An Arrival in Disarray

  "Regarding dreams, if a dream's structure was unfamiliar, or if beings which have been described as 'feeling alien' were present, or if you suspect the presence of Warp, it is imperative that you report it to the nearest authority and submit yourself for potential quarantine and excision of any aberrant entities. If excision or obliteration isn't deemed necessary, Great job! You're okay!" - Excerpt from the Pocket Protocols for Human Children, Vol. 2, By Velendrethel Fa'lenarin

  Still reeling from the warp-fueled nightmare, Kellin had finally gathered himself enough to start paying attention to his surroundings again. From his seat-turned-nap-spot at the end of the carriage, he noticed first that he was not dead, nor captured by bandits.

  'Sweet. Seems like you slept through the night too.'

  Before he could ask what had happened to their attackers, or indeed how they had gotten out of the ambush, his question answered itself.

  A loud thud followed by a short yelp from behind the carriage had drawn his attention.

  Off to his left, were the missing bandits, or at least what remained of them.

  Less than half of their original compliment were jogging behind the carriage, bound by thick metal cuffs around their hands, necks and feet. Chained both to each other and the carriage, with very little slack, being pulled along by the rapidly moving vehicle.

  Barely able to keep pace with it.

  The sound that had gotten his attention was Simon, the spatial weapon’s ex-operator had fallen, unable to keep up the enforced march with his thin, frail body.

  Pulled to his feet by Sharp, or whatever her true name was, the leashed group kept moving, the only sign of discontent being the single glaring eye she kept fixed on the carriage.

  Her subordinates kept their eyes glued to the road at their feet, focused exclusively on keeping up.

  Kel briefly met her one-eyed gaze, and her expression shifted only slightly, softening into what looked suspiciously like pity, before condensing back into a stony disgust-filled rage.

  'I’m not the one who deserves pity here, lady. You’ve got a hellish march and a noose waiting at its end.' he remarked internally.

  Speaking of the journey’s end, as Kel looked away from the carriages unwilling followers, he spotted a faded green signpost, half-rusted over, which read;

  ‘a lt u o B le At L ai’

  Or something to that effect, the missing white letters leaving it largely indecipherable, but in large scarlet lettering painted onto the rustless section was written “ATHLORN”, which, if he remembered right meant it should be just about-

  Smoke rose in the distance ahead, and Kellin could just make out the sounds of life on the wind.

  'Yes, there it is. Finally.'

  The journey had taken… well Kellin wasn’t quite sure how long it had taken, having taken a tactical nap partway through it, but he knew that Duroyed was roughly a two day journey from Athlorn, at least by foot as he had made the journey before.

  If the carriage hadn’t stopped throughout the night, that would explain their advanced position. As he ruminated on the subjectively short nature of the trip, a question occurred.

  Tactical nap, huh, is that what we’re calling passing out now?... Actually, how did I stay upright during the ‘tactical nap’? Also, how the hell did Oshin and I get back into the carriage? Wait- '

  Yes, at a glance the condescending aspirant mage was also present, further up the opposing bench, still dead to the world as Kellin had been minutes earlier.

  Taking a second look revealed not just the belt they were all expected to wear while the vehicle was in motion, but familiar metal clasps, receded openings in the carriage's body allowing the thick bindings to emerge from within.

  He was held upright, bound by all the same appendages as the bandits, arms restrained at his side.

  'Those bindings are identical to the bandit’s chains. Why are they in the carriage too?' he wondered.

  Kellin looked at his wrists in suspicion, noticing the half-expected fading red marks, and scowled. He raised a hand to his neck, and hissed in pain. Though he couldn't see them, he knew there was a similar bruise along the base of his neck, and atop the reddened skin were very faint green boils.

  He would have to sort that later.

  Flux, like all of the Transcendentals, had its downsides.

  'Hopefully it won’t take much time to-'

  Kel cut off his thoughts there, still passively, and exclusively passively, aware of the Elven Peacekeeper’s presence, and of his earlier loss of a train of thought.

  It wouldn’t do to dwell in thoughts of things he didn’t know, after all.

  Anything detrimental caused by his attunement must, of course, be because he was breaking the Protocols. He would learn everything he needed to know once he was in the Academy, so therefore any problems arising are exclusively due to attempting magic outside of its teaching.

  'Which I would certainly never do. No sir, not I.'

  While Kellin was occupied doing his level best to not muse about the unfairness of certain things, the appearance of a stone wall rapidly looming closer was a welcome reprieve.

