figroth

[figroth]

I know I've not been adhering to my writing challenge, but I thought I'd try to remedy that today and combine with another attempt of mine and do a writing stream, if anyone wants to join they'd be welcome!

I'm live right now.

[figroth]

Should I post my stories in other places like A03?

So, as you may know if you've read my previous posts, I've been doing a weekly writing challenge and decided to put my stories here on Tumblr.

But do you think there are are other places where such short stories might be welcome, for instance any of the fanfic sites that exist like AO3? The stories I wanna write right now aren't intended to be primarily fanfics and while I understand one can post original fiction in such sites, I don't know how discoverability works there and if anyone will be seeing what I post unless they're specifically looking for it.

Should I try it? Tumblr has so far been a pretty welcome platform, more so than I expected, but would AO3 or anything work as well or better?

[figroth]

I kinda rushed to end this due to time limitations, but I'll probably be returning for a Part 2 at some point.

Cracking the Pod Open

Samo and Tinus tried to emit as little light as possible whilst circling the Black Hole.

Once it might have been big, but it was fairly small now. A black hole on death's door, a magnificent sight that served as a reminder that an end awaits us all.

At least Tinus was pretty confident that this black hole was about to evaporate, the detector he'd snatched from his uncle said so. The way he fidgeted with it, however, perhaps betrayed some anxiety.

"The radiation emitted is higher than the cosmic radio background. That means it should burst soon", he repeated again with an expert's certainty.

Samo observed his friend for a moment and the slight smile was not clearly visible under his helmet's visor. He adjusted his spaceboard's trajectory, away from the invisible great mass and closer to his friend.

"That just means it's shrinking. We could be here for days you know", Samo's calm delivery worked well to conceal the fact he was pulling Tinus's leg. After all it had been Samo himself who had made the calculations that led them there. His father always said that predicting a black hole's evaporation was more of an art than a science, but Samo had learnt from the best.

Tinus looked thoughtful for a few seconds, but quickly returned to happier thoughts, "Everyone's going to be so surprised when we come back packed with riches. We'll gain everyone's respect".

"We should hide some of it first or else your father's going to take all of it away".

"Damn. He definitely will. And here I was hoping to be rich. What happened to the sacred law of finders keepers?"

"Don't worry, we can sneak some past him".

"And we're going to be legends anyway!" Tinus performed a fancy roll with his spaceboard to demonstrate his legendary status.

The job of a black hole raider was a tough one to perform and often with little reward in the end. However, it became even more worrying for the tribesmen and women waiting at home when the young lads of the tribe would seek glory and riches by trying to find treasure themselves. Eager to prove themselves adults, they would recklessly jump into the first opportunity they found.

Tinus's eyes wondered to a rock he had thrown earlier, almost out of sight left behind them now. At first, it had approached the black hole speedily, but now it appeared almost motionless, joining the ensemble of objects doomed to forever approach, but never quite get there. Would it perhaps have already crossed the event horizon from its perspective? Although he had grown up in an environment full of black holes, he still struggled to completely grasp the physics behind them. He wondered what would happen to the rock once the black hole reached the threshold and burst.

"Oh damn!" Tinus snapped his head away as he realised he had been staring towards the black hole with his helmet torch on. There was a superstition among raider tribes that if one sends too much light towards a black hole it might grow and suck you in. Logically, of course, this was entirely ludicrous. There was no way a few people's share of radiation could reverse the evaporation of a black hole, let alone enlarge its horizon that much. Yet, one couldn't easily shake off fears developed during horror story telling and grandmother warning giving.

"What do you reckon will be inside the hole?" Samo did not notice Tinus's momentary panic. "Probably some asteroids".

"I hope for a pod. Those always have good loot".

"Could be nothing".

"Do you think there'll be any weapons? I want a spear like what Damos found".

"For me, it has to be the sweetbread. It's so tasty, but I never get much when we share it with the others".

Apparently, a very long time ago an ancient civilisation had gone around leaving its artefacts inside birthing black holes. They didn't know why they had done that or if it was even intentional, but the items were always very precious. And there were a lot of these black holes in their particular neighbourhood of the galaxy.

"Is it just me or is the debris moving faster now?" Samo noted.

Tinus checked his stolen device, "Radiation is picking up. Do you think it's happening?"

"Shield up, it could happen any moment now", Samo warned.

Although their spacesuits offered protection against high frequency radiation, none of what their tribe could build was completely foolproof, especially the leftover suits given to the young members of the tribe. A shield wasn't the optimal countermeasure either, but they definitely felt safer raising the long shields, built to cover the whole body, between themselves and the black hole.

"It's rising even faster now", Tinus monitored the gadget. His eyes darted towards the black hole, his shield slightly lowered. The black hole was still black; maybe there was a slight red tinge now, or was he imagining it? There was a very strong temptation to keep looking and see how the situation evolved. It took all of his mental fortitude to take his eyes away from the dark patch of space.

A few moments of anticipation passed. Was he getting excited or was his back warmer than before? Then, suddenly it all went down in a matter of seconds. Evaporating faster and faster, the black hole shrunk to such a small size it broke apart completely. The asteroids, dust and other debris orbiting the black hole lit up, as the light trapped and compressed within the black hole finally escaped in an explosion: the greatest view he'd ever miss. There was no sound, but he could feel his back almost burning. The visible light and the hot microwaves were of course something, but the most dangerous part were the x-rays and gamma rays that were surely mixed in the burst. Had he looked directly at the explosion, being blinded would have been the most fortunate outcome.

The moment passed and the environment grew dark again. Tinus gave it a few more moments just to be safe, letting his spacesuit to cool off in the meantime. This had certainly been something - he had heard the tales, but he had never actually witnessed a black hole explosion before.

"Tinus, it's all right to loo-" Samo started to speak, but then he suddenly exclaimed "Whoa, what's that?"

Tinus immediately turned around, leaving behind all fears in the face of exciting discovery. What was that indeed? It was a lot bigger than any of the pods he'd seen the adults bring in the past. It had the signs of wear and tear that always accompanied any object that made the mysterious journey through a black hole, but just like the pods it seemed to be built to withstand it. Its shape almost looked like...

