White froth and the costume features of our assembled groups, a vein of silver across Rain’s tech, red decorative elements on Capricorn’s armor, Sveta’s sky blues and forest greens contrasted with her colorful patchwork coat, the reds, blues, and yellows standing out against a background that was largely gray. Kenzie was the most monochrome of us, but even she had glimmers of silver or gold where tech at her belt or mask lit up. The eyes of her mask had glowing gold irises, set above a frozen smile.

To our west was Titan Eve. The kind of tall that meant I had to raise my chin slowly to take in her full height. The sky was dark but she was darker, as black as crude oil with a cloak of gray-green fog pouring off of her, more fog for her ‘hair’. Many of the buildings weren’t even waist high for her, and most of those buildings were lost in a pea-soup sea of fog.

To our east was Titan Oberon. Hulking, hunched over, with complex antlers seeming to take up a third of his body mass, arcing over his back. Where Eve moved slowly and steadily along the beach, he looked like he was amped up for a fight. He didn’t move smoothly or directly in our direction, but instead lurched a few feet forward, stopped moving, occasionally putting a hand out to touch a nearby building and rock it to its foundations. Like he had no foot speed that wasn’t either ‘full steam ahead’ or ‘hard stop’.

I hadn’t expected the noise. Wind taking odd courses across the cracks, producing whistling sounds here and there, like an eerie, inconsistent song that ranged from whooshes to hissy squeals.

The dull and constant grind, complete with a vibration that ran across the city and shook small bits of snow from rooftops and windowsills, as Titan Eve marched continuously forward. She had no feet to leave the ground, and moved instead like a sword too heavy for the wielder to carry, the tip in soil, dragging through as it was pulled behind the owner. She was that sword, her lower body churning through ground, though I could only tell by looking well past her to the places she had been. Titan Oberon creaked and groaned with every movement, and his footfalls were loud enough with three-quarters of a mile of distance that I could imagine they might deafen us up close.

A constant, horrible noise that never found any resolution or climax.

“Masks ready. Put them on before you think you need it,” I said. “That gas might move faster than you think.”

The Undersiders were on dogs, navigating the shattered landscape. Deathchester was just a bit ahead of us, having stepped forward before stopping. Damsel stood on top of a car. Hookline and Gibbet were paired together.