Vavnaar’s oversized blade rose, a sliver of polished death against the red canopy. The Wolf Kin’s scarred snout curled into a sneer that made Trenn’s chest tighten. He was disarmed, unarmored, and utterly outmatched as the killing blow began its descent.

  He had resigned himself to using the secret weapon when a flicker of white drew his attention. Almitad’s skeletal arm was raised, a single finger pointed at the top half of the god corpse. She flicked it.

  Instantly, the gruesome remains lurched into motion. Its one remaining arm pushed into the earth, propelling the mass of fur and meat directly into Vavnaar’s path.

  The Wolf Kin's eyes widened. He sidestepped the tumbling corpse, his body's reflexive motion carrying him clear of its path. The swing meant for Trenn aborted mid-arc. The warrior pivoted on his heel, quickly redirecting his blade. The steel hissed through the air and severed the rabbit zombie's remaining arm at the shoulder.

  The armless carcass rolled to a stop. Its empty eyes stared from a lolling head. A low groan escaped its slack jaw as the twitching stumps pawed at the air.

  A pistol cracked from Trenn's flank. The Grey-Fur was repositioning, firing on Zeen's cover. Lead slugs from the flintlock hammered the rabbit corpse, gouging furrows through the putrid hide and pinning Zeen down.

  Zeen, unable to sacrifice his position and refusing to retreat, fired blindly. A wide, arcing volley of embers flew toward the Wolf Kin, but the burning ashes lost their momentum and rained down uselessly in the ferns. The Wolf Kin was carefully maneuvering just beyond the effective range of the Gnome's musket.

  The Grey-Fur raised his shield to reload. In that instant, Zeen burst from cover, his clockwork musket already cycling through its reloading sequence. The Wolf Kin’s surprise lasted only a moment. He dropped his pistol and drew a throwing knife, his hand a blur of motion as he sent the blade spinning through the air.

  Zeen did not falter. The instant the musket's clockwork mechanism clicked shut, he fired.

  A cone of blazing ash erupted from the muzzle. The blast batted the spinning knife from the air and splattered against the Grey-Fur's shield as he abandoned his pistol and retreated between the Sequoias.

  On the opposite side of the battlefield, the Brown-Fur was stumbling in pain. He used his remaining hand to fire his pistol, but Mara was moving in his blind spot.

  As she stepped behind him, her left claws raked across his hip. The attack tore a deep furrow through armor, flesh, and bone. The Wolf Kin screamed and collapsed to his knees.

  A sharp call from the sniper cut through the clearing: “Fox Kin!”

  Her right claws pierced through the Brown-Fur’s armored back. They slid between his ribs and burst from his chest. A gurgling sound was all the dying Brown-Fur could manage as Mara heaved him like a shield.

  Two heavy rounds from the sniper slammed into the dying Wolf Kin.

  Still reeling from Skate’s attack, Janaree dropped her empty pistols and drew two more from her belt. She fired both without aiming. One bullet went wide; the other pierced Mara’s thigh armor and flattened against the pill-hardened hide beneath.

  She winced and dropped to one knee. A wave of shocked revulsion flooded Trenn from Mara’s tether as the Brown-Fur’s corpse, impaled on her claws, lurched by itself.

  The corpse straightened. It pressed its boots to the ground, pushing itself free from her claws with a stiff, unnatural motion. The dead Wolf Kin raised its hand-canon and fired a clumsy shot that sent Janaree scrambling away.

  Almitad? Trenn's sonar snapped to her position.

  Her right hand was outstretched toward the dead Brown-Fur, and her left was aimed at the Scrapper’s severed leg. Her skeletal fingers twitched and crooked with precise gestures, each hand controlling a different undead.

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  “Ezy,” came a disincarnated voice that made Trenn’s blood run cold, “put it back where it belongs.”

  The bony limb animated, dragging itself across the thorny earth. Ezy's Scrapper had already dragged its chassis into a wall of cover from Janaree and the Black-Fur. The gnome engineer reached out from behind her cover, grabbed the approaching leg, and held it flush against the stump.

  Almitad’s fingers made a delicate, knitting motion. Sickly, gangrenous black threads wove between the shattered bone fragments, pulling them into place and making the limb whole.

