Dion stood motionless, the wind cutting through his wet rags. He stared at the dark, metallic sludge on the ground.

  A moment ago, it had been a solid iron rod, now it was puddle.

  The rush of power was gone. In its place, a dull, throbbing pressure behind his eyes.

  He felt drained, hollowed out. The sensation was familiar, a bone-deep fatigue that reminded him of the hardest days in the training yard, followed by hours of political debate in the royal study.

  It was a miracle he was still standing.

  It seemed using it comes with consequences.

  Dion breathed out.

  This was something he could easily accept.

  He would have been more scared down the line if there were no consequences to using this power.

  He instinctively understood this.

  There is no form of power without its cost. Right now there were more pressing problems.

  The two scavengers were gone, escaping into the jagged landscape. No doubt they would return.

  And when they did, they would bring others.

  He needed to move.

  He didn't know where he was going. Just away from the open shore, moving inland.

  The landscape looked like a smith-god's scrap pile. Towers of rust-bruised ironwood rose like gnarled skeletons, their leaves brittle sheets of mica that clattered in the toxic breeze.

  Underfoot, fields of razor-grass, each blade a sliver of polished steel sang a low, keening whine as they sliced against each other.

  He avoided the blood-blooms, their petals glistening like freshly spilled copper.

  Then he heard it.

  A scuttling sound made him freeze.

  A creature the size of a dog, that was where the resemblance ended, its body, a segmented cage of living quartz, it picked its way through the steel grass.

  It paused, a cluster of multifaceted eyes focusing on Dion. A shard of amethyst on its back pulsed with faint light and then it skittered away.

  What in the gods is that?

  Dion thought.

  In the distance, a flock of what looked like shards of broken mirror took flight, their wings chiming a discordant, beautiful music as they circled the ironwood spires.

  He shook his head, he had no time to admire the alien beauty.

  He hadn't gone a hundred paces when he saw the first casualty.

  It was a slaver from the shipwreck, Dion recognized him, or rather what remained. Now he was just meat, his throat ripped.

  This place was more dangerous than he imagined.

  He gave the body a wide berth, turning sharply away from the direction the man had been facing. His path now led him through a denser patch of the razor-grass.

  The blades sliced at his legs, leaving shallow, stinging lines on his skin, but his flesh sealed the cuts almost as quickly as they opened, leaving only faint traces.

  He kept moving, his ears straining. Every whisper of razor-grass, every distant chime of crystal wings from above, sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through him.

  The wind sighed through the ironwood leaves, clattering them like bones.

  Somewhere deeper in the metallic forest, something heavy shifted, and the ground transmitted a faint, grinding tremor through the soles of his feet.

  It wasn't long before he found the next one. And then another.

  A trail of blood, leading straight into the jagged maw of a deep, shadowed gash in the landscape ahead.

  It was a clear sign. One written in blood.

  There was only one interpretation.

  Don’t Go This Way.

  He was about to heed it when he heard it. A low, whimpering sound.

  Every survival instinct screamed at him to turn away, to vanish into the jagged terrain and save himself.

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  But ahead, a broken figure was crawling across the steel grass.

  Another scavenger.

  Dion easily concluded, yet unlike the first two Dion encountered, this one seemed in a bit of a bind.

  The man’s left leg was destroyed, bent at a brutal angle where the femur had shattered and punched up through the flesh of his thigh.

  Like something had ripped through.

  He crawled forward in shuddering, one-armed drags, his face a mask of dirt, sweat, and blood. Every movement was pure, visible agony.

  He's beyond saving.

  Dion clinically assessed. The bone was compound-fractured in multiple places. The major artery was likely severed, the pooling, dark blood and pallor of the man’s skin suggested it.

  Even if the bleeding could be stopped, sepsis would follow swiftly in this foul place. It was beyond anything field medicine could mend, beyond even the skilled chirurgeons of Lavos.

  The man would be dead within hours. Until then, he would be nothing more than a screaming, immobile liability, a beacon for whatever predator was out there lurking.

  As if to confirm Dion’s assessment, a shadow moved.

  For a fractured second, it looked like a leopard, a dark silhouette of lethal grace. Then the shape resolved, and the illusion shattered.

