An Air of Finality

Throughout the Shroud, sirens rang out across cold passageways and lifeless rooms, empty but for the thousands of corpses scattered throughout its vast interior. There was no blood, except where some of the crew and their families had struck something as they'd collapsed to the deck. A single wave of energy had passed across it, and left nothing but bodies in its wake.

One corridor, in particular, was distinguished from the others by the pair of reinforced blast doors that marked its only entrance. Both were sealed, locked from a nearby terminal which, during a ship-wide lockdown, would require specific credentials and a password to open. The password had been known to only three officers, whose corpses now all wreathed the edges of a ritual circle on the bridge.

Beyond those doors, the sirens could barely be heard. This part of the ship was isolated from the rest in special ways, and the noise dampening was a side-effect of several of them. Further down the hall, which continued on for quite a considerable distance, the noise faded altogether. By the end, the only sound to be heard was the faint electric humming of the ship's emergency auxiliary lights, which shimmered in shades of faint red now in the absence of a functioning drive core.

At the end of that corridor, in front of the isolation cell at which it terminated, the last two living members of the Shroud's crew looked at each other from across a force field that neither of them could have hoped to breach.

On the outside of the cell, a jackal-headed man was leaning against the far wall for support, using the long, gnarled fingers of his right hand to keep his organs from tumbling out of the gaping wound where most of the left side of his torso used to be. Blood poured freely from his side, and from dozens of smaller gashes and cuts scattered across his body, slipping through the grated deckplates at his feet.

Inside the cell, a short man in a purple diamond-patterned vest over a white shirt stood in the center of his cell, hands clasped coolly behind his back. With glittering golden eyes, he took in the state of the jackal-headed man, and said, "I'm surprised you didn't leave immediately."

"I'd hoped that there would be a 'Kill the Patron' button outside your cell," the Jackal Man said, shaking his head briefly to focus his vision at the wall on the left side of the room, where a single red button sat in front of the cell.

"There is," said the Short Man matter-of-factly, nodding toward the red button. "It's right there, and I cannot stop you from pressing it. I'm afraid you've defeated me."

The Jackal Man shuddered momentarily, lurching forward toward the button hungrily for a moment before reality caught up to him and he stopped short. Then he stumbled back to the wall, hitting it with enough force that he couldn't suppress a sharp gasp of pain. "Fuck you. I can just leave you here."

"And risk future defeat at the cusp of an otherwise inevitable victory?" the Short Man asked with audible incredulity, still unmoving. "How short-sighted of you. You are very powerful, and I am weakened from my prolonged imprisonment. Surely there is no better time to strike me down. Press that button and you'll get a chance."

The Jackal Man's teeth creaked a little as he clenched his jaw, and his remaining eye shut tight in pain. When he opened it again, a slurry of blood, pus, and tears poured out as it congealed back into shape, swiveling madly to face the Short Man. "I am not so far gone as to believe that I can fight you like this."

"Too bad," the Short Man interjected, scowling. "But surely the pragmatist in you realizes that it's either now or whenever I escape here. Wouldn't it be easier to just end it now? Those wounds look," his eyes flicked up and down the length of the Jackal Man, and his lip curled up a bit as he finished, "unpleasant."

"Existence is torture," spat the Jackal Man. "A few little scrapes won't change that for me, and neither will being killed by you. And you aren't so powerful that you can fight all—"

The Short Man's shape detonated in a wave of energy so powerful that it washed over his isolation cell's defenses like a tidal wave crashing onto the shore. The *entire* ship shook from the sheer power of it, and the Jackal Man had to clench his fingers just a little tighter around what was left of his ribcage just to keep his heart from rattling free.

The force field between them wiggled imperceptibly and held strong; this was only the second-strongest blast it had endured in recent minutes.

The Short Man was gone. In his place, a hurricane of infinitesimal golden dustmotes swarmed within the cell, swelling up as it gathered strength and *pushed* on the walls around it, causing the entire space to bow outward a little bit at a time, like lungs filling with a series of short breaths. The Jackal Man's eye glimmered with uncertainty, and he quickly planted one foot in the direction of the exit.

The voice within the cell resonated from every wall of the ship at once; every deckplate, every fixture, every console and frame. It came from all around, booming with cosmic rage and fury. It shook the vessel so hard that the Jackal Man nearly lost his balance as he backed up into the corridor.

And then the room snapped back, and the cloud of golden dust slammed back into the shape of a short, unassuming man with his purple vest and white shirt, staring at the Jackal Man with those piercing yellow eyes.

The Short Man growled, "But you will, one day."

And after a moment's hesitation, the Jackal Man simply fled.