Chapter 321: 321: Aftermath and The Caution
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Gullies where they had slid. Craters where they had hit. A deep channel where the Stalker had tried to outrun death underground.
Behind him the mountain coughed out people. Shadeclaw came first, tall and dark and silent as old stone. Silvershadow was on his shoulder a step later, eyes raking the dunes. Vexor, Shale, Flint, and Needle poured out in a knot of eager muscle. They had weapons ready and jaws tight. They took in the kill and swallowed the alert with a soldier’s relief that looks like shame for being a second late.
"You took your time," Kai said, without heat.
"We were sleeping," Shale said, and then bit the word in half because it sounded wrong in his own mouth.
"You are here now," Kai said. "Good. Help me move the carcass away from the entrance. The acid will eat the base of the slope if we let it pool."
"Yes, King," Shadeclaw said, and went to work, his voice like rock sliding into place.
Silvershadow moved first without waiting for orders, light on his feet and already picking the safest angles. The others fell in behind him because they trusted his lines. Kai pulled the corpse by the shoulders, because he was strongest and because it mattered that his hands be the first to move the thing that had come for his children. Alka hopped and dragged at the tail, her beak sunk into the thick tendon. They made a difficult task look like routine labor.
The second wave spilled out a dozen heartbeats later. Naaro led without meaning to. She stood in the doorway when she saw how the sand lay and when she smelled the acid and when she counted who was standing and who was not. She did not go farther than the sill.
She had promised to stay near the brood. Her antennae tilted toward Kai like plants toward the sun. Luna was at her shoulder, silver hair snatched into a rough knot, eyes bright and dangerous in the moonlight. Akayoroi’s veil moved like breath even without wind. Vel and Sha came arm to arm but split in the same instant, both measuring angles and exits.
Azhara arrived grinning and then lost the grin when she saw the stain the acid had made on Kai’s side. Lirien came last, jaw set, palms already warm with the start of forge light.
Miryam did not come. She slept in Kai’s room. Kai could feel the small slow pulse of her through the bond like a candle that knew morning would be safe.
"It is dead," Kai said, because he knew the thing that mattered most to them first.
Naaro’s breath left her in a single long line. She did not smile. She looked at the mountain beyond the stone where the egg chamber mouth was behind her and then at the black heap on the sand and then at Kai. He gave her one small nod that said what words would have said less well. She nodded back.
A thread of white ran down from the Stalker’s torn jaw and cut across the dune. A small hiss rose where it touched. Alka hopped back from the puddle and shook out her talons, then raked them clean in the sand with the practical disgust of a creature that liked to be tidy. She lifted her head and stared into the dark for a long moment. When she spoke her voice was dry and low.
"More will come."
"Yes," Kai said. "They will smell what they missed and they will want to take it. They will send scouts and then a pack. We will make them regret the idea of hunger."
He looked at the wound on his side. The crack in the plate was wide enough to slide a blade into. The flesh under it was hot and sore and sticky. He rolled his shoulder once and it hurt the right amount. He set the pain in the corner of his mind where useful discomfort lives.
The system offered another note, cool and impersonal.
[Ding! System Notification: Enemy neutralized. Essence sample available.
Suggestion: absorb trace with Essence Eater to learn minor resistance to corrosive saliva. Caution: do not consume bulk of flesh in its current state. Toxic load is high.]
He bit on the dead thing’s heart and let the Essence Eater skill run as a trickle. A sliver of the old cold aura that had moved this beast flowed through his mouth and then flowed into his body and disappeared. A small itch along the tongue where the acid had kissed it eased. It was not much. It was enough to count.
[Ding! +6 stats points.]
Shadeclaw and Silvershadow had the tail and the lower trunk braced now. Vexor and Shale worked the head with him while Flint and Needle cut channels in the sand with their feet to draw the acid away from the mountain base. It was messy work, but they were built for it.
They turned a dangerous pool into three small, manageable streams in a minute and held them in place with simple ridges.
Lirien stepped down the slope with a controlled breath and let warmth into her hands until the sand near the worst burn fused into a thin glassy skin that kept the acid from sinking deeper. She looked at Kai’s side and then at his eyes. He gave her a nod. Later. She nodded back and turned the heat off.
Inside the entrance, the girls clustered near Naaro. They kept their voices low. Vel whispered a single question and Naaro answered with a small shake of the head. No damage to the chamber. No splashed acid inside. The brood’s hum had not changed. The runes held steady.
Luna did not speak. She watched Kai move the body and her jaw worked the way it did when she counted through anger to make room for pride. Azhara put a hand on her arm and Luna did not shake it off.
Akayoroi’s eyes followed the angles of the dunes the way an engineer looks at walls. Sha’s gaze kept returning to the crack in Kai’s plate and then away as if she did not want to see it and could not help it.
Naaro did not look away. She did not look afraid either. She looked like a wife at a wall who had already decided the next thirty days would end with victory and that patience counted as a weapon.
They dragged the carcass fifty paces down and left it in a low bowl between dunes where the wind would not carry the smell straight to the mountain mouth. Alka hopped up on a rock and stood sentinel. The moon made a hard white line along the edge of her wing. She did not preen. She watched. The desert answered with a silence that was only a little too clean.
Kai walked back up the slope to the group at the entrance and stopped at the threshold so that the warmth from inside met the cold from outside across his shins. He looked at each of them in turn, males first because they were the first to move when he said move.
"Shadeclaw. Silvershadow. You own the approaches until dawn. Pair patrols. Stagger the lanes. No one follows a single track. The Stalker burrowed. Others will too. Mark soft places and shift them."
"Understood," Shadeclaw said.
"Understood," Silvershadow said at the same time, and the echo sounded like a plan, not a mistake.
"Vexor. Shale. Flint. Needle. Take turns at the lip every two hours. I want fresh eyes. Rotations in pairs. No one alone outside until I say."
They nodded as one.
He turned to Alka and lifted his chin to her without calling her name. She tilted her head once. She had already claimed the sky. She would keep it.
Inside, he faced the women. He did not give them orders. He told them the truth, about Naaro laying eggs.
A few moments later...
"The brood is safe. This was a scout. There will be more. We are strong enough. We will be stronger tomorrow. Sleep in shifts tonight. Armor within reach. Alkaz has the air. Shadeclaw and Silvershadow have the sand. I have the gate."
Azhara opened her mouth. He gave her a look that said later and the smallest edge of a smile to make sure she would not take offense. She closed it and grinned back with a line of teeth altogether too pleased. Vel’s hand found Sha’s elbow. Sha pretended she did not notice and kept it.
Akayoroi added two requests without asking permission, because she knew he would approve them. Extra water at each patrol point. A coil of resin rope near the lip for a fast line if the sand gave way.
Lirien volunteered to set small heat stones along the inside wall to keep the first meter of entrance air warm. Cold air carries scent. Warm air holds it low.
Naaro did not ask to help. She had already done enough.