The roar shattered what was left of the rocks around us.
Then the weight came down. Something I couldn't see slammed onto the crushed volcanic gravel of the shelf and pressed the air flat. The Primordial Pressure Wave hit us like a wall. It forced the freezing chasm draft down into the rock, and for a moment there was nothing left to breathe.
The basalt under my boots began to crack. Hairline fractures ran out across the ledge in every direction, and the stone shrieked as it went, a high and continuous sound, buckling under the weight of the beast's evolution. Grit jumped against my ankles.
The stench of charred dragon meat and hot copper flooded my throat.
Devant walked casually through the spreading shockwave, his thin boots stepping lightly over the fissures in the basalt. If the pressure touched him at all, it didn't show. He held his dented tin cup level in his left hand, and not a single drop of water went over the rim.
