The following is an excerpt from a set of children's stories concerning Sith Lore)
An old man approached Darth Sangraal on her mountain retreat, and found the Regenerator meditating in contemplation of her existence.
And the old man said 'I seek wisdom'
Sangraal smiled at the old man, for wisdom was a thing she both had an abundance of and mocked herself for.
'I have wisdom, but it may not be a thing you find useful' The Dark Sage cooed. 'Speak unto me. What do you seek?'
'My son has fallen and become your disciple.' the old man said bitterly.
'My condolences' she remarked. 'But I have need of disciples'
'How might I draw him away? The old man asked
Sangraal pondered this for a moment. "If you would draw him from me, simply give your son something I cannot,' she answered finally, for she was well known for her willingness to answer an enemy.
"And what would that be?" the old man pondered.
Sangraal looked at the old man in bemusement. 'Is it not obvious? Tell him why you yourself stopped serving me...if you have the nerve.'
The old man departed and neither troubled her nor his son any further.
(Excerpt from 'Allegories of the Dark Lady of Regeneration')
...
Coruscant, Great Sith War
The sky was shrouded in tears of fire. The Jedi Temple had still not stopped the Anti-spacecraft fire since the Interdictor's had set up orbit.
The leader of the blue-armored Senate Commandoes, a female in full gear, hefted her great Vibro-Claymore and awaited the attack just outside the doors of the Chancellors Office. The Mandalorians had been trying to shut down the Forcefield protecting it for the past minute. They'd be through in seconds.
The other Commandoes hefted their repeaters. The invasion so far was going badly and everyone knew it. The only reason the Republic hadn't tried to discuss terms was because the Jedi Temple and it's inhabitants were still fighting brutally. That and any talk of surrender was dismissed by the government: The Republic had long since stated it's intent to fight to the bitter end, and threatened to take all their enemies with them in the process. So far they had proved more than willing to make good on that threat: Mandalore had recently been assassinated by a Republic developed bioweapon...along with eighty percent of the inhabitants of Mandalore's namesake world and the survivors of that attack had sworn not to stop until the Republic was utterly destroyed this time, avenging the string of humiliating losses in the past.
The Commander counted at least a dozen surviving commandos. They had acquitted themselves valiantly. None could call them cowards. Not after the horrendous losses they endured evacuating surviving politicians from the Exo-suit equipped Mandalorian Special Forces.
The Commander was clad in the dark blue durasteel armor typical of the senate's defenders. Her head concealed by a full helm adorned with a metal, Mohawk like crest. An armor weave cape draped her shoulders as she held her claymore in front of her with both hands, awaiting the breach. The others defending the supreme chancellor were armed with assault blasters and vibrodaggers.
The sparks from the torches on the other side of the door traveled up the seam of the sealed door. She hefted her sword above her head. Exar Kun had murdered the Chancellor, and most of an in Senate session, and she and her men had sacrificed their own escape getting what few senators remained in hiding so as to maintain Continuity of Government. Her men had been beaten, hammered, reduced to a handful now held up in the late Chancellor's office.
"DEATH OR GLORY!" The Commander shouted, and those under her command shouted the same as the doors blew open. The Mandalorians came in shooting and the commander charged, her sword crashing through the neck of one Mandalorian while she backhanded another so hard he flew into his fellows, and her sword came up for a vertical slice through the relatively unarmored groin of the next. Her free hand stopped one of the armored warriors from completing an attack with his wrist blades, ruthlessly breaking the arm with a simple rough twist before beheading him also, kicking his body into the wall close by. The Mandalorians fired, winging her in the shoulder but she powered through it, charging into the crowd and leaping. The warriors corrected, firing into the air, but she had already completed the landing, and her sword tore through two more as she slipped into a battle madness, violently swinging her blade at everyone that wasn't republic, the sword sang menacingly through the air, slashing through armor mounted muscle as her men then advanced, firing at other Mandalorians trying to get into the room, some tackling Mandalorians who got too close to The Commander, who found herself under assault from two armed with Vibroswords, who furiously slashed at her arms. She retreated, parrying savage blows that aimed at her shoulders and waist before her attackers were downed by shots from her men. She and one of the other commandos teamed up and took point, her leading, wondering why the firing had suddenly stopped.
