[Inner System - The Citadel - Cethol Trohon]

As his sleek form walked the halls, instincts began to trigger. For some reason, his primal subconscious was sensing danger.

Cethol Trohon had gone far in life heeding that ancient warning.

All in the warrior caste of his species knew this. The ability to infer danger was honed through years of training starting at adolescence, and through maturation as an adult. The Rullah culture was steeped in respect, as well as practicality. If all could truly understand the danger before them, the honor of the ones who faced it would be recognized in greater clarity. Thus was the way of the claw and sword.

There was no honor in facing this danger now though, and it continued to grow with each passing corner. The Rullah had passed information to several Gemynd messengers, and those were likely already preparing themselves for warp jump, but his true messages had yet to be delivered. For these he would need to be in person, as spies were everywhere. Diplomatic formalities aside, the atmosphere in the citadel was growing thick with tension, and the edges of the lie were beginning to fray. Though it had not been easy, Cethol Trohon had finally begun to fit some of the pieces together, and at the very center of his incomplete picture was that worm, Erazathii.

For some reason the 33rd line had fallen, after holding in perfect unison for cycles. He personally knew several of the Second commanders along that line, and held them in high honor. Their trust in their First Commander had been absolute, and their training impeccable. For that line to suddenly fall... no it simply did not make sense.

That left only one logical conclusion

For some reason, there someone organizing a collective effort to get personal fleets out of the inner-systems. A collective effort so determined, that they threatened the safety of the entire Union by sabotaging the one thing keeping them from certain death. While their goals beyond this were unclear, but the reasons he could think of at the moment were not good.

If Cethol Trohon could get the word passed to the Trader's Guild in time, their people would spread it across the black in time to prevent this, he was certain of it. They must not let their home worlds go unprotected, not now. Something was wrong, and they had to act with caution.

Ducking in behind a pillar in the secondary halls, he slipped through a separation between the thick stone blocks that held the structure. Such alleyways were uncommon, and generally the result of simple weathering and age, but this one was slightly different. Slowly, the passage began to widen, until the Rullah was once again capable of walking comfortably. A secret room awaited him, and within it stood... no one.

That was wrong.

Cethol stiffened as he focused his instinct. The danger was closer, very close. He almost lashed out with violence in response to a light touch on his front legs, but thankfully he held himself in control. The floor of the dim room blurred, and the Oxot diplomat revealed himself, crouched belly to the ground, as low as it could go.

“Friend Rullah, you must flee. Now, while there is still time.” His hushed voice licked out at Cethol's translators. “It is worse than we feared. We are no longer safe.”

Kneeling down, Cethol listened as the Oxot continued in urgent, hushed tones.

“I saw what I should not, and told one who could not protect himself. His death weighs down upon me friend Rullah, his song will not sing again.” The diplomat's voice grew angry. “The Siren tried to run, but they held him down, and gave him up. All this time, it was right in front of us! So obvious it hurts to think back.”

“Calm Oxot, what has happened? Who has taken the Siren? Was it the slime, Erazathii?”

“There is no time, leave now! You must flee, Cethol Trohon. Flee and trust no one. They are everywhere, and we have failed in all rights to stop them.” He shuddered in terror. “If anything we've only made them more deadly.” The Oxot seemed to mold back into the floor of the dim room as it slowly backed away, before issuing one final statement.

“Trust no one after this meeting. Not even me.”

As the room once again fell silent, the air seemed to fall into a chill. Calmly, Cethol Trohon drew his ceremonial blade from the sheath at his mid section, and respected the weight in his upper arm as he listened. Testing the stone cooled air with his three pronged tongue, he began to detect scents with greater clarity. Still wafting was the faint residue of terror...

And death.

The Oxot had been genuine in its warning... but as to what the cryptic message had meant, Cethol was not yet certain. As he slowly crept through another passageway toward his quarters, he kept his weapon ready. Until he was back within the sight of witnesses, he was not certain of his safety. As he exited out into another hall, he could have sworn he heard a scream echo from the alley. As he waited in the shadows for any indication of why, he found time passing with no explanation.

Finally, Cethol sheathed his weapon and began to walk down towards the main halls once again, cutting into the crowd with a casual step. Trust no one had been his warning...

No one.

Without some semblance of trust he was uncertain of how to advance further. If the Siren had fallen, then he would need to contact someone within the Trader's Guild.

As the crowd ahead began to part, he saw something that made him physically turn to be certain his eyes had not deceived him. Several Oxot diplomats and representatives, were speaking with Erazathii and his several of his supporters. Their animated discussion barely registering through his translator. As he continued he recognized one of them.

Not even me.

The memory of that statement resonated now. Had he been played? Had this simply an effort to slow him from spreading the word of warning?

As he met the Oxot's gaze, no recognition flashed over its scaled face. None whatsoever.

Cethol continued towards his quarters while suppressing his sense of danger.

Once again, something felt very wrong. His pace increased until he had left the main halls and passed out into the near empty streets of dusk. Ancient stone walkways carved through the surrounding city, and the buildings were much of the same. Inside their structures would be technological marvels that could do almost anything imaginable, but outside, in the setting light of the blue star, the Rullah could almost imagine things were as the had been before the Union. He often wondered what life must be like to an undiscovered species.