"A spaceship?" Tinus wondered aloud, the enthusiasm unmistakable in his tone.

"I can't tell, I've never seen one", Samo observed carefully. Something as luxurious as a full ship was not something their remote tribe got to witness often. They only had small wagons, just enough to carry their men to the black holes.

"I don't see any engines or anything. Perhaps, it was all destroyed inside the black hole", just the rough, bent exterior remained.

"Well whatever, we'll find out what it is once we get inside".

"I only know one thing, man. We're going to be rich".

The two boys headed for the big metal structure that was left behind where there was only darkness before. They landed their spaceboards on top of it and magnetically locked onto it, no real gravity to keep them on top of it. Tinus picked up a spear from his supplies.

"Go look for a door. I'll try to get through with this", he instructed Samo, who nodded and started to walk away.

Tinus pointed the sharp end of the spear at the hull of the unidentified object. The thing had been built to endure a lot, but it had served its purpose to survive a black hole's punishment and was already weakened by it. He pressed a button and the spear's blade lit up red hot. This would surely get through.

The effect was not immediate when he placed the spear on the metal surface, but fairly quickly it scorched to a bright red as well, softening in the process. Tinus pressed harder, hoping to finish this quickly, but the hull appeared to be thicker than he expected, thicker than the pods' encasing usually was.

"Hey, Samo, any luck with that door?" he asked, their comms ignoring distance.

"Nothing yet. I'm afraid even if there was something, it would be welded shut at this point".

"Just my luck", Tinus complained as his spear finally got through to the other side and he realised he needed to cut a full hole that would fit them. "I need to get a sword".

"They can't deny us a full warrior's set once we get back with this", Samo encouraged.

"How will we even bring this whole thing back?"

"Lots of pushing, I say".

Soon, Samo returned, having found no entrance, and started to use his own spear to speed up the process. It was rather boring work and Tinus quickly grew tired from pushing the spear too much, but there was nothing that would stop him now, with the greatest find of all times right in front of him. It would all be worth it once they were done.

It was a couple of hours before they finally got the little circle they were carving fall away with a kick. Tinus gave Samo a wide smile before jumping in. He floated downwards until his magnetic shoes snapped to the floor.

He found himself in what appeared to be a dark corridor. With helmet torch on he looked around and his eyes fell on some ornate illustrations etched onto the wall. This looked expensive already. Samo floated down through the hole next to him. They exchanged a glance, almost blinding each other, and then started to walk down the corridor in search of even more exciting findings.

At the end of the hallway they found a door that opened after a little fiddling of buttons on its control pad -the letters on them were unrecognisable. On the other side was a small room with another door and a control pad. Once again, Tinus tried pressing everything and he was rewarded with the door behind them shutting tight. A loud beep was heard and after a moment his suit's sensors indicated external pressure rising.

"It's an airlock!" Tinus searched for the vents. "And it's working fine. Do you think it's okay to breathe in here?"

"Who could know? For all we know, the ancients breathed different air".

They waited patiently as the room filled with air and when the pressure indicated by their sensors stabilised to an amount close to what they had at home, the door in front of them opened.

They were surprised by the light that suddenly came from the bright room on the other side. Turning off their helmet torches, they entered with awed expressions. The well-lit room was full of various pieces of technology, many of which they didn't recognise. What seemed like advanced types of a screen and an oven were easier to understand, but there were also objects like an orb hovering in soft blue light and a field that contained a plasma-like substance taking different shapes. The walls as well as a lot of the furniture were decorated with ample amounts of gold -real one as far as Tinus could tell.

Samo took interest in an unfamiliar plant that had a reddish trunk and blue leaves, examining to see if there were any fruit on it. Tinus picked up a small vaguely human-shaped figure from the floor. It kind of reminded him of a mix between clockwork and robot, but it had some strange light-emitting spheres on its joints. He wondered if it was a toy, when it started making sounds in an unfamiliar language and he dropped it startled.

His eyes then fell upon a big tube, about twice the size of a human, filled with an unfamiliar yellow-green liquid. Large bubbles were floating up through it and electronics were attached on its top and bottom. A metal near cross-shaped plate was standing in the midst of it, with pads strategically placed in such a way to make him think of a bed.

Behind the alien a tube, a door had discreetly lied unnoticed until that point, but it quickly drew attention to itself when it opened by its own. Alerted, Tinus and Samo suspiciously turned their eyes toward it.

"What?"

A girl stood there, looking at them judgmentally through golden locks of hair falling messily onto her face. She wore a white dress that featured golden threads of light woven into the fabric, many of them concentrating towards the heart region, creating a miniature sun shape. Bracelets adorned her wrists that seemed to be defiantly made out of pure light. The boys goggled in amazement.

"It's rude to stare you know".

[figroth]

Cracking the Pod Open

Samo and Tinus tried to emit as little light as possible whilst circling the Black Hole.

Once it might have been big, but it was fairly small now. A black hole on death's door, a magnificent sight that served as a reminder that an end awaits us all.

At least Tinus was pretty confident that this black hole was about to evaporate, the detector he'd snatched from his uncle said so. The way he fidgeted with it, however, perhaps betrayed some anxiety.

"The radiation emitted is higher than the cosmic radio background. That means it should burst soon", he repeated again with an expert's certainty.

Samo observed his friend for a moment and the slight smile was not clearly visible under his helmet's visor. He adjusted his spaceboard's trajectory, away from the invisible great mass and closer to his friend.

"That just means it's shrinking. We could be here for days you know", Samo's calm delivery worked well to conceal the fact he was pulling Tinus's leg. After all it had been Samo himself who had made the calculations that led them there. His father always said that predicting a black hole's evaporation was more of an art than a science, but Samo had learnt from the best.

Tinus looked thoughtful for a few seconds, but quickly returned to happier thoughts, "Everyone's going to be so surprised when we come back packed with riches. We'll gain everyone's respect".

"We should hide some of it first or else your father's going to take all of it away".

"Damn. He definitely will. And here I was hoping to be rich. What happened to the sacred law of finders keepers?"

"Don't worry, we can sneak some past him".

"And we're going to be legends anyway!" Tinus performed a fancy roll with his spaceboard to demonstrate his legendary status.

