The Core: The Dark Enemy

20: The skism sentinel

The LOW were avid travelers and seekers of mysteries. Long ago, even before the Tela came to power the LOW discovered a mystery seemingly only occurring in our region of the cosmos.

The mystery of the skism.

Skisms were created by ancient devices that, still to this day, no species had managed to replicate or understand the science behind beyond being able to push the button that activated the ultra-rare devices. When activated, the devices created a region of space that, for all intents and purposes, had to be considered desolate and unusable for the rest of time due to the field's permanent effects.

All skism fields, when created, were stationary and unmoving.

Save one.

One skism field moved, seemingly randomly between galaxies. In the early eons of it being discovered the LOW had followed it and had attempted to study it at length. They tried to communicate with it, restrict or alter its movements, and even attempted to destroy it.

All to no avail.

They couldn't do anything to it, but they did discover and note three strange traits that made it different from other skisms only found in this region of the cosmos.

One, being the most obvious, was its ability to move.

Two, discovered multiple times during the eons of study, was its ability to vanish and appear elsewhere, demonstrating an ability to teleport immense cosmic distances.

Finally, the oddest trait that they found was that it did not speak and try to sing a siren song, as the other stationary skism fields were known to do, thereby tempting space-faring aliens to certain doom within the mysterious field.

Skisms were an oddity, an anomaly that defied the very laws governing the cosmos, and one of many priceless treasures that the LOW awaited patiently for the keys to unlock. They maintained teams throughout the galaxies dedicated to studying and cataloging any rare and ancient relics until someone came along who could crack their secrets.

One such team, known only by the sector of space they monitored, was observing the roving skism when something finally happened.

"Grand Elder Gleg-dooong, the roving skism has teleported again."

"Understood underling. I will alert the other teams to scan for its new location."

"Grand elder, there was a suspicious anomaly detected before it teleported. A mere flicker of light was observed intercepting it and immediately the skism reacted and left."

"Oh? Bring up the detailed scans,"

The scientists slowly replayed their recorded data, observing closely as a mysterious and previously uncataloged entity, a squirming and glowing worm-like creature, sped through the darkness of space before coming into contact with the surface of the slowly moving skism.

For the first time, the scientists saw the skism react, its normally random undulating surface suddenly becoming perfectly shaped geometric patterns centered around the point of impact.

"How odd..." the senior LOW commented aloud. "Why did that transformation appear as though it was a vessel that lost its active camouflage? It makes me suspect that it was only imitating what a skism field would look like..."

"Elder... look at this!" the underling nearly shouted in excitement before remembering its place.

In the bare, briefest of instances, before the skism teleported away, it seemed to fragment, almost as though it was splitting itself into smaller skisms. They didn't get to see it fully divide, just the briefest of moments was all they managed to catch, just a flicker of a hint of it pulling itself into several separate parts before vanishing.