Wutren moved without a word, crossing the clearing to the Black-Fur’s remains. He retrieved the flintlock sniper rifle and its ammo pouch, then strode to the Scrapper, handing both up to Ezy. He pointed to the breech, his curt gestures a silent, efficient lesson on the reloading mechanism.

  At the same time, Janaree snatched the Brown-Fur’s heavy pistol and belt and crossed to Trenn, who was retrieving his long club from the ferns.

  "You'll need a real weapon," she growled, shoving the pistol into his chest. Her hands were a blur as she took a fresh magazine from the belt, showed him the release, slapped it home, and racked the slide. "Point. Pull. Repeat."

  A spike of raw anxiety from Mara's tether cut through the tactical moment. The edges of her giant form shimmered, distorting the air as steam rose from her matted fur. Her voice was a pained, urgent growl.

  "Then we go, now," she grunted, her giant frame trembling. "If we wait too long, I'll shrink, and I'll be out of combat for good."

  Vavnaar gave a sharp, guttural nod.

  Almitad flicked a finger. The fifteen-foot-long corpse of the rabbit god began to move, dragging its legless body across the ground with its front paws, a grotesque, mobile shield advancing through the Sequoia Gate.

  Mara and Vavnaar fell in behind it, their massive frames flanking Ezy's war machine as it crunched over the thorny earth. Zeen and the Grey-Fur took the outer flanks, their weapons already tracking the distant, thrashing forms of the gods.

  Trenn took his command position in the rear, the familiar weight of Skate in one hand, his enchanted club in the other. Janaree fell in beside him, drawing two of her own pistols, her lips peeled back from her teeth in a silent snarl. Behind them all, Almitad glided a foot off the ground, the necrotic bloom pulsing with a baleful, black-green light from within her runic ribs.

  The oppressive mist of the forest vanished the instant they cleared the gate. Before them lay a vast, grazed grassland stretching to a horizon beneath a perpetual grey sky. The air vibrated, charged with the energy of the divine conflict.

  The Gem-Croc’s jaws, wide enough to swallow a carriage, were clamped on the giant dog's tail. A pained yelp boomed across the field. The dog's tail was as thick as a grown oak and spilled from either side of the crocodile's mouth.

  From nose to tail, the reptile god was as long as four train cars, and twice as wide. It coiled its immense body and yanked.

  The brutal lurch dragged the Armored Dog backward. The fortress of white plate fought for purchase, its wagon-sized paws ripping up slabs of turf that provided no anchor.

  Behind the struggling gods loomed a comically oversized sequoia-wood coop, painted red with a white trim. Its open doorway was a shadowed maw at least twenty feet high.

  Perched atop the coop was a giant rooster wearing a golden, ruby-encrusted crown. Its plumage was a perfect, mirror-like surface that reflected only the brilliant morning sun piercing the grey sky.

  Its posture was one of weary exhaustion. As Trenn watched, a single, luminous tear welled in the god’s eye. It detached not like water, but as a soft, pulsing mote of golden light. It began a slow, meandering drift toward the ground.

  “Is that… a Tear of Dawn?” Trenn asked, his gaze locked on the pulsing mote of light.

  “Yes,” Vavnaar grumbled beside him. “That’s Dawn of the Morning Mist. One of the oldest gods in the world.”

  Janaree growled. “Vengeance first.”

  The Rooster God’s metallic feathers were ruffled and dull. It let out an agitated, frustrated crow. From the shadowed opening of the coop, the heads of giant, nervous chickens peeked out. Rows of jeweled necklaces, sized to fit the tapering width of their long necks, formed layered collars of glittering gems.

  Behind the colossal chicken coop, a living backdrop of titanic beasts stood as terrified observers.

  Three giant aurochs, their horns grown into living trees complete with bird and squirrel nests, shuffled in a nervous herd. Nearby, two giant steeds—one of polished ebony, the other of gleaming marble—stamped and whinnied their distress.

  Vavnaar gripped the hilt of his sword, his predatory instincts screaming at him to charge. Before he could break formation, Trenn acted.

  He cast his Sonar spell, overlaying the battlefield with a clear, tactical map. At the same time, he reached out and forged a new Charm tether with the Armored Dog.

  His eyes mapped the physical space—the distances, the angles, the terrain. His tethers provided the emotional reality. He felt the pure, noble duty radiating from the Armored Dog, a clean fire of defiance. From the Gem-Croc’s existing tether, he felt a strange stillness, an alien focus he had never felt from the One-Eye before.

  He took a breath and plunged his will into the tethers connecting him to his team and the Wolf Kin. The feedback from the hostile links was a psychic shriek of static. He focused past the abrasive resistance, shaping his intent into a tactical image: the sonar-clear, top-down view of the struggle. He pushed the image into all of their minds.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The immediate response from Vavnaar’s tether was a surge of indignant fury, a violent rejection of the intrusion. The Wolf Kin leader’s teeth gritted, his body tensing for a charge. But the image offered a bird’s eye view against his ground shot. He held it in his mind’s eye for a moment before finally dismissing it.

  From the Grey-Fur's tether, Trenn felt a flicker of surprise, followed by a cool, analytical assessment. The veteran hunter processed the tactical reality instantly. A low, guttural bark erupted from his throat, a single word of affirmation.

  The alliance exploded into action.

  The Giant Rabbit Zombie lurched faster, digging into the ground, a grotesque wall of undead flesh moving under Almitad's silent command.

