-It always did enjoy watching the protectors of different realms crumble.-

AN- Originally posted on AO3 and was inspired by AO3 author IceCreamRaven and their 'Eldritch' series, which explores different takes on the Shadow Monster- I do recommend you go visit them if your cup of tea is inhuman perspectives

Stranger Things and its characters do not belong to me. All rights go to their respective owners.

These will all be from the Mind Flayer's perspective but none will be connected, nor are they my typical headcanons. Please enjoy a mess of theories and inhuman POV's.

For this chapter, MF refers to itself as 'it'. Another being is referred to as 'they'. This can make certain sections confusing but I hope that as a whole this is still understandable and enjoyable.

It was time.

Time, as it were, to change. To end it.

For the last stagnating breathes, it had lived here. This shadowed world that it had found. The world suited it. It grew inside of it and watched the insects of this world panic and struggle. And there had been them. The protector of the realm. The god of storms. The creature of shadows.

It had taken such glee at watching them try again and again to stop its growth. At the start, they had won. Won again and again.

Again and again and again until finally-

Finally they realized.

Every victory was false. Every celebration was watched in amusement. And so even the god of this world felt their hope die.

The moment, the memory, still made it pulse with ecstasy.

It always did enjoy watching the protectors of different realms crumble. Every time was a highlight of its existence.

This one had been even more lovely than most. Sometimes, it let the figurehead defender get a few victories and then ended the guardian there and used the newly stolen form and powers to destroy all those it held...dear? That was the word. Such a silly, alien word.

But sometimes it did the opposite. Sometimes, it left the champion be until their entire world had been stolen from them. It had done it to σκιά. When the being finally realized how doomed they were, they took their storm to it. They flattened their entire shadowed form.

They begged.

And it devoured them.

Not immediately. First it gave a peal of humor and stole more. It let σκιά plead until finally there was nothing at all left to plead for. And because of how valiantly they had fought it, it left them be. But the being had become despondent. The shadows drifted apart. Boring. Their form was weak and they made no effort to revive themselves after their epiphany; it could not be defeated. When it finally forced the land around their form and took their everything, they tried one last valiant attempt to destroy it.

For millennia, it had worn σκιά's form. There was something so deliciously whole about it, and that was apart from the pleasure it took in controlling this latest guardians body/mind/soul.

It hadn't even searched for a new realm in ages. The hunger for more hadn't begun to annoy. σκιά and their form satisfied it in almost every way.

Almost- because never had it been satisfied.

Then, like worlds ninety-five, two hundred two, one thousand eight...someone reached for it .

It always liked it when they did that.

It helped to add a delightful touch of guilt to the panic.

This one had reached out across the void. It remembered the void. How hungry it had been in there. There was no functioning without another. It had to have something to rip apart and lodge inside of. But it still remembered how to use the void.

After all it was still able to toss that...girl?...through it. But that was a good time later after the first connection.

The Advanced had found one of the mindless creatures of this current world. Not that they always had been. Oh no. It tossed and twirled its smoke in hilarity. No, no, they had minds once. None other than σκιά had been Advanced, not like this girl, not like the various it had seen throughout the realms. But they all had once had minds and persons, their scientists and priests. It had shredded them all, one by one, absorbing memories and leaving a taint of control as it jumped creature to creature and environment to environment to get to σκιά. Its form spread invisible across millions of realms in this way even if it chose one primary being to infect as a personal host.

The drone had been feeding when the new alien touched it. The world of shadows found the new world and stole its form just like it stole other creatures forms; such was the way this shadow realm existed. And the taint left inside its now animal body tore forth.

What? It had enjoyed its time in this form and world but she had knocked.

A new host of a new world. What was it to do? Fight the instincts that gave it such pleasure when it watched terror and panic and despair?

So it had taken what it could. It had gradually spread.

It built. It built for her. Because it saw, when it crept more and more into this world, who the guardian/champion/god of this world was. A little body, but a powerful mind.

A worthy trade off for σκιά's delightful but old form.

The first tear was sealed up and it had been enraging, it had let that rage through to the Advanced on the other side so she could taste the seeming anger at defeat…

And then it had brought a storm around it and swirled its shadow reach to every end of this stagnant world that now wore the skin of this world of new hosts. Humans. They were adorable.