The bolt of lightning that hit her man answered that. He was covered in black and red tattoos, a sneer on his face.
The Commander saw only blazing purple white...
...
...and the Veteran snapped awake in her bed, heaving in gulps of air, remembering the lightning, the pain...
A real leg swung out of the bed, followed by a metal one and the Veteran rose stumbling through the dark of her house, feeling her way through the pitch black until the familiar archways of her bathroom touched the tips of her fingers, and she lit the oil lantern in her bathroom.
She stared in the mirror, dirty brown hair hanging over her eyes. She stared at the discolored patches of synthetic flesh that had been grafted to her face and arms and parts of her shoulder and chest. Soft beige met chalk white at the seams. The synthskin functioned perfectly, yet she still felt phantom itching on occasion.
It was the nightmares and seizures that were the real problem. Turns out being violently electrocuted by a Sith Lord has long term health problems attached. Like developing a pathological fear of electricity.
The Veteran stared at herself some more, trying to get her bearings. Her face was rounded at the cheeks, but with a somewhat narrow chin. Her nose was small, narrow, and she was tall. She got her breathing under control eventually, but she knew she wasn't going to sleep any more.
She took the lantern and began to travel downstairs, down to her primitive wood-fired stove to boil some tea.
The Veteran was working her small acre of crops in the barely lit dawn hours in the grain fields of planet Castell. She'd chosen to construct her farm house by hand out here in the isolated wilderness, surrounded by endless golden grain fields and flowers, cut by only a single well tread dirt road that went past the house, which was of a simple design of wood and glass, with a primitive shingled roof. A simple steel hand scythe in her grip cut down the grapes she was growing, preparing to process them for fermentation.
"Commander?" called out a man's voice in the distance.
The Veteran didn't look up from her harvesting. "You with Disability Services?" she called out, her accent coarse and tone deep.
The man, a dark skinned, bald human with green eyes, clad in a yellow and red officers uniform, opened the crude, waist level door of the fence set up around her home. "Captain Von Delri, at your service ma'am. I, uh, am here to speak to you regarding the claim you filed at the Veteran affairs office. I would have contacted you over a terminal, but you apparently don't own one."
"I prefer people to look me in the eye when they're gonna tell me 'No'."
"We are aware that your nightmares have increased, but giving you access to the type of medication you've requested isn't covered by republic insurance policies. They also carry significant health risks," Captain Delri explained carefully, respectfully. "It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that the Service has to turn down your request. We are perfectly happy to recommend alternative forms of therapy, give you access to support groups for returning soldiers-"
"I don't need to listen to a bunch of people whine about what they had to do to survive. I saw what they had to do, they don't need to tell me," The Veteran replied with a snort, putting a bundle of grapes in a basket next to her. "And I don't need no therapy animal. I don't need no other mouths to feed. You guys ain't even paid me fully for all the 'Unofficial' stuff I was involved in."
She rose, clad in plain brown slacks and boots, with a full sleeved plaid shirt, hefting her basket of grapes to her nearby barn, where the other barrels of wine were maturing.
"The Republic is still recovering from a devastating war with two longtime foes. We barely won-resources are scarce still."
"Your problem, not mine. I just fought in it," she replied exhaustedly.
"May I ask how your electrophobia treatments are progressing?"
"Fine. I'm almost ready to use a flashlight," she lied.
"Your doctor says you haven't shown for your last three appointments."
"Was busy," she lied, going back to the second bush of grapes and returning to cutting.
"He can't help you if you don't show up, Commander."
"Not a Commander," The Veteran replied tersely. "Not anymore."
