Wanderer Ch 38: The Trapped Titans, Km Not Done With You!

(Thalassa)

It started like a whisper—barely a tug, really. A slight shift in the vacuum that tickled the edges of my forcefield. I didn't even register it at first, too distracted watching the tiny ships spin and scatter like frightened insects. The black hole pulsed, crimson and unnatural, a jagged tear in the fabric of space. It fed hungrily, slurping up matter and energy with a soundless fury.

I smiled.

"Is this your last attempt?" I asked the void, my voice rippling through the emptiness like thunder underwater. "Your final, pathetic gambit?"

Foolish, insignificant Thanoros. Using my energy to conjure this desperate trick. It reeked of fear—of weakness. The kind of last-ditch effort made by cornered prey.

"Fool," I said again, louder this time, letting the disdain roll off my tongue. "We are of the cosmos. We are born of its breath and storms. We outlived suns. Black holes mean nothing to us."

That was when I felt it.

A tug—no, a pull. Deep. Sharp. Like something was reaching into my core and dragging. My forcefield shimmered, strained, and then—

"What?" I blinked, my smile faltering.

I wasn't moving. I was being dragged.

My fingers stretched wide, glowing blue as I tried to anchor myself. I summoned energy from the dark matter around me, tried to stabilize the forcefield, but it was like pouring water into a collapsing dam.

Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Eris appeared beside me in a calm shimmer of starlight, arms crossed as always, looking far too composed for the situation. "This isn't an ordinary black hole," she said. "It's artificially structured. Some sort of gravitational architecture designed to target large-scale quantum-mass entities." She nodded toward the growing scarlet spiral. "Us."

I stared at her, the color draining from my face. "A black hole... designed to trap gods?"

Eris shrugged. "Technically, we're not gods, just interdimensional meta-organisms—"

"Not the time, Eris!"

She raised an eyebrow. "Just saying."

"This isn't good," came Eclipsa's voice from across the void, slipping back into her black clothes as debris spun wildly around her. "I'm not dressed for this kind of nonsense."

The pull was stronger now. I could feel my body stretching—my limbs elongated into gravitational resistance, half of me already below the event horizon. But just above, just outside the swirling chaos, one thing held my attention.

The tiny ship. His ship in the center of my palm.

"Jack..." I whispered, knowing that he wouldn't survive this.

I tried to be as careful as I could as I threw him into space.

I locked eyes with his speck-sized vessel through the blur of gravitational distortion. I didn't need to raise my voice. He would hear me—because I wanted him to hear me.

"I'm not done with you," I said, smiling despite the pain. "Stay right where you are, little one. I will come for you. If you run—"

My eyes flashed like burning stars. "—I will chase you. Across the galaxies. Through time itself. Forever."

And then I was gone.

Swallowed.

⸻

(Jack)

So, uh... that happened.

I mean, sure—I've had bad days. I once got trapped on a radioactive moon with nothing but a stale protein bar and a busted oxygen filter. But this? This was on a whole new level.

The ship's alarms were practically screaming at me. Red lights pulsed like strobes in a dance club run by angry engineers, and every single warning was screaming the same thing:

"GRAVITY FIELD BREACH. CORE STRESS LEVELS CRITICAL."

Which is ship-speak for: "You're boned."

"This is bad," I muttered, gripping the seat as the whole hull groaned around me like it was about to split apart. My fingers slipped on the controls—I couldn't keep the damn thing steady. The artificial gravity inside was going haywire, flipping between full weight and zero-g like some sadistic rollercoaster ride.

Then—wham—the ship launched.

I was flung back in my seat so hard I saw stars. Not the poetic kind—actual stars. I think my lungs briefly forgot how to work.

"What's happening?!"

Everything spun. The ship twisted, tumbled, and for a hot second I was sure I'd just flung myself straight into the black hole's cosmic garbage disposal.

But no.

The ship leveled out. Somehow. I don't know if it was luck, or if the ship's auto-pilot was smarter than I gave it credit for. Probably both. I took a second to stabilize the controls, heart pounding in my ears, and then I looked—really looked—at the screen.

Thalassa.

Still visible. Half her body sucked into that bleeding black hole, the rest stretched across space like a dying constellation. But even then—even then—she looked at me.

Right at me.

"I'm not done with you," she said, her voice vibrating through the damn metal of the ship. My bones practically rattled with her promise.

She told me to stay.

Told me she'd come for me.

Told me she'd chase me to the ends of everything if I tried to run.

Naturally, I hit the throttle.

"I am so done with titans," I muttered, gritting my teeth as I blasted the ship into the stars. "No more god-ladies. No more cosmic threats. I'm finding the farthest moon I can, building a shack, and retiring. Maybe raise some space goats. Something quiet."