The sun was low in the sky and the rolling dunes cast long shadows across the sand unapologetically. Withdrawn from the light and standing among one of these shadows lingers Valve; her eyes narrow as she stared off into the distance at nothing in particular. The desert taunted her with a foreboding stillness, and the black Akhal-Teke thought of nothing but ways in which she might tear it all apart.

Voices and shuffling sands break her solitary intensity and she twisted her neck behind her, her ears flicking in the direction of the sounds. Three, maybe four others, she guessed, but she wouldn’t assume because she was not a fool. Valve lifted her lithe figure into a trot and approached the group with haste.

Gabbar, A’idah and two nearly identical Akhal-Tekes she had never seen before.

“Bir uğursuzluk…” she mumbled under her breath, far from pleased to see two strangers of her own kind wandering these dunes with the kind of lofty righteousness she knew all too well.

Standing apart from the rest of them, she kept her head level and her eyes fastened tightly upon the two strangers. She was within earshot enough to hear Gabbar’s query, to which she followed up with a simple statement.

“We shall see.”

VALVE
slenderman x black heart machine