We limped away from the road of black iron, leaving the acid-pitted slag and the cooling, dismembered corpses of the Ashdrakes behind us.

  The adrenaline of the battle had long since faded, replaced by a deep, bone-weary exhaustion. We weren't walking so much as shuffling.

  I was supporting Willow, who was stumbling with fatigue after her magical exertion. Liam was walking with a hitch in his step, favoring the leg the badger had chewed on the day before. Even Faelar, usually an inexhaustible font of energy, was dragging his boots, the massive weight of Bessie seemingly doubled now that the fight was over.

  The silence was heavy, filled only by the crunch of our boots on the rocky ground and the low, mournful howl of the wind.

  But it was a silence that could not last. Not with this team.

  “So, just to be clear,” Faelar’s voice boomed, startling a flock of ash-colored birds from a nearby outcropping.

  He was looking at Elmsworth, but his eyes kept darting nervously towards Nugget. The chicken was perched on the wizard’s shoulder, contentedly preening gore-flecked feathers. She had turned a deep, regal shade of Prideful Purple.

  “For future reference,” Faelar continued, giving the bird a wide berth, “we are not allowed to eat the chicken under any circumstances, correct? Because it might… you know…”

  He made a vague, but graphic, explosive gesture with his hands.

  “…redecorate my insides?”

  Elmsworth looked deeply offended. He adjusted his spectacles, which were smeared with drake blood.

  “You would eat a fellow scholar? A hero of the battle? Faelar, sometimes your dwarven pragmatism borders on the monstrous. Nugget is not food. She is a colleague.”

  “I’m just asking a practical question!” the dwarf insisted. “He’s a chicken! Chickens are for eatin’! Except, apparently, for this one, who is for explodin’!”

  “I, for one, am less concerned about eating him and more concerned about standing near him,” Liam said. His voice was a low, clinical monotone.

  I noticed he was carefully keeping a ten-foot radius around Elmsworth as we walked.

  “What, precisely, is his blast radius?” Liam asked. “Is the detonation voluntary, or is it triggered by specific stimuli, such as being swallowed by a giant, acid-spitting lizard? Does he have a timer we should be aware of? Is there a safe, minimum distance we should all be maintaining from him at all times? These are important tactical questions.”

  “He is not a bomb!” Elmsworth huffed, clutching Nugget protectively.

  “He literally just exploded!” Faelar roared. “I saw it! There was glitter in my beard!”

  “He facilitated a localized, contained, bio-arcane detonation within a hostile entity!” the wizard corrected him sharply. “It’s a defensive mechanism! Like a skunk’s spray, only substantially more… spectacular. And effective. And loud.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he’s a weapon at all,” Willow said. Her voice was dreamy with exhaustion. Her eyes shone with a wondrous, gentle light as she looked at the purple chicken.

  “Can’t you feel it?” she whispered. “He’s not a normal chicken. He’s a Guardian Spirit! A protector of all that is good and natural. He’s a tiny, feathered sunbeam who has taken this humble, unassuming form to guide us on our quest and protect us from harm!”

  A long, stunned silence followed her pronouncement.

  “A spirit?” Elmsworth finally sputtered, his voice cracking with academic outrage. “My dear child, that is the most unscientific, mystically superstitious, and frankly insulting thing I have ever heard! Nugget is a perfectly normal Gallus Gallus Domesticus who has, through a unique combination of a specialized diet I designed and living in close proximity to my own formidable arcane aura, simply achieved a state of quantum superposition! It allows for temporary, localized explosive decomposition and subsequent corporeal reconstitution! It is a perfectly logical, if rare, biological phenomenon!”

  “So he’s a magic, exploding, teleporting chicken,” Liam summarized, his face deadpan.

  “Well, when you put it so crudely, yes!” Elmsworth conceded.

  “Can we please,” I said, my voice tight with a building headache, “focus on the fact that we are still bleeding? And that there might be more of those things?”

  Our path led us to the wreckage of the second drake—the one crippled in the mid-air collision and finished off by Faelar.

  It was a huge, broken heap of leathery wings and shattered bone lying in a crater of ash. Its single intact eye stared blankly at the bruised sky.

  We stopped. Not out of respect, but out of necessity. It was a resource pile.

  “A magnificent specimen!” Elmsworth declared, his eyes gleaming with scholarly desire. He pulled a serrated knife from his belt. “Even in death! The internal organ structure of a lesser draconid is a marvel of arcane biology! The spleen is a potent alchemical reagent for potions of fire resistance. The acid glands could be weaponized. We must dissect it immediately! For science!”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “We will do no such thing!” Willow said, her voice firm and horrified.

  She moved to stand between Elmsworth and the corpse, a tiny, determined guardian.

  “It was a living creature,” she said. “Even if it was our enemy. It fought and it died. It deserves to rest in peace. We can’t just… butcher it for parts like it’s a piece of lumber. It’s disrespectful to the spirit of the wild.”

  Faelar nodded grimly, siding with Willow. He rested the haft of his axe on the ground.

  “The lass is right,” the dwarf grunted. “The beast fought, and it died. There’s no honor in rootin’ around in its guts after the fact. It’s a warrior’s due to rest whole. We leave it to the scavengers. That’s the way of the wild.”

  “Honor? Peace?” Liam scoffed.

  He was looking at the creature’s tough, scaly hide with a professional’s eye. He touched his empty quiver.

  “Those are fine sentiments,” Liam said coldly. “But a vial of that acid could melt a lock or a hinge. Those scales could stop a dagger meant for your throat. The animal is dead; it no longer cares about its spleen. It is a waste of valuable resources to leave it all here to rot when we are walking into a war with nothing but bad attitudes and sharp sticks.”

  While Elmsworth and Faelar descended into a passionate argument about science versus honor, Liam limped closer to the corpse.

