Oops, I Accidentally Started the Industrial Revolution - When Mount Spine Shears

Dust rained from the cave ceiling10  When

Dust rained from the cave ceiling as the boulder lurched again.”Hold the timber!” a veteran named

Hakk shouted, throwing his entire two-hundred-pound weight against the main cedar wedge.Without warning, the scarred, blunt tail of the stalker whipped through a five-inch fissure at the base of the rock.The tail was not flesh; it was a flexible column of interlocking black bone rings, barbed like a harpoon.

Hakk across the thigh, two-inch quills sinking through his leather breeches with a sickening, wet rip.Hakk screamed as the beast contracted its muscular tail, dragging the full-grown warrior toward the narrow gap with terrifying, mechanical force.”Help him!” Goran yelled, firing two bone-tipped arrows through the slit.

The arrows struck the black bone plates and shattered into kindling.Dropping his pack mid-stride,

Corin leaped over the fire pit and drew the nineteen-inch

Terrapin tooth-blade from his hip with a fluid sweep.He closed his eyes for a breath, his inner vision tracing the internal structure of the beast.Corin saw the weak point between the fourth and fifth caudal vertebrae of the stalker’s tail—a gap no wider than a thumbnail where the cartilage was exposed.He channeled his un-sundered flame into his forearms, raising the heavy, serrated drake-tooth high, and drove the blade down with every ounce of kinetic momentum his sandbagged muscles possessed.SHING-CRACK.The indestructible enamel tooth sheared through the stalker’s tail like a hot knife through tallow.A shower of black, oily blood sprayed across the cavern floor.Outside the cave, the titan let out a deafening roar of agony that shattered three stalactites from the roof.

The severed tail segment dropped into the dirt, thrashing like a dying viper before going limp.Hakk collapsed backward, clutching his bloody thigh, sobbing with shock.The boulder stopped shifting.Through the stone,

Corin watched the massive skeleton retreat three paces up the cliff-face, circling upward toward the roof overhang.”It’s not leaving,” Corin said, wiping black ichor from his tooth-blade. “It’s waiting for us to starve or break the door.”Thirty feet above the cave floor, the smoke chimney opened into a jagged vertical fissure barely eighteen inches wide.Corin looked up at the vent.”You’re too small,

Corin,” Goran whispered, clutching his shoulder. “You can’t go up there.

The wind on the upper crest will tear you off the face.””The beast is sitting directly above the cave mouth,” Corin said, tying a forty-foot coil of heavy three-ply river-reed cord around his waist. “If

Torran’s squad comes back up the trail, the stalker will drop on their heads from two hundred feet.

Give me the ironwood pry-bar.”Rann stepped forward, his face pale, and handed

Corin a four-foot lever of fire-hardened ironwood tipped with chert.

The two boys looked at each other for a single, silent second.”Don’t fall, ditch-rat,” Rann muttered.”Don’t lose my meat,” Corin replied.Corin squeezed into the chimney.The limestone walls were slick with soot and cold condensation.

He climbed using his knees and elbows, inch by agonizing inch, the heavy

Terrapin blade banging against his ribs.After twenty breaths, the fissure widened, and

Corin pulled himself out onto the freezing, rain-swept ledge atop

Spine.The wind hit him like a frozen wall.

Below him lay the primeval forest, a vast, pitch-black void stretching into infinity, broken only by the roar of the swollen river two miles away.Directly beneath his ledge—forty feet down—the scarred

Stalker clung to the cliff-face above the cave mouth, its remaining tail twitching, its blind, scent-tracking snout raised toward the forest trail below.Above the beast hung a precarious overhang: three tons of cracked, weather-worn granite held in place by a single, narrow wedge of limestone.Corin crept along the rim on his belly.He jammed the ironwood pry-bar into the fracture behind the granite slab, setting his feet against the solid bedrock.He pressed his palms against the granite, feeling the subterranean stress lines map themselves in his mind.One heave along the diagonal vein would shatter the limestone anchor and drop the three-ton block straight down.Down in the forest, a torch flickered into view.Torran’s vanguard was returning, running up the narrow switchback trail directly into the ambush.Corin did not shout a warning.

A shout would alert the stalker.He took a deep, freezing breath of rain-drenched air, called the jade well beneath his ribs, and let the un-sundered flame flood every tendon in his back and shoulders.The crimson totem lines blazed across his skin like white-hot wires.”BREAK!” Corin roared into the gale.He threw his entire body weight against the ironwood lever.CRACK.The limestone anchor shattered.The three-ton granite overhang groaned, broke free from the cliff-face, and plummeted through the dark like a falling mountain.BOOM-CRUNCH.The granite block struck the scarred stalker squarely across its armored shoulders.The impact sounded like a lightning strike hitting solid bone.

