It was of sanguine, hinting of mud and wanting of salt and fire.

I could hear and smell it.

It was a snap unheard, and a taste untasted.

The craving.

One for the marrow of bone.

The wanting for what lies below the flesh of unwanted foe.

Hatred, coalesced towards the one most unloved.

It was a mind designed to do nothing else but harm.

And that mind was mine - molded by the hands of me, and many of them.

And I needed another.

I knew that far below there lurked an answer to a question.

One I did not have.

But I know.

And I knew.

“Am I so lost?!”

00 - Those without.

There came a scream.

“Jkl'hrai-na kjrt?!”

Out of fright in the cold of the night – far under sundered, benighted skies of thunder – he stirred from slumber. A horrid voice resonated within his slowly waking mind, but mattered little.

Alreno found himself trapped and buried by mounds of rubble lying deep within depths beyond darkness. Several sunderous sounds above came down like waves, flooding his prison of debris as the resonance rang.

Despite the weight keeping him stuck in place, he mused over the mess of noises breaking his short – albeit unintended – respite. Eyes agog, darting across an unbroken view of the unseen, his memory cleared through a tired haze of confusion wishing to catch even the faintest glimmers from outside his holdings.

Clanks and clacks there then encroached. Muffled dissonances became clearer, coarser... those of digging.

What he found strangest was how all his expectations were skipped in the surrounding soundscape. Every brattle fell to a silence where a loud metal-on-stone creak of heavy tools should have been. Yet no mechanical noise recurred nor could a single voice be heard. He thus inferred the effort unbecoming of his fellow lowly soldiers of the Sol.

Who'd dare deign to entertain the venture? he wondered, staring blankly into shadows, listening as what sought him sifted through the tunnel's rubble. Following stronger rumbles, several heavier rocks displaced, shaking his core harder than before.

The digger lurched above, quickly causing concrete clashes, scratching at the pile with a rising ferocity. Sudden shifts sent smaller segments skating across fallen metal columns, skipping off of stone debris as the aggregate fell away. Weight alleviated. He could feel his armor entering a more responsive state, evermore unburdened.

By way of no coincidence, tiny rays of flickering light cast through and into the mound weakening around him.

In a flash, shines pierced the black with a force so strong that he had to squint at the brightness breaking the dark. His eyes winced and watered, adjusting to what at first seemed some kind of incandescence reflecting from the surface of a distant pond. The false image conjured by his muddied vision quickly cleared, giving way to reality.

Certes, a fool is I to have expected more, he thought.

Dancing far away in an elegant blaze was a tall and tempestuous orange-red fire, rising and falling in erose flames, coiling through a massive skyscraper seated on a city tier high above; flanked with refractions through crystal carvings, shattering shafts of light to a hundred flickering beams. The conflagration burned a savage hue, taking the majority of his view, but his focus was forced elsewhere.

A dark, hunched figure strode past his narrow field of vision, moving in ways too horrid to ignore. It showed itself – at first – as nothing more than a phantasmagorical silhouette; ghost-like, shrouded by shaded, swarthy, oscillating, ever-decaying mist.

Like static, the dark gilings shivered in chaos, fading back to where they seemed to appear: Nowhere.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Oh shit, he thought.

The weight entrapping his armor attenuated, allowing him to move ever so slightly. The creature crawled and clawed and tore all along his left flank, knowing what to lift, ensuring Alreno would not be crushed below.

He shimmied his arms in all directions, finding less resistance towards his right. Protected and strengthened, he shook through rocks and pulled upwards, no longer tombed to the tonnage, climbing to the top.

With a loud crash, a large column reacted to his struggles, bringing a cascade of rocks and dust upon him once again.

Why me? he wondered in willing vain.

Though buried in the mound from the waist down, being merely half-trapped was progress.

After surveying his surroundings to see where he was – as if it mattered or as if he'd even know – all he saw was rubble spilled onto a ratty road, populated with corpses, craters and scattered pieces of other damaged structures.

“Hello?!” He loudly yelled and wildly waved, his eyes fluttering towards even the faintest of movements in the darkness. Though in his mind he knew what had saved him, his inner coward longed to be wrong.

“Whoever it is you are, I'm of RB1–3, A.E division, Private Alreno Vo-...”

With one sudden sight, he found his heart wading through a terror-tide, only to be then swept within and spread thin by its sharp maw, wide.

He wasn't wrong.

Twenty feet away, just ahead of the shattered crystal bricks and broken dark-stone remnants his savior's silhouette rose to lounge in shadow as would a mirage on asphalt. Captivating, haunting, horridly large and broadly-spaced, bright-red eyes shone like molten rubies through the night, and on him, its gaze became fixed.

In the abyssal silence, it stared at Alreno for a moment without motion; the creature's predatory eyes assaying the armor he wore, opting then to regard the machinery a few moments more. The fiendish being looked long and hard at the suit protecting him; an impressive piece far beyond this world – to it – it seemed. A thick contraption of plated blue and teal-painted steel and osmium robotics, withholding the wearer from atmospheric exposure. Nothing sat in the palms of Alreno's heavyset gloves, weapons least of all. With that fact noted, it made its move, lunging forward on all fours, crawling low.

