The Collector entered into a state of consciousness that was simply that: consciousness. Consciousness in its barest, purest form: the psionic profile. In this state, the Collector could perceive in even greater detail the psionic tethers that swirled within the dimensional waters.

If there had to be an equivalent to conventional ocular systems, then the Collector would have described the experience as being in the center of a whirlpool of rippling, shining rainbow currents, and lining those currents were psionic tethers: bright white, root-like protrusions that floated up, breaching the surface of the waters and connecting to the material world.

This space where the Collector's psionic profile inhabited independent of its physical body was called a Simulacra.

A lesser point in hyperspace meant for creating lower range warp gates.

By analyzing a specific psionic tether, the Collector could perceive where it led to, and following that would allow for a warp to that very location.

But the scope and processing power of these waters, this Simulacra, was minute.

A brief analysis of the tethers showed that they reached out only to specific points within this world and its realms, though notably, there were only five independent realms the Collector could sense these tethers linked to.

The Collector did not require this. It needed to establish a link beyond this world, to the far flung reaches of space where the Collective awaited its call.

Like all Collector units, the Collector possessed a Dawning Protocol imbued in its psionic profile specifically for this purpose.

Psionic power was based off the mind's ability to interact with space and time. If a sufficiently intelligent lifeform conceptualized their star, then though their physical forms remained anchored to their terrestrial space, their minds, their psionic profiles, had crossed light years to perceive that solar body.

This conceptualization was not merely an image constructed from neurochemical reactions within a processing organ.

No, there was something inherent within it that was beyond that, beyond even flesh, and this power, psionics as it was labeled, possessed an origin that eluded even the Collective.

Of course, unless in extremely rare cases, biological lifeforms did not possess the processing power to have their minds, their latent psionic energy, manifest any tangible phenomena. Even in the cases they did, it was in minor manipulations of space.

Pushing and pulling. Infiltrating other psionic profiles. Nothing nearing the level of warp travel.

Yet with warp-sensitive points that led into Simulacra, minor 'holes' in space whose ripples reached far around them, it was possible for a sufficiently advanced psionic profile to envision a space, and then connect with the Simulacra to manifest access to that place so long as the Simulacra's ripples encompassed the area.

In this case, this Simulacra reached only to specific points in this world.

But the Collective was perhaps the only lifeform in the universe that understood the Simulacra, hyperspace, and psionic power to such a degree that it could access further into the Simulacra and utilize it as a jumping point to reach deeper into the ultimate hyperspace nexus: the Tesseract.

All Simulacra were simply sub-points of the Tesseract: byproducts of its greater spatial ripples.

Within the hyper-spatial, extradimensional Tesseract whose great ripples encompassed the entire known universe, it was possible in theory to reach any point in conceivable space, potentially even beyond it to a great beyond past the known reaches of the universe.

Thus, the Collective believed psionic power and the Tesseract the greatest means to avoid the inevitable decay of the universe, though as of now, even the Collective's enormous processing power could only grasp the smallest percentage of the Tesseract.

Yet, the Collector, though it was simply a shard of the Collective, had programmed within its psionic profile a specific protocol, the Dawning Protocol, that allowed it to manifest a specific psionic programming from that allowed it to access the Tesseract when it entered any Simulacra such as the one it found itself in now.

The Collector did not have nearly enough processing power on its own to navigate the Tesseract, but the Dawning Protocol imbued within its psionic profile provided first a means to interface with any Simulacra to reach deep hyperspace and then input exact coordinates to the Collective and a means to generate a signal to contact them.

The first part of the Dawning Protocol, the Collector exercised now.

All the white tendrils in the rainbow waters bent and started to latch onto the Collector, and in the next instant, the Collector predicted these psionic tethers would essentially 'catapult' the Collector's psionic profile into the Tesseract.

The rainbow waters faded away in an instant, but what the Collector perceived was no Tesseract.

