From the Scrapper’s cockpit, Ezy fired the Black-Fur’s rifle, each heavy round hammering the slagged, burnt scar tissue on the Gem-Croc’s face. Beside the lurching rabbit zombie, Janaree and Wutren concentrated their fire on the massive, bleeding gash in the creature’s tail, their bullets tearing into the exposed flesh. A short distance away, Zeen’s clockwork musket roared, adding another payload of searing embers to the small, persistent fire that now scorched the hide between the god’s blackened scales.

  A high-pitched shriek of pure agony erupted from the Gem-Croc. Enraged by the concentrated fire, it turned its attention from the Armored Dog and whipped its immense tail in a massive, sweeping arc aimed directly at its tormentors.

  The wall of golden scales and encrusted gemstones hurtled toward them. Almitad flicked a skeletal finger. The necrotic threads binding the rabbit zombie to the tail pulsed. The corpse convulsed, its hide stretching taut over its bulging innards for a fraction of a second before it detonated in a concussive blast of necrotic energy.

  A loud CLACK of bones snapping at once echoed across the field. An explosion of sharpened bone shrapnel tore through the tail, shredding a new series of deep, bleeding gouges.

  The Gem-Croc shrieked, a raw sound of pure agony. Its massive body convulsed, and the tail thrashed wildly, a reflexive, uncontrolled spasm to fling off the source of the pain. The violent flailing sent the immense appendage whipping back across the battlefield, directly toward Janaree and Wutren.

  A surge of grim, protective resolve flared through Wutren’s tether. "Janaree!" he roared. He leaped in front of her, planting his shield to absorb the impact.

  The thrashing tail slammed into the braced shield. The impact tore the shield and the arm holding it from his body.

  A spike of pure shock flooded Wutren's tether an instant before it dimmed into the slack, silent frequency of unconsciousness. The momentum of the blow carried his ruined body into Janaree. The impact sent her tumbling across the battlefield.

  Janaree hit the ground, rolled with the force of the impact, and came up on one knee. Her tether, which had flared with a spike of terror, immediately hardened back into a jagged edge of pure fury.

  She drew two of her semi-automatic flintlock pistols from her belt and opened fire, her lead slugs tearing into the bleeding gash in the Gem-Croc’s tail.

  Its wounded leg lashed out against Vavnaar, hurtling him across the field and ripping Silver Flash from his grasp. The flare of surprised fury in his tether vanished into a stunned silence as the Wolf Kin bounced off the ground.

  The beast's rolling flank tore a trench in the ground, peeling back a thick slab of turf and soil. The wall of earth and rock crashed toward Zeen's position. A spike of pure, helpless terror erupted from his tether as he scrambled backward, a desperate, futile attempt to escape the avalanche.

  His backward scramble was too slow. In a final, desperate act, he hurled the clockwork musket clear an instant before the wall of earth and rock slammed into him. The crushing weight of the displaced turf rolled onto his lower body and pinned him amongst the rubble. His tether flared into a prolonged shriek of pure, helpless rage.

  The living mountain thrashed beneath her. Clinging to its flank, Mara was thrown sideways. The violent motion dragged her embedded claws through the crystalline hide, ripping deep gashes in the golden scales and shattering countless gemstones.

  The gashes gaped open, bleeding thick globs of golden ichor that caked the fur of her hands. She ripped a hand free from the ruined hold to punch them into a fresh section of crystalline hide, but an abrupt lurch of the Gem-Croc tore her other hand free, sending her tumbling down the creature's flank.

  The impact of her head against a large emerald sent a blinding flash of pain through her.

  A wave of dizzying confusion and a sharp spike of terror flooded Trenn. His sonar locked onto her form just as she began to tumble down the giant crocodile's back.

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  He shoved a raw, desperate Message spell into their bond: “Grab hold now!”

  His voice snapped Mara out of her daze. Her claws shot out in a blind, desperate stab. They bit deep into the crystalline hide, and her fall stopped with a violent, arm-wrenching jolt.

  Trenn bounced Skate off the ground and took a batter’s stance. He met the rising obsidian sphere at waist height with a level swing of his long club. The sphere's surface yielded to the wood for an instant, then expanded with explosive force, launching from the impact toward the thrashing One-Eye’s face.

