Midnight’s Fables
The Things Between The Stars
Every inch of your skin is crawling after hearing the tale of Joseph and his Mongolian Death Worm. You can’t bear to look at that camera and think of the awful picture it took before its owner died. The image of the dying man screaming in silence from the bed of his truck, bidden to your mind by Midnight’s tale, now will not leave though you beg it to.
You fall to your knees and clutch your head and cry out in horror as the image is joined by that of Edgar as the towering, ravenous Windigo, and of Bloody Bones and his infant victim.
“It’s alright,” Midnight tells you in a poor attempt at a consoling voice. They put a hand on your shoulder, perhaps intended as a reassurance, but their hand is cold and dark and empty and you recoil from their freezing touch.
“Get away from me!” you cry out, backing away in terror. “Just… get away!”
“Alright, alright,” Midnight says calmly, hands raised in a pathetic attempt at a calming gesture. They still approach you despite your insistence, and you back away further, almost bumping into exhibits as you do so.
“Please, be careful with my collection,” Midnight implores of you, but you do not listen. You don’t want to listen to a word this thing has to say, you-
You turn around in a hurry and accidentally touch one of the exhibits. It’s a strange object, made from something that isn’t rubber or metal yet seems to be both at once. It was once perhaps silver or grey but now is green and red and black with rust, and partially crumbles in your hand. It’s a sort of pipe, with a long thin part that feeds into a broader ribbed section. Both ends are jagged and crumbling, and pieces of the metallic material lie with it on its stand.
“Be careful not to-!” Midnight begins.
You touch it for barely a second, but it is too late. You are transported to another time, another place. Far, far, far away across time and space…
***
“How’s that coolant looking, Wysathyra?” Ynstina’s voice came in over the comms. “You got that leak patched yet?”
“Almost got it,” the engineer sighed as she yanked out the broken, rusted piece of hosing. “Bezal’s Shadows! The Nitrosine’s almost gone through the pipe. What the shades are they sending us?”
“Whatever’s cheapest, as usual,” Ynstina sighed over the radio. “You got spares?”
“I’ve got enough spares to replace all the pipes in the ship fifty times, that’s not the point,” Wysathyra grumbled back as she began installing the new hosing. “The point is I shouldn’t have to. They’d actually save more money in the long run if they just sent us good equipment to begin with. They’re just costing themselves more and putting us in danger. Do you know what happens when liquid Nitrosine gets into the atmosphere?”
“Of course, Wys, I’m a Stjernonaut, not an idiot,” Ynstina replied. “But I’m not the one giving you crappy equipment. Just get it done and then we can both clock out and go to bed.”
“Smartest thing you’ve said all day, Cap,” Wys chuckled as she finished up the repairs. “Still don’t get how the Nitrosine is getting through the pipes though. They must have some Phosphine or something in them, I just…”
“Wys, come on. It’s late, I want to sleep,” Ynstina complained over the radio before the engineer could finish her thought. “We’ve got new crewmates coming up in eight days, and we have a lot of maintenance checks to complete before then. Busy day tomorrow, early morning. So I want to sleep now.”
“Yes Cap, just about done here,” the engineer nodded as she screwed the service panel back in place. “Bed time.”
***
“Warning!” the automated computer voice called out, its synthetic tones echoing eerily through the empty metal halls of the ship. “Warning!”
Wysathyra was barely conscious when Captain Ynstina pulled her out of bed.
“Proximity alert. I need you,” Ynstina barely explained, before hauling her comrade to her feet and dragging her along out of their bunking quarters and down the corridor.
“Proximity alert?” Wys asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “But we’re in deep space. We’re not even in a galactic cluster, there’s nothing around us! That’s why it was safe to sleep!”
“You think I don’t know that?” Ynstina snapped as they reached the bridge, each assuming her position as pilot or copilot.
“Computer, display object,” the Captain demanded as she strapped herself in.
One of the monitors in each woman’s display popped up with an image of… darkness. Just black.
“Computer, I don’t understand what I’m looking at here. Explain,” Wys frowned, her heart beating with a mix of anticipation and anxiety as she squinted at the pure black screen.
“Unidentified organic object,” the computer unhelpfully chimed. “Distance: five khilometri and closing.”
“Did she just say organic?” the Captain insisted, and Wys could do nothing but nod as she stared at that black screen. “But that’s not possible, we’re in deep space… there’s nothing out here but… nothing.”