The Tesseract was an extradimensional space that did not truly have any geometric form completely perceivable to an organic lifeform, but to the Collector's limited psionic profile, it should have manifested in a form of four-dimensional cube.

Countless cubes linked within each other in constantly shifting spatial dimensions filled with white lines that represented points in space.

But this was entirely different.

The Collector's psionic profile found itself within an infinitely expansive mass of overlapping circular planes, the outlines of these shifting and rippling planes shaded in bright iridescent rainbow and curled like roots.

An entirely foreign hyperspace. One that the Collector did not even have the slightest beginning of an understanding in how to navigate.

Would the second part of its Dawning Protocol, the signal to the Collective, even work here?

What was this space in the first place? Did not the Tesseract encompass the entirety of the known universe?

The Collector could not comprehend this, and its perception of this hyperspace was extremely hazy, the seemingly infinite series of constantly overlapping circular planes flickering and blurring, making them even more difficult to analyze.

The dimensional waters of the dungeon, the Simulacra, did not possess adequate processing power to clearly allow the Collector to interact with this hyperspace.

But beyond this issue lay the fact that this hyperspace was beyond the Collector's programming.

It was only through the Dawning Protocol imbued within it that it could navigate the Simulacra and hyperspace, allowing it to make decisions that would have taken absolutely no time at all relative to its physical form.

Yet, here, in this utterly foreign hyperspace?

The Dawning Protocol would have immediately allowed the Collector to pinpoint the Collective's coordinates to send a psionic signal to, but here, the Collector had to manually navigate this infinitely complex hyperspace.

And because the Dawning Protocol could not assist the Collector, it drastically reduced its processing power, which also meant that the Collector could no longer guarantee that it was navigating this space in a timespan equivalent to a single instant to its physical form.

This, during a time where every single second meant the Collector's potential death at the hands of the humanoid.

Already, in simply beginning to conceptualize this hyperspace, several seconds might have passed to the Collector's physical body.

Perhaps even more time. It was impossible to tell.

It was an improbability of high degree that the Collector's physical form remained intact. But it could not continue to push these boundaries of probability much longer.

The Collector had to make a decision now.

==

"Oh, my dear, my love, what has your new friend done?" exclaimed the warden as he stared down at his hand.

Five golden severed threads spooled back into his gloves, and his flashing gold eyes flickered as he hung his head low.

"My dearest Ambrosian Arms severed like this…why, that is a sin that even I, with my boundless love for your filthy kind, cannot forgive." A pause.

"Krala, my dear," said the warden as he switched his gaze, eyeing the daemon child staring listlessly up to the shining cavern ceiling. "You have a name. So must your friend. Tell me, what is it?"

Krala's tongue-less mouth gaped open like that of a beached fish's as her vision blurred and focused in erratic intervals, focusing only on the lightstone crystals above, at their hazy sunny light.

"You must tell me," said the warden. "I love your kind, I do. That is why when I have finished tasting any one of you, I always remember your names, etch them into my heart with the great flavor they give me. I need to know this one's name before he dies."

Krala could barely hear the warden's words. They drifted into her ears as if in slow motion, garbled like they had traveled through water to reach her.

"Ah, right, I tore out your sinful tongue long ago," said the warden with a nonchalant, remembering shrug. "And I suppose you are too tired of being loved to speak to me in any case."

The warden looked over to the strange new daemon, one unlike he had ever seen before, but in the end, that did not matter. All of them were his to be loved no matter what. No matter how small or big. Old or young. Even infants that could barely crawl possessed quite the exquisite taste.

It was an awful tragedy that he would only be able to taste this night child raw, without love marinating its flesh, but alas, even he in his boundless love could not forgive anyone from harming his Ambrosian Arms.

The daemon's large figure was hunched over the dimensional waters of the dungeon. The warden had feared that perhaps it might have warped out, but it instead strangely remained frozen.

"I will ask him personally," said the warden as he floated over to the new daemon, his four golden wings of energy shining by his sides.