The skin of the Watcher seemed still like stone, randomised by age and covered here and there with drifts of the omnipresent black dust. A Praetorian took samples and showed the vials to Pallin. He grunted disinterestedly and had them packed away for analysis back in the laboratories of the Barbican. They climbed on, following the ridge of what might have been, at a distance, the representation of one of Lyreia’s braids. Close by, under their feet, it was simply landscape, the fibres that were analogous to hair thicker than tree trunks and covered with ragged scales.
They went on, and met their first wild Eater.
Whirlwinds and eddies stalked the glass gullies. In one the knotted swirls of the black dust seemed to form into something more substantial than a mere dust devil. It came upon them without warning. . . .
