The Captain's office was dark, merely illuminated by a dim blue light emanating from a tank in the corner of the room. The black gloop had been slowly spreading from his chair, mutating the rusty floor into more of itself like a self-propagating slime.
The Captain shifted and groaned in his chair, his brow furrowed, in the throes of whatever memory the assaulting whispers had dredged up from the mouldy corners of his mind. Abruptly, the Captain shot up, panting heavily as a sheen of sweat covered his forehead, plastering his hair onto his face.
His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated and his hand seemed to be reaching from something in front of him. Slowly, reality asserted itself over the misty remnants of his dream, and he collapsed back into his chair, running his hand through his greasy hair.
The black gloop stopped its encroachment onto the room, frozen in place like a child caught with its fist fully inside the cookie jar. Luckily, the Captain seemed to have not noticed its transgressions yet, still reeling from the after-effects of that vivid dream.
'How long as it been since I last dreamt of...that?'
He shivered imperceptibly before steeling himself.
'First [Fractal], now this? Too many coincidences for my liking. Things are churning out there in the malevolent dark, and they dare to set their sights on me?'
His serious expression warped into one of malicious glee.
'I suppose it would be rude to keep them waiting.'
***
Aeons before the Captain was even born, when the system that birthed him was still cosmic dust, far past the historical borders where the fog of time has hidden all records, there was a certain place. An imaginary place.
A fragment of a thought that had coalesced and congealed into permanence. That place was empty, a bleak and desolate terrain as far as the eye could sea.
Strange green and violet flashes of luminescence sparked in the empty void above, not a single star to accompany them as though even they feared to look upon this place. The ground was shades of black and grey, craggly peaks alternating with valleys of rock.
A black bird arrived, landing atop the highest peak, overlooking the barren landscape with beady eyes, sparing a brief glance at the warring flashes of light above.
Its jet black pupils hid a cold intelligence, surveying the landscape with the detachment of confident superiority. As it watched, however, a hint of excitement appeared on its obsidian-feathered face. It clicked its beak, taking to the skies before soaring downwards into the valley before it, landing on a small boulder.
There, on the ground in front of it, was something that immediately caught the eye. Even half-buried as it was, it stood out against the monotone backdrop like ink on canvas.
The bird hopped down, pecking at the rocks around the object before pulling it free. Upon seeing its full form, a triumphant expression dawned on the black bird's face.
There, lying covered in dust, was the helmet of an ancient space-suit. Covered in dust and grime, its finer features still could not be discerned, but on its visor was some kind of marking. A shape.
A circle.
Abruptly, a green flash fell from the sky, landing on the other side of the mountain with a resounding boom. Tremors echoed strong enough to crack the boulder the black bird was perched on and causing it to be thrown onto the ground. Flapping its wings to get rid of the dust, It cast a wary glance at the mountain and then at the sky.
Without warning, a violet flash followed the trail of the green one and another echoing boom roared through that place. This time, the mountain could no longer hold strong as it began to crumble, boulders the size of small hills being dislodged from its side.
The black bird, clearly wary of those warring violet and green flashes, grabbed the helmet in its claws and took to the skies. Not a moment later, the violent clashes behind it had already laid waste to entire swathes of mountainous landmass.
The magnitude of the forces involved may have not been that impactful when occurring far in the void above, but on the ground its true scale could be seen as the entire world seemed to be facing complete obliteration. That was until, as if time were being reversed, the shattered peaks and levelled valleys began to be restored. Boulders running up mountainsides, cracks repairing faster and faster until all evidence of the supreme battle had all but been erased.
By now, the green and violet flashes had relocated to the empty sky, though faintly the echoes of their clashes could still be heard.
The black bird, however, had long since disappeared from that place. Even for it, coming to a place like that carried a heavy risk and staying a second longer than necessary was a chance it wasn't willing to take. With the visitor gone, that bygone fragment returned to solitude, the ongoing battle continuing eternally in its starless skies.
And so, as the aeons marched inevitably ever-forward, that place was buried. Passing from memory into story, from story into legend, from legend into myth and from myth into the Seal of Oblivion.
And yet, I am sure, that somewhere out there beyond the reach of the Stars it endures. That imaginary place where green and violet wage their endless war, consigned to the prison of eternal combat on the fragment of a god.