Chapter 7 - The Roost of Scars
Zephyr woke up to the smell of sulfur and burning blood.
He wasn't on the damp, cold floor of the Ashlands anymore. He was back in the Roost, tucked deep inside the volcanic crater of Mount Karas. Above him, the opening of the caldera exposed a twilight sky choked with plum-colored clouds.
His right wing was clamped tightly against his side, bound with thick, hardened strips of cured dragon-gut. The throbbing ache in his bones was dull now, replaced by a strange, tingling numbness.
A sharp claw prodded his ribs.
"Get up," Ignis grunted. She was sitting near the lip of the crater, gnawing on the charred femur of an elk. "The bone is set. You aren't dead."
Zephyr rolled over, hissing through his teeth as the pain spiked again. "You could have warned me about the draft," he mumbled, refusing to look at her.
"I did," she countered coldly, spitting out a splinter of charred marrow. "You chose not to hear it. Pride deafens the ears faster than an explosion."
"I took his face!" Zephyr snapped, his eyes flashing with weak embers. "I got on his tusks! If my flame had sparked, I would have killed him myself!"
Ignis slowly turned her head. For the first time, Zephyr saw something other than boredom in her eyes. It was pity. Sharp, cutting pity.
"You didn't take anything, boy," she said quietly. "You survived because an old animal mistook you for an insect. If you fight like an insect, you die like one. You want to roar like the lords of old? You have to carry the weight of the flame."
"Then teach me!" Zephyr snarled, standing up on three trembling legs, his chest heaving. "Stop treating me like an egg! Show me how you summoned the violet fire!"
Ignis let out a dry, rattling chuckle that sounded like stones rattling down a well. "You don't summon it, Zephyr. You let it destroy you until only the fire is left. And you aren't ready to burn."
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Suddenly, the ground beneath their talons shivered.
It wasn't an earthquake from the magma chambers below. It was a sharp, metallic ping that echoed up the mountain slopes—the distinct, synthetic chime of a dwarven seismic drill.
