Omega looked over the racks of crystals, stored in shock gel. This was the hundredth one she had opened to do a direct visual inspection. She had done a random sampling of the precious cargo. Picking from the crates and crates of storage crystals. Each with cases layered in several millimeters of lead and gold foil and the highest grade steel available.

Each with a combination lock that required a terran soul to whisper it’s password. A password that was only known by her, Aleph and Quarti.

She was not so sure the security would really have held up against even the most cursory of inspections to the wider reef. But it was the best that her world could divise for the stored dead within the crystals.

Anecdotes from the visitors had it that at least something to do with human souls was considered high grade cryptography by the larger scope of Reef civilization. Omega was not so sure how much stock she put in that. But it was a small comfort.

So far every single one of the crystals she had inspected visually was unspoiled and pure.

Over resonance inspection she likewise found nothing concerning. But she was not as skilled as Quarti. She was also not so arrogant as to assume that without a meditation pod and its extra symbiote gel she could actually catch anything malignant beyond the obvious. Still she put her best effort to act as solid visceral eyes and senses for her partner’s soul to corroborate and confirm the state of the colonists of Aoria.

Everything was fine.

But still she had a suspicion, there was a taste in the air that bothered her. The stink of the suit with her own sweat aside. Something felt wrong somehow and made her suspicious. An unease to the world of spirit that spoke of isolated cliffs and dark woods. Places people had not been in a very long time.

It was loneliness, danger and foreignness. Somehow even worse then the eerie emptiness and unfamiliar buzz that had permeated her sense of resonance song up until now. A More profound sensation of isolation.

“Quarti? Do you have a feel for that? I’m catching fearlings all over this place”

Her friend’s ‘voice’ in resonance was whispery, diffuse and more a like the spirits of the dead then the living. It was kind of uncanny when she projected like this.

“Right wotcha blue, not fret the ghoulies none, Be taunters and sprat kind. Small nibblers and trixters all so sooth I”

Omega gave herself a shudder and nodded sharply. Turning away from the inkling paranoia and hints of menace that seemed to cling around the crates of the colonists, the intuition that the place was somehow more like a tomb.

That there was hidden somewhere in the ranks of crates were a foul an terrible infection that she had to find, that she had to assure herself was not there.

“Right, Still getting mighty overt willies here now Quarti, You’re sure it’s nothing wrong on your end?”

She was just about certain that there was not actually anything here, at least nothing besides the weird undulating shapes of the occasional writhing worm of a motile that we're some kind of component of the ship’s circulatory system and cargo handling. But her spine tingled like there was something terrible right behind her anyway. Horrible nightmares from her many childhoods lurking right behind her, waiting to snatch her up and gobble her soul.

“Dinnae scratch that itch lovely, fed them more we not needa, crystal frozen deadlies safer then sound I see. All static and cold, not the prey of these wobbly bogarts. Dinnae feed! Theirs right wise crawling swarm o them bloggy riddles... Wotch out for jumpers they liable ta be nasty thirstin ya wit so many mouths ta feed”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Omega shivered in the suit and tried to get a grip on herself. But it was hard to not jump and spin at the slight irregularities in her suit’s respirator. She started humming a happy little tune, a rhyme to ward off hauntings back home. It was meant to be sung cheerfully and strong but she took a while to get into the feel of it with so much spook sticking to her.

She saw a few flickers of light out of the corner of her eye, but refused to whirl in a turn towards it. She calmly moved back to the bubble of the walker. Careful of her steps, every motion calm, straining to keep her heart from raising in tempo. She could feel the itching tingle of things watching her crawling up and down her back, giving her goosebumps. The dark of the ship seemed to hide shifting monsters like the worst nightmare of a cave.

But she breathed deep and calm and collected, she focused on her song trying to get herself into the right mindset, not singing because she was scared. Singing because there was nothing to be afraid of.

Because she was happy.

It was not easy.

But she was just about feeling better right before she was nearly knocked over by the SCREAMING distorted apparition of Aleph’s shredded and festering corpse sailing through her with agonized cry in resonance buzzing into a distorted strangled wail.

"Damn it! Wraiths!"

She couldn't help the outburst but clamped down hard on continuing it, trying to calm herself.

“Toldja watch fer jumpers! They getting mighty antsy now that whoever was feeding them oodles has gone super dry”

Omega shook herself off and took a shaky breath even as the phantom sounds of her friend’s whimpering suffering and high pitched wails of anguish rose up around her. She continued singing and walking toward the bubble even as she saw the fat bloated bellies and festering pustules of faux Alephs shambling around her, grasping at her ankles and tugging on her suit with slight fluttering sparks of blue resonance waste heat.

[https://i.imgur.com/vfMyftv.png]

It was just her fears, it was just some parasite of the spirit trying to get a rise out of her. Draw her into a fight or flight. She had dealt with a few sparse hauntings before. Most terrans did eventually in their life times.

You had to ignore them, break their cycle.

Not react or engage them and sing their hold out of your friends and family.

But this was horrific in the number of projections. Far more than she had EVER seen herself, and far stronger and more visceral and detailed too.

She slowly slid into the bubble, unhurriedly, not panicking, not giving any erratic or slap shod behavior. No paranoid shifting, not even meeting the horrible distorted simulacrums of aleph’s body. Tormented bodies surround her, each of them abused and infected and filled with all manner of disease or alien spore or whatever nightmare horror the cursed things had caught on would upset her the most.

She clung to the song in her heart and kept the walker from rushing away as fast as it could even though she wanted to get out of the teeming hoard of nightmare Alephs as soon as possible.

Only after the things had started to slip away and vanish into little more than threads and whispers did she feel confident she could actually hold her voice steady enough for coms.

She called up Aleph, Quarti already knew but probably had not thought it was worth letting their youngest know it was safe.

"Good news Aleph! it's just Wraiths, bad news, there's a obscenely huge LOT of them."