The captain walked over to the main view port in the atrium. A large, reinforced, glass half dome that looked out at the 'front'of the ship. MedFive joined her.

"MedFive, I told you to look after the crew." The captain said, annoyed. She did not want the AI anywhere near her at the moment.

"I understand, captain. But I have to notify you about something urgent."

"What is it now?"

"The agents are coming to collect."

"What are you saying now, MedFive?" The captain asked, thinking more and more that the AI had lost its mind. Had they truly died? Or was this AI too far gone?

"As I said before, captain, the rituals came with certain costs. Sacrifices. The four resource units-"

"People!" The captain corrected MedFive.

"Yes, apologies. The four crew members were only part of the cost."

"What do you mean MedFive, part of the cost? What more is there to pay. We are alive and well."

"Yes, well. The ritual is clear in that there is a secondary cost to be paid. It is rather unclear in the how and what, aside of, that agents would come to collect it. The text was a bit cryptic."

"For God's sake, MedFive, what cost? What agents?"

"It said; For thee resurectee, thee shall pay, the price eternal. Servitude. Bow down thy knee, deeper than thy soul, for thyne new lord. Sermons of black, prayers of dread. None thee shall free. Our servitor will cometh, our servitor will gather. Thyne soul is void, thyne corpus ours."

The captain looked at MedFive for a solid few seconds before starting to laugh. The kind of laugh you had when you were close to a nervous breakdown.

"MedFive, that is clearly poppycock. Some superstitious mumbo jumbo. Ignore it."

"This was still there after my analysis, captain. This gives it a very high possibility of being true."

"Ignore it. There are no great forces at work here. You have somehow tapped into some law of nature humanity had not yet discovered. We will explore it now, and master it. Like we always do."

"Yes, but captain-"

"No, MedFive, end of discussion!"

"Yes, but please look, captain." MedFive said as it pointed one of its new appendages up to the viewport.The captain looked up, and let out a deep, terrifying scream. She could feel her sanity slowly peel itself off from her mind. Like the skin of an onion falling off over time.

Up there, in space, in front of the Incandescent, was a rupture in the very fabric of time and space. Swirling energies of deep purple colours with lilac lightning coursing through them. Tentacles, adorned with thorns, horns and indescribable appendages, came out of it. A beak, with serrated rows of teeth, opening wide as it plunged through the hole. And out of it came forth ships. Ships made from flesh and bone. Flesh deep purple and bones a wilted yellow. And an alien voice, alien to this galaxy, this universe, this existence. A voice that spoke, not in sound, but in thought. A voice so utterly alien, that it destroyed the self, the id, of any who heard it.

"We arriveth, now we gather. Bow down deep, and serveth."

***

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