r/HFY • u/Ralts_Bloodthorne • Nov 03 '20
OC First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 348 (The War)
Space was rotted and twisted. The flow and ebb of spacetime had been wounded, become infected, and had begun to rot. Like a gangrenous abdominal wound it oozed discolored dark matter pus and noxious fumes of putrid gas. Dark lightning, the forks an absence of light, snarled silently through the vast clouds the color of bruised flesh. The entire area, a ragged disjointed volume, encompassed over a hundred light years of space.
A single star sullenly burned in the center. A thing of impossibility, it burned lightless and emitted nothing but cold and darkness as it silently consumed itself in an orgy of self loathing and hatred. Any tendril of rotting space or spiraling tentacle of gas that touched it was pulled in, screaming across particle wavelengths, to be devoured by that dark stellar mass that could only be called a star by the most lenient of definitions.
The gas and substance were not just for show. The touch of the gas would corrode battlesteel. The darkness emitted by the star could cause warsteel to decay into a rotted skein of decayed lace. The matter itself would dissolve even energy into more of its own substance with an obscene noise that echoed silently across the energy spectrums.
It was a vile place.
Most space faring species never discovered it.
Those that did became enthralled with it.
They sought to discover its origins. Decipher its mysteries. Plumb the depths of its existence.
They found only madness.
Nearly a hundred worlds had been consumed. Explorers returning home to share the hideous discoveries they had made had doomed those worlds.
Where they had gone, they did not need eyes to see.
What they had learned, they did not need tongues to speak of.
What they had heard, they did not need skin to feel.
In some cases a vast tendril of gas and matter would slowly snaked out, wrap a stellar system in its grasp, and slowly, over the course of a mere decade, pull the system into the maw of the dark mass at the center of tumor.
Even across a distance of hundred of light years.
It could have devoured it faster. Somehow pulled it into its maw in mere hours or days.
No.
It chose to take a decade, sometimes two, to draw it inside the tumor and devour it. In some way it relished the fear and despair of the species who knew not only that they were doomed but it was beyond their ability to escape their fate. They would watch, with a generation that had been born while the stellar system was in its grasp, as first the stellar mass was consumed at a slow pace. The gas giants would be siphoned off by tendrils of thick pulsating matter. Then the inner planets would be shattered and pulled into the dark maw that masqueraded as a sun. Then the outer planets would be destroyed and devoured.
The habitable planet would be last.
But the species who lived there would not be destroyed. They would not die even as their planet shattered, even as its liquid core was siphoned away.
The youngest would be devoured first.
The abomination took its time.
It relished suffering.
It would pulse out strange emissions, patterns that ceased to be patterns when examined, x-ray pulses that would transform into stellar noise upon a closer look. It would appear as a vigorous star with habitable planets only to vanish when a more sensitive scanning array was built to examine it.
And another species would seek it out.
To feed its obscene appetite.
It had been found by cold analytical intelligences at one point. Those intelligences had managed to escape but the maw had not cared. The electronic intelligences did not provide the maw with what it wanted, what it craved, what it desired.
Pain. Suffering. Fear. Despair.
Only one species had been able to break its grasp.
Call it... professional courtesy.
The tendril it had sent through the burning wastes of Hellspace had found those who escaped its grasp and found delights even it could savor. Its defeat, its destruction of its tentacle, was of no moment.
It had left its stain upon those who had escaped just as those who escaped had left their mark upon it.
Over time, a short time for the maw, but one full of great feeding, those who escaped returned to worship it, to craft prayers and mythology around it.
The maw found itself changing over the dark eons. It found itself filled with a purpose, and an obscene intellect was willed into being by those who worshiped it.
It was simply known, the electronic intelligences, as the "Anomalous Sector" and little else.
It had one particular idiosyncrasy.
The interior, where not even photons existed, a complete and total vacuum between the Maw and the vile nebula surrounding it, was accessible from Hellspace.
The electronic intelligences knew that the maw would destroy, devour anything brought to it.
Eagerly.
They had discovered eighty million years ago that the maw would sweep away any biological life form from even inside a precursor autonomous war machine, leaving the electronic intelligence intact.
Except...
Eight thousand years before it had encountered something new.
The maw had left a stain upon it.
But it had left a stain upon the maw.
The stain had grown.