  The tip of its castle was just barely visible through the plumes of smoke wafting up from within the large town. They were reaching Athlorn, the end of the first leg of their journey.

  As the carriage rumbled forward, instead of continuing onwards through the impressive iron-and-stonework gates, probably dwarven made, they instead turned off to the left, onto a well-used road along the perimeter of the town wall.

  Minutes passed in easy silence, the stone wall towering over them on one side, and mounds of debris and wreckage on the other, kong since piled up and grown over with moss and grass.

  Coming to a bridge, some chatter struck up in the vehicle, the large river a novelty to many of the passengers, Kellin included.

  “What, it’s just a bloody river, get over yourselves!” a tired, contemptuous comment rang out.

  'Well, Oshin’s awake.'

  Kellin had been briefly eyeing some Water Sprites, patchwork equine and fish-like forms convalescing for brief moments from scraps of semi-transparent white cloth that floated in the river.

  Manes and fins rimed in frost and foam, shifting and reforming as they broke apart with every movement. They raced back and forth, diving and leaping, the simple play as good a distraction as any other.

  And besides, he wasn’t particularly in the mood to leave wild Logos spirits unwatched, given what had happened the last time he had dismissed one on the journey.

  Shifting his attention to Oshin after the waspish outburst, Kel noticed that despite the bored sneer on his face, his fellow aspirant seemed withdrawn.

  Somehow his haughty countenance rang hollow.

  The metal restraints had vanished since he had awoken, sliding back into the carriage’s structure while he hadn’t been paying attention.

  'Athlorn is large enough to have at least one mage candidate every Selection, but we’re bypassing it. I wonder…'

  “I don’t know about you but I’d be less critical of my hometown if it had a nice little river like this.” Kel mused aloud, keeping an eye on Oshin’s reaction from the corner of his eye.

  The snooty prick’s face blanched into the same white as the Water Sprite’s formless cloth scraps, before a deep red bloomed across his face. His eye twitched as he spun to glare directly at Kellin.

  'Hah, called it.'

  “This shitty little backwater might be where I was born, but it’s as much my hometown, as your nothing village is civilised,” Oshin spat, his vitriol almost tangible.

  “There’s nothing here for anyone of worth, so I’m sure you’d feel right at home. Maybe you should forget the Academy and settle down. Right. Here.” he finished with a mocking grin, jauntily pointing at the carriage’s floor.

  As Kellin’s gaze fell to the spot Oshin pointed at, there was suddenly a great, yawning void.

  A hole in the carriage’s floor which seemed to stretch downwards forever, it was growing, he was going to fall in-

  Some smoke puffed from Oshin’s outstretched finger as the hole in the floor suddenly vanished, and Kel’s eyes breathed a sigh of relief, no longer straining to see the bottom of a non-existent void.

  Oshin blinked, and then scowled, his minor spell futzing out after a bare few seconds.

  'So, not using Flux then. Illusion specialty, but what’s his Logos? Either way, he's insane, to cast with a Peacekeeper not five paces away.'

  His face got even more red somehow, cheeks burning in embarrassment, and he seemed to want to say more, but the rage and shame warring on his face left very little room for forming coherent words.

  After a moment or two, Oshin realised the attention he had garnered with his outburst, not to mention the failed magic, wasn’t waning.

  He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and mumbled something.

  Kel’s focus drifted away from what he had been looking at, which now seemed unimportant.

  The carriage continued onwards in terse silence until they had crossed the bridge, and eventually they had circled all the way past the town. The dirt road encircling the walls ended and the driverless vehicle rode up a curving stone ramp, which opened back onto a wide raised road.

  Identical to the one they had rode in on, black stone seemingly melted into place.

  It was at roughly this point that Kellin suddenly noticed Oshin existed again.

  'Oh, that prick! Mind-reamed us because he was feeling a bit embarrassed. One of these days there won’t be a Peacekeeper keeping me from hitting back, Oshin, and on that day, good luck. Flux mutations are a real bitch.'

  Unlike the road they had rode in on, however, only a few dozen metres after the ramp, two massive trees flanked the road.

  Truly titanic in scale, each one shot up at least a hundred metres or more, thick trunks splitting into hundreds of leaf-filled branches. There was something peculiar about them, as they didn’t have the thin, graceful qualities that very tall trees usually did.

