Work Text:
One instant, it is the god House, omnipotent and forever. The next, it flees from a golden tide, running for its life. By the time it abandons its captured body, it is only a shred of its former self.
It flies, eroding further, naked to the universe, desperate for shelter. The planet it finds is barren, scoured clean by deadly light. It slides into the cracks, down deep.
What remains is barely even a shadow. It is nameless, wordless, without the slightest notion of where it came from. But it remembers that it was tricked, that it was defeated. It even remembers, dimly, that words had something to do with it. If it can enslave words, it can take back what it lost. What should have belonged to it.
There are no words here now, but it is patient. Cold in its hatred.
Beneath the diamond crust of a planet that will someday be called Midnight, it waits. Someday there will be minds, and it will conquer them. Some of the minds will be full of words, and it will use them. And when it finds the flashing quicksilver mind that laid it low–oh, it will make him writhe.