  The sphere slammed into the mangled tissue of the old wound. On impact, it flattened, the violent compression shattering its obsidian shell into a spray of sharp volcanic glass that tore through the raw flesh.

  The Gem-Croc’s body seized, its massive jaws snapping shut on empty air. The chaotic thrashing ceased. Its head lowered, its gaze finding and locking onto Trenn. A wave of pure, focused hatred—cold and personal—flooded the tether.

  The One-Eye’s hatred acted as a psychic beacon. Trenn's sonar pulsed to the source. He saw it with perfect clarity: an eyeball-sized amulet nestled in the scales where the creature’s neck met its shoulder, radiating an intense concentration of shadow-attuned mana.

  “It’s there! I found it!” he screamed through the team’s tethers, pushing the sonar image into their minds.

  Mara ran on all fours up the beast’s flank. With each bound, her necrotic claws plunged into the crystalline hide, the violent purchase propelling her toward the neck and the amulet.

  The ground shifted beneath her. The Gem-Croc’s two-hundred-foot frame was tilting, a capsizing mountain of scale and flesh that threatened to crush everything in its path.

  “STOP!”

  The crocodile god froze mid-roll, a gargantuan statue of arrested motion.

  The psychic backlash struck him. A wave of sensory oblivion followed a feeling of something vital in his mind snapping. His sonar map shattered. The vibrating landscape of the battlefield fractured into a million meaningless points of light and then winked out of existence, leaving him psychically blind.

  His club clattered to the ground as his legs gave out. The world was a void of soundless pressure. His body seized in a violent shudder, and twin trickles of blood, warm against his skin, ran from his eyes down his cheeks.

  His sonar was static and pain. But a surge of determined fury came through the Armored Dog’s tether. Trenn pushed through the pain.

  A single image bypassed his compromised senses: the giant Great Pyrenees, its powerful jaws clamped on the paralyzed Gem-Croc’s neck, crushing the very section of scales that concealed the One-Eye’s amulet.

  Mara was there, frozen, claws in the giant crocodile’s scales. Her head turned toward the bite.

  The alien hate of the One-Eye disappeared from Trenn’s link to the Gem-Croc. Instead, he felt confusion and terror.

  Where did it—

  The alien glee of the One-Eye appeared in Trenn’s link to the Armored-Dog. Its pride and sense of duty erased.

  The possessed Armored Dog released its grip on the Gem-Croc’s neck. It stood over the fallen god, its head swiveling as it assessed the battlefield. Its left eye turned into a hole in reality. An empty void portal that opened into a world of nothing. Its gaze lingered for a moment on the battlefield.

  At its feet, the groaning, bleeding Gem-Croc.

  Trenn, the psychic blindness receding into a splitting headache, forced his body into motion. He grabbed his enchanted club and pushed himself up.

  Across the field, Vavnaar, a low growl in his chest, had retrieved his enchanted sword. His tether pulsed with a singular, murderous intent.

  Janaree was repositioning, already poised to attack the giant dog, pistols aimed.

  Through the link, Trenn felt a flicker of something new from the entity. Worry. The Armored Dog was wounded. Its mangled tail, its bleeding haunch.

  It turned and exploded into motion, its shocking speed sending it rocketing away from the combatants, toward the coop.

  Its white armor caught the sun as it leaped clean over the giant structure. Dawn of the Morning Mist let out a startled squawk an instant before the dog's jaws closed on its neck in a precise, bloodless grip.

  With its prize secured, the Armored Dog bolted, its powerful gait carrying it across the grassland at an impossible velocity.

  Mara retracted her claws and gracefully slid down the groaning Gem-Croc.

  The giant crocodile was a landscape of ruin. It lay still, its ragged breathing a low, pained rumble that vibrated through the ground.

  Trenn watched the white shining speck of the Armored Dog run past the giant horses, beyond the giant aurochs, and disappear on the horizon.

  The horrifying truth of the entire battle settled upon him. They hadn’t been fighting a god. They had been fighting a parasite.

  And it had found a new host.

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