Rocks small and large cascaded as the alien stopped just short of his reach – not that he would have tried to touch it first.

It loomed and lurked uncomfortably close. Its raptorish head bobbed as would a bird's, confused, with nix evincing the cause of quandary. In fear, Alreno stared back blankly at a long and snakeish face draped with quilted, unkempt cloth furls, his eyes locking into those of the lizard. Minutes passed them by, the creature moving again only when Alreno began to fidget; his focus straying to the penumbric field of shadows the alien's body seemed to shed with elated undulations.

A long neck reined in all movements of its head, and slowly, two limbs pronged with three outstretched, spidery fingers – each drenched with blood and concrete – tarried in his view. It was clear to him that the alien meant to mitigate any misconceptions. Past the patency, its attempt was failing.

Then, acting on what little courage Alreno had reserved behind his mind's infandous cloud – one barring a break in senses to fits of screams and punches – he reached out timidly to the claws on offer.

With a sudden speed like none he'd ever seen, the creature quailed away the robe-wrapped arm in a loud snap of air and fabric, concurrently coiling the other around his gauntlet, clutching him by the wrist. Onyx-like claws raked across the paint of his armor, his muscles twitching beneath as though he felt incisions.

Sickly gray and tinged with sallow, to Alreno, its disturbingly coriaceous skin and scales were a sight made more vile by what few unblood-soused sinews strayed outside the robe's concealment, briefly betraying the alien's hidden frame.

Scratching with a foot nigh-indiscernible from the hand upon his armor, the lizard loosed rocks where the mound met Alreno's waist. Dust and shadows were becoming hard to tell apart the more it dug.

The alien pulled as Alreno wiggled and climbed, lacking anything remotely resembling coordination; both sharing a compulsion to move away from one another. Eventually, their work paid off and from the pile, the alien set Alreno free.

The rubble under them gave way as he left it, and upon dislodge they each fell, tumbling down from the weight and momentum, rolling at the mercy of the mound. Alreno remained safe within his armor, but on the creature, one sharp pain struck after another whilst sliding, spinning and whirling across the jagged cement rocks. Its robe negated little, leaving naught but its scales to take the brunt of sharp and blunt strikes against crystal and stone.

The lizard landed upon the flats of the street, and Alreno came falling right behind, the whole of his suit's weight bouncing off of his savior.

Onto its side the creature writhed in an Ouroborosian fashion, clutching different parts of itself through a silent fit. Alreno rushed to his feet, clamoring to the creature's aid. As he got barely a step away however, it stood, facing him with fingers parted and arms held wide. He took the hostile hint.

For a time, all he could do was look, feeling guilt for the pain he had caused. The alien met his stare, yet in its eyes was nothing but a lifeless, unchanging gaze; accompanied by occasional bobbings of its head and unending quivering beneath its robe. He stared for a time longer, until it became clear that his savior seldom blinked. Meekly, Alreno looked away, knowing to not approach.

“I'd've never opined you a fount of favors,” Alreno said, wearily wasting his breath.

Nary a drop of gratitude in his tone was apparent, or present, but he was thankful nonetheless. Before another word could escape his mouth though, the lizard swiftly stepped further away, as if all interest had left.

He receded as well, walking back to the mound of rubble in search of his belongings. From over his shoulder he briefly glanced at the alien, only to see its head beginning to bob once again.

For reasons unknown to him, the alien lingered nearby, waiting, and from regular turns... still watching. With time seemingly on his side, he dug through the rubble, searching for what he had lost.

Minutes passed.

When he spotted the alien from over his shoulder again, it had taken to walking on all fours, piquing his interest and pausing his venture. His attention honed in on how it took large, disgusting, gormandizing bites from bullet-riddled corpses lying in the street.

The creature tore at muscles and eviscerated abdomens, taking in whatever it could with every loud snap of its jaw; its mouth lined with strange, jagged fangs. The width at which it opened seemed impossible as it clamped onto a corpse, shaking its head from side to side, ripping flesh apart, lapping at the exposed tissue and drinking the blood.

“Ugh... urg!” Alreno gagged at the sight. His savior tore into a dead man's face, licked an eye and forced it out. Not vomiting became an active effort as he watched both prongs of its tongue slowly entrap the cord of the optic nerve, snipping at it like rusty scissors and almost erotically curling around the eye until it popped. He could stand to look no longer.

With a few minutes more of his nervous digging, he at last placed his hands around both his and another's most damning possession.

“Sys-check?” he whispered, pulling it from the mound and wiping dust from its reflective armor.

“All systems operational,” the drone replied.

Alreno let it go, allowing the machine to hover freely. He then turned around and was surprised – for whatever reason – to see that the space once occupied by the gray creature had been filled by ash, burnt skin and grains of dust blowing in the wind.

It was neither there nor gone.

In view – far off – there walked a robed and scaled silhouette shrouded in speckled shadows.

Without a moment of thought, he ran after it...

Leaving his rifle behind.