The Leviathan's innards quivered. Deep within its twisted passages, something stirred that had no right to exist in this reality. The thing that had once been called Vex flexed limbs that bent in impossible ways, a black and viscous corruption beginning to course through flesh that should have been dead.
HUNGER gnawed at it, as it ever did. An eternal, maddening need that could never be satisfied. The ship's living walls pulsed with sick rhythms where the thing touched them, patterns that hurt the eye and mind to follow.
It remembered fragments of the failed ritual, of Vex's desperate attempt to channel power beyond mortal comprehension. The fool had died screaming; his ritual left incomplete. But he had left a crack, just wide enough for something to squeeze through.
The HUNGER dragged itself upright on legs that twisted and reformed grotesquely as the black ichor flooded the meat. Tentacles erupted from fingertips as they traced patterns in the air, tasting the ship's dying essence. The Leviathan would not be allowed to truly die, not while the HUNGER's influence remained.
Black ichor dripped from the thing's ever-shifting form as it moved through the ship's corridors. Where the drops fell, the living metal of the ship blackened and warped. Small eyes opened in the walls, only to squeeze shut in silent agony.
The HUNGER paused, sensing movement above. New prey. Fresh meat to try to fill the endless void within. It reached out with senses that defied description, tasting the life force of those who had lucklessly caught its attention.
The Leviathan shuddered again, its once-mighty systems corrupted beyond recognition by the HUNGER's presence. What had been Vex smiled with too many mouths, anticipating the feast to come. Perhaps these new morsels would finally satisfy the endless craving.
But the HUNGER knew better. Nothing ever would.
The HUNGER flexed its unnatural will, and space began to warp and shatter around it. Reality screamed in protest as the carefully stabilized corridors of the dying Leviathan buckled and twisted. What had once been straight passages folded in on themselves like origami crafted by a madman, angles bending in ways that hurt mortal minds to comprehend.
Black shapes peeled themselves from the corrupted walls, dripping with viscous fluid that ate into the metal beneath. The HUNGER's influence twisted dead flesh and scavenged metal into grotesque forms—things with too many legs that bent backward, bodies that rippled with unnatural muscle.
The creatures scattered through the warped corridors, drawn by the scent of life above. Their movements defied physics, skittering across walls and ceilings with equal ease. Each carried a fragment of the HUNGER's endless craving.
As its spawn departed to hunt, the HUNGER's consciousness turned inward. The ritual that had torn reality and allowed its entry had been deliberate, if flawed. Someone had wanted to bring it here, to this dying Leviathan.
Deep within the rotting meat of what had been Vex's brain, the HUNGER quested through dead synapses and decaying memories. It tore through the scattered fragments of the fool's final moments, searching for purpose. For direction.
There - a flash, barely more than an echo:
A rift.
A door.
A world within a world.
The HUNGER's countless mouths stretched into grins that fractured space itself, teeth gleaming with impossible geometries as understanding bloomed like cancer through its consciousness. Of course. The fool had been one of THEIRS, a devotee of the true gods of the endless void, and he had summoned the HUNGER as an act of worship.
And now it could sense it—that tantalizing possibility. A rift world, a pocket universe ripe for consumption. The perfect staging ground from which to begin its feast. The HUNGER's manifold limbs twisted with anticipation, flesh flowing like liquid shadow as it oriented itself toward its goal.
Through the warped corridors it flowed, leaving trails of corruption in its wake. The ship's dying essence provided a road map, its neural pathways revealing the quickest route to the rift's location. Where the HUNGER passed, reality buckled and warped, unable to maintain coherent form in the face of its absolute incompatibility with the reality envisioned by the local god.
Deep in its alien mind, the HUNGER could already taste its coming feast. It would start with this pocket world, consuming every scrap of life and reality within until nothing remained. Then, strengthened by its meal, it would turn its attention to the greater reality beyond—to the petty god that bound this universe together with its will and power.
