Void: prologue

The Beginning

He could remember his birth. Or, rather, he could remember the moment he was bought into existence.

It was warm. It was strange. It was calm, soft darkness that held him in captive sleeping consciousness. Not long after the initial warm-safe, there had been breaks of cold-shiny. There, trembling on the cold-shiny, had been pain and then bright, searing inertia.

Not all of it had been pain. Some of it was just strange - stranger than the first moments in the dark warm-safe -, and some of it was insufferably good. All too often, however, hot lights burned lines in the dark while things probed around in his body and his mind, unpicking his organs and thoughts and proceeding to sew them back up. Then the warm-safe would take him back.

That endless cycle of cold-shiny, pain, and warm-safe was his whole miserable existence.

One day, something broke the monotone. Fearful chills started to creep down his spine, through his very being, as if some other consciousness was melding with his. His mind wandered dully, bracing him for the inevitable. Why? What new torture had been thought up for him?

The feeling got stronger, lapping up his fear and smothering it like the warm-safe smothered his pain. He didn’t have time to grapple with the feeling before the warm-safe started to shudder. He felt his heart shudder with it, quaking faster and faster and faster - so quick he heard it thundering in his ears.

The blue light switched to harsh white, stimulated by his feeble, panicked movements. A high-pitched whine caught his fraying attention, beyond the walls of his container, louder and louder until it was positively screaming towards him.

The warm-safe was silent as it broke. It shattered and birthed him onto cold-shiny and the surgical light, covered in sharp shards of something and the sticky remnants of the warm-safe, which was quickly becoming cooler and unsafer while the air rushed out of the missing patch of wall.

Something blotted out the light. His eyes stung, watering as he stared up, stomach sinking and twisting as he stared up into the shadow. His vision cleared.

A beast towered over him. Its head was as big as his torso, its whole body about twice as long as his height. It had six limbs, two sticking up from its back, dark skin, and amber, oval eyes that spewed golden light onto him. Its paws were huge, flat and clawed.

It stared at him, making a low, light chuffing sound as it edged closer. It was impossible to look away. He was so afraid, so so afraid. The air was beginning to thin so much that he could barely breathe. Still, the beast advanced. It came so close he could feel warmth rolling off of its skin. It was so close he could have reached out and touched it. He shrunk down against the wall as it pushed its face closer.

The beast pressed its warm, dry forehead against his. The suffocating fear stopped, so suddenly as if it had been struck dead, and an overwhelming sense of togetherness took its place. It was all clear - the beast meant no harm. There was nothing to fear. With their faces so close together, he could breathe again.

As he stretched a hand up to caress the warm skin, the thing pulled its head away and rumbled again. The floor started to vibrate. Bad. It tensed and shifted. The breathable air shifted away with it, leaving him gulping and clutching at his neck.

The beast looked back at him, blowing the air back to him, its eyes contorted with desperation as it shoved its shoulders and neck toward him. It glanced back, its eyes locking with his. A vision that played like a memory passed over his eyes - a vision of him, sat on the back of the beast. So that was what it wanted.

He obliged - just in time. As he was pulling himself over the broad, smooth shoulders, the door burst open and lasers started to blast, fired from shiny tubes clutched by grey, shiny beasts that walked upright like him.

The beast rolled beneath him, bringing one huge, webbed hand up to protect from the lasers as it turned to toward the hole it had created. Something told him the beast wasn’t the one who needed protecting. It kept its webbed hand up as it started to move towards the gap, walking at first and then running. Mechanics clunked faintly with each step.

The beast dived out of the room, into the dark of the void. His vision grew dark splodges as he grabbed and clung to the horns on the beast’s head to try to hold on, flatting himself to the neck as the thing slipped and turned in the darkness.

More lights flew, to his dismay, aimed at him and the beast. Each blast was blocked by those weird webbed hands. The void seemed to be snatching at his legs, at his beast, dragging everything away from him. What was happening?

The beast spun again, darting around blurred grey and light. Were they being attacked? Its spinning wouldn’t stop - in fact, it felt as it if were getting faster. Light and void became one before the beast spread its wings and everything was gone.

