Ash only rolled his eyes.

They trailed the odd little creatures--whom I secretly dubbed the pack rats--through the wasteland of junk, drawing curious stares from the other residents living there. There were more of the ratlike men whose teeth rusted metal, a few scrawny dogs wandering about, and swarms of iron bugs crawling over everything. Once, in the distance, it was possible to catch a terrifying glimpse of another dragon, unfurling from a mound of trash. Thankfully, it only shifted into a more comfortable sleeping position and returned to its perfect disguise as a pile of debris.

At last, the mountains of garbage fell away, and the lead pack rat pointed a long finger down a barren plain. Across a cracked, gray plateau, spiderwebbed with lava and millions of blinking lights, a railroad stretched away into the distance. Hulking machines, like enormous iron beetles, sat beside it, snorting steam. And silhouetted against the sky, a jagged black tower stabbed up from the earth, wreathed in smog and billowing smoke.

Isiea stares up at the tower, not saying anything.

Lise stared at it. " Is that the Iron court? "

Ash drew in a quiet breath. He looked awful. His skin was ashen; there were shadows under his eyes, and his hair was damp with sweat.

Isiea glances at him and frowns. ,, Are you getting sick? ,,

" what's wrong with you? "

One corner of his mouth curled up but he ignored them altogether. "Don't look now," Ash muttered, "but we're being followed."

,, Whats following us? ,,

" what? By who? "

"Your friends." They were following the railroad--walking beside it, instead of directly on the iron tracks--toward the looming fortress, and hadn't encountered a single creature, faery or otherwise, on the journey. Streetlamps grew out of the ground, lighting the way, and iron behemoths, crouched along the tracks, hissing smoke. Through the writhing steam, it was difficult to see more than a few yards away.

But then, a small, familiar creature scuttled across the tracks, vanishing into the smoke. It was possible to catch a glimpse of a tricycle poking up from a mound of junk and frowned.