The bait lines snapped taut all at once, jerking three drake carcasses off the gantry and down into the water. Twenty guards ran for the nets as Julian burst out of his pavilion, beaming like a boy at a fair.
"Nets on the left bank with chains on the right, though any man who nicks a single glorious scale will be flogged!" he shrieked, waving a goblet over his head.
Cleat stood at his lord’s elbow with one hand resting on his sword, watching the water instead of the men.
Ray knelt at the tent flap with the launcher across his thigh, "Your boss is going to get somebody killed tonight, probably one of the poor guys holding a net."
"He’s your boss too while we draw his twenty silver a day," Yuzu said, sliding her rapier free.
"I’m on my own payroll, Doc, the only boss I ever trusted with my money."
She nodded at the launcher without looking away from the water, "That tube cost us four hundred coins, Ray."
"It’ll work, given that a tube with this much of my money inside it doesn’t get permission to fail."
The mire bulged upward like a blister, mud sheeting off a ridge of plates as long as the gantry.
The Tyrant rose with a head like an armored wagon, its eyes as wide as cart wheels behind the plates. Steam poured from nostrils big enough to crawl inside, rolling across the camp until the lanterns turned into dim smudges.
[ TARGET ]
[Target: Bog Tyrant]
[Threat Grade: C]
[Mana Barrier: Active]
[Length: 31 Paces]
’Thirty-one paces of armored drake with a barrier wrapped around it is apparently what that idiot wants chained up by his front door.’
"That is the biggest drake anyone in the Murk has ever seen," Yuzu breathed, her thumb pressing hard against the rapier’s guard.
The Tyrant ignored the swinging carcasses completely, turning its head toward the pavilion instead.
"Hey, Your Lordship, I’d step away from that tent right about—"
It surged out of the bog before he finished, landing on the striped silk with its whole weight. Poles snapped while guards screamed, the pavilion folding flat beneath a belly as wide as a barn roof.
Julian went flying backward into the mud, his goblet spinning off into the dark like a coin down a well.
"My goblet... my pavilion, my father’s own silk, you wretched overgrown newt!" he wailed, flailing on his back like an upturned beetle.
Cleat hauled his lord out of the mud by the collar, never once taking his eyes off the churning water.
Then the Tyrant rolled once and sank, gone under the bog without a single ripple to mark the spot.
Yuzu stared at the flat water, "Where did it go?"
"Oh, shit, it went straight under us, with the whole camp riding on its back like a raft," Ray said, pressing a palm to the trembling ground.
The hummock answered him, shuddering as the thrashing below churned the packed mud into soup within a few heartbeats. Guards sank to their knees and then their waists, clawing at each other while goats bleated in toppling cages.
[ TERRAIN ]
[Ground: Liquefying]
[Footing: Lost]
[Personnel Sinking: 17]
’Seventeen men are going under while the one guy in camp with shoes that stand on air is kneeling here doing math.’
He clicked his heels together, "Grab whoever’s bleeding and get up somewhere high, since I’m going fishing!"
The first cell hummed awake under his soles, lifting him clear just as a young guard went under.
He skated over the bog in three long strides, the air under his feet holding firm while the swamp boiled. The kid was down to his chin, eyes rolling white, both hands clawing uselessly at mud that refused to hold.
Ray grabbed his collar with both fists, keeping his ribs square as he hauled the gasping boy upward.
"It’s under me, sir, I-I can feel it moving right under my feet!"
"Then kick those legs and quit choking me, since the faster you kick the less of you it gets to eat!"
He skated the kid to the overturned gantry, dropping him on its beams beside three others clinging to the wood.
"Thank you, sir, I swear I’ll pay you back the second Lord Julian pays me!" the kid gasped, hugging a beam.
"Keep your wages, kid, while you hug that beam until somebody with a rope comes looking for you."
Yuzu stood on a tipped cage with her rapier planted, gold light rising into a dome of Veil. Seven wounded guards lay crammed beneath it, mud sliding off the ward like rain down a window pane.
"This ward holds for three minutes, maybe less, if you have a plan!" she yelled.
"I’m planning as fast as a man can plan anything while he’s standing on nothing but air!"
[ MOONWALKERS ]
[Cell 1: 9 Seconds Remaining]
[Cell 2: Full]
’Nine seconds of air with nothing to shoot at means the lizard has to come up to me.’
He drew Payday and thumbed in the fire rounds, spotting a fat line of bubbles rising beside the gantry.
The grin he wore for the drowning kid was gone, his face as calm as a man reading the time.
"You’ve had your fun with these men, so come up now and deal with me instead."
Three incendiary rounds punched into the bubbles, bursting deep below the surface in a wide bloom of orange fire. The bog flashed to steam in a ring around the gantry, baking into crust while something huge screamed underneath.