  Vavnaar turned from the twitching, limbless rabbit corpse. The sneer returned to his scarred snout. He advanced on Trenn, his oversized blade rising for another strike.

  Trenn anchored his feet to the thorny earth. The searing psychic feedback of the spell was a small price to pay compared to the certainty of the blade. There was no escape. He met the Wolf Kin’s advance.

  Channeling every ounce of will he possessed, he stayed poised in front of the readied blade. He let the Wolf Kin commit to the swing, let the oversized blade begin its final, lethal arc, and then screamed the one word that could save his life.

  “STOP!” It shot out of him like gunfire.

  Vavnaar froze mid-swing.

  A bewildered expression locked onto his face.

  His body seized, a statue of imminent violence.

  His blade was locked inches from its purpose.

  Trenn's sonar map dissolved into a roaring, blinding static. An invisible fire seared through his nerves as the Command spell left his mouth.

  His body collapsed to the ground, his back arching in a violent, uncontrollable convulsion. A wave of nausea erupted from his gut, and he vomited. The acidic burn was a distant sensation in the overwhelming sensory overload.

  His mind, stripped of its anchor to the world, floated in a sea of meaningless noise. He had no sense of up or down, only the heaving of his own guts and the violent shuddering of his muscles.

  As he retched, the only things that made sense were his tethers. One of them, the tether that bound him to the crocodile god, transformed dramatically. There was a pull, followed by a profound release.

  The sharp, intelligent, malevolent presence of the One-Eye winked out of existence. The complex, hostile emotions were gone, replaced by a dull, confused fear—the raw, bestial mind of the Gem-Croc.

  It thrashed, confused, its immense body lost between the sequoias. Trenn could feel the poor creature’s panicked disorientation.

  It mirrored his own.

  Get… up…

  He was gasping, his face dripping. He shivered in his clothes, suddenly drenched with sweat.

  Vavnaar won’t stay paralyzed forever…

  Fragmented images and sound started to reach his senses, but it was Mara’s shift in emotions that drew his attention. Her battlerage was drowned by an alien will. A void. A cunning, ruthless void.

  It’s not Mara! It’s—

  A sharp, terrified scream from Ezy pierced the deafening static. She was above him, in her Scrapper. She had blocked the Silver Flash with the spiked gauntlets of the Scrapper. She had saved his life.

  “Mara! Zeen! Help!” she screamed.

  He managed to shuffle back as fragmented images of Mara imposed themselves over the static. She was on her feet, but her natural agility was gone. She moved with the stiff gait of someone uncomfortable moving their body. As if she were moving her limbs for the first time.

  —It’s the One-Eye!

  Mara’s hands, moving with mechanical purpose, gripped the two dead-man’s switches and pulled them into their respective handles. Trenn shoved himself off the ground, but before he could form a word, she pushed the buttons and yanked the levers.

  The metallic gate that blocked the path between the Sequoia Arch instantly fell to the ground, as if swallowed whole. He could see beyond it. It was a field of grazed grass. There was a structure in the distance. A coop.

  In front of it stood a giant Great Pyrenees in gleaming white armor. A chanfron protected its head and neck. Plates ran down its legs and paws, across its spine, and covered its belly. The Armored Dog turned its head toward the now-opened gate, perplexed.

  Trenn noticed the rooster's crow had stopped. The thinned mists were fading around them.

  He saw Mara's body go slack as the dull confusion of the giant crocodile disappeared, overwritten once more by the will of the One-Eye. A wave of pure, triumphant glee flooded the empathic tether that bound him to the Gem-Croc, while confusion took hold of his link with Mara.

  The crocodilian god stopped its thrashing and bolted in a single line. Its massive body, well over thirty yards, barreled through the battlefield like a natural disaster.

  The combatants scattered as the Gem-Croc’s massive body barreled through the battlefield, its charge unstoppable. In an instant, it was gone, a trail of destruction in its wake.

  Trenn could see through the white noise. His Sonar spell pulsed.

  The black-furred sniper was lying on her side, back to a sequoia. Her body had been crushed between the monster’s flank and the tree, turning her armor into a thin cage of pulped organs.

  The brown-furred zombie was a flattened smear in the ground.

  He followed Mara’s tether—her enlarged body was mangled, slumped against the Sequoia Gate, held together by a ferocious will to live, and the effects of her Giant Pill.

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