Shadow's end

Chapter 8: The Kinslayer

Corporal Sadron was standing guard outside Rasocren's cell feeling slightly tired after the rush that the former Councilman's arrest had given him. It had been a long day and the only thing on his mind had been the hour at which the next guard rotation would be happening. It usually happened at six hour intervals but to Sadron, it felt much much longer. Normally, he wouldn't have been so bothered by doing his job. In fact, he was known (not really in a good way) for loving his job as a guard. That's how he had been assigned with keeping watch on the worst criminals of the century and that now seemed to include Rasocren. The problem he had with doing this is not only the exhaustion he felt but also the inexplicable paranoia he felt. To him it seemed to come from the cell although quite vaguely, it still came from there. He knew it was baseless, no matter how twisted and evil the prisoner had become. The prisons were specifically designed to hold in extremely powerful inmates (at least in the section in which they locked up Rasocren). In fact, Sadron once guarded a Shad'raa who had walked the dark path and went on a rampage by leveling massive cities near the Shad'raa capital with just a single punch to the ground. So, not only were the walls and doors extremely resistant to that kind of power, the cells were designed to be mist proof. There were no bars and the doors had a sealing mechanism that made it impossible to escape. And yet, even after all of these precautions, Sadron still felt unsafe. Unfortunately for him, his pride of being a good guard was much stronger than his instinct for survival and he stood his ground. The next few minutes of his life would be the most painful and terror stricken that he would ever have the misfortune of experiencing.

When the cell door exploded in a blast of shrapnel, the first thought to go through Sadron's mind was that he had fallen asleep on duty. But as that evil, sinister aura became extremely overpowering, Sadron knew he was well awake. The sheer force that blew open the door had thrown him to the ground and crashing into the wall in front of him. He felt himself for injuries and found that, not only was his left arm most likely broken, but he was profusely bleeding from his right shoulder as well as a few other places on his body. When he saw the monster step out of the seemingly infinite darkness of the cell, all of that seemed inconsequential. Never in his life had he seen a beast so terrifying. Whatever was standing in front of him was no longer Rasocren. Rasocren had long, dark hair. The beast did not. Rasocren had purple skin. The beast did not. Instead, its hair was buzz cut length and it had very dark grey skin, almost like a corpse. What made it even more terrifying was that it still had every facial feature that Rasocren possessed yet the only difference was that the eyes no longer had pupils. All that was left was glowing white eyes that seemed to burn a hole through one's soul with intense hatred. The beast started to walk towards Sadron while he frantically tried to scramble backwards, forgetting that he was already up against a wall. The beast reached down and grabbed him by the throat with such titanic strength that it seemed as if he weighed nothing more than a feather. In a last desperate search for survival, Sadron looked around for his partner, the one who stood guard with him and saw her body laying motionless, the remaining half of her head pooling blood all over the floor. All reason having left him, the doomed Corporal flailed his fists and dangling feet at the beast, which still held him tight, completely unfazed by his otherwise stunning blows. Instead, it simply retracted long, ugly claws from its fingers and plunged them into Sadron's abdomen making him shriek in pain. As he screamed, the last thing he ever saw was that terrifying beast covered in his own blood and guts as it eviscerated him slowly and painfully.

When the beast was finished with that annoying pest of a guard, he looked like nothing but a pile of shredded meat and blood was splatted everywhere. This, however, was not enough for it. No, no not even close. It would not stop until every single one of the Shad'raa were dead. Even Drash'aa (especially Drash'aa). No one would be spared from its wrath. It turned away from the slaughter, not even bothering to hide it, and left the prison to find its next victim.