KER-RUMPH!
The wall facing the street didn't so much shatter as cease to exist, annihilated by a force that tore through it like rotten cloth. A blizzard of splinters and choking dust filled the air. And within that cloud, a shape resolved itself, a mountain of scaled muscle that had to crouchto enter the ruined cottage.
Terrorclaw King.
It bore no resemblance to its lesser kin. Its scales were not black, but a dull, burnished gold, each one the size of a knight's shield, etched with the pale scars of countless kills. In its blood-red eyes burned not mere bestial rage, but a chilling, calculating intelligence, a cruel amusement as it surveyed the four trembling specks before it.
Before this monarch of monsters, Bucky's mighty hammer looked like a child's toy.
HRRRNNGGGHH—!
The King's growl was a low, subsonic rumble that vibrated in the bones, not the ears. It carried the stench of open graves and volcanic vents. It moved with deceptive, lazy speed, a single clawed limb lashing out in a dismissive backhand swipe.
"HYAAGH!" Bucky roared, heaving his hammer up in a desperate block.
CLANG-SHRIEK!
The sound was a physical blow. Bucky, all his formidable bulk, was lifted off his feet and flung across the room like a ragdoll. He hit the back wall with a sickening crunch.
HUURRK!
A gout of blood, dark and clotted with flecks of tissue, erupted from his mouth. The hammer, now a twisted wreck of metal, spun from his limp grip. He slid down the wall into an unmoving heap.
"BUCKY!" Renn's cry was raw terror.
The Terrorclaw King ignored the ruined smith. Its gaze, heavy as a tombstone, settled on the smallest, weakest source of fear in the room: Mia. It seemed to savor the scent, a connoisseur with its finest vintage. It lowered its massive head, jaws lined with yellowed tusks like daggers parting. Thick, acidic drool pattered on the floorboards, burning smoking pits where it fell.
"No… no…" Mia whispered, pressed into the corner, beyond screaming, beyond tears.
"GET AWAY FROM MY GIRL!"
The shriek tore from a ruined throat. Old Huck, a bloody ruin himself, surged up from the floor with a final, impossible burst of strength. Clutched to his chest was a small, blackened keg—his Black Powder Keg, used for blasting rock. A short, frayed fuse sputtered and hissed at its top, a frantic spark dancing in the gloom.
A living comet, fueled by a father's fury, Old Huck flung himself at the monstrosity. He made no move to strike a vital point. Instead, he threw his arms around the beast's tree-trunk foreleg, his broken hands finding purchase in the gaps between the golden scales.
The Terrorclaw King, insulted by this defiance from a dying insect, jerked its limb to dislodge him.
But the old hunter held on, a burr of flesh and bone and final purpose. He turned his head, his eyes finding Renn's across the ruined room.
Time stretched, thin and silent.
Renn saw his father's face. All the stern lines, the weathered map of a hard life, were gone. In their place was a terrible peace, a vast sorrow, and a love as deep and unyielding as the roots of the world.
"RENN! GET THEM OUT!!!"
It was Old Huck's last roar, a father's final wish.
KABOOOOOOOM—!!!
The world turned white, then orange, then black. The sound was not a noise, but the end of noise. A sun bloomed in the center of the cottage. The concussion wave was a physical wall, smashing Renn and Mia to the ground. The remains of the house ceased to be, collapsing in on itself in a torrent of flame and shattered timber.
RIIIIIIING—
A high, painful whine filled Renn's skull, the only sound in a dead world. His vision swam with phantom lights.
But grief was a luxury for the living. His father had bought a single, ragged heartbeat of time with his own vaporized flesh.
ROOOOOOOOAAAAR—!!!
From the heart of the smoke and fire came an answer—a roar of such pure, world-shearing rage that it cut through the ringing in Renn's ears.
The Terrorclaw King still lived. The blast that could shatter bedrock had not killed it. One of its forelimbs ended in a mangled stump. The scales on one side of its face were gone, revealing raw, smoking meat and the gleam of bone beneath. The pain had not slain it; it had baptized it in a new, all-consuming hatred. It thrashed, pulverizing the rubble around it.
"Go… move…" Renn gasped, pushing himself up from the debris. Every bone screamed in protest. He stumbled, half-crawled, to Bucky's motionless form. With a grunt born of pure desperation, he hauled the massive boy over his shoulder. Adrenaline, fear, and fury fused into a strength he never knew he had.
His other hand found Mia, yanking her to her feet. "RUN!" he croaked, his voice a torn thing. "DON'T LOOK BACK!"
The three of them—one carrying a mountain, one dragging a ghost—burst from the burning wreckage and into the night, sprinting for the river, for the path his father had named.
Behind them, the earth shook with the Terrorclaw King's thunderous, limping pursuit. Each impact was a countdown.
The wind was a knife on Renn's face. His lungs were bladders of fire. He ran. He could not stop. Stopping was death.
Closer. The rush of water grew louder. A desperate, mocking promise of escape.
THWIPP—!
A sound, sharp and wrong, cut the air. Not an arrow. A spine, launched from the body of one of the other Terrorclaws lurking in the ruins.
Uhn!
Mia, pulled along by Renn's hand, gave a small, choked gasp. Her slight weight suddenly went heavy, a dead drag on his arm.
Renn glanced back.
His world shrank to a point of blinding white.
A jagged spike of bone, slick and pale, stood out from the front of Mia's chest. It had punched clean through her back. The simple white linen of her dress was already a saturated, spreading crimson in the moonlight.
"MIA!"
The sound that tore from Renn was not human. He caught her as she fell.
"Brother… it hurts…"
Her face was already the color of chalk. Bright red foam bubbled at her lips. The light, the curious, fierce light that was Mia, was guttering out in her wide eyes. Her small hand plucked weakly at his tunic.
"Shhh, don't be scared, I'm here, I'm right here…" Renn babbled, pressing his hands over the horrific wound. The blood, hot and relentless, pumped between his fingers, a tide he could not stem. It carried her warmth away with it.
The Bronze Flask was a block of ice against his ribs, its cold now a mockery, a useless stone in the face of this true, final cold seeping into his sister.
"Bro…ther…"
Her hand fell. The light went out.
NOOOOOOOO—!!!
Renn threw his head back and screamed at the uncaring sky. It was a sound of everything breaking.
From the shadows of the rubble, the lesser Terrorclaws crept closer, eyes glinting with hungry green fire. And behind them, limping, relentless, the burning silhouette of the maimed King-Beast closed the distance, each step leaving a crater of mud and its own blood.
A dead end. Burning village at their backs. The cliff's edge and the roaring river below.
Nowhere to run.
Renn held his sister's cooling body. Father, gone to smoke and thunder. Mia, gone to silence. Bucky, a silent weight, perhaps already gone. All of it, for nothing.
Riiiiiing—
The whine in his ears became a shriek, the sound of a mind snapping.
"Kill… you… kill you all…"
He laid Mia gently on the cold ground.
He stood. His eyes were pools of blood, veins ruptured by grief and rage. The notched skinning knife was in his hand. He placed himself between the monsters and the two fallen behind him—one dead, one dying.
He would die. But he would die biting.
A lone, wounded wolf, he raised his pitiful blade against the mountain of golden scale and world-ending hate.