The job of a black hole raider was a tough one to perform and often with little reward in the end. However, it became even more worrying for the tribesmen and women waiting at home when the young lads of the tribe would seek glory and riches by trying to find treasure themselves. Eager to prove themselves adults, they would recklessly jump into the first opportunity they found.

Tinus's eyes wondered to a rock he had thrown earlier, almost out of sight left behind them now. At first, it had approached the black hole speedily, but now it appeared almost motionless, joining the ensemble of objects doomed to forever approach, but never quite get there. Would it perhaps have already crossed the event horizon from its perspective? Although he had grown up in an environment full of black holes, he still struggled to completely grasp the physics behind them. He wondered what would happen to the rock once the black hole reached the threshold and burst.

"Oh damn!" Tinus snapped his head away as he realised he had been staring towards the black hole with his helmet torch on. There was a superstition among raider tribes that if one sends too much light towards a black hole it might grow and suck you in. Logically, of course, this was entirely ludicrous. There was no way a few people's share of radiation could reverse the evaporation of a black hole, let alone enlarge its horizon that much. Yet, one couldn't easily shake off fears developed during horror story telling and grandmother warning giving.

"What do you reckon will be inside the hole?" Samo did not notice Tinus's momentary panic. "Probably some asteroids".

"I hope for a pod. Those always have good loot".

"Could be nothing".

"Do you think there'll be any weapons? I want a spear like what Damos found".

"For me, it has to be the sweetbread. It's so tasty, but I never get much when we share it with the others".

Apparently, a very long time ago an ancient civilisation had gone around leaving its artefacts inside birthing black holes. They didn't know why they had done that or if it was even intentional, but the items were always very precious. And there were a lot of these black holes in their particular neighbourhood of the galaxy.

"Is it just me or is the debris moving faster now?" Samo noted.

Tinus checked his stolen device, "Radiation is picking up. Do you think it's happening?"

"Shield up, it could happen any moment now", Samo warned.

Although their spacesuits offered protection against high frequency radiation, none of what their tribe could build was completely foolproof, especially the leftover suits given to the young members of the tribe. A shield wasn't the optimal countermeasure either, but they definitely felt safer raising the long shields, built to cover the whole body, between themselves and the black hole.

"It's rising even faster now", Tinus monitored the gadget. His eyes darted towards the black hole, his shield slightly lowered. The black hole was still black; maybe there was a slight red tinge now, or was he imagining it? There was a very strong temptation to keep looking and see how the situation evolved. It took all of his mental fortitude to take his eyes away from the dark patch of space.

A few moments of anticipation passed. Was he getting excited or was his back warmer than before? Then, suddenly it all went down in a matter of seconds. Evaporating faster and faster, the black hole shrunk to such a small size it broke apart completely. The asteroids, dust and other debris orbiting the black hole lit up, as the light trapped and compressed within the black hole finally escaped in an explosion: the greatest view he'd ever miss. There was no sound, but he could feel his back almost burning. The visible light and the hot microwaves were of course something, but the most dangerous part were the x-rays and gamma rays that were surely mixed in the burst. Had he looked directly at the explosion, being blinded would have been the most fortunate outcome.

The moment passed and the environment grew dark again. Tinus gave it a few more moments just to be safe, letting his spacesuit to cool off in the meantime. This had certainly been something - he had heard the tales, but he had never actually witnessed a black hole explosion before.

"Tinus, it's all right to loo-" Samo started to speak, but then he suddenly exclaimed "Whoa, what's that?"

Tinus immediately turned around, leaving behind all fears in the face of exciting discovery. What was that indeed? It was a lot bigger than any of the pods he'd seen the adults bring in the past. It had the signs of wear and tear that always accompanied any object that made the mysterious journey through a black hole, but just like the pods it seemed to be built to withstand it. Its shape almost looked like...

"A spaceship?" Tinus wondered aloud, the enthusiasm unmistakable in his tone.

"I can't tell, I've never seen one", Samo observed carefully. Something as luxurious as a full ship was not something their remote tribe got to witness often. They only had small wagons, just enough to carry their men to the black holes.

"I don't see any engines or anything. Perhaps, it was all destroyed inside the black hole", just the rough, bent exterior remained.

"Well whatever, we'll find out what it is once we get inside".

"I only know one thing, man. We're going to be rich".

The two boys headed for the big metal structure that was left behind where there was only darkness before. They landed their spaceboards on top of it and magnetically locked onto it, no real gravity to keep them on top of it. Tinus picked up a spear from his supplies.

"Go look for a door. I'll try to get through with this", he instructed Samo, who nodded and started to walk away.

Tinus pointed the sharp end of the spear at the hull of the unidentified object. The thing had been built to endure a lot, but it had served its purpose to survive a black hole's punishment and was already weakened by it. He pressed a button and the spear's blade lit up red hot. This would surely get through.

The effect was not immediate when he placed the spear on the metal surface, but fairly quickly it scorched to a bright red as well, softening in the process. Tinus pressed harder, hoping to finish this quickly, but the hull appeared to be thicker than he expected, thicker than the pods' encasing usually was.

"Hey, Samo, any luck with that door?" he asked, their comms ignoring distance.

"Nothing yet. I'm afraid even if there was something, it would be welded shut at this point".

"Just my luck", Tinus complained as his spear finally got through to the other side and he realised he needed to cut a full hole that would fit them. "I need to get a sword".

"They can't deny us a full warrior's set once we get back with this", Samo encouraged.

"How will we even bring this whole thing back?"

"Lots of pushing, I say".

Soon, Samo returned, having found no entrance, and started to use his own spear to speed up the process. It was rather boring work and Tinus quickly grew tired from pushing the spear too much, but there was nothing that would stop him now, with the greatest find of all times right in front of him. It would all be worth it once they were done.

It was a couple of hours before they finally got the little circle they were carving fall away with a kick. Tinus gave Samo a wide smile before jumping in. He floated downwards until his magnetic shoes snapped to the floor.

He found himself in what appeared to be a dark corridor. With helmet torch on he looked around and his eyes fell on some ornate illustrations etched onto the wall. This looked expensive already. Samo floated down through the hole next to him. They exchanged a glance, almost blinding each other, and then started to walk down the corridor in search of even more exciting findings.

