The Age of Void Dragons

The Log of Eustace Kid

The Passage of Pearls was not picked because it was safe. The Passage of Pearls, The Dragon's Lair, The Abyssal Mist, Soul's forfeit. We agreed on a phrase far more terrifying. "The Haunted Trench." It lies within a region of harmless radioactive clouds.

Harmless, without a doubt. But treacherous when used with guile. A master of the static clouds and the radioactive storms can conceal large warships, reveal four but hide five, move at high speeds, and creep like a blind man upon another blind man and still strike him in the throat so he cannot call for help in the dark.

A land so vast and so disruptive you could sail an entire navy past the most powerful detection systems and only pick up some static.

As always, should a ship pass through the region, their communications are flooded with the wail of a million souls screaming out for the end.

Into a single receiver.

Captains and officers says its just the radiation, but radiation can't pierce the shields or reach the receivers. The crew say its a signal. It arrives at a single device. You never here it twice on the same voyage. You will click a button and the screams will try to tear your soul from your body.

On my first voyage, I was below deck and a man received a call from the commander. His ears spurted blood and he was rushed to the medical ward.

On my second trip my commander answered a hailing sequence through our bridge systems. He shot himself in the head afterwards.

On my third I heard it myself. The emergency systems blasted it through the whole ship. Several men took ill and coughed up lunch as well as a bit more.

I hear the sound differently than others. They hear the wail of the dead but that is good news to my ears.

What is more vile? The sound of foreign spirit moaning out, shrieking, whimpering your name. Or the silence.

Whatever wants my flesh from my bones is already sated. In a way we're lucky Cerberus has all three of his heads full with someone else.

Many enter the dark and treacherous waters of this space and wait by the signal master and silence creeps in and strangles every throat. Until an applause of good fortune and protective omens are absorbed into the crew.

Only once did the call reach our ship in that manor. I was second mate, first day, first week. First of the new year.

Our sister ship and fellow merchant escort hailed us.

Captain answered with camaraderie and good cheer and to speak back in benevolence came nothing. Where two ships drew off the solar winds, now stood one. And before we returned to cruise speed I saw escape pods.

No one believed me. We passed them too fast.

I saw red eyes crawling over the metal corpses that were jettisoned off of the vessel. The tendrils reached in and pulled out men screaming the only air in their lungs, never to breath again. Their forms freezing as their blood became ice and their bodies shattered into red shards. Pieces of frozen faces drifted in the dark, forever lost to space. Forever captured in torment. Forever cold and unable to shiver, terrified and never comforted, anguished and lost.

I was though insane and demoted for cowardice and madness.

When we arrived at port the maintenance crew spotted the captain of the sister vessel impaled on the mast. An entire sarcophagus of scrap embedded him atop our craft.

The dragon lurked in the murk. She swiftly shifted, her serpentine scales sensually, shadowed, shrouded, silent, skeletal, and scarlet.

I still dream of laser fire. Pilots cooked within their attack craft. They go quickly.

A red flash and your ship is covered in pools as hot as the sun, or hit with a magnification so intense you can see the flesh leave your bone. Sand seeping through your fingers, or more accurately; your fingers turning into black sand that joins your ship, your body, and your eyes.

It happened. They believe me now.

But I have one more question. Why am I still demoted?

- Captain Eustace Kid