The Gem-Croc’s tail whipped forward, a sea of golden scales barrelling towards him. He opened his mouth to speak the command, but his vision was already filled by a wave of gems that threatened to swallow him.

  “ST—”

  He didn’t have time to finish the word.

  Trenn’s fear of being crushed was compounded by the fears of his team. He could feel it all.

  He was overwhelmed by the panic of the Gem-Croc. He was smothered by Ezy's fear of being eaten alive. He choked on Zeen's terror, lost and unarmed on the battlefield.

  He could not see. He could not breathe. He drowned in the impaled dog god's hopeless agony as its life bled out into the turf.

  He had stopped experiencing them as the dull feedback of distant tethers and accepted all of their emotions as his own.

  The combined terror paralyzed his body, his lungs. A noise erupted from his throat. It was a vocalized shockwave of pure panic that he blasted down every empathic tether he held.

  The Gem-Croc flinched, its tail swipe spasming into a clumsy, misdirected arc that whipped harmlessly over the clifftop. It reared back on its heavy, webbed feet with a gargled groan, stumbled, and crashed back to all fours.

  It was retreating, backing away, confused by the powerful, alien fear that gripped it.

  Bomber’s wings seized mid-flight. The giant moth crashed on the turf past the cliff's edge and fell in a limp heap of pink and yellow.

  Skate sprang from its paws, careening away at an angle. It bounced off the ground and shifted its mass chaotically. With each subsequent, smaller bounce, its trajectory changed, never bringing itself closer to Trenn.

  Zeen, his hand outstretched for his musket, went rigid. Mara, poised to deliver a strike to the encroaching Larval Husk, became a statue of white fur.

  On the clifftop, Ezy’s frantic fight against the creature eating her foot stopped. Her wrench slipped from her slack fingers to clatter on the stone. The monstrous teeth, unimpeded, continued their grinding work on her shattered foot.

  The larva's segmented body had worked its way past her ankle; its maw now ground into the meat of her calf.

  Her eye snapped open and locked onto the fallen wrench. Her skeletal hand shot out, snatched the heavy tool, and jammed it deep into the creature’s mouth, wedging the steel between its grinding teeth and her own savaged leg.

  She used her calf as a fulcrum and heaved, putting her entire weight into the lever. Sweat drenched her face as she gritted her teeth. The larva’s jaw fought the pressure. She screamed in pain as metal and tooth ripped her leg open. Warm blood gushed over the tool.

  With another scream of pure, defiant rage, she heaved, putting the entire weight of her compact body into the lever. The wrench bit deep into her own raw flesh as the larva’s teeth fought the pressure, scraping a fresh, bloody furrow up her shin.

  A wet, tearing sound echoed in the clearing, distinct from the grinding of teeth. It was the sound of sinew and muscle giving way. The larva’s jaw was pried open and thrown, its body spasming as it landed in a heap, the bloody wrench still tangled in its broken maw.

  Through her tether, a wave of triumphant agony crashed into Trenn. His sonar painted the new reality with clinical brutality. Her foot hung at an unnatural angle, a ruin of shredded leather, mangled flesh, and exposed, splintered bone, connected to her leg by little more than a prayer.

  The grounded Husk, its back a spreading ruin of necrotized flesh, shifted its weight. Its multifaceted eyes fixated on Mara, who stood locked in place by the terror Trenn had broadcast.

  Its front legs clawed at the turf, hauling its body forward as the ruined back legs dragged.

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  The Husk's crippled gait skewed its charge. Its rhino horn drifted and gouged a furrow in the dirt beside her. But its bullhorn, however, found its mark.

  Trenn's sonar registered the punch as the horn's tip pierced her gut. The Husk's momentum impaled and carried her a few feet before she slashed the horn free from its head and fell to the ground in a broken, unmoving heap.

  A larva crawled up her limp arm and latched its maw onto her hand. As its teeth sank into her flesh, a final spasm of hunter's instinct shot through her. Her jagged necrotic claws erupted from her fingertips, shredding the creature's head from the inside out.

