Abbadon

I think I’m dying.

It's agonizingly hot. I try to get away from it, to press myself to the metal of my ship, but that just burns my skin, leaving every inch of me shiny and pink.

I can’t breathe. I can’t see.

I reach blindly for my comms. Just as I grasp it, I feel a tiny glimmer of hope, but the metal burns my fingers and the ship falls away into nothing.

* * *

I woke up in the smoldering remains of my ship. I felt dizzy, breathing shallowly but not able to fill my aching lungs. I stumbled as I stood in a blind panic, searching the wreck for an oxygen mask. I finally found spares in the cockpit. The mask was thankfully unbroken. I yanked it over my face and took huge, grateful gasps of air. The outside was faceted and sleek, as if it was carved out of obsidian, but smooth and clear from the inside. For a good while I just sat there, breathing, listening to the rustle of leaves and the singing of birds.

Wait- birds? Leaves? 

I sat up and stared out all around me. The air was humid, heavy, and unobtrusively warm. The sky was a bright greenish-blue, streaked with clouds and dotted with moons and the glimmer of distant planets. It was mostly covered by lush vegetation, painting the landscape in teals and magentas and oranges. The ship had made a shallow crater of burned earth in the jungle. The breeze carried a faint smell of rain and something vaguely sweet. I hoped it was fruit as my hunger became known to me.

Was there a procedure for a situation like this? There must've been. I thought back to my (admittedly short) time in training, but nothing came up. My stomach growled, and I decided that, despite whatever the guidebook may say, food would definitely be my priority at that point.

After I had a bit of a panic, at least.

* * *

My stores of food had already been somewhat depleted even before the crash, so I was relieved when I found that some weeks worth of rations still remained in the wreck. I tried to think about my situation as calmly as possible- if I could use the shell of the ship as shelter, using sharp pieces of scrap metal for hunting food, then maybe my living situation would be stable enough to find time to create a signal. My star maps or comms weren’t working- I had already checked and triple-checked just in case- but I could use the remains to signal my old classmates or superiors…

I was really dreading that part. The idea of them laughing in my face saying I told you so, Abbadon- you knew that this would happen when you left the academy- You shouldn’t have stolen that ship-

Whatever. Those free years had been the best of my entire life. And my pride wasn’t worth dying on a foreign planet over.

I might have been imagining it, but the days on that planet were much longer than those on Earth. And trying to repair my comms was an absolute nightmare. My food and water supplies were rapidly disappearing and I had to start seriously rationing my remaining food. I tried to make traps out of scrap metal, hoping I could catch my dinner, but the things I caught were… odd. Inedible. There were slick, squirming things with far too many teeth and fuzzy things that unhinged themselves, splitting down the middle and lashing out with whiplike tongues. 

That thing almost took my arm off. As soon as I flinched back, it struck, wrapping around my finger. I yanked my hand back instinctively, but that only made it tighten, slicing my finger clean off. I swore in pain and stumbled away, all thoughts of hunger forgotten.

I also had to start worrying about water. There was plenty of vegetation, but all of the rain that seemed to nourish it could have been harmful to me. When my clean water ran out, I’d have to use the filters from my mask to drink water. I didn’t have any spares, so I’d have to cover the space in my mask with something else, though I couldn’t think of what. Would cloth be enough?

* * *

I was trying to reach the strange, malleable fruit growing on a lanky tree when I found something really strange. 

In that jungle, everything was deceptively soft; the creatures were fuzzy and soft, but most had fangs and teeth and acid hidden under their fur. The dirt was plush, but if you stood in one place too long you’d probably sink into the ground. 

But this was smooth as a river stone and twice as solid. It was a deep blue obelisk of massive size, the tip peeking out past the trees and into the sky. The thing was shining dully in the light of the sun, and I could tell that it was slightly see-through. Curious, I slid down the trunk of the tree and headed towards it. It was like a beacon drawing me in through the trees and the underbrush.

I approached the tower and reached out to put my hand against the smooth surface. It went from cool to uncomfortably, familiarly hot, nearly burning me. The thing somehow started to glow where I had touched it. I flinched back from it and the light faded. 

I shouldn’t have touched it again, obviously. I mean, the warning signs were there, clear and obvious, but being half starved and half dead wasn’t good for my logic.