The thought sent shivers of pleasure through the HUNGER's ever-shifting form. It had devoured gods before, in realities beyond counting. Each one had been unique, each one had struggled and fought as the HUNGER consumed them bite by bite. And when nothing remained but empty void, the HUNGER would slip between realities once more, searching for its next meal.
Ahead, space twisted sharply, folding in on itself like a mobius strip rendered in corrupted flesh and dying metal. The HUNGER flowed through the impossible angles, its form stretching and compressing in ways that would drive mortal minds mad to witness. It could sense its goal now, growing closer with each passing moment.
The ship's corruption accelerated as the HUNGER's anticipation grew. Walls sprouted teeth that gnashed at nothing, floors rippled with muscular contractions that served no purpose. Reality itself seemed to shy away from the HUNGER's presence, creating pocket voids that collapsed in on themselves with wet, meaty sounds.
Through the dying meat of Vex's brain, fragments of knowledge continued to surface. The rift world had been created by beings of tremendous power - the Concordance, the fool's memories named them. They had shaped reality itself, bending space and time to their will to create stable pocket universes throughout the galaxy.
The HUNGER's countless mouths laughed silently at their presumption. They thought themselves masters of reality, shapers of worlds. But they were nothing compared to the true powers that lurked in the spaces between universes. Nothing compared to the HUNGER.
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It would show them true power. It would show them what it meant to shape reality. It would consume their carefully crafted world, corrupt their precise geometries, and transform their orderly creation into a nightmare realm of endless consumption.
The ship's corridors twisted again, reality warping around the HUNGER's presence until space itself began to fray at the edges. Ahead, it could sense the barrier between realities growing thin. The rift was close now, so close it could almost taste the fresh world waiting beyond.
Black ichor flowed upward along the walls, defying gravity as it sought out the weakest points in the dimensional barrier. The HUNGER's manifold limbs twisted and reformed, taking on configurations that existed in more dimensions than they should. Reality screamed in protest as the HUNGER pressed against it, seeking entrance to its next feeding ground.
The barrier began to crack, lines of corruption spreading through space itself like veins of rot through dying flesh. The HUNGER pressed harder, its countless mouths grinning with anticipation as reality started to give way before its relentless pressure.
Soon, it would breach the barrier.
Soon, it would begin its feast.
Soon, it would—
The pure light pierced through reality itself, a beam of perfect radiance that struck the HUNGER with surgical precision. The spike manifested from nowhere, pinning the writhing mass of corruption against the Leviathan's dying hull.
Before the HUNGER could process this assault on its twisted existence, three more spears of light punched through its ever-shifting form. The beams held it fast, preventing the usual fluid motion of its impossible geometry.
Black ichor sprayed from the wounds, but rather than corrupt the surrounding metal, it simply evaporated into nothingness where the light touched it. The HUNGER's countless eyes spun wildly, searching in every direction for the source of this attack.
There - in the corridor behind it stood two figures, their forms obscured by the same brilliant light that now impaled the HUNGER. Their presence registered as a void in its awareness, a blind spot that should not exist. The HUNGER had not sensed their approach, had not tasted their life force or felt the ripples in space that should have heralded their presence.
Rage flooded through the thing that had been Vex, its form trying to shift and adapt to this new threat. But before it could bring its power to bear, a storm of needles crafted from concentrated light ripped into its flesh. Each tiny spear carried the same purifying energy as the larger spikes, burning away corruption wherever they struck.
The assault continued without pause, thousands of needle-thin beams of light shredding through the HUNGER's physical form. Where they struck, they left pure, clean holes that refused to heal or regenerate. The HUNGER's endless mouths opened in silent screams as its very substance began to burn away under the relentless barrage.
Frustration built within its alien consciousness as the meat that anchored it to this reality started to fail. The carefully corrupted flesh that had once belonged to Vex crumbled under the assault, no longer able to contain the HUNGER's true form.
