Unknown to Kael, as he ordered a review of every soul who'd entered the Residuum, seeking any trace to the mysterious figure, the person in question was currently running for his life.

  Quite literally.

  All the politics and paranoia of the fortress were a distant fiction compared to the raw, immediate terror Dion faced in the twisted woods.

  A deep, resonant pulse shuddered through the ground, vibrating up through the soles of their feet, a sound like a massive, organic engine.

  “W-wait for me!” the figure gasped, shooting a terrified glance over his shoulder. His face was a mask of pure panic.

  “I don't want to die! We just need to make it back to the Residuum. The Skollynxs, they're catchin–”

  SWISH-CRUNCH.

  A greyish-tipped limb scythed through the air between them, shearing a low-hanging ironwood branch clean off. It landed with a metallic thud.

  "Shut up and move," Dion snarled.

  His gaze dropped to the man’s leg. A minute ago, it had been a bloody mess. Now, after one potion, it looked like little more than an arrow had passed through.

  The scavenger had gulped the vial down, desperately thanking him for saving his life.

  Dion didn't care to clear up the misconception. While he was no fool who would risk his life on a whim to save another.

  Thankfully, it played in his favor.

  Without even being asked, Pello, as the man had introduced himself, began to open up.

  He’d noticed Dion’s fascination, the plain surprise on his face as his wounds mended in real time.

  It made him a bit skeptical. After all, experts were supposed to be more knowledgeable.

  Right.

  He couldn't be sure. But the strength and skill Dion had shown were no different from an Expert’s.

  He could only chalk the strange reaction up to their weird antics.

  Noticing Dion's intense focus on the vial, Pello began to explain.

  “Common stuff,” he said, a hint of pride in his shaky voice. “You can buy it in the Residuum's bazaar, and quite cheap too.”

  “Every scavenger carries a few.”

  Essential gear. For the dangers of the Ferro-Locus.

  Dion listened, but his gaze never left the small bottle. It wasn't the information that held him.

  It was the object itself, a mundane miracle, a bottled defiance of death, sold like cabbages in the new world.

  It fascinated him.

  GRRRRRR.

  The strange sound snapped Dion back to the present. They broke into a small clearing, and skidded to a halt.

  Ahead, the ground dropped away into a narrow, rocky gully.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  From behind, the metallic shriek echoed through the ironwood trees, closer than before.

  It was closing in. Or rather… they were.

  The beast was back. And it had brought friends.

  Skollynx.

  Dion finally had a name for them, thanks to the scavenger’s panicked ramblings.

  But a name changed nothing.

  He could hardly handle one. Now, three grey-skinned horrors hunted him through the razor-grass.

  BAM.

  They burst from the tree line a heartbeat later, giving relentless chase.

  He could spot the original by the jagged stump where its tail had been, a trophy from their first, desperate encounter.

  But more than the injury, it was the aura it carried, a focused malice its companions lacked.

  It remembered.

  Under different circumstances, Dion might have been amazed by its level of intelligence.

  But now, he was too busy running for his life from the creature that wanted nothing more than to carve him into pieces and scatter him across the metallic scree.

  He slotted the thought at the back of his mind.

  He had wasted too much time listening to the scavengers rambling about potions, he had forgotten the most important question.

  How to get back to civilization. In his defense, seeing a wound seal itself before your eyes tended to be distracting.

  Still he had an idea.

  The Residuum.

  It was possibly the hotspot for human civilization. Maybe a town, a village or maybe a capital.

  Whatever it was, it was his destination.

  SWISH.

  “Get down!”

  Dion’s head snapped up, every sense screaming. He felt it, a shift in the air, the scent of death given form.

  He barely dodged, a second later, he felt the scent of death.

  Another attack, but different this time. The attack was coming in front.

  Ho–

  Dion's pupils constricted into pin holes. It was too late.

  BAM

  The impact crushed the air from his lungs. He felt his ribs buckle, a wet, splintering crack that shuddered through his chest.

  The limb, a heavier, blunter tail this time lifted him clean off his feet and hurled him sideways. He crashed into an iron-barked tree with a sickening thud.

  Somehow, through pain and shock, he managed to land on his feet a second before his legs gave out, dropping him to one knee.

  The scavenger on the other hand was not so lucky.

  A second, whip-like tail from the Skollynx lashed out with terrifying speed.

  The scavenger stood no chance.

  BAM

  Pello’s scream was cut short, he laid unmoving.