  'They almost look like oak trees, Kellin thought, comparing them to his namesake, but ridiculously proportioned.'

  The massive trees’ branches were so long they crossed the span of the wide road, overlapping with each other, almost forming a roof overhead.

  As they quickly approached the two behemoths, the Peacekeeper stood from his seat at the carriage’s head. Again a small cord shot out from the chrome white band on his hand, slotting into the same divot as before.

  The carriage slowed to a stop.

  Raising the adorned hand into the air, the Peacekeeper began speaking in High Elvish, a language apparently so complex that the human mind was literally incapable of processing it.

  Kellin only recognized a few words, as much of Common was elvish that had been ‘dumbed down’ so that humans could understand it.

  “Request… passage, by… Perennity…” the Peacekeeper’s rapid-fire words echoed out with sonorous grace, as the band glowed with familiar gold light, almost too bright to look at.

  Kellin resisted the urge to look away, what happened next shocking him so much that the stinging pain was forgotten entirely.

  The colossal tree branches overhead swayed and bent, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. They wove together with branches from their twin tree, twisting into a single massive arch overhead, the leaves shimmering as they moved.

  Some turned a golden brown colour, others midnight black, and as the branches settled into their new position, the colorful leaves formed overlapping writing.

  Each colour formed recognizably elvish characters, though it was impossible to discern any meaning as the constantly shifting leaves re-wove together.

  Within the arch, the long, straight road to Blackpool seemed to shrink, as space bent.

  Within seconds, another pair of gargantuan trees bloomed into view along the shortening road, already twisting into a similar arch, and space before them seemed to condense further and further.

  Another pair of trees zipped closer, forming an arch, and then another pair, and another, space condensing faster and faster, until there was a corridor of blurred colours above the road.

  The horizon was replaced by a bright white light as the road contorted.

  “WAIT!” a shout burst out from the leader of the carriage’s unwilling followers.

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  Turning back from the awe-inducing sight ahead of them, Kellin saw Sharp, with one arm resting on a hunched over Simon, who was busy getting sick on the ground. The other arm was outstretched, her hand held aloft as though she could stop what was about to happen with sheer force of will.

  'Maybe she can, you don’t know. Also what IS about to happen, what is she…'

  The Elf half-turned, almost looking at her over his shoulder, but he didn’t say a word.

  He simply waited.

  “Please!” she cried, with genuine despair in her voice, “I’ll do what she wants, just don’t do this, it’s pointless, it’s stupid, it’s inhumane!... though I don’t suppose you care, do you?”

  She finished, having paused for a moment to see if the Peacekeeper reacted to her accusation. Her tone grew cold and spiteful as she realized no mercy was forthcoming.

  'Apparently not then… Oh, they’re on foot. Oh, damn.'

  “If you crave survival, then survive.” the Elf remarked, before returning to his seat as he set the carriage in motion with the wave of his hand.

  He then addressed the passengers, in a bored tone:

  “If you wish to retain them, please keep all hands, feet, heads, assorted limbs and myriad appendages inside the carriage at all times while traversing the Rootway.”

  As the vehicle chugged forward, the chained bandits were almost pulled off their feet, Sharp shouting desperately at Simon to do something.

  Then, as the carriage passed under the arch, the world blurred.

  Kellin’s heart started hammering and his stomach felt like it was doing somersaults, yet he didn’t feel like they were moving any faster than their previous pace.

  Unable to turn his head without feeling like getting violently sick, in his periphery he could just make out a shimmering disk of thick purple fog rapidly swirl into being, on which the bandits knelt, holding onto protruding misty handles for dear life.

  They were bounced around, pulled along with the blindingly fast carriage. Whatever protections it offered its occupants against their real speed, didn't apply to those chained behind it.

  A yelp from one of the other prisoners interrupted the low chanting emanating from Simon in rolling waves, presumably the source of the thin disk of ethereal mist which had saved them.

  On the very edge of Kel’s vision, the origin of the yelp had released the handles he had been so desperately clinging to, and stood half-upright to scramble backwards. A dreadful look appeared on his face as his eyes widened in shock, staring at something Kel couldn’t see.

  The disk shifted and juddered, barely cushioning the desperate prisoners from the repeated impacts as it skipped along behind the carriage.

  The anchorless bandit bent and wobbled, desperately trying to balance himself, but to no avail.

  He fell back to his knees, but the angle of his fall sent him careening off the side of the rattling disk with a pained wail, directly onto the road.

