The thick smell of death hit Jasper from over the hill where the small patch of woods looked out over the usually vibrant beach village. Instead of the soft sand of the beach Jasper's boot crushed a human skull and came out with a smattering of bone dust on the toes.

Three miles of sandy beach front was covered with corpses.

Fresh blood mixed with the old blood of mangled bodies and broken skeletons. The misshapen parts of mutants, animals and mutant animals; some from things Jasper couldn't even recognize with nearly thirty years of life in the wastelands. Things like horned humans and a ram skull three times the size of a full-grown bison.

Some of the mutants retained their human features and some were mutated beyond recognition. With extra limbs and sharp teeth, skin colored in ways skin didn't naturally color, and some without skin at all. A boulder with a face like a jack-o-lantern sat in a pile of gravel and rubble. It stared straight ahead with blood running out of its empty eye sockets.

Jasper took a moment to look at the giant skull, "Do you know what the cannibal got when he was late for dinner? The cold shoulder."

The stream of blood made its way down the rock to stick to a few particles of sand every second. It took a while to form a drop and fall completely.

Past the evident massacre and the village was the Gulf Sea. Many broken bodies floated in and out of the water; the red current of the gulf splashing the macabre debris against the village's support beams.

The once magnificent village on stilts had a complex arrangement of rope bridges connecting shopping huts, homes and guard towers from the outskirts to the several main platforms stacked up. Each higher landing was smaller than the last, giving the impression that you were gazing at a wooden temple on the beach.

The usually welcoming and ornate golden archways were stained blood red and corpses hung from them by various limbs. One of the outskirt landings connected by a bridge had broken free and the entire tower was hanging diagonally with only a pulley cable for support. Another hut had broken, and the wooden platform slid halfway down its posts.

Other buildings were broken; cables and bridges were loose, but more broken were the people. The former inhabitants were nailed to the posts and draped over their huts. Every cable and torn rope in sight had someone hanging from it. This wasn't the thriving beach city Jasper remembered.

On their families very first stay they had spent the night on the bottom and biggest platform with houses for the common folk and those too mutated to hunt and gather. After their very first hunt (a crocodile bigger than a house that Jasper's godfather decapitated) they stayed on the next floor up when in town; with houses and training grounds for the warriors and explorers willing to go out on supply runs.

The next level up held some political buildings and a war-room. Jasper remembered sitting in those rooms for long sessions where his godfather gave as much advice as he did argument.

On the top was a platform big enough for the throne of Old King Three-Eyes who would sit upon it when he felt the need to. Now Three-Eyes swung from the arch at the front entrance. The battlefield was a much more pleasant sight than what lay in the cloud of void that covered the throne. A new figure seemed to rest on the throne. His body was shrouded in shadow, but his head was topped with a crown of wood grown as large as an elk-boar's antlers. Glowing bulbs from a tree-parasite form in vines wrapping around the outside and an infestation of gnawing bugs crawl across entry holes all across the hallow crown. The entire entity, crown and body drips from head to toe in an inky sludge.

A dome of darkness had settled over the village like a cage. To the north horizon the red moon seemed to set and to the south the pale moon seemed to rise, but neither had moved for hours. The world remained stuck between the clashing sunsets. As beautiful as it was macabre.

To get a better view he flipped his .50 caliber Beretta rifle from its shoulder strap and rested his cheek on the stock in one practiced motion. Inside of the fog Jasper saw a speck of red and one of white over an unnaturally wide shark-toothed smile. It was as if he had stared into the light of the two moons. It gave the term lunatic new meaning.

A humanoid skeleton the color of metal formed from the depths of the black fog. A swirling roke reformed like a hide around the frame before the entire creature disappeared. Jasper looked over the scope and saw that it was now inexplicably at the edge of the village's shadow.

The dark figure stood there staring into the cross-hairs for a few agonizing seconds. Then it smiled a thin, long grin until the edges of its mouth touched its ears. Like lightning it charged across the pit of corpses. Jasper fired as soon as his sights lined up with a spot below and to the right of the shade's head. The slope of the hill and the wind coming up from the beach to the right flank should have been accounted for.

