"Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity."
-Wernher von Braun
From the far away surface of planet Earth, the stars are like magic.
Gold and azure and ethereal silver orbs of pure light, dancing across the black of the night sky.
They paint pictures and tell stories, a celestial game of connect-the-dots. Stars are the stuff of myth and legend, the stepping stones of the heavens that children dream to walk on, brushing their fingers against the moon along the way.
If only they knew.
If only they all knew the deceit of the stars, of the moons and all the galaxies.
If only they knew like you know.
Icy metal bites into the skin of your wrists, burning the already raw flash there. As you're pulled forward with harsh urgency through a tunnel of scrap metal, heating panels spread here and there to offer some pitiful protection against the freezing temperatures outside, you let your head droop forward tiredly.
How have you come to this?
Surrounded by jagged metal pounded together in a permanently makeshift manner, chained and trapped and imprisoned.
Far, far away from the place you know as home.
The panels emitting that blessed heat are tucked haphazardly along the tunnel, casting a reddish-orange glow across the reflective grey of the handcuffs circling your wrists, making them glow like embers.
Looking ahead of you, you can see where the tunnel curves off, blocking the final destination from your view. Behind you is the frigid black entrance to the dingy ship you've just come out of, spurts of frosty air blowing out from the entrance.
It's been days since you've slept.
The handcuffs are too tight on you, barely allowing any circulation to make it through to your hands. The ache has been a constant presence in the back of your mind, bullied to a tiny corner by the fear eating you alive.
You're going to die.
That's all you can think. That's all you've been able to think for the whole time you've been here.
How long has it been?
You can't remember how long the handcuffs have been clasped around your abused wrists - a week, a month, a year? A long time. Long enough that you know for the rest of your pithy life, you'll have two scarlet bracelets of scar tissue around each wrist.
The handcuffs trail off of a long metal chain, grasped in the massive, dinner plate-sized hands of Thing.
That's what you've been calling the creature for the time you've been trapped here.
Thing.
It's grunting in frustration at your tiny steps, slowed by the weakness of your body and the fragility of your gait. The heating panels are making moisture bead on its pale green skin, dripping like rivers down the narrow slope of its hawk-like nose and to the slavering void of its maw.
With every situation, you learn something new about Thing. You understand now that it must be extremely warm blooded, pushed into perspiration by a heat that's barely keeping you warm.
It's odd, since its amphibian-looking skin, smooth and visibly pore-less, should be more comfortable in the heat than in the cold; but Thing's hairless features are pushed into a scowl under the heating panels' radiance.
That must be why it keeps the ship so cold inside - cold enough that the bars of your cage occasionally frost over.
The inside of Thing's small ship is rusted and old, stained with mysterious splatters of various colored substances. The bars it keeps you locked behind are just as old and dingy, and just as splattered.
You wonder how many creatures it's kept locked behind those bars.
The entirety of the ship is one medium-sized space, shared by your cage in the back corner and what you can only assume is the control panel in the front. Various switches and buttons glittering a wide array of dull colors live there, hovering just within a wide window to view the outside.
That window is how you first knew.
You had just woken up, blurry and disoriented, and opened your eyes only to see the black void of space glittering with stars and framed by frigid iron bars.
The realization that you were in space took a long time to come. It was so random, so completely unprocessable because you were just at home what felt like minutes ago. You had just returned to your lonely apartment with the creaky door and the leaky faucet, just fallen into bed to prepare for another day of classes at your university.
Then you woke up to the vast blankness of space outside the window of a starship you'd been locked in.
The first time you opened your eyes to behold Thing standing at the control panel, you thought you were hallucinating.
It has the stature of a bear with none of the associating features, looming and loping with a grace uncanny for it's size. Massive biceps tattooed with fluorescent yellow symbols are dulled by the heating panel's lights, reduced to a faint, poisonous glow.
You've never touched Thing directly, and you're terrified to do so. In your imagination, the minute your skin brushes that nefarious, toxic-hued tattoo, you'll shrivel up and die.
Its teeth are tiny slivers or razor sharp enamel, the kind of teeth you'd see on a piranha, and it's beady eyes gleam with frightening intelligence that contradicts its oafish build. Whether it's male or female, you aren't sure. It wears a sleeveless shirt made of a loose canvas-like material and pair of baggy pants, covering most of its enormous body.
Even now, as you stare at its enormous back shifting while it leads you down the hall, your fragile human brain has a difficult time understanding.
Thing isn't any kind of a creature that can be found on earth.
It's an alien.
Aliens are real.
And you're now the prisoner of one, trapped in deep space, with no idea how you've gotten here. You don't even know where here is.
During the drifting of your mind, your feet slow even further on the uneven walkway, shuffling tiredly as they bear the weight of your body.
Thing snarls at your sluggish pace and yanks harshly on the chain links, sending you toppling onto your knees across the tough metal floor.
You gasp in pain but keep your head down, getting up as quickly as possible to avoid any further punishment from Thing.
Where is it taking you? Where is this place?
Your heart is pounding with the terror of the unknown, mouth dry as the bend in the tunnel draws nearer and nearer.
