Nerena Corvantis
The water raged around me, its violent currents tearing through the jungle. If not for my ability to breathe underwater and move against the current to some extent, I doubted I would have survived.
Deep beneath the tsunami, I anchored two of my astral tentacles around the base of a world tree, giving myself at least some sense of where I was while the Asterism remained active. With my remaining two tentacles, I formed small bubbles around my tools to keep them dry as I waited for the effect to wear off.
It took nearly an hour for the tsunami to subside and the water levels to recede, sinking back into the murky marshland swamp that made up a large part of the rift.
Once it did, I popped the bubble my tools were in and began using my drone to scout the area.
I commanded the drone to fly high into the air, pushing its limits, so I could understand just how vast this rift was.
The drone's controller displayed a live feed of everything it saw, helping me update my digital map. As the drone climbed above the canopy of the world trees, the first things to come into view were the peaks of three towering mountains.
I commanded the drone's camera to zoom in.
They weren't mountains.
Each was a colossal stepped pyramid, built of pale stone, its terraces smothered in thick vines that climbed toward the rift's sky. A long, steep staircase cut through the center of every pyramid, leading to what I assumed was a temple or shrine at the summit.
I rotated the drone to get a panoramic view, taking in the rift's scope and positioning. It was the size of a large city. The pyramids themselves were aligned to form an obtuse angle, stretching wide toward the western and eastern ends of the northern part of this rift. I was closest to the central one.
Behind me, to the south, was a vast jungle teeming with creatures and behemoths alike. A place I wouldn't dare travel through alone.
As I waited for more information to stream back to my tablet so I could finish mapping the area, I heard rustling nearby.
I summoned my tentacles and cloaked myself, matching the terrain of the jungle.
Soon, crawling out of the brush into the shallow water, where my feet were submerged, was a group of giant, flat, oval creatures covered in a hard, glossy exoskeleton.
The creatures had small heads with large, bulging compound eyes, short antennae tucked beneath them, and long, sharp beak-like mouths.
Their front legs were thick and folded like a praying mantis' arms, while their middle and hind legs were long, flattened, and fringed with hairs prickling out from them.
Then their movement stopped.
Probably surprised that whatever they expected to be there wasn't.
They didn't leave, though; they stood still, so still that they could have been mistaken for a drifting leaf.
Standing still with my cosmic energy concealed, I waited patiently for the data to finish transferring from my drone above me.
90 percent complete.
Then I heard something else coming towards me.
"Don't waste your time on that." A soft and familiar voice said.
Coming out of the brush was a small girl with tawny skin like mine, black wavy hair, and blue eyes.
It was a person who should no longer exist in the world.
Because she is dead.
My best friend Sonya.
My focus was shaken, and my camouflage unraveled, revealing me to the insect creatures that lurked at my feet.
Then the flat, insect-like creatures lunged at me with a speed I hadn't expected. I jumped into the air, using my tentacles to latch onto a higher branch of the world tree and swing myself away, sending me lying in the opposite direction.
"H-how?" I found myself saying under my breath.
I looked back down at my tablet. 95 percent complete.
Sonya walked up the world tree toward me.
"Why do all this work for people who don't trust or care about the work you do?" Sonya said, now standing perpendicular on the tree, face to face with me.
This can't be happening.
"You know deep down your cluster is going to treat you just like your family did. They're just gonna brush you off; they already think you are schizophrenic."
I trembled at her words.
She was right; in the past, no one took my knowledge seriously, and even now, here in the present.
Wait…Sonya wouldn't know what other students said about me.
Meaning what was before me was not my closest friend.
But a phantom echo of a rift.
The corrupted astral projections of Starbound who have died in the pursuit of conquering this rift.
I can't believe I was almost fooled by this aberration taking on the forms of my memories.
I peered down at the insect-like behemoths trying to jump up at the world tree, and I looked back at Sonya, whose face started to twitch and contort.
Her face turned to the eviscerated remains I saw when I found her body that day.
Then my tablet dinged, signaling the data transfer was done. I commanded the drone to return to me, and it collapsed in my palm.
"This is what happens. When you trust the wrong people with your knowledge." The phantom echo moved closer to me.
I turned away. I didn't want to see it. That was one of the first memories I threw to the deepest part of my mindscape, hoping I wouldn't have to relive that disaster ever again.
Then I felt fingers grab my throat.
I swiped the hand away and jumped off the trunk of the world tree, using my ink mirage ability, and spat a massive blot of ink on the ground, creating a cloud of blacks, blues, and purples billowing up.
I cloaked myself before landing inside the cloud. I formed three different mirages of myself and sent them in separate directions, each mimicking my cosmic energy signature.
Through the ink cloud, I watched as the phantom echo wasted no time choosing which echo to run after.
It ran after the mirage I sent into the southern region of the rift's jungle, while the behemoths followed the others.
I fled further west into the jungle because I remembered that was the flow in which the violent current washed everyone away. I just hoped I ran into someone fast, because I now understood why we were never ready for a rift of this magnitude.