Chapter 11 - Blood on Iron
Zephyr slammed through the glass-and-brass observation dome of the harvester like a cannonball.
The cockpit exploded in a shower of reinforced shards, twisted copper, and screaming dwarven engineers. Zephyr hit the steel deck plate, rolled hard, and came up with his jaws wide, snapping wildly in the smoke.
A dwarven operator in heavy leather armor pulled a steam-pistol, leveling it at Zephyr’s eye.
Zephyr didn't hesitate. He lunged under the barrel, his talons sinking into the joint of the dwarf's elbow, tearing the flesh back to the bone. The pistol clattered to the deck, firing a wild shot that ricocheted through the engine manifold.
Steam blasted from the ruptured pipes, filling the cabin with a white-out fog.
"Dragon in the cab! Dragon in the—" a soldier screamed before Zephyr leaped onto his chest plate, driving his crooked right claw into the dwarf's open visor.
The hatchling was manic. He wasn't thinking; he was tearing, biting, scratching at anything that smelled of iron and cold grease. He was bruised, bleeding from his reopened wing-seam, but the sheer savagery of a cornered predator made the three men inside the cockpit scramble backward in pure panic.
Zephyr saw the main control console: a cluster of heavy, brass hydraulic levers glowing with volatile green fluid.
Frost-salt controls.
He clamped his jaws around the primary pressure valve and wrenched his neck with everything he had. The cast-iron lever sheared clean off, spraying superheated hydraulic acid directly across the console.
Outside, the frost-salt lines hooked to Ignis sputtered, coughed, and burst open in clouds of vapor.
The freezing chemical stopped flowing into her veins.
Zephyr dragged himself up to the shattered observation hatch, spitting out teeth and gear grease, his eyes wild.
Ignis felt the pressure drop.
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Down in the mud, beneath three tangled cables, the great black dragon slowly lifted her head. The frost coating her jaws cracked and fell away in dry sheets. And deep within her chest, the violet light didn't just return.
It went nuclear.
