Cassian and his honor guard were immediately flanked by two dozen heavily armed Shell-Kin. The massive Tortoise warriors formed an impenetrable wall around the envoys, nudging them forward with the blunt ends of their star-iron spears.
Cassian walked off the pier and entered the City of Spiral. He expected to find a struggling settlement built from salvaged ruins. Instead, he found an industrial nightmare operating with terrifying, synchronized perfection.
The air smelled of refined alchemy and hot metal. They walked past the towering Ash-Forge Crucible, where Cassian watched a line of human laborers effortlessly hauling carts filled with raw materials.
'Those humans,' Cassian thought, his eyes widening in disbelief. 'Their musculature is entirely abnormal. They look like heavy shock troops, not common laborers.'