By now there were likely none left in the galaxy, any that had not been on the Union side of things would have been wiped out by the consumption long ago. What worlds they possessed, reduced to dust and fragments.

There had only ever been one race to have survived that plague, and the Union had dealt with them as it had done with all things it considered a threat. It sickened Cethol to think on it, and remember the words his broodmother had spoken on the tragedy. His species had lost so much honor that cycle, and they would never be able to redeem themselves in his eyes. To act in fear and not thought, such things were beneath them... and yet they had. They, and so many others...

What could be recovered from that species had been little. Their worlds had burned as surely as the consumption they had held at bay, and their ships were little but fragments. From what their probes could collect out in the deep space radio-waves, the species had risen in such a way that was unthinkable when compared to those within the Union.

There had been thousands of languages, and nationalities among their kind. Governments had their rise and fall, and so did nations, but their progress... their progress had never stopped. In the brief snippet of radiowave interception their probes could collect, barely 600 cycles in all total, the species had jumped from their home planet, to almost their entire system. From primitive fuel sources, to harnessing the very nature of the universe in which they existed. Even after withstanding the consumption for as long as they had- the creatures had been capable of fighting through an AI-descending quarantine array.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He had watched the surviving recordings and analysis. They had been brave, beyond anything he had ever witnessed in his lifetime. They had not simply stood and defended their last world, they had charged death itself to protect it. Even when the combined armies of almost every species in the Union had come upon them, they had defended their home world fearlessly. Hopelessly.

Such honor had been rewarded by genocide.

No, for their participation, the Rullah would never be redeemed. No matter what others said or did, his kind remembered, and it pained them. Every cycle until the void had consumed all else, would they regret.

Lost in his thoughts as he strode through the quiet streets, Cethol Trohon was almost caught fatally off guard. An ambush had been set.

Seizing his instincts, he threw himself to the side as a light-round passed where his skull had been a mere instant before. As he curled his flexible spine and tucked his limbs into a roll, a secondary shot glanced his more thickly skinned torso. Dark brown blood oozed from it as he drew his weapon to the flat to deflect a third shot.

There were five visible enemies now, all of which were armed, and several of which were Sikka. This would not be an easy fight. Not even for a veteran Rullah in his prime. Though Cethol Trohon was a certainly a veteran, his prime was long past. This night, he might finally embrace the dance.

Launching himself forward, his limbs splayed out to the side, allowing for a nimble cartwheeling dodge as another round of shots were fired. In an instant he had closed the gap between himself and the first of his attackers, and in another the creature was down.

Straining to the very brink, he stood onto his hind legs and lifted the Sikka's corpse with three of the four arms now available, while keeping the third free with his weapon as he advanced. By the time he had made his way to the next opponent, it was barely holding together, but it had absorbed more shots than he could afford to. Discarding it, he quickly found himself engaged in a duel. Whoever these mercenaries were, they had been trained in the art well, and he soon found himself pressed on a disadvantage. Still, he kept the assailant between him and the other enemies, keeping their shots at bay with its presence.

He was stalling now, and it could not last.

A low strike crippled one of his mid limbs, and a gash appeared along his back as he ducked a viscous swing to deal the killing blow to his closest enemy. As soon as the Sikka corpse hit the ground, a solid strumming could be heard through the night air.

That was when he felt the impact of certain death.

A spike protruded from his chest, and the thin slices near the entry wound indicated a razor head. In disbelief, Cethol Trohon raised his head to see what he already knew would be waiting. Only one species in the Union had the strength to carry draw back a rotation bow to full tension.

A fellow Rullah stood only ten units from him, covered in the shadows of the surrounding stonework. As fluid began to leak from his lips, Cethol Trohon managed to utter a final question before his vocal lungs filled with blood.

“Where is your honor, brother?”

The question was left unanswered as the Rullah stepped into the light. He could see something was wrong about it. The way its legs moved were too mechanical, and its middle arms seemed to hover in an uncomfortable manner between steps. As it came closer, Cethol Trohon could see the dull sheen in its eyes polished by the starlight above.

The Rullah was his kin no longer.

As the red began to close over him, he felt his heart begin to beat in an accelerating pulse. His blood began to flow faster, and faster, and his wounds became tight with pressure as his outer layer solidified with the colors of dying cells and sinking scales.

And he knew:

It was finally time to dance with death.

...

[Ch'Korob]

On the trade ship, Ch'Korob couldn't sleep. His well earned rotations off had begun, and yet he still couldn't bring his mind to rest. The vibrations kept bringing him back to alert. Matters weren't helped by the fact that he could only sleep on his claws. He had tried to muffle them with extra clothing, but he still recognized the sounds as unfamiliar, and it bothered him. His intensified sense of touch was beginning to be more of a curse than an asset, and his mind was growing foggy. This was the third sleep rotation he felt the strange sensation, and it was pushing him into madness.