At the end of the hallway they found a door that opened after a little fiddling of buttons on its control pad -the letters on them were unrecognisable. On the other side was a small room with another door and a control pad. Once again, Tinus tried pressing everything and he was rewarded with the door behind them shutting tight. A loud beep was heard and after a moment his suit's sensors indicated external pressure rising.

"It's an airlock!" Tinus searched for the vents. "And it's working fine. Do you think it's okay to breathe in here?"

"Who could know? For all we know, the ancients breathed different air".

They waited patiently as the room filled with air and when the pressure indicated by their sensors stabilised to an amount close to what they had at home, the door in front of them opened.

They were surprised by the light that suddenly came from the bright room on the other side. Turning off their helmet torches, they entered with awed expressions. The well-lit room was full of various pieces of technology, many of which they didn't recognise. What seemed like advanced types of a screen and an oven were easier to understand, but there were also objects like an orb hovering in soft blue light and a field that contained a plasma-like substance taking different shapes. The walls as well as a lot of the furniture were decorated with ample amounts of gold -real one as far as Tinus could tell.

Samo took interest in an unfamiliar plant that had a reddish trunk and blue leaves, examining to see if there were any fruit on it. Tinus picked up a small vaguely human-shaped figure from the floor. It kind of reminded him of a mix between clockwork and robot, but it had some strange light-emitting spheres on its joints. He wondered if it was a toy, when it started making sounds in an unfamiliar language and he dropped it startled.

His eyes then fell upon a big tube, about twice the size of a human, filled with an unfamiliar yellow-green liquid. Large bubbles were floating up through it and electronics were attached on its top and bottom. A metal near cross-shaped plate was standing in the midst of it, with pads strategically placed in such a way to make him think of a bed.

Behind the alien a tube, a door had discreetly lied unnoticed until that point, but it quickly drew attention to itself when it opened by its own. Alerted, Tinus and Samo suspiciously turned their eyes toward it.

"What?"

A girl stood there, looking at them judgmentally through golden locks of hair falling messily onto her face. She wore a white dress that featured golden threads of light woven into the fabric, many of them concentrating towards the heart region, creating a miniature sun shape. Bracelets adorned her wrists that seemed to be defiantly made out of pure light. The boys goggled in amazement.

"It's rude to stare you know".

[figroth]

#I'm in this photo and I don't like it

[figroth]

Flickers in the Dark

The orange lights flickered unexpectedly in the distance of the abyssal darkness.

Thania observed the first source of light she had encountered in years thoughtfully. What could the meaning of this be? Down in the Abyss there was no light. There was barely anything to be honest, but especially not light. She had learnt to sense her barren and bleak world through other means, so much so that she had almost forgotten what it was like to see. Could she believe her own sight after it'd fallen in such disuse?

Indeed the question of whether she could trust the vision was prevalent in her mind. Her many years of experience in the Abyss had taught her that trust was a sentiment one shouldn't afford to anything.

Once, she remembered, the harrowing cry of a woman echoing through the darkness. She had hurried to the aid of the distressed woman, hoping in the depths of her heart that she might finally have a companion in her empty journeys. At the end of her dash, however, she had met no person, but a bulbous mass of disparate parts. Her first tentative touches had felt a number of faces, distorted in unnatural asymmetrical shapes, undulating in and out as one with the breathing of the beast. As she stepped back, she could hear the unearthly shrieks of people rendered so inhuman in how real they sounded. She had barely escaped the claws that had then swooped in to catch her, and likely add her own face to the amalgamation.

No, there were two very fundamental lessons about living in the Abyss. The first was that despite the general emptiness, in the rare event of encountering something other than yourself, investigating was never worth the danger it put you in. Though Thania did not understand the purposes of the things she met and could never predict their actual nature beforehand, she knew they were never safe. From the pleasant aroma of a flower luring you into a plant that would entrap you and incorporate your living body to its growing vines; to a room of warmth and comfort inviting you to rest your sorrows away, only to sap away all your will and motivation by the time you woke up; everything in this world harboured a threat of some kind or other.

Yet, these orange flickers of light made Thania feel warm just by looking at them. She remembered a time when a flame of not too dissimilar hue would have kept her company through the night, shielding her from the cold of the outside world. She could imagine the small crowded home that surrounded such hearth. She yearned for its warmth. Could these lights possibly be houses of people? What else could create light? She had never seen the creatures of the Abyss do such a thing.

The second lesson of the Abyss was that the cold, lonely life it offered was not living at all when you didn't let even its rare encounters approach you.

"Do you reckon you'll find people over there?" Grinner suddenly appeared with a condescending chuckle.

She ignored him.

"It's almost inspiring how you still believe after all this time. Your optimism is why I like you, though", his mocking grin was perceptible even without having to see him.

Once upon a time, a naive young Thania had allowed herself to feel around his face and body. He had seemed roughly human-shaped, even if the texture wasn't quite right. But most noticeable had been the incredibly wide smile his face was contorted to. It was a smile she could hear in his very voice. That's why she had called him Grinner back then.

Of course, it had been entirely wrong to engage with him. She had once been glad to meet another person she could speak with. Nowadays, she wasn't sure if she should refer to him as a person at all. Her current theory had him be a demon haunting her in an attempt to confuse and mislead her, out of pure appreciation for her suffering. She still feared he might have yet worse intentions, however. Thus, she ignored him.

"Still not much for conversation, I see. You wound my feelings, dearie. In any case, be careful in your foolish little endeavour. We wouldn't want you to die, would we?" his last words were dipped with a pretend concern that induced an ominous feeling in her.

With his part said, she heard Grinner's essence dissolve back into nothingness. She was alone again. Perhaps she wouldn't be for long. Her tormentor didn't seem to think the flickers held anything good in them, and in truthfulness she agreed. But if the demon was right about one thing was that in the core of all her jadedness, she simply wanted to believe in the light again.

After all, although Thania always said she had been alone since the start, in reality she'd met other humans before. It had been mostly in the beginning, right after her home had been taken by the Abyss. She assumed they came from the same place, but she hadn't been able to confirm it, since she didn't recognise anyone she knew. Unfortunately, in most cases the humans were already dead or in irrecoverable states that didn't allow communication when she found them. Horrifying though these instances were, they were invaluable learning experiences that allowed her to survive all this time.

