For two terrible heartbeats the beetles around Pip’s forefeet kept spilling downward into the mist.
Then the nearest column of white antler beetles felt the broad, warm mineral bulk wedged across the tear and the steady, rhythmic vibration humming through Pip’s shell filaments. The panic-scent of the crossbow strike faded beneath the familiar physical signal of an anchored neighbor holding the line.
The foremost beetle did not flee. It drove its serrated head-antlers forward and locked them over the green-and-white ridge of Pip’s left shoulder plate.
Beside it, three more beetles scrambled up Pip’s forelegs, where there was no shell at all, and clamped their barbed feet and notched jaws directly into the thick, living hide of Pip’s neck-folds and flanks. Behind them came dozens more, then hundreds, swarming over Pip’s outstretched back and hooking their horns into one another’s shells across its spine until the broken cables of the bridge re-knitted straight across Pip’s body.
Through the bond, Ysabet felt a hot, stinging shower of pain—hundreds of sharp little pincers and horn-tips biting into soft tissue to hold the canyon’s pull. She gasped aloud, her bent right hand curling against her ribs.
Yet beneath the stinging punctures, something else was happening inside Pip.
