Knights of the Grey City

Chapter 31 - BADLANDS

I was forced closer to the surface as the lakebed rose toward me. The grey sand turned brown and then into what looked like coarse sandstone. Soon, it was so shallow I could no longer swim and was actually walking along the bottom.

I spread out my spatial sense as far as it would go. The quality of the water had changed considerably: it was no longer cold and flowing, but lukewarm and stagnant. The clouds of demon blood were still drifting around me, my movements parting them to reveal momentary glances of greenish, murky water.

The fin on the back of my head was skimming the surface, so I slid my face above water to take a look at where I'd ended up.

It was definitely a new district.

This one barely seemed to be making any effort at all to appear like it was part of some fake Toronto. It was an alien, barren landscape, like the surface of Mars, with a cracked floor of coarse beige and orange sandstone. The shapes of buildings stood in the sky, but they were torn apart to their skeletons, scaffolds and foundations out in the open. There were lumps of structures that—upon closer inspection—could have once been construction equipment, had said equipment been melted by unbelievable, searing heat, and then left to solidify there.

Oh—and there were more demons.

In the pervasive mist of the Grey City, it was hard to tell how many. I could see another stick insect not too far off, undulating its way through the wasteland. Around me, the demon blood was starting to rise up out of the water and drift into the surrounding mist, out of sight. I caught a few glimpses of demons far above in the sky.

Just looking at the demons made rage bubble up inside me, but I braced myself against it. Soon, I told myself, knowing that it was time to be cautious, time to use my abilities to survey rather than leap into action.

There was something I had never paused to consider—as far as I could tell, the Leviathan was made for stealth more than it was made for combat. Its instincts demanded head-on confrontations in battle, yet my scales were the colour of deep shadow, seeming to absorb all light around them. My frame was powerful, but I could step lightly, and there was muscle memory that allowed me to move stealthily when I wanted.

As I had that thought, the green light cast from my eyes, helpful in seeing through the murky water, dimmed to a faint glow. My instincts didn't exactly back down from urging me to just jump in the face of the nearest demon, but they did recede, accepting hunting as a part of the attack process.

It was interesting, but I couldn't spend time puzzling out my instincts just then. Katie could be here somewhere, alone and in danger. I slowly crept up to the surface, then headed for the nearest buildings, keeping low to the ground where shadows would hide me.

I mean, I was still a fifteen-foot tall lizard, which I'd have to say, as a general rule, makes it difficult to sneak anywhere. But if I put my mind to it, I could blend with patches of darkness in ways I'd never attempted before. The mist, and my spatial sense, were on my side. I could easily gauge the least exposed path and then silently glide along it, moving behind melted excavator claws and chunks of debris.

Everything about this place just felt wrong, in a far more intense way than the rest of the Grey City. The other districts were oppressive, dark, and silent, but this one felt poisoned. The ground itself had the taste of the demons on it.

A piercing, powerful roar echoed in the distance.

The stick insect, which had crawled off almost out of my sight, rose its head to the sky, antennae twitching, then began to make its way in that direction.

I picked up the pace and followed.

As I moved further in, the buildings grew more numerous until I was weaving through the streets and squares of a destroyed, rubble-strewn city. Out in the distance, another roar rang out. It wasn't like any demon I had heard before, and it definitely wasn't the birdlike shriek of the Gargoyle. It was kind of like a dinosaur roar in a movie: middle-pitched, warbling, and shatteringly loud.