Between intermissions of creaks and whines, I drifted in a sea of dreams. Swaying back and forth across untouched lands and distant recollection until I happened upon a great foreboding tide. The point in time this occurred is unknown to me, though the dreamlands often scoff at the measures of the waking world. I braced against the unending swells, which seemed to desire my plunge into the abyss. Amid my pleads for calmer waters, I came upon a red sun. It flickered against a black sky with cries of sirens calling me to the edge of the cosmos. Against the torrent I struggled until I stood before the precipice. 

I awoke to the chime of Soujourn’s console. To break my staggering fatigue, I slammed the computer. In response, a deluge of reports came flowing from a myriad of the ship’s screens. An unknown astral body seen adrift across the stars, with no sheltering star it called home. My thirst for riches called me to these untamed fringes of known space. A place where only courage or ignorance can carry one through, of which I carry myself is yet to be revealed. Several cycles of searching across the vale known as the Black Wall, a realm no ship has crossed and returned. Light years of starless sky filled only with whispers of countless treasure. Fields of dark rock carrying more riches than a thousand systems. A fool’s dream that beckoned one to their demise, and yet there it was, a lone stone splitting the astral plane.

My survey of the body through the ship’s systems granted only more questions than answers. Its mass was greater than the father planet Jupiter and held no outline of any known planet within the night sky. Here was not a jagged carving of ancient tragedy but a lost sculpture of Eden cast off from unknown shores of lost time. Further investigation revealed its husk carried far greater quantities of hallowed rock and gem than any king or emperor could conquer in a lifetime. Here I would claim my fortune to carry my progeny beyond want for eons. I made landfall with all haste. As I disembarked my craft, no light greeted save the distant stars shuttering before a violet haze, rendering them as twisted gazes of unknown gods delighting in my folly. 

I ventured forth, preparing to mark my claim for further extraction of the planet’s resources. A beacon to guide me and others back here to build an outpost. As I prepared the beacon, my eyes met a massive structure, larger than any construct of man. Its edifice held strange angles, which conveyed no logical constants known to man. At its center stood a great gap, a massive corridor, a gateway to the heart of this lonely mountain. A gentle glow emanated from the entrance, shimmering from deeper within the chasm. Barks of static rung in my helmet, its origin calculated to be from the furthest depths of the monolith. Believing the sounds to be of human origin, I entered the structure in blind anger to contest my claim. 

My pace steady yet my heart erratic, as I journeyed deeper into the hollowed rock, I found only symbols and carvings foreign and unnatural to the human eye. Various trinkets of vexing design lay before altars to obscene gods, unblemished by form or symmetry. There at the center of the vast chamber stood a tall stone pillar with a fleshy, smooth obsidian surface. The light that lured me here emanated brighter with every pulse as I drew closer. Its hue was like the violet sky surrounding the planet. What force or power compelled me to reach for the pillar I cannot say. 

Upon contact, an immense current permeated my body, as if the universe itself was trying to fill every inch. Moments long forgotten, a red sun over grotesque edifices, multitudes of beasts conjured from the darkest dreams. One of the beasts turned with its various eyes and peered into my being. Screams of anger and agony filled my head. Then, a chasm of darkness engulfed the beasts and their horrid landscape. The creatures wailed against the encroaching black. Their leathery skin dissolving into a continuous mass, a single form rose from the heaps of fallen creatures. The pressure increased, and I felt some longing, a hunger fiercer than man’s deepest desire. I could no longer resist its blazing thirst as my skin and mind dissolved against the radiating void. My screams held no weight, like a whimper against a cacophony of madness.

I drifted again between unconscious thought and the sensation of my fingers caressing the sand and rocks. My heels resisted a force that carried me as I gazed upwards towards the contrasting glittering sky against the empty chasm beyond the entrance to that infernal pit. I slipped back into my dreams, returning to a setting sun far from here with my hands reaching for the emerging stars at dusk. The infinite twilight tugged at my dreams of buried treasure across the vast reaches of our imagination. Then the stars emptied, and only black remained. Alone against the piercing veil. Its presence encroaching upon my childhood, devouring my innocence, I screamed as it fell across the horizon on the verge of swallowing me whole.

I awoke on a cold and plain table with lights and probes littering the space. The Soujourn had detected my distress and dispatched aid with its recovery drones to retrieve me while I lay in some manner of psychosis. Once I regained some measure of coherence, I ordered the console to make ready for launch. I had wished to suffer this place no more. It was in the final moments of the ship’s launch protocol that I saw it. 

 A black figure some several meters from the ship. The ship instruments returned no indication of its presence, but it was there, plain as the forgotten day. The entity’s placement across this barren Hades remains unchanged. Its shape molded to that of a hooded person in black robes, with no eyes, head or any limbs to discern. I could sense its gaze like piercing winter, which seeped frost into every corner of my body. I remembered my time in the cave, that conclave of madness, the stare of the horrid vagaries of lost time. A chime from the console jolted me back to my terrestrial senses. 

As the entity began moving towards the ship with an unknown force, the ship pulled me to the floor as it hurled us back into the stars. The ship continued its course, with ever-increasing leagues from that accursed place, I felt only the faintest of relief. It was then, when the planet was no longer in sight, that the console chimed. If only to merely silence this disruption to my fleeting peace, I reviewed the ship’s report.

My heart sank into utter convulsion. I searched every corner of the ship with my stunner rifle in hand, nothing. There was nothing that I or the ship could detect. As I returned to the console, I sat in silence for a moment, pondering the gravity of my hubris. The more I realized what I had done the more I sank into utter despair. Must I return and face my potential doom or forsake all of mankind to the ravages of whatever beast calls them to their horrid fate? Was I a mere pawn in this, a foolish tool in some obscene machination of a banished eldridge? The ship had detected a signal from that wretched dominion of an awakened beast. The signal I had set to champion my ascension continues to echo across the expanse. 

Once my banner to challenge any who would dare claim my prize, now it marks the vanguard of our doom. I must venture back or else cast off humanity to its ravenous ambition. I grow tired, so tired, yet I cannot sleep. The realm of dreams holds no bastion against the darkness that seeps further into my mind. I drift into tirades of a foreign tongue no man has spoken. I no longer eat or drink, yet I hunger and thirst for more of the beasts detestable light. Whatever remains of my honor compels me to return and burn that accursed lure to ash.

The course is set, I shall return to its lair and embrace whatever fate befalls me. If you receive this message, then I have likely failed. Succumbed to dark dreams, which consume my ever-fleeting waking moments. Let my tale be your warning. The stars are nothing but a spider’s web conceived by a mad god. Cursed tombs of ancient folly drift in the endless black. Only temptation and ruin await us in the void. Turn back to the dimming light, turn back to the fire and carry the ignorance of its protection. I am Captain Eli of the CSF Soujourn, may whatever God you pray to answers before the writhing chaos does.