The spinal ridge of the undead god offered a swaying, panoramic view of the devastation.

  The valley below had been churned.

  Solid bedrock had been tilled like soft loam, thrown up in massive, vitrified waves that froze mid-crash. Parts of the forest were gone, snapped upwards or sunk into the God’s Wake.

  Soil liquefaction had swallowed entire groves, leaving only the very tips of ancient pines poking from the hardened grey slurry like the fingers of drowning men.

  Vents of cooling magma hissed from the deep furrows, releasing plumes of yellow gas that choked the sunlight. The air tasted of sulfur and the copper tang of pulverized stone—the scent of a world turned inside out.

  The massive white skeleton marched with a rhythmic, clattering gait, its bone-feet crushing pine trees into splintered paths.

  Trenn sat on the edge of the shoulder blade, legs dangling over a thirty-foot drop. He looked at his hands—one whole, one maimed—and felt the restless energy of the Gem-Croc’s soul itching beneath his skin.

  "You're driving it too hard," Mara’s voice rumbled from behind.

  Trenn didn't turn. "We need to get to the Ratlings. We need to get to the Red God."

  "And then what?" Mara climbed up beside him, the wind ruffling her thick neck fur. "You think you can shout ‘DIE’ at a mountain range and it will just fall over?"

  "It worked on the Wolf Kin," Trenn muttered, the words tasting like ash.

  Behind them, Vavnaar let out a sharp, barking laugh. "Flesh and blood are easy to break. The Red God is an elemental force. It swims through granite. You don't kill a landslide, Wild Mage. You divert it. You erode it."

  He pointed a clawed finger toward the distant jagged scar of the God’s Wake.

  "It digs with its face and its forepaws—great shovel-claws that shear rock. If we want to kill it, we have to trap it above ground. We have to break its tools."

  Janaree sat cross-legged on the bone deck, cleaning the firing mechanism of her pistol. She lifted her muzzle and looked at the pair ahead of her.

  "Vavnaar is right. And even if we trap it, we have a problem," she said, holding a spring up to the light. "Gods heal. You've seen it on yourself. The ichor clots, hardens, and seals the breach. If we injure it, we’re just giving it new scabs."

  She snapped the pistol back together.

  "We need things that stick. Barbed harpoons. Cannonballs. Black powder shrapnel explosives. Weapons that bury themselves deep in the meat." She grinned, a flash of white teeth. "Then we let time do its thing. Let it heal over our embedded weapons. Let the infection fester."

  Trenn’s eyes went dark, but he said nothing. My family doesn’t have this sort of time… I can’t afford to wait.

  “You’re thinking about your mother,” Mara said, sharp, as she sat down next to him.

  “Of course I am. They’re in danger, and we’re, once again, stuck on a side-quest.”

  Mara chuckled despite herself. She flexed her right hand. No claws. “I have no weapons to fight this thing. Even if I took my last Giant Pill, I’d still be useless against the Red God.”

  Trenn didn’t turn to look at her. He sighed, defeated.

  From the shadow of the Crusher’s leg, Ezy watched them, her eye wide. She stayed silent and adjusted the strap on her prosthetic leg, the leather creaking in the silence. She had lost limbs to survive; she understood the math of sacrifice.

  But a rhythmic scrape-scrape-blow cut through the wind, drawing her attention to the rear of the deck.

  Zeen sat on a roped supply bag larger than him, Almitad’s skull cradled in his lap. He held a fine-point chisel in one hand and a small hammer in the other.

  "Zeen," Ezy whispered, stepping closer, her voice tight with revulsion. "That isn't scrap metal. That was... she was..."

  “She liked bone-art,” Zeen murmured, tracing a spiral groove.

  It was becoming similar to something you would’ve found in Spider-House.

  Ezy reached out, as if to stop the hammer, but her massive skeletal hand froze mid-air. She looked at the bleak horizon, then back at the skull. She lowered her hand, her shoulders slumping in resignation.

  "Then make it beautiful," she said, her voice hollow.

  "I am," he answered.

  Delicate, swirling patterns were etched deep into the frontal bone—petals, vines, and geometric spirals inspired by the colorful mask Almitad had worn in life.

  Zeen blew on the skull, sending a puff of white bone dust into the wind. He held it up, critical of his work.

  "Intricate," Wutren noted, leaning on his spear.

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  He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the remains of the One-Eye, the cracked amulet. The black obsidian sphere was hollowed out, but still radiated a faint hum of Darkness Element mana.

  Zeen turned the skull to face him. He slotted the black sphere into the right eye socket.

  It fit perfectly.

  The black glass stared out from the white bone, a dark pupil in a death mask.

  "It needs a binding agent," Zeen said, his voice dropping to a flat, transactional tone. He looked up, his gaze finding Trenn. "I need ichor, and we need currency for the Ratlings. Timber, powder, steel... they won't give it to us for free."

  Trenn stood up and walked across the softly swaying skeleton of the Gem-Croc. The golden tail dragged heavily behind him.

  "What do you want, Zeen?"

  Zeen pointed the chisel at Trenn’s arm. "You're full of it—liquid gold. The highest quality reagent in the world,” he lifted his gaze to meet Trenn’s eyes. “We need to bleed you, Trenn."

  There was a cold satisfaction in his voice.

  "We need the money," Zeen continued. "And I need the adhesive to set the stone."

  Trenn looked at his arm. He looked at the scars already crisscrossing his skin.

