"What does this place make anyway?" Sadea said, as she walked down yet another endless hallway lined with doors. She'd pushed open a few, just out of curiosity, but all she'd seen were rows of assembly lines and stacks of unidentifiable machinery, all now silent. Some of the rooms actually contained the mauled corpses of hapless workers, the permacrete walls stained with dried blood and splattered viscera.
The psychic trail the creature had left behind was now useless. Sadea could sense its malevolence everywhere, haunting every square inch of the building and lurking in every pool of shadows cast by the flickering amber radiance of poorly maintained wall lamps, but she couldn't pinpoint the creature's location. Not that it really concerned her. She'd see it when she saw it, and then she would kill it.
There was another psychic presence that interested her. It lay down the next hallway, past a right turn, up a wobbly steel stairwell, and... behind double steel doors. She rapped on a door with her knuckles.
"Hello? I know you lot are still alive there," she called, her voice echoing eerily down the ceramic, steel, and permacrete innards of the manufactory. "Open up!"
Frantic whispers arose from the other side of the doors, muffled to the point of intelligibility. Eventually, a wavering voice arose from the tumult of shushed voices.
"Who... who is it? Help from the authorities?" The voice was unmistakably female, and it carried with it depths of exhaustion, starvation, and fear.
"Yes. I'm a freelancer. Saw the bounty notice at the town hall. So I'm here," Sadea replied. "Now, will you open up?"
Subdued cheering arose from the other side of the doors. The woman spoke again. "Thank God you're here. We've got a working tap here, but no food at all."
"Let me guess, you lot ran from whatever attacked the manufactory and locked yourself inside here, hoping and waiting for help to arrive."
"That's right. My name is Leal, fourth shift forewoman. Thank you, Great Lady, for slaying the beast."
"Oh, it isn't dead. I haven't found it yet." Sadea yawned. "Now, are you going to open up, or not?"
"You... you haven't killed it yet? But..."
"Well, I'm going to. Now, come on. Open the doors."
Frantic whispers arose again, and when they died down, Leal's reply was adamant. "We're not opening the doors. That thing is still out there!"
"So am I! Open up!"
"No! Are you insane? I just told you why we can't open the doors. As long as they stay shut, it's not getting in here."
"And you're so sure about that?" Sadea growled. "This is a manufactory, ridden with vents and maintenance tunnels, and you geniuses have chosen the one room where the only entrance is a set of steel doors."
"Well... I..."
"And I, hunting whatever this thing is, want the doors open simply so that you peons can be underfoot, useless, and in my way. There's absolutely no possibility I would want in because the thing I'm hunting isn't there already. Does that sound right?"
"Uh..."
"And there's simply no way, utterly unthinkable, that you lot have been left alone for the time being by the creature while it killed everyone outside because you've all corralled yourselves in a figurative and hopefully not literal slaughter-pen?"
"But..."
"Open the doors, Leal." Sadea took her war-staff in both hands. "Or I will."
"But..."
YOU ARE READING
Shura Saga: Burn and Slay - Cultivation, Lightning Bolts, Monsters galore
Fantasy"If it lives, we can slay it. And then burn it, just to make sure it doesn't come back from the dead," she said. "...does that happen often?" he asked. "Slaying? Yeah, duh? It's what we're here to do in the first place, dummy." "I meant the coming...
