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Chapter 109 — Northern Route Cleared
Mercer set the black core down on Laura's desk and it rolled half an inch before it settled."That came out of a chamber under the eastern draw," he said. "It was running seven beasts at once."Laura didn't touch it. She looked at it for a while with her hands flat on the wood."Seven.""Boar, two jackals, a lynx on the walls. Three more we tracked afterward." Mercer put the smaller disc down beside it. "That one was cut into a Ridgehide Hound's neck. The wound had healed over. Somebody put it in weeks before we ever entered that ravine.""And the hound?""Ran past two of my men in open ground to get at a crate of medicine." Mercer's voice didn't change. "When we took the disc out it stopped knowing where it was. Bring the disc near it and it threw itself into a net trying to get away from the thing."Laura sat down."Say the last part again.""It was terrified of it," Knox said.She looked at him for the first time."You're Morales.""Yes, I am.""Go on.""A trained beast goes towar
Chapter 108 — Under the Mantle
Knox pushed the perception out further and got the wiring.The lines ran from the core out along the buried cables to every disc on every wall, and he could feel where they went and how they branched and none of that told him one useful thing about how to break them. He was looking at a road map. What he needed was a weak point."The rods."Neris had come up level with him. She wasn't looking at the figure at all."Three of them. Inside the ring, at the base." She pointed with two fingers, low. "They light up before the pulse. Every time. Watch the next one."Knox watched the next one.Three narrow uprights standing between the ribs went pale a fraction of a second before the floor moved under his boots."Ignis."The drake was already turning.Heat. All of it. The nearest one.Ignis planted and opened his jaws and put out a concentrated blast of white-edged heat that lit the whole chamber, and it went into the base of the rod and stayed there.
Chapter 107 — The Command Below
They went out two hours after the tracker came back.Mercer took six veterans and Knox's four, and nobody else. The outpost commander wanted to send twenty and Mercer talked him out of it in about a minute, standing in the yard with the gate already open."If last night was meant to pull your men out from behind these walls," he said, "then this morning is when it works."So the commander kept his soldiers and Mercer took eleven people into the Northern Ravine.Kade's ram was still on the Other Side and would be for days. Neris hadn't tried the stag since the ravine. Neither of them was on this walk as a fighting summoner and Mercer had said as much before they left — they'd seen the hound, they'd seen the man come out of the drain, and if there was more of it down there he wanted people along who'd know it when they saw it.Kade had taken that better than Knox expected."I'd rather be useless underground than useless in a yard," he said, and that was the last either of them said abou
Chapter 106: Voidclaw Lyn
Knox had been carrying an idea of what would come through that drain since Neris found the scar, and none of it had looked like a man.The beast came out behind him.It poured out of the channel rather than climbing from it, long and low and black, built for going up things. Four hooked claws on each forepaw. Its fur took the lamplight off the eastern wall and gave nothing back at all, so the edges of it kept disappearing and the shape had to be guessed at.【 Voidclaw Lynx 】【 Level: 11 】【 Rank: Rare 】【 Attribute: Shadow/Void 】Four claws, Knox thought. Evenly spaced. Lying down easy beside a man’s bootprint on a ridge.The lynx came out and looked at its summoner first.It waited until the man made two quick signs with his left hand. Nothing dramatic, only two small movements of his fingers, but the beast understood them at once. It slipped across the yard, stopped where he wanted it and looked back to him for the next command.Something tightened in Knox’s stomach.The Ridgehide Ho
Chapter 105 — They Came for the Relay
The southern gate took it first.CRUNCH.The whole barricade jumped in its frame and dust came off the wall above it in a sheet, and somewhere along the parapet a man swore in the dark. Knox felt it come up through the stone at his back before he heard it.Whatever hit it backed off and hit it again.CRUNCH.【 Stoneplate Boar 】【 Level: 10 】【 Rank: Common 】The timber held.The boar charged a third time, but it came alone. By then, the men on the southern platform were ready. They planted their poles against the gate, braced them with their shoulders and took the impact together. The wood shook, but there was never any chance of it giving way.Then the shouting shifted east.Knox climbed the granary steps and saw four beasts scrambling sideways across the wall. Their hooked claws caught cracks in the stone too narrow for a man to notice, carrying them from one firing position to the next before the soldiers could turn their weapons.One climbed high enough to snap at a soldier leanin
Chapter 104 — Why Are They Like This?
The light crept across the disc and disappeared.Two of the soldiers holding the net shifted their grip. One reached toward the disc, but Mercer stopped him before his hand got close."Nobody touches it.""Sir—""You don't know what it does when someone holds it." Mercer placed the disc on the lid of a crate, well away from anything living. "Neris, finish checking its neck."Neris was already kneeling beside the hound, one sleeve pushed up.Knox stayed where he was. His attention remained on the beast, not the disc.Only minutes ago, it had been desperate to reach the medicine. It hadn't merely fought against the net. It had kept driving its shoulder into one corner, again and again, even with its breath coming in broken gasps and one front leg refusing to bear its weight. It hadn't seemed to care what happened to its body as long as it reached those crates.Now it wasn't moving at all.Its eyes roamed across the storehouse while it lay on its side beneath the net, panting. After a wh
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