The dust on the northern ridge took nearly an hour to settle.
The swirling red-and-white haze finally cleared beneath the declining sun. Then, nothing remained of Caravan-Master Voss’s forward slaver outpost except for two splintered ash masts sticking out of the sand like broken gravestones. The deep, scorched trench where the Glass dust-Wyrm had burrowed back into the underground depths of the earth-shaking shelf.
The huge beast was gone, gorged on slaver timber, bronze plating, and scrap iron, returning to its sleep miles beneath the desert crust.
“Clear the outer edge,” Ren commanded. He wiped sweat, blood, and powdered white chalk-stone from his brow.
His lambskin apron was blackened with sulfur residue, his right palm was raw and blistering from channeling the sound shunt through his bone metal pen. His knees shook with gut-deep tiredness. But his rawhide boots were firmly planted on the salt crust. His voice held the total power of a master keeper inspecting a salvage yard.
The eighteen refugees, led by Master Varos and the four young textile weavers, cautiously picked their way up the steep slope of the northern ridge. They carried their bronze pry-bars and flint knives ready, but there was no need for violence. The few slavers who had survived the wyrm’s breach had long since fled into the trackless waste on foot, abandoning their gear to the desert.
