Amon was no longer a man. He was the wolf.

  He surged through the fog, paws striking the earth with the heavy, muted thud of wet clay. The forest blurred into streaks of gray and black, but his vision—Belugmah’s vision—locked onto the heat signature of the nearest Harvester. It burned like a furnace against the cold backdrop of the mist.

  Faster.

  The command wasn't his. It was the instinct of the construct, a hunger for momentum. He let it take him. He didn't run; he flowed. The tar muscles expanded and contracted with hydraulic force, propelling him out of the tree line and into the scarred, muddy wasteland the Tharnells had created.

  Sirens wailed. A chaotic, rising scream that cut through the rumble of engines.

  Too late.

  The wolf didn't slow. It hit the side of the massive machine with a clang that shook the chassis. Claws—harder than steel and dripping with acid-black ichor—punched through the metal plating. Amon scrambled up the vertical flank, the sensation dizzying and exhilarating.

  Shouts erupted from the deck above. "Contact! Hull contact!"

  He crested the rail.

  Four Tharnells stood there, rifles raised. They were thick, armored shapes in the gloom, their eyes reflecting the frantic sweep of spotlights.

  Flash. Crack.

  The rifles barked. Amon felt the impacts, dull, heavy thuds against the wolf’s chest. The kinetic shards punched into the tar, but there were no organs to ruin, no blood to spill. The sludge simply swallowed the metal, knitting instantly behind it.?

  The wolf lunged, and a thousand pounds of animate hate slammed into the squad. The extra limbs sprouting from the wolf's shoulders lashed out, wrapping around armored torsos and pinning arms to sides.

  "Grenade! Drop a—"

  The shout was cut off as Amon hurled two of them over the railing. They fell screaming into the fog below.

  The remaining two drew trench axes, hacking at the black substance holding them. The blades bit deep, severing a tar-limb, but the severed piece didn't fall. It liquefied, flowed back up their armor, and reattached itself to the main body.

  Enough.

  Amon dove.

  He took them with him, plunging off the Harvester and crashing into the mud thirty feet below. The impact would have shattered bones. The wolf simply splashed, absorbing the force and reforming in a heartbeat.

  He threw the captives deep into the mist.

  "Welcome to the Garden," Amon thought, the words cold and final.

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  ***

  Living through the Wolf’s body, he witnessed as the great beast moved from one Harvester to the next, defeating Tharnells, throwing them into the mist, and serving as a grand distraction.

  As the invaders focused on the Wolf, the Caregivers arrived.

  A rising tide of tar shaped hares, coyotes, foxes, and squirrels—thousands of them—flowed out of the tree line. They didn't bite or scratch; they swarmed. They were a carpet of bone and tar that rolled over the Tharnell infantry.

  Amon watched through the eyes of a dozen creatures at once.

  He saw a Frontclaw—the soldiers official rank—pinned by a mound of squirrels, his rifle useless as they clogged the barrel with their own bodies. He saw another warrior hacking wildly with a war axe, only for the weapon to get stuck in the viscous flank of a tar-bear. The tar crawled up the blade, over the hilt, and onto the soldier’s gauntlets.?

  The Tharnell screamed as the black sludge seeped through the joints of his armor, filling his helmet. The scream turned to a gurgle, then silence.

  Preserve.

  The soldier went limp. Not dead, but suspended. The tar hardened, turning him into a statue, a cocoon for the Soul trapped within.

  More.

  Amon returned to the wolf. The pool hungry for more Souls pulled into Preservation’s embrace, and their Cores feeding the Garden. He hunted, for he was not fighting a war, but harvesting a harvest. He snatched soldiers from the edges of the formation, dragging them into the mist—as other groups of Caregivers did— before their comrades could adjust their aim.

  But the Tharnells, they were adapting.

  "Suppressing fire! Grid four-seven!"

  The roar of the guns changed. It wasn't panicked individual fire anymore; it was a wall of lead and Mana. Heavy machine runes opened up from the rear lines. Tracers—streaks of angry red light—tore through the fog, shredding trees and evaporating Caregivers. The mist recoiled, burned away by the sheer heat of the barrage.?

  Amon felt the wolf shudder. A heavy round—something meant for tanks—punched through its hindquarters, blowing a massive hole in the construct. The connection wavered.

  Retreat.

  He scrambled back, using the bulk of a wrecked Harvester for cover. The metal groaned under the impact of the shelling.

  "They're not running," Amon realized. "They're digging in."

  The Tharnell line held. Tanks moved up, their main cannons leveling at the tree line. They weren't trying to enter the fog anymore. They were going to erase it.

  BOOM.

  The earth jumped.

  Artillery.

  The first shell landed fifty yards away, turning a patch of ancient oaks into splinters. The second landed closer, then the third.

  The ground churned, and Caregivers were blown apart. Their tar-bodies scattered like ink in water. Even the wolf was knocked flat, its form destabilizing under the shockwaves.

  We cannot hold.

  Belugmah’s voice was calm, almost bored.

  The surface is lost. For now.

  Amon looked up. The sky was choked with smoke. The shelling was intensifying, a creeping barrage that would turn the entire domain into a crater.

  ‘What do we do?’ he screamed mentally.

  We go deep.

  The pool churned. It didn't erupt this time; it inverted. A whirlpool of tar opened in the center of the clearing, spiraling down into the earth.

  Come.

  Amon abandoned the wolf, and awareness snapped back to his own body, standing by the edge of the abyss. The fox was already there, pressing reassuringly against his leg.

  The tar rose up, a wave of war, black fluid that washed over them, gentle as a mother’s hand.

  It pulled them down, and darkness took him. The roar of the artillery faded, muffled by tons of earth and magic. They were sinking, passing through rock and root, deeper than the worms, deeper than the graves.

  Sleep Guardian, Belugmah whispered. Let them break the stones. The roots remain.

  Amon drifted in the stasis, safe in the womb of the world, while above him, the Tharnells burned the empty forest to ash.