Shades of Grey

KESTASLA— JUNE 1844

I awoke slowly, which by this point in my travels was no cause for alarm. What did cause me alarm was the fact that I was encased in a warm, lavender gelatine-like substance from the neck down inside of an egg-shaped cocoon inside of what appeared to be a great, twisting tree. I should hope such a situation would cause anyone great unease.

My eyes shot open and all feelings of lassitude left me. Plans of action began to run through my head, when I heard muffled voices from the outside of my cocoon. I squinted in an attempt to look through the hazy purple shell that surrounded me and I watched as blurry tribe members cautiously stepped torward me. The chief then approached my cocoon with a spear and stabbed it. The encasement broke and the substance in which I had been imprisoned spilled through the tear. I fell through to the ground, coughing and chortling as I recovered from whatever narcoleptic spell had gripped me.

“Relax Grey, just breathe,” soothed Roslyn as she knelt beside me.

I looked around me as the rest of the tribe approached me, the memory slowly resurfacing in my head.

“Kestasla…” I slurred stupidly as I slowly achieved full consciousness.

“Yes. Roman finally got his wish,” admonished the chief from across the crowd. “He has captured the last of the free Dragon tribes.”

I turned slowly on my side and pushed myself up with the majority of the tribe members stationed around me, watching eagerly. I then noticed that no one else was unconscious inside a tree egg.

“Am I the last to wake up?” I said in mild embarrassment. “How long has it been?”

“It has been three days, but you received the blast of at least four different sleeping bombs, it is expected that you awaken last,” replied the witch doctor.

“Three days?!” I gaped.

“And given our current location, it was probably for the best that you did not wake,” replied Caelan from the outskirts of the crowd. I looked around as he spoke, studying my newest prison cell.

The Shadows tribe stood in a clearing in the middle of a ugly forest of deformed metal trees. Above the shining metal forest sat a large red storm cloud covering the entire breadth of the ceiling, expelling carmine bolts of lightning and thunderous bouts of electric, crackling thunder.

“God almighty…” I marvelled in a whisper as I took a cautious step towards the nearest tree, carefully stepping over one of the many flat steel roots that made up the clearing. “What is this place?”

“After three days of examination, I think we can all agree on one answer: hell,” said Roslyn simply. An acquiescent murmur swept through the tribe.

I examined their faces: a blank sea of fear and confusion. They had never been captured before. They had never felt this sort of anxiety. I bit my lip resolutely. I was no stranger to panic.

“Where is Forma?” I asked, suddenly realising that she was not with us.

“They left her back at the camp. She is not a Dragon so they did not take her,” replied the chief.

I processed this bit of information and then laughed aloud, which greatly alarmed the rest of the tribe.

“What’s so amusing?” Freyja asked.

“Forma will finally get a chance to rescue me from captivity,” I replied through my chuckles, recalling her understandable lamentations after we had escaped Tournesol. Needless to say, this garnered even more strange looks from the tribe.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” inquired Roslyn.

“I’m fine, really,” I assured them in a forceful voice.

They looked doubtful, but the chief then took control and addressed the group.

“Shadows, we must not panic. Panic is the forefather of poor decisions…”

I began to fidget in unease as my Hunter instincts told me to scout the prison, to search for weak spots and possibly other prisoners. I did not need a lecture from the chief telling me to be brave and not panic.

Carefully, I slipped into the darkness of the twisting forest around us and began to mentally call to Forma as I attempted to gather information about our current prison. Before I could though, I heard voices from the distant dark of the steel serpentine forest. Silently, I began tracking the distant parlance, trying to ignore the roots as they buckled and shifted under my weight.

After a few minutes of soundless running, I arrived at another clearing, similar to the one the Graylights currently occupied. The inhabitants of the clearing were adorned with war paint and ceremonial tattoos of a similar fashion to the Graylights, but of an entirely different style. They whispered to each other in a language I did not understand but recognised immediately from my studies in year seven with Lady Saryah: Redlight Dragons.

My heart lurched as I realized that Graylights were not the only targets. I was about to enter the massive clearing to greet the Redlights, when a great rumbling from underneath the twisting silver roots of their clearing stopped me.

