Callisto

Iron and Rain

A single road ran from the gaping maw of the Changeling's tunnel into the depths of the iron forest. The tarmac boiled under the sun of the open Deadlands and stung Rain-Born's cloth-wrapped feet. Still, she and Jespar followed this great burning tongue as it wound its way through the skeletal remains of dwellings Rain-Born had never seen before towards the great iron trees that held her prize. Around her, large planks of iron jutted out from the ground and twisted in the air like grasping hands. Chunks of these hovels were missing – as though some great winged tyrant had feasted on their steel hides before returning to its nest. The walls of these houses that still remained intact were rusted and broken. The colors that had once clung to their hides had been battered into submission by the dry desert winds. They looked sad, Rain-Born thought, like the shadows of a decrepit civilization that had breathed its last breath long ago.

As they passed more and more of these strange houses Rain-Born noticed a pattern: each house was placed equidistant from its neighbor, and a small metal device attached to a plank of dead wood lay on the scorched grass before each open door. She scanned these hollowed hovels for signs of life – feeling like the rectangular eyes of their squalid husks stared at her and Jespar with hunger in their minds. Watching. Waiting for the precise moment to strike and take the lives of two from the new world they did not belong to.

Jespar seemed to notice her trepidation and whistled a song quietly into the air as they followed the road. His tiny voice echoed through the iron husks and the dead air, and its melody calmed her somewhat.

They stopped as the road spilled into a circle flanked on all sides by more and more destroyed houses, pieces of their rooftops scattered across the road, and the thing that rose from its center attached to what looked like a stone dais.

It was a statue. Of a human. Headless, holding what looked like a piece of parchment in his or her left hand. If this decapitated entity held any importance to the beings that once dwelled here, their message would be spread no longer.

"What is this place?" Rain-Born asked, more to the air than to anyone in particular. All around her, she saw potential threats: corners, walls where assailants could hide, and shadows moving behind the open windows surrounding them...

"It's a suburb," Jespar said, as a matter of fact. He, too, looked up at the statue with nonchalant eyes, evidently unimpressed. "Used to be plenty of them before things changed around here."

"You knew this place?"

He sniffed the air and turned up his nose at the scent. "Nah. Places like it, sure. I used to live in one when I was but a wee pup. I thought –"

He saw that she had drawn her bow.

At his look of confusion, she held up her hand and made several quick gestures. This, of course, only served to increase his confusion, and though she struggled not to chuckle at his cocked head, she pointed towards one burnt-out hovel.

Its door had just swung open.

The huntress within Rain-Born activated, and she crouched low, almost prone to the boiling ground. She tried to get a handle on her senses, but the Changeling's tunnel spilled her into a new world. She could not feel a connection with the great hulking, rotting iron giants she saw on the horizon, and she could not even feel the reassuring warmth of the red sands beneath her feet. The people who had made this place had made something unnatural, and it pained her to readjust to a new environment where the spirits of the land did not dare to tread.

But, she reminded herself, she had him. She saw him crouch low with her and issue a low growl as he crept forward by her side – like a shaman's familiar stalking prey with his bonded master. She was no master to any animal (and he certainly would not consent to such a comparison), but it still allowed her to stay calm and press on, keeping low, slowly making her way toward the front door and the shadow that moved within that house.