"Was setting the swamp on fire your plan?" Yuzu shouted from under the dome.
He gave no answer, his face so still that the guards beneath her ward stopped moaning to watch him.
[ CELL 1 DEPLETED ]
[Cell 2: Engaged]
[Duration: 40 Seconds]
"I’d prefer you came up on your own, before I’m forced to—"
The Tyrant came up through the crust directly beneath him, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow a wagon.
He put two plain rounds into its snout, both sparking off the shimmer on its scales as the scan promised.
Thirty-one seconds of air remained, eleven paces of plated skull lying between him and one yellow eye.
He dropped onto its snout instead of away, skating down the ridge of its skull toward one huge yellow eye. Hard Sell slammed into the plate above the eye, its spike punching through with a crack heard across the mire.
[ HARD SELL ]
[Charge: Discharged]
[Cells: 1/2]
The Tyrant reared back bellowing, its jaws gaping at the stars with the soft mouth exposed.
’The barrier only wraps the outside, which leaves the throat.’
He kicked off the snout into the open air, swinging Enma onto his shoulder in one motion.
"Hold still for me, please, since I only need the one shot," he said, almost gently.
The warhead left the tube with a deep thump, sailing straight into the open mouth before the jaws could close. For one heartbeat nothing happened at all, until the Tyrant’s chest lit up from the inside like a festival lantern.
It came apart in a roar of fire, plates spinning away while the burning carcass collapsed into the bog.
The blast flung Ray backward, the last seconds of his second cell barely catching him above the steaming mud.
[ TARGET NEUTRALIZED ]
[Target: Bog Tyrant]
[Method: Single Charge]
[Contractor Damage: Ribs Aggravated]
He crashed onto the gantry beams and rolled onto his back, "Gah, every rib I own just filed a formal complaint!"
"Say something if you’re breathing!" Yuzu shouted from her cage.
"I’m breathing... mostly, though my ribs are out shopping for a new owner," he wheezed at the stars.
Something round and glowing rolled out of the smoking chest cavity, coming to rest against his hip.
[ ITEM ACQUIRED ]
[Item: Bog Tyrant Core]
[Grade: C]
[Value: Significant]
He tucked the core into his coat without thinking, the habit of a man who never left money lying around. Around him the camp dragged itself free of the mud, guards hauling each other out by their belts and collars.
[ TARGET BOUNTY PAID ]
[Target: Bog Tyrant]
[Bounty: +250 HC]
[Balance: 310 HC]
[Rounds: 50]
[Hot Take: 5]
[MANA: 70 / 150]
[ FEAT RECOGNISED ]
[Contractor: Ray K]
[Feat: Tyrant Breaker]
[PER: 25 → 28]
[Title Earned: Tyrant Breaker]
[Blueprint Points: +8]
[Blueprint Points Total: 13]
The far bank snapped into focus as the panel faded, every ember on the burning plates suddenly crisp.
’Three points of perception let me count the rivets on a guard’s belt from forty paces, which beats any bounty paid in coin.’
Julian came squelching across the ruins in sea-green silk caked with mud, his round cheeks flushed with fury. Cleat walked at his shoulder with his sword drawn, the scar through his lips pulled tight as wire.
Four more guards fanned out behind them in a ragged half circle, none of them eager to be first.
"You killed my Tyrant, you ghastly little peasant, when I specifically and explicitly forbade you to harm a single glorious scale!"
"It ate your tent, my lord, then tried to eat your men, so I’d say the rules changed around the time it swallowed the furniture."
"The beast came to my bait inside my camp beneath my banner, which makes every scale of it House Amamiya property!"
Ray spread his hands at the burning wreck, "Take the corpse then, my lord, since it’s all yours... smell included."
"I shall take the hide, the bones and every last tooth, then write to my father that every part of this kill belongs to House Amamiya!"
’He hasn’t noticed the core riding in my coat yet, though I’m not about to be the one who reminds him.’
Julian turned toward the carcass, shrieking for saws and wagons as if he was the one who killed it.
Yuzu climbed down from her cage as the dome faded, seven wounded guards staring after Ray in total silence. Out on the gantry, the kid from the mud sat hugging his knees, still shaking too hard to speak.
"Seven men under my ward are breathing," she said quietly, "whatever banner that corpse belongs to."
"Neither of us cares about the banner, though his lordship is going to care a whole hell of a lot by morning," he said, wincing as he sat up.
She crouched beside him, pressing two fingers along the binding under his coat, "Report on the ribs without lying to me."
"They’re all present, though at least one of them is filing for a transfer to a quieter body."
"You jumped onto its face."
"I jumped onto its face for four hundred coins and a very good reason, which I’ll explain once I can breathe again."
Across the mud, Cleat never looked at the carcass once, his eyes following Ray’s coat every step of the way.