That small white droplet still hovered, suspended at the peak of that grotesquely writhing stalagmite of black crystal. Its last pulse had been particularly powerful, causing tremors that shook the very ground Captain Resquilatron, Circleface and Squareface stood on. Cracks ran through the floor and up the walls of the cavern but just as soon as they appeared, a bubbling liquid the colour of night spilled out before solidifying to fill in the gaps.
More shocking to those three adventurous souls, however, was the revelation that the Captain relayed to them from his trusty thing-detector.
"You're sure about this?", Squareface protested in desperation, though his voice was already tinged with the grey of hopelessness. "I mean to be honest I'm slightly skeptical about that thing-detector anyways. It seems like even you don't know what its talking about"
Circleface brought his hands to his face in an exaggerated expression of shock. The Captain, meanwhile, fixed his steely gaze onto Squareface who gulped nervously before standing his ground.
"Listen, wait", Squareface held up his own hands as though attempting to calm a raging bull. "I'm just saying that a small, tiny, miniscule sliver of caution wouldn't hurt, now would it?".
The Captain was silent for a few seconds, the ominous pulsing of that silvery orb continuing like a countdown to their imminent doom. Well, I suppose it literally was a countdown to their imminent doom.
In the end it wasn't the Captain who spoke, but Circleface who stepped forward resolutely. He held a hand out to both the Captain and Squareface solemnly as though holding them back from fighting.
"Uhhh we weren't - ", Squareface began but was quickly silenced by Circleface making a shushing motion in front of his mouth. Circleface then nodded gravely and turned to Captain Resquilatron who sighed before speaking out.
His voice was gravelly and he spoke with the firmness of certitude.
"This is the only way Squareface. Trust me, if there was another - anything at all - I would have jumped at that chance like a Globule in Swamp Delta. But there isn't. And so here we are."
He placed a rusted and stained glove onto Circleface's shoulder, looking directly at that opaque visor as though his unflinching eyes could see right through it.
"Circleface. In about 45 seconds from now, that thing", he pointed at the silvery orb still emanating reality-breaking pulses with every greater frequency, "is gonna forever mutate us, absorbing us into this labyrinthine digestive tract all around."
Circleface took this information well, it seemed. Well either that or he temporarily forgot how to comprehend spoken language. I give it a 50/50.
The Captain, seemingly unbothered, continued to speak.
"Now in civilised space they have classes and danger-levels and all this nonsense. They'd have this on lockdown a day before it could ever reach this level of corruption, establishing such a strong presence on this godforsaken rock. Out here, all we have to rely on is ourselves. And today, Circleface, we rely on you."
He punctuated this speech with a jab of his finger at Circleface who puffed out his chest in pride.
"What you have to do is simple. You see that silvery orb thing you see there mutating reality itself in bursts of Unenergy?"
Circleface nodded.
"Go grab that and put it in your pocket, 'kay?"
Upon hearing this Squareface, whose shoulders had progressively drooped lower and lower over the course of the conversation finally couldn't take it anymore and crouched on the ground muttering and mumbling to himself hysterically.
Circleface gave him a once over and glanced at the Captain as though mocking his jelly-legged compatriot. He then proceeded to smack himself on the chest and nodded as if to say that he could be fully trusted with their lives.
The Captain stared at him for a few seconds before sighing and moving to the side.
By this point, the pulsations had reached an intensity that shook the entire cavern with every undulation. That obsidian stalagmite had grown insidiously and the silvery droplet was almost head height now.
The sharp stabbing pain upon looking directly at that material had only gotten worse as though the walls between stable reality and whatever that stuff came from were being slowly eroded away. Flashes of colour and static now accompanied every pulse making it hard to hold onto coherent thought.
Strange sounds could be heard as though with every beat, a door was opened just long enough for one terrible syllable to travel through the crack. Its incompleteness only made the madness even worse. The Captain withstood it with a grim look on his hideous face, glancing at the thing-detector every few seconds in growing unease.
Squareface seemed to enter a catatonic state though whether that was from this reality altering situation or his own depression was still up for debate.
Circleface had begun walking forward but it was as though he were walking through treacle. Each step looked like a thousand rubber bands were pulling his legs back, and with every pulse, it only got worse.
