My every failure, and even my successes, measured in terror.

I greet my new crew as they come aboard. I wonder if they can see their deaths reflected in the mirror of my face. Woe, being litany, is something we share; theirs only being much shorter. I will remember every face. I will listen to their laughter, until it stops, has run out, like sand from a glass. The sound replaced by the beating of ten thousand featherless wings in a negative space full of ruin and madness colored the blackest pitch.

This abyss we sail upon does not need you to look into it to take your measure. It knows that everything alive has been born a lesser monster than itself.

From behind the door to my quarters, I listen to these men boast of courage and bravery. They don't yet understand the way their sanity will be tethered to the ship's light - and what will happen when we must extinguish it to save ourselves.




10/10 for jumped-up IF unfairly attached to a RNG