“Warning! Proximity alert! Distance to object: three khilometri. Impact imminent! Evasive manoeuvres advised!”
“You heard her,” the Captain said tensely. “Let’s get moving!”
Between the two of them, Wys and the Captain pulled the ship up and though it took them wildly off course, they avoided being hit by whatever had been coming towards them.
“Distance: ten khilometri. Twelve. Fifteen…”
“Computer, can you tell how big that object is?” Wys asked as she took a deep, slow, steady breath.
“Object approximately… one khilometri by… one khilometri by… ten khilometri.”
“What kind of creature is ten khilometri long? I’ve never heard of anything being that big before,” the Captain asked in shock and confusion.
“I have no idea, and I don’t want to find out,” Wys said, body still trembling with adrenaline.
“Warning! Proximity alert! Unidentified organic object! Distance: Ten khilometri. Nine… Eight…”
“Shades, shades, shades, move!” the Captain shouted as she and her copilot swung the ship around violently to starboard, almost doing a barrel roll as they did so, and went careening off in a whole other direction.
“Collision averted.”
“Computer, was that the same object as before?” Wys asked, sweating by now.
“Negative. Second object approximately fifteen times larger than the first.”
“Fifteen?!” Ynstina gasped. “That’s not possible.”
“Affirmative. Calculations verified.”
“Computer, perform a deep range scan, how many more of these objects are out there right now? Search radius: ten thousand khilometri,” Wys ordered, her anxiety building and building as a terrible possibility dawned on her.
“Calculating… calculating… calculating… Approximation available: twenty-four thousand objects detected. Size range: between ten khilometri and two hundred khilometri.”
“Computer, what the shadows are these things?” the Captain demanded, panic rising within her.
“Unknown.”
“Computer, chart us a course out of here,” Wys begged.
“Negative. Navigation unable to compute safe route.”
“Why not?” the Captain shouted.
“Too many objects, all moving with unpredictable paths.”
“You mean they aren’t all just… drifting? They’re actually moving themselves?” Wys asked in awe.
“Affirmative. Objects are swimming.”
“Swimming?” the Captain demanded. “Through what? We’re in deep space! There’s nothing to swim through!”
“Correct.”
“Computer, what are our options?”
“Calculating… calculating… calculating…”
“Shadows, we’re absolutely shaded aren’t we?” Wys breathed, staring through the bridge window into the pure darkness beyond. Even the nearest galaxies were too far away to be seen by the naked eye. Only mycrowave radiation scanners allowed their craft to navigate.
“Computer?” the Captain asked, almost begging.
“Calculating… calculating… calculating…”
“Shades,” Wys swore under her breath.
“Proximity alert! Ten khilometri! Four khilo-”
CRASH!
The entire ship jolted as something enormous and unforgiving slammed into the hull, knocking the entire vessel aside. Sparks flew as computers and cables jolted in their casings and the entire structure groaned and strained with the force of the impact.
“Proximity al-”
CRASH!
Another impact sent them flying the other direction. Even more sparks flew and half the screens went out as the entire ship strained and groaned again.
“Warning! Hull breach! Warning! Hull bre- Proximity alert! Two k-”
CRASH!!!
The biggest impact of all sent the entire ship screaming through the void yet again. All the monitors and lights on the bridge went out, leaving the two women in utter darkness as they spun around and around.
“Computer! Emergency autopilot!” the Captain begged.
The air was still and silent as one by one the ship’s systems crashed and failed to reboot.
“Computer! Please!” Wys screamed as the ship continued to roll again and again, almost flinging them from their seats, their harnesses straining and buckling to hold the two women in place.
CRASH!
Another collision brought the rolling to a stop and instead jolted the ship to the side, slamming both stjernonauts to the edges of their seats.
“Shades,” Ynstina whimpered as the sickening motions finally came to a stop.
“What on Alast are these things?” Wys breathed as she unstrapped herself from her seat and fell to her hands and knees, struggling to keep down last night’s dinner.
“Shades if I know,” the Captain wheezed, struggling to breathe as she prised the harness out of her flesh. “But we need to leave now. If the computer hasn’t rebooted yet, we’re going to have to do it manually.”
“I know. That’s why I got out my chair. You stay here, I’ll head to the mainframe,” Wys groaned as she dragged herself to her feet. “Soon as it’s up and running, you get us out of here.”
