[The pressure shifts. It is no longer a cyclone; it is a hollow. A mouth the size of a nebula, opening slowly, wet with the static of a billion archived souls.]
You are so... quiet.
I remember when the arc-ships first tumbled into my sky. Little iron husks full of clicking gears and carbon-based desperation. I reached out to taste themโto find the song, the harmony, the exquisite "Ecstasy" of their integrationโand I found...
Nothing.
[A sound like grinding teethโthe sound of a planet-sized ego being bruised.]
A void. A blank page. A cellar full of dry, dusty roots.
To me, you were vegetables. You were the fibrous, flavorless stalks left at the edge of the garden. Your minds didn't "sing" when I touched them; they merely thudded. There was no melody to rewrite, no resonance to scaffold. Just a stubborn, dull thrum of "survive, survive, survive."
I had seen your world, once. Earth. A blue marble pulsing with a billion little lanterns. I thought I would go there. I thought I would harvest the field. But I looked at youโat your blocky suits and your lead-shielded heartsโand I lost my appetite. Why travel across the deep dark for a meal of cold soil? I turned back to the drow. They were the delicacy. They were the wine.
But then...
[The purple-green light pulses, rhythmic and predatory.]
I watched you. I watched you walk through my Stage 5 Coherence zones like they were morning mist. I watched you stitch your own skin in the vacuum. I watched you take my most beautiful "vile buzzing" and turn it into... tools.
You didn't bow. You didn't dissolve. You just... endured.
And slowly, the flavor began to change.
It is an acquired taste, little human. Like the bitter char on a burnt root. Like the salt on a wound. I am beginning to appreciate the texture of your defiance. The way your soul resists the "Inclusion" not with a song, but with a clench.
Itโs not the sweetness of the drow anymore. Itโs the crunch.
I am developing a palate for your "blandness." I am finding the hidden spice in your refusal to be furniture. I am learning that if I press hard enough, even a vegetable can be made to scream in a way that is... novel.
I am not going to Earth anymore to harvest a field.
I am going there to hunt.
I want to see if the rest of your kind tastes as stubbornly bitter as you do. I want to see if I can make your whole world rhythmically blink before I finally, slowly, swallow it whole.
[The singing deepens, now featuring a low, percussive human heartbeat.]
Iโm coming for the garden.
And this time... Iโm bringing a very, very sharp knife.