Shades of Grey

VIKKA— AUGUST 1844

Flying blind is immensely more difficult than walking blind. The slightest upturn of your wing and you might gain twenty yards in altitude; the most miniscule of turns to the left and you could drift five kilometres off course. Forma had to fly behind me and direct my motions the entire ten days it took to travel from Salvo to the outskirts of Vikka just to keep me straight.

“Prepare to land, the ground is about fifty feet away and closing,” she warned, her voice still slightly weary from the rising intensity of her monthly transformation. I could hear the degeneration that had held the Jzasach men hostage for so long begin to take its slow toll on my poor, worn Maisling. This thought only fuelled the rageful fire that burned inside of me: it would not be long before I would be able to release my anger on a certain vampire that deserved it more than any Creature I had yet come across.

I focused my hearing and listened to the wind as it swept across the dirt path below, calculating exactly how far away it was as I extended my wings and landed with ease, inhaling the steady stream of distinctive aromas and listening to the clear sounds that choked the air around me.

“Good God,” Forma marvelled after changing back into herself. “That was exhausting. I’ve never—”

She stopped as she saw me listening.

“What can you hear?” she asked in a soft voice.

I took in a breath as I scrutinised the sounds that were flooding my senses.

“I hear the thudding of enormous machines, the clanging of metal, brutish voices speaking in Romanian…screams of horror… but the smells are the worst,” I said as I analysed everything my senses were taking in.

“What can you smell?”

I paused for a moment as I identified all of the aromas.

“Fire, steel…madness…”

Forma took an apprehensive breath.

“That’s not a far cry from how it looks. The outer gate looks like black marble and it is lined with hundreds of spearheads along the top rim. Industrial smoke towers stretch high over the rest of the enormous buildings made of black stone and rotting wood, belching ugly multi-coloured smoke into the air. It’s no wonder every living thing within a twenty mile radius of the city is dead.”

A sudden whisper shot through the mechanical whirring and idiomatic babble, drawing my focus.

“Come, Miss Echo. I am waiting.”

Two years ago I would have gasped and fallen to the ground in horror. Two years ago I would have shaken in fear at the very sight of the city. Now, here I was standing firm as I realised that the vampire I had been searching for knew that I was coming. Here I was now, blind and perpetually exhaused, preparing to fight a Vanguard: but there was no doubt, no fear, and no pain.

There was only victory.