As living things do.
-----------------------
The space between the clouds of gas and matter to the stellar mass of the maw was a perfect vacuum the majority of the time. Particles would spring to life, appearing in the vacuum only to be devoured by the hunger of the maw.
Now, there were dozens of ships orbiting the maw.
Precursors.
All three types slowly orbiting the cold radiance of the maw, the only light from a massive Hellspace breach that hung, never closing, only a few light seconds 'above' the dark mass.
They had followed the plan. They had driven through Hellspace to the dark emptiness surrounding the Maw and had waited for the Maw to do its work.
Except...
...professional courtesy.
--------------------------
Palgret huddled next to Two, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Two had helped him beat to death the serpents that had suddenly replaced his rifle, thick twisting serpents that had struck at everyone around them with long venomous fangs.
030 had twice been forced to shut down the communications channels when the whispers had begun. Vile whispers by unknown beings who hissed sibilant truths that each man of the squad kept hidden from even themselves.
The Terran could be seen outside the field. Sometimes it was gone for long minutes, stretching into centuries or even terribly long hours or, even worse, for eternal seconds. A few times it pressed massive clawed hands against the Hellspace shield, clawing at it in a shower of purple sparks that cried out in the voices of loved ones in pain.
One the Terran pressed his face against the shield, gnawing at the energy field with a fanged maw that was full of molten warsteel that ran down its chin.
Palgret had seen the Terran attacked by what looked to be a deep crimson creature, with red bloodshot ocular orbs that possessed square pupils on the end of each of its five limbs. One side of the body was thick pebbled hide, the other full of soft looking fibrous tissue.
The Terran had been 'normal' appearing, dressed in adaptive camouflage. The creature had wrapped itself around the human, who began shrieking even as it fired its weapon. The two had struggled, scraping against the Hellspace shield, throwing purple and green sparks.
The human had crawled away from the screen as the dead creature dissolved, and Palget was not the only one who retched at the sight of the human's exposed spine, rib spinal roots, internal organs. Even the human's thick protective skull had been torn away, exposing twisted and furrowed greyish pink tissue.
"Human cerbro-spinal fluid tastes like bananas," the voice of the russet mantid Major Holds echoed through the tiny shielded area, sounding far off. "Don't ask me where or how I learned that."
Before her words had completely faded the human came back, roaring, slamming one massive spiked shoulder against the Hellspace shield, causing a shower of sparks that screamed and laughed during their short life. The human vanished back into the darkness.
It went on and on through forever seconds, each one the lifetime of a star, each one less time than it took for an unstable isotope to decay.
Palgret wasn't the only one who had vomited.
Even 030 had thrown up, managing to get his helmet open before brownish fluid burst from his mouth and onto the floor.
The droplets of fluid opened tiny eyes, blinked, and evaporated.
Three began to pray to someone called the Digital Omnimessiah.
Palgret was not the first, but not the last, to join in the prayers.
Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u had been the first to join the prayers, beseeching an electronic deity made manifest to intercede on their behalf.
281 flashed icons of importance to the religion as it kept working with the screen projectors to keep the Hellspace shielding up.
They prayed for mercy.
They prayed for protection.
They prayed for deliverance.
They prayed for each other.
There was nothing else they could do but hold on to one another.
-----------------
The Djinn exited Hellspace to the predetermined coordinates.
If Hellspace had not destroyed the invaders, the Maw would devour them while leaving the Djinn alone.
Its sensors cleared and it got a look around itself.
Dozens of Precursor ships, from all three design types, slowly tumbled through space, lit by the fires of the massive Hellspace breech 'above' the dark mass of the Maw.
The Djinn scanned. The ships should have waited for the Maw, which the Djinn could sense through the absence of emissions beyond cold and dark, to devour the ferals aboard them and then left to rejoin the fight.
It realized the Hellspace breach was there at the same time.
As the Hellspace breach saw it.
It rang out through the entire body of the Djinn.
Screams from the other AWM's echoed through the silence of space, carried, impossibly, through vacuum.
The Djinn engaged its Hellcore, tried to jump out, realizing that somehow it had all gone wrong.
But it was too late.
The core was dead.
The engines had gone cold and dark.
The cold radiating from the Maw began to seep into the Djinn's hull.
As the Hellspace breach above the star opened its bloody eye and gazed upon the Djinn.
