Editing Apollyon (section)

==History==
Things begin as they do in canon, with the Thinker detecting a third entity as it approaches Earth.<ref name="SB1 e1">Two parts to a whole. The other entity is a warrior, direct, oriented in the short-term goals. This entity looks further, consulting possibilities.<br /><br />Their general destination is in mind, and has been in mind for some time. Already, they have begun to close their helix spiral, drawing fractionally towards one another with each rotation, controlling the pattern and timing of their approach.<br /><br />''Destination'', the Warrior entity communicates.<br /><br />''Agreement'', this entity responds. The signals that accompany and form the overarching messages allow them to pick out sub-worlds for themselves. Arrival points, destinations for critical shards to root, hosts for the extensions of those same shards.<br /><br />''Trajectory'', the other entity communicates. More data on where they will arrive, the way they will move on approach, the placement of less crucial shards.<br /><br />''Agreement''. This entity sees the constant messages as a distraction. It is reorganizing, calling on its own precognition and clairvoyance to map out their actions after arrival.<br /><br />This entity reforms itself, adjusting the placements of individual shards, priming itself for a deeper simulation, considering possible ways things can be carried out.<br /><br />This takes time. Focus.<br /><br />''Colony'', the other entity signals.<br /><br />Narrowing down possible destinations.<br /><br />''Agreement'', this entity is distracted in responding. It is receiving another broadcast.
<br /><br />A third. - [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15100258 Wildbow on Spacebattles]</ref> However, instead of the [[The Loner|small thing]] it meets in other universes, this is a larger and more hostile entity. Called Apollyon, it absorbs the two entities, becoming even larger and more deadly. <ref name="SB1 e2">The communication is almost alien, a member of their species, but long distant, from countless cycles ago.<br /><br />It hesitates, then signals its own location.''Exchange. Meet.''<br /><br />The response is garbled. Takes time to analyze<br /><br />The third entity travels more through momentum than by insinuation. It expends vast quantities of power to change course.<br /><br />The response, this entity realizes, is a declaration of war.<br /><br />And the third entity is larger than the two of them combined.<br /><br />Victory is impossible, only submission will serve.<br /><br />The other entity only takes, and it is a return to the beginning, in a way, to a time when they as a race agreed to be consumed by the strongest, so that the dynamic might change.<br /><br />What remains of this entity turns its focus toward the future, attempting to process this eventuality.<br /><br />A focus on the superweapons. Lesser than the ones this entity had planned, but still potent enough to serve. Numbering in the hundreds.<br /><br />This entity and its warrior partner will be cannibalized, so the larger entity can seed the population with only minor powers. Four or five times the number of powers, at half strength or weaker.<br /><br />This third, larger entity, devourer that it is, has reached a size where it must decide what shards will pass muster and which will be discarded or repurposed entirely.<br /><br />This biped race will kill or be killed. This larger entity does not care about preserving the race. It follows a faster cycle.<br /><br />As the warrior entity is consumed, this entity ceases fighting and allows itself to be subsumed and cannibalized.<br /><br />Those that were once three set down together as one being, landing on the biped planet. - [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15100258 Wildbow on Spacebattles]</ref>