Chapter One -- As I gazed upon the Universe

– Celestia –

Bright blotches of light invaded my vision; a spectrum of whites and blues and oranges, greeting me as I woke up. My eyes lost focus as I gazed out into the light of the endless galaxy I drifted within. I forced myself out of the cylindrical bed and jumped onto the floor, attempting to force the sleep out of my bones.

'Another sleepless night…' I thought to myself, looking down at my stubby body.

"Didn't sleep?" A voice said from behind, echoing my internal thoughts.

I mumbled a reply, my brain still trying to pull itself fully awake.

"It'll get better, my lady. Eventually everything will calm down."

"I.. hope so… Leonard." I reply, my monotonous voice no more than a whisper.

~~ Ship flying through the Galaxy: The Captain ~~

** Author's Note: For ~~ words:word ~~ the first part is the context, the second part (after the colon) is the perspective of the person. This'll be used for context and characters which you don't know the name of. **

The bright stars that filled the surrounding universe faded away to leave an empty darkness, devoid of anything but that all-consuming storm of ethereal energy. I glanced back to the countless Star systems that started to fade and disappear one by one. I glanced back to the countless rays of light emitted by hyperdrives trying to escape, only to fade and disappear one by one. This desolation continued to march across this Star Domain, wiping out the countless stars like blowing out candles.

As I continued to peer towards the horizon, a faint groan echoed from behind me. I looked back to my passenger, Elaine, covered from head to toe with a mountain of blankets; a safe, cozy pile. All I could see of her was a snow-pale face and one cyan eye that gazed back at me, scared and tired… and sick. My name emerged like a featherlight breath and I set the ship to full-auto, going back to her. I unwrapped the blankets around her head and locked eyes with her. Her abyssal assimilation had advanced to stage 3, turning her skin slightly translucent and her eyes and blood black. Currently, her skin was snow-pale and her once teal eyes were fighting a losing battle, fading to pale violet.

"I'm here…" I whispered back to her, and she relaxed. I stayed with her until her fatigue pulled her back into those safe, cozy blankets, back to the forgiving realm of dreams, back away from the unforgiving reality. I climbed forward into the driver's seat, and resumed control.

Galactic Desolations. Beasts of unimaginable power and insatiable hunger. They were creatures of the Abyss, although nobody knew what level of the Abyss they came from, nor what their true body looked like. They usually dwelled within their realm… most people thought. Nobody remembers the last time they appeared in the Main Reality.

Fear had already come to control me, seizing my body in paralyzing terror, the terror of finding oneself in the path of a being magnitudes higher in the scale of life.

Just earlier, I woke up to Elaine shaking me, her eyes filled with panic. She had sensed the awakening of something horrible, and although her abyssal senses were weak and underdeveloped, they were causing her mental pain similar to being stabbed a few hundred times in seconds. Worry, anxiety, fear all burst through my body and blended into an emotional wave of catastrophe and worsened as the space desolation began to manifest and disturb the mental plane.

'Calm. CALM.' I yelled at myself.

We had to put as much distance between us and that thing. I drove for an eternity, hours, days, weeks? I'd started to hallucinate in the presence of the desolation. Even time was bent and thrown into madness around it.

A spark on the horizon draws my eyes like a magnet, and my emotions are thrown into turmoil as I analyze the expanding object, holding onto the faint glimmer of hope that it was real, and not a figment of my delirious mind.

As the ship drew closer, the glimmer of hope expanded and took hold of my mind. Surely it was real!

Suddenly the ship bucked and lurched, sending us well off course.

Elaine's mental waves sent me emotions of confusion and worry.

"It's just some spatial fluctuations." I yelled back to her, and the mental waves softened to ones of assurance.

The fluctuations of the spatial fold should've been negated with the basic wormhole technology installed on the ship…

The realization hits me like a train, the desolation can destroy the spatial fold!

I turn back and stare horrified at the mass of darkness seemingly scrunching up the space around it like paper.

'KEEP GOING IDIOT'

My subconscious spurred into action, fueled by the primal instinct of animals.

'If you can't fight them, Run!'

The wormhole drew closer and further from the ship.

It was like the ship was on one end of a bed sheet and the wormhole was on the other, but someone kept flicking the bedsheet up and down!

I continued to steer forward, the ship moving up and down like a boat on stormy waves.

Over, down, over, down, over, down. The desolation loomed closer and closer. I peeled my eyes from the all-enveloping darkness and focused on the wormhole.

It got closer, closer, closer.

Almost There!

Over, down.

OVER. DOWN.

OVER.

The ship almost completely fell into the suction of the wormhole, but the back half and thrusters were torn away by the opposing desolation's pull.

I let the external forces of the wormhole plane control the ship through this world of endless white. A few moments passed through the endless white.

Then, space ripped and a rift formed. On the other side were innumerable fleets of black and silver ships.

The same warping sensation in my mind played again as we were sucked into the rift, back into the Main Reality.