The mask closed over his face and put the pain somewhere he could not feel it, while the shoulder went back into its socket without him doing anything.
Under that mask, smell now arrived at him well before his sight did. He could smell the hunters on the ropes forty feet above him, down to which one was bleeding.
'I can smell them from down here... that's the jackal's nose doing it, not mine,' Ossian stood up in the water on a leg that had stopped hurting, 'shit, stand still and think.'
Both his hands were black plate over the knuckles now, where the larval shell had eaten into his porter gloves and set hard with the pieces of the ceremonial carving stuck in the backs.
[Fused relic registered as Dreadweight]
[One imprint socket is shared between both hands]
'One socket across two gloves... so somebody's rationing me already, wonderful,' he turned his left hand over in the last of the flare light, 'later, ladder run first.'
He took one step toward the west wall and the floor came at him far faster than a walk should bring it.
The second step pulled the air out of his chest while the room smeared sideways past the eyeholes of the mask.
'Too fast... I didn't ask my legs for any of that,' he tried to plant a foot on the third step, 'stop, get something into the ground.'
Trying to stop halfway threw all the speed he had built back through his shins, which dropped him onto both knees in the shallow water.
[The hunt asks for four steps]
[Stopping short returns the force to you]
'Four steps every time, no halfway... that'll cost me a leg one day, noted,' his calves were shaking under him from the recoil, 'up, they're coming down the ropes.'
Armored feet hit the nest floor while he was still finding his balance.
Ruan reached the bottom first with a core case open on his hip, sweeping his lamp across the dead jackal without pausing over it.
"Pull the helmet footage before the core, we're an hour ahead of the regulator," Ruan instructed the two recovery hunters behind him.
'He wants the recordings before the regulator lands... whatever that report says becomes the truth by lunchtime,' Ossian pressed himself back against the rock, 'don't move.'
Perris came down last with his rifle up, and his light found the shape standing in the water.
"Contamination, lower basin," a recovery hunter called, and three lamps came onto Ossian at once.
'That's my own uniform hanging off this body... Perris packed that harness at the yard this morning,' the lamps found the torn canvas at his ribs, 'say something, right, this mouth doesn't do words anymore.'
Ruan gave the order before the boy's light travelled down to the harness buckle.
"Clear it," Ruan put the case on a dry ledge to free both hands.
Rounds came off the rock beside Ossian's head and drove him sideways into the dark with his back against the wall.
The wall at his back came apart instead of holding his weight. The thing built into it had been waiting through every minute of the larva's death.
A plated hound the size of a freight crate came out of the broken stone, six pale eyes opening along its skull in sequence.
The hound went at the lamps instead of the silent shape in the dark, since the squad was making all of the noise in the room.
Its tail took a recovery hunter off his feet into the far wall, where the man stopped moving with his back at a wrong angle.
Ruan drove The Standard into the floor for the second time that day and shared the hound's damage out across the team.
Perris went down onto one knee as that damage arrived in him, coughing over the stock of his own rifle.
'The boy's carrying the captain's hits now... smallest body on the floor, so that's who it lands on,' the smell of him changed the moment his knees hit the water, 'no.'
Jackal instinct picked Perris out as the easiest kill in the room, a hurt boy down on one knee in the water.
'That thought wasn't mine... look at the big one instead, not the boy,' Ossian dragged his face away from the boy with effort, 'the plates, something under them healed wrong.'
Old injuries came up out of the hound as smell, one rib broken and healed crooked, one throat plate cracked at some point before it grew back out of true.
'That throat went in some other fight... whoever patched it did a rush job,' he watched the plate ride wrong when the head turned, 'damn it, that's the only door in.'
A drone lens tracked him from the observation rail above the shaft, holding steady instead of following the fight.
'Somebody's driving that lens by hand... and they're not watching the loud half of the room,' the water reached his waist as the hound came around, 'later, four steps, go.'
He took the first step at the hound and let the speed have him.
The second step put him under a claw with the wind of it dragging the water sideways.
He spent the third on a pivot around the blind side, where the six eyes could not carry.
Dreadweight went into the cracked throat plate on the fourth step with all four steps of speed behind it, and the plate held.
That impact came back up his arms into the shoulder which had come out of its socket an hour ago.
'The plate held... that crack runs sideways though, so stop hitting it and pull it open,' his feet lost the floor as the head swung around, 'shit, the jaw.'
Six pale eyes came around with the jaw, which closed on both gauntlets before he could get clear, teeth grinding along the black plate over his forearms.
Those teeth kept squeezing, pushing his arms toward each other until the bones began to give.
'The jaw's got both my arms... and I never spent the last of that rush,' he set both feet against the underside of the jaw, 'push, everything at once.'
Ossian let the rest of the pursuit speed out through his shoulders into the crack and tore the throat plate open at arm's length.
Black blood came over the mask in a sheet while the six eyes went out of sequence, then quit.
The hound came down on him with the water underneath it, pinning both his legs at the knee.
Ruan took the larval core off the ledge into the case without once looking at the pinned creature.
"Leave it buried, the room's coming down," Ruan told Perris with one hand on the rope.
Perris looked at the harness buckle on the creature's shoulder, the one he had cut through himself at the ascent.
He put his rifle down and got a beam up off Ossian's chest, taking the weight on a leg that was still shaking.
'The boy's inside reach... and this thing has already picked which part of him goes first,' Ossian felt his own jaw open without asking for it, 'get this bone off my face.'
He put both plated hands under the edge of the mask and pulled it off his skin.
Changing back took ten seconds, with his teeth going first and the shoulder coming out of its socket again on the second count.
[The pack asset has been preserved]
[Your Human Mask stays available for lair conditions]
'Pack asset... it watched me pull a man clear and filed him as livestock,' Ossian read it lying in the water, 'the badge went up that rope without me.'
'The system just called my real face a Human Mask... it has me filed under equipment, thanks for that,' Ossian lay back in the water, 'not now, Perris has to get out of this room.'
"Get out before the roof comes in," Ossian pushed the words through a throat that had been a different shape four seconds earlier.
Perris said his name once, then held onto the beam with nothing else coming out of him.
The lens on the observation rail kept tracking him after Ruan's voice ordered the recovery channel wiped, so somebody up there was still recording.