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At the edge of the forest, a few estranged human soldiers prepared to make their last stand. They had taken up residence in a long-abandoned fort, their last chance for survival. All day they worked, rebuilding the wooden fence that had once enclosed the fort. They hurried to complete their task with a speed that only comes from heart-wrenching fear. These few humans were the last survivors of what had once been a small army. The dead outnumbered the living more than ten to one. Yet their enemies numbered only one: a black-scaled raptor by the name of Silthin, an assassin of the highest order...

The humans never knew what hit them. They never would have expected to be attacked within the safety of their precious fence - at least not without the warning of seeing a ladder being set up or enemy troops on the horizon. Unfortunately for them, the hastily-constructed barrier didn't meet the limits of a raptor's jumping capabilities. All Silthin had to do was wait for the guard to look away for a few seconds. That was all the opportunity he needed to leap up, slam the human down on the ground to knock the air out of him, and eliminate him with a swift swipe of his sickle claw across the throat. In daylight Silthin knew he couldn't maintain secrecy for long, but he still had the element of surprise. Most of the humans weren't wearing full armor, and the few who were he was able to kill before they could even draw their weapons. There were only about a dozen all together. Flustered as they were, with poor night vision, they were no match for an experienced assassin such as Silthin.

However, there was one human that Silthin did not kill. It was easy to avoid doing so by accident, as the coward kept his distance, shouting useless orders throughout the battle. When it was all over and the last wounded soldier received a merciful killing slash, Silthin turned to the man slowly, setting his cold, reptilian gaze upon him.

"I- I am commander of the Third Imperial Brigade, General Ralen, and I am hereby placing you-" the human started.

"I don't give a damn who you are," the raptor snapped. "You have information I need, and you're not going anywhere until I get it."

The general hesitated, weighing his options. "What sort of information?" he asked.

"Troop movements," Silthin replied simply. "I know many things from stalking your own pathetic platoon, but I need one last piece of information. There is a brigade preparing to move out from a fort just a few miles south of here. Where are they going? Why? Tell me, and I'll make your death quick and painless."

"What do you plan to do with this information?" The general asked timidly.

"The same thing I did with the information from the last general I questioned," Silthin answered casually. "And the same thing I did to your... men," he hesitated to say 'men,' as the title invoked more respect than he thought was due to them. "I'll kill them all. I'll attack from the shadows and slip away before they know what has happened. I'll lay traps around every tree, and set fire to every camp. They will never rest easy, and every night more of them will disappear. And one way or another, with or without your cooperation, I WILL find them."

All the while that Silthin had been talking, the general had been trying to draw his sword as slowly and quietly as possible. It seemed that Silthin had underestimated his courage. He swung with all his strength, aiming at the raptor's neck, but he was far too slow. Silthin easily ducked under the blade, turning as he did so and sweeping his adversary's feet out from under him with his powerful tail. Before the man could lift his sword again, Silthin pressed his sickle claw down on his wrist until he was forced to release his weapon. "By the time the night is over," he growled, "you'll regret doing that..." The last thing the man saw was a muscled, scaly tail whistling towards his head.

It was night when the human awoke. The first thing he noticed was the dull throbbing in the left side of his head. The second was that his armor was removed, and he was bound at the wrists and ankles by some sort of leather. Rather than being bound to the wall or hanging from the ceiling, however, he had been laid with his back flat against the ground. That was unusual, and he knew instictively that unusual things were never good in these sorts of situations. He seemed to be in some sort of cave, the only light coming from a small hole in the ceiling through which the half-moon shone brightly.

"Finally. I thought you'd never wake up," came a sinister voice from somewhere beyond the human's range of vision. Silthin slowly walked forward, stopping at his prisoner's left side. "The first thing you need to know," Silthin said as he put a clawed foot on the man's chest, "is that you will certainly die. All you control is how long it takes..." The raptor flicked his sickle claw downwards, burying it about a centimeter deep in the man's chest, right above his heart. The human stiffened, but otherwise made no sound. Once Silthin pressed down further though, the man began to gasp and struggle. Silthin stopped with his sickle claw barely an inch from the rapidly beating heart. "Any time you feel like giving up your information, all this pain can stop..."

Silthin removed his claw from the man's chest with a wet sliding noise, putting his foot back on the ground as the man groaned in pain. "You think that's bad?" Silthin taunted. "You haven't even begun to feel pain. But I suppose there's nothing wrong with starting slow..." The raptor bent low over the human's body and placed his hand claws on his bare chest just below his collar bones, then began to drag them downwards. He didn't move too slowly, but dragging was far slower than slashing. Silthin grinned sadistically as the man screamed, their faces only a few inches apart. The raptor's sharp claws sliced through the pale flesh like hot knives through butter, but he only pressed hard enough to cut through skin, only touching muscle in a few places until he finally stopped at the human's abdomen. The six cuts followed the natural inclination of a raptor's talons when slashing - they were farther apart at the chest and quite close together at the abdomen, forming four incomplete triangles.

