The world vanished, replaced by a suffocating red haze.

  Humanity, with its complicated constructs and emotions, evaporated. The mind that remained was a furnace of pure, reptilian instinct.

  Meat. Bone. Threat. Crush.

  The Gem-Croc Kin leaped off the edge of the tower.

  It plummeted, a meteor of dense gold and muscle, and slammed into the center of the main timber deck. The impact cratered the thick pine planks. A shockwave launched two boarding Wolf Kin between the ship’s ribs and into the abyss.

  Lead slugs sparked off Trenn’s gilded carapace. A scattergun blast hammered his shoulder.

  He didn’t flinch. The beast didn't feel pain.

  It surged forward, opening its crocodilian maw. It caught a Wolf Kin raider mid-lunge, jaws clamping over the warrior’s Arm. Armor buckled. Bones snapped. There was a scream. With a violent torsion, the broken body was tossed overboard.

  A rider thrust a spear at the gilded avatar’s glowing eyes. The White Metal shield was raised, and the iron tip shattered against the divine alloy.

  In the same fluid motion, Trenn swung the God-Bone club. The runed bone caved in the attacker's breastplate with a loud thwack, folding the Wolf Kin like a crushed can.

  Another boarder tried to flank. The massive golden tail whipped around—a blur of raw emeralds and rubies. It cut through the rider’s legs and painted the bleached white ribs of the bone-ship red.

  Through the blood-soaked filter of its vision, the Gem-Croc Kin processed the chaotic battlefield in flashes of violence.

  A dozen yards away, a pillar of kinetic ash erupted. Zeen stood atop the rear tower, the One-Eye amulet gleaming in the socket of Almitad's skull. He was a turret of vengeance, firing a sheet of searing flame that washed over three Wolf Kin riders, turning them into screaming, burning husks at once—forcing others to scatter.

  To the golden berserker's left, the Crusher was a spinning top of Red Metal. Ezy had locked the chassis into a continuous, violent pirouette, her heavy hydraulic fists extending outward.

  The machine was a blender, smashing Wolf Kin into pulp and clearing a wide circle of shattered bodies.

  But the perimeter was collapsing.

  There were too many ropes, too many riders pouring over the bone railings.

  Near the starboard edge, Wutren and Janaree fought back-to-back, a dwindling island in a sea of blades. The beast’s green eyes caught the flash of a barbed spear. It bypassed Wutren’s missing hand, sinking deep into the elder’s gut.

  The Grey-Fur gasped, dropping his weapon, his hands clutching the wooden shaft embedded in his stomach. He fell to his knees, his ancient eyes wide.

  Janaree shrieked, a sound that tore through the din of combat. She spun, raising her semi-automatic pistols to empty them into Wutren’s killer.

  She never saw the scattergun leveled at her side.

  A deafening sound rattled the deck. The blast caught Janaree in the ribs, lifting her off her feet. She was thrown backward, tumbling over the lip of the inverted ribcage. Her scream faded as she crashed into a broken heap below.

  The three pups were suddenly exposed, cowering behind the bleeding, kneeling elder. A boarding Wolf Kin raised a heavy axe, his eyes fixed on the defenseless children.

  A roar of absolute, soul-tearing grief erupted from the edge of the ship as Vavnaar hauled himself over the bone railing. He saw Wutren fall. He saw the space where Janaree had been.

  The Alpha went rabid. Silver Flash hummed a blinding white arc as Vavnaar waded into the swarm, abandoning all defense, hacking a path of dismembered limbs and severed heads to reach his pups.

  The beast in Trenn’s marrow did not care about the wolves. It only cared about the slaughter.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  Above the fray, a splash of pink and yellow registered in its mind. Bomber shrieked, diving over the melee, and opened its six furry legs.

  Skate dropped from the sky.

  The slime hardened mid-air, crystallizing into a dense, heavy sphere of porous black carbonado.

  The golden monster’s green eyes snapped toward the falling shadow. It roared, swinging the God-Bone club in a savage, unthinking arc to swat the object away.

  The ivory struck the black diamond with the force of a cannon. Skate rocketed across the deck, smashing dead-center into a Wolf Kin’s faceplate, shattering the helm and the skull beneath.

  The impact ricocheted the heavy slime straight back toward the beast's head. Driven by primal self-preservation, the avatar jerked its White Metal shield up to blindly deflect the incoming threat. Skate hammered against the divine alloy and bounced wildly into the chest of a second attacker.

