Star Sirens: The Origin Story
For millennia mankind has been consumed by tales spun by wordsmiths. Stories of never ending skies, daring sword fights, and fearsome beasts – these are the things that have captivated our minds for generations. But there is nothing more illustrious than tales of those with scales. Stories of creatures too fantastic to be lurking even in the depths of the pitch black ocean. Humanity has always feared the dark, not because of the absence of light, no; it is because of the limitless, unimaginable things that lurk within the fathomless black. Demons that dwell amongst the nebula and all the space between; those beautiful, deadly creatures are just one of those things. Creatures as black as empty space, with scales that glitter brighter and deadlier than the stars they swim in, it is them we must fear. The Star Sirens. All legends and myths have their origins; nevertheless we pray that the Star Sirens are nothing but fable. As fables shift and merge over the years, so does our belief in the creatures. However when there is a story, a lone tale standing stronghold against the ever shifting rumours one has to wonder at the truth behind silver spun words. It was once said that a lone captain, one of the first to ever dare step into what we now call deep space, was the first Terran to ever encounter the Star Sirens. That on the edge of space the Mad Captain found The Collective – the home of the Star Sirens. This story is the first known contact between mankind and the Star Sirens, between explorers and one of spaces most feared rumours. The tale of a once bright, young intrepid explorer just waiting to make his mark on the universe. This is the Origin Story. The Captain was an explorer, a man with nothing but his ship and silent stardust on his trail. He spent many years mapping the cosmos, exploring worlds and stars alike, encountering many races. Eventually he reached the beginnings of deep space. The void, with its sickening horizon of black emptiness, its tendrils of hopelessness grasping all that dare draw near. However the Captain was not deterred. He wanted nothing more than to prove himself, for his name to be immortalised in the stars for all future generations to see. To be the first of mankind to dare step into the black was a challenge most glorious. The temptation was too much to bare. Many years passed in the void before the Captain encountered the first of the Star Sirens at the dawning of a new galaxy. Years travelling alone in the void of deep space, with nothing but endless silence for company, had left his sanity a topic of dispute for his cracked persona. No longer the intelligent and promising Captain who initially left Earth. No longer a man driven purely by his quest for glory, but someone entirely different. He could do nothing to deny the beauty before him. Like multi-coloured lights dancing through the black, The Collective shifted. Clouds of stardust compiled of every colour imaginable and more, spread out in all sizes glowing and humming in activity. They glowed like stars, and danced like the northern lights of Earth. This was the birth of the Mad Captain. The birth of the man who was ripped apart by beauty. Weeks the Mad Captain spent observing the clouds from a distance - mapping their routes, monitoring their colour fluctuations, trying to penetrate the outer layer of energy that stopped the scanners from delving deeper into the clouds. Nothing entered or left the conglomeration for the duration of his studies. It was only as he was contemplating leaving that the Mad Captain caught a glimpse, a shadow of a figure moving across the blackness towards one of the outer clouds. Before the words ‘sense’ or ‘reason’ could even leave his lips, the Mad Captain had boarded a shuttle pod wanting more than nothing to find the strange creature. The small craft slowly edged into the cloud, alarms ringing due to interference from the pulsing stardust. The Mad Captain paid it no mind, his sights set on the slowly drifting figure in front of him. It swam through the ever-changing stardust, propelled slowly and gracefully by its tail. While having met many strange species over the years, the Mad Captain had never been as enraptured as he was at this very moment, so much so that he did not even begin to notice the other shapes forming around the edges of his viewing screen. He wanted to embed every feature of this beautiful creature in his mind. Never once tearing his eyes away the Mad Captain began scanning the creature, enabling the transmission relay; automatically sending all information back to the mothership. What the Mad Captain did not take note of was the effects of the clouds on his systems. Little-to-no information would make it back to his ship uncorrupted by the strange waves emitted from the dust. Not wanting to scare the creature, the Mad Captain brought the ship to a dead stop, leaving only life support and his scanners running. His presence did not go unnoticed for long. The creature stopped, turned, and swam slowly up to the shuttle pod until it was just in front