"They say your men would still follow you if you asked it."
The Veteran didn't look away from her grapes. "News to me, Captain," she responded quietly.
"I am trying to help you, Ma'am."
"Get me something stronger to kill these nightmares and I'll buy that."
"The isolation isn't doing you much favors either. Have you contacted any relatives?"
"No," The Veteran answered. "They got problems of their own. Don't need mine."
"That's not a healthy attitude," Delri snapped. "Cutting yourself off from the world won't silence the Demons in your heart. The Demons will only get louder in the silence. The Demons will be in your home, in yourself, until you excise them."
The Veteran turned to look at him. "We done yet?" her look was piercing. The noon sunlight made the synth skin glow.
Delri frowned. "Yeah. For now."
The Veteran went back to her harvesting as Captain Delri walked down the dirt road to the closest spaceport.
...
The Veteran sat on her front porch, and drank her unwatered wine, watching the sun go down. Her eyes had a glaze to them, her body almost numb. The wine cup slipped from her hand, spilling thick, dark red liquid on the unpainted wood beneath her. She barely stirred, only noticing the thick liquid as it ran through an incline, a small imperfection in the way she had worked the material. She watched it slowly work a way down the hand made steps, saw a small, diffused reflection of her face in the waning light.
The Veteran thought about rising. Thought about it. Decided against it. Too numb. Too tired. She She continued to watch it for the sake of watching it.
It dripped down one step, a few stains at first, then the rest started to pour and join the stains on the first step. The Veteran's eyes drooped. Fluttered.
"Prices, Soldier. Prices for everything."
The Veteran, upon hearing those words, was out of her seat, heart pounding. Those words. She'd heard those words, somewhere. She couldn't remember where though. A surprising chill cut through the numb. It was night. She hadn't noticed the sun go down. She saw a campfire in the distance. A short walk from her home. She hadn't noticed that either.
She stumbled back into her home, grabbed her hunting Slugthrower, a double barreled rifle, hefted it uneasily, and unsteadily headed down the front steps of her house. She noticed a trail of wine on her chin and wiped it off, hefting her gun clumsily at the figure in silken gray wraps, sitting on a log, watching the fire. She could not see his face, it was as shrouded as the rest of his thin, wiry body.
"Come. Sit." the breathy, low voice of the man said, bidding her to a nearby log.
"Why'd you set up so close to my house?" The Veteran asked, her speech labored.
"I did not set up on your property. Just outside it," the figure said. "I didn't see the problem."
"You're too close."
"Isn't that the truth for everyone where I am concerned," the figure noted dryly, tossing a dead twig to the flame.
"Everyone?"
"Figure of speech, dear."
"Ain't no figure I been introduced to," the Veteran said with a slight growl, the numbness falling away a bit. "You got yer' face all hid. Why?"
"Definition," the figure answered, tossing another twig to the flame. "I'm told the smell of burning wood is pleasant. Is it pleasant for you?"
"Show me your face."
"We both know there is nothing underneath here, Soldier."
"Hells that mean?"
"Prices. That's what I told you that day. Always prices."
"We met somewhere?" The Veteran asked, a mortal tremble in her spine shaking the aim in arms already swayed by unwatered wine.
"We met every time you shoved your sword through bone and sinew. Every time your hand crushed another's throat. Every time your knuckles pounded through a skull so hard the brains came out of the ears."
"I'm not proud of those things," the Veteran said quickly, knowing who she spoke to now. "Didn't know I was so bad you'd show up in person to collect."
She threw the rifle aside. "Will it hurt, where I'm going?"
"So eager to go?"
"No. But I ain't no coward. Karma's a Schutta. What Daddy said, anyway."
"I'm not here to collect you."
A pause. "Am I going to Hell? For the things I done?"
"Not my purview. I just collect."
The Veteran sat on the previously offered log. She frowned. "Where are the stars? Can't see no stars."
