Chapter 12 - Shattered Chains
The ground didn't shake—it liquefied.
The heat radiating off Ignis spiked to three thousand degrees in three seconds. The mud beneath her belly flashed to dry steam, throwing up an opaque curtain of white vapor. The three tungsten cables holding her down turned cherry-red, then orange, then sagged like cooked spaghetti before snapping under the sheer expansion of her shoulders.
The harvester Zephyr was standing on groaned as the heat wave hit its chassis, melting the rubber treads instantly.
"Scatter!" the brass horn bellowed, now completely cracking with hysteria. "Fall back to the boreholes! Retreat! Ret—"
A jet of ultraviolet fire cut the loudspeaker, the crawler beneath it, and the small hill behind it clean in half.
Ignis rose.
She didn't look like a beast anymore; she looked like a walking fissure in the earth's crust. Her eyes were completely white with plasma fury. She snapped her neck sideways, grabbing a fleeing crawler in her jaws, biting the five-ton machine clean in two, and spitting the burning wreckage into the ranks of the armored infantry.
It wasn't a battle. It was pest control.
Zephyr scrambled out of the ruined cab as the harvester's fuel tank caught fire. He dragged himself across the scorching rocks, desperate to get away from the secondary explosions.
A shadow fell over him.
He flinched, curling his tail tight, waiting for the incinerating backdraft of her breath.
Instead, a massive, scaly snout gently nudged him, rolling him onto his back. Ignis looked down at him through the thinning smoke. Her scales were covered in chemical burns, her shoulder bleeding black blood, but her eyes were clear.
"You broke the lines," she said, her mental voice vibrating through his skull with a weight that made him tremble.
Zephyr coughed, spitting a mixture of ash and blood onto the stone. "They... they were annoying me."
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A deep, rolling vibration started in her chest—not a growl, not a roar, but a low, volcanic purr that Zephyr hadn't heard since he was an unhatched egg in the warmth of the deep vents.
"Climb," she commanded softly, lowering her neck to the dirt.