The Oxot rose to his hind legs and stretched his tail for balance as he moved around the cabin. Quietly, as to not disturb any of the other engineers in the bunks. Flexing his tendons, he muffled his claws to be more pliable as he moved into the halls. No sleep would come until the mind could be put back at ease, and at this point he would be willing to go on an outwalk to get to the bottom of it. Exhaustion was slowly breaking him down.

For an Oxot, sleep was something different than most species. Oxots were one of the rare few species that had vivid dreams during their periods of unconscious recovery. Even rarer still was the trait for such things to slip into their waking minds during exhaustion. Ch'Korob was more than aware of the hallucinations that had begun to swirl around him. Their distractions were tantalizing, distracting, and sometimes horrific. Shadows flickered where there was no darkness, and passageways seemed to bend on forever when he lifted his eyes from the floor.

The halls were wide and slightly rounded as they dome off at their ceilings. Siren ships were always like this, so their songs would travel and echo. Unlike many species, most of their communication was still done individually, and not often by broadcast. Ch'Korob had always enjoyed the architecture, far more than the more aggressive alternatives. Now though, their curved nature seemed to bend back and forth, as though the ship was filling its lungs, only to release them in time with his steps.

Carrying on past the halls that would take him to the bridge, or to the medical bay, he continued down towards the tail end, and began to take the ramps down into the belly of the vessel. Lighting was dimmed here when crew were not on rotation duty, and it was generally used for extra storage. It was vast in that nature, and stretched on for hundreds of thousands of units. It reminded him of the journeys many adolescent Oxot would take into the caves of his youth, for adventure, curiosity, and perhaps something more.

Each room was large and cavernous, and the few not filled with military cargo were filled with mechanical scrap waiting to be recycled and reused. Ch'Korob wasn't certain why the shipmaster always kept so much of it on hand, considering her status and contracts, but he supposed it was an old habit. At one point the ship must have been in much lower standing, though he found it difficult to believe.

The rooms all seemed to resonate with sounds, as each metal piece moved or rocked with the wave currents of their FTL travel. Though distracting, they were not the irregular patterns that kept him awake, those were simply camouflage. He was searching for something more, hidden away deep within the catacombs of the lower levels, far deeper than he had ever needed to go before.

Hidden... two could play at that game. Ch'Korob's skin fell into the patterns around him as he crept onward into the crypts of the ship. He would seek, and he would find.

Soon there was no light at all.

The mind was a strange thing without a planet's cyclic nature to ease it into patterns. When is one to sleep or wake when there is no true rotation of light and dark, of hot or cold, of safety and danger? When was the mind and soul alive the most? perhaps the waking world was the dream. Ch'Korob pondered these things as he crept ever onward, slowly descending onto all fours with an ancient intuitiveness. His instinctive mind was focused on the vibrations, and his body followed obediently, while his true mind fought for sanity. The dark had not always been safe for his species, and he often found himself drifting as he tried to focus his attentions. The abyss of darkness around him seemed to flicker with motion, but only when he turned away from it. It danced as if amused, or as if frightened. It was a long time before Ch'Korob found the awareness to bring a true thought to his mind.

Where was he?

He was deep into the lowest levels of the ship now, possibly on the base hull between their fragile environment, and in the black.

The ever-black.

Even before they had taken to the stars, they had stared at it in awe. A space so vast, it contained everything there was, and nothing at all, endlessly. Even in this ship, even if his feet were on the soil of his home world, he would still be within it. He was it in a way.

The cool darkness was all around him as he came to a halt and stared into it. Colors seemed to peel off into the edges around him as he felt the icy hull beneath his feet. Then he felt the pulses, and he continued on, ignoring the swirling shadows and the figures within them.

Soon he felt himself begin to converse with them, quietly at first, then in casual tones. He saw many figures, friendly, surreal, terrifying, but he kept walking onward. Ever onward... He imagined the strange quiet steps of the ship-beast, and soon began to converse with yet another hallucination, though he could barely make it out within the darkness that surrounded him. They spoke for a long time, he and the shadowed figure, as they calmly paced down the cold halls. Of things they had seen, people they had met, and of those they had lost. Though Ch'Korob's memory quickly faded, as it always did within the dream, he felt great pain for his spiritual companion. To be lost in the black of the void, with no direction, even the most determined spirit might let go of hope.

Onward Ch'Korob's scaled feet pushed him, and he soon realized, that yet again he was alone. No further shadowy companions, simply alone. Alone but for the strange sounds only a unit away.

“Obviously” he concluded aloud to himself, “I have slipped into madness.”

The noise stopped and stared.

He felt he should tell someone what he had seen, as he slowly trekked back through the labyrinth of the under hull, but as he passed through the cold dark rooms, he began to wonder why. As the light came back with a slow steady glow, his mind seemed to return as well, and the swirling colors within the dark were left behind. Perhaps it had simply been a spiritual journey, brought about by his lack of sleep, and the stresses of his new position in the crew. He had gone into the black and returned, reborn in a strange way.

As he laid down upon the floor in his cabin, he felt the sweet embrace of warmth and closure. When he finally awoke, Ch'Korob remembered nothing but the residual fading touch of a long and strange dream.