The pale moon shines like a beacon in the desert, a single pin of light which pierces through the enveloping darkness, breaking it’s stranglehold of the pitch-black desert. Long, foreboding shadows are cast across, as if the darkness desperately attempts to escape from the lunar brightness. It is this beacon that guides lost travellers in the wasteland to a small town, like some lifeless ghost trapped forever within the confines of a cell, and it will do so for many years ahead.

* * *

05412-A6 uncurled his twitching body, cold sweeping his senses away. He was amazed at how such a horrid and barren place could be so hot one moment and so cold the next. He sniffed at the air slightly. The wind blew in his favour, and because he caught the scent of exactly what he was desiring immediately upon waking so suddenly.

Man flesh.

He grinned, a long line of spittle hanging down from his greedy maw. It had been some time since he had eaten anything decent, and he was growing thin. He couldn’t get much of a workout as well, what with the inferior meals he’d been having recently, and he had been fearing for his skills – they’d grown rusty over this famine, and he needed a good way to test them, to exercise them. Well, it looked like he’d have his chance.

He instantly sprung up from his bottom and ran in his unique wolf-like fashion low over the cracked desert ground, which was littered with ancient skeletons, rocks, and the occasional struggling vegetation, but his feet ignored these, their souls hardened. He had never worn shoes.

Then, he saw it – silhouetted against the illustrious blue moon’s light was the town. Or more accurately, a shell of a town. The buildings were cracked and decrepit. The only thing that seemed to show any sign of life was a small mud and brick building which was in a state of disrepair like the others. However, it was dressed in the meek light of a nearby torch, which beckoned passers-by to enter. A sign, old and splintered, hung from the door frame, portraying only a beer mug. 04512-A6 ran across the ground to the side of the structure and peeked around the corner.

A dark figure emerged from the doorway, it’s form masked by the darkness. It seemed to grow calm as a rare wind passed through the ghost town, the buildings letting out a weary sigh as it rattled their torn frames.

It was then that the figure whipped around, cloak billowing in the breeze, the sound of metal clanking, and the moon opposite it causing it’s eyes to shimmer with a surreal blue light…