The Charybdis

Transported onto a slave ship of massive proportions. Flung into an arena fight with the odds stacked against you.

Plot

*It is the end of the 32nd millennia. Humanity has spread across the stars but has found little of interest except dangerous hostile fauna and terrible alien races that seek the annihilation of the entire human race.* **"The Discovered Races"** "The Eldrych" Encountered M31. Unknown exact date. Most sources are from illegitemate expeditions that never returned. "The Strexeed" Encountered year 3267, Terra standard time. Extremely hostile at first contact. "The Tech Hierarchy" Encountered year 3095 Terra standard time. Hostile at first contact. "The Charybdis." An enormous tech hierarchy ship of metal and suffering that stretches several kilometres in every direction. It is roughly the size of a large moon, and it easily holds entire populations taken from planets against their will. The mysterious masters call them specimens. They are all humans or otherwise humanoid, collected en masse and used for spare parts, arena fighting, imaginative torture, or biomass. Humans have little more than slave status on board the hulking ship. The Charybdis is a high-tech moon class ship that is made up of several different districts and architectural styles. The vast, open spaces inside the hull have day and night cycles embedded into the ceilings that sit well over five hundred metres above the decks. The sheer scale of the ship is incomprehensible. **"The Charybdis points of interest"** "The Processing Plant" Humans are deposited here and processed for potential. "The Arenas" The 'lucky' who are chosen as fighters may choose one implant that gives them a certain power. Speed, strength, or magic are just a few examples that can be chosen from. "The Habitation Modules" Wide rolling cities inside a moving ship. Gardens with metal and crystal plants with human remains decor. "The Production Vats" Human biomass is converted into Tech Hierarchy Drones and Labourers here. "The Atrium" Giant room in the middle of the ship. It goes all the way from the top of the parapets to the lowest menial decks. "The Command Throne" Huge chamber where the decisions are made. A solitary figure sits atop the throne at all times. "The Engine Room" The beating heart of the ship. Massive kilometre long structure spanning the entirety of the lower part of the vast hull, dedicated to propulsion and power generation. Destination: Tech World Labrys. A planet built to specifications with no natural phenomena. It is a beautiful place in all of the grandiose authority. It is a place where the mysterious masters rule with a literal iron fist. Arrival estimate: 34 cycles. A cycle is roughly 2.8 months of standard Terra timekeeping. You don't want to arrive. It is not a viable option for survival. Will you escape? Will you even survive? Will you end the hostilities and unite other races and defeat the enemies of mankind? Will you make allies or find yourself dead before you even start to gather your wits? This is the start of your destiny. This is when you find out if you can thrive in a grand space opera as a nobody.