  Dion couldn't be sure.

  The only qualities it shared with one were its patch-marked hide and a predator's slender build.

  What stood before him was a nightmare of fused flesh and industry, shoulders thick with corded muscle beneath plates of rough iron.

  Three tails drifted lazily behind it, each as long as its body, each with a visible bulge at the end.

  Dion had a feeling those tails were not just for show.

  The creature lowered its head and snuffed the air, drinking in the scent of the fresh kill. The metallic tang of blood was a dinner bell.

  No. Walk away. He’s dead. You’re going to join him.

  Dion mentally chastising himself.

  Leaving the area was the smart thing. The only thing.

  Even with a sword in hand, taking on this beast would be nothing more than a death sentence.

  He was half-starved and trembling with fatigue.

  Unfortunately he needed answers, and who better to give them than a dying scavenger.

  He couldn't continue running around like this, it would only be a matter of time until he was the one crawling across this metallic hellscape.

  The scavenger would be his key towards navigating the landscape.

  Unaware of Dion of his thoughts, the creature moved with feline grace, stalking its maimed prey.

  It leaped.

  No time to think. Dion's thought slowed to a crawl, his iris carried hints of blue as he focused on the creature mid air.

  Shiuuuu.

  Then, something unexpected happened.

  “Arghhh”

  Dion screamed in pure agony, his head was already pounding.

  Just now he had endured a severe backlash trying to unmake the beast, a feat he quickly found out was a fool's wish.

  His cry ripped through the air. The beast reacted instantly. Still in mid-leap, it twisted with unnatural fluidity, its three tails lashing like rudders toward the source of the noise.

  “Shit.”

  Dion dodged at the last second, his skull still pounding.

  BOOM.

  The creature’s tails had extended, razor-tipped and piston-fast pulverizing the spot where he’d just stood.

  “Extendable tails,” Dion hissed through gritted teeth. “Great.”

  He looked from the crater to the beast. It had already reoriented itself, now positioned and gazing at Dion,

  It abandoned its crippled prey without a second glance, now coldly assessing this new entrant.

  Dion could see it in its eyes. To this thing, he was just another piece of meat. Prey, no different from the man crawling in the dirt.

  Despite the splitting headache threatening to crack his skull open, blood leaking down his nose, a dry, humorless chuckle escaped him.

  Just now, he had miscalculated or rather, gambled wildly.

  He had attempted three things he’d never done before.

  First, trying to use the power without physical contact. While the ability didn’t come with instructions, he was still learning its edges.

  In the moment, he’d felt he could reach out and Wither from a distance, so he did

  The good news was he was right. The bad news, the cost was staggering. The energy required increased by tenfold, maybe more.

  Second was the scale. Before, he’d only withered small objects. This thing was far more complex, massively layered in muscle and iron.

  But the third reason was the real one. He knew it.

  He tried to dissolve something alive. Something that fought back on a level deeper than flesh.

  Something that wanted to exist. And his reward was a skull-splitting backlash, and a very quick lesson.

  A moment later, those tails would have turned him to pulp.

  His father’s voice returned to him as a crisp memory.

  A king who does not know his army’s limits loses battles. A man who does not know his own gets himself killed.

  He traced his hand across the signet ring, the one thing that reminded him of home. He had lost everything but not this. It was a miracle.

  “Let’s try this again.”

  Grrrrr.

  The beast snarled, sensing the challenge, needless to say, it was annoyed.

  In the next moment, they both moved.

  Or rather, Dion moved. The creature stood its ground, its tails lashing out like piston-driven spears to intercept him.

  Bang. Bang. BANG.

  Dion wove through the attacks with desperate precision, each dodge a breath away from death.

  He could feel it, the reason he could move so fast were his bones and tissues, the former were hollow, granting exceptional speed exhibited unnatural elasticity, allowing contortions and evasive maneuvers beyond what should have been possible.

  Both of these came together to give Dion the edge, not in strength but motion.

  He wasn't just dodging, he was learning. The tails weren't just extendable, they were independent, striking from different angles in a blurred, coordinated assault.