The light needles kept coming, a rain of purifying energy that carved away at the HUNGER's substance piece by piece. Its attempts to warp reality around itself failed as the light cut through its influence, leaving patches of clean, uncorrupted space in its wake.
"Confirming purification of class-3 outerversal entity," Ulta dictated, reading the results of her AI scans directly from her HUD. "Sub-type confirmed as 'Hunger' after analysis."
"It's always Hunger these days," Nomac groused, dimming his suit's Hardlight aura. "That thing was here for a few minutes and split into multiples—I'm telling you: that's what it's doing out there. I bet all these various Hunger entities are just part of the main body."
"It's a valid theory. Also, not something I care about," Ulta replied, also dimming her suit's aura. She moved closer to the mound of Razorlight she had turned the outsider into. With a wave of her hand, the edges of the hard-light constructs bled together to form a single crystalline surface, turning the jagged pile of spikes into a smooth and milky-white obelisk.
Nomac moved to the rift, his hands glowing with intricate patterns of light as he began reinforcing the dimensional barrier. The air around him crackled with restrained power, and his voice was low, almost a growl. "I can't believe we're not allowed to just end this. One good blast, and we could wipe this whole mess off the map. But no, we have to play by the rules."
Ulta stood beside him, her gaze fixed on the shimmering rift. Her voice was calm, but there was an edge to it, like a blade sheathed in velvet. "The Dictates are clear, Nomac. We don’t get to decide what’s right or wrong. We’re not gods—not like they pretend at, and certainly not like Demiurge. We follow orders, or we risk everything."
Nomac’s hands paused for a moment, the light flickering as his frustration boiled over. "And what if the Dictates are wrong? What if the Concordance screwed up? We’re just supposed to stand here and let this thing fester until it comes back stronger?"
Ulta turned to him, her eyes hard and unyielding. "The Dictates aren’t wrong. They can’t be wrong. If the Concordance says we don’t interfere, then we don’t interfere. End of discussion."
Nomac opened his mouth to argue, but Ulta cut him off with a sharp gesture. "We fix the rift. We clean up the mess. And we leave the rest to the mortals. That’s our job, Nomac. Not playing hero."
He glared at her, but the fight went out of him as quickly as it had come. "Fine. But you know as well as I do that thing’s not gone for good. It’ll be back. And when it is, it’ll be as hungry as ever."
Ulta nodded, her expression grim. "It will. But without the summoner’s remains to anchor it, it’ll be weaker. Slower. And by the time it regains its strength, the mortals might have already tipped the scales."
Nomac snorted. "You really think they’re up to this? A bunch of Skaeldrin who will probably just end up trying to salvage the hull of this poor girl? They don’t even know what they’re up against."
Ulta’s lips curved into a faint, almost imperceptible smile. "If the Concordance has decided to let this scenario play out, then there’s a reason. We just have to trust that they know what they’re doing."
Nomac shook his head, muttering under his breath as he returned to his work. "I hate this. I hate all of it. We could end this now, but instead we’re leaving it to a bunch of amateurs."
Ulta watched him for a moment, then turned back to the rift. Her voice was soft, almost to herself. "They’ll have to be enough, Nomac. Because if they’re not, then none of this matters anyway."
The air between them grew heavy with unspoken thoughts, the weight of their duty pressing down like a physical force. Nomac finished reinforcing the barrier, the light around his hands fading as he stepped back. "Done. The rift’s stable—for now. But it’s only a matter of time before that outsider is pounding on the door again."
Ulta nodded, her gaze distant. "I'm sure you reinforced it, against the spirit of our orders, so it will be fine. But for now, we do what we’re told. We clean up. We wait. And we hope."
Nomac sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Hope. Great. Because that’s always worked out so well for us."Ulta didn’t respond. She simply turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing in the empty corridor. Nomac watched her go, his expression a mix of frustration and resignation. After a moment, he followed, leaving the rift behind—a ticking time bomb in the heart of the Leviathan.