A haunted and lost world

The shadow dragon swooped down, flaring out her wings and landed and Jade tumbled out of her claws.

The village was not really impressive. There were houses but everyone semmed to be living in small wooden poorly made shakes on the streets. Alice jumped off and ran ahead then came back with Mealanie.

"Melanie!" Nyy cried.
"Nyyri!" The anthro girl called back. She had eagle wings sprouting out of her back, cat ears and a wolf tail.
She ran up and threw her arms around the dragons neck.

"Welcome to Stone-edge." Alice said smiling.

"Hello Jade." Melanie said kindly.
"Hi." Jade said back.
Nyy turned to Alice. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. And please try not to mind our town's poor comunity. We do have houses." She waved to the well built houses in contrast to the wooden shacks.

Nyy nodded and her belly rumbled. "Not to be rude or anything but do you have any food?"

"Yes." Alice nodded "Please follow me." She walked into one of the wooden shacks.

Nyy followed with Jade and Melanie tagging after her with Melanie talking Jades ear off.

Suddenly there was the sound loud mechanical feet stomping into town. "Oh no..." Alice said horrified.

Nyy halted with Jade and Melanie crashing into her legs. "What is it?"

"His Soldiers." She said running around gathering everyone in town outside. When they were out the Soldiers marched into town square. They were mostly bronze colored and were riddled with gears and springs. They had a small pipe strutting out of one of their shpulders that was expelling a black smoke. They only had a pair of bright yellow eyes on their faces and they all carried multi-barreled rifles. A leading soldier stepped forward who was silver inestead of bronze and was covered in blue markings and had blue eyes. He also had a cutlass as well as the rifle. "Payment..." It said in a mechanical voice.

Melanie and Jade scrambled up onto Nyy's back.

The leader of the Village who was a tall feline ina white hooded robe handed the leading soldier a large bag of gold and the metal soldiers left.

"What was that?" Nyy asked quietly.

"Reaver's Soldiers." Alice said. "Reaver owns every house and village in this dimension. He's an evil and corrupt being. Who's obsessed with Shadows and metal. Every day his soldiers visit every village and they force thm to give them every cent they have. Those who resist are..." She faultered at saying the next word. "..sacrificed.."

"They have guns?" Dander's paws carried her like lightning towards the mountain in the near distance. "What kind of place IS this?!" She dodged another bullet, and hoped there would be a place to lose them once she got to the more uneven ground close to the mountain.

The ground rumbled beneath Dander as giant mechanical centipede burst from the sand in front of her. It dwarfed the tiny Fennecat and stared at her with it's multiple red eyes.

Dander slid to a stop, clouds of ashen dust boiling up around her. Her eyes widened, staring up at the monster. She acted on the first instinct that came to her, and darted left, intending to make a wide circle around it.

The centipede lunged at Dander and by only a hair. It rose up again and shrieked angrily as it fired a red beam from it's mouth.

"Can't anything be done about this Reaver?"

Alice had a sad look on her face. "Not that I know of....you might want to speak with our village leader if you wanna stop Reaver. He knows more about him than anyone."

Nyy nodded. "We could have a shot."
"Hey! What is this we?!" Jade fumed.

Alice nodded and directed them to the village leader's cabin.

Melanie pushed the refusing Jade into the cabin behind Nyy and the shadow dragon bowed to the elder, hissing at the others to do the same.