A tidal wave of golden ichor flooded the battlefield. It washed over the Golems' boots, a warm, sticky river of divine blood that pooled around the killers of stone and Red Metal.

  His stomach turned into a churning maelstrom of pain.

  “Trenn! Now!” Mara was pulling at his arm.

  But Trenn’s feet remained planted in the dirt. He stared, unable to breathe, while his empathic connection flooded his mind with the Gem-Croc's last moment.

  He fell to his knees and put a hand on Skate’s obsidian shell.

  "No..."

  The presence of the ancient animal was fading, bleeding out into the cold dark of the void. Betrayal. It felt betrayed by Trenn.

  "NO!"

  Tears ran down his cheeks. His focus sharpened. The hum in his bones grew louder. Clearer.

  "YOU’RE NOT DONE!"

  He reached for the discordant pitch of the Necrosis Element. He didn't wait; he didn't ask—he seized it. He embraced the marrow-deep chill and forced his Mana Radiation to match the anti-frequency of his dying friend.

  Mara grabbed his shoulder, shaking him violently. "Trenn! It's dead! We have to run!"

  "Stay with me," he grunted, his eyes squeezing shut as he clamped his mental grip onto the fading soul. "I won't let you go!"

  Mara froze. She saw the sickly, black-green light igniting in Trenn's eyes. She recognized the discordant hum radiating from him—the same wrongness that animated Almitad.

  "Trenn, don't!" she whispered. "That's necromancy! You don’t know what you’re doing! You can’t control an undead god!”

  She turned to call after Almitad, but her screams didn’t carry through the mist.

  He clung to the Charm spell that connected him to the crocodile god. A blackened thread snaked around the beam of light, tinting it with a green hue.

  "NO MORE DEATH!"

  The line went limp. The light faded and pulsed weakly.

  Trenn held his breath and cast his Charm spell, modulated by his necrotic pitch. The Gem-Croc’s immense body twitched and let out a groaning death rattle.

  But their tether glowed bright again. The god’s soul was there, in the World Between Worlds… Looking at Trenn. At the cable of green-black light connecting them.

  The powerful soul swam through the necrotic thread and dove into Trenn’s fragile body.

  And the world turned red.

  His arm erupted in agony. Heavy, golden scales tore through his skin, shredding his sleeves to sheath his limbs in living armor. His fingers fused and lengthened into webbed, clawed hands of gem-encrusted gold.

  The grass beneath his knees withered, turning grey and disintegrating into dust.

  "Trenn!" Mara screamed, releasing him. "Trenn, what’s happening?"

  She recoiled in horror as his spine elongated, forcing his chest low and his head forward in a predatory stoop. Vertebrae cracked and multiplied with a wet, tearing sound. A massive tail of gold and jewels burst from his lower back, balancing his new posture.

  The sudden weight and density of the divine gold drove his boots into the compacted earth.

  Gilded scales crawled up and down his neck. They clamped over his jaw. Over his mouth and nose, his ears. A stylized crocodile head snapped closed over his face. Its eyes ignited with black-green flames.

  Covered head to toe in jeweled scales, Trenn pushed himself up, his movement groaning with metallic weight.

  Mara, her white furry face locked, jaw slacked, tried to speak, but nothing came.

  A foreign instinct seized his muscles. He coiled. No! Mara!

  His body ignored the scream in his mind. His massive tail whipped around, striking her with the force of a battering ram. He felt the impact shudder through his spine as she was launched into the air, vanishing into the mist before she hit the ground.

  No…

  Trenn didn’t look back. He hunched over the battlefield, locking onto his next target. The nine-foot-tall golems loomed, vast silhouettes of Red Metal and stone, their attention shifting to him.

  But their size meant nothing anymore. He was a solid ingot of rage; they were brittle stone goats.

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  He opened his maw. He didn't mean to speak, but an ancient will forced the word through his throat like jagged glass.

  “BREAK!”

  The air before his jaws shattered. A cone of force raked the earth, clearing the mist in a violent wash. The sonic wave hammered the phalanx, driving the heavy statues back with a thunderous CRACK.

  Stone shrapnel sprayed against Red Metal. A cloud of pulverized dirt filled the vacuum.

  Trenn whipped his tail. He struck Skate, launching the slime from the dust.

  The projectile slammed into a staggering giant. It flattened against the breastplate. The obsidian shell detonated, shredding the Red Metal and cracking the stone chest. Skate reformed, pushed off the freezing statue, and shot back to Trenn.

  He was surging forward, a golden avatar tearing through the mist. The ground cratered under his clawed feet, kicking up sprays of mud and ichor. The Golems readied their stances and poised their spears.

  Trenn launched himself into the air, twisting his torso to meet Skate’s return. The Purple Slime was still regenerating its armor when the crocodilian helmet connected.

  The impact fired the sphere at a flat, lethal angle. It smashed into the face of the nearest Golem.

  Stone exploded; nose and jaw disintegrated into gravel, leaving a jagged crater where a face had been.