"You've been drinking unwatered wine. Nobody's vision works right after unwatered wine," the figure said. "Let's talk price, Soldier."
"What price?"
"I'm not surprised you don't remember," The Figure said, passing a twig to her. She hesitated before taking it, tossing it to the flame. Sparks erupted from it as the fire ate through the remaining resin in the twig. "Few remember me speaking to them. You probably convinced yourself it was a nightmare. That and you'd taken a few bolts of lightning."
"The hell kinda deal we make?" The Veteran grumbled.
"It'll make sense as events progress," the Figure answered. "Right now though, I would like you to do something for me. I would like you to walk your wine off. Take a stroll through the fields."
"Why?"
"It's part of your price," the Figure explained.
The Veteran pulled herself up wearily, feeling the wine burning in her stomach.
"I'm terrified," she confessed, shaking.
"Again, understandable. You have good reason to be," the Figure replied. "Take your rifle with you."
The Figure waved his hand and the fire went out. The stars appeared in the Sky and the Veteran still shook, knowing she was alone yet not alone.
With still trembling hands, she grabbed her rifle, and proceeded to the thick grain fields. The adrenaline and fear of encountering who she encountered making the Alcohol worse as she stumbled deeper into forbidding grains.
...
The Veteran couldn't quite feel the chill wind touching bare skin on her arms. Her metal foot hit the grain plants with a noticeable crunch. The flesh foot was softer, more cautious, and more numb. The metal leg was one she still hadn't gotten use to.
She held the rifle as steady as possible. She was doing terribly at that. Beyond terrible. The rifle swayed like a soft branch in a gust of wind.
The Veteran forced herself to concentrate. The wine made everything harder. She forced herself to stop shaking.
She heard voices in the distance. Her numbed mind had to struggle for a few seconds to make a coherent decision. It was a chant, a harsh language unknown to her. She smelled smoke. She smelled blood and burning ozone.
The latter smell sent her into fits of quick breathing. She remembered the burning pain of lightning, the smell of oxygen vaporizing from the strength of it...was there electricity around?
She didn't have to ask herself what she would do. If she saw so much as an arc of it, she would run, as fast as her legs could carry her. She would run and hide in her house. She would lock the door and not come out for days if she had to.
This was stupid, a part of her sneered in her head. She was probably so drunk she had imagined that campfire meeting. And now she was imagining all of this.
She stepped into a clearing in the grain fields. A pentagram had been burned into the ground. And men in black robes and bone white masks stood in a circle around it. In a dark night, they looked darker still.
She stumbled backward, fell over, crunched the plants loudly. She was running through the fields behind her a few seconds later. She knew who they were. She didn't have to ask. She knew Sith when she saw them. She'd been cooked by one hard enough that it would have been impossible for her NOT to recognize what they were.
The Veteran didn't know what they were doing here. And she didn't care. Her only concern was saving her own skin in her drunken stupor. She didn't even know where she was running, having lost sense of her orientation in her panicked escape.
The fist came from the left. The alcohol dulled it, but she was sent hurling backward all the same.
Her gun went off. She heard someone yell but she didn't care where it came from. She wanted to live. She scrambled up and as soon as someone came close, she reacted.
Her hand shot out, clutching her victim by the throat. She never felt the effort to lift him up by the neck, because she was too busy casually flinging him upward, even as she broke the neck with the ease of snapping a cracker in half. No scream, just an exhale and a gagging sound from a crushed trachea.
Fear making her body prickle everywhere in a sensation that unpleasantly reminded her of electricity, The Veteran caught the dead body by a leg as it fell, flinging it into a larger, burlier Sith in armored black robes, the corpse impacting with enough force that the larger, taller man whose features were still hooded, was sent flying backward into the wheat.
