The Last Moult

A patched one-woman kite-boat labors in the wind off your lee rail. Her pilot—an emberkin leatherworker stained to the elbows with tanning dye—hails your deck. "I'm Hask Cinderhand! I'm tracking an ancient skywyrm leaving the Highwilds to shed her skin for the final time, and my fragile kite won't survive the border crossing. Take me aboard, and we'll split the shed wyrm-scale!"

By noon you spot the ancient skywyrm flying low and slow ahead of you. Every so often, a shed scale as wide as a shield works loose from her hide and spirals down toward the clouds. Hask watches them fall hungrily. "A single plate fetches good silver from a saddler—but if we heave to and net them, we'll lose sight of her, and noble trophy hunters patrol this migration route."

At the Moulting Crags, the ancient skywyrm lies exhausted along a sun-warmed rock ledge, her old hide split halfway down her back and too weak to finish shedding. Upwind, a gilded noble hunting yacht hovers at anchor, aiming its heavy guns for the kill. Hask grips your rail. "Those trophy hunters want her head for their hall wall! She just needs one hour to shed her skin and fly free."

Because you stopped to net scales, you reach the Moulting Crags an hour too late. A gilded noble hunting yacht has already fired a heavy harpoon into the ancient wyrm's shoulder and is winching her off the rock foot by foot while her half-shed skin tears along her back. Beside you, Hask goes dead silent.

Freed of her burden, the ancient skywyrm launches off the crag in gleaming new scales. Left behind on the rock lies forty feet of intact, shield-thick wyrm hide. Already slicing it into two shares, Hask looks up at you. "Half is mine. I can cure your half into a full wyrm-scale armor belt for your hull that deflects one shot in five—or you can sell the raw hide for silver."

Refusing to speak a word to you after your betrayal, Hask launches her kite-boat and leaves. Moments later, the gilded yacht's owner—a lord's younger son—rows over with a heavy purse, offering to buy the skywyrm's head so he can claim he slew it himself.

Trailing forty fathoms of snapped harpoon line, the skywyrm dives free into the clouds. What she leaves behind on the rock is a shed skin ripped in two by the harpoon wound. Hask spreads the torn hide out and curses softly. "Too torn to make a full armor belt that deflects shots—but I can still cut solid scale plates to reinforce your hull frames, or you can sell the hide as scrap."

Your new wyrm-scale armor belt is bolted securely along your hull, and Hask's cured share lies rolled in your hold beside her folded kite-boat. After three days working alongside your crew, she stands at the rail looking out at the open sky. "The old wyrm has flown where no kite can follow. I could head back to my tannery—or I could stay aboard with your crew."