NPC The Bug - Life Amid the Ruins

[Marissa Jeffrey]

(OOC - This was not on a dare...for the record.)

((Darkness))

The skittering of a thousand tiny legs echoed against ancient walls that rose along sharp angles towards a blocky arched ceiling. The tiniest beam of light barely allowed for enough to make out the lower edge, casting an eerie glow from the room beyond. A greenish tinge accompanied the musky scented air as the light paid no mind to the walls or what grew there, spurred on by decades of disrepair, neglect, and forsakenness. 

Somewhere, deep within the bowels of the pyramid-like structure, the slow dripping of some liquid could be heard. Water? Perhaps. Life existed, however dark, however unpleasant, however sinister. The drip drops echoed against stone walls, sound ricocheting back and forth for no ears to hear, caring not for its own discovery, nor for that of the passage of time. And yet, all the same, it provided a consistent backdrop to the movement of spiked skittering, as it moved.

Over the littered carapaces the living did push forward, its four antennae spreading out in multiple directions seeking a view of what lie ahead. Scurrying forward, leaving the littered bodies of those that had come before in its wake, the creature without true eyes darted along the wall of the corridor, keeping to the moist edges and seeking the source. Around the blocks that made up the brutalist architecture, of which the creature had no recollection, it avoided the areas of perceived silence and made way towards the heaviest vibrations never knowing what their true forms were. 

Deeper and deeper into the craft, further and further into the dark, where power grew ever slackened and the chill ever greater. What little warmth became trapped beneath the exoskeleton, lost in tufts of exhalation and regenerated in movement as it scurried along. As the central core was left further behind, the creature moved ever slower, finding footholds for its many feet slicker, and water for its function more plentiful in the dark. Taking of its fill from the icy outcroppings here and there along the path, it never noticed the danger.

Until it was too late.

And perhaps for the other creatures who came as well, would it be the same? Only time would tell...

TBC

--

The Bug

As simmed by:

Commander Ash MacKenna

Chief Intelligence Officer

USS Arrow

R238605KN0