  But the Red Metal armor held. The Golem staggered back, its pike wavering, but it did not freeze.

  Skate ricocheted off the ruined face, spinning wildly. It struck the chest of a second Golem, the kinetic force driving the heavy statue back on its heels, before bouncing high into the grey sky.

  The Gem-Croc Kin hit the ground and exploded into a shoulder charge, crashing into the breastplate of the Golem with the ruined face.

  CRUNCH.

  The Red Metal collapsed into a concave ruin. Trenn used the impact to spin away, his massive tail slashing in a devastating arc. It hooked the jagged edge of the damaged armor. With a shriek of tortured metal, the plating ripped free, straps snapping as the crimson armor was flung away.

  The moment the metal left the stone, the Golem seized. Its raised pike froze mid-thrust. The magic animating the stone evaporated, leaving it nothing more than a statue with a broken face, dead and harmless.

  Skate reached the apex of its climb, hanging suspended in the grey mist for a heartbeat before gravity reclaimed it. It began to plummet; a now fully re-formed Obsidian Slime.

  The Golem Legion did not hesitate. Four statues in the second rank stepped over their fallen comrade. In perfect, mechanical unison, they thrust their leveled serrated pikes into Trenn’s chest and side.

  The spears cracked against his gilded armor with three successive hits that rocked and pushed Trenn backward. To regain control, his clawed feet and hand tore gouges in the turf.

  They lunged again. He vaulted over a thrusting spear and used its shaft as a springboard to launch himself upward toward Skate, while steel points clashed beneath him.

  He lined up his shot and spiked the stone sphere at the group of statues. Before they could bring their spears up, Skate exploded into a mess of rebounds between them, shooting black glass shrapnel through their armors.

  The golden warrior landed heavily, his webbed feet breaking the ground. He opened his jaw, drawing in a breath that seemed to pull the very mist into his lungs, and screamed.

  “SHRED!”

  A cone of distorted air blasted from his maw. The shockwave hammered into their damaged armor, tearing metal and blowing the heavy statues away like dead leaves.

  All four Golems froze mid-attack, their wall of spears paralyzed the instant their armor broke off their bodies.

  Skate, caught in the center of the blast, was launched back into the fray. It dove into the chest of a Golem, stepping over the rubble.

  The impact punched a clean, jagged hole through their Red Metal breastplate. The construct staggered as the force of the blow sent the Purple Slime arcing straight back toward the Gem-Croc Kin.

  Trenn spun, dropping his center of gravity and driving his claws into the churned earth. His hips snapped around, turning his massive, golden tail in a horizontal blur.

  It connected with Skate at the apex of its return.

  THWACK.

  The sound was like a tree snapping in a hurricane. Skate vanished into a purple blur that tore through the mist.

  It impacted the flank of a Golem. It had no obsidian left and only dented the armor before crashing into the chest of the Golem next to it.

  Skate skidded across ichor puddles and bounced to a halt, a spent, quivering puddle of purple goo.

  A sharp pang of guilt pierced the crimson haze. No! I’m breaking Skate… I… Mara—

  A spearhead slammed into Trenn’s abdomen, and another drove into his spine.

  White light flashed in the red world and drowned his guilt.

  There was no pain, only a titanic pressure that knocked the wind from his lungs and pinned him in place. Sparks showered the mud as the metal groaned, failing to find purchase in the divine armor.

  But the weight of the stone soldiers bore down on him, their mechanical strength locking him in a vice. He was trapped, immobile, a golden beast caught in a stone trap.

  Fury, hot and suffocating, flooded his mind.

  He flexed every muscle, scales flaring outward as he unleashed an omnidirectional pulse of the Sound Element.

  “FUCK OFF!”

  The air distorted. A sonic boom hammered the spear shafts, shattering wood into splinters and blasting the Golems backward.

  They stumbled, their stone feet skidding in the mud, their formation broken by the sheer force of his rejection.

  The field was a graveyard of frozen statues and piles of gravel. The Golem Legion was struggling to maintain a formation amidst the debris of their fallen kin. They stumbled over the crushed remains of the Gem-Croc’s initial charge and the frozen, armor-less statues Trenn had left in his wake.

  He roared, steam venting from the nostrils of his helm, and charged into the cluster of enemies

  He shoulder-checked a Golem, shattering its stone hip. He caught the next spear and snapped the haft like dry kindling. He tore through their ranks, ripping plates from armor with golden claws, his tail weaving a path of destruction that ground stone legs into gravel.

  The Legion was breaking. The disciplined thud-thud-thud of their march had dissolved into the chaotic clatter of metal on stone as they tried to surround him.

  He reached the center of the formation, where Skate lay in the mud. It had reverted to a purple goo—no trace of its obsidian shine.

  Steam hissed from the nostrils of his helm. He stared at the crumbling line, golden claws flexing. Beyond the rubble, between the paralyzed statues, the few remaining Golems closed ranks.

  He opened his maw and unleashed his Command spell.

  “DIE!”

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