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I turned back to the gully, took a deep, steadying breath, and slid down the steep ten-foot bank of loose basalt rubble. My boots hit the black mud at the bottom with a squelching thud, cold water instantly soaking through the leather of my footwear.

The moment my feet touched the bottom of the ravine, the hatchling reacted.

Despite its crushed torso and pinned wing, the instinct of the predator was absolute. The young dragon snapped its head toward me, its slitted crimson eyes locking onto my frame. A high, vicious hiss tore from its throat, exposing rows of translucent, needle-sharp teeth that glinted wickedly in the twilight. A jet of scalding, sulfurous steam erupted from its nostrils, splashing across my leathers and burning the skin of my cheeks.

“Easy,” I rasped, holding my bare hands out in front of me, keeping my posture low, non-threatening, and steady. “Easy, you miserable little beast. I am not here to eat you.”

The hatchling thrashed violently, its good wing slamming against the muddy bank, its jaws snapping wildly, missing my left gauntlet by mere inches. The frantic movement only caused the massive petrified trunk to settle deeper into its chest, dragging a high, pained screech from its throat as blood welled faster from its pinned wing.

“Stop moving!” I commanded, my voice dropping to a dark, dominant resonance that carried the subtle, vibrating hum of my internal magic. “If you keep thrashing, you’re going to break your own spine before I can lift this damn tree.”

The hatchling froze. Whether it was the raw, unyielding tone of my voice or the faint scent of the Remnikai shifting beneath my skin, its slitted pupils dilated. It stopped snapping, its heavy, scaled head resting in the mud, its crimson eyes watching my every move with a mixture of feral rage and agonizing exhaustion.

I stepped up to the petrified log.

Up close, the scale of the task was horrifying. The ironwood trunk was six feet in diameter, petrified into solid, heavy stone over centuries of volcanic exposure. It weighed at least a few hundred pounds. There was no physical universe where a half-blood Fae female—even one trained in the elite physical regimens of the guard—could lift it bare-handed.

“Think, Tauriel,” I muttered, my mind racing through the mechanics of the terrain.

I scanned the gully. Four paces to my left lay a thick, heavy slab of basalt rock that had broken off the cliff face; long, flat, and dense enough to act as a natural hinge. Beside it was a thick, fallen branch of petrified oak, four inches thick, sturdy enough to bear immense weight without snapping.

Leverage.

I scrambled through the mud, dragging the heavy basalt slab over to the ironwood trunk, jamming it flat against the ground just inches from the hatchling’s pinned wing. Then, I shoved the petrified branch beneath the massive trunk, resting it directly over the basalt.

I stepped onto the far end of the lever branch, wrapping my arms around the petrified wood, and threw my entire body weight downward.

“Haaaaah!”

A violent, blinding arc of agony shot straight through my right shoulder as the brand flared to life. The scar burned with a fever that made my vision turn spotty, my muscles screaming as I strained against the massive tree.

The branch groaned under the monumental tension, bending dangerously, but the physics held.

Slowly, agonizingly, the colossal trunk shifted. It rose a mere two inches off the hatchling’s chest—a tiny, crucial gap of clearance.

“Go!” I screamed through my clenched teeth, blood trickling from my lip where I had bitten through the skin. “Move, you stupid reptile! Move!”

The hatchling felt the sudden release of pressure. Driven by pure, primal survival, the young beast let out a raspy screech, digging its powerful, webbed rear talons into the mud. It hauled its heavy body backward, dragging its crushed, bloody left wing out from beneath the shadow of the stone tree.

It worked. The hatchling was free.

Exultation flared in my chest for a single, glorious second—and then catastrophe struck.

In its desperate, frantic scramble to escape, the hatchling’s tail lashed out, violently kicking the basalt slab out of alignment.

The balance of the lever snapped instantly.

The four-inch petrified oak branch shattered in my hands with a sound like a gunshot, sending sharp splinters of petrified wood flying into the air. With the lever destroyed, the full, unmitigated weight of the trunk collapsed backward.

It didn’t fall back into the mud. It rolled sideways down the slope of the gully.

Directly over me.

“No—”

The massive petrified trunk slammed into my left side, a brutal, glancing blow with the force of a battering ram that swept my legs right out from under me.

The impact knocked the breath cleanly out of my lungs in a single, agonizing instant. I hit the freezing mud hard, the momentum of the rolling log dragging across my boots and pinning my shins for a suffocating second before it finally rolled past and ground to a halt.