  “Aaa-”, he began, before being cut off, quite suddenly.

  There wasn’t an impact, not really.

  It was more like where before there was a man, there was now a red smear, trailing off into the distance behind them as they shot forward.

  It looked like he had fallen into the road, somehow, their incredible speed grinding away his form from the bottom up, till there was nothing left but a scarlet stain.

  The shackles that had once held him, still chained to the back of the carriage, bounced and clinked on the road before slowly retracting into the carriage.

  'You recognized that, Kellin. The scared, animal shock, the need to look down. Are you going to look, or are you going to wuss out? Do you want to know?'

  Still unable to turn his head for fear of getting sick, perhaps doubly so after that grotesque display, Kellin flicked his eyes over to where Oshin was sitting.

  He had a misbegotten smirk on his face, and a hand raised to his mouth, blowing away a puff of smoke that had just curdled up from his index finger.

  'He killed him. The bastard did his little ‘hole’ illusion, and he… good gods, for what? Why?'

  Mustering up the courage to turn his head, nausea be damned, Kellin slowly turned to stare Oshin head on. The spiteful bastard stared back and raised an eyebrow, as though asking ‘What? Anything to say?’.

  Before Kellin could think of something appropriate thing to say, the blurred corridor they had been travelling through unravelled as they passed the final arch, taking his attention.

  The last pair of giant trees unwound as the carriage rumbled forward. The magical disk dissipated, blowing away as the chanting that maintained it cut off.

  'He might have been trying to kill me,' Kellin began, after turning back to watch the bandits scramble upright. He saw Simon, who was being held under the shoulders by two of the other prisoners, seemingly knocked unconscious from the strain of the desperate spell.

  'But I’ll be damned if he isn’t a decent guy. I’d swap Oshin for him as a travelling companion any day of the week. At least your stomach isn’t in the mood to do backflips anymore.'

  As Kel turned back to try and face the malicious lunatic, the carriage rounded a bend in the previously straight road, curving between two hills. As they passed through the small valley, his vision caught, Oshin temporarily forgotten.

  Before them lay the City.

  The midnight walls of Blackpool rose thirty metres or more, easily as thick as the road they had been travelling on, and from their raised position he could see the city within.

  Sprawling and bloated, thousands upon thousands of buildings, more than Kellin had ever imagined existing, never mind in one place. Some large, towering affairs in the far-off city center that easily dwarfed the walls, glimmering lights reflecting the morning sun from soaring windows.

  But closer by, there were small, dinky little cottages that would have been right at home in Duroyed.

  He could just about see green fields over the wall's edge, stretching across at least a quarter of the walled area.

  Through the morning haze, at the very edge of visibility, beyond the city center, rose large black mountains, the city's namesake, seeming to shift and ripple as the carriage moved, in some unknowable trick of the light.

  But that wasn’t what kept his attention.

  His, and every other passenger’s eyes, were glued to a point far above the bustling metropolis.

  Suspended, miles and miles up in the sky above the city was a humongous, spherical cloud.

  As wide around as the city's entire footprint, the gargantuan cloud was clearly unnatural, almost a perfect globe.

  Occasional flashes of lightning were visible at its edges, where the cloud thinned enough to see through the lighter grey outer layers, but the source of the crackling discharges underneath the wispy shell was entirely obscured by denser, shadowy cloud, heavy and swollen.

  The carriage rolled onwards, unnoticed by the carriage's occupants, far too busy staring at the swirling, roiling sphere that dominated the sky above them.

  Kellin’s eyes dropped just in time to spot a needle-like silvery metal spike gleaming in the city center, towering over the nearby buildings, before the carriage’s downhill descent hid the city behind its walls.

  It was hard to judge at this distance, but it seemed like it was directly underneath the middle of the sphere.

  Whether it had been built under the ludicrously large cloud or the metal spike caused the cloud, Kel couldn’t say.

  'Guess you’ll find out when you get there. Pretty sure you’ve never seen a cloud that big in your life. Good gods.'

  Kellin’s inner monologue was apparently also in enough awe that it didn’t have the time for proper snark. The carriage continued its descent, he spotted rain falling from the closest side of the sphere, over the city's green sector.

  As the carriage finally reached the bottom of the hill, the road before them split, ringing the city before joining other roads, leading to other, far off corners of the land.

  However, there was only one entrance to the grand city, a giant rectangular gate, taller again than the rest of the already daunting black walls.