  "Trenn," Wutren interrupted, eyes fixed on the Wild Mage’s tail. "The Ratlings... they like shiny things almost as much as they like blowing things up. You have a fortune-worth of gems on that thing."

  Vavnaar looked. His yellow eyes dilated. Raw emeralds and rubies jutted from the metallic scales, protruding like spikes.

  "A single one of those stones would buy the village," Vavnaar growled.

  Trenn sighed. "They tried to pry one out of me once," Trenn said softly. “It didn’t go as planned.”

  Vavnaar drew Silver Flash. The enchanted blade hummed, a hungry sound that vibrated in the air. “They didn’t have a sword that cuts through anything,” he grunted.

  Trenn looked at the blade. He’d seen it cleave an animal-god in half with a single swing. He turned to Mara and then to Ezy.

  “Looks like it’s your turn to take one for the team,” Mara said, with a flicker of reluctance in her voice.

  Ezy just shook her head while Mara collected an empty ceramic jar from her alchemist’s satchel. “If we’re going to do this, I’m not wasting a drop.”

  Trenn turned to look at Vavnaar. “Careful with that thing,” he said reluctantly.

  He turned his back to the Wolf Kin. He knelt on the bone deck, extending the massive tail.

  "Take what you need.”

  "Hold still, Wild Mage. This will sting."

  Vavnaar pressed the tip of his sword where a large emerald met the golden scales and pushed.

  The blade slid into the seam. Trenn’s vision was white-washed with sudden, searing static. He didn't see the bone deck or the scarred wolf looming over him. He shoved his mind backward, clawing through the cold gold fog in his skull until he found her.

  Mom.

  He focused on the way she used to tuck her hair behind her ear when she was stressed. He conjured the scent of the Laurentian pines from his dream—the real pines, not these thorny red abominations. He anchored his entire existence to the image of her waiting on Mount Royal, looking for him in the ruins of Montreal.

  I’m doing this for you, he told the ghost of her. Every scale, every drop, it’s all just currency to buy your safety.

  Vavnaar, with a swift, brutal motion, circled the stone, keeping Silver Flash’s tip deep inside the tail.

  Trenn roared into his arm, his body arching as the connection severed. It felt like someone had ripped a fingernail out by the root.

  The Gem-Croc soul writhed in his mind, screaming at the theft of its hoard, but Trenn smothered the beast with a single, desperate thought: The monster can save her. The human can't.

  Thick, honey-scented ichor welled from the socket where the gems had been.

  The cloying scent of exposed divinity hit the pups. Yetran’s nostrils flared wide, drinking in the smell of honey and ozone. His upper lip twitched, a reflexive snarl of confused hunger fighting against his discipline. He leaned in, his gaze locked on the weeping gold.

  Beside him, Arenlys watched the blade work with terrifying stillness. Her eyes tracked Vavnaar's leverage, studying the anatomy of the cut, memorizing how to pry wealth from a living thing.

  "Mara!" Ezy barked.

  Mara was already there, a ceramic jar in hand. She moved quickly, her face a mask of professional detachment, though her ears were pinned back. She angled Trenn’s heavy appendage. “Help me out—stay still,” she muttered as she angled the thick, glowing fluid with her knife as it dripped from the wound.

  "That's enough," she whispered, capping the jar.

  Skate shuddered against Trenn’s scalp, vibrating in sympathy with his roar. It flowed urgently down his spine to drop onto the tail.

  The slime turned purple as it spread itself over the weeping socket, pressing down like a living poultice. It suctioned the area, cleaning the wound of debris and excess fluid to aid the clotting.

  As it absorbed the divine gold, streaks of luminescence shot through its gelatinous body. The deep purple turned translucent, veined with pulsing amber light.

  Vavnaar picked up the raw emerald. It was the size of a gnome’s fist, heavy and jagged. He tossed it to Zeen, who caught it with a grin.

  Zeen used a small brush to collect the glowing fluid from the gem. He then painted the frame of the skull’s eyesocket and the rim of the One-Eye amulet. The ichor hissed as it touched the obsidian, reacting to the void mana still trapped inside.

  He waited for the ichor to change texture before pressing the sphere to the bone. The ichor bubbled, hardening into a resinous amber seal.

  The One-Eye was locked in place.

  Zeen stood up. He inspected his work. The skull of the Shepherd, carved with flowers, stares out with the eye of the monster that killed her people.

  "It's poetic," Zeen said, lifting the skull. "She was bound to us by the One-Eye's violence against her people. I was bound to this war because the One-Eye’s murder of Gil."

  He turned the skull over. The spinal opening was a jagged, narrow hole. Zeen grabbed his rasp. He drove the coarse file against the occipital bone, widening the aperture with harsh, rhythmic strokes. Bone dust coated his knuckles as he carved away the back of the cranium.

  He lifted it higher.

  He lowered it onto his head and cinched the strap.

  The interior scraped against his head, loose but suffocating. It smelled of stale calcium and the tang of the shadow mana trapped in the amulet.

  The world narrowed. His vision was tunneled into two distinct circles. Through the left, he saw the grey sky through the empty socket of his friend. Through the right, the world was filtered through the One-Eye’s obsidian lens—sharper, colder, and tinged with a violet haze.

  Zeen looked at Trenn. His breath washed back against his own face, hot and recycled within the brainpan.

  "It needs padding, but it’ll fit," Zeen said. The voice that emerged from the death mask was stripped of its warmth, booming with a hollow, resonant rattle

  Ezy looked away. Mara’s ears flattened against her skull. Even Vavnaar, the killer of gods, took a half-step back from the small gnome.