I didn't bother with banter.
I ran.
World Cleaver felt heavier than usual in my hands, the haft buzzing faintly from residual heat, but the weight was familiar. Comforting, even. I sprinted straight at the power armor trooper, boots chewing up the torn ground, then brought the axe down in a two-handed swing that would've snapped a Deathclaw in half.
He didn't dodge.
He met it.
The Enclave trooper stepped into the arc and blocked with his forearm.
World Cleaver's flaming edge bit into the armored bracer with a screech like a car accident. For a heartbeat, resistance fought me: plate, brace, servos, and whatever nightmare alloy they'd cooked up in their new forges. Then the edge chewed through the outer layer and kept going.
Chunks of metal and glistening gel blew out in a fan, spattering the dirt in smoking gobbets. The impact knocked his arm sideways, torque rolling his upper body back a fraction. The limb started smoking, sparks flickering where armor had been sheared away to reveal pulsing cable and half-melted gel packs.
But it was still attached.
Still moving.
This wasn't thousand-year-old museum armor held together with stubbornness and duct tape. This was a suit that, at worst, was a decade off the line. Fresh seals, fresh servos, redundant systems up the ass. All I'd done was make it angry and uglier.
Which, to be fair, was kind of my whole brand.
Then I realized something important: he hadn't tried to avoid the hit.
He'd taken it on purpose.
"Thanks for the opening," he said calmly.
His damaged arm twisted in a way that no human limb should, plating shifting aside. A compartment on his hip popped open with a hiss, and some very cursed part of my media-brain recognized the motion instantly.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," I muttered.
A large pistol deployed out of the side of his hip holster on a mechanical track, swinging forward into his waiting hand. It was big, blocky, and mean-looking, every inch of it designed to look good next to power armor.
My brain flashed on behind-the-scenes trivia at the worst possible time.
That's the Fallout TV show gun, I realized. The one they'd built to look right in hands this size. Under the shell it had just been a Desert Eagle dressed up for camera.
Here, it wasn't prop foam.
Here, it was a high-caliber machine pistol.
He brought it up toward my face and squeezed the trigger.
I didn't think. I kicked.
The hydraulics in my boots screamed as I triggered them and used his own chest as a launchpad. Metal met metal with a hollow whump as both my feet hit center mass. The burst from the pistol shredded the air where I'd been half a heartbeat before, rounds ripping a line of holes through smoke and shattered trees.
The recoil and my shove added up.
I pushed off him like a gymnast leaving a vault, the thrusters in my boots flaring just enough to keep me from eating dirt on the way out. For a second I was airborne, spinning past his shoulder, the world reduced to Enclave armor, crimson Wolf Lord eyes somewhere in the haze, and the glow of World Cleaver in my grip.
I landed hard, boots skidding, knees flexing to soak the impact. I came up with the axe between us, half-expecting him to rush me.
He didn't.
He pivoted with that tank-like precision, tracked me, and snapped the pistol up again, blue lenses narrowing as he sighted center mass.
He was going to turn my torso into red mist.
He never got the shot off clean.
Cesar hit him from the side.
The Wolf Lord erupted from the smoke like a missile made of teeth and muscle, slamming into the trooper's right leg. His jaws clamped down around the armor just above the knee, teeth punching through plate and gel with a sound like someone driving rebar into a car door.
The Enclave heavy staggered as a hundred-plus kilos of enhanced wolf did its level best to separate his leg from his body. Servos shrieked, armor buckled.
Cesar pulled.
The power armor dropped to one knee with a grinding crunch, aim jerking skyward. The first round from the machine pistol went wild, screaming off into the distance to go ruin some random tree's day.
I saw his lenses flare, fury finally cracking through the professional calm.
"Get off me, you—"
Cesar growled, low and furious, and bit down harder.
"Yeah," I panted, raising World Cleaver again as the stimpaks' last wave of heat settled into my bones. "What he said."
The armored man finally panicked.
Cesar's teeth ground deeper into the trooper's leg, metal groaning as armor and gel both started to give. The Enclave heavy let out a clipped, very not-professional yell and hammered a gauntleted fist into Cesar's face.
The hit sounded like someone punching a truck.
Cesar's head snapped sideways, jaws tearing a strip out of the armor as they were forced open. He snarled, shaking it off, ready to go right back in.
The trooper twisted the machine pistol toward him.
"NOPE."
I was already moving, boots kicking me forward. I came in from his blind side, swinging World Cleaver low and mean, aiming for his hip joint. If I could wreck that actuator, he'd be fighting with one leg and rage.
The axe smashed into the outer plate, biting deep. Armor warped around the edge with a horrible crunch, sparks and globs of gel spraying out. His whole frame jerked sideways.
Cesar lunged again, this time going high.
He went for the helmet, jaws opening wide, a black-and-red blur intent on turning the Enclave's head into a chew toy. The trooper reacted on pure instinct, jerking his free arm up to block. Cesar's teeth clamped down on the forearm instead, biting through yet more armor, more jello, more of the man's day.
So there we were:
Cesar latched onto his arm, snarling.
Me hammering World Cleaver into his hip, then his flank, then his ribs in a brutal rhythm.
The Enclave trooper in the middle, trying very hard not to fall over and failing to keep the calm tone in his yelling.
I raised the axe for another shot at his hip when something caught my eye.
On the center of his chestplate, just left of that smug eagle emblem, a small device I hadn't hit flickered. A blue spark jumped across it. Then another. Tiny arcs of electricity started dancing between little prongs I absolutely did not remember damaging.
My guts dropped.
"MOVE!" I barked at Cesar.
He didn't question it.
He released the trooper's arm and kicked back, claws scrabbling in the torn earth. I launched myself away in the opposite direction, boots screaming as I forced them to dig for all they were worth.
The armor detonated in lightning.
A dome of electricity burst out from the trooper's suit in a crackling wave. Blue-white arcs lashed over the ground, up trees, across twisted metal. It washed over where I'd been standing a heartbeat before, angry and hungry.
I still caught the edge of it.
The jolt hit like being dropkicked by a thundercloud. My whole body seized; my hair tried to leave my scalp; my teeth clacked together hard enough to make me worry I'd need a dentist. For a surreal second, my fingers and toes vanished—just numb static where they used to be.
I hit the ground on one knee, muscles twitching, grip spasming on World Cleaver's haft.
Across the clearing, Cesar shook himself hard, fur puffed out, growling like he'd just bitten a live wire. He looked pissed, but mobile.
I gritted my teeth, forced my fingers to work again.
"Fantastic," I wheezed. "He's got the Tesla coil mod too."
The lightning storm bought him space.
Cesar and I both backed off on instinct, shaking out the jitters while our nerves rebooted. The Enclave trooper stayed where he was, vents hissing, blue arcs crawling over his armor as whatever internal capacitors finished dumping their tantrum.
Then he straightened.
Very slowly, very methodically, he started taking inventory.
His gaze dropped to his ruined leg first. Armor there was a cratered mess, plates warped and split where Cesar's teeth and Warcrime had done their work. Gel bulged through the gaps in ugly clots, some of it burned black from the Tesla burst.
Then he checked his forearms. One was chewed open, the other not much better. Both still attached. Both still deadly. Smoke curled off the worst of the damage.
His hand brushed the dent in his ribs