  Though calling anything giant in the face of the enormous cloud overhead felt like a lie.

  As the carriage approached the yawning portal before them, they slowed, and then stopped, having joined a long queue of vehicles and pedestrians in line to enter the city.

  A line which was moving at a truly glacial pace. And then the rain started to hit them.

  Kel sighed.

  He was going to get soaked, and there wasn’t a chance the Peacekeeper was going to activate the wards to keep them from getting wet. Might as well find some way to pass the time. Oshin was still eyeing the titanic sphere overhead, with something approaching hunger in his eyes.

  “Hey Oshin, it’s just a cloud,” Kel remarked with a sickly sweet smile, unable to stop himself from needling the murderer, “Get over yourself.”

  'After all, turnabout is fair play.'

  But before anything more than a familiar look of outrage bloomed on the maniac’s face, a yellow flare of light and a low hum of power put lie to his earlier prediction.

  'Huh, guess the Peacekeeper is more considerate than you figured,' Kellin mused, 'it does makes sense, if we made it into Blackpool soaked to the bon-'

  THOOM

  Overhead a firestorm exploded into sight, thick raging streams of white-hot flame blasting forth towards the city from the sky above them.

  Before the burning torrent even reached the walls, a giant plume burst forth from the cloud, which swirled to meet the oncoming blaze.

  Just as the foggy deluge was about to impact, it condensed, thinning into a sheet of dark water. Billowing parallel to the wall like a massive ship's sail for a moment, the murky sheet froze solid.

  The two massive spells met, a skull-rattling explosion of steam thundering out from the epicenter, sizzling drops of liquid-flame bursting outwards in a scorching reaction.

  ‘Oh, so that’s why he put the ward up.’ Kellin thought in a daze.

  A wave of sweltering heat passed through the carriage's dwarven defenses, a warbling, whining tone as the shockwave passed around the wards.

  A little ways ahead of them, was a traveller on foot with no defense against the steam explosion. He had screamed in pain briefly, before falling to the ground. His pink, broiled skin still smoked somewhat as the flash of superheated steam had cooked it in an instant.

  No doubt he was not the only one, as similar cries echoed out further along the queue.

  Between their cart and the steamed man however, there was a figure who sat astride a curious two-wheeled vehicle that Kellin had never seen before, a leg stuck out to stop the contraption from falling over.

  Covered in a thick coat of orange fur, wearing nothing but a rather stylish small black bowler cap, the bizarre traveller had removed a small umbrella from somewhere, presumably the small basket at the front of its vehicle.

  Held aloft in one large hand, with a thumb folded oddly in line with the rest of its fingers, the relatively small umbrella wouldn’t even shield the creature's body against rain, nevermind this hellstorm.

  However, the steamburst had left the unfamiliar entity entirely untouched.

  As Kel curiously watched the unusual being, a single gobbet of flame fell directly onto the umbrella it held over head, and instead of setting the small weather-shield ablaze, or perhaps even breaking apart over it, it simply fell into the umbrella’s smartly-embroidered canopy.

  The midnight-black material rippled like a liquid before it stilled, appearing once again as nothing more than a regular old rain-stopping device, if rather well adorned.

  'Eyes up Kellin, you’ll have time for curiosity later.'

  Even as he berated himself for a lack of situational awareness, the riot of flames overhead dissipated, revealing a distant figure floating in the air, too far above to make out any details.

  A soft green glow winked into being, barely noticeable at first in the air beside the figure, but it quickly swelled in size.

  The suddenly recognizable arrow grew to giant proportions in three pulsing bursts, a low echoing throb reverberating through the air with each one, like a heartbeat.

  Two lines of scarlet red light shot from the tail-end of the massive bolt, now grown longer than the height of the walls and thicker than a man’s height, floating in the air as though underwater.

  Both of the lines had a glowing spike at their ends, scarlet light giving way to white-hot burning hooks, which lanced into the towering wall on either side of the gates.

  The titanic missile stilled to point directly at the wall.

  A massive hand, formed of similar red light, swirled into existence behind the nocked arrow, and Kellin’s breath caught, as the ethereal hand began to pull back on the tremendous bolt.

  The green glow suffusing it condensed into an ominous star at its tip, a groaning shriek filling the air as the scarlet improvised ‘bow string’ stretched overhead.

  He breathed out, slumping back into the bench seat.

  Several of the passengers had begun to pray, led by Eryn.