  Clutching her gut with one hand, she scrambled to open her alchemy satchel. She drew out one of her two healing potions, but the broken Husk with the necrotic wound finished its turn, ready to crush her.

  She rolled, a desperate, last-second motion that put her clear of the trampling legs. The agony from her impalement wound overwhelmed her, and she lost consciousness as the broken potion’s content mixed with her spilled blood.

  Almitad drifted downward from the clifftop, her bony fingers already weaving patterns in the air. A sickly, black-green light pulsed from within her robes, illuminating the motion. She pointed, her entire focus on the dead Husk, its head a ruin of chitin and Scrapper shrapnel.

  The corpse began to churn. One of its legs scraped against the turf, then another; they pushed. With a loud crack of stressed chitin, the undead insect surged to its feet, its ruined head lolling at an unnatural angle.

  The reanimated Husk’s larvae writhed to break free.

  Almitad’s fingers danced in the air, sending her puppet forward in a stiff gait. It cleared the distance to the Husk poised to trample Mara, and lurched its horns deep into the necrotized ruin of its back.

  Rotten chitin gave way with a wet, splintering CRACK. Greenish fluid and dead larvae sprayed the ground.

  Floating above, Almitad continued her gestures. She lifted her hand, her fingers curling upward, and her undead Husk heaved its head to flip its crippled foe onto its back before a final, violent wrench tore the horns free from the ruined flesh.

  The upturned Husk, dying, helpless, its feet weakly pawing at air, emptied itself of a mess of larvae. A mountain of writhing worms rolled a few feet next to Mara’s unconscious body.

  A shriek of tearing air snapped Trenn’s gaze upward to the last surviving Husk. It peeled away, its wings angling back as it accelerated into a steep power dive. Below it, Almitad hung motionless in the air, her skull tilted down, one skeletal hand still raised in the controlling gesture.

  She couldn’t react before the Husk’s central horn punched through her ribcage with a dry CRACK of bone. The impact snapped her body backward, her raised hand falling limp. The Husk’s momentum then carried her impaled form in a wide arc across the sky.

  Zeen was a prisoner in his own mind, his body locked in a cage of imported fear. He saw the thick, worm-like things land on his chest, saw them squirming over Mara’s broken body, but could do nothing.

  His hand was inches from the soul-bound musket, a gap as wide as an ocean. Larvae squirmed around him, creeping closer by the second. On his back, a toothy worm was trying to bite through his thick work clothes.

  A silver-white light shimmered over his weapon, coalescing into Gil's translucent, smiling form.

  Luminous fingers closed around the stock. A voice, familiar and distant, resonated in his ears. "I am here, Zeen. You are not alone."

  The weapon shifted, its ivory grip pressing into his palm. He closed his fingers around it. He could not say if his hand had moved the musket or if Gil had brought it to his hand.

  The contact sent a jolt of purpose through his arm, shattering the foreign terror. A shudder ran through his body as his muscles unlocked.

  He rolled onto his side, tearing his face away from a larva's snapping teeth, and pulled the trigger.

  A wave of blazing embers erupted from the barrel, washing over the ground in a sheet of fire. The larvae writhed, their bodies charring and curling in a blackened sizzle. The stench of burnt chitin filled the air.

  He scrambled away from the nearby survivors, while his musket’s clockwork system reloaded itself.

  The fear from his empathy attack held his limbs locked in place. He was on the ground, his club inches from his twitching fingers.

  A larva latched onto his limp left hand. Its teeth sank into the flesh over his knuckles, a grinding pressure that ended with a distinct CRACK of fracturing bone.

  The physical agony shattered the paralysis. He surged to his feet, swinging his arm in a wild arc to fling the creature off.

  It responded by locking its jaw and raising the pressure until a final CLACK of teeth sheared through bone. The thrashing weight on his hand vanished, breaking his stance as the monster flew away in a spray of blood.

  His gaze locked on his hand. The image refused to process. Three fingers remained. A deep gouge was carved into his hand, a concave ruin of mangled flesh where his index and middle fingers and their knuckles had been. Blood pulsed from the wound, pumping onto the grass.

  Across the field, the larva ground its teeth and swallowed Trenn’s fingers.

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