For the briefest of moments, the entirety of the universe pressed down on them, threatening to crush them into nothing, squeezing and garotting them until calm.

He slid off of the beast’s back and onto softness, trembling still and struggling to stay sitting up. The beast curled up beside him, its webbed hands lying still against its back. He stared around his surroundings - tranquil white walls, comfortable temperature, soft on the ground. Confusion hazed his mind like a sandstorm as he fought to give everything some kind of meaning.

It was then, while he was running over the events while searching for an answer, when he was hit in the thigh with a dart. Yet another thing he couldn’t make sense of! The beast watched as he fumbled with the dart and pulled it out, covered in bright red, and dumped it on the soft.

Very suddenly, his head started to burn. Not just his head, but his mind, his conciousness - his entire being was on fire. New language poured into his memory, stinging and blistering like molten gold. He cried out, clutching at his eyes, his hair, his ears. Stop. Like a crushing landslide, history, culture and geography settled into the crooks of his fragile, pulverised sentience. He heard the beast screeching beside him, nudging his sides and working itself up into a frenzy. Facts burrowed and lodged in his brain like a tropical insect, finding a painful home among his neurons. It finished very suddenly, leaving him reeling and clutching the beast’s face to try to console it.

The beast. He looked at the beast, his eyes following its spine and smooth skin to the tip of its tail. It was a dragon, not a beast. Its skin was smooth, dry, its face and tail were reptilian, it had wings - not webbed hands - furled tightly to its sides. It had four stout legs, a deep chest, and sharp teeth. It seemed to be made out of warm, matt metal that was melded perfectly into a living being.

“You figured him out, hmm?” A voice came from somewhere. It was soft and synthesised. His new knowledge told him it was female, and human. He couldn’t see where it was coming from - the chamber he was in was empty, aside from himself and the dragon.

“Wh-what?” His own voice sounded so alien and sophisticated when used for something other than screams of agony.

“Your dragon, Fear. You’ve figured him out?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

“Nevermind. Humans are slow to learn, after all.”

He didn’t reply. The dragon - his dragon? - was so beautiful. In his terror, he hadn’t had time to appreciate it. It was surprising how much concentration staying alive took. Wait…

“Why… What happened?”

The voice laughed. It wasn’t a kind laugh. Then it spoke. “Fear bonded with you. He chose you. You, human, will lead us all to victory.”

“Wait... I still don’t understand.” Twinges of apprehension prickled across his skin, alongside anger and bewilderment. I don’t want to lead anyone to victory! “What do you mean?”

“You are a human. Fear - this dragon, the embodiment of fear - has chosen you to be his human. You will overthrow the empire, alongside four humans and dragons. You will bring peace.”

His hands coiled into fists. Adrenaline made him feel sick. The dragon - Fear - made a purring noise most probably intended to soothe him. “What empire? What dragons? Are the other humans - more things like me? Why isn’t there peace right now? Is that why they were trying to kill me? Is -”

“Come on, human. Shh. You’re getting all worked up - it’s not healthy. We need you in top condition for the revolution -”

“What revolution?!”

“Silence. There will be a revolution. You are a lab-human, grown by our overlord. You are a lab-human chosen by Fear to be his partner. One day, you will soar with him and bring victory to us all. However, there are things you can’t learn from injections of knowledge - things you have to experience before you stand even a hope of being ready. I will send you to the birthplace of humanity, the hope of the strongest race in the universe. Such noble aliens you humans are. So strange, so strong. You’ll learn to be just like them.”

“No…”

“Yes. And then, one day, you will be returned and reunited with Fear. Then our glorious revolution will be.”

“No, please… just wait a moment. You haven’t explained this bull-”

“Goodbye, lab-human.”

As soon as those words were sighed, his world became as dark and silent as the void itself.

Thank you so much for reading! This is a first draft - which is probably why it's such an incoherent mess right now (aren't we all?). I am, however, hoping to improve it. Congrats to anybody who actually made it through, and thanks for your time.