THE ABYSSAL VOID

By John Chen

After a long night’s sleep, I woke up in my light-filled bedroom. I am a 16-year-old astronaut sent to the planet Apotheosis-133. Apotheosis gets little light from the distant star it orbits because of a strange layer of fog and energy. Its core is the color of the darkest ebony, and huge chasms filled with energy. The little light that it does have comes from a strange bio-luminescence scattered around the planet.

I put on my spacesuit and went to the common room. Our space base was a spire that was made out of durable nano-materials, and it had a polarized plasma shield that could reflect enemy projectiles while allowing friendly ones to pass through. It was armed with Omega-10 ray emitters that could fire hyper-heated beams of plasma at targets for defense.

I make my breakfast using a nano-duplicator which could 3D-print anything. Since the base had a gravity-generator, my cereal and milk didn’t float.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said to my two teammates, Ayesha and Alec, twins who liked similar things, such as biology, technology, pranks, adventures and of course, space. “Hello, Mark!” they said in unison. “I think it’s a good day to explore the surface of Apotheosis-133,” I said. They agreed. After breakfast, we entered our star ship and took off from the landing pad.

Our star ship is the most advanced of its kind, with many features. It has polarized energy shielding, four plasma beam emitters, a load of turbo laser cannons, advanced sensors, energy missile launchers, drone launchers, and a super laser. The Plasma beam emitters can fire super-heated beams at enemies, while turbo-lasers fire lasers at targets. The energy missile launchers fire powerful homing energy missiles at targets that explode into more bolts of energy. The drone launchers launch drones to fire at targets and the super-laser fires an extremely powerful beam.

We are on a mission to search and retrieve Precursor tech. The Precursors were an ancient alien race that vanished long ago, leaving only their relics behind. They are incredibly mysterious and all we know about them is that they created life on earth and other planets. They had insectoid (insect-like) bodies made out of pure energy. It is possible that they have transcended reality and that their home world is the nearby planet, A-113. Their technology includes super weapons capable of tearing worlds apart, such as reality dissipators and cosmic guardians--giant constructs which fire infinity beams, blasts and pulses, capable of annihilating any size of planet.

We took off across the dark and rocky landscape. I looked around and saw dark mountains shaped like spirals, rivers flowing with nebulous energy and giant blue crystals. Dotted around the landscape were various Precursor buildings, tall alien monuments that were eons old. I wanted to explore them but knew that I couldn’t without making sure there was no life there. We could uncover something truly awful if we were not careful.

As I piloted the star ship, I noticed a peculiar glow coming from one of the chasms. The glow was a nebulous aura, but it was different than the glow of most of the auras there. It was much brighter and was constantly changing from blue to purple. “Let’s check this place out,” I suggested.

“Yeah, let's!” my teammates agreed. So I piloted our star ship into the great abyss. The interior of the abyss had huge crystals jutting out and as we descended, our scans showed that the crystals went down to the planet’s core. As our ship went deeper into the abyss, I decided to put the ship on autopilot, passing time by playing a game Terraria 5 while eating a plate of carbonara with my mates.

It took a while to get to the planet's core and so I took a nap--a sleep plagued by nightmares involving things that are too terrible to talk about. When I got up, we were nearing the core and the glow was getting brighter yet for some reason, colder. I felt a strong sense of dread. We landed on a rocky ledge near the core. The core was a pulsing flare of purple energy with cosmic particles orbiting it. Energy like this should be very hot but it was incredibly cold for some reason. Three celestial monuments resembling eyes orbited the core. Near us was a strange object that was a space gray color and contained cosmic energy. We all agreed to take the object to study, and get out of there as quickly as we can. BIG MISTAKE.

The second we touched the gray object, the core flared up and unstable tentacles of energy snaked after us. We quickly retreated to our star ship and took off. I looked back to see a huge cyan and black creature emerge out of the core. The creature had a centipede-like body made of energy, tentacles tipped with pincers, energy wings, a head with many eyes and huge claws.

“Let’s store the artifact and get out of here!” I said to my teammates who quickly agreed. The second we installed the artifact our ship sped up and we summoned nebula flares outside of the ship which honed in on the creature and exploded violently on it. We flew out of the chasm and sped to our base at an extremely high speed. We were able to flee but knew it would come after us.

We arrived at the base having discussed a battle plan. Alec and I would go use the star ship to distract the creature while Ayesha prepared a device generating a portal that would suck the creature in.

Not long after, the creature appeared and Alec and I fought it off. When it lashed at us using tentacles, we fired lasers at it. When it fired a beam at us, we used energy missiles. We fired our super laser at it which made it stagger for a bit, firing a massive ring of phantasmal fireballs and summoning orbiting void energies which fired void lasers at us which we barely dodged.

The creature then summoned several portals of light which unleashed inter-dimensional projections of its own head and summoned void blasts which exploded violently. It then used a void pulse and it’s chest opened up, firing a huge laser at us, which we cleverly reflected back at it. Finally, it took a heavy hit. Ayesha threw her device while creature was flailing, and it opened up, forming a multicoloured portal. The creature tried to escape but the pull was too strong and we sighed in relief as it disappeared. "And stay there!" Ayesha exclaimed. We all cheered.

After this tiresome ordeal, we decided it was time for bed. I can’t wait for another adventure tomorrow, was my last thought before I fell asleep.