Chapter 3 - Little Teeth, Big Ego
The mammoth didn't roar. It didn't panic. It just made a low, bubbling rumble in its chest that sounded like a boulder rolling through mud.
Zephyr’s brain screamed run, but his juvenile pride, stoked by an overdose of pure adrenaline, snapped the leash. He was an apex predator. He carried the purple fire in his belly. Or at least, he was supposed to.
He bared his needle-sharp teeth, hissing like a stepped-on viper. "Back off, rug," he snarled mentally, throwing all the venom he had into the psychic link.
The mammoth blinked slowly, unimpressed. It took one heavy, casual step forward, crushing a petrified stump into fine gravel beneath a five-hundred-pound foot.
Zephyr’s temper flared hot and stupid. Instead of limping away into the narrow crevasses where the giant couldn't follow, the hatchling lunged. He kicked off his uninjured leg, snapped his wings out wide despite the searing agony in his shoulder, and launched himself directly at the bull's face.
He hit the mammoth's left tusk hard, wrapping his foreclaws around the iron bands. The cold metal bit into his skin, but Zephyr clambered upward like a rabid ferret, scrambling toward the beast's exposed eyes.
"Burn!" he hissed, squeezing his diaphragm with all his strength.
A sad, sputtering pop echoed in the clearing. Instead of the scorching, armor-melting violet fire of his bloodline, all that puffed out of Zephyr’s throat was a mouthful of acrid gray smoke and a tiny spark that died against the mammoth’s cheek hair.
The mammoth didn't even blink.
It simply angled its head, letting Zephyr scramble onto the flat bridge of its nose, before its trunk whipped up with terrifying, whip-crack speed.
The muscular slab of flesh caught Zephyr across the midsection, peeling him off the bone plate like wet parchment. The hatchling lost all grip, soaring backward through the air before slamming spine-first into a stone spire.
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He fell into the gravel, completely paralyzed, the air violently evicted from his lungs.
Above him, the shadow of a colossal, dirt-caked foot rose, blocking out the gray sky.