  The chaotic pinball continued, the heavy stone arcing erratically right back toward the beast. Irritated by the persistent flying hazard, the reptile brain snapped. It lashed out. Its massive golden tail whipped through the air in a blind, aggressive swat.

  The gem-encrusted limb struck the returning slime, sending it violently skipping across the timber deck, breaking the shins of three more boarders before it skidded to a halt.

  A volley of lead slugs hammered Trenn's back and sides, sparking off the golden scales like rain on a tin roof. The beast ignored them. It turned, hunting for the next skull to crush.

  Then, through the red haze, it saw white fur stained in red blood.

  Mara was failing.

  She was fighting at the edge of the Crusher’s spinning buffer zone, her jagged raptor-talons flashing. But she was exhausted. She tried to reach for her alchemist’s satchel, but the pressure was too great.

  Three Wolf Kin surrounded her. One hooked her leg with a halberd, pulling her off balance. A second drove the butt of a rifle into her dense, chitinous breastplate.

  She slashed and opened her attacker’s throat, but she over-extended herself.

  A loud shot came from behind her. A scattergun’s pellets dug deep in her chitin armor.

  She gasped, her eyes rolling back as her body betrayed her. She collapsed to the timber deck, pinned between the roaring flames of Zeen’s musket and the crushing, spinning metal of Ezy’s machine.

  A massive Wolf Kin stood over her, raising a heavy iron maul to crush her skull.

  The Gem-Croc instinct flared.

  The beast opened its jaws. The air distorted around its golden teeth. The clear Sound Element flooded its vocal cords while the cold, discordant hum of the Necrosis Element resonated in its tail. It was prepared to unleash the absolute command spell: “die”.

  The magic boiled in its throat, a split-second from release.

  But in the dark, submerged cage of his own mind, Trenn slammed his hands against the bars.

  He saw the golden tail swat Mara into the mist.

  He saw Almitad, blocking the death-command he had turned against an ally.

  The magic surged, pushing against his teeth.

  He saw a wooden dock. A blue lake. The faces of his mother and sister

  "Don't bring a monster home."

  Trenn’s soul grabbed the beast by the throat.

  I won’t let you erase them!

  He threw every ounce of his willpower, every shred of his guilt, into his jaw muscles.

  The physical agony was blinding. The magical feedback loop seared his tongue and boiled the saliva in his mouth. The word demanded to be spoken. It clawed at his vocal cords, threatening to tear his throat apart from the inside out.

  He wouldn't let it. Not this time.

  Trenn fell to his knees, his hands clutching the sides of the golden helmet. He tore at the metal scales, fighting his own biology. He forced his human vocal cords to shift, changing the shape of the sound, wrestling the entropy into something else.

  His hands pulled the Gem-Croc Kin’s maw apart. Inside the helmet, Ichor leaked from his eyes as he screamed.

  "STOP!"

  The sonic blast that erupted was a raw, stunning shockwave of pure Sound Element.

  The blast slammed into the Wolf Kin standing over Mara. The sonic force ruptured his eardrums and paralyzed his muscles, causing the heavy iron maul to slip from his numb fingers and crash to the timber deck.

  Lying in the blood and sawdust, Mara seized the split-second reprieve. Fighting the black spots consuming her vision, she unleashed a ragged, guttural scream of pure survival and dragged her aching arm upward from the floor. She drove her jagged talons blindly into the back of the stunned warrior’s knee.

  As he fell, she tore upward through his throat.

  The feedback of denying the Power Word shattered the Gem-Croc's control.

  The interlocking golden plates of the crocodilian helmet gave in to Trenn. The metal uncoupled with a violent, grinding friction. The scales covering his head and throat tore themselves backward, slicing beneath his skin to retreat into his upper collarbones, leaving his neck bare.

  He gasped, sucking in a lungful of cold air.

  He was kneeling on the blood-slicked timber.

  His human face was exposed. His expression was a distorted mask of agony and raw, unfiltered emotion. His jagged white scar pulled his lip into a grimace as tears of gold streamed from his eyes.

  He looked down at his hands. Below his bare neck, his chest and arms were still sheathed in the heavy, gem-encrusted armor. The massive golden tail still twitched behind him, keeping his body locked in the divine carapace. The physical mutation remained—but the red haze was gone.

  [email protected]

  https://discord.gg/mhxDZjw4

  https://www.patreon.com/cw/RDDMartel