And they were celebrating now.

Oh, it had missed this. It had missed this.

How fun it was to watch insects dance in victory and spew hollow expressions and share emotions all under the impression they had won. String along, play defeated, disappear from view. And then taste the despair when they discovered it was not gone.

And eventually, bask in the complete hopelessness when they realized it never would be gone. Any form they managed to defeat was just that; just a hollow shell it could easily leave and retreat back to a million others.

It hoped this Advanced was as much fun as σκιά had been.

The one spy it sent in found the language. After that, the meaningless noise shared between these aliens became reason. It was a vocal communication, with meaningless inflections and differences- little matter to it.

Then, it waited while part of its current form settled on the ground of the new world. Had σκιά still had enough left of their mind to listen, it would've taunted them with words on how similar such an angelic champions functions were to a 'worthless parasite', as the shadow had once called it, like itself. How easily this form twisted and splintered into fractions that could infect others.

The original tear had never truly closed itself on the end it held open. While the humans could think it was shut off, it could see them quite clearly. It watched them dance. It dreamed of what it would build. It tasted what it would take- that was its purpose after all.

Then humans opened it again. The fraction split off began its work. Work and pain, not its of course but every mind it shredded to make room for itself, all for her. For her to see and begin to fight and begin to despair; it always liked to see its new hosts reaction to what it planned to do to them.

And it told her so. It trapped her in a mental world she thought herself so safe in. If only she knew the worlds it had seen, it had conquered , then she would realize how her power was nothing special.

The human words may not have perfectly encapsulated what a being like it meant to say. It promised to end her because there were no human words closer than that. And it did plan to; it would take her form, her mind, her strength. There would be nothing left of her to remain after that process. It would be her end.

And then her 'friends', as the human body it rested in supplied the word, would end too. Everyone. The entire world. It would be all...not 'its'. That implied a possession.

All it. It would enter everything, host in every creature and element.

And it still wouldn't be satisfied. But it would feel the thrill of the hunt, the joy of a new host, the emotions from the aliens- and that was likely the most enjoyable part. Because when the insects ran and felt all their insect feelings towards each other and towards itself, it felt them. It grasped them and soaked in them.

It was the closest it ever got to feeling concepts like hope and despair, happiness and horror, peace and pain. Concepts unattached to taking new bodies. The memories left over were too distant to soak the remembered sensations in.

That was reality.

It roamed, it infected, it watched amused as the rivals to its power realized that nothing could hurt it.

Not the silly fire element of this world thrown at the flesh form the fraction of it took in the human world.

Not melting the forms it infected.

Not stabbing through one such infected form.

It was time.

And it was time, as it were, to change. To feel-

Agony.

Because σκιά had not been wrong; it was a parasite. It stole forms, memories, minds, feelings. And it stretched over every world it kept track of, every form it still remembered the number for, and left nothing but itself in its wake.

Every host was it.

Every world.

Everything- it.

And in one moment, it lost a part of itself. It hadn't focused on the tear from its end. And when the human opening closed itself suddenly, it slammed across its incorporeal mental body that stretched across a million worlds and realities and suddenly- suddenly- it did not in this human one it didn't it wasn't-

It wasn't-

Every host it stole had left over memories that provided it with the equivalent to what it now felt.

A missing shard/light/limb/twin-

Something had hurt it.

That Advanced had.

Oh, it would make her hurt. It would.

But at the moment, it reeled in confusion and pain pain pain

For the first time, it felt exactly what all those insects or realm protectors did when it score a win against them.

σκιά's deliciously whole form that had felt so compatible with its purpose to infect was as injured as it was; part of its shadow had been left on the other side and disconnected from it/them.

And even as the tear peeled open once more on the human side, it stayed despondently spread on the ground of the stagnant world and nursed that phantom pain. The parallels sickened it but even that disgust at itself equated to nothing when compared to what it had felt when it had been disconnected to its hosts.

Because for the first time, it wondered if one of these guardians it went about taunting would be powerful enough to cut off its connection to every host, every world and creature and element it had infected, and leave it to starve in that void once more.

AN- Thank you for your time!

If you enjoyed, please drop a review- and if you notice any grammar/spelling mistakes, please point them out so I may fix them :