In the Deep

The ship silently flew through the terrifying and mysterious cloud.

It was just as Asurmen had said. The "visitors"' arrival had stirred the ancient Denizens of the Stars from their thousand years of slumber. Even when the main consciousness showed no signs of awakening, localized materialization was happening. From the monitors and sensors outside, the glowing clouds continued to visibly roil and turn while incredible things would appear amid the mist from time to time. Sometimes, it was a domed buttress, sometimes a crystal point, but most of the time, what appeared were nondescript crystalline sections.

These crystalline sectors were not the real form of any part of the starship. They were a special sort of projection. The localized awakening resulted in the appearance of these "silhouettes" that should not have existed, creating a very bizarre scene.