Page 39 of Orange Tundra
Blood sprayed across stone. Bodies fell. But more replaced them.
Three attackers fell beneath my claws. A fourth lost his throat to my fangs. I, the Silver Beast, howled in savage delight, reveling in the carnage.
Trill moved first. I blocked his strike with my shoulder and slammed him into the canyon wall. He flipped mid-air, landing soft, crouched, unreadable.
“You’re fighting blind,” he said, as if he cared.
“I’m fightingyou.”
I lunged. Caught one of Nialla’s brutes mid-charge, crushed his windpipe with a backhand, spun into another, and tore his gut open with my claws.
Pain meant nothing. Purpose burned. Find Brynn. Find Roqs. Protect the pack.
Then something shifted. A sound—a low hum.
The air curdled.
The weapon she drew wasn’t a rifle.
It was a shard of nightmare.
Long, jagged, wrapped in bone and obsidian metal that throbbed with pulse-like energy. I smelled its birth: death and crystal.
Shura.
“Nialla,” Axad shouted, “don’t?—”
Too late.
She lifted the weapon and it screamed. A beam of distortion lanced toward me—blinding, soundless, alive.
"Hold him still," Nialla roared, adjusting the weapon's settings.
The air around the device warped, reality itself seeming to bend and twist. A high-pitched hum filled my ears, vibrating through bone and tissue.
I lunged toward her, my vision narrowed to destroy the weapon before it fully activated.
Pain exploded through my body. Not burning.Freezing.It hit me in the chest, and I dropped. Legs refused to move. My arms—stone. I roared, but it came out strangled, like my throat calcified mid-breath.
“ZIRC!” Cruuvex charged her flank. She pivoted, and the Shura flared again. He crumpled.
Axad reached her—tried to tackle her weapon arm—Trill was faster. A blade flashed. Axad fell.
My breath wheezed through numbing lungs. Vision fractured into kaleidoscopic shards. I could feel parts of myself—skin, fur, bone—turning to crystal.
Zirc
The Silver Beast screamed in my mind.
Let me fight, my beast roared.
I tried. I fucking tried. But even rage needs blood to move muscle.
Nialla laughed. “It works. Beautifully.”
I summoned everything I had left. One arm, still flesh. One leg, half-dead. I launched forward, dragging the stone weight of my body. My claws caught her shoulder, dug in, and she shrieked.
I ripped the Shura free and threw it—far. It landed with a hollow clang.
