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Scratch....

scratch.....

scratch...

Over and over... loud, painful to listen to... the dreadful sound of metal dragging on stone, over and over again... that nails-on-a-chalkboard kind of sound that everyone dreads hearing.

It would have been impossible to tell where it was coming from. The clearing in the forest of Yew, painfully difficult to find since the forest thickened, still inhabited by the blackened rubble of the devastated building, sat silent in the blood-red glow of the moon. The intense chill that strangely befell the area was gone, yet there was still no sign of life.

No obvious sign, anyway.

Inside the remains of the building, several massive stone tables lined the wall of what appeared to once have been a laboratory. Dusty bottles sat on the tables, some intact and filled with unknown fluids and objects, most of the others broken. One vial rack sat away from all the other substances, as though it were somehow more important. A thick red liquid filled most of the vials, every last one of which was still intact. A few were labeled... one bore the letter B, another an M, and yet another a T.

Scratch...

The sound of metal-on-stone was caused by a malfunctioning machine... a mechanical arm, still with some energy left in its form, grabbing at the stone floor long after its owner's body had died in a form of defense it would never need. Soon the arm stopped scratching suddenly, and collapsed next to the skeleton. The corpse's ribcage had a strange sort of dark-colored glow emanating from the lifeless form's heart. The machine arm died, making what might have been its very last movement, and hit the stone floor with a crash as its last amount of energy was drained.

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A week later a thief would wander into the ruins, having finally found the clearing, and fill his pack up with whatever valuables he could find - of which he found many.

By this time the skeleton would be gone, and only the unexplainable scratches would remain on the floor.