On one side of the gate, an unsteady calm had given way to violent conflict. The furious barks of the Armored Dog turned into pained, guttural yelps.

  Beyond the open gate, the ground trembled as a deep, grinding CRUNCH echoed through the clearing, the sound of armored scale meeting armored canine. Plumes of dirt and shattered ferns erupted into the air with each violent impact.

  On the other side of the gate, a violent conflict had given way to an unsteady calm.

  The psychic backlash from his Command spell had left a splitting headache and a deep, bone-weary exhaustion. Trenn stood on his feet, his body screaming at him for moving.

  Ezy, inside her Scrapper’s cockpit, was shielding him from Vavnaar. The towering Wolf Kin’s enchanted sword was stuck between the crossed, spiked knuckles of the Scrapper’s skeletal arms.

  Its arms groaned under the strain, Silver Flash biting deep into the metal and wood that reinforced its bony hands. The smallest movement sent showers of sparks from the grinding contact.

  Ezy’s one good eye was wide, a mixture of terror and ferocious determination. Vavnaar’s paralysis had worn off, and his muscles corded as he applied a calculated pressure. His scarred face had turned from contemptuous rage to something more complex, more calculating.

  Near the woods, Trenn located Zeen. He had chased the Grey-Fur, but the Gem-Croc’s sudden rampage had given them both pause. Their personal duels forgotten, Zeen and the Grey-Fur stood a dozen yards apart, shield and weapon lowered.

  They were both scanning the battlefield, noting which side had suffered the most devastation at the hand of the treacherous One-Eye. Zeen stared past the arch, where his sworn enemy had fled. Then he turned back to the Grey-Fur, who looked like little more than an annoyance. A speed bump on the path to vengeance.

  The Wolf Kin stared back. He was unarmed, with a few knives hidden in his armor. His entire body gave an impression of calculated cost analysis.

  Mara was hunched awkwardly against the Sequoia Gate. Her muzzle was bleeding, probably broken. Her breathing was shallow and rasped.

  Her link to Trenn was flooded with emotions. She went from shock to terror and landed on dizzying confusion. Trenn had feared the worst, but feeling her presence filled him with courage and determination.

  “Mara, stay back. Heal yourself,” he said through their tether, with a Message spell.

  Her hand was painfully fumbling through her alchemy satchel. She retrieved a couple of thin vials and emptied them into her mouth. Steam rose from her matted, giant form.

  With a pained grunt, she staggered to her feet, held together by sheer will and alchemy. She pushed off the gate and tripped over her own feet, wincing in pain. Her stance was shaky, but her resolve was unshakeable.

  “No,” she sent back through the tether, “I didn’t follow you here to watch you die.”

  Beyond Vavnaar, Janaree disengaged from combat. The red-furred Wolf Kin’s eyes swept across the back line, searching for the black-furred sniper. Trenn’s sonar followed her to the spot where the Gem-Croc had charged—to the squished, unrecognizable remains of the Black-Fur.

  Janaree froze, her eyes widening with disbelief. The fury in her posture evaporated, replaced by a rigid stillness. Her hostility vanished.

  This is my shot!

  Trenn cast his Charm, and the tether sprang into existence between them. He braced for a warrior's rage but was hit by something far more potent: a flood of all-consuming powerlessness and a deep, hollowing despair. Grief.

  Janaree’s face contorted. A vengeful, heartbroken scream erupted from her as she collapsed to her knees beside the black-furred remains.

  Her cry destabilized Vavnaar. His battle-ready stance faltered for an instant as understanding dawned in his eyes.

  Got him.

  Trenn seized the moment of hesitation, casting the Charm. The tether snapped into place, but the connection was tenuous. He struggled to decipher the Wolf Kin’s emotions, feeling only a chaotic surge of furious, indignant pride laced with the sharp sting of betrayal and loss.

  He wasted no time trying to influence Vavnaar. Instead, he refocused his attention on the stronger link to Janaree. She’s the fulcrum, I’m the lever. He poured his own will into the empathic bond, taking the pure, cold despair he felt from her and adding a tint of focused rage.

  He tried to connect himself to the Grey-Fur, but the strain of holding multiple hostile links made his head throb. A fresh trickle of blood dripped from the corner of his left eye and slowly rolled down his cheek. He coughed and turned to meet the gaze of the blue-black furred Wolf Kin.

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  Focusing on the frayed tether between them, he made his desperate pitch.

  “We were fighting each other,” he said, his voice rising over the god-fight, "and the One-Eye took advantage. It backstabbed you. You weren't useful anymore. You were discarded."

  Vavnaar growled at the sound of Trenn’s voice and yanked his sword free from the Scrapper’s grasp with a screech of tortured metal. The movement jarred Ezy’s undead machine, and she stumbled back in her uncomfortable cockpit.

  Vavnaar’s killing intent locked back onto Trenn. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a low snarl. “Fight beside you?” he growled, raising the point of his oversized sword until it aimed directly between Trenn’s eyes. “I would sooner—”

  A deep, grinding CRUNCH echoed from beyond the gate, a sound so violent it felt like a tectonic plate shifting. The Gem-Croc and Armored Dog were locked in a biting contest. Latched to each other, they grunted and yelped through gritted teeth.

  Trenn felt the Wolf Kin leader's arrogant fury crack, a sliver of pragmatic fear lancing through the indignation. He pressed the momentary advantage, his voice cutting through the ringing aftermath.

