F E A S T
The creature leant forward and began to eat, eyes flicking back and forth in case of anyone coming to steal its food.
Despite its gangly, malformed appearance it was surprisingly strong, cracking the sternum with relative ease, the harsh snap of the solar plexus sending shards of bone flying left and right. When it was finished it picked up the bloodied remains, mostly skin and bone, though a few areas of flesh remained. It dragged them off towards the entrance to its home, a trail of blood following.
There was a clang of gridiron as the ghoul retreated to its underground lair beneath the base. The eye of a security camera watched dispassionately. It had already watched and recorded the events that had provided the skulker with its meal.
The battle here hadn't been particularly impressive - the colonists outnumbered four to one, making their last stand here with old fashioned shotguns against the invaders´ blasters and RPG's.
The result had been slaughter, the entire fight lasting less than fifteen minutes. Afterwards the invaders took a few prisoners - women, the aged and children, though most of these had already died either through suicide or just mindless butchery.
They'd then retreated through the slipgate back to their own realm. A machine priest had remained behind with a cadre of troopers, using several corpses and arcane magics to perform the Desecration.
After all, this was a message; a warning.
The Desecration was around ten foot square on one metallic wall, iron spikes holding it up. It consisted of the corpses of the defenders impaled and broken, some threading through each other's intestines are spinal columns, others simply flayed to form overhanging awnings from their skin and flesh.
On the floor were the heads of all the remaining fallen, each mounted on a spike set along ley-line patterns, their lower jaws sheared off.
The ley-lines had been burned into the decking with acid - this was the spell that kept the Desecration functioning, that would strike the recovery team that came here with pure horror. The ghoul had avoided touching it instinctively.
What the spell did was sustain the reanimation of each of the corpses used in the Desecration. Those who still had tongues and jaws moaned mournfully, almost inaudibly, without lungs to give them air. At least, not connected ones.
Broken and smashed faces nevertheless rolled their eyes in grief and agony, mutilated torsos spasmed with pain, struggling mindlessly to escape the spikes that impaled their flesh.
The whole structure was composed of agony, fear, hatred and pain - the nervous systems of eighty-seven butchered linked into one blasphemous entity of woe.
The machine priest had been particularly pleased with the centerpiece, consisting of a child partially flayed and impaled through the muscle by a number of long thin spines, a tiny keening noise echoing from its throat.