The snap hiss and red glow behind her made her wheel around, catching a descending pair of hands and crushing them both so fast and hard she felt broken bone and smashed sinew burst through the skin between her fingers from her attacker. His shrieks of agony only filled her with further panic. A crude blow from a closed fist caved in his chest and left a visible crater as he fell dead into blonde wheat.
She saw her gun, grabbed it and ran, putting a bullet in another Sith as the robed figure brandished a purple lightsaber to her right, about to strike. The crackle of lightning made her freeze everywhere, made her freeze so hard her muscles hurt as a bolt shot past her.
She was back at the chancellor's office, felt the burnt smell of ozone in her soul as her body seized up. She choked, the panic attack coming fast. Months of therapy, and she couldn't even go near a lit bulb. She hated anything with electricity, because with it came the risk of being shocked. Even static electricity from her clothing could cause a panic attack. She was face down in the blackness of the grass, terrified. Unable to move. The Ozone smell was everywhere. Always everywhere.
Still paralyzed by the encounter, even though none of the lightning had actually hit her, The Veteran could not even resist as a pair of arms turned her over, forcing her to look at the hooded shadow brandishing a lightsaber above her. In spite of her paralysis, The Veteran still managed to send spittle towards him. The hooded figure merely laughed and brought a boot down on her face.
...
"Should we kill her?"
"After that display? We should probably see if she can be put under contract," the Hooded Sith, a female, answered her male peer jokingly.
"Why has the Master ordered she be spared?"
"The Master has a use, obviously."
"To what end? I do not understand why we are to perform the ressurection ritual here. There were a dozen safer places this could have been done," the male Sith complained.
There was only the cold gust of wind and the night air, yet the male Sith took a more deferential tone and posture as he heard the silent voice of the Master in the night.
"I shall question it no further," the Sith spoke quickly, an edge of fear in his tone.
The Master's voice carried through the breeze over to the unconscious woman that had killed three of their men. Every Sith present was instantly aware that to harm the woman would incur terrible wrath upon themselves. Their master was difficult to anger, but once one was successful it was generally a good idea to run.
"Is everything prepared?" The head Sith asked.
"The Ritual is ready to perform. We must do so now, before it hits midnight. We should have been done an hour ago-" the previously chastised Sith pointed out in the darkness of the wheat field.
The Master's voice carried a hint of warning in the wind.
The Sith bowed his head, not understanding at all why the Ritual had been delayed so long by the Master. "Please excuse my impatient nature, My Master."
The Sith present began to drag the unconscious Veteran aside, away from the Ritual site.
"How could she have such ferocious strength?" one of the other female Sith remarked. "Did you see what she did to Amenus' wrists and chest?"
"Only other time I've ever seen anything like that was this beating I saw a wookiee bouncer give to a Gran. All three eye stalks caved in within two seconds. Trust me, this woman gets her hands on you, you're dead." the chastised Sith remarked as they deposited her in the grassy patch nearby.
The remaining Sith gathered in a circle around the bloody pentagram they had carved into the wheat field. They began to chant. The Master's voice rippled through the wind in ecstacy.
The Pentagram glowed red, bright, blood red. The wind swirled around them as one gathered the Organs they had harvested, dumping it into a pile so the Master could rework the genetic material through their magics.
Red lightning flashed from the sky, traveling down in an instant to the Pentagram. But instead of scorching the immediate area in wheat fueled fire, it gathered into the Pentagram itself. There was a scream, sharp and piercing, seemingly from everywhere. The Veteran jolted awake and froze as it all came back to her. She was still stiff from fear, but she forced herself up awkwardly. Had to get away. Had to run.
"Something is wrong!" one of them shouted.
The screaming came from everywhere, even as something started to coalesce in the middle of the Pentagram. The Veteran was running, running as fast as she could, hyperventilating, even as the red lightning flashed and surged, threatening to make her muscles lock up again. The lightning was everywhere, escaping it became her only priority. The crackle of it danced along her spine, and her adrenaline was all the worse for it. In her nigh-overwhelming panic, she saw the strange, gray covered man watching her from the distance for a split second as she ran past. She failed to see the log. She stumbled as she tripped, but catching herself.
