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Silent feet on metal.
A calm beating heart and quiet breaths.
Someone is ahead.
A shadow but light in comparison to the darkness.
He does not know that those will be his last breaths.
The whisper of something sharp being pulled over something dull.
The low click of metal against metal.
The one ahead notices something.
His ears twitch.
He stops to examine the door, through which blue-green light illuminates his frame.
He is like a ghost.
His horns short but his psychic sense sharp.
He turns around and stares.
The naked eye sees nothing.
The night eye just as blind.
Darkness mixed with darkness.
Immovable and indistinguishable.
A perfect void without light and motion.
He looks with his other senses.
He shrugs and turns around.
His heart beats faster.
His mouth gets dry.
Fear licks over his mind, swallowing it with one swipe.
He feels watched.
He feels frightened.
Slow he turns around, cold sweat gleaming on his brow.
His breath is caught in his lungs.
Has something touched him?
A gentle touch of invisible, cold fingers on his light-grey arm?
He backs away, pulling out his combat knife.
The hand holding the weapon trembles.
He has to hold it with both hands.
The knowledge that he is afraid makes the calm heart jump with glee.
He could never give a better present.
Except perhaps his life.
He does not notice the movement surrounding him.
He does not notice how sharp blades flashes brightly behind his back.
But he does notice the pain.
Sharp and clear.
It runs up from his side to his head and then into the rest of his body.
And then he sees the blades.
Thin claws that stick out of the front of his body.
Cold, sharp and covered in light-grey blood.
Covered in his own blood.
The knife drops on the walkway.
The clatter of metal on metal resounds within the bowls of the giant ship.
He wants to shout in pain.
He wants to sound alarm.
All he does is gasp for air.
The blades are twisted around in deliberate cruelty.
Like fingers tracing scars.
Scars they create.
Scars that never heal.
His breath gets caught in a wet sound.
Blood wells up in his mouth, painting the wall and walkway in a pale shade of grey.
The pain becomes sharp again as the blades wander up, up, up, up…
It cuts open his right side.
Merciless.
Cold.
Joyful.
His right arm dangles limply from his body, living organs exposed.
His racing heart pumps the life from the body.
His body.
He falls down with a sad thud and stares with tears in his breaking eyes into the darkness.
Something moves there.
The specter of black boots appears before his face and vanishes a moment later into thin air.
His body twitches as the life runs out of him.
It is like a fast river made of the color of the metal underneath him.
Then the body relaxes.
A wave of calm occupying the mind and then there is no pain.
The void awaits him.
Silent feet on metal.
An excited beating heart and chuckling breaths.
Someone is left behind.
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