The beast let out a strangled, bubbling shriek as its spine collapsed, its claws tearing four long, bloody grooves through the granite before it was dragged off the cliff, tumbling through two hundred feet of empty air in an avalanche of shattered stone and black gore.The monster slammed into the forest floor thirty yards in front of

Torran’s vanguard.The impact shook the entire hillside.

Mud, pulverized rock, and black blood rained over the astonished hunters.Torran threw up his shield, his eyes bulging as he looked at the crushed, thrashing titan pinned beneath three tons of granite at his feet.The two other stalkers that had been shadowing the hunters let out terrified, whistling shrieks and bolted into the deep swamp, fleeing the thunder that had fallen from the empty sky.Dawn crept over the mountain, turning the mist from slate to pale gold.Captain

Torran drove his heavy spear through the crushed skull of the

Stalker, ending its struggles with a final, wet crunch.Morwen and the fifteen warriors stood in a circle around the massive carcass, staring up at the sheer, vertical limestone cliff that soared two hundred feet above their heads.”Where did the rock fall from?” Morwen asked, wiping mud from her cheek. “That overhang was solid when we marched yesterday.”Torran pointed his spear-tip upward.High on the narrow ledge, two hundred feet above the forest floor, sat a small figure.Corin sagged against the wet rock wall, clutching his temples as dark blood trickled from his nose.

Overusing his

Marrow-Sight to map the internal stress lines had triggered a violent neurological backlash; white static flickered across his vision, leaving him half-blind and gasping for air.

Yet he forced his trembling hands to hold his nineteen-inch

Terrapin tooth-blade, breathing through the excruciating cranial spasms.Beside him, poking his head out of the narrow chimney fissure, stood

Rann, looking down at the dead monster with his boar helmet crooked on his head.”Holy mother of the flame,” Goran breathed, emerging from the unsealed cave entrance below. “The ditch-rat dropped a mountain on it.”Torran stared up at the boy on the high ledge while the dust of the fallen mountain slowly settled.A slow, fierce, terrifying grin broke across the captain’s scarred face.

He raised his bloody war lance toward the sky and let out a single, deafening, bone-rattling war-cry that echoed across the valley.”GET DOWN HERE,

RAT!” Torran bellowed. “WE HAVE THREE HIDES TO STRIP!”The procession back to

Crag was a slow, glorious march of iron and bone.Thirty hunters carried the harvest of the three-day expedition: the massive, mud-armored carcass of the

Gore-Boar, four mountain elks, and three complete, gleaming black hides of adult

Bramble-Spine

Stalkers, their venomous quills bound with thick reed wraps to protect the carriers.Corin walked in the middle rank, carrying his own twenty-pound pack-frame containing fifteen pounds of prime four-tusk fat and the severed, two-foot skull-plate of the

Stalker.Beside him walked

War-Chief’s grandson didn’t speak as they climbed the lower switchbacks.

When they reached the steep shale incline below the main gate,

Rann unhooked his leather water canteen, uncorked the bone stopper, and handed it across the gap to

Corin.Corin looked at the canteen, then looked at

Rann.”Pine-berry wine,” Rann said, his voice flat and stiff, but his eyes meeting

Corin’s without a trace of his former sneer. “From my father’s lodge.

Drink it.”Corin took the canteen, took two long, sour, burning gulps, and handed it back.”Good wine,” Corin said.Rann grunted, took a swig himself, wiped his mouth with the back of his dirty wrist, and marched forward beside

Corin, matching his stride step for step.The

Road was packed four deep with shouting clan members.When the crowd saw the black, barbed hides of the three stalkers, a roar went up from the terraces that shook the cedar roofs of the high lodges.Near the gate of the

Tharn stood leaning on his crutch.

Beside the old master sat

Brant, the grey wolf straining against his rawhide lead, whining furiously with joy as he caught

Corin’s scent on the wind.Corin broke from the formation, walked across the terrace, and unrolled the massive, six-foot black hide of the

Stalker across

Tharn’s stone anvil.Tharn looked down at the gleaming, armor-plated pelt.

He reached out a trembling, dust-caked hand, running his scarred fingertips over the deep puncture where

Corin’s tooth-blade had sheared through the tail.”Did you lose the tooth?” Tharn asked, his raspy voice cracking slightly.Corin drew the nineteen-inch drake-blade from his hip and set it gently beside the hide.The serrated edge was stained black with dried predator blood, but the bone was whole, completely unchipped.”Tooth remembers,

Master,” Corin said with a faint smile.Tharn turned his head quickly to spit into the dust, wiping his good eye with his sleeve, though there was no smoke in the yard.”The platform holds,” the old man growled, unhooking

Brant’s lead. “A true hunter’s blade.

Now take your flea-bag and go boil some fat.”