After a while, the humans stopped showing up. Thania was left to deal with the Abyss and its dangers by herself. What happened to her home, she never knew exactly. In her childhood she and her family had lived in a mining colony on a far-off moon of the solar system. It had not been an easy life, but it was all Thania had known and she had been happy. She knew that now at least. But then with no sign or warning, a fog of complete blackness had appeared and consumed the whole moon within it.

Where was she now and where was the moon gone now? She didn't know. Her current whereabouts, the thing she called the Abyss, didn't feel like she was on a planet or in space, or even in the fog that started it all. Sometimes the Abyss didn't even seem to have any corporeal form at all. It was just a Darkness, and she existed in it. Then, sometimes other Things would appear within it.

The fog had taken her entire home. But then, after the initial panic and mayhem, she was alone. She had met some people, but not nearly enough. Where had the rest of them gone? Where had the buildings and towns gone? Where had her family gone? Were they also somewhere in the Abyss to be found? Or had they perhaps been spared from the darkness and she could go back to them, if she only found an exit.

Those questions bothered her whenever she tried to sleep. But they were also what kept her hope alive. What kept her moving after a long series of disappointments.

There was of course something else that motivated her. That inner hunger she always felt that could never be quenched in the bare landscape of the Abyss. An agonising unrelenting hunger that plagued her always. It tormented her, but it kept her alive. It drove her to take risks she wouldn't have otherwise, every time a step closer to death. And yet when she made it out alive, she had what the hunger demanded of her. Perhaps without it she would have given up long ago.

Her belly now again rumbled. She didn't get to eat often. Whatever waited for her at the end of this trip, this was an unmistakable chance to alleviate that hard knot in her stomach.

She looked down at herself, a motion more symbolic than anything else. If she did find people, though, would they be able to accept her as she was now? A wandering creature, twisted by the instincts of survival and the corruption of the dark, who can only think of consuming whatever she can find to satiate her hunger... Was she perhaps also a monster of the Abyss now?

Her clothes were long gone, torn and frayed through time and wear. They wouldn't fit her grown body anyway. Instead now she wore a veil of shadows, fashioned like a cloak. Although no prying eyes could pierce the darkness that enveloped all and no clothing could shield from the coldness permeating everything in the Abyss, she still somehow felt safer or more comfortable with something on rather than otherwise. Perhaps it was an artifact of a life in a more reasonable world.

Would such appearance scare a fellow human? The transformations the Dark had forced upon her. Could they ever be accepted by people? If she ever re-surfaced to the real world, would she be welcome? Would she be able to live there? Or would she be so far gone, the warmth would burn her?

In the Abyss, there was no night and day. The only differentiation of time for Thania was the cycle of necessary movement replaced by the loss of all willingness to think and experience. Then, she would sleep, surrendering herself to the same void that surrounded her from all sides. Once again now, stopped in her tracks by her maddening thoughts, she found a hole to crawl in and lied down hoping the oblivion would claim her and erase all worries.

She had no dreams.

She awakened to the call of her hunger. Though sleep in the Abyss rarely offered enough rest to be considered fulfilling, Thania had at least shed some of her exhaustion, allowing to build up her mental fortitude once again.

The orange lights were still there. Whatever lay there, human, monstrous or otherwise, she would have to face it in the end no matter the outcome. That wouldn't change.

She made her way towards them once again. Although the Abyss had no definite shape or form, it did sometimes assume a particular, more corporeal state. Often Thania found her feet walking upon what felt like hard rocky terrain. Other times, it was as if she was in a murky bog, her legs submerging themselves into invisible mud and water. And yet other times, even more structure appeared in her way, like stony trees, pillars made of tar and even rivers of ambiguous substances defying the notion of gravity and flowing in any direction they saw fit.

This time the darkness melted into a liquid form and Thania found herself having to swim through a lake. It was not her favourite state. The touch of the water, if it could even be called that, made her yet colder. She pushed on despite it. The faster she swam, the sooner she'd be out of the lake.

Whilst at first, her head remained above the surface, letting buoyancy keep her afloat, suddenly all the enveloping darkness was liquid, pressing from all sides. In a panic, she tried to swim upwards, but no end to the water appeared. She'd closed her mouth as soon as the change occurred, so nothing had gotten in, but as a result she hadn't gotten a good breath in. She didn't have long.

Taking a moment to calm herself, she stopped and looked at her target, the only visible thing in so long. The Abyss was playing tricks on her, but the lights were surely there and approaching. She could try go back, but it wasn't certain the Abyss would change back. The lights were true and material, though, no matter what the Dark shaped itself into. That was her only hope.

She dove straight for the orange dots, now blurring through the pain-induced tears. She didn't even know if oxygen existed in the Abyss, yet her lungs longed for it nonetheless. They begged her to open her mouth, ignorant that what lay outside was not air. They pressure built up far quicker than she had hoped. She couldn't stand this. She was getting closer, but her instincts fought her.

She opened her mouth.

The darkness flowed quickly into her mouth and down her neck, filling her up inside with the most dreadful stuffy solidified sense of drowning. It reached the capacity of her lungs and then overflowed, spreading to her entire being. A single scream escaped, short in duration, muffled, and eventually swallowed by the void.

The next instant that she could be certain she was conscious, Thania was on solid ground -solid enough at least- with no sign of the lake that had been drowning her, for how long she couldn't tell.

She greedily breathed in and out, partly to calm herself, but also to make up for all the breaths she just skipped. The essence that had invaded her seemed to be gone and any lingering taste was probably her imagination. However, she didn't trust that it wasn't hiding somewhere within her with some insidious purpose. The fear of that would be something more to worry about in her lone moments of sleep, but in the moment she couldn't do anything about it, so she tried to repress it.

She felt around her body, from her limbs to her chest to her belly, to make sure everything was still in place, then she got up. The lights were closer than ever, fairly bigger than before and easier to distinguish. Without any other landmarks, it was hard to estimate distances, but she felt she was almost there.

