The industrial smell of motor oil and burning incense was like a prison, it had become enslaved to the ever-croaking dull metal walls which lined the halls of the lower levels. Darkness was the major feature one could see, that being the major feature of foreboding nothingness. The lower levels were not safe, they had never been safe. Our master’s reveled in the darkness, they were one with it. We had been raised in it but were still frail, still recoiling from its touch lest it swallow us. The embrace of darkness was like a cold and icy coffin, the incoherent signals from chem-butchered nerves locked us in that stasis until something that lurked beyond removed us from our torment, for eternity. Click, click, click, the sound of the monolithic void shutters rolling down from casings whose last maintenance dates spanned centuries ago. We could taste the metal in the air and the jolting of the ship as we entered elsewhere, and elsewhere was darkness.
The ship rocked like a huge sea-beast cast in a storm, not that any of them had seen the sea. The phantom sounds of humanity’s lost nightmarish memories could be heard through the groaning of the hull, a potential for imagination so terrible that perhaps it should not exist. One of our master’s had told us that humanity’s greatest power was its endless potential for cruelty and evil, so now it brought us very little in the way of surprise when that potential welled and gathered in the darkest corners of our pitiful existences. We heard a switch click somewhere above us and the blaring red alarm-lights start flashing, the droning insectile sound ringing out and blaring through the cold halls. We heard the footsteps of giants above our deck as the master’s prepared for what was coming.
A vision of primeval malice reached through the fabric that made up our existence and dragged its un-born un-form into our world, jolting flesh-rending claws shaping themselves out of the spite that the beast had for our existence. Our weak limbs only took us as far as they could before failing us, lactic acid choked muscles spasming with fear and exhaustion in their state of malnutrition as the writhing form saw the blaring light of what resided within us- and wanted to devour it. The sound of escaping pressure. We heard a metallic thud behind us as one of the bulkhead doors swung open on hinges that had not been tended to since time immemorial. The figure that stepped out was huge, and beyond human. The master was not just encased in howling armor of towering black metal and horrible sigils, he was encased in terrible power. Witch light shone out of his hooded cloak, for we had never been privy to our master’s visages. Too lowly to even behold the likenesses of the tyrants that presided over our suffering.
The demi-god like figure raised an esoteric sidearm in one gauntleted hand, the issuing bright blue flash burning away at their retinas- such was its luminance. Men the beam passed by went up in flame, the scant pieces of cloth tapestry that hung uncared for in the walls bursting like candles. The miniature sun hit the crawling nightmare, tendrils of un-reality burned away by the fire and causing it to recoil for the first time since its birth unto our world. Thump, thump, thump. The demi-god like figure strode forward toward it, the sheer accumulation of his presence causing the metal hull around him to contort and crack at his very presence. The ruinous sigils which lined his black plate became incandescent as something was readied.
The master raised his free hand, the air around it blurring. The sheer release of his presence and will focused unto his palm and unleashed onto our broken forms made the air ahead of them turn into a flashing epileptic canvas. Pipes ahead of them exploded and burst, sealed bulkhead doors bent backwards and our frail mortal frames withering- our blood vessels split open still inside our bodies as the exertion of the master’s will threatened to crush us like the insects we had been brought up to be. The sound that then escaped the master’s unseen lips was nothing like we had ever heard before. A sudden whirlwind trapped us at the uttering of the sound, men falling on their knees and crying out in pain as blood escaped our ears and eyes at having heard the sound that wasn’t meant to exist. The reality around us revolted at it, existence itself crying out in pain as it was ripped apart by virtue of the twisted whims of a human that was seldom still a human. We saw the writhing monstrosity be torn apart, the script of the uttered un-word burning itself into the walls around us as it was drug back into the Gehenna that it had conjured itself into existence from.
The void-shutters and bulkhead doors slowly slid back into their huge, armored casings, the red alarm-light burning itself out. The ones of us that remained held onto now scorched and torn pieces of the deck in order to steady ourselves back to our feet, aided by the now apparent fact that the vessel’s rocking had ceased. A clicking sound. The master’s communicae link crackling onto life and plagued by static. We turned our ruptured eardrums and listened.
“Did you end it, Herzog?”
“Yes. It is gone.”
“Good. Hurry back to the observation deck, our dreamers received a message.”
“A message?”
“The Barbarois, Herzog. The ascension is about to begin. Thracian’s dogs are after us.”
The master, who we now knew was called Herzog, nodded in apprehension.
“Set a course to Golgotha. We’ll burn the galaxy before we let them stop what we came here to begin.”
Our master turned around, and we heard his heavy footfalls as he strode out of the hallway. We looked to the broken remains of what had been lives and became set back into the repetitive mold of our misery. Somehow, we knew, an even greater darkness was coming.
