The crack of the colossal river-chain snapping under our holy fire was still ringing in my teeth when the whole landmass tilted to the left.
The black stone under our boots pitched like the deck of a sinking galleon. Gravity dragged sideways as the living island shifted its weight in the boiling sea, and I hit the rock hard. My knees ground into the porous stone. I threw my left arm out to stop myself sliding down the slope into the black water, and my broken collarbone answered with a white spike that went straight up into my skull.
My well was a dry, uncompromising zero.
There was no essence for Feather Step, and none to throw a chain. I had to fight the slide with plain friction, my Dark Mantle scraping across the bedrock.
The math settled on my chest like an anvil. Every burn we put into the raw red flesh of the cliff killed the spawn, and every burn also loosened the iron chains holding the mother of dragons down. We were burning the lock off the cage.