  "That," he said, gesturing with his head toward the sounds of the god-fight, "is the one who lied to you. The one who used your pack. If you keep fighting us, we will go down swinging. Is it worth it? Do you want to face those gods wounded, with one less hunter? Or do you want to face them with us by your side?"

  He let the question hang in the air. Vavnaar’s sword did not lower, but the certainty in his posture had fractured. His gaze drifted from Trenn to the gate, his mind now a battlefield between his pride and the brutal calculus of survival.

  "Once we’re done with that damned Gem-Croc, you can have your rooster. Or anything else beyond that gate.”

  The Wolf Kin raised his sword hesitantly, causing Ezy to brace and Trenn to take a step back. Janaree’s second, more desperate cry made him flinch.

  "What are you doing, Vavnaar? It killed our daughter!"

  Through the tether, Trenn felt the Wolf Kin leader's fury weaken, struggling against a deep sense of loss. He lowered Silver Flash. He turned his towering frame to stare down Trenn.

  "Yes, the traitor killed our daughter. But the Fox Kin butchered Saluratt," he growled, nodding at Mara, who was struggling to stand up straight

  "Besides, why trust them?" he finished, Silver Flash poised to strike as Trenn took a few more steps towards Skate. The slime’s obsidian shell was fully regenerated, and it was humming anxiously, a few yards away.

  From the Scrapper's cockpit, Ezy's voice boomed with rage. "Trust us? You can trust that I lost an eye and an arm to that thing. Believe me when I say: I’ll sacrifice all the gods of the Valley of Dawn to kill that damned crocodile."

  Emboldened by her words, Zeen lifted his soul-bound musket high over his head. "The One-Eye's a liar, a manipulator, and a murderer. I will kill it, or die trying!"

  The Grey-Fur stepped beside the small gnome and picked up his flintlock pistol from the ferns. He was calm and spoke with authority.

  "The 'lings are right, Vavnaar. The One-Eye tricked us. It betrayed us. It led us here. What else did it lie about? Dawn, the mists, its goal?” he said, walking to recuperate his thrown spear. “It has shown us its true nature. We should believe it."

  "You would have me fight side-by-side with prey, Wutren?" he said, Silver Flash’s tip still aimed at Trenn.

  A booming voice erupted from the skeleton of Almitad.

  "Do I look like prey to you?"

  The sound was not merely heard; it was a wave of pressure that bypassed the ears to resonate deep in the bone. Vavnaar, Trenn, Janaree—they all froze.

  Every single empathic tether—the familiar ones from his crew as well as the frayed, hostile links to the Wolf Kin—screamed with the same, identical emotion: fear.

  "The Dam will not be denied its vengeance,” Almitad said as her skeleton rose a few feet from the ground. “My soul cannot pass to the next world until the One-Eye is dead."

  The necrotic Mana Bloom pulsed within her ribs, its black-green light reflecting on the clean white bone of her arms as she raised them. Her hands pointed toward the severed paws of the giant rabbit.

  “Are you enemies?” she started.

  Every Wolf Kin tensed into a fighting stance as the reanimated limbs began to twitch and crawl through the ferns, following the rhythm of Alimtad’s fingers. They scraped across the thorny ground, back towards the torso they were severed from.

  “Or are you enemies of my enemy?” she finished.

  A profound silence fell over the clearing.

  As Almitad’s skeletal hands gestured, gangrenous black threads coalesced in the air, pulling the first severed paw to the carcass and stitching it into place.

  With its limb reattached, the corpse’s face animated. A low groan escaped its slack jaw, and one of its long, floppy ears twitched. It used the newly attached arm to push against the ground, angling its torso to align the second stump with the remaining severed paw. Another weave of necrotic threads appeared, stitching the final limb into place.

  An indignant, pained yelp tore through the air from beyond the gate, followed by the shriek of buckling, tormented metal.

  Trenn's Sonar spell registered the Gem-Croc’s maw clamping down on the Armored Dog's haunch. The plates of its armor buckled inward under the immense pressure of the giant crocodile’s jaws.

  Janaree lowered her weapons and walked back to her dropped semi-automatic pistols. “We don’t need their help, Vavnaar,” she said, reloading her weapons before storing them in her belt.

  “But we don’t need more wounds before the real fight, either.”

  Vavnaar grunted, but this time, it sounded like approval.

  “We’re not together, we’re just walking in the same direction,” quoted Wutren as he stepped next to Zeen, spear and shield in hand.

  The top half of the god corpse was pushing itself across the ground to reach its legless bottom half. It aligned the two ragged pieces of the torso, and again the threads manifested, gruesomely weaving the two halves of the god back together under Almitad's silent command.

  Trenn decided to press his luck and doubled down.

  "Everything about the One-Eye is a lie... It's not a god. It’s a Wild Mage. An amulet. It's—"

  "You’re not the only one with the Sight," the Grey-Fur cut him off. His eyes momentarily shimmered with a faint, internal light. "I thought you were a Hedge Mage. The bloom masked your Mana Source. But I saw you flare in combat. You’re a Wild Mage, too."

  Vavnarr’s eyes went wide, dawning comprehension covering his face.

  “You can tell… how?”

  The Grey-Fur shrugged, a gesture of dismissal. "Magery. Arcana. Wolf Kin knows better than to rely on mana,” he said, baring his teeth.

  His voice rose to a guttural declaration. "I’m a hunter! I bleed and drink blood, and it’s time to bleed!"

  "It’s time to bleed!" Janaree and Vavnaar roared in unison.

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