Three more steps brought them to a second corpse at the base of an oak that had been snapped off at an angle. This Ground Dragon's head was missing. The cartilage and windpipe at the severed neck had been scorched by intense heat, their edges blackened and contracted, as though a branding iron had sealed the cut surface in an instant.
The spine had been cleanly severed at the third cervical vertebra. The cut was smooth, without any splintering or chipping, as though something hard and thin enough had sliced through it at speed.
Goyle lingered longest beside the third corpse. It was a relatively small Ground Dragon, impaled through the center of its chest by a thick tree trunk roughly thirty centimeters in diameter. Half a broken root system was still attached to one end-the living tree had been uprooted and used as a weapon.
The trunk had pierced the chest precisely where the ribs were least densely packed, entering at an angle through the gap between the third and fourth ribs and emerging beneath the shoulder blade on the opposite side.
He studied the claw marks and rubbed his chin. "Tsk, tsk..." Goyle said, his voice caught somewhere between admiration and disbelief. "Uprooted a whole tree and rammed it straight in."
"It wasn't just uprooted." Crabbe crouched at the base of the trunk to examine the broken roots. He brushed away the dirt with his fingertips, exposing their cut ends. "A large, fire-breathing creature burned through the roots, then pulled the tree out and used it as a spear to impale this Wyvern. Some kind of mutated giant?"
The farther they went, the muddier the ground became. Firm footing gradually gave way to sinking soil, and every step took extra effort to pull their feet free. Another scent