  Mara broke from the formation, her giant form propelled by explosive power. She leaped for the Gem-Croc’s flank, five-inch necrotic claws erupting from her fingertips as she aimed for a high handhold. A high-pitched CLASH of shattering crystal echoed as her claws punched through a large, uncut emerald, sinking deep into the hide beneath.

  Finding purchase, she began her violent ascent. His sonar mapped her progress—a frantic figure of white fur against a living mountain. The climb was a brutal, grinding struggle. The Gem-Croc’s muscles bunched beneath her, the shifting plates of scale and gem threatening to shear her claws free with every movement. A surge of desperate, furious determination flooded his tether to her. He watched her left hand lose its grip, her entire giant frame swinging precariously from a single, straining arm. She roared, a sound of pure defiance, and drove her free claws back into the hide, arresting her fall. She found a new rhythm—a brutal, three-limbed scrabble against the living terrain, her form dwarfed by the sheer, impossible scale of the beast she was climbing.

  Simultaneously, Vavnaar charged. Ignoring the main body, he veered toward the creature’s massive, tree-trunk-like rear leg, which was still braced and digging into the earth as the Gem-Croc pulled on the Armored Dog's tail.

  Silver Flash descended with the force of a falling tree, striking the ankle joint with a grating shriek of protesting metal. The blade bit deep, shattering a dozen smaller crystals and gouging a deep wound into the monster’s golden scales.

  The giant crocodile groaned through gritted teeth, but the wound was superficial on a beast of this impossible scale.

  Trenn ran ahead, Skate clutched in his left hand, his club in his right. He moved like a predator, circling, his eyes constantly tracking the shifting battlefield.

  Where’s that damned amulet’s Mana Radiation? He wondered, scanning the massive frame of the Gem-Croc with his sonar.

  Above him, Almitad ascended, a silent, skeletal figure rising into the grey sky. The necrotic bloom pulsed faintly within her thoracic cage, its light glinting off the runes scribed across her ribs.

  The Scrapper crunched forward, closing the distance to the colossal head. Ezy steadied the long sniper barrel, her aim fixed on the charred, slag-like scar tissue on the Gem-Croc’s face. A sharp CRACK echoed from the flintlock.

  The slug struck the wound with the force of a hammer, shattering a blackened scale before burying itself in the tough hide beneath. The Gem-Croc’s colossal head jerked sideways, a low, annoyed growl rumbling from its immense chest.

  Zeen stepped out from behind the lurching corpse, running toward the giant crocodile with the clockwork musket already rising to his shoulder. He fired.

  A torrent of searing ash slammed into the crocodile god’s flank. The embers did not ricochet. They adhered, lodging deep in the crevices between the gem-like plates, where they began to smolder.

  A guttural bellow of pain and irritation erupted from the giant beast’s throat, but it refused to let go of the dog’s tail.

  “Yes!” he screamed as his clockwork musket began its reloading cycle. “Feel the fire that destroyed my life!”

  Janaree and Wutren slid into cover behind the lurching rabbit corpse and opened fire. Lead slugs sparked and screeched, ricocheting uselessly from the Gem-Croc’s dense, crystalline scales.

  Enraged by the burning embers and the assault on its leg, the Gem-Croc unleashed its tail. It whipped across the field in a massive, sweeping arc.

  Clinging to its back, Mara dug her claws in deep. Terror lanced through her tether as the living mountain beneath her lurched violently.

  The tail slammed into the Giant Rabbit Zombie, flattening it. The momentum of the whip continued, swinging the mangled rabbit corpse—still attached to the tail—directly into Janaree and Wutren. The impact of the undead flesh was enough to throw them violently to the ground, but it saved them from the direct, lethal force of the tail itself.

  Above, Almitad's skeletal hands were weaving, and gangrenous threads started to bind her giant zombie to the Gem-Croc's tail.

  Vavnaar met the oncoming whip head-on. Instead of dodging, he bellowed a war cry and drove Silver Flash deep into the advancing wall of scale. The enchanted blade sank to the hilt.

  The Wolf Kin’s massive frame shuddered but held, his boots carving deep trenches in the earth as the tail's momentum shoved him backward in a controlled slide. The sheer force threatened to rip the blade from his grasp.

  Instead, he held on. He roared, his muscles straining as he used the creature's own momentum against it, pulling the blade laterally through flesh and crystal as the tail retracted. Silver Flash tore free in a spray of blood, ripping a massive, bleeding gash down the length of the tail.

  “Shoot the wound!” Vavnaar called out.

  From where she lay on the ground, Janaree unloaded four rounds into the tender flesh of the gash. Nearby, Wutren groaned and pulled himself to his feet.

  From high above, Almitad pointed a single skeletal finger at the wound.

  Instantly, the raw, red flesh of the gash turned a sickening shade of blackish-purple. The edges of the wound swelled, becoming puffy and water-logged as blisters formed and wept a foul, brownish fluid. The stench of rot reached Trenn even from a distance.

  The Gem-Croc shrieked, its body reacting to the wound. Through the tether, however, its mind remained a cold constant; Trenn felt no answering fury or terror, nothing to match the creature's physical cry.

  But its body could not ignore the gangrenous wound.

  The colossal beast flinched.

  For a fraction of a second, its massive jaws fell open.

  The Great Pyrenees seized the instant, ripping its mangled tail free as it spun to face its foe, a low growl rumbling from deep in its chest.

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