Disclaimer: Starcraft isn't mine!
A/N: The next chapter! Dreamworld!
A light hovered in midair, beckoning, gliding. He followed it, its irresistible pull coaxing him onwards through the otherwise formless, cloudy void. The light seemed to be coming from a single point that occasionally seemed to flow from one spot to the next, as oil would- a band of color splaying against the misty space. It captured his attention and focus. But he seemed to be going in circles, inasmuch as one can distinguish direction where he was. A light, ringing laugh sounded, and the light went towards it. At last, something besides that pinpoint! A fair-skinned woman, clothed in glowing wreathes of light intertwined with a shroud of the dark, starry night, stood before him.
"You are different from the others." He shifted, uncomfortable. For his power seemed to have left him, and he felt naked, helpless before this entity.
"Yes, I suppose I am..." A laugh of merriment. He realized for that her face was shrouded. It was slightly unnerving.
"Yet you made the same mistakes as countless other victims of mine." What? Victims... Where the hell am I?
"Where am I, and what have you done with my crew?" She laughed again, the laugh seeming more malevolent in tone to the Russian.
"Where are you? Such impertinance... You are in the Palace of Our Gods. A place that, for all intents and purposes, is inescapable. You, Alexei Stukov, are inside of a black hole. Remember when your ship started 'skipping', as you humans and part-humans call it? That was your first mistake, to go into hyperdrive so near to the black hole. All of my victims do that. All who have been attacked by my scouts."
"Your scouts...?"
"You humans called them Kurayami." Those things...
"What are you going to do with us now?" A much more menacing, almost demonic laugh from her.
"Again, impertinent... You will be sacrificed, along with your ship, to the god that maintains my right to rule. Let me show you my subjects' ruler god..." The scene changed.
A struggling Dark Templar was bound with chains of the same material as the entity's clothing. He was being lowered toward an invisible area in the center. The gravity-warped stars were clearly visible through the event horizon. When the unfortunate Templar touched an invisible ring, he jerked in pain. For his foot had been sliced in half by the ring-shaped singularity, and blood was being drawn from it. A loud voice rang through the area in an unfamiliar language.
The distortion disappeared, and a diffuse light began glowing from the singularity. As the light increased, the Templar started burning from the intense radiation. Hawking radition, Stukov surmised, as the scene played itself out. He felt a certain sympathy with the Protoss warrior, for it would be his turn soon. It was amazing, however, the degree of manipulation his captors had over space-time. He abruptly returned to his previous 'reality' in the area with the entity.
She turned and walked away. The area faded, and was replaced by a prison. Stukov was being held in shackles that were of the same metal as the Kurayami scouts. The prison itself was bleak and desolate.
A/N: Cliffhanger! That, and I'm still finishing up planning for the rest of it.