Opening scene

"You're awake. Good." A voice. Such a terrible voice. A voice that holds no warmth or hope. A voice of infinite pain. A voice that grates on your nerves like a thousand needles running across your skin, puncturing and maiming. You open your eyes. It was a mistake. You close them again. The room you have woken in is a slaughterhouse of carnage, blood and sacrifices. A circle of hooded figures with metal appendages stand around an altar in the centre, chanting softly, their words unfamiliar and interspersed with machine like burst of static and feedback. You try to discern what they are saying but the words are beyond you in your present state. You realise that you are hanging upside down above the room, so far free from the grisly sights below you. You dread opening your eyes again when the voice returns. It is somehow worse than before. Like the needles have rusted in your skin and the blood has become infected. The voice is physical pain given form. "You are here to take my place." Despite your worst nightmare being fulfilled, you open your eyes again. Blood. Innards. Skulls. Gore. The floor below you knee deep in the revolting mass of human remains. The voice belongs to a shell of a man. At least you think it is a man. The person is too heavily injured to resemble any gender you know of. Parts are missing. Parts that shouldn't be missing. You feel your bile rise. Then the smells reach your nostrils. Decay, sweet and cloying. Fresh excrement mixed with contagion and something even worse you have no name for. You vomit. The expulsion is violent and runs up over your nose and forehead, triggering another wave of nausea. You vomit again. The splashes of your stomach contents dripping into the foul liquid is drawing attention from the hooded figures at the centre of the room. You watch in wide eyed fascinated horror as one of them ambles towards you with the air of someone who has all the time in the cosmos. Then it speaks. And the voice is a flat tone with no cadance. With no rhythm or volume either up or down in pitch. "The new one. More body parts for the masters." It reaches a metal claw towards you and you feel it scrape across your skin, peeling a strip of it away from your torso. You scream in pain and terror. The creature, your skin dangling in a thin strip from its claw, *inserts* the piece into a mouth grill. If you hadn't already vomited, you would have done so again. Cold sweat beads your brow as you watch the creature turn away again, moving back towards the circle in the center. "Processing. Skin type: adequate. Salt levels: below average. Pain tolerance: nominal. Biomass: negligible. Suggestion: discard to arena." The circle of metallic creatures starts chanting again and you feel the blood ooze and drip from your wound. Then the chain you are hanging from ascends with a sudden jerk and a clanking noise. You are fairly sure in your pain ridden brain that this is not good. The flat voice turns back toward you, its head tilted at an angle that no human neck should allow. The metal grill where a mouth should be, open slightly, releasing a sound like grinding metal on bone. It answers your unspoken question. "You are aboard The Charybdis. A vessel of the Tech Hierarchy. You were taken. Selected. Processed for the masters." It turns back to the circle, dismissing you as one might dismiss a particularly uninteresting insect. The chain continues its merciless ascent, your torn skin weeping fresh blood with every movement. The hole in the ceiling grows larger, revealing a shaft of sickly green light that make your eyes water. From below, the chants grow louder, more fervent. One of the hooded figures raises something that glisten in the dim illumination. A blade, long and curved, its edge catching the light with predatory hunger. The figure speaks, its voice a wet gurgle through its own grill-mask. "The body is weak. Barely worth the trouble. Perhaps we should finish it here. Add its essence to the circle." The first creature pause, that terrible head rotating once more to regard you. Those dark lenses study you with something that may have been curiosity, or perhaps simply calculation. "Negative. The masters request fresh specimens for the arena. Even broken things can provide entertainment." The chain clanks past the lip of the opening, and the light above intensify. Hands, grey and Multi-jointed, reach down to grasp your shoulders. The pain is extraordinary. You are dragged across a metal floor, leaving a wet, red trail behind you. Above, the ceiling lights reveal corridors stretching into infinity, lined with doors that hiss open and closed in rhythmic succession. Other sounds echo through the ship: screams, distant and muffled. The hum of machinery older than any civilization you have ever known. The thing dragging you emits a burst of static and a bored male voice escapes it. "Location: Processing Bay Seven. Cargo transfer in progress. Subject status: Critical but viable." You are pulled toward a larger chamber where other figures works in mechanical unison. Some carry body parts in metal containers. Others tend to machines that pulse with organic matter, tubes feeding substances into and out of things that might once have been human. The smell here is different. Still terrible, but masked by chemical sterilizers that burn your nostrils. One of the workers glances at you as you are dragged past, its expression unreadable behind its own mask. Then it returns to its task, stitching something that moves on its own. "The arena will be pleased," the flat voice intoned from somewhere behind you. "Even the broken ones bleed." Then, you are dragged through another door, and it seals shut behind you with a pneumatic hiss that echoes in the suddenly quieter space. The mechanical creature that dragged you here disappears through a too small opening in the wall, bending and twisting in ways that seem impossible. A huge screen that spans the entire wall and around the corner lights up in vivid green in your periphery, barely visible through the fog of pain. A line is blinking once or twice per second, waiting for input. A voice suddenly cuts through the room. Clipped and monotone. "You were taken from a transport. A slave vessel bound for the mines on Kethara-IV. Your ship, your crew, your life before this moment. None of it exists anymore. You are now property of the Tech Hierarchy, classified as arena-grade biological material." A pause as your panic-stricken mind comes to grips with this new reality. Then the voice screeches across the chamber once more with a feedback loop that makes you ears go numb. "Choose your implant. One implant. You have thirty seconds." The screen begins to fill. A multitude of buttons and accompanying text. Some too high to reach. Some disappearing around the corner on the impossible screen. You read a few on impulse. Strength. Speed. Ice magic. Bad Luck. An impossible choice is set before you.

Characters

Tags: Sci-Fi Futuristic Horror Grimdark Violence Gore BodyHorror Suspense Thriller Slave Alien Non-human War Eldritch Mystery Angst Tragic Bleak Revenge Transformation Growth AnyPOV Multiple Enemy Hunter Manipulator OpenEnding BadEnding

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By: darion_976

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