The Wolf Kin Landship was a rolling fortress of riveted iron and malice.

  Through the violet lens of the One-Eye, Zeen watched the thermal signature of its dual smokestacks venting black heat into the sky. It sat perfectly positioned off the God’s Wake, its massive tracks grinding the vitrified glass to powder.

  Protruding from its sloped glacis was a siege cannon, its bore wide enough to swallow a Ratling whole.

  "Brace!" Zeen’s voice echoed from the skull mask.

  The Landship fired.

  A bloom of orange flame eclipsed the trench. The sound hit them a fraction of a second later—a physical wall of displaced air that knocked the breath from Trenn’s lungs.

  The cannonball, a solid sphere of pig iron, shrieked across the distance and slammed into the Gem-Croc’s skull.

  The impact was rippled through the structure as a ten-foot section of the right parietal bone vaporized into a cloud of white shrapnel. The psychic recoil whipped through the Necrotic tether connecting Trenn to the skeleton—a phantom spike of blunt-force trauma that drove him to his knees on the vanguard tower.

  Below him, the Bone Ship lurched, its massive front legs staggering off the centerline.

  Panic erupted on the timber deck. The Wolf Kin pups screamed, scrambling blindly around Vavnaar. The large Wolf Kin roared, his blood-soaked fur bristling as he threw an arm over them to keep them from tumbling overboard.

  "Reload the cannons!" Trenn bellowed, his voice cracking over the ringing in his ears. He forced himself up, grabbing the necrotic leash in his mind.

  Turn! He commanded, and the undead god pivoted. The massive skeleton groaned, its bone-feet carving deep gouges into the glass as it angled its starboard side toward the Landship, exposing the broadside battery of Ratling Husk-Busters.

  "Track them!" Mara shouted, rushing to a heavy iron breech.

  But the Landship’s crew were veterans of the siege. Before Mara could align her sights, a second flash erupted from the iron beast.

  "Incoming!" Ezy shrieked, ducking deep into the Crusher’s Red Metal cockpit and throwing her armored arms over her head.

  The second cannonball tore through the center of the timber deck. It plowed directly into one of the Ratling hoppers. It was stacked with explosive, red-tipped harpoons and black powder charges.

  Trenn’s sonar painted the detonation a microsecond before it happened.

  The Gem-Croc instinct screamed at him to protect himself, but he fought the urge and surged forward. He lunged across the deck, throwing his massive golden bulk directly over Zeen, his White Metal shield overhead.

  The hopper exploded.

  A sphere of expanding fire consumed a section of the timber deck. The concussion launched Trenn and Zeen off the boards. Trenn coiled his golden tail around the skull-wearing gnome.

  Shrapnel hammered his divine scales and shield. Splintered wood and fractured bone disintegrated against the gilded armor. A heavy chunk of the cast-iron breech struck his shoulder. The impact punched through the gilded armor. Iron crunched, burying deep into his flesh.

  He gagged on a mouthful of thick ichor, trying to scream, but all that came out was a gurgling sound and golden spit.

  Mara dove into a tuck-roll, sliding beneath the blast wave. The heat scorched the tips of her white fur, but her black Husk armor deflected the deadly splinters.

  The smoke cleared, revealing a gaping, splintered crater in the center of their ship. Half of their ammunition was gone, vaporized or spilled into the mist below.

  "Fire! Fire now!" Vavnaar roared, shielding the whimpering pups with his own broad back.

  Mara hauled herself up to the surviving starboard cannon. She yanked the firing lever. The cast-iron barrel bucked.

  The harpoon screamed across the gap, but the angle was rushed. It flew wide, striking the vitrified trench and exploding in a useless shower of rock and fire.

  "Adjusting!" Ezy yelled. She swung the Crusher’s heavy chassis, using its hydraulic fist to slam the back of the second cannon into alignment. "Fire!"

  The Husk-Buster roared—the harpoon struck true, breaking into the Landship’s massive left tread.

  The percussion cap detonated. Thick iron links shattered, the explosion crippling the tank as the Landship lurched violently, its engine screaming as the broken tread whipped wildly in the air, halting its forward advance.

  "Hit!" Zeen coughed, pushing himself out from beneath Trenn’s tail.

