While Lucen was messing around with his system, the people of the fortress had finished gathering up the bodies of the fallen.
Once the soldiers were done with their own dead, they turned to the monsters. The stench of ruptured entrails and frozen gore was rancid, thick enough to sting the eyes, yet the men endured.
Knives rasped against bone, their shrill scrape echoing in the frosted silence. Axes came down with dull, wet cracks, splitting hide and sinew alike.
Men worked methodically, hands numb yet unyielding, prying free every usable fang, every patch of leathery hide, every jagged claw glistening with half-frozen gore.
Each sound, the wrench of tendons, the thud of cleavers, mingled with the sickly perfume of blood and frost until the courtyard itself seemed like a butcher's hall.
The greatest prize, of course, was the Frost Titan. Its sheer bulk loomed like a toppled statue, radiating a cold that prickled the skin. Its materials were something they hadn't seen before.
