Glassback Lizards

Overview

Glassback Lizards are big monitor lizards that live on the furnace scars of the Glassbelt Interior, the deep dead furnace zones whose glassed ground is said to hold the fire's heat still. They have lived there long enough to carry that heat in their own blood. They hunt the scars by night and day alike, and their bite burns like a coal.

Appearance

A grown glassback is as long as a tall man from snout to tail-tip, half of it tail, low-slung and heavy-shouldered, with a long neck and a narrow head. Its scales are small and beaded, dark brown to soot-black on the flanks, and along the back they are glossy, smooth, and dark red-brown like fired glaze, giving the name. In the cold of the desert night the back shows a faint dull glow, and the air above a resting lizard shimmers. Its tongue is long, forked, and black. It moves in a swaying, high-stepping walk and runs fast in short bursts, and it hisses with a dry, crackling breath. It smells of hot stone and scorched meat.

Habitat and Range

They live only on the warm glassed ground of the furnace scars, sheltering in cracks and under glass lips by day and by the coldest hours of night, and they are not met on the cooled glass, the pans, or the caravan wells. Each holds a wide stretch of scar.

Behaviour and Temperament

A glassback hunts whatever lives on the scars and whatever crosses them: beetles, small lizards, birds come down to the warm glass at dawn, and carrion. It does not need the morning sun to warm itself, which every other lizard of the desert does, and so it hunts in the cold hours when other beasts are slow. It is bold, and will stand its ground against a crossing party and come at a pack animal.

Abilities

Its blood runs hot enough that its bite scalds: the wound blisters and blackens around the teeth, and the burn spreads and festers for days. It keeps its warmth through the desert night and on the coldest ground.

Life Cycle

The female buries her eggs in cracks of the warm glass, where the scar's heat hatches them, and the young are bright-banded and hunt insects from the first day. They grow slowly and live long, and the largest are said to be older than the crossing routes.

Uses and Dangers

The Salvage Peoples who work the scars count glassbacks among the reasons to go over such ground only when they must; a salvager bitten on the scars may lose the hand. Their hides are tough and handsome, but a salvager will not carry one out of the deep scars, any more than ash or slag (see Furnace-Ash Sickness).

Lore and Belief

Crossers say glassbacks are the furnace's own beasts, hatched from its embers, and that whoever speaks the god's name near a furnace will draw them; nobody tests it. Some salvagers believe the lizards keep the old fire alive under the glass by lying on it, and will not kill one on its own ground. That they are animals of the world changed by the fire the scars still hold is the likelier truth, and the more any of the crossers will say.

Salvagers who dig the scars for furnace relics keep a pot of water at hand for the bite, and the tale of the delver bitten in a glassed vault, who carried his treasure out on a burning arm and lost both, is told on every crossing.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Touched Beasts