A comatose Celestus tossed and turned in his bed. He was fully capable of going several days and nights without sleep but even he was incapable of doing so forever.
Eventually his body’s need for rest caused a metabolic “overload” resulting in the mitochondria of certain sleep-regulating brain cells becoming overcharged. As a result, they leaked electrons, producing potentially damaging byproducts known as reactive oxygen species which appeared to act as a warning signal that pushed the brain into sleep by generating reactive molecules that damaged cells, restoring equilibrium before the damage spread more widely forcing him to sleep, to dream whether he wanted to or not.
He didn’t always remember his dreams when he awoke, but those he did remember were often of a familiar nightmarish nature; dreams of being badly hurt and restrained, unable to respond or react other than squirm in abject terror as the nightmare engulfed him. Yet he had a secret desire to experience them because these nightmares also contained his mother’s voice (or at least a female voice he associated with his mother), even though she had died before he had a chance to get to know her. A soothing female voice calling him her “brave, little Star Knight.”
This time though the dream was more vivid than ever before as if the use of his newly acquired powers had somehow activated something inside his mind. This time, in his dream he was finally aware of his ‘dream location’. He was sure he was an embryo in his mother’s womb. It was a world of fluid, muffled sounds, and subtle defused light, where his developing senses were being continually stimulated, presumably to prepare him for life outside the womb.
Surprisingly the womb was not completely dark. His still developing eyes saw everything through a subdued, reddish glow. His eyes though had begun to open and close which meant he had to be at least in his seventh month of Antenatal existence.
He could feel himself suspended in warm, amniotic fluid, which offered a feeling of gentle buoyancy and pressure all around his body. He reached out and touched the uterine wall and the umbilical cord. He could hear the rhythmic thump of his mother’s heartbeat, the whooshing of blood circulating through her major vessels. His mother stood up and he felt himself being gently rocked and tumbled in the fluid, the movement stimulating the vestibular system in his ear.
He heard her muffled voice saying “Sorry my little Star Knight but it must be done!” then there was bright lights hurting his premature eyes followed by intense pain.
There are those who debate whether babies can feel pain whilst developing in the womb; Celestus knew they could, as he experienced it then. Sharp, severe, intense, unrelenting pain.
As he lay in the amniotic fluid, something glided over his shoulder, faint as a whisper. Again he heard his mother’s muffled voice, “Sorry little one, but this is necessary!” as something thin and cold burrowed into his neck and wrapped itself around his spine. He screamed and kicked out in distress but the cable of organic matter continued its journey down his spine before hair-like tendrils proceeded to integrate themselves into his spinal column from neck to coccyx.
“Shush little Star Knight, it will be over soon, I promise.”
It felt as though his body was on fire if he’d known what fire was at that point in his existance. The invading cables of alien organic matter wormed its way into his brain and unfurled its companion ‘petals’ as it installed itself in his skull. Then a second invader wormed its way into his body and split into multiple cords which crawled down his arms and legs installing themselves into his bones. The invader then activated and directed his stem cells to heal the entry wound, hiding itself inside his still developing young body.
He instinctively knew this was technology, super-advanced organic-based technology that was near mystical in its ability to alter and activate his Meta genes and begin to heal him. This was a chrysalis that would activate and enhance his metamorphosis that would set him apart from his half-siblings from the moment of his birth.
Instinctively he knew this, admittedly painful, ‘gift’ was an alien symbiotic chrysalis that activated his meta-metamorphosis, the first and last thing his mother could give him until that dying alien sentient had activated, (programmed?) his weaponry adaptations already installed before birth. Totally organic, the technology had been hiding inside him. The initial manifestations, his ability to survive vacuum and space, his inhuman strength, his ability to heal others, to understand all known languages had always marked him as different from his unpowered half siblings, now he knew why…
He suddenly woke up, sitting upright in his bed. A dream or..?
{Now you understand your origins, you must seek out the first ones who made/grew the original power chrysalis and created the first Star Knights.}
The voice inside his head spoke, a voice he now identified and associated with his mother (even if he still didn’t know what she (had) looked like.
“Where do I look?” he asked out loud but there was only silence in response.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 