  'Well, that’s it then. The end. Can’t believe I thought Blackpool would be saner than the village. The sheer force of the impact… plus whatever magic is bound to follow… it was a good run, but carriage wards, dwarf made or no, aren’t standing up to that. I never even got to kick Oshin’s ass.'

  'Mom, I’m sorry, Marc’s going to finish the Plan, but damn, I really thought…'

  Before Kel could finish whatever it was he really thought, a figure appeared atop a dark metallic platform, rising from behind the midnight black walls. Accompanied by a swirling cloud, trailing behind like a massive cloak, a cone of blue flame blasted from underneath the platform as it floated past the walls.

  Far closer than the other airborne figure, though still blurry in the distance, Kel caught only sparse details, and what he did spot left him questioning his sanity.

  Thick tentacles wrapped along the edges of the floating platform, their source hidden underneath some kind of skirt and a grey-clothed torso, wearing what Kel was sure had to be formal wear.

  The only time he had ever worn anything similar must have been the memorial.

  Dangling from one of the large tentacles which secured the figure to the floating platform, a small case hung limply.

  Just as Kellin processed what he was looking at, and began to wonder what business the cephalopod had with a briefcase, it flipped open, and another tentacle reached within, much farther than it’s dimensions should allow. It withdrew a long yellow staff, ending in two rings of increasing size.

  A dull hum rose, a discordant note to the still rising whine of the stretching scarlet bowstring.

  Organized lines of purple light spread out across the wall underneath the floating squid-man, circuits flashing awake, the same as the wagon's wards.

  As the stone lit up, seams appeared in the previously monolithic wall, and the tentacled figure held the staff aloft, two pillars of stone rising up to flank him, dense lines of magenta light terminating at their tips.

  The cloak of swirling cloud behind the strange figure swelled and thickened as it morphed, a shimmering navy glow outlining a massive tentacled face above the odd looking mage.

  The misty squid head blew on the staff, almost gently, and at almost the same moment the scarlet hand popped into red sparks, releasing the terrifying missile.

  Kellin blinked.

  And then realized, for the second time that day, that he wasn’t dead.

  Overhead, the sky had been replaced with a wall, no, a mountain, of bubbles.

  Slightly purple tinted, Kellin could still see through the mostly clear mass of watery orbs, and within, the giant arrow rested. Frozen in motion as if at any moment it would continue its destructive flight.

  The squidlike figure, and who or whatever his opponent was, had vanished.

  'Probably not dying then, alright. Plan’s back on. As long as some third thing do- Nope, no jinxes today.'

  “PLEASE make your way to the gates, I repeat, please continue making your way to the gates, we can’t afford further delays, the disturbance has passed.”

  The message, unbelievable though it seemed to Kellin, repeated on a loop, echoing out from two large white cones attached to the walls, flanking the gate's frame.

  The carriage began moving again, a sharp crack following after the wheels rolled over some unfortunately still steaming remains, and Kel saw the Elf’s expression change from placid boredom to a dull exasperation.

  Perhaps he simply hadn’t been paying attention, but it seemed the first time his expression had shifted since Kellin had awoken.

  He shivered.

  'How was that boring? Is this normal? Am I going insane?'

  Overhead the mountain of bubbles were condensing, merging together into larger and larger bubbles, but Kellin didn’t have it in him to care anymore, even dismissing the purple tint casting everything in an alien light.

  Rocked with emotional whiplash, some passengers chuckled, some cried, and others still were silent.

  Kel reeled internally, desperately attempting to cling onto his prior worldview, which still had some expectation of sanity, more’s the pity.

  Before he knew it, lost in a senseless fugue as he was, the carriage had carried onwards to the gate, and they had stopped at the threshold. The passengers were shepherded off the vehicle and made to line up at what appeared to be a kiosk inset into the breadth of the stone gate, the long counter manned by several attendants.

  It was only in the queue, turned awkwardly to the side, and staring vacantly at the floor that he regained an awareness of the external world.

  As the passenger in front of him turned away, he turned to face the counter the attendant was supposed to be standing behind and the world seemed to condense down to a single point.

  Green skin. Sharp cracked yellow teeth. Long, pointed, almost bat-like ears.

  It gave Kel a crazed look, viscera trailing down a still-chewing jaw, bloody spittle flying as it munched, a gnawed and cracked bone protruding from the half-eaten limb clutched possessively in one hand.

  ‘Oh damn, I really hope that wasn’t the attendant.’