#camar

“What were you thinking?” Horne shouted, still in full armor save for her head. She stared up at the substantially taller Camar.

“It opened fire on one of my knights.” Camar growled back.

“One of your knights?” Horne threw her hands up. “Hurlant was deputized by me. Hurtlant, Brach, my daughter, Kyle, all of them are Order of Protection and Rescue, she’s one of MY Knights.”

“Order of Protection and Rescue falls under the command of the military orders during a crisis situation. Our extinction sure as Zarr seems like a crisis to me.”

“But the Order of the Steel Talon doesn’t exist, officially.” Horne nodded forward, subconsciously making her horns as tall and prominent as possible. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that. What exactly did you DO back home? What does black ops do centuries after global unification? I’m still waiting on that ‘nuanced explanation’ you promised.”

“That’s classified and immaterial!” Camar shouted. “There was a threat, I responded.”

“That weapon was no threat to Hurlant in full armor and you know it. You could have provoked a full scale firefight.”

“And what if I had?” Camar crossed her arms, her own dorsal spines rising in response to Horne’s own display. “You’re so attached to your pet shrews you don’t see they’ve got teeth and teeth are evolved for biting.”

“What are you saying?”

“You may think this is a grand chance for peace with another genus but I’ve got as many egghead brains on my team as you have on yours, even if they’re both in the same body. Mine brought up some good points. Like how when two animals fill the same biological niche in the same area that one gets displaced or wiped out.” Camar took a step forward, Horne did not move back. “Imagine if this happened to us, if instead of a monster rock hurtling from space to kill us, it was a dozen or so big-brained flappers from the Triassic, and lets say they showed up with technology hundreds of years more advanced than ours. What would happen?”

“That depends on if they were friendly or-”

“We’d have wiped them out! Not just ‘we’ as in dinosovians, I mean ‘we’ as in my order. That, Sheriff, is what black ops does, in any time period. We solve problems.” Camar’s cold expression barely disguised her anger. “And yes, we had a global government, with six different species living together as equals, and the world still needed saurs like me. And these overgrown mammals can’t unite one species!” Camar turned her attention to the gathered DinoKnights, pointing a thick finger at Linn. “If we give them a chance to prepare and learn our weaknesses, then they’ll be hanging your daughter’s bones right next to the great beasts! Come one, come all, and gawk at the corpses of history’s greatest mistake, the dinosaur-people! Don’t forget to collect all ten plastic models of their artfully posed skeletons, the gift shop is on your left!”

“And when more of us come through, you’d want them to come back to a war?” Horne said, poking her claw against Camar’s chestplate. “Because that’s what you’re going to start.”

“Better they come back to a war than to an ambush.” Camar said. “Not that it matters. You are relieved, sheriff, I’m pulling rank.”

Horne stopped. She looked around to the other DinoKnights surrounding them. Brach pushed his way forward, staring at Camar’s familiar face.

“Sugarspines, you know we’ve been through a lot, so you know I respect you, and I mean it when I say this-” He said, crossing his arms, straightening his spine, his head rising to brush the ceiling of the command center.

Hot as the days in the desert my be, the nights are out as cold, maybe more so. The wind which hours ago may burn bone white now blows cold sand across the dunes. It is a good night for killing.

Two figures stand facing one another in the desert outside the city of Camar. One in fine raiment, black with gold buttons and white lining. The other is dressed half so well, and is bound to a rope, held by their finely dressed captor. The captor pushes their hostage to the ground, where their knees dog into the sand. They look to their master, eyes pleading. They do not understand. They ask why.

The captor answers.

Love.

There is no sound as an ornate dagger is slid into the eye socket of the captive, but one could almost imagine the sound of their light sniffing out echoing off of the sand. Their corpse falls silently to the ground.

The finely dressed figure pulls back the dagger, sliding a finger along it’s edge. The scraping noise is accompanied by a low chanting from the weapon’s owner. Moments later, another figure arrives from somewhere else, clad in black so dark it appears to be a void. The sand responds to the figures presence a moment too late, as if it has yet to realize there is weight pressing upon it. The figure stands a foot or more above the finely dressed killer. Neither move for a long moment.

Finally, the killer releases a shaking breath. They take a step forward, but the shadows of the night sky seem to gather before the black-clad figure and violently shove the killer away, sending them sprawling. A sound echoes from the void-black figure. It may have been speech, or it may have been the sound of grinding, breaking bone dragged across jagged stone. The tone, regardless, is enraged. The tall figure slides forward as if falling sideways, stopping abruptly only a foot away from they who summoned it. It looms above them, and the killer again makes to approach, speaking quickly and desperately. Whatever they say, they are able to proceed unimpeded. They stand, putting only inches between the two. Slowly, the killer moves their face closer to that of the otherworldly presence. They kiss the face if death.

The killer stiffens, but does not pull away. As the moments pass, their skull begins to crack and crumble. Soon, there is little mouth left to make contact with death’s visage. Only now does the killer pull away. They reach up a hand and gently stroke death’s face. When their hand is again at their side, a knucklebone is cracked.

They speak again to death, as well as they are able. They ask of death some question. Death dies not answer. It turns, having seemingly forgotten it’s suitor, and glides to the corpse. It kneels, and it’s cloak pools around the body as a fluid. The bones therein glow momentarily, and then are passive again. Death stands again, it’s duty dine. The now disfigured killer stands, unable to leave so soon.

Suddenly, death looks to the city. It glides towards the walls of the settlement, fast as rain. Even as it is moving to harvest again, it turns to the killer and speaks again. With a scream, the killer feels their skull reconstruct itself, piece by rotten piece, until it is the same as it was before. Except, they notice, for a single, nearly invisible crack, which runs from the bottom of their left eye socket to their nose. They look to death, hand in their mouth. They wonder. But the spectre is gone, past the walls of the Prince’s city, gathering some dead citizen.