The Iron Ark convoy stood ready on the high northern rim of the Red Mesa at dawn, prepared for the long migration into the uncharted inside of the Outer Badlands.
Thirty heavy wagons formed a disciplined traveling column across the red sandstone ridge. The captured Promethean gun-trucks had been converted into heavy supply haulers. The two Type-58 howitzers were mounted securely on tracked transport trailers. And fourteen hundred frontier commoners stood with their packs lashed and their water barrels filled, well-fed, healthy. Then it united under the brass Star-Compass.
Beside the lead wagon, Arthur Vance stood with Kira Jansen and Toby Mallow, going over the final navigational route.
At Arthur’s side, his four companions stood at the peak of their consolidated power:
Grimm, a five-foot-tall, three-hundred-and-fifty-two-pound Gold A-Rank Nether-Spine Direhound, his twelve black glass bone spikes gleaming like polished glass. Titus, a six-ton Gold A-Rank Earth-shaking Trench Titan, his dark rock shell heavy with hard dark metal-silver-steel plates. Pip, a Gold A-Rank Solar Flare Raptor with a five-and-a-half-meter wingspan, perched on Arthur’s shoulder like an avian sunburst. And Vesper, a climbed Silver B-Rank Gale-Sunder Sabertooth, pacing along the sandstone rim with hungry, non-Euclidean grace.
Suddenly, a high-pitched, turbine-like whine cut through the morning silence from the southern sky.
