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"Among the Ruins" The bones cried out before the waining night, a bright spark rising east to west. You could see the glimmer elsewhere, beneath the crypts, the cemetery mounds. Uk-Mudum, in the entranceway -- bones glowing, a moaning amongst the ruins. The bodies, they pile. Their possessions build a wall. The howling of the gauntlet of skeletons grew in the claustrophobic room. Air tightens off, the stench of rotting corpses and rat discards. Two men stand in the walkway leading into the chamber. Moon armor lies by a far doorway in the back -- bones rattle in the foreground. "Damn, we're not going in there are we?" One man asked, pointing his index finger into the dark, looking on towards the prized blue armor. The man stood hunched in the lowering crypt, his black hair frayed and matted. The stench hung green in the air, accenting his grey silhouette in the flickering morning light. "It's worth too much to leave amongst the bones and zombies." Jae, the other man, looked at his feet and then back towards his shaking friend. "But that Kajang or whatever will eat us alive or something -- whatever that rat is will too." He lurched forward with his back arching to look beyond the corner towards the skeleton horde. "You wanna be rich? Or do you want to lie dormant, sit here like paupers by the gates for the next decade hoping for some fool's handout." Jae frowned at his friend. His friend glared back: "You act like I'm poor. This is a lifestyle, you know." He plucked at his worn, tattered shirt and whipped his hair back in defiance -- "Perhaps you're simply greedy." "Stop projecting your Han ethics on me." Jae hunched into the next room. The bodies piled, fresh sacrifices for the king of the crypts. The moon armor glittered past in the rear of the room where the skeletons bunched the tightest. In the midst of the room, a large wall barriers, blocks off the straight shot down the middle of the hall. Their conversation continued -- "Then I'll take the left fork, Jae." Jae nodded and trudged, climbing over the mound of bodies before him. The other man did likewise across the room, past the barrier. Jae reached the skeletons quickly, slashing them across their sternum with his blue-tinged dagger -- they collapsed into piles of dust. Screams could be heard across the room. Jae began to the near the armor, only to see the other man dart across the room and leap onto it. But Jae wasn't paying attention to the man. A large form rose from the corner of the room. "Jae, you fool, you thought I'd share the prize with you?" The man laughed quietly as he pulled up on the moon armor, backed turned to the creeping form. Jae backed away. The dark man laughed in the murk as the form consumed him. The ruins and he became one, and the mounds grew. And the blood-soaked killing floor remained pristine to the touch of living flesh. The sun shone brightly in the sky as he stepped into the cemetery once more -- the east gaze blanketing the death knoll. | |