Chapter 41: {Bonus - } Iron and Ash
[I promised Sauron_0405 a bonus Chapter. Here it is. Thanks once more for the Dragon gift.]
Clayton’s eyes lingered on the broken reactor tower where the cloaked figure had vanished. The air still carried the faint tang of ozone and scored earth from the Charhound Tyrant’s demise, but his focus was elsewhere.
His pulse hadn’t slowed.
That silhouette; human, not Behemorph, hadn’t attacked. On one hand, it confirmed something. ’I’m not the last human alive’.
Clayton never acknowledged how important it was to know this, but confirming that he was not the last surviving human among billions of humans that once populated Earth made him feel like a lump just left his throat. The burden he never knew he was carrying since now evaporated like steam.
But there was another thing.
That human, it hadn’t attacked. And yet, it hadn’t fled either, rather, it had watched.
And in Clayton’s world, being watched meant you were prey or a problem. He’d bet on the latter.
He crouched low, his Mycoglyph gauntlet pulsing faintly against his wrist. The Regalia of the Verdant Warden hummed in his grip, its spear form coiled with latent thorns, ready to shift at a thought.
The Expanse was quiet now, but quiet never lasted.
His instincts, honed in the Scorchpath Outskirts where he grew up, and sharpened in Echoterra’s crucible screamed one truth; whoever that was, they weren’t here to talk.