Everything that went through his mind had been calculated perfectly, but he somehow missed the shot. Jasper didn't waste any time panicking or overthinking it. Sometimes good shots missed, but rushed shots always did.

His thumb slipped under the bolt and slid it back then changed directions and deftly locked it into place. It only took a fraction of a second to replace the spent casing, but the devil had crossed it's playground of bodies already.

The next shot was aimed for the chest and this time he saw the bullet hit the ground directly behind. Had he not noticed the nearly imperceptible dodge he would have thought it went through. Had he not been so lucky as to see it he may have chosen to fight differently or run.

Instead Jasper fired off one more shot as it neared its last mile. The shade jumped clean over the chest shot and crawled over the bodies on all fours doubling its speed. Jasper let his rifle hit the dirt with a puff of dust. He pulled an old, dusty looking sawn-off triple barrel from the belt at his hip.

It lunged with chrome claws dripping black ooze aimed at Jasper's chest. Midair the slug tore into its forehead and knocked it backwards. The sound of the impact rang out louder than the actual explosion of gunpowder. It was as if a steel block had been struck at point blank. The lanky thing tried to stand, but Jasper sent another slug at its head as he pulled his .45 magnum from his other hip and leveled both guns at the pleading eyes.

Those mesmerizing and hypnotic eyes the depth and likeness of the full moons in a blanket of beautiful stars. It faded into smoke as the bullets kicked up dirt. The fog surrounded Jasper only to materialize behind. His feet turned fluidly as he spun his magnum to pistol-whip the shade in the jaw. No sooner than it appeared the gap between the cylinders and the barrel connected against its cheek. As Jasper pulled the trigger the excess gas escaped the gap.

Normally pistol-whipping that way would be overkill and a waste of a bullet, Jasper knew from the two times he had done it the mutant had been knocked unconscious before bleeding out and the zombie had lived for another shot, just with less skin.

Since he struck as it was changing form it did rip off the flesh from the jaw to the cheekbone. It may have been overkill, but overkill didn't faze the living shadow as it plunged its claws through two layers of the barbarian's Kevlar and into his spleen. Black ooze entered the wound and spread out over his armor in thin vein-like rivulets.

The beast still stumbled with the blow just long enough to give Jasper a glance up close. Its mouth had been stitched shut enough to keep it from unhinging like a snake, but not enough to prevent that diabolical Cheshire grin. More smoke swirled around in its wound and the skin reformed unblemished. Then by some unseen force the wire stitches pierced the lips back together.

The darkness stood there for what seemed like ages, waiting. The smile gave it the look of wanting to stop and talk, not continue. Jasper felt differently, but only because he was more worried about what this thing had to say than its claw.

So, he began to move as if juggling his guns. While sheathing his sawn-off and pulling his 1911 from its leather straps around his chest the first magnum shot connected.

The shadow evaporated in a puff and Jasper managed to hold the second shot despite the hair trigger.

Its teleport put the beast close in the front. Jasper tucked his 1911 unusually close to the side of his chest and aimed the magnum upward as the darkness took form.

The magnum shot went straight to the sweet spot on the monster's chin and knocked it back as three 9mm rounds landed in three spots in front of the heart. Two bounced off of metal ribs, but one of them ended its life.

The skin melted and dripped from the body into a black puddle. The bones sank in as they split and cracked apart in a dozen hairline fractures. Before the remains disappeared into the pool of melted skin.

Jasper leaned forward to see that the puddle had formed a bottomless pit of ink. The pit contained a dark forest blanketed under the same stars above and the moon-colored eyes drifted apart within. Looking into the depths of the corpse had a profound effect on his already skewed sanity.

The Valorian ripped his gaze away from the abomination's strange corpse and found the sight of hundreds of other corpses on the beach to be much more pleasant. After a long moment to gather his wits and shake off the fear, Jasper limped forward slowly. His fingers came away, from what was an ink filled gut wound five minutes ago, bone dry; even though the Kevlar was still broken.

Moving deeper into the massacre went against every instinct in his being, but Jasper figured that there must be something of worth in this decrepit ghost town.

Or someone in need of help.

Or, at the very least, a drink.