As I touched the spire again, the effect was instantaneous. A hot, terrible burning racing up my arm and to my core. I fell to my knees in pain and shock. I choked on my scream, not even able to find the strength within me to push the air from my lungs. God, what was I thinking?

Then it was gone, as if it had never happened. For a second I just sat there, staring accusingly at the tower. I pushed myself off the ground weakly and suddenly became very aware of my right hand. It was whole. The finger I had lost to that thing in my trap was completely regrown! I gawked at my finger, slowly bending and unbending it to see if it was real. There wasn’t even a scar to show it had ever been injured! It was just a really normal finger that… grew on me without me noticing. I stared at the towering blue stone, unsure if I wanted to thank it or run screaming for the hills.

Then I got some sense and decided that, whatever this thing was, I wanted absolutely no part of it. I had enough to deal with without worrying about crazy magic rocks. I had no clue what it was, but it couldn’t have been manmade. I’d checked the surrounding few miles many times for any sight of an earth colony, but came up short. We had devices back home that could print a fake finger in just a few hours. We had labs that would grow new limbs and organs on racks and attach them surgically, and medicine that could speed up the healing process by months. But nothing we had made could make a new body part just… appear like that. The thought of some rock messing with my biology without me even knowing was terrifying to me. I crashed through the leaves and ran back to my broken ship. I’d had just about enough of this crazy place.

* * *

I ended up sitting in my camp for hours after that, desperately trying not to think about it. I stared out at the forest, the one that had been so hostile to me, and wondered why it would give me a gift like this. Was it a gift? I felt like I was going insane. Maybe I had died in the crash and this was some crazy trick of my mind before I kicked the bucket. Maybe the dehydration was getting to me and I was hallucinating.

It took another few hours to realize that I wasn’t actually dehydrated. I hadn’t had anything to drink in a long, long time, but I was fine. No headaches or pains. I didn’t feel hungry either, even though I’d been shaking from hunger for weeks now. I guess that, whatever the obelisk’s plan or purpose was, it didn’t need me to be fed and watered for it to be carried out.

Maybe it was ungrateful of me to feel badly about having two less things to be worried about, but it’s impossible to explain how extremely violating it is to have something so basic and utterly normal to be taken away from you.

Maybe I’d be okay with not having to eat or drink if it was a procedure I could have had on Earth, but my whole life was out of my hands. Having this piece of me stripped without any of my own agency involved was just a bit of a slap to the face.

That night, I discovered that I could no longer sleep. I spent the long, long night desperately trying to fashion a communication device out of the garbage I had, and the morning shouting into my broken comms.

I spent a long time like that. Maybe a week or two, but the days were even harder to track when I couldn’t sleep and had little to do to pass the time. My shelter got better, more functional, but I had little use for it. My scrapes seemed to heal faster, and the wildlife seemed to avoid me when I got close. Even the leaves seemed to make way for me.

I decided that I might as well try to figure out what that spire was. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? Sit in the wreck of my old ship, trying to contact my old friends who either couldn’t be reached or simply wanted nothing to do with me until I died? Assuming the thing would even let me die. I don’t think I had much of a choice, really. I thought it was stupid at the time, but now I realize that it called to me, in a way. It isolated me from everything that could distract me from it and pulled me in. And I was too small to notice anything about it at all.

My mask had long since been discarded. I could breathe the air here if I needed to. I hesitated as I stood in front of that tower. What was I even going to do? Throw a rock at it? Shout at it? Try to destroy it? I didn’t want to touch it again, but I didn’t know what else it would respond to. I had nothing to lose, anyway.

This time, it wasn’t pain or fire that I felt. It was fear. It was the most overwhelming emotion I had ever felt. It was nothing like my crash, which I could barely remember anyway, but was still the most terrifying tragedy of my life. It was whole and complete. I drowned in it.

Then, I saw pictures. Half projected onto the translucent surface, half formed in my own mind.

-It is buried in the sand and dirt and rot of this place and will rise to consume it will eat the planet alive it will crush those beneath it when it is free from beneath the surface it will burn and burn and never die it will choke and drown and never breathe but it will splinter and crack and finally, finally be free- do not let it stay unconnected do not let it burn and burn and burn-

I couldn’t take it anymore. I stumbled back from the tower. It didn’t speak in words- It told me in a confusing mesh of pictures and muddy feelings and urgency that I understood perfectly: the thing festering in the earth would emerge if I didn’t take action immediately. And it would destroy whole worlds if left unchecked.