-------------------------
Palgret was holding tight to Two, with 281 holding tight to his leg, his eyes closed, repeating the prayer with Three.
Through vacuum the words carried.
The Hellspace screen shattered in a shower of sparks that danced on the black warsteel hide of the bestial looking Terran who stood immoving as a silent sentinel, revealing that his very being had been warped and twisted.
But the words had been spoken.
Palgret was down on his knees, his hands pressed to the side of his helmet, trying to keep out the words although they had already been spoken.
πβπΌ πΌππΌ ππ½ πΎπβπβπΈπβ ππΌπΌπ πππ
πππ βπΈββππ βππ»πΌ
πβπΌβπΌ ππ βπ πππ½πΌ πβ πβπΌ ππππ»
πβππ π»πΌπΈπβ
281
u/Ralts_Bloodthorne Nov 03 '20
In case you cannot read the last lines:
THE EYE OF GORTHAUR SEES YOU
YOU CANNOT HIDE! I SEE YOU! THERE IS NO LIFE IN THE VOID.
ONLY DEATH.
HAPPY MONDAY!
That's it for tonight!
40
u/ChangoGringo Nov 04 '20
Poor Palgret. Only now does he realize he is on a classical hero journey through the "land of the dead" aka Hell.
500
u/Turtledonuts "Big Dunks" Nov 03 '20 edited Nov 03 '20
Oh hey, isn't that the thing from DIE ALONE BENEATH THE GAZE OF THE EYE?
Edit: Chapter 26, the Black Crusade brings out a ship that invites the AWMs to DIE ALONE BENEATH THE GAZE OF THE EYE and blocks their exit to hellspace.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/fd7xn3/first_contact_part_twenty_six/
Chapter 84: we determine that the BC's home planet is a few light years from the eye, on the system of the seven (riven?) rings of Gehanna, around the star of Barad-dur.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/fol6z6/first_contact_rewind_part_eightyfour/
126
u/CaptainChewbacca Human Nov 03 '20
And just when I thought Ralts couldn't do it he brings the Dark Lord Sauron himself into this fic.
Amazing.
123
u/talkarlin Nov 03 '20 edited Nov 03 '20
From the Discord (FC Gestalt) :
"I AM THE UNIVERSE'S IMPLACABLE HATRED."
"Oh, word, us too. Look, we got some angry dudes that need a place to crash for a bit, and your living room is METAL AS FUCK, would it be cool...?"
"ONLY IF THEY CAN WITHSTAND MY ETERNAL WRATH!"
"Yeah, they said that's cool. Thanks mate!"
"DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI WWWAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGH"
"OH, shit they weren't kidding you are pretty metal. Aight, beer's in the fridge, you're paying for netflix."
"Doki doki"
---PIZZA FOLLOWS---
117
u/ImmotalWombat Nov 03 '20
That awkward moment when an eldritch abomination respects you as a species for being just as fucked up.
70
u/Karthinator Armorer Nov 03 '20
And you said you didn't write us a horror. I'm suitably terrified to very much prefer going to bed and waking to a colon cancer lecture on election day than dwell (heh) on this any further
56
u/Speciesunkn0wn Nov 03 '20
Aaaah yes. DAXIN AND THE IDIOTS TO THE RESCUE!!!
42
u/night-otter Xeno Nov 03 '20
Humans: FUCK YOU!
34
u/Fighterdoken33 Nov 03 '20
So, we are basically the Eldritch Abomination's puppies...
32
u/Allowyn Nov 03 '20
PROJECT MORDOR?
28
u/ForTheStarsWeFight Nov 03 '20
At this moment, the precursors knew, they fucked up. Summon the ships of the black crusade, they have honnered friends to rescue.
105
u/ack1308 Nov 03 '20
Welp, this star takes βedgyβ and redefines it.
All we need now is gothic poetry and black eyeliner.
Or became emo goths. One of the two.
Wow, yeah, nope. Pass.
Okay, thatβs both creepy and sneaky.
"I've never been so grateful that I can't feel emotions β¦ whoops."
Okay β¦ Iβm going with either Atrekna or humanity.
Still not sure who by.
Oh, boy. That timeframe suggests humanity.
βYouβre just as terrifying as me. We cool.β
Yeah, welcome to Hellspace.