The Redlights that had awoken from their gelatine cocoons noticed as well. They transformed smoothly, expecting a great battle but no creatures came. Instead, I was forced to watch as several small steel roots shot out of the ground and wrapped themselves around the ankles of the Redlights. The Dragons roared and shrieked in anger as they fought with all of their might. The others immediately took to the air, attempting to help their comrades as much as possible, but within seconds, the captive Redlights began to sink below the rootish surface of the ground. A few gut-wrenching seconds passed and the captive Redlights were gone.

I closed my mouth, which had fallen open in shock several minutes before, and turned to run back to the tribe. I would not let a similar fate befall my own people.

“GET OFF THE GROUND!” I shouted as loudly as possible.

Seconds after I shouted my command, I leapt off a bowed trunk and broke through the silver canopy, transforming and flying the remaining distance to the Graylight clearing.

The Shadows had heard my command and obeyed without question. They all hovered warily over the clearing, watching as the same smaller roots I had seen take the members of the Redlight tribe stretch outward, searching for more Dragons to steal.

Several seconds passed and the roots seemed to give up, retreating back into the massive root maze below. The chief flew forward and addressed the tribe, roaring and grunting in Nangani for the tribe to transform as they landed, but stay as close to the border of the forest as possible. As soon as we had done so, we were to seek shelter on any large root. No one was to touch the clearing floor.

I waited until the entire tribe had followed the chief’s instructions before I transformed and landed on the canopy, stretching my mind out towards Forma.

“Forma, where are you?”

“Unnnhh…” she slurred as she slowly came to consciousness.

“Wake up. Tell me where you are,” I asked.

“Hold on, hold on….ugh….I got knocked unconscious during the battle and I just woke up, freshly de-wolfed. I’m still at the camp which…oh my… looks like an abandoned war zone. Where are you?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I’ve no idea. I’m assuming some sort of prison cell in Kestasla, but it’s unlike any prison I’ve ever been in.”

“I’ll leave for Kestasla right now. Describe your surroundings to me.”

“It’s a twisting forest of black metal trees with a great red cloud covering the—”

Suddenly the entire cavern began to rumble and a sickeningly harsh wail of stressed metal broke the air, forcing me to cover my ears. A second deeper metallic whine then broke the air right below the treetop upon which I had sought refuge. I quickly dropped below and landed on a root next to Goran, eyeing the rest of the tribe with similar anxious unease, until the trees began to bend around us.

“RUN!” ordered the chief as the trees began to move and contort, creating an entirely new, open clearing and making the entire tribe vulnerable to any rootish attacks.

The tribe obeyed instantly, leaping in all manner of directions as we tried to trick the trees, which did not work. Each time a tree was touched it would bend and stretch until there was an enormous wall of trees surrounding a clear ground of freshly flattened roots. I looked around, trying to see an escape route, but none were visible. We were trapped.

“Act with caution!” urged the chief.

A third metallic shriek from directly above us forced us all to cover our ears. All eyes moved upwards and all mouths dropped as a large metal hand broke through the red storm cloud above, reaching directly for the Graylights. We all immediately transformed in preparation for battle, but in an unexpected split second of movement, the hand lurched forward and locked its skeletal fingers around the transformed Syla.

The Shadows let out several roars of protestation, exhaling flames over the metallic joints and swatting at the hands with their powerful tails. Syla fought with all of her strength, but she was no match for the mechanical strength of the enormous hand and she disappeared as it took her up into the red cloud above.

A silent beat of comprehension passed, when Ian suddenly let out an angry roar and charged towards the twisted metal forest surrounding us. He disappeared for a moment into the contorted steel woods and several beats of silence passed before a low groan followed by a dark voice echoed in the great cavern.

“And where do we think we are going?”

The voice was followed by the ear-splitting shriek of metal grinding against metal. Every member of the tribe covered their ears instantly as a badly beaten Ian was thrust back into the clearing from the dark wooded abyss, gripping several painful looking contusions and lacerations. The metallic groaning instantly stopped.

“No one escapes my mighty walls,” the voice stated simply, followed by three loud rolls of thunder and two great lightning strikes. A stale silence permeated the clearing as we all attempted to discern what we had just witnessed.

“Grey? Grey what happened?” Forma asked after I did not respond. How could I respond? What words were there to articulate what I had just seen?

“Forma?” I said after I took a minute to find said words. “Please hurry.”