Examples from "Sandkings," by George R. R. Martin.
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The reds were the most creative, using tiny flakes of slate to put the gray in his hair.
The small scarlet mobiles were frozen, watching.
The lines closed around it, covered it, waging desperate battle.
He stopped at her table briefly and told her about the war games, inviting her to join them.
He waved it back and forth, smashing towers and ramparts and walls.
Sand and stone collapsed, burying the scrambling mobiles.
He watched for a moment, wondering whether he’d killed the maw.
“Easy,” he said, holding his head.
The shambler came peering round a corner to see what the noise was.
Kress went through the house room by room, turning on lights everywhere he went until he was surrounded by a blaze of artificial illumination.
He paused to clean up in the living room, shoveling sand and plastic fragments back into the broken tank.
The body shifted once again, moving a few centimeters toward the castle.
He retreated upstairs, returning shortly with a cleaver.
The screen began to clear, indicating that someone had answered at the other end.
He listened for several uneasy moments, wondering if Idi Noreddian could possibly have survived, and was now scratching to get out.
The black castle was glittering with volcanic glass, and sandkings were all over it, repairing and improving.
He stood his ground, sweeping his misty sword before him in great looping strokes.
One landed on his faceplate, its mandibles scraping at his eyes for a terrible second before he plucked it away.
The mist settled back on him, making him cough.
They were all around him, on him, dozens of them scurrying over his body, hundreds of others hurrying to join them.
Kress heard a loud hiss, and the deadly fog rose in a great cloud from between his shoulders, cloaking him, choking him, making his eyes burn and blur.
He stumbled and screamed, and began to run back to the house, pulling sandkings from his body as he went.
Inside, he sealed the door and collapsed on the carpet, rolling back and forth until he was sure he had crushed them all.
The canister was empty by then, hissing feebly.
His hand shook as he poured, slopping liquor on the carpet.
He sat at the console, frowning.
Their skimmer passed low overhead first, checking out the situation.
The black army burned and disintegrated, the mobiles fleeing in a thousand different directions, some back toward the castle, others toward the enemy.
Kress pounded wildly on the window, shouting for attention.
He brought it down sharply, hacking at the sand and stone parapets.
The laser bit into the ground, searching round and about.
Then he used the lasercannon, crisscrossing methodically until it was certain that nothing living could remain intact beneath those small patches of ground.
“Is that safe in here?” he found himself muttering, pointing at the flamethrower.
She stepped into the door, shifted the laser to her left hand, and reached up with her right, fumbling inside for the light panel.
He closed his eyes and waited, expecting to feel their terrible touch, afraid to move lest he brush against one.
His shambler followed him down the stairs, staring at him from its baleful glowing eyes.
Kress slipped outside, carrying his bags awkwardly, and shut the door behind him.
For a moment he stood pressed against the house, his heart thudding in his chest.
Kress smiled, and walked slowly across the battleground, listening to the sounds, the sounds of safety.
A white sandking watched him from atop the dresser in his bedroom, its antennae moving faintly.
They were making modifications in his house, burrowing into or out of his walls, carving things.
He went outside to get the bodies that had been rotting in the yard, hoping to appease the white maw’s hunger.
They avoided the frozen food, leaving it to thaw in a great puddle, but they carried off everything else.
He closed the door behind his latest guest, ignoring the startled exclamations that soon turned into shrill gibbering, and sprinted for the skimmer the man had arrived in.
Kress rose, holding his breath, not daring to hope.
He ran down the stairs, jumping over sandkings.
Finally he got out and checked, expecting the worst.
Kress went to his communicator again, stepping on a sandking in his haste, and prayed fervently that the device still worked.
The fear was on him again, filling him, and with it a great thirst and a terrible hunger.
He ran down the hill toward the house, waving his arms and shouting to the inhabitants.
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