  He timed the rhythm, a tail from the left, high, then one low from the right, the third a heartbeat later, aiming to pin him where the others would strike.

  He didn’t just dodge. On the third strike, he flowed with it.

  His body bent around the piercing tip, elastic tendons stretching as he used the tail’s momentum to slingshot himself forward, closing the distance in a single, fluid vault.

  The creature recoiled, retracting its tails with a metallic hiss. It had not expected that. Its cold eyes tracked him, recalculating.

  Dion landed in a crouch, breath sharp in his throat. He was inside its guard.

  This time, he wouldn't try to Wither the whole beast. Instead, he focused on a single point.

  There.

  The joint where an iron plate met the swollen muscle of its second tail. Coincidentally or not, it was the same tail now whipping back toward him, a blurred strike aimed at his chest.

  He needed to make contact.

  No pain, no gain.

  Dion sighed, he braced for impact. With all the time in the world to dodge, he chose not to.

  BANG.

  Ooof.

  A shuddering crunch echoed through him as he caught the tail, absorbing the blow. The force slammed the air from his lungs, but his arms held.

  To his surprise, the damage was manageable, a deep ache, not shattered bone. It was the benefit of his hollow frame.

  It didn’t just grant speed, it distributed force, letting him withstand impacts that should have broken him.

  It made his job easier.

  Skin met cold iron. As if on cue, his vision sharpened, his focus narrowing to that single, vile junction where flesh fused with metal.

  This time, he didn’t push the power out, he let it seep, a corrosive whisper into the seam of its being.

  The effect was one of terrifying, literal unraveling.

  Where his palm pressed nothing happened, instead, at the base of the creature's tail, the iron plate didn’t bend or crack, it sanded.

  Its molecular bonds disintegrated into a stream of fine, graphite-dark dust. Beneath it, the dense cable of muscle and tendon didn’t tear, it dissociated.

  Fibers that moments before had been tightly wound snapped apart along their lengths, exploding into limp, lifeless strands like a rope burst into useless thread.

  Roooooar.

  The creature’s scream was less a sound and more a shockwave, a raw signal of systemic violation. The tail went instantly dead, a heavy, disconnected mass of dissolving tissue and streaming particulate matter.

  Then, with a series of audible pops, like over-tensioned wires snapping and a low grind of crumbling substrate, the appendage severed completely.

  Unlike one would expect, there was no gush of blood. Instead, the wound sealed almost instantly in a grotesque, puckered fusion of scar-like tissue and hastily knitted metal, as if the creature’s body were desperately trying to forget the limb had ever existed.

  But the creature remembered. The phantom pain was immense, a white-hot circuit of loss firing through its nervous system.

  It recoiled, a violent spasm of shock racking its frame. Its remaining tails flailed in discordant panic, their coordinated rhythm shattered.

  The flawlessly engineered predator was now, irrevocably, crippled.

  It simply ran.

  Meanwhile, for Dion, a white-hot spike of pain lanced through his skull. His vision swam, gray static fuzzing at the edges before it cleared.

  He couldn’t afford to faint.

  Not here.

  The creature.

  It wasn’t dead. It was wounded, wailing, but very much alive.

  This power… it’s quite shitty, isn’t it?

  Dion thought, bitterness rising like bile.

  What’s the use of breaking something down if you can’t land the finishing blow?

  On the ground, the wounded man stared, eyes wide with a mixture of shock and desperate hope. His gaze darted from the thrashing beast to Dion’s position.

  Through a haze of pain and blood loss, his assessment was simple, awe-struck.

  From his angle, it looked as if Dion had simply yanked the tail from its socket.

  “An Expert,” the man muttered, too loud, the word a ragged breath of revelation.

  Dion’s senses converged at the sound. By sheer willpower, he pushed himself upright. In his hand was the creature’s severed tail, a heavy, limp thing.

  Its terrifying extension mechanism was dead, now it was just a length of sinew, bone, and cold iron.

  A worthless trophy.

  But he needed a weapon.

  He hefted the dead tail, its weight settling into his grip.

  Maybe a whip.

  Dion chuckled at the thought.

  It would have to do for now.