I knew, when I attempted to become a star pilot, that my life would be at risk.

I knew, when I quit school and became something of a fugitive, that my life would be in even more jeopardy.

I knew, when I crash landed on this planet, that I had only survived through a crazy bout of luck. I knew the fear of death already.

But I had never felt it quite that acutely.

The traces of the spire in my very soul urged me onwards. Do not fail. Or we will perish.

I had to travel to four other similar spires and activate them the same way I had activated the first one. It was simple. I just had to put my hand to the spire and fuel it. It would draw energy from the earth, sapping the creature at the planet’s core of all energy, leaving it powerless. 

The spires were mostly like the first one; some were taller and slimmer, some were wider and shorter, though they were all that strange, translucent blue, and they all towered high, dwarfing the trees. Each one burned worse than the last, and every time I touched one, its feelings resonated stronger in my very soul. There were times where I couldn’t differentiate its feelings from mine, and couldn’t tell the difference between that fire burning under my skin and my blood pumping foreignly in my veins. 

This was it. The last spire of the five. I pressed my palm to it, barely flinching from the pain. I saw the telltale signs of its power working; the plants turned gray and crumpled to dust, and the moisture was sucked from the air and earth, leaving the ground hard and packed and red and making the sky turn from teal to a shocking green. Like all the rest, I watched the imprint of my palm mark it, making it glow and pulse like a heartbeat. 

Then, the ground began to shake. I stumbled back, but my hand was glued to the spire. I couldn’t move away from it, and the pain burned and burned brighter than before. It had never, ever done this before, and that fear that I had felt from it turned into elation, and for the first time in days the terror I felt in my bones was completely my own.

Then, to my horror, the spire twitched.

Suddenly the thing was soaring into the sky, faster than I thought possible, and I went with it. As the dry dirt fell away, I saw the other spires rising with me as one. And they were all connected in the base forming something huge. A hand. Each spire was a huge finger on one gigantic hand.

No, I thought, no this isn’t possible. I didn't understand why this was happening. 

A sudden, sickening realization hit me. I wasn’t stopping a giant, world-destroying weapon from forming- I was activating it. 

The light of the spire was dancing and moving in strange, geometric patterns, almost like…

Like circuits.

As the titan was forming, it showed me the truth of its existence. An ancient civilization born from chaos built a giant creature of metal and crystal in their planet’s core. It was supposed to be a weapon unlike any other. But the titan sucked too much from their earth, leaving it a barren wasteland. With nothing to do and not enough energy to form, the titan went dormant, only able to push its fingertips out from beneath the surface. The planet eventually recovered into many rich and blooming ecosystems.

Until I came along. I thought I was sucking the energy from the titan, but really I was drawing it from the earth and using it to fuel the titan like a battery.

I finally dared to look up. I couldn’t see the head of the thing, only the six pricks of light that must’ve been its eyes, all fixed on me. The clouds swam around its head, circling it like a coronet. It was a deep, dark blue that would be invisible against the dark of space. 

It was horrifically beautiful.

I stared at the rest of it. It had seven arms- four from its shoulders, two from its back, and one from its belly, holding me. It was dotted with hundreds of tiny white freckles, shining like stars on its skin. No- not stars, I realized- eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of eyes, staring at the distant ground, the sky, but mostly me. It carried me towards its massive head achingly slowly. My hand was unstuck, so all I could do was hold on for dear life as I was dragged away. A crack opened in its face, which now obscured the whole neon sky, and its breath hit me like a furnace. It had so many teeth. I could definitely see how it could eat planets whole with teeth like that.

At least, I thought, now that I had doomed countless worlds and trillions of lives, it would have the decency to kill me before I had to witness such a thing.

But it didn’t lower me into its mouth. I realized that it was smiling at me.

The emotion I could feel emanating from the thing couldn't have been more clear.

Friend.

It gave me time to collect my things before we left, so at least I finally got my comms working in time for our departure. So, if you’re hearing this, I’m sorry. The titan will come and it will destroy you all and leave nothing but desolation in its wake. I know what it’s like to run from your own doom. Hell, I spent my whole life running. But it doesn’t matter in the end. 

I think I knew, deep down, it was all borrowed time.