But his progress, even if glacial, was inevitable.
Finally, he reached the foot of the stalagmite that now towered over his form, that silvery orb almost out of reach. Almost.
In an almost sentient move of desperation, it let out the most powerful pulse of all. Jagged streaks of shattered glass seemed to expand from it that, upon closer reflection, reflected an eternity within themselves, before collapsing in on itself with a blinding flash. A sound like tinkling glass pierced through the entire cacophany like a knife through butter.
For a moment all was silent. Then the glare died down and the situation was revealed.
The Captain was frozen, shining the beam of his torch onto the silvery orb now floating in a pool of liquid outer space. An undulating violet speckled with stars. Squareface resolutely refused to look, but the Captain was entranced, letting out an involuntary gasp.
What he saw was true beauty, and his mind went blank.
The pupils in his eyes reflected those points of light and an expression of pure wonder slowly spread on his face.
His pupils, briefly a reflection of the beauty of space, spilled out onto his iris and sclera like ink in water, painting his entire eyes black. That obsidian colour seemed to strain against his skin, a dense black droplet forming at the corners of his eyes.
His expression warped into one of pain, but he still stood transfixed by the sight that he saw.
Circleface was closest to the anomaly, whose pulses had stopped as though it had run out of energy. Or as though it had completed its task. He too was frozen for a few seconds, but his expression during this time was hidden behind his visor.
Abruptly, he shook his head as though waking up after a long nap. He looked curiously at the stalagmite in front of him, its tip sheared off leaving only a smooth, semi-circular indent where something used to sit.
Looking further upwards, he finally noticed that silvery orb. A hint of recognition entered his body language, but he quickly shoved that aside. Much more important was grabbing that shiny floating thingy.
And so he reached out a gloved hand, the silvery orb floating peacefully in its pool of stars as though mocking Circleface's pitiful attempts to grasp it. Of course, this did not last long. As that white gloved hand approached, the circle on his visor, usually black in colour, began to glow a radioactive blue.
The silvery orb seemed to sense for the first time a real threat to its position and began to vibrate inside its pool, but to no avail. Now that it was glowing, the circle's true form could be seen. It was not a solid mass, but rather made up of countless circular strings. And, steadily, each of these glowing blue strings began to rotate.
Slowly at first, but they accelerated faster and faster until it looked like a solid, luminous blue ring. Just as he was about to make contact with the outermost layer of that violet space the orb was floating in, a few of those blue strings appeared around his glove.
They too began to rotate faster and faster until he had a ring orbiting his palm. By this point, the silvery orb was clearly panicking, but its fate had long been set in stone. Circleface closed his fist around it, orb still floating in its glittering pool of starlight, and promptly shoved it in his pocket.
As soon as he did that, a profound sense of relief shuddered through the Captain. He blinked several times, that starry visage receding to the very deepest parts of his pupils, returning his eyes to their previous colour.
Though it never disappeared.
Squareface, with his uncanny intuition for when danger has disappeared, came out from his cocoon and stood up slowly.
"is it over?", he asked tentatively though he startled like a field mouse in front of a starfox when he saw Circleface's obviously glowing visor. "Are you serious Captain?", he hissed frantically. "You let him do that?"
Captain Resquilatron glanced at Circleface, whose visor was dimming rapidly, returning to its previous, inert state, and scanning him once over with the thing-detector.
"I told you it was the only way". He turned to look at Circleface, scanning him with the thing-detector for a brief once over. Examining the results briefly, he spoke to Circleface.
"I never doubted you for a second, I knew you could do it"
Circleface cocked his head in an expression of confusion.
"Yeah he's got no clue what just happened", Squareface palmed his visor. "Well, at least we can finally get out of here. And at least looking at these rocks doesn't feel like stabbing myself in the eyes with a hot iron poker anymore."
"That's more like it, Squareface", the Captain chuckled phlegmily, smacking Squareface hard on the shoulder. Circleface copied him but instead just punched Squareface as hard as he could.
The Captain walked ahead with an airy chuckle and a Cheshire grin.
'Not too bad a haul today. Not too bad..."
Deep within his pupils, a flash of starlight glinted before disappearing.
Circleface skipped behind the Captain, leaving Squareface behind in a twitching lump on the floor.