As she continued on her way, the ground started to turn uphill. Eventually, after some searching she found a swirling path that appeared to climb up a hill or mountain. The lights proved to be higher than her current level, so the path seemed to be a promising way of reaching them.

As she went around the hill, the flickers came in and out of sight, as if something was hiding them, but now Thania could see they weren't quite round, but had a more elongated squarish shape. The excitement caused by this almost made her turn around and run away, for fear of the disappointment being wrong would cause.

"Don't do this to me now", she inadvertently mumbled to herself in a croaky voice.

The remaining climb was some of the hardest exercise she'd gotten in a long time. Other than running away from dangers, the empty Abyss didn't often offer much physical challenge. Now, the clear path up the hill seemed to stop and instead the way up was through steep jagged cliffs. Yet, the lights were just above, tantalisingly close and yet out of reach. Thania put in her all, making her way up, blindly searching for stable footing.

She was faintly reminded of climbing a much less steep slope in the dark during the exploration of an abandoned mine, back home. Was she with her friends then, venturing into dangerous passages out of curiosity despite warning; or had her father brought her there to familiarise her with the mines that she might also have worked in some day? She couldn't remember. Her memories of her old life seemed so far now, so faded. Lost almost, as if taken by the all-consuming Darkness.

A sharp feeling grasped her gut. Her memories of the old world were one of the few things she had, one of her precious treasures. Without realising it, it had escaped like sand in her hands. Was forgetfulness and nothingness all that awaited her? If she had lost what once was, could she perhaps ever make memories to replace the ones that were gone? A warm life with warm people. Could she possibly ever have something so nice?

A monstrosity of many eyes and enormous size stared at her and seemed to almost silently reply "No". Archs of almost human size, emitting orange light, with a cross separating them in four parts dotted the gooey flesh of the monster. By all accounts they should have been windows. And yet they were just another trick of the Abyss meant to deceive her. The window-shaped eyes of the vaguely spherical mass of overlapping disproportionately small arms turned to look at her. A maw covering about half of the creature opened in anticipation, revealing its inner dark depths. The two chicken-like legs supporting its weight dubiously, slowly started to move towards her.

Thania wasn't sure if this was worse than the creatures she imagined when she couldn't see the horrors of the Abyss visually. It didn't matter in this moment, however, as instead of a fearful scream, hoarse laughter escaped her mouth. Of course. What else did she expect? She felt horrible, yet she could only laugh.

But something else stirred within her at the same time. Looking down, below her cloak, in the light of the beast's eyes, she could for the first time see the gem that had embedded itself in her stomach. It opened up to reveal the mouth she knew was there, demanding flesh to quench its hunger.

Many might have wondered, had they heard Thania's tale, how she managed to survive this long in the Abyss, escaping its touch and its horrible traps. The simple answer is she didn't. Since the very beginning, the taint of the Abyss had accompanied her.

When the fog came, unimaginable beasts had emerged from it. Some had been satisfied hunting for food. Others had simply killed, seemingly for its own sake. Some few had committed unthinkable horrors on the unfortunate victims of her home. As for Thania, before she could escape one of the small ones had bitten her leg. What happened next was always a blur, but the creature had managed to enter her body and somehow merge with it. She could still feel it inside her, attached to her heart, its tendrils reaching within her, sapping any warmth she could produce.

Its thirst for life, its search for sustenance had always followed her. It was what had made her eat the the detached claw of a face-stealing monster. What had convinced her to accept the fruit of a tree growing out of a man. It was what gave her power and what had helped her survive.

It was what would have her fight the many-eyed monstrosity charging at her right now. And the survivor's hunger will be sated.

If only for a moment.

[figroth]

Tumblr is confusing

In the span of a couple of minutes, I've tried to show my appreciation for a reblog and ended up liking and replying to my own blog; then I replied to what appeared to be a private message and the reply became a public post.

Guess I'll have to get used to this! :P

[figroth]

Flickers in the Dark

The orange lights flickered unexpectedly in the distance of the abyssal darkness.

Thania observed the first source of light she had encountered in years thoughtfully. What could the meaning of this be? Down in the Abyss there was no light. There was barely anything to be honest, but especially not light. She had learnt to sense her barren and bleak world through other means, so much so that she had almost forgotten what it was like to see. Could she believe her own sight after it'd fallen in such disuse?

Indeed the question of whether she could trust the vision was prevalent in her mind. Her many years of experience in the Abyss had taught her that trust was a sentiment one shouldn't afford to anything.

Once, she remembered, the harrowing cry of a woman echoing through the darkness. She had hurried to the aid of the distressed woman, hoping in the depths of her heart that she might finally have a companion in her empty journeys. At the end of her dash, however, she had met no person, but a bulbous mass of disparate parts. Her first tentative touches had felt a number of faces, distorted in unnatural asymmetrical shapes, undulating in and out as one with the breathing of the beast. As she stepped back, she could hear the unearthly shrieks of people rendered so inhuman in how real they sounded. She had barely escaped the claws that had then swooped in to catch her, and likely add her own face to the amalgamation.

No, there were two very fundamental lessons about living in the Abyss. The first was that despite the general emptiness, in the rare event of encountering something other than yourself, investigating was never worth the danger it put you in. Though Thania did not understand the purposes of the things she met and could never predict their actual nature beforehand, she knew they were never safe. From the pleasant aroma of a flower luring you into a plant that would entrap you and incorporate your living body to its growing vines; to a room of warmth and comfort inviting you to rest your sorrows away, only to sap away all your will and motivation by the time you woke up; everything in this world harboured a threat of some kind or other.

Yet, these orange flickers of light made Thania feel warm just by looking at them. She remembered a time when a flame of not too dissimilar hue would have kept her company through the night, shielding her from the cold of the outside world. She could imagine the small crowded home that surrounded such hearth. She yearned for its warmth. Could these lights possibly be houses of people? What else could create light? She had never seen the creatures of the Abyss do such a thing.

The second lesson of the Abyss was that the cold, lonely life it offered was not living at all when you didn't let even its rare encounters approach you.

"Do you reckon you'll find people over there?" Grinner suddenly appeared with a condescending chuckle.

She ignored him.