  "It bought us seconds," Trenn rasped. He gripped the iron chunk embedded in his armored shoulder. He heaved, tearing the metal free along with a cluster of ruined scales. Globs of amber blood flooded the wound and drooped across his armor.

  "Load the next volley!" he gritted through his teeth.

  The Landship’s turret screeched, grinding iron bearings to compensate for the ruined track; its long barrel leveled at the Crusher.

  "They're locked on," Mara whispered, the Crusher’s hands loading a powder charge.

  Trenn’s sonar tracked a ripple underground. Something was coming up—attracted by the two harpoons that hit the God’s Wake. “The Red God!” he bellowed—what else could it be?

  A tremor struck.

  A tectonic heave lifted the valley floor.

  The vitrified trench shattered.

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  The Landship’s cannon fired as the ground buckled beneath it, tilting the Ratling tank and its cannon. The iron slug shot wide, screaming harmlessly above the undead Gem-Croc.

  "Forget the tank! Get ready to shoot the Red God!" Vavnaar bellowed, his voice laced with primal hunger.

  A tremor hit them as the earth split, sending everyone scrambling on the deck.

  A chasm cracked directly beneath the enemy Landship and widened with terrifying speed, racing toward the Bone Ship. The Gem-Croc skeleton’s front left leg lost its footing, slipping into the void.

  The massive undead construct lurched, tilting violently at a forty-degree angle.

  Gravity seized the deck. The surviving Ratling cannon tore free from its mounts, sliding down the bloody, splintered timber and tumbling into the darkness. Crates of black powder followed, swallowed by the expanding crack.

  "Vavnaar!" Mara screamed.

  The Wolf Kin Alpha had buried his claws into the marrow of an inverted rib, his other massive arm wrapped desperately around the three terrified pups, holding them suspended over the sheer drop.

  Zeen tumbled and righted himself, screaming at Trenn to move the ship out of this new wake the Red God was creating.

  But there was no time. The land was a serrated nightmare of shifting tectonic plates.

  The crack below them was widening at an alarming rate. Their skeletal ship was scrambling backwards, but the shifting ground kept catching up.

  The trench collapsed inward, pulling the ground, and their ship with it.

  In the panic, Trenn’s sonar pinged the Red God as a colossal, spade-like fore-claw clamped onto the iron hull of the Ratling Tank.

  The enemy Landship, a terrifying engine of war only seconds ago, buckled like a tin toy.

  Iron shrieked. Rivets popped like gunshots.

  Through the grinding roar of the earth, the muffled, agonizing screams of the Wolf Kin crew echoed as the Red God dragged the entire fortress down into the abyss.

  "Hold on!" Trenn roared as he drove his golden tail into the wood, wrapping it around the base of the vanguard tower to anchor himself.

  He gripped the necrotic tether in his mind, forcing the Bone Ship to lean back on its tail, fighting the drag of the abyss. The skeleton scrambled against the fracturing ground, struggling to pull back from the edge.

  A streak of purple shot past Trenn's boots.

  Skate was sliding rapidly down the blood-slicked, tilted timber deck, heading straight for the widening hole below them.

  Trenn, anchored by his tail and holding the necrotic tether with all his concentration, couldn't reach his friend.

  The Meteor Slime dropped off the side of the wrecked platform. Plummeting towards the darkness.

  "Skate! No!"

  A blur of pink and yellow folded its wings into a steep dive.

  Bomber dove, its six furry legs shooting out, and snatched the black, porous slime just inches from the precipice, its wings beating a frantic, straining rhythm as it hauled Skate upward into the relative safety of the grey sky.

  Trenn’s relief was short. A suffocating wave of heat washed over the deck. The smell of melting iron and sulfur choked the air.

  "It's coming back for us!" Zeen shouted, staring into the glowing chasm through the violet lens of his mask. "The Red God is circling back up!"

  Half of the Gem-Croc was already hanging over the void. The rock beneath their rear feet was cracking. They had seconds before the Red God surfaced to drag them down.

  Zeen looked at the massive, lurching mole and its Red Metal carapace, riding up the crack. He looked at the Crusher, fighting for grip on the tilted deck. He felt the weight of Gil's soul humming in the musket strapped to his chest.