of the ship. The Mad Captain had never seen anything more beautiful. Shades of blue pigment as dark as the Earths night sky rolled across her skin like waves. Marbled skin tapered down to her hips merging into what could only be described as a tail. Translucent fins were thin and dangerously spiked at the tips; identical were those on her forearms, hips, spine, and shoulder blades. As she flicked her tail, her fins swayed like sheets in the afternoon breeze. Scales covered her tail where her fins did not. Dark grey discs glowed like the cloud, tapering up her tail until they blended in with her soft skin. The Mad Captain’s breath almost stopped when he looked up to behold her face. Opalescent eyes started back at him unblinking. Placed just above cheekbones that looked like they could slice through the hull of his ship, ethereal was the only word he could use to describe them. He watched as full lips parted under a bridgeless nose and stardust floated out – no longer glowing. The Mad Captain watched the process. The glowing stardust around her was periodically dragged into two mesh-like sacks either side of her neck every ten minutes or so, then her lips would part and release the no longer glowing stardust. The varying tendrils on her head would swell and shudder with intake of what the Mad Captain could only assume to be breath. Fascinating could not begin to describe the creature. The Mad Captain was ecstatic. He could not wait to travel back with his new findings – a creature that lives, and sustains itself in open space. Switching on the engines he made to bring the ship about; shrill screeching stopped him in his tracks. The sound of tearing metal. Turning slowly he looked to the creature now pressed up flat against the view screen. Eyes wide and tendrils glowing angrily she continued to drag her clawed hand through the ship’s hull, just to the left of the screen. She was no longer alone. Creatures swarmed from beyond the edges of the view screen and the midst of the cloud, systematically attacking the ship, their mouths open in unheard screams. Lights and alarms flared to life in the ship. A loud mechanical voice spoke above the roaring of metal and whirring of lights and alarms. “Hull damage 65%. Weapons system offline. Engines critical. Overload imminent.” It was impossible for so much damage to have been done in such a limited time by mere animals, simple creatures that drifted in space. The Mad Captain realised all too late what the scanners could not hope to detect. Intelligence. They attacked his ship with abandon, unwilling to let the Mad Captain leave. With engines and weapons now offline he did the only thing conceivable to a madman in space. Without a second thought he donned his protective suit, grabbed his pistol, and jumped out of the loading dock. Silence. The sound of tearing metal stopped. Shrill alarms were heard no more. Space was silent. All the Mad Captain could hear was the Sirens. They swum up to him, their voices like crushed velvet on his ears, liquid chocolate on his skin, and fire and bloodlust in his veins. His suit did nothing to protect him from the melody now echoing in his head. It was the most breathtaking sound he had ever heard. He did not notice as the pistol slipped from his fingers. They swarmed around him, the female Siren bobbing in front of him as the rest trapped him in a torrent of melody, scales and skin. The female siren ran her hands over his suit, him arms, legs and all the space between. She opened her mouth and her voice joined the rest, only stronger and louder and so much more beautiful. “Come.” He did not notice as he was pulled away from his ship in bliss, never to be seen again. Decades later his ship was found, having drifted slowing back through deep space and discovered by yet another group of deep space explorers. Empty. No captain and no shuttle pod in sight. The Mad Captains logs and the data collected from the ship and shuttle pod – corrupted by the strange energy emanating from the Collective - were the only things left behind. Most write of these logs as a mad mans delusions, and the scans unreliable due to their degradation. In the world of academics and explorers the Mad Captain was titled thusly and dubbed Missing-In-Action, his name forever blackened; immortalised in the stars none the less. The dismissal of a mad mans words does not stop people disappearing once they reach deep space. It does not stop the tales of those with scales. Stories of Sirens that dwell in the stars, luring young travellers to their doom. It also does not stop the most popular tale of all. Something whispered by those who have travelled into deep space and returned, that a lone man can be seen drifting among the clouds. The Mad Captain still lives; eternally wandering the midst of the Star Siren Collective. Never free to drift too far from the clouds. After all, a kiss from a Star Siren will only save you from the endless silence of deep space, not from the creatures that dwell behind the never ending black. Now what meaning you take from that is completely up to you.