“Now what?” Ronan groaned.
“Maybe they want to surrender,” Kane said.
Kane and the team were led off the ship and brought to stand before the large reptilian. Their wrists were still shackled in chains, and the armed sentries kept a watchful eye.
The massive draconian looked down at them. Kane watched more skiffs fly by in the distance.
“Hi,” Kane said. “Nice place you have here. Like an amusement park, only minus the amusement.”
The draconian grunted, then turned and walked away.
“What the hell?” Sol said, almost in a laugh.
“I get the impression we’re supposed to follow him,” Jade said.
“Maur thinks that’s a terrible idea.”
“For once, Ronan agrees with Maur,” Ronan said.
“Jade?” Kane asked without taking his eyes off of the giant. “Do you or your spirit have anything to add here?”
“There are no other spirits anywhere in the vicinity,” she said. “But this complex is shielded somehow. I can’t see past any of the outer areas.”
Well, that’s about as unhelpful as you can get. He cursed under his breath and followed the giant.
The complex was even larger than it appeared from the outside. They stepped through a pair of iron double doors and came into the guts of the refinery-city, a noisy industrial complex filled with dark metal and distant klaxons. The entire locale looked jury-rigged, a mismatched amalgamation of rusted steel towers and crooked iron girders, tube-shaped buildings with yellowed windows and stream pipes that filled the air with hot white smoke.
Scaly Grey Clan moved with purpose through uneven narrow streets that had been hobbled together with patchworks of asphalt, rock, and cobblestone. The air in the city was green and tasted like some sort of cleaning agent. The atmosphere was vitriolic and liquid, and moving through it felt like walking through a dissolving gel.
Kane noticed that the reptilians didn’t wear masks there in the city.
Strange organic creatures somewhere between jellyfish and seagulls navigated the space between the haphazard rooftops. Workers carted sacks of sea rock and vats of burning liquid. Everything smelled of industry and machines. The loud grind of gears and metal hammers sang into the sky.
The air took on a turgid quality. An enormous gel shield surrounded the city. Kane knew it hadn’t been there before, when they’d been on the skiff and on the landing platform, which meant the barrier was only visible from within. The Ebonsand Sea and the beach and the sky were all on the other side of a gigantic and sickly green lens. Everything in the reptile city was suffused with green muck, and e very particle of air was weighed down by intangible sludge, making it difficult to breathe.
Kane and the others were marched through the streets. Reptilian humanoids parted and watched the procession. The Grey Clan all wore faded grey overalls or simple patchwork clothing that allowed for the subtle variations in their specific body types: prehensile lizard’s tails, multiple arms, spiked ridges along the back, undulating chest cavities that rose and fell like organic accordions.
The giant reptile-man led them with the help of an entourage of guards. The mercenaries were marched towards what appeared to be the center of the metropolis of metal and recycled industrial parts, old ships and re- invented watercrafts. The streets ran low between elevated platforms filled with ramshackle housing. Thin walkways made of metal and sinew ran between the taller buildings. Kane looked up through the green air and saw the compressed sky.
“What the hell is this place?” Ronan said, but he didn’t really speak, even though his words sounded in the air. Kane answered, and that was when he realized they really did walk through liquid. The air was a chemical substance: they moved through a gelatinous atmosphere. Even though they’d been breathing it for several minutes, it wasn’t until Kane tried to speak that he actually felt the sticky fluid push down his throat. He almost gagg ed, but the words still escaped.
“Not Kansas,” he said.
Kane looked around. It was difficult to discern one building from the next. He saw vague outlines of old sea vessels and the shells of converted fuel tanks, the husks of land rovers and sheets of tin plating sco u red with burn marks and scratches.
The other reptile folk watched them silently. They seemed a silent people, a direct counter to the industrial din of the city they inhabited.
“Jade?” Kane said, fighting his desire to gag on the floating muck. He felt himself moving slower. “What the hell is this place?”
It’s New Desh, his own voice echoed back in his mind. It was the voice of the giant, filtered though Kane’s brain. Yes. We are the Grey Clan. And you are here to help us.
“What?!” Kane said out loud, but no other answer was given.
Enough of this shit.
He stopped walking. When t he lead reptile realized he wasn’t following, it turned and walked back with loud and deliberate steps. T he other sentries waited stoically.
Motion ceased all around them. Dozens of reptilians stopped what they were doing and cast their eyes to the scene as the enormous leader moved towards Kane.
Move, Kane’s own voice echoed in his head, the voice of the Grey Man. Now.
“Screw you,” he said, and he leapt forward and kicked the Grey Man’s knee. Even in the heavy air the force of the blow was enough to crack the bone with a sickening squelch. The creature growled and fell.
“Jade!” Kane yelled.
He was glad she decided to ignore her concerns about the area being too unstable and finally use her magic. The gritty air turned thin, melted by the presence of her spirit. Sol and Ronan struck out and knocked two of the armed guards aside. Ronan even managed to disarm one and steal its barbed spear. He swung it around and downed another sentry, leaving eight immediate threats for them to deal with. Jade’s spirit swept four of them aside, while Kane kicked the leader in its lizard’s nose. Sol grabbed two and knocked their heads together.
More Grey Clan descended from above. They came down slowly, altered the air’s viscosity to make it so they almost flew. They wore armored masks and bladed bracers and yielded double-edged swords. Their armor was covered in razor-tipped spines.
Kane kicked one in the face as it came down and sent it flying back through the air. He pulled a blade away from another and used it to defend himself. Even in that goop atmosphere he moved as fast as he ever had — if anything, he was faster, as the pain that had bothered his leg for the past few days seemed to vanish in that gel air.
Reptilian citizens scattered all around them. Window panels slammed shut and klaxon alerts blasted out like air-raid signals.
Most of the Grey sentries hesitated, as if unsure of what to do. Even though Kane and the others were surrounded, the soldiers held back, and those who did engage didn’t use their blades but instead tried to grapple the captives, who in spite of being shackled at the wrist still put up a valiant fight.
They want us alive. They didn’t expect us to give them this much resistance.
Jade shaped her spirit into a cone of razor air and scattered the scaled soldiers. Bodies flew and fell hard to the steel city floor. Sol pelted reptilians with his considerable fists, and Ronan hacked at anyone who came close. Maur stayed close to Ronan, spotting for him and barking orders as to who to slice up next.
Enough! Kane’s own voice shouted at him.
The Grey Clan sentries stopped in their tracks. Jade was held still with a dazed look in her eyes. A nimbus of crackling black fire surrounded her head in a net of ebon steel. Sharp points aimed in towards her skull from the inside of the sphere, solid midnight knives that hovered less than an inch from her skin.
A tendril of shadow energy ran from the sparkling orb back to a reptilian hand. Unlike the others, the creature that held the arcane whip was largely human, save for a greenish tint to his skin and scaly ridges on his brow and jaw. His fingers ended in dark claws, and he was dressed in a n armored coat made from oily skins and toothed shoulder plates. The arcane harness slithered and wrapped around his hand like a snake made of electric smoke.
Stop this! The voice shouted again, Kane’s own voice, the reptile mage’s word translated in his mind. One more move and I’ll crush her mind!