The screaming grew louder and deafening, and then an explosion of red that she only caught a sliver of from the corner of her left eye alerted her to the...wave...of red energy screaming towards her. The Veteran didn't even have time to yell.
The world went black and all she felt was pain.
...
The Veteran shot up in the crushed remains of burnt wheat. It was dawn. The wheat fields around her were utterly burned, most stalks reduced to ash swirling around in a hot morning wind. She picked herself up, dusted herself off, and stared at the burnt ruin around her.
Hesitantly, she went forward. She needed her gun, and she had gotten the distinct feeling things hadn't gone as planned for the Sith. If she was lucky most of them were dead. If not, she would have to try and finish them off. No way the ones still alive weren't wounded. Not after that. Her fists clenched as she approached the circle of crushed wheat where the Pentagram had been created. The organs that were at the center were gone, a red smear trailing into the wheatfield from that center. The Sith present were dead, had been dead for hours. The corpses were as scorched as the wheat around them.
The Veteran spotted her rifle and sprinted for it. She snatched it up, opened the breech, took out the spent round, and snapped it shut.
The smoke wafted in front of her face as she went looking for whatever had made the trail...
She stumbled through a once golden field of wheat, a hangover from unwatered wine casting a slight numbness over her organic parts and a haze over her vision.
It was the primary irony of her situation...she could not hide from her phobia like she wanted. Her body was partly artificial, and thus powered by electronics. Consumption of alcohol helped her forget this fact. Most of the time. The trail was wet still and in the faint pale blue light of early dawn she could tell whatever had moved from the Pentagram had done so recently. She moved slowly into the taller grains. What had the fiends summoned?
Adrenaline and fear made the alcohol burn faster through her system, but not by much. Her metal foot crunched burnt wheat loudly, and she cursed its clunky nature. It dragged with annoying regularity also, and felt too heavy. All her years of service and that was the best disability could give her. A clunky old robot foot. She should have been a mechanic, like her cousin.
That was the other thing that drove her to drink: she did not feel whole. Parts in her, not all of them viewable with a medical scanner...were missing. And the gnaw of reaching for them had her on edge constantly these days. The Veteran felt her natural arm trembling and stopped it by sheer force of will. Sweat beaded on the natural parts of her skin.
The crunch of burnt and bloody wheat was all she heard in the grain fields in the early morning. She heard something move ahead of her in the wheat stalks. Her gun snapped straight forward as she drew a bead. She steadied her breathing. She moved as carefully, as quietly as she could. The mechanical whir in her artificial leg sent images of electric sparks into her brain, sending a chill up her spine. She felt her real skin develop goosebumps.
The blood trail grew redder and thicker as she moved along through the stalks. She heard nothing. She saw the stalks ahead of her soaked in blood. She braced herself and then slowly poked her rifle through the bloody stalks...
...an empty, dusty road greeted her. The road that led to her house, in fact.
She looked up and down the road. No blood. No footprints.
The Veteran's courage failed her again. Maybe she should take this as a sign and run while she could. After all, whatever had fled the area obviously hadn't cared at all about her still being in the area. Why should she? She wasn't a soldier any more. Let some other sucker handle it.
Taking the fortune of having found nothing for face value, The Veteran decided this had stopped being her problem when she lost the trail. Looking around, she decided to be smart and hoof it back to her house. She had more ammo and weapons there, and once she went into that panic shelter she had built herself under her house, it'd be six months, easy, before she came out from hiding.
The Veteran sprinted back to the ritual site, looking for the one she remembered shooting. She found him, and quickly took a dagger on the corpses belt and dug out what slug fragments she could find, before tossing the fragments into a nearby stream and going back onto the road after washing her hands and checking herself for blood. Her hands were caked with it, she realized, and she ended up washing her rifle in the water also when she realized it too had blood on it. Her clothes had light smears but fortunately few people lived out here. If she was lucky, she would make it home without running into anyone. She jogged on the road to her house. The sun was making everything brighter as the minutes crept by. She needed to get inside, fast.