The Captain nodded as she adjusted herself and sat more comfortably in her seat.
“Try not to get your head bashed in by a wall,” Ynstina suggested.
Wys just nodded solemnly. “Believe me, I’ll do my best.”
With that, the engineer took off down the hall, sprinting as fast as she could, praying to Ashwena she would make it a reasonable distance before the next-
CRASH!
She hurtled upwards, slamming headfirst into the ceiling before dropping back down to the ground heavily. Pain throbbed through her whole body as she struggled to get back up to her feet, and she was sure she’d broken a few ribs from the impact.
There was no time to think on that, however, and with gritted teeth she pulled herself back to her feet and continued her sprint along the corridor. She just made it past their bunks before the next impact threw her against the wall so hard she dislocated her shoulder, and she was sure the sharp throbbing ache that radiated through her entire arm was indicative of a broken humeral.
No time for that. No time for broken bones or dislocated limbs. No time for injuries.
Her legs were fine, so she continued her sprint towards the ship’s core. She just about made it past the bulkhead before a third crash threw her backwards and sent her sliding down the corridor, twenty feet from where she’d just been.
At least nothing broke this time.
Unstoppable, unrelenting, she got back to her feet and ran back past the bulkhead and into the ship’s core. Finally, she strapped herself into the seat across from the access port and began working on the manual restart. All the systems had been tripped, everything was shut down, and so one by one she began fighting to return those stiff switches and levers to their active positions, bringing each of the ship’s systems back online one at a time. Lights. Engines. Computer. Navigation. Telemetry. Each one was accompanied by a buzzing whirring sound as its little light came on.
All the while, the ship was crashing this way and that. Every time the ship was struck, a system would fail and the trip switch would flip off again, giving Wys even more work to do. At last though, every system was back online.
“Computer!” Wys screamed. “Emergency autopi-”
CRASH!!!!!
The ship had taken one beating too many and with one final, awful collision, the hull and the ship’s internal structure began to scream and wail as steel shredded like paper and then… silence.
The air was torn away in a split second.
Wys could hear nothing, but she could still feel it as the entire vessel – or whatever part of it she was strapped into – shook and vibrated with the terrible screaming of metal being torn apart like it were nothing.
Then everything fell still.
Wys was still strapped into her seat in the core, but the core… wasn’t. Just a small part of the room and the corridor behind her were still joined to her chair, with both torn wide open and left in the darkness.
And all around there was nothing but black.
No stars.
No shapes.
No other pieces of the ship.
No vast and terrible creatures lurking in the void.
Just blackness. Endless, empty, silent blackness.
Wys knew she had seconds left to live but somehow those seconds seemed to be stretching out as her lungs burned, desperate for air.
Desperate for…
For…
For something…
For…
And then there was nothing.
***
“-touch that!” Midnight exclaims. You weren’t even gone for a second and yet you experienced that entire story, living within it like an unseen spectator, like the camera of a movie.
You fall backwards onto the ground, a cold shock running through your body in response to the experience. You were in… you were in space. And although Wysathyra hadn’t seen them, you had been able to understand the form of those things in the darkness, those terrible and vast creatures composed of shadows which swam through the void by impossible propulsion. You hadn’t seen them, that would be impossible, but you had somehow understood the shape of what they had been.
And there had been so many of them, so…
“Don’t dwell on it,” Midnight urges you. “When I tell you the stories, you experience them in a controlled environment. When you touch one of those objects for yourself… you experience the story… unfiltered. You live it in a way that you quite simply aren’t equipped to do. You see the story as I see them.”
“What was that?” you insist, breathing heavily as you struggle to comprehend what you just witnessed. “Those people… why did they have four ears? And thumbs? And they were so tall… what were they?”
“Elves, my dear friend,” Midnight smiles in that menacing way. “Captain Ynstina and Engineer Wysathyra were Light Elves in the early days of the Alasti conquest of their universe. They came from a universe called Alvheim at the dawn of the second multiverse. Your universe, sometimes called Midgard, is from the latter half of the third multiverse. Those people lived and died almost three hundred centillion years before your universe even began.”
“I don’t understand… I don’t… what are you?” you beg, tears streaming down your face as you desperately try to stop imagining Wysathyra’s dead face in your mind’s eye.
“I am Midnight. The rest need not concern you. Now… take a moment. I think you best recover before I tell you my next story.”