Standing was a negotiation with gravity.

  Trenn leaned forward, chest parallel to the mud, hunting for a balance point. The massive golden tail anchored to his spine was a pendulum of muscle and metal, threatening to drag him backward into the river.

  He took a step. His heel sank deep into the black sand. He tried to swing his other leg forward, but the tail didn't follow. It dragged, a dead weight plowing a furrow through the muck. He overcompensated and pitched forward onto his hands.

  "Damn it," he wheezed.

  He tried to push himself up again. This time, he focused on the sensation at the base of his spine. There was a new cluster of nerves there, a thick bundle of impulses he had never felt before.

  The muscles along the armored spine bunched. With a sound like scraping metal, the limb lifted a few inches off the sand.

  He used the momentum to heave himself upright. He stood swaying, his knees bent, his torso hunched forward in a permanent, predatory crouch.

  He needed to move. He needed to find her. Mara.

  He took a step. Then another.

  A wave of vertigo hit him. He felt unmoored, like stepping off a curb that was higher than expected. There was a weight missing; his head was too light.

  His hand shot to his scalp. His fingers met only matted hair.

  There should have been a grounding weight, a familiar hum against his skull. The silence was like a missing limb.

  He spun around, the wide tail whipping with him, knocking a swath of reeds flat.

  He scanned the riverbank. He saw driftwood. He saw the churned mud where the children had fled.

  He scrambled back to the water's edge, ignoring the protest of his strange morphology. He fell to his knees and plunged his hands into the murky water.

  His fingers brushed a smooth, round stone. His heart leaped. It felt familiar. He pulled it out, dripping and muddy.

  He stared at it, expecting a hum, a shift in mass. Nothing. He threw it back into the water with a roar of confusion that resonated in his chest.

  He sat back on his heels, the new limb curling around his leg like a protective serpent. He drank.

  He was naked, bleeding gold, and the only things he had in the world were names he couldn't put faces to.

  He strained his mind, trying to force the blank spaces to fill with pictures. Instead, his environment was painted with vibrations, followed by a wall of static. Pain spiked behind his eyes.

  “Wrong. You’re doing it wrong.”

  A memory of a cool hand on his forehead and the voice of a woman. It was an echo of a lesson he couldn't remember learning. Don't chase. Invite.

  He gritted his teeth, frustration bubbling in his throat. Who was that? It wasn’t Mara. Why did he trust that voice?

  He closed his eyes. He slowed his breath, trying to control the frantic hammering of his heart. He stopped pushing and instead reached inward, past the confusion, hunting for the hum he knew should be there.

  He found something else. A clear vibration, high-pitched and resonant, it filled his senses. It was familiar, but different somehow—deeper, more resonant. It didn’t just sit in his chest; it conducted through the dense, metallic vertebrae of his new tail, turning the metal limb into a living tuning fork.

  The world exploded into a greyscale map of vibration.

  The river became liquid static, washing over his senses. The reeds were distinct notes of dry, papery friction. Cutting through the white noise, the rapid thumps of the children's hearts were drumbeats in the silence.

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  They were far, moving fast, scrambling up a muddy embankment.

  Beyond the children, the world's texture hardened. The fluid chaos of the river gave way to a mechanical arrhythmia—the grinding teeth of gears vibrating through the ground—the metallic song of industry.

  A settlement.

  He opened his eyes. The world returned to blinding color.

  He pushed himself up, his brain already adapting to the new distribution of mass. His heavy tail acted as a rudder, counterbalancing his stride as he moved into the tall grass.

  The reeds whipped against his raw skin. Insects swarmed him, drawn to the sweet scent of his blood. He swatted them away, his movements jerky and irritable.

  He followed the children's trail. Their small, clawed footprints were distinct scars in the soft mud. They led away from the river, up a steep bank, and onto a beaten dirt path winding through a forest of stunted, moss-covered pines.

  He stopped at the top of the rise.

  Below him, nestled in a valley choked with smog, lay a shanty town.

  It was a sprawling mess of rusted corrugated metal, scavenged wood, and patchwork tents. Thick, greasy smoke hung over it, spewing from crude chimneys. The sound of gears and shouting voices drifted up on the wind.

  He looked down at himself. Naked. Covered in mud. A wide, muscular appendage dragging behind him.

  Trenn closed his eyes and pulsed with the strange note. It vibrated from his teeth to his tail. The feedback was a headache of hard edges—iron, brick, gears—but he pushed past the noise, hunting for cloth.

  He found it on the periphery—a rhythmic, muffled snapping amidst the clang of industry. Fabric whipping in the wind.

  He opened his eyes. He had a target.

  He moved down the slope, keeping to the tree line. The new limb was a liability; it caught on roots and snagged on bushes. He had to constantly look back to lift and guide it, dragging a dead weight anchored to his spine.

  He reached the edge of the clearing. The clothesline was fifty feet away. A small shack stood nearby, its door slightly ajar.

  He closed his eyes, casting his perception forward. The interior of the shack was silent. Empty.

  He broke cover. He tried to stay low, but his tail kept hitting the ground.

  Where’s everybody?

  He reached the clothesline and grabbed a tunic. It was made for someone half his height. The fabric was a nightmare of stiff, industrial weave—more like a burlap sack used to haul ore than clothing.

  He held the tunic up against his chest. It barely covered his pectorals. If he tried to put his arms through the sleeves, the seams would explode.

  He threw it down in frustration, the movement causing his tail to twitch and slap the side of the shack with a dull thump.

  He froze, waiting for a shout, a bark, an alarm. Nothing.

  He turned back to the line. He couldn't wear them, but he could use them. He grabbed a pair of grease-stained trousers and another shirt.

  His fingers were clumsy and stiff. He tried to tie the sleeves to the legs, but his left hand betrayed him, the stump useless for fine motor tasks.

  "Come on," he hissed through gritted teeth.

  Finally, the knot held. He grabbed two more shirts, tying them into the chain.

  He wrapped the makeshift garment around his waist. It was less clothing and more of a crude, patchwork kilt of grey and brown. He tied the final knot at his hip.

  The skirt flapped around his thighs, trailing over Trenn’s thick tail.

  He closed his eyes again.

  He let the hum in his chest sing. The vibrating, greyscale map of the world returned. He peered around the edge, down the road. He methodically scanned the village, his breath held tight in his chest.

  He quickly found a crowd gathered down the main street, on the other side of town. Hundreds of the small, twitchy folk stood in a loose semi-circle. Their heads were bowed, their large ears flattened against their skulls.

  In the center of the road stood three towering figures.

  They were massive, easily seven feet tall, covered in thick fur, and wearing mismatched plates of leather and iron armor.

  His muscles locked up. His scar and stump throbbed. His body knew what they were before his mind did. Hunters. Killers. Wolf Kin... the words tasted like blood in his mouth.

  One of them, a brute with grey fur, casually kicked a crate of supplies over, spilling machine parts into the mud. He barked a laugh, the sound sharp and cruel. The gathered people flinched but didn't move. They were paralyzed, held in place by the sheer physical dominance of the intruders.

  Trenn stared, his mind racing to bridge the gap between the image and the fear. Why did he know them? Why did his gut twist with fear?

  A disruption in the static behind him. Heavy footsteps vibrating through the grass.

  He opened his eyes to run, but his tail was a dead weight. He slipped.

  The click of a rifle hammer froze him. A low, predatory growl came from behind.

  "What's this?"

  Two Wolf Kin stood at the tree line: a woman with a rifle raised, and a man with a spear and shield.

  The man’s eyes widened, locking onto the gold. He snapped his shield up.

  "Bleed it!" he barked.

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