  A fourth Skollynx.

  It made its appearance, pushing through the ironwood like a moving cliff. This one was larger, thicker, its metallic plates crusted with what looked like old rust.

  The rest of the Skollynxs came to a halt, encircling them.

  Dion understood immediately.

  They had been herded straight into the jaws of their leader. Escape now was impossible.

  "M-my legs… I can't feel my legs. Gods, no… no, no…" Pello's sobs were a wet, broken whisper, barely audible over the high-pitched ringing in Dion’s ears.

  The last blow hadn't just broken any bone. It had shattered his spine.

  Dion pushed himself to his knees. His body was a symphony of screaming protests, the fiery agony in his chest, the deep, hollow ache behind his eyes that felt like a pit threatening to swallow his consciousness.

  The Brine-touch thrummed within him, a second, cold heartbeat, but it offered no strength. Only a profound, draining emptiness.

  The chances of survival were quite bleak.

  “Do you have more of that?” Dion gritted out, the words tasting of blood and salt.

  “I do….” Pello stammered, wheezing through the pain. “But it won't change shit.” His gaze was already hollow with resignation.

  “It’ll seal the wound… not the damage. It won’t fix my spine. Won’t put me back on my feet.”

  Dion understood. The potion could stitch flesh, but it couldn’t restore a shattered system.

  Looking at the scavenger now, he looked worse than before. Gray, sunken, as if the miraculous healing had drawn the very vitality from his core to fuel itself.

  Perhaps the potion doesn't create new life. It borrows it.

  If he weren't surrounded by three mettalic-skinned horrors and their leader, he might have been terrified by the deduction. He knew nothing of alchemy until a minute ago.

  Potions like this that mended or restored one to peak performance were godly, in a way.

  But their prices were usually drawn from the user’s own life force. Using them consecutively wasn't just risky, it was a slow, borrowed suicide.

  This was it. The end.

  A ridiculous, bitter thought clawed its way to the surface of Dion’s mind. When he had stumbled onto this shore, he’d felt reborn.

  Touched by the Brine.

  Marked by something ancient.

  Now here he was, crawling on his knees, hunted by mere beasts, about to be torn apart in a foreign wasteland.

  It was pathetic.

  And then.

  BANG.

  The largest Skollynx moved. It didn't skitter or flank. It simply slammed a metal-plated forelimb down where Dion's head had been a second before, cratering the metallic soil in a spray of sharp gravel.

  Dion rolled, his face flashing with sharp, tactical surprise. It wasn't using the whiplash tail.

  It was brawling. Direct, brutal, and far harder to predict. Those thick, crushing limbs were a different kind of nightmare.

  GROWL.

  It lunged again, not from above, but from the side, a twisting, scrabbling rush of quartz and rust.

  Dion sidestepped, the creature's momentum carrying it past him in a scrape of limbs against metal.

  All the while, he kept a fraction of his focus on the three smaller Skollynxs. They had stopped advancing.

  They stood in a loose, watchful ring, their multifaceted eyes glinting. They weren't attacking. They were… containing. Forming a living arena.

  At least they were ignoring the crippled scavenger.

  But he couldn't last like this. He was tiring, his ribs a cage of white-hot pain with every breath.

  It was only a matter of time until the others decided to join the fight.

  In that case.

  He yanked the familiar, greyish limb from his waist, the metallic tail he’d torn from the first Skollynx.

  GROWL.

  A furious, metallic snarl ripped from the smaller Skollynxs. Its cold, multifaceted eyes blazed with a sudden, crystalline rage. It recognized its own.

  Dion didn’t care. He needed to end this. Now.

  Even if he doubted he could.

  His Lavosian training, years of drills until his muscles screamed and his blisters wept, kicked in, overriding the panic. He didn't think. He reacted.

  He ducked beneath a claw-swipe that sang through the air where his throat had been.

  He sidestepped a bone-crushing lunge from the brute, his body flowing through the motions of a thousand sparring sessions.

  His grip tightened on the severed tail.

  It was strange to hold. It felt deceptively smooth, almost soft, like polished stone.

  Yet a deep, resonant hum seemed to travel from it into his bones, whispering a promise.

  This could tear through ironwood. This could cut deeper than steel.

  He trusted his instinct.

  As the brute's momentum carried it past him, Dion pushed off its quartz-plated side, creating a precious few feet of space.

  His wrist snapped forward in a short, vicious arc. The severed tail cracked through the air.