It was the sound of thunder overlapping. Like lightning, coming and going. It was fire and steel and death. It was a skull splintering, brain surgery by bullet. The long fall, the final rest. But no. For there are forces far beyond the ken of mortal men and hungry parasites. Entropy is ever closer, no matter how far you run, and though it might have been meant as mercy, a long road finally at an end, a new beginning…

The Hungry Abyss reached out between the skeins of Fate and Time, and wrung from one young woman one final service. She’d go on her way. Cleansed, her darkness ripped off her soul in that realm where spirits dwell, a legend claimed.

***

A permanent storm raged over the deep harbor at Midway where the Abyss held absolute dominion. Pale flesh breached the surface. One armed and with a breached skull, half dead in the water and with its movement near crippled, still it clawed for land. Screeching laughter surrounded it, as the fleet at rest enjoyed the newcomers struggles. Bets were made on how far it might come before sinking, when Ri-Class Heavy Cruiser rolled her eyes and skated across the now still waters. Whatever its state, its humanoid appearance removed it from the running of being one of the lesser ships, so the Ri-Class who’d lost last night’s poker and drawn guard duty towed the wet, miserable excuse of scrap to shore.

The pale young woman was extremely lacking. In armament, in tonnage. To the Ri, she felt like a freighter and what a waste that was. But it wasn’t her problem. She’d bully the pale chick into carrying her supplies when the girl could actually stand. She dropped some oil, Abyssal steel and a few boiled clams before the bedraggled newcomer and went back to her escorts. If she had to sit here on guard duty, she wasn’t going to suffer alone.

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***

The rain was falling in cold sheets that blot out the sky. Dark clouds hid the sun and every spark foretold thunder and another ice pick to her head, another flash of two. One after the other, echoing around her skull. With supreme effort, Taylor Hebert, Skitter, Weaver, reached out for the blobs before her, her had inching up the coarse sand. She knew not where she was, or what was going on. Waves still lapped her feet, and she could hardly think, or see. Her head was ringing and everything ached. Her hand finally closed upon one of the blobs and it felt like a candy bar. She tried to bring it to her teeth to unwrap it but the moment her teeth and tongue touched it she forgot all about manners, and cared nothing for the sand sticking to the crunchy snack.

A void had opened in her stomach and she felt as if her very life depended on filling it. Yet even as she feasted on the meager scraps left to her, her eyes kept looking, scanning, and slowly she stopped flinching from the thunder. She would lay there all night, half in the sea and half out, watching, listening, and learning. More than once, the watching Division Four of the Midway Fleet would turn back on the topic of the newcomer. In mockery, in disdain. They’d pelt her with sand and their leftovers.

And why not? She was just a freighter. An unarmed glorified servant for them to play with. Even the least of them knew that if the freighter got uppity… they could take her.

And in the darkest Abyss of her heart, there was a spark. Small and frail, but impossible to quench. A frown pulled one way while she kept a secret smile to herself. Taylor didn't know much. She could barely recall her own name. But she knew with certainty, she really despised bullies.