SAPPHI ARTWORKS!!! SAPPHIIIIIIIIII WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *ahem*, anyways! This piece I could also title, "The Fate of the Derelict Space Station Teo-Frast". Buuut, since that is most fancy font, the other working title is something along the lines of "welcome to heaven". ^-^
Sapphi cooked up another full-course meal here, all over the entire canvas! This was truly a cooperative work, we were going back and forth with all the concepts and feelings here and there, although she definitely contributed the most of it considering the artwork and the lore involved! It's so sufficiently uncanny and alien, especially when one looks at the details a bit more closely!

As far as the lore goes and as I've mentioned in This Post!, Faen is essentially a researcher of artifacts and phenomena. This piece takes place after the main events of the story, in which his markings, features, and abilities have all changed and he has arrived back to a similar timeline as the one he left [this meaning: he is in sci-fi land]. So, he is off exploring an abandoned wreck of a space station with a scavenger comrade after investigating a distress signal. Upon arriving there and heading deeper, they come across this room utterly festooned with some invasive form of coral... forming all sorts of barriers, encrusting and breaching the very metal, and even interfering with electronics and sophisticated technologies such as Faen's own. It emulates some zombie-apocalypse games where the normal industrial-grey color scheme has been overtaken by an organic sheet of biomass. Various hints of wreckage are present, cracked monitors and screens and a gap in the ceiling [notice the see-through legs and feet there], as well as alien additions like the organic corrugations and suspiciously hive-like honeycomb openings in the wall. You can also see some ". ." faces in those openings, and in the hallway too! c: Faen certainly is alarmed as he records this voice log, noticing that unraveling of his nanotech suit around his tail in response to an orange droplet falling from the ceiling and somehow retaining its cohesion. The blue bubble coral is not keen on sparing the other section of his tail, either.

This all isn't a good thing, is it! C: but, the question remains: is this a hostile form of life, a neutral one that simply seeks to neutralize artificial constructions, or even a positive one aiming to ensure an audience? The coral is not the only foreign presence here, if one looks closely at the holes in the wall or up on the ceiling. My favorite unsettling bit is directly along the central hallway in the background, besides Faen's left arm. Ooohh, I don't like thaaaat. Further details and much needed zoom-ins of the piece can be found aaall the way at the bottom of this post's text, on Bluesky or Twitter from Sapphi's posts! <3

This was my prompt for Sapphi to really lean into the more horror-style and visual storytelling skills of her repertoire, and she most definitely delivered! Notice the unravelling fabric along Faen's spacesuit or the fact that the back of his neck bears a small encrusting of coral interfering with his helmet's functions such that they remain only along his horns and a bit of his frill. Or! The claustrophobic feel from the foreground's pillars set so close to the viewer's perspective. Seeing this develop from sketch to colored and rendered was such a treat, not to mention the color theory of the orange-yellow light suffusing the piece fading to the colder blues at the edges.

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Artwork by  sapphi
Find the Original Submission here!
For this piece, there is an additional [https://bsky.app/profile/sapphiringore.bsky.social/post/3lhmwkv6kkk27 or on twt/X!
Heckn LOVE this illustration's feel and composition still friendo! 💚