The whine of distant shuttle engines made her pick up the pace, taking cover under a large tree with an impressive canopy of wide leaves. She crouched down in the tall grass, and waited, going prone. It was an attack shuttle. She waited until she spotted a black, flying wing shuttle with two laser cannons up front, close to the cockpit fly overhead at high speed. She began moving through the grass, quickly, stopping when she heard it making another pass overhead.
She waited longer this time, before moving again, not daring to get up. That could be Sith reinforcements.
So they weren't all dead. Damn.
It still wasn't her problem.
Not stopping to wonder why she had survived the initial encounter, The Veteran creapt through the grass again, moving from under the canopy of the tree, going a few dozen meters on her belly, stopping a few minutes, going a few dozen more, and repeating the pattern. Only when she rose again, saw she was about forty meters to her house, did she dare rise and sprint to it. She swiped the key to her house from under a rock near the front step, still seeing the spilled wine on it.
She scrambled to the front door, unlocking the primitive tumbler based system, she scrambled inside, slammed the door shut, and let out an exhale, collapsing onto the floor and curling into a fetal position, trembling, one hand still clutched on her rifle. She remained trembling, curled into a ball in her primitive house of wood and stone for the next ten minutes before overcoming her panic attack, and forcing herself to move. The panic shelter had a six month supply of food. She never told anyone about it. It was safe. She would hide in it and it would be safe. She would hide as long as she had to. It was hidden. She headed upstairs, the floorboards creaking with every step, gathered the box of ammunition for her rifle and a dagger on a desk next to her bed.
Her metal foot hit the steps with a heavy thud, and she clambered back down the steps, face stoic, but inwardly still on the verge of a panic-fueled breakdown. Had to hide from the Sith, had to get to safety.
She pulled up the rug in the middle of a sparse living room's floor, with a floor cut out attached underneath. She carefully headed down the trap door and made sure her feet hit each rung of the ladder as she closed the entrance over her. She set down her rifle, breathing in musty air from what was basically a supply pantry with a bed and guns, and went to light a candle from her supply.
She took a match, and struck it on her clothes, lighting a candle and placing it in a wroght iron holder, illuminating the room, revealing a bare, square room, with multiple shelves of food and non electric equipment only. Just essentials.
Before she could grab her rifle and cower next to her spare bed she turned when she heard the sound of shuffling behind her. She went white, and cold all over, stepping back in horror.
It stood, a bloodied skeleton, intestines and internal organs misshapen and burnt, pulsating and hanging loosely off the skeleton. A red glow from its eye sockets grew brighter as it stepped forward, the blood slick and wet, with a copper smell. The angle at which its head tilted gave the appearance of a rictus grin.
The Veteran stepped back more out of dumb terror than real instinct, backing all the way into a corner. No sound came out of her.
There was no sound from it either. No evil wheezing or monsterous hiss. It stood there, silent, its scrutiny worse than if it had simply charged, shrieking like a demon. It studied her. She didn't really do the same. It was more like she dared not take her eyes off it, lest it move. She was trembling uncontrollably at this point, terror sweat pouring down her face. She didn't even bother trying to use the gun. No gun was going to stop that at all.
It made no move, save to tilt its skull to one side in seeming curiosity. The candle light flickered between her and it. She was hyperventilating, still paralyzed with fear. What was it? Why didn't it just try to kill her? Did it have something even worse planned?
The beads of sweat eventually stung her eyes shut for an instant, when she opened them again it was standing in front of her.
A scream of horror at whatever was coming was cut short by a bloody, bony finger placed on her lips. A faint, dusty female voice escaped bloody teeth.
"Shhhhh. You'll wake the neighbors."