The transition from the rigid steel of the Iron Spires to the Salt Marshes was like stepping into the throat of a dying god. The air was a thick, briny soup that tasted of sulfur and ancient decay. Here, the ground was a lie—a shifting patchwork of peat and toxic crust that could swallow a man in heartbeats.
"Watch your step," Elara warned, her brass hand clicking as she adjusted the seals on her boots. "The salt here is caustic. It'll eat through leather, and the fumes will melt your lungs if you don't keep your mask on."
Kaelen nodded, his eyes scanning the horizon where the gargantuan Burrow-Drakes—the size of city blocks—were said to sleep beneath the sludge. Vane moved with ginger precision, his obsidian fur retracted to keep the salt from corroding his crystalline edges.
"Elara," Kaelen said, his voice muffled by his respirator. "Tell me about the Reapers. I've heard the stories, but I've never seen one surface."
Elara stopped, her mechanical fingers twitching as she looked out over the shimmering white crust. "Old hunters used to say the ground in the Mire is a graveyard that hasn't finished eating. A Salt-Reaper doesn't hunt like a wolf; it waits. It buries itself deep under the caustic crust until it's nothing but a hill of jagged white crystals. You'll be walking along, and then the 'hill' starts to breathe."
She gestured toward a distant, rippling mound. "They're armored in salt plates so thick a Guild-forged blade would snap like a dry twig against 'em. They have dozens of eyes shimmering behind those salt-veils—they see the heat of your blood through the fog. If a Reaver-Binder gets his mark on one, you aren't just fighting a beast; you're fighting a fortress with a mind for murder."
As if summoned by her words, the "ground" erupted. This wasn't Rend.
A Salt-Reaper, a gargantuan crustacean-like Primordial with pincers that could snap a redwood, burst from the silt. It was covered in the very jagged salt crystals Elara had described, reflecting the dim light into blinding shards. Standing atop its head was a Reaver-Binder, a man whose Lexicon glowed a sickly, oily green.
"Kaelen!" the Reaver-Binder shouted. "The Guild put a heavy price on your head. They want the Wisp and the Siren back!"
The Salt-Reaper lunged. Its massive pincer slammed into the peat, missing Kaelen by inches and sending a spray of caustic mud into the air.
"Pip, the eyes! Rend, the anchors!"
Pip shot forward like a neon needle. "Spicy mud! I hate the spicy mud!" he shrieked, exploding into a series of strobing emerald pulses. The Reaper, sensitive to light, recoiled, its many legs thrashing.
Rend surged upward from beneath the Reaper's hind legs. He didn't try to pull it down—the Reaper was too large. Instead, Rend used his spade-claws to anchor the creature's back legs to the solid rock deep beneath the silt.
"Heavy... so heavy," Rend groaned in Kaelen's mind. "Hurry, Binder!"
Vane was already a blur. He sprinted up the Reaper's curved back, his obsidian needles vibrating at a high-frequency pitch to shatter the salt armor. With a roar, he drove his foreclaws into a seam in the creature's carapace.
"Lyra, the salt-storm!"
Lyra dived low, her wings creating a localized gale. The wind whipped the loose salt crystals into a scouring vortex that blinded the Reaver-Binder and choked the Reaper's breathing vents.
Kaelen didn't wait. He drew the Pulse-Trigger Elara had modified and sprinted toward the Reaper's head. As the creature thrashed, Kaelen leapt, grabbing onto a jagged ridge. He jammed the device into the Reaper's primary nerve cluster and pulled the trigger.
A wave of blue disruption surged through the beast. The Reaver-Binder screamed as his green Lexicon short-circuited, the feedback from his bound beast's pain slamming into his brain. He tumbled from the Reaper's head and disappeared into the swallowing silt.
The Salt-Reaper let out a low, bubbling groan and collapsed into the mud, its nervous system temporarily paralyzed.
By nightfall, the pack had found a rare outcropping of solid basalt that rose above the toxic mists. Elara had set up a chemical stove that burned blue, neutralizing the surrounding fumes.
"My paws feel itchy," Vane grumbled, licking a patch of salt from his leg.
"Don't do that," Elara scolded, gently pulling his paw away. She took a rag and a neutralizing solution, carefully wiping down Vane's obsidian fur. "The salt will dull your edges, and we can't have you losing your bite."
Vane let out a huff. "The metal-human is efficient."
Pip was hovering near the blue flame of the stove. "Blue fire is the best fire. It doesn't smell like rot."
Kaelen sat with his back against a stone, his Lexicon arm throbbing. He looked at Lyra, who was perched on a high ledge, her pale eyes fixed on the distant mountains.
"What do you see, Lyra?"
"The wind is changing," she replied. "There is a heat in the north. A dry heat. Not like the Forge. A living heat."
Kaelen looked at Elara. "The Reavers wouldn't be this far south unless they were pushed by something bigger. Something that isn't afraid of the salt."
Elara stopped polishing Vane's paw. "There are legends of a Cinder-Drake—a dragon that hasn't been seen since the Shattering. They say its wings carry the breath of the sun."
Kaelen looked at his pack—the wolf, the wisp, the siren, and the drake below. "If the Guild is hunting it, they'll use it to burn every forest left in Aethelgard. We need to find it first."
"A dragon," Pip chirped, his light turning violet. "Is it shiny? I bet it's very shiny."
"It's more than shiny, Pip," Kaelen said, closing his eyes as the exhaustion finally took hold. "It's the key to everything."