"It's almost inspiring how you still believe after all this time. Your optimism is why I like you, though", his mocking grin was perceptible even without having to see him.

Once upon a time, a naive young Thania had allowed herself to feel around his face and body. He had seemed roughly human-shaped, even if the texture wasn't quite right. But most noticeable had been the incredibly wide smile his face was contorted to. It was a smile she could hear in his very voice. That's why she had called him Grinner back then.

Of course, it had been entirely wrong to engage with him. She had once been glad to meet another person she could speak with. Nowadays, she wasn't sure if she should refer to him as a person at all. Her current theory had him be a demon haunting her in an attempt to confuse and mislead her, out of pure appreciation for her suffering. She still feared he might have yet worse intentions, however. Thus, she ignored him.

"Still not much for conversation, I see. You wound my feelings, dearie. In any case, be careful in your foolish little endeavour. We wouldn't want you to die, would we?" his last words were dipped with a pretend concern that induced an ominous feeling in her.

With his part said, she heard Grinner's essence dissolve back into nothingness. She was alone again. Perhaps she wouldn't be for long. Her tormentor didn't seem to think the flickers held anything good in them, and in truthfulness she agreed. But if the demon was right about one thing was that in the core of all her jadedness, she simply wanted to believe in the light again.

After all, although Thania always said she had been alone since the start, in reality she'd met other humans before. It had been mostly in the beginning, right after her home had been taken by the Abyss. She assumed they came from the same place, but she hadn't been able to confirm it, since she didn't recognise anyone she knew. Unfortunately, in most cases the humans were already dead or in irrecoverable states that didn't allow communication when she found them. Horrifying though these instances were, they were invaluable learning experiences that allowed her to survive all this time.

After a while, the humans stopped showing up. Thania was left to deal with the Abyss and its dangers by herself. What happened to her home, she never knew exactly. In her childhood she and her family had lived in a mining colony on a far-off moon of the solar system. It had not been an easy life, but it was all Thania had known and she had been happy. She knew that now at least. But then with no sign or warning, a fog of complete blackness had appeared and consumed the whole moon within it.

Where was she now and where was the moon gone now? She didn't know. Her current whereabouts, the thing she called the Abyss, didn't feel like she was on a planet or in space, or even in the fog that started it all. Sometimes the Abyss didn't even seem to have any corporeal form at all. It was just a Darkness, and she existed in it. Then, sometimes other Things would appear within it.

The fog had taken her entire home. But then, after the initial panic and mayhem, she was alone. She had met some people, but not nearly enough. Where had the rest of them gone? Where had the buildings and towns gone? Where had her family gone? Were they also somewhere in the Abyss to be found? Or had they perhaps been spared from the darkness and she could go back to them, if she only found an exit.

Those questions bothered her whenever she tried to sleep. But they were also what kept her hope alive. What kept her moving after a long series of disappointments.

There was of course something else that motivated her. That inner hunger she always felt that could never be quenched in the bare landscape of the Abyss. An agonising unrelenting hunger that plagued her always. It tormented her, but it kept her alive. It drove her to take risks she wouldn't have otherwise, every time a step closer to death. And yet when she made it out alive, she had what the hunger demanded of her. Perhaps without it she would have given up long ago.

Her belly now again rumbled. She didn't get to eat often. Whatever waited for her at the end of this trip, this was an unmistakable chance to alleviate that hard knot in her stomach.

She looked down at herself, a motion more symbolic than anything else. If she did find people, though, would they be able to accept her as she was now? A wandering creature, twisted by the instincts of survival and the corruption of the dark, who can only think of consuming whatever she can find to satiate her hunger... Was she perhaps also a monster of the Abyss now?

Her clothes were long gone, torn and frayed through time and wear. They wouldn't fit her grown body anyway. Instead now she wore a veil of shadows, fashioned like a cloak. Although no prying eyes could pierce the darkness that enveloped all and no clothing could shield from the coldness permeating everything in the Abyss, she still somehow felt safer or more comfortable with something on rather than otherwise. Perhaps it was an artifact of a life in a more reasonable world.

Would such appearance scare a fellow human? The transformations the Dark had forced upon her. Could they ever be accepted by people? If she ever re-surfaced to the real world, would she be welcome? Would she be able to live there? Or would she be so far gone, the warmth would burn her?

In the Abyss, there was no night and day. The only differentiation of time for Thania was the cycle of necessary movement replaced by the loss of all willingness to think and experience. Then, she would sleep, surrendering herself to the same void that surrounded her from all sides. Once again now, stopped in her tracks by her maddening thoughts, she found a hole to crawl in and lied down hoping the oblivion would claim her and erase all worries.

She had no dreams.

She awakened to the call of her hunger. Though sleep in the Abyss rarely offered enough rest to be considered fulfilling, Thania had at least shed some of her exhaustion, allowing to build up her mental fortitude once again.

The orange lights were still there. Whatever lay there, human, monstrous or otherwise, she would have to face it in the end no matter the outcome. That wouldn't change.

She made her way towards them once again. Although the Abyss had no definite shape or form, it did sometimes assume a particular, more corporeal state. Often Thania found her feet walking upon what felt like hard rocky terrain. Other times, it was as if she was in a murky bog, her legs submerging themselves into invisible mud and water. And yet other times, even more structure appeared in her way, like stony trees, pillars made of tar and even rivers of ambiguous substances defying the notion of gravity and flowing in any direction they saw fit.

This time the darkness melted into a liquid form and Thania found herself having to swim through a lake. It was not her favourite state. The touch of the water, if it could even be called that, made her yet colder. She pushed on despite it. The faster she swam, the sooner she'd be out of the lake.

Whilst at first, her head remained above the surface, letting buoyancy keep her afloat, suddenly all the enveloping darkness was liquid, pressing from all sides. In a panic, she tried to swim upwards, but no end to the water appeared. She'd closed her mouth as soon as the change occurred, so nothing had gotten in, but as a result she hadn't gotten a good breath in. She didn't have long.

Taking a moment to calm herself, she stopped and looked at her target, the only visible thing in so long. The Abyss was playing tricks on her, but the lights were surely there and approaching. She could try go back, but it wasn't certain the Abyss would change back. The lights were true and material, though, no matter what the Dark shaped itself into. That was her only hope.