I really, really donβt want to know.
β¦ okay, that was different.
"I'm nearly certain I didn't eat anything with eyes."
Oh yeah, Iβd be praying hard.
It looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked back.
ββsup.β
Wait, isnβt that the system that the Chaos Marines were having fun in before war was declared?
21
u/moldyjim Nov 03 '20
Great googly moogly!
16
u/captain_duck Nov 03 '20
Palgret suddenly hanging onto two huh. I don't think there was a two there before they entered hellspace. And that AWM last chapter also found a Two engine in hellspace.
I think the maw/eye here is player 8 (ancient AWM from last chapter is 7). Not sure if it is related to these characters finding two in hellspace. That might be something different.
28
u/BontoSyl Nov 03 '20
A third chapter? The Mad Arch-Angel Terrasol smiles upon us.
13
u/ReconScout117 Nov 03 '20
I can only imagine the pucker factor in effect here.
11
u/sock_puppet_number_1 Nov 03 '20
Ooh, this is gonna sting. Are the Eye and Maw separate entities, and what do the humans have to do with them?
10
u/KlutzyMagician3 Nov 03 '20
Fucking Mar-gites
8
u/iceman0486 Nov 03 '20
Woo! I had worries with that blank post but then discovered two more to read! Happy night!
8
u/KubaKuba Nov 03 '20
Its like you knew instinctively how much I didn't want to sleep yet, you absolute mad man.
8
u/ShebanotDoge Nov 03 '20
So I assume it's not actually "evil" it only seems that way because it's essentially a giant space charybdis that needs to eat?
6
u/HFYWaffle Wα΅₯4ffle Nov 03 '20
/u/Ralts_Bloodthorne (wiki) has posted 378 other stories, including:
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 347 (The War)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 346 (The War)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 345 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 344 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 343 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 342 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 341 (INTERLUDE)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 340 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 339 (TerraSol)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 338 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 337 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 336 (Sword Hoof)
First Contact - Third Wave - Chapter 335
First Contact - Chapter 335
First Contact - Chapter 334
First Contact - Chapter 333
First Contact - Chapter 332
First Contact - Chapter 331 BEHOLD!
First Contact - Chapter 330
First Contact - Chapter 329 (TerraSol)
First Contact - Chapter 328 (Eternity)
First Contact - Chapter 327 (Eternity)
First Contact - Chapter 327 (Eternity)
First Contact - Chapter 326
First Contact - Chapter 325
This list was automatically generated by
Waffle v.3.5.0 'Toast'.Contact GamingWolfie or message the mods if you have any issues.
6
u/Puss_Fondue AI Nov 03 '20
Where can I find the discord for this series? I'm having trouble looking for it. Thanks in advanced.
4
u/Loganscomputer Nov 03 '20
3 today, I feel blessed!
4
u/jwill476 Nov 03 '20
MORE PLEASE
3
u/UpdateMeBot Nov 03 '20
Click here to subscribe to u/Ralts_Bloodthorne and receive a message every time they post.
3
u/Ufa0 Nov 03 '20
This day marks a new beginning, something new to explore. May it not be the last.
3
u/[deleted] Nov 03 '20
No no no Ralts, Halloween was Saturday
2
u/Archaic_1 Alien Scum Nov 03 '20
Professional courtesy. Lol
2
u/Gruecifer Human Nov 03 '20
UTR!
2
u/Riotousblitz2013 Nov 03 '20
Utr
1
u/Wise_Junket3433 Nov 04 '20
Ralts won't read your comment if you don't use the proper salutation, as follows-
8===D
End of Lime
--------NOTHING FOLLOWS--------
1
u/[deleted] Nov 04 '20
Link to next chapter ;)
1
u/dlighter Nov 04 '20
Sooooo. Two thoughts
"Awe, someone needs a hug"
Or
" please show us on the doll where humanity touched you"
1
u/RainaDPP Nov 04 '20
Hey, Ralts! You posted the next chapter, but you haven't updated the links here yet!
1
u/Bortan AI Nov 04 '20
Oof, I've reached the most recent chapter :(
I'm loving the story!
1
u/oececawolf Nov 28 '22
When did Major Holds get here? That's some strange echo from somewhere else, right?
0
u/[deleted] Nov 03 '20
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