Ebony watched Hrazfel vanish into the trees, and she didn't have the time to hate him for it.
The dragon was winding up. The tremor in the ground was climbing, the pressure on her skin building toward something, and the rational part of her — the part that had kept her alive through a year of this world — was already flipping through everything she knew like a deck of cards, fast, looking for the one that mattered.
"(Think. Think. Storm dragon, newborn, can't reason with it, can't outrun it, can't out-muscle it — what does it want. It's hungry. It wants to feed. So what does a creature made of lightning want to eat?)"
The card came up.
"(My shield.)"
Her thunder shield. It was wrecked — cracked down the boss, the rim split, three campaigns of abuse finally catching up to it — but it was still charged. It still held thunder essence soaked into the metal from every time she'd channeled through it. To a thing that ate lightning, that broken shield wasn't scrap. It was a meal.