She dove straight for the orange dots, now blurring through the pain-induced tears. She didn't even know if oxygen existed in the Abyss, yet her lungs longed for it nonetheless. They begged her to open her mouth, ignorant that what lay outside was not air. They pressure built up far quicker than she had hoped. She couldn't stand this. She was getting closer, but her instincts fought her.

She opened her mouth.

The darkness flowed quickly into her mouth and down her neck, filling her up inside with the most dreadful stuffy solidified sense of drowning. It reached the capacity of her lungs and then overflowed, spreading to her entire being. A single scream escaped, short in duration, muffled, and eventually swallowed by the void.

The next instant that she could be certain she was conscious, Thania was on solid ground -solid enough at least- with no sign of the lake that had been drowning her, for how long she couldn't tell.

She greedily breathed in and out, partly to calm herself, but also to make up for all the breaths she just skipped. The essence that had invaded her seemed to be gone and any lingering taste was probably her imagination. However, she didn't trust that it wasn't hiding somewhere within her with some insidious purpose. The fear of that would be something more to worry about in her lone moments of sleep, but in the moment she couldn't do anything about it, so she tried to repress it.

She felt around her body, from her limbs to her chest to her belly, to make sure everything was still in place, then she got up. The lights were closer than ever, fairly bigger than before and easier to distinguish. Without any other landmarks, it was hard to estimate distances, but she felt she was almost there.

As she continued on her way, the ground started to turn uphill. Eventually, after some searching she found a swirling path that appeared to climb up a hill or mountain. The lights proved to be higher than her current level, so the path seemed to be a promising way of reaching them.

As she went around the hill, the flickers came in and out of sight, as if something was hiding them, but now Thania could see they weren't quite round, but had a more elongated squarish shape. The excitement caused by this almost made her turn around and run away, for fear of the disappointment being wrong would cause.

"Don't do this to me now", she inadvertently mumbled to herself in a croaky voice.

The remaining climb was some of the hardest exercise she'd gotten in a long time. Other than running away from dangers, the empty Abyss didn't often offer much physical challenge. Now, the clear path up the hill seemed to stop and instead the way up was through steep jagged cliffs. Yet, the lights were just above, tantalisingly close and yet out of reach. Thania put in her all, making her way up, blindly searching for stable footing.

She was faintly reminded of climbing a much less steep slope in the dark during the exploration of an abandoned mine, back home. Was she with her friends then, venturing into dangerous passages out of curiosity despite warning; or had her father brought her there to familiarise her with the mines that she might also have worked in some day? She couldn't remember. Her memories of her old life seemed so far now, so faded. Lost almost, as if taken by the all-consuming Darkness.

A sharp feeling grasped her gut. Her memories of the old world were one of the few things she had, one of her precious treasures. Without realising it, it had escaped like sand in her hands. Was forgetfulness and nothingness all that awaited her? If she had lost what once was, could she perhaps ever make memories to replace the ones that were gone? A warm life with warm people. Could she possibly ever have something so nice?

A monstrosity of many eyes and enormous size stared at her and seemed to almost silently reply "No". Archs of almost human size, emitting orange light, with a cross separating them in four parts dotted the gooey flesh of the monster. By all accounts they should have been windows. And yet they were just another trick of the Abyss meant to deceive her. The window-shaped eyes of the vaguely spherical mass of overlapping disproportionately small arms turned to look at her. A maw covering about half of the creature opened in anticipation, revealing its inner dark depths. The two chicken-like legs supporting its weight dubiously, slowly started to move towards her.

Thania wasn't sure if this was worse than the creatures she imagined when she couldn't see the horrors of the Abyss visually. It didn't matter in this moment, however, as instead of a fearful scream, hoarse laughter escaped her mouth. Of course. What else did she expect? She felt horrible, yet she could only laugh.

But something else stirred within her at the same time. Looking down, below her cloak, in the light of the beast's eyes, she could for the first time see the gem that had embedded itself in her stomach. It opened up to reveal the mouth she knew was there, demanding flesh to quench its hunger.

Many might have wondered, had they heard Thania's tale, how she managed to survive this long in the Abyss, escaping its touch and its horrible traps. The simple answer is she didn't. Since the very beginning, the taint of the Abyss had accompanied her.

When the fog came, unimaginable beasts had emerged from it. Some had been satisfied hunting for food. Others had simply killed, seemingly for its own sake. Some few had committed unthinkable horrors on the unfortunate victims of her home. As for Thania, before she could escape one of the small ones had bitten her leg. What happened next was always a blur, but the creature had managed to enter her body and somehow merge with it. She could still feel it inside her, attached to her heart, its tendrils reaching within her, sapping any warmth she could produce.

Its thirst for life, its search for sustenance had always followed her. It was what had made her eat the the detached claw of a face-stealing monster. What had convinced her to accept the fruit of a tree growing out of a man. It was what gave her power and what had helped her survive.

It was what would have her fight the many-eyed monstrosity charging at her right now. And the survivor's hunger will be sated.

If only for a moment.

[figroth]

A Wild Figroth appears.

Hello world!

I'm Figroth. For a long time, I've wanted to be a writer, but unfortunately the last few years I've been struggling to produce a lot of writing. Although I want to write actual books eventually, I think I might need to start learning how to walk again, before I run.

So for this purpose, I thought I would challenge myself to write a short story or story segment every week (at the least frequent). The odds are against me, but I want to try to see how far I get. If you by any chance find this and take a liking to what you see, all the better for all of us. Writing is after all best when shared with people.

I don't know how long or consistent the stories are going to be. I want to prioritise posting something (anything) every week, so length (let along quality or polish) might be sacrificed in the altar of meeting the schedule. Nonetheless, I hope that what I deliver will be complete stories that will keep your interest.

Perhaps, we might see recurring characters or settings as the weeks stretch with stories that connect to each other, but I won't promise a continuous story for that is a rather scary commitment at the moment that could stop this venture in its tracks.

My main interests in writing involve fantasy and maybe a bit of sci-fi, so that's probably the most that you'll be seeing out of me.

With that being said, if you choose to follow me on this journey, I thank you very much.