Damien looked at the core.
Dense. Warmer than the Grade Four and Five cores had been, the warmth of it carrying something that was less like heat and more like concentrated vitality, the accumulated essence of a legendary creature distilled into the size of his closed fist. He had expected it to feel significant.
It did.
He turned it over once.
Then looked at Luton.
The slime had maintained its seal against his chest through all of it, the motion of the final exchange and the extraction and the Stormhorn's fall, holding its position without instruction. He looked at it for a moment.
"Store it," he said. "Make it separate."
