ValentineDavis21

Aethan slept heavily through the next seventy-two hours but it was in no way a restful sleep. He moaned and rocked in his sleep, kicking the blankets off, sometimes clawing at the air. When he did this he remained completely unaware, lost in the memories of the child who had begun to materialize more and more in his mind. These experiences did not manifest instantly, but grew in stages in peaks the same way a fever did, with occasional pauses and plateaus. The images that fueled this fits were g

It only escalates from here...

Aethan's first thought upon seeing the camp was that they were still on the ship. And why not? It didn't seem entirely unreasonable to think so. In the eight hours it had taken Ghor and he to travel to the command deck and back they had seen the ship commit many terrifying but awe-inspiring acts of creation: the aberrations, the shifting of walls and ceiling, countless alterations, breaches in reality. With these facts in mind it did not seem entirely impossible that the ship could have fabricat

His skin crawled, breaking out into hives that trailed up his arms; the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. A cold finger traced its way teasingly down his spine. He could sense the things watching him in the dark like predators hiding out of sight, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. These were not the mindless creations of the dark gods he and Ghor had encountered earlier throughout the ship…they were more cautious, more calculated. Like a supercomputer that learns as it is fed m

"I know you will…Illyrion…” Aethan's reaction to these words was immediate and startling: He stepped back with a small gasp, seeming to sway for a moment. Ghor tensed, ready to intercept, sure that he would fall. When Aethan straightened, Ghor halted, pausing at his side, one paw tucked close to his side, the other unfurled, claws ready to strike at the first sign of danger from the Vrevil. All this was done before he had fully, consciously made the decision to do so, his instinct

Every step was a private testament of will, strength, and determination made greater by the fact that his mind was no longer his own. In their terror the voices in his head had grown into a panicked clamor, reminding him during the press conferences back on Cathesan, when he'd glimpsed the seemingly random outbursts of violence, his own people pushing and shoving and trampling over each other while Vash and the security detail ushered him away. Only this was happening in his mind. The time dilat

Lol, I'm glad that you enjoy it

Crowe backed away instinctively from the aberration, his blood turning to ice. For a moment he was back in the aberrant corridor with the last horrific construction Bhal-Ghor and he had encountered, only this..this was far worse. Because he now recognized the face of the creature that was staggering drunkenly towards him, its long arms swinging awkwardly, its bare two pronged feet scraping against the floor, its mouth gaping open, moaning in misery. It had the bulbous head and lithe build of a V

Illyrion. There was that name again. It was a mistake. It had to be. Every time he heard it, it seemed that every cell in his body cried out in superstitious terror, as if it were the name of the creature that hid under his bed. And every child, no matter their age, race, or religion had one of those. But the souls stored inside his mind did not balk in terror. He could see them as they had been right before death, their heads bowed in prayer, their hands raised in the air as they began to chant

For a moment he stopped, one foot placed in the command deck, the other set firmly on the floor of the secret chamber. He looked back over his shoulder at the chair and for an instant that made his head hurt, Aethan was seeing the room as he’d viewed it in the video. The shades who congregated together were no longer made of shadow, but wore the same strange bio-material that Hiernymus’s robes were made of, their heads bent in solemn prayer. Not for the first time Aethan had the sense that he wa

Aethan felt as if all his limbs weighed a ton, so heavy they were impossible to lift. The mere task of lifting his foot and setting it back down was monumental, a simple impulse turned into a life-or-death battle. A powerful wind had picked up, blowing through this section of the command deck, stinking of rot and black poison. It rustled his hair, blowing it back from his sweaty straining face, his jaw clenched, his eyes focused not on the hole between realities but on Ghor who was in more dange

Spasms of fear wracked up and down Ghor's spine, making it impossible to relax. No matter how much he told himself he needed to be alert for the little lordling, the fear hung around him like a toxic black cloud, made blacker by the gloom around them. The shadows seemed to creep around them, closing in, wanting to spill over them and bury them under a tide of doom, held only at bay by the dome of Aethan's light and the glow of his skin and hair. Just when Ghor would start to relax, he woul

Aethan could feel another presence taking root in his mind, another passenger completely different from Hiernymus. The cleric was still there, the Cathesan could sense him as well, but he had been curiously quiet, a watcher biding his time. This presence was different, smaller, younger, with a voice that rang with both fear and innocence, searching the shadowed corners for the monsters it might contain. The eyes and voice of a child. That child had just used his mouth to speak, to warn Bhal-Ghor

As they entered the stygian darkness of the ship, it occurred to Aethan that he was being manipulated. While this thought had passed through his mind before, this time it landed with weight and stuck. He knew that when it came to the interest of the ship, there were two parties who seemed to have a hand in its discovery. There were the Vrevil who had left the message as both a warning and a calling, a calling that seemed to be specifically for him so that the ship could be discovered in th

I would also like to say there might be a little bit of projecting on my part. I've been in these types of relationships and I think anyone with enough common sense would read this and say these two have a very toxic dynamic. In my past experiences any time I tried to speak up for myself only made the situation worse and was met with understandable resistance. But it's also frustrating when you try to fend for yourself and it just blows up in your face or leads to consequences you regret in the future. Maybe it's quite self indulgent, but with fiction you can strip that away and say "well Aethan gets to make a jab and it actually has an impact on their relationship" or something stupid like that. Maybe that says more about me as a person, but it also brings a sense of empowerment when there's little power to be found at least in the current setting of this story.