As I slipped in closer to my target, I swept my finger tips over the stone
floor, whispering words of encouragement to my forest. Immediately around me,
the ground began to bloom, like an ethereal nebulae coming into existence.
Shimmering green vines laced themselves through the broken stone floor, and
patterns of glowing leaves began to glow along the walls. It reminded me of
water rushing to fill the dry riverbed. Raising a forest so close to my target
was risky, as they aren't exactly the most unnoticeable of things. But it was a
necessary risk, for it is my forest gives me strength.

My target was a middle aged Viscanti, with large, bull-like horns, and gleaming
purple skin that looked like disease. He was wearing a long black coat, covered
in pockets, each one holding an assortment of vials and strange, shining metal
instruments. Some of them were bladed, but didn't look like any weapon I had
ever seen.

My enemy was kneeling over something in the middle of the floor, a strange
machine covered with gears, and one long vertical tube rising from the top.
Around the base of the machine were hundreds of tiny metal claws, each one
digging into the flesh of the earth.

As if sneaking around the Presidio of the Damned wasn't creepy enough, this
machine increased my fear tenfold. For I knew its purpose, and it chilled me to
the very core of my soul.

The Viscanti stood up quickly, and for a moment I thought I had been caught,
but he merely ran his hand over his sparse hair, and began to mumble with
fierce excitement. He removed one of the vials from his pocket, a crystal clear
one filled to the stopper with thick, black-purple sludge. Holding the vial over
the top of the tube, he began to flick the bottom of the vial with a yellow
fingernail. The sound resonated all through the hall, and bits of stone
crumbled away from the walls. A statue, which had been watching all this from
the back of the room, seemed to quiver, and its eyes seemed to shift towards
me. To this day I pray that I imagined those eyes.

The gears on the machine began to turn, at first slow and creaking, but quickly
growing to an eerie crescendo. In a few moments the gears where whirring in
their sockets, and the creaking had become a moan that sounded for all the
world like death. I had never known death, but in this moment I was sure that
when it was my time to go, this would be the noise I would hear, coming like a
flaming chariot to take my soul away.

The Viscanti began to pace around the machine now, his thoughts too caught up
in his research to have ever noticed me. "It needs something else," I could
hear him muttering over and over, "If the college would just give me more
time..."

It was then that I decided he should never have more time, not in this research
or even in living. I was about to do something terrible, assassinate someone far
weaker than myself. But it was necessary, and the ends did justify the means. I
slipped out of my hiding spot and brought myself right up behind the Viscanti.
Surely he could feel by breath creeping down his neck? I did the finger trick
again as I moved, bringing my forest with me.

I planted the end of my mystic cudgel in the back of the Viscanti, between his
shoulder blades and just behind his heart. Without waiting for a reaction I let
loose with a fury of splinters. At this range he had no other choice but to die.
The barbs of wood seemed to incinerate his coat and body, leaving a gaping hole
through his torso. With a short moan not unlike that of the spinning gears, he
slumped forward onto his machine.

It was necessary, I told myself.

As I turned to leave, I heard the gears suddenly come to a stop, then begin to
turn again, this time slow and methodical, clicking with each rotation. I
turned to look at it, and my entire being froze with the cold fear of a guilty
realization. The blood of the Viscanti was seeping through the machine, and the
gears were turning with it, like a grotesque water wheel. The blood worked its
way through the gears and to the base of the machine, where the metal needles
that were digging into the earth began to inject it directly into the stone.
Glowing red lines of infect began to trace their way along the floor, mingling
with my forest.

The ground in front of the machine began to tremble and shift, the stones and
dirt twisting around one another like liquid. From the center of this earthen
whirlpool a figure began to rise. Its form was composed of bits of earth and
stone, and, to my greatest fear, jagged ethereal leaves jutted out from odd
angles along its arms and legs. The abomination slithered from the pool of
dirt, moving with great speed for something of such monstrous size. Its
shoulders were broad as boulders, but the rest of its body was lean, with
muscle literally chiseled from stone. Its hands terminated in five fingers that
were over a foot long, and had no joints, just long curving blades of stone.

The creature tipped its round head back and howled, and from deep in its throat
I could hear the gears the moaning. Thick cords of red and purple saliva formed
between its teeth, which were ridiculously long and sharp.

It moved towards me quickly, its movements all tremor and flow, and I scrambled
to the side, barely dodging its first wicked slice with those terrible fingers.
I punched forward with my arm, and from somewhere in my forest a thorny vine
lashed out, aimed for the monsters neck. With a flick of its wrist it cut my
vine to ribbons, and in the same motion it moved towards me.

This time I was not fast enough, and I felt one hand wrap around my throat, and
squeeze. Instead of snapping my neck, as it easily could have, it began to drag
my body across the floor...towards the machine. As sparks began to cloud my
vision and air escaped my lungs, I could hear the moan of the gears beckoning
to my soul.