The world around us is made up of more than what we can see. Most interestingly is the different planes of existence that occupy the multiverse. A person could spend their entire lives searching and studying and documenting everything they came across and they would only touch on the tiniest percentage of what actually exists.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a large portion of what the multiverse has to offer. But one of the more interesting things I have encountered is a small plane of energy that doesn’t have a name to us at this time. It is occupied by two main species that, until recently, had lived out their lives with a unique balance. The beings here do not posses physical bodies in any sense that we can understand. They are concentrated thoughts given self awareness.
The first species we will call the Lumos. The Lumos are small, bright, fairly simple thought forms. They heavily populate this plane, their numbers appearing to grow suddenly from the growth of consciousness on other planes.
They are communal and are mostly harmless unless their stream of thought is interrupted in mass.
The other species appear to, at least among themselves, be referred to as the Grasus. They are a quasi-predatory species, feeding on the concentrated psychic energy of the Lumos. This doesn’t directly harm the Lumos, but they do find the presence of the Grasus disturbing because the Grasus prefer the darker, quiet of solitude to communal gathering and extinguish light as they absorb the ambient psychic energy.
Recently, the Grasus have faced a threat to their source of psychic food from an aggressive new species we will call the Rapax. This new species came to this plane from the greater Astral. They appear almost parasitic, drinking a place dry of psychic energy before moving on. However their method of harvesting the energy is far more direct than that of the Grasus.
While the Grasus feed off the ambient energy cast off by the gathered Lumos, the Rapax feed directly from them which is ultimately lethal to the Lumos.
Stranger still is the fact that the Lumos have embraced the necrotic feeding of the Rapax, because their influence makes the Lumos toxic to the Grasus, who the Lumos have feared for longer than they can remember.
I’ve begun to see an almost cult like worship from the Lumos, building structures of energy to house the Rapax in so the Lumos can visit them regularly and offer energy in exchange for what they seem to see as protection.
The Grasus have started to fight the Rapax for control of the various Lumos communities to prevent the poisoning from eating away their entire food source. The Lumos see the sudden increase of Grasus attention as an attack on them, leading to greater worship of the toxin that is killing them, but which also deters the Grasus.
The Lumos have also begun to spread the toxic influence of the Rapax by themselves, some Lumos communities even seeking out Rapax influence to ward off the Grasus.
Ultimately, I believe this will be the end of this plane. The Rapax no longer have to fight to stay since the Lumos work so hard to embrace them. And the Grasus are seen as so cruel due to their darker nature that they have to trap and farm the Lumos to isolate them from the harmful effects of the Rapax.
Eventually the Rapax will drain the life from this plane and the Grasus will be forced to leave or die.
This provides a lesson for us. Often, we will go with what appears safer and more comfortable than what is good for us. Often we shun things we do not understand even though they do not harm us at all, and embrace what we see as safety which harms or limits us.
We have to learn to question everything. To never let the lure of comfort restrict our ability to see reality for what it is.
Hopefully, the Lumos learn to do so. Otherwise their entire place will die.