Dropping from the Behemoth’s chest fissure via the magnetic ascender winch, Arthur Vance touched down onto the arena floor. The heat in the volcano bowl had dropped dramatically. With the titan’s fever broken and the leech-like bile purged, the surrounding heat had steadied to a manageable hundred degrees, easily scattered by Pip’s gentle solar halo.
Grimm right away bounded over, pressing his cold, wet snout firmly into Arthur’s palm with a joyful whine. The hound leaned his full body weight against Arthur’s thighs, his wire-dense tail giving three slow, heavy thumps against the dark rock stone. Arthur smiled, running both hands through Grimm’s thick neck ruff, scratching behind his intact ear with firm, rhythmic strokes.
“Good boy, Grimm,” Arthur murmured, feeling the hound’s deep, steady breathing. “You held that nerve like a total champion.”
Grimm responded with a soft, ringing chest-chuff, closing his eyes in blissful contentment as Arthur checked his jaw muscles for strain. There was minor friction bruising along the hound’s gumline. But his void-infused tissue was already regenerating with rapid cellular turnover. Devouring the ten-meter parasite had filled Grimm’s stomach with dense void calories. The hound had already entered that relaxed, post-hunt state typical of an apex hunting beast.