  He understood the math.

  He ripped the death mask from his head.

  He tossed Almitad’s skull into the open cockpit of the Crusher. It landed heavily on Ezy’s lap.

  "Zeen? What are you doing?" Ezy cried out, her hand fighting the controls as her large inverted prosthetic wrapped around her deceased friend’s skull.

  Zeen looked directly at Ezy. He saw the gnome he had shared a workbench with since they were apprentices back in the Hive. He saw a lifetime of blueprints, failed engines, and surviving the impossible.

  "You were always the smartest one in the class, Ezy," Zeen said, a small, sad smile crossing his soot-stained face. "Keep the engine running for all of us."

  He scrambled up the tilted, blood-slicked deck, his small boots finding purchase where larger ones failed. He reached Trenn, who was entirely focused on keeping the skeletal god from tipping over.

  Zeen pushed the ivory stock of his Soul-Bound musket squarely into the Wild Mage's chest.

  "Bind me to the musket when I'm done," Zeen commanded.

  Trenn blinked, his concentration fracturing. "What? Zeen, no, get behind my shield!"

  But Zeen was already moving across the tilted deck toward Mara. She was clinging to a rib with one arm, her alchemist’s satchel hanging at her hip.

  Zeen plunged his hand into the pouch. “Zeen, what are you doing?” Mara exclaimed, looking at him bewildered, but making no move to stop him. Zeen’s fingers closed around the small, clay-sealed vial containing the second Giant Pill she had made from the Raptor’s talons.

  "Zeen, stop!" Ezy yelled, her eye going wide as she realized his intent. She tried to reach for him, but the Crusher slid on the slick deck and fell to a knee.

  Zeen was backed up to the precipice of the shattered deck, directly over the yawning, glowing chasm.

  “Zeen,” Trenn exclaimed, clutching the clockwork musket to his chest. “I don’t understand!”

  "Just do it!" he screamed back at Trenn, his voice cracking with a fierce, absolute defiance. “I want to be with Gil!”

  Beneath them, the abyss erupted…

  And Zeen launched himself from the tilted deck.

  “NO!” Trenn, Mara, and Ezy shouted in unison.

  In his mind’s eye, Trenn clearly saw the small gnome fall into the breach. Underneath him, in a direct line of effect, came the Red God.

  It noticed the prey, delivering itself to death, and opened its mouth to catch the tiny, falling treat.

  Mid-air, Zeen raised his fist, the alchemical pill clutched tight as the jaws of the giant mole snapped around him.

  The crushing bite consumed the gnome and the Giant Pill instantly.

  “Why?” screamed Trenn… “We’re still going too…” but something had changed. The Red God wasn’t climbing up the ravine anymore.

  The beast's upward momentum had died. Its red metal carapace was scraping against the widening chasm.

  The subterranean leviathan lurched, making the ground shake as Trenn fought to keep the Gem-Croc ship from falling after Zeen.

  A tearing groan erupted from deep within the beast’s armor.

  “It’s… It’s growing!” Trenn screamed.

  Ezy, righting the Crusher, screamed over the shaking ground, “It’s the Giant Pill!”

  The magic triggered an expansion of muscle and mass. The Red God's metabolism was driving the magic into its bloodstream.

  The creature inflated. Its carapace wedged tightly between the rock faces of the chasm.

  A tremor shook the valley—and abruptly stopped.

  The Red God released a tectonic shriek as its expanding bulk pressed outward, against the bedrock.

  "Brace!" Mara roared, wrapping her arms around a rib.

  With nowhere for the mass to go, the pressure turned inward. The god’s carapace groaned. Giant plates of metal cracked. The internal organs swelled with speed, compressing against the granite walls.

  A series of crunches. Shattering black glass. The Red God ruptured, its growing mass stuck in a narrow crack, could only go sideways—it exploded like a crushed, ripe watermelon.

  A geyser of warm ichor erupted from the ravine. It shot a hundred feet into the air, a fountain of god blood splashing upon the Bone Ship.

  The fluid washed over the timber deck and giant ribs. It coated the survivors in a sludge that smelled of honey and lightning.

  The ultimate prize God Slayers sought rained from the sky, bought with Zeen's life.

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