Bleak...
That was the only word that could describe the dark and desolate appearance of the Baian Swamp. Thick, boggy marshland stretched as far as the eye could see, showing little signs of life, save for the occasional croak of an Anura or the faint buzz of wings as insects fluttered by. Thick, ominous clouds, boding of rain rolled by overhead, a dark, stifling blanket that seemed to oppress any that looked upon its stormy heights.
All-in-all, this place seemed utterly inhabitable to creatures of any sort.
At the same time though, this was untrue. There were indeed creatures who could survive these conditions, and perhaps even enjoyed this dark abode. To them, this was home.
A blurry line on the horizon, black against the sea of murky green and brown around it, turned out to be a copse of trees, a curiously formed wood in the middle of this swamp that stretched for miles around. Deep within the heart of this forest though, where almost no light penetrated the thick canopy, a considerably large facility lay hidden within the depths of the lightless trees, throwing darkness as a cover over the building.
The way it was built was ingenious: The facility was actually, for the most part, buried deep beneath the surface of the marsh, hidden in a naturally-formed crater-like crevice that sank a few stories into the hard earth and stone that lay beneath the layers of mud. The building itself was built of metal and thick walls of stone, each several feet in thickness, seemingly impenetrable to the outside world, given that they could even find it first. One would think that any creature would suffocate in this environment, but those that dwelt within the heart of this fortress had various hi-tech innovations that made the citadel under the marsh habitable.
Inside the fortress, the few rooms, all adjoining to one large, main chamber, were lit by harsh, fluorescent lights that were almost painful to look at, illuminating reflective, tiled walls of a blinding white hue. The whole place was considerably cold, and air was constantly exchanged through filters and converters, old, carbon-filled air circulating as the carbon dioxide was removed and fresh oxygen put back into the rooms.
In the huge main chamber, one wall on the far side of the room was taken up by an expansive plasma screen that stretched from corner to corner, currently black and dead-looking. In front of it sat a huge mahogany desk that added a sudden burst of color to the whitewashed room, its surface covered in papers pens and the such, yet disconcertingly neat. What caught one's attention though, was what sat in the dark, ebon-leather chair behind the desk.
The dark, charcoal creature seemed to pulse with an eerie, blood-red light, reflecting off of the polished surface of the desk and the intricate scales that covered the creature's lithe frame. Her body was serpentine, yet had a considerable amount of muscle in its long length. It was not her appearance though, but those cold, hard, calculating eyes, pupil-less, set into her snake-like head, that cut deep into a person's soul. She sat, unmoving, upon her seat, the only movement being the occasional flicker of a coal-black tongue as it tasted her surroundings.
She simply sat and waited, frozen, almost like a statue, just waiting.
Always waiting...
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