The bronze vibration that had filled the cavern roof died away completely, leaving only the ordinary clatter of water spilling down the upper fault and the harsh, uneven breathing of thirty-five exhausted people on the shore.
On the grounded stone block beneath the broken frame, Pip stood swaying on its six legs.
Then, without a sound, the closed circle of horn blades above its eyes turned the colour of dry wood ash. A crack ran through the left fork of the lattice crown, then the right, and the entire structure crumbled into chalky grey flakes that pattered down over Pip’s snout and into the wet gravel.
A heartbeat later, the outer plates of Pip’s shell—already thinned from the mineral it had given up to line the upper basins—loosened along their seams. With a series of small, dry clicks, like pine cones dropping from a branch in autumn, the heavy translucent armor plates and the grounded discharge ridges shed off its back and flanks, sliding into a loose heap around its feet.
What remained on the stone was a creature scarcely larger than the starved thing Ysabet had carried home in a fish crate from Darr’s auction: a small, six-legged body covered in soft, scarred grey-brown hide, its shortened antler stubs damp with a few drops of pale sap, folding itself tightly around a dim, flickering thread of green light beneath its ribs.