  “I’m just going to… check for vulnerabilities,” he said to no one in particular. “For future reference. Tactical analysis.”

  He ran his hand over the drake’s hide. His fingers probed the edges of the scales near the flank.

  I saw his movements. They were quick, subtle, and practiced.

  Under the guise of his inspection, he found a cluster of large, undamaged scales that had been loosened in the crash. With a deft twist of his wrist and a flash of his dagger, he pried them free.

  Click. Snap. Slide.

  He slipped the black, iron-hard scales silently into a pouch at his belt. He did it three more times.

  I saw it. I saw the glint of the scales as they disappeared.

  I opened my mouth to say something about looting the dead. Then I looked at my own armor, which had a new, gaping hole in the arm from the battle in the quarry. I looked at Liam’s empty arrow quiver.

  I decided I didn’t see anything.

  “Enough,” I said, my voice cutting through their argument. “We’re not performing a full dissection, Elmsworth. We don't have time. But Liam is right. We take what we can grab quickly. A vial of the acid, and any scales that are already loose. No more. We do it fast, and we move on.”

  It was a compromise that satisfied no one completely, which meant it was the right one.

  As Elmsworth grumpily siphoned a vial of the viscous green acid into a glass bottle, and Liam officially “found” the scales he had already pocketed, his eyes scanned the rest of the body.

  His hands stilled on the creature’s thick, scaly neck.

  “Kaelen,” he said. His voice was suddenly grim. All the sarcasm was gone. “Come look at this.”

  I walked over. Liam pointed with the tip of his dagger.

  He pulled back a flap of torn skin near the base of the skull. There, partially embedded in the flesh, was a crude, heavy iron collar. It had been forged right onto the beast, the metal biting into the scales.

  And seared into the leathery hide just below it was a brand.

  A black, grasping hand.

  The discovery put an end to all arguments.

  “They aren't wild,” Willow whispered, covering her mouth. “They aren't hunting. They’re slaves.”

  “Branded,” Faelar growled, spitting on the ground. “Like cattle. There’s no honor in enslaving a dragon-kin.”

  We left the corpse in silence.

  We found our shelter as the last of the light faded. It was a dark, yawning cave set into the side of a rocky hill, facing away from the wind.

  The entrance was littered with the bones of small animals. As we ventured inside, Faelar suddenly raised his axe with a shout.

  “BEAR!”

  He charged at a massive, hulking shape in the shadows.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  Faelar stopped inches from the target. He blinked. He lowered his axe.

  It wasn't a bear. It was the massive, picked-clean skeleton of the cave’s previous inhabitant—a giant cave bear that had died years ago.

  “Oh,” Faelar muttered, looking embarrassed. “Right. It’s… it’s very quiet for a bear.”

  “A good, big beast,” he said, recovering his dignity by patting the skull. “Died in his own home. A proper end. Unlike that poor drake.”

  We built our fire amidst the scattered bones. The flames cast dancing, skeletal shadows on the cave walls. The mood was somber. There was no victory feast. We had work to do.

  “Two traps at the entrance,” I said to Liam. “A noise trap here, a rockfall there.”

  He nodded, his face all business. He unpacked coils of thin, strong wire from his pack.

  “I’m setting the tripwire at ankle height,” Liam explained as he worked, his hands moving with precision. “If it’s a badger, it hits the legs. If it’s a cultist, it hits the boot. If I set it at knee height, the badgers go right under it. You have to know your enemy’s stride.”

  He tied a cluster of hollow bones to the wire. “This will rattle if anything breathes on it.”

  While we secured the perimeter, Faelar and Willow were put in charge of the meal.

  “Right, what’ve we got?” Faelar grumbled, looking at our pathetic supplies. “Air and disappointment.”

  Elmsworth’s face brightened. He reached into his robe. “I have more of the nutritional slurry!”

  “Absolutely not,” Faelar and I said in unison.

  “I will improve it!” Faelar declared, snatching the tube. “It just needs… character.”

  He took the pouch of glowing green paste. He dumped it into a pan. Then, he poured a heavy splash of his precious, remaining ale into the mix.

  “The alcohol will cook off the slime,” he reasoned.

  He began to fry it over the fire.

  The smell was… indescribable. It didn't smell like cooking. It smelled like a wet mossy log had been set on fire inside a brewery that was also burning down. It smelled of burnt magic and socks.

  “Dinner!” Faelar announced proudly.

  He served up a series of lumpy, blackened cakes that still glowed faintly green in the middle.

  We ate them. We had to.

  They were gritty. They were bitter. They tasted exactly like they smelled.

  “This,” Liam said, chewing grimly, “is a crime. Someone should be arrested for this meal.”

  “It fills the hole,” Faelar grunted, though he looked a little green himself.

  I took the first watch. I stood at the mouth of the fortified cave, looking out at the darkness.

  The intricate web of Liam’s traps was a comforting sight. The night was cold and silent.

  After a while, Liam joined me. He couldn't sleep. He sat on a rock, cleaning Soul-Drinker. The dagger’s occasional whispered complaints about the lack of violence were the only sound between us.

  “I was promised a war,” the dagger hissed. “This is camping. I hate camping.”

  Liam ignored it. He looked out at the black, silent line of the iron road stretching into the distance.

  “So,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “An army of burrowing monsters to take out the walls. A private air force of enslaved drakes to control the sky. This Malkor… he’s thorough.”

  “He’s building a combined-arms force,” I said. “He’s not just a cultist. He’s a general.”

  “What do you think he has for infantry?” Liam asked. “Goblins with sharpened spoons? Or something worse?”

  I didn't answer. I just kept my eyes on the hostile darkness, my hand resting on the hilt of my sword.

  “Something worse,” I said finally. “Always something worse.”