The wounded Jag-Wolf was a different kind of predator. The patient, stalking intelligence that had toyed with him in the dark was gone, burned away by the white-hot, singular fire of its rage. This new creature was a force of pure, destructive fury, a locomotive of obsidian and hate. It no longer stalked; it rampaged.
Ignoring the shattered ruin of its front leg, it lunged forward, a three-legged engine of annihilation. It no longer cared for tactics. It smashed through the stalagmites that stood in its path, reducing them to glittering dust with the sheer force of its momentum. Its obsidian armor, which had seemed so impenetrable, now groaned and scraped with each impact, but it held. The relatively large cave became a claustrophobic death trap, filled with the cacophony of shattering stone and the creature's continuous, enraged roars. It was trying to corner him, to crush him against a wall, to simply run him over and leave him nowhere to dodge its next lethal, resonant bite.
Kael was exhausted. His throat felt like it had been scraped raw with sharpened stones, the constant, focused humming having taken a brutal toll. His body was a tapestry of pain, aching from a dozen collisions with the unyielding cave walls. He knew, with the chilling certainty of prey that has seen its final moments approaching, that he could not keep dodging forever. His luck and stamina were finite resources, and both were rapidly draining into the dusty floor. He had to end this, now.
As he scrambled away from another charge, his boot slipping in the very dust created by the creature's rampage, his eyes darted upwards. He saw it. It was a desperate, insane gamble, the kind of plan born only from the absolute certainty of death. High above a narrow passage that cut through the center of the cavern was a large, precariously balanced rock formation. It was a massive chunk of the ceiling, hanging by a thick, gnarled thread of stone, the same formation he had targeted earlier to create the distracting stalactite shower. He could see from the way the light from the entrance now faintly illuminated it that its base was already weakened, a web of fine fractures spreading from where he had struck it before.
It was a deadfall trap waiting to be sprung. But he would only get one shot. His power was a flickering candle flame, about to be extinguished.
He had to be the bait. He deliberately broke from his circular retreat and scrambled toward the narrow passage, his movements intentionally clumsy, his breathing loud and ragged. He made himself an obvious, tempting, wounded target.
The Jag-Wolf, its multifaceted eyes glowing with a singular, murderous purpose, took the bait. It saw him heading for the narrow channel and abandoned all pretense of flanking, lowering its head for a direct, overwhelming charge. It wanted to pin him in the passage, where there would be no room to escape, no space to dodge.
Kael reached the entrance to the passage. The Jag-Wolf was thundering down on him, its single good foreleg clawing at the ground, propelling its immense bulk forward with terrifying speed. He didn't run through the passage. He stopped at the entrance, planted his feet, turned his face to the hanging rock above, and poured every last ounce of his remaining strength, every last dreg of his Dissonance, into the weakened base of the formation.
He didn't have the energy for a focused hum. This was a raw, desperate scream of power, torn from the very depths of his soul, a final, defiant note of chaos against the beast's own destructive song.
The massive hanging rock shrieked, a final, tortured protest against the unnatural forces tearing it apart. The web of fractures widened, connected, and with a deep, grinding groan that vibrated through Kael's entire body, the stone pillar broke free.
It fell.
The tons of stone descended with a tremendous, ground-shaking CRUMP, landing directly on the midsection of the charging Jag-Wolf.
The creature's furious roar was cut short, replaced by a choked, gurgling sound of shattering obsidian and crushed life-crystal. For a moment, its front half, still filled with momentum, tried to scrabble forward, its six eyes wide with a final, shocking instant of comprehension. Then, the internal, hateful light in those eyes extinguished, and its massive body went limp beneath the crushing weight of the rock.
A cloud of thick, choking dust billowed out, and then, silence.
A profound, absolute silence. The only sounds left were Kael's own ragged, agonized breaths and the incessant, muted roar of the Shard-Storm outside the cave.
He had won.
The realization didn't bring triumph or relief, only a tidal wave of exhaustion so complete that it swept his legs out from under him. He collapsed to the cave floor, his body a trembling, screaming mess of pain. He lay there for a long time, just breathing, the dust settling around him like a grey shroud.
As the ringing in his ears faded, a new sensation pushed its way through the fog of his exhaustion. A sharp, searing, brilliant pain in his left leg, so intense it made him cry out. He pushed himself up, his arms shaking with the effort. In the gloom, which was now faintly illuminated by the waning storm outside, he could just make out the source of the agony.
In that final, desperate scramble, he hadn't been quite fast enough. When the Jag-Wolf's obsidian armor had shattered under the falling rock, it had sent shards flying in all directions like a claymore mine. One of them, a wicked, razor-sharp splinter of obsidian still humming with a faint, residual energy, had buried itself in his calf. Blood was flowing freely, soaking his tattered trousers and pooling on the dusty ground in a dark, glistening puddle.
This was no clean cut. It was far worse than the self-inflicted wound in the Boneyard. This was a battle scar, a permanent brand from his first real fight, a trophy from a victory that felt more like a mutual destruction.
He tore another strip from his ruined tunic and clumsily tried to bind the wound, his fingers slick and uncooperative with his own blood. The storm outside was finally beginning to subside, its apocalyptic roar fading to a low, mournful moan. The immediate danger was over. He had survived.
But as he tightened the makeshift bandage, a gasp of pure horror escaped his lips. The edges of the wound… they weren't right. They were unnaturally pale and hard, as if the flesh were turning to stone. In the faint, grey light now filtering in from the entrance, he could see it clearly. A faint, dark line, like a crack in porcelain, was beginning to form in his own skin, spiderwebbing out from the gash.
A cold dread, far worse than the fear of the storm or the beast, seized him. It wasn't just a cut. The shard that had struck him must have been a piece of the Jag-Wolf's resonant fang, or a part of its hide charged with its dissonant killing power. That power, that shattering poison, was inside him now. It was spreading, a seed of dissonance planted in his own life-crystal.
He had survived the predator only to be afflicted with its curse. A curse that looked, felt, and behaved terrifyingly like the very blight he was trying to cure in his sister.