ERIS
The small creature didn't move. It didn't strike or hiss or vanish into a cloud of silver smoke. It simply sat on my sternum and stared at me with the absolute, unblinking focus of a predator that had successfully cornered its prey and found it surprisingly comfortable.
I stayed on my back, the silver grass of Pyronox's realm pricking the back of my neck. I took a breath, watching the way the creature rose and fell with my chest. Its scales weren't the obsidian black of the great dragon behind me; they were pale, ice-pale, like the heart of a glacier or the precise, lethal light that reflects off a frozen lake at noon. There was a suggestion of color beneath the translucence, a faint, shifting shimmer that caught the light and held it captive.
