Trafalgar didn't make him wait for it. "There's a nest," he said. "I got all the way down to the core of it. Right at the bottom of the mountain."
mountain."
He let the black mouth of the mine hold his eyes a breath while he sorted the telling from the memory of standing in it. "A cavern of raw mana crystal, the richest I've ever laid eyes on. Pillars of it taller than houses, whole sheets of it, lit from the inside and cold enough to fog your breath from across the room. And the entire brood is down there feeding on it. Tearing it out of the walls and grinding it between their teeth, swelling on it while you watch them do it." He rolled the dead weight out of his sword arm, slow. "That's the answer to why they hit like a pack three times their age. They aren't only nesting on the vein. They're eating it, the purest mana in Morgain land, and every last one is fatter and meaner for it than a brood this young has any right to be."