Even Thing seems to get tenser the closer you get, its form straightening and broadening in stance. For a moment, it turns to look at you with a look you've seen before - one that's been quite common in the time you've been in it's possession.
Thing looks at you, scanning over you with beetle-like eyes, with the greed of someone who's come into a massive inheritance.
It scares all the hope out of you, and makes your skin crawl.
And you don't understand that look. Here, in this world of dank metal and gleaming stars just out of reach, why would it be looking at you like you're the winning ticket for the lottery?
Before you can think further on it, Thing reaches the bend in the makeshift tunnel, disappearing around the corner. Your chain rattles and catches on the wall, slithering after it like a faithful pet - you follow accordingly.
But then, you stop.
This - this isn't the world you've experienced so far. This isn't rusted metal and black spaces, whirled together into a spinning mass of fear and captivity.
This is beauty.
The scrap-part tunnel has channeled into a massive atrium, translucent glass dome rounding the top of the skyscraper structure.
Light reflects and refracts off of the glass, which rounds over an enormous living tree.
Its highest tip nearly brushes the atrium dome, branches spreading like sunshades across the room in every direction. Each leaf is a shade of burnished bronze, hanging like a precious jewel from the chestnut-colored branches. The starlight that shines through the dome settles on each leaf and stays there, glowing like a hundred thousand miniature suns trapped in glass and bronze. The leaves rustle together with soft sounds that brush gently against your ears.
It's as if the tree is breathing.
Standing there at the entrance of the atrium, the whole breath of your body is stolen from you by the grandeur.
You can barely tear your eyes away to observe the rest of the room; but when you do, what you see causes any sense of wonder to drain out of you.
The roots of the tree are arching above ground like behemoth serpents, zigzagging and curving through the mysteriously earthen floor of the atrium. Crowds of creatures of every shape and size patter under and around the roots.
A red-skinned woman with horns curling from her scarlet hair brushes her fingers along a tree branch, her arm clasped around a man with violet stripes running like scars across his skin. An auburn bat-like creature ducks and weaves like a fighter jet through the bronze-leafed branches of the tree.
And although each gigantic tree root is a thing of beauty within itself, your stomach roils at the iron bars that have been speared into them in circular patterns.
More cages.
More cages, and more prisoners.
Here, there are desperate hands emerging from the slats between the bars, grasping at passersbyers in a plea for help. Figures are curled in corners, limbs huddled together and wary eyes following any who com near.
This place - this magnificent, holy place - is being contaminated by the parasite of captivity.
Thing marches forward, causing the handcuffs to cut harshly into your wrists. You want to cry out with pain, but you're even more terrified of drawing attention now then you ever were as a creature with black eyes and shark-like teeth glances at you from afar.
Without a doubt, you know that you're headed for one of those cages. It's an obvious dynamic among the two of you; you're the one in the chains, and Thing is the one slinking through the crowd with the chain to your fetters clasped in its hands.
You trail behind it, leaving as much length between you as the chain allows.
Your eyes don't know where to settle; there are so many colors and creatures of otherworldly origin, dancing through your vision like imaginary characters that have escaped from some fantasy book.
No one here is staring at the oddity of someone chained and bound - you aren't the only one here in your position.
As you watch, a creature covered in shaggy grey fur leads a handcuffed humanoid through the masses. The other prisoner has no hooves or wings or fur. In face, he's so human-like in everything but the crystal white of his skin and the turquoise coloring of his hair that you can't draw your eyes from the familiarity of him. The other prisoner catches your eyes through the crowd, returning your stare with one of his own.
Your gazes hold only long enough for you to register the glowing Caribbean blue of his eyes; then he's gone again, swept away into the crowd by his master.
Thing snarls at you, a wordless, languageless mutter of anger, and pitches your forward. It's headed for the base of the giant tree, where piles of glittering bronze leaves stand like a dragon's treasure trove. The roots are thicker and less consistent here, leaving huge gaps of space for the alien crowd to mill around and converse.
On top of one particularly large gap stands a booth of sorts, with metal-plated sides and a table standing freely inside. Thing approaches the booth and knocks on its side, thick knuckles dragging across the metal with a rasp.
Moments later, a figure emerges from the back.
You swallow a gasp.
It's a man - petit and delicate, completely human in appearance save for the pair of silver-speckled wings spreading behind his shoulder blades. He looks exactly how you imagined an angel to appear, ethereal and lovely.
The man smiles at the sight of Thing.
The his gaze travels down the length of dull chain links to settle on you.
His smile brightens.
And, for the first time since you awoke in Thing's spaceship, someone speaks to you.
"Hello, little human," says the man in a voice like bells. "Welcome to Servus."
[A/N]
Unedited
Welcome to Spark :)
Just as a warning, most of the BTS members won't be in the story until the third chapter. Please give it a chance, though😭
I'll have a Blood Ink update coming out soon. Sorry guys, I've just been studying for my final exams, which are coming up this week.
I've been trying to work on this book for a long time. I always come back to it because I love the idea so much, but I've never been able to start it well until now. I hope this pleases all the sci-fi lovers out there.
❤️PB