The thick, deathly still energy fog of the Eternal Corridor was savagely torn open from within by an indescribable force.
The dark-purple spatial vortex was not the brief, sharp-edged fissure produced by an ordinary jump. It resembled a wound slowly festering in the skin of the universe, constantly seeping pus. It expanded soundlessly, its edges streaming with thick bands of dark-purple and pitch-black light that seemed alive. They tangled and pulsed together, radiating nauseating fluctuations that mingled the cold deathliness of "finality" with the mad whispers of Deep Dream. Deep within the vortex, an immense creature was slowly "squeezing" its way out. Before it had fully emerged, its oppressive presence was already making the Whisperer's fragile concealment barrier shudder like a spiderweb in a gale.
That was not a "ship." At least, not a spacecraft as any known civilization understood the term.
It was more like a... "living creature," or the manifestation of a "concept."
Its main body was a constantly shifting dark-purple mass, like an enormous tumor or heart. Strange structures resembling biological armor covered its surface, continuously melting and reforming. Thick purple-black energy fluid, glowing with an ominous nightmare radiance, flowed through the gaps. Dozens, hundreds of "limbs" of varying thickness and shape extended from different parts of the mass-some were whip-like tentacles covered in bony spikes, their ends resembling enormous mouthparts; some were fleshy appendages covered with countless compound eyes that opened and closed as though watching and whispering; others were twisted, indistinct wings or blades seemingly formed from solidified shadow. All these "limbs" writhed, twitched, and transformed without pattern. The being radiated extreme instability and madness, yet also a chilling sense of cold "order" originating from a higher plane.
Where its "head" should have been-if it could be called a head-was a vast, vortex-shaped opening that