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The technician licked his lips nervously, sweat beading across his brow and trickling down his temples. Trav Kellen had been doing this on the side long enough to know a bad deal when he saw it. This business was bad, really bad, but the guy had offered to pay him what amounted to over a year’s salary for it. He glanced around the interior of the dark cargo locker, wringing an oily rag in his hands and trying to look anywhere but at the cloaked individual standing a few feet away from him,

‘Mm, so this is it?’ Spoke the shrouded man, not looking up from the dataslate in his hand. The technician started at the sound of the other’s voice, finding something about the nature of it deeply disturbing. He licked his lips again and stammered a response,

‘Y-yeah, that’s all you asked for. Flight logs from the Karavessa, should all be there.’ Kellen coughed lightly and clutched the rag in his fists, his nails were beginning to tear bits from the fabric.

‘Splendid.’ Said his cloaked accomplice, casually tucking the slate into his robes and turning to leave. A shadowed figure moved aside as he neared the edge of the single pool of light filling the room and the technician took a step after him calling out,

‘Hey! What… what about my payment?’ All confidence vanished the moment he began speaking, leaving the question little more than a sniveling appeal. A chill bolted through him as the cloaked one stopped. The technician whimpered and backed towards the rear wall of the locker, knowing he’d just made a big mistake, ‘I’m sorry, I… forget it!’ He cowered against the wall, beginning to weep.

Turian Lebachus simply shook his head, chuckled and continued on his way out, the form in the shadows following after him.

The technician thought himself safe for a moment until he realized the resonance of the other man’s laugher was building rather than subsiding. The hollow, mirthless noise doubled upon itself until it began lashing across his ears. Kellen cried out as the noise continued to grow, clasping hands to his head. A nauseating, icy pain raked across his mind with every echo of that mocking laugh and he could feel something sticky and warm smearing his fingers as they clawed at his ears.

The heavy door slammed slut and Trav Kellen screamed so loud the glowglobe on the ceiling shattered, just seconds before his skull imploded.

‘I believe we’re done here, Mekura.’ Lebachus spoke, his voice breathless and unsteady as the resonance of the technician’s horrid death throes teased his ears. There was a quiet susurration of assent from beside him, even in the light of the hall outside the cargo locker his companion remained wrapped in a cloak of darkness. As the two began to move away someone shouted behind them,

‘Hey! You two, hold it right there.’ A pair of enforcers had emerged from an adjoining corridor, no doubt having heard the technician’s screams. Both carried auto pistols, drawn and aimed, but the sorcerer and his shadow ignored the command without missing a step. One of the enforcers moved forward then and reached out to grab the inky garb of Mekura

‘I said stop, are you fething deaf ?’ The man bellowed. As his hand sought purchase he gasped in alarm. The darkness surrounding Mekura’s form melted away before his eyes. Like liquid, cold between his fingertips the shadowy substance cascaded to the floor and the creature came about to face him. It was porcelain white and hairless with obviously feminine anatomy; a sinuous form wrapped about the limbs and midriff in straps of leather and cord. Blackened fingers elongated and curved into fine blades over a foot long each and her bare feet were fashioned with hooked talons like those of a raptor. The enforcer looked in utter shock upon an elegant face which bore neither eyes nor a mouth.

‘No, just blind and mute.’ Said Lebachus without turning around. Mekura’s head tilted as the other enforcer, backing off, began to reach for his com bead.

In flash of motion she was upon him, a forearm cloven effortlessly. The enforcer’s hand fell away as his fresh stump began pumping a spray of bright crimson. His eyes fixated upon the gushing wound, features quickly growing pale. When he attempted to refocus and raise his weapon another glint of black liberated that hand as well. Mekura swayed before the man as he slumped down to his knees, both arms pouring a pool of blood out onto the floor. Her foot lashed around savagely, hooked talons ripping out the enforcer’s throat in a spatter of torn sinew and arterial red. The motion brought the lethal creature smoothly around to face the other man just as his weapon discharged.

The bullet punched through one cheek and out the other, scattering flecks of black blood. Mekura twisted, issuing a noise of mute ecstasy as the dark ichor began dripping down her chin. The enforcer fired again and again, burying more slugs in the perverse creature’s alabaster flesh. Shadowy blood coursed freely from the fresh wounds, writhing in serpentine patterns across near translucent skin. Veins bulged, crisscrossing her flesh like a network of roots, and drank the black liquid in hungrily before the wounds themselves pinched closed and abated its flow.

She paused as the enforcer’s gun clicked empty repeatedly, the man’s face a mask of blank terror. As he was about to open his mouth to speak, a weaving of glinting blades rendered his face to an unrecognizable pulp of shredded flesh and hemorrhage and he simply fell backwards with a damp gurgle,

‘Mm… are you done?’ Lebachus chuckled dryly as Mekura straightened up over her kills. The blood splashed across her form being drawn in directly though her skin just as her own had been. There came a sound something like a giggle though unearthly and detached in its nature as she moved back to her master’s side. The shroud of darkness curled in from the shadows of the hall to enfold her once more,

‘You can play all you like once we reach Eostra, we should not keep the good Captain waiting.’ The sorcerer spoke and, once again silent, his unearthly companion nodded in agreement.