Satisfied with his work, and displaying it with a toothy grin, Silthin straightened and walked to his captive's left side. The human was obviously in a lot of pain. His eyes were squeezed shut and his face showed nothing but agony. He was also coughing every few seconds as he had damaged his vocal cords from screaming so loudly. It didn't help things when his reptilian captor slashed a sickle claw horizontally across his chest, leaving a deep gash over the tops of his most recent wounds and drawing out another hoarse scream.

"I do hope you've decided to talk now," Silthin muttered, some of his taunting casualness now missing. The human gasped in agony, but otherwise made no effort to speak, staring straight forward. "Very well," the raptor said as he leaned over again. He dug one finger claw beneath the flesh at the top of one the slashes he had made, then quickly yanked downward, tearing a long, triangular piece of skin right off the human's torso. It was a miracle that he didn't completely lose his voice after such a loud cry of agony. "I'll give you five seconds between each strip," Silthin said after the screaming had stopped, tossing away the bloody strip. "If you don't talk, I pull off another one. When I run out, things get even worse."

Receiving no response, Silthin proceeded to remove another strip of sin, followed by more screaming. As the six cuts he had made with his hand claws were shallow, only the skin itself was being peeled off, exposing the raw muscle beneath. It wasn't long before the other two strips were removed, yet still the human refused to talk. Silthin was impressed, but didn't tell his captive that. It would have boosted his confidence. Instead, he spat down on the seeping wounds. "You know I'll get the information out of you one way or another," he growled. "I can keep a captive alive for weeks - many long weeks of treatment far worse than this. I can tell you already long for death to relieve you of your pain." The raptor put one scaly foot onto the raw muscle where he had peeled of the skin. "I can end your suffering," he murmured softly, almost comfortingly. "All I need is your cooperation, and this will all go away." He stepped up onto the human's chest with both feet, causing him to gasp as his lungs were compressed, not to mention the pain of having any object coming in contact with the exposed muscle.

"Fine," Silthin growled. "You'll receive no more mercy from me." With that, he began wiping his scaly feet roughly down the human's torso, producing the most horrific screams yet, if not the loudest. The rough scales and pads on the raptor's soles tore at the exposed muscles and already ripped flesh, slowly turning the human's chest and belly into a bloody, mangled mess. As if that weren't enough, Silthin then began scraping his toe claws across the wounds, though he kept his sickle claws back. When there was scarcely any skin left on the poor human's torso, he finally stopped, just standing there in a mess of blood.

"Are you finally ready to talk, human?" Silthin growled threateningly. The human was putting up a hand weakly in surrender, but the raptor was running out of patience. He jumped up about a meter in the air, then slammed both feet down on the human's chest, cracking a couple of ribs and causing him to cough up quite a bit of blood. He still wasn't able to speak for nearly a full minute after the raptor stepped away.

"The- the reinforcements... are headed north," The human gasped hoarsely between ragged breaths. "They'll join up... with General Kavez's platoon... and march east through the woods-" "To cut off the supply lines to the coast," Silthin interrupted. "Of course. Thank you so much for your... cooperation. Now for your reward: death."

The raptor once more stepped up onto the human's chest with his scaly feet, flexing his sickle claws in preparation. "I know I promised you a swift death, but you really pissed me off," he growled. He jabbed his right sickle claw down right into the human's solar plexus, burying nearly half the long, curved claw in his chest. If the human's vocal cords weren't completely destroyed already, they were at that point. He twisted the claw slightly as he turned to his left, braced himself against the wall, and KICKED with all the impressive force that his muscular sprinter's leg could muster. The effect was devastating. The raptor's powerful hind limb and killing claw literally ripped the human's damaged rib cage apart, exposing his left lung and various other organs.

Before the human could lose consciousness, Silthin quickly spun around and preformed the same horrific operation on the other set of ribs, using his left sickle claw this time. The human now barely resembled a member of his own species anymore. He could no longer feel anything but a dull coldness as he slowly slipped into the void. This was an indescribable mercy, especially considering the last thing he saw, rather than felt. Silthin buried his muzzle in what remained of the human's chest, then came up with a still faintly beating heart in his jaws, which he savored for a moment, then tilted his head back and swallowed whole. His work here finally finished, the raptor left the cave to find a secluded area to clean his talons and prepare for the long day to come.