The city groaned, that was the only way to describe it.
Nox walked down the center of what used to be a busy four-lane avenue, now a canyon of twisted metal and shattered glass, the asphalt beneath his boots cracked with veins of strange glowing moss pulsing in the fissures, infected blood vessels spreading through dead pavement.
Wind whistled through the skeletal remains of skyscrapers, carrying the sound of groaning steel and the distant wet tearing sounds of things eating other things, the busted-up city quiet around him for now, but it was a heavy pregnant silence that could break at any moment.
The map the system had given him for Princess What's-Her-Face was blinking in his mind's eye, a steady rhythmic guide through the trashed streets, he kept an eye out, his senses dialed up to eleven, things seemed mostly dead in this particular section but 'seemed' was a dangerous word these days.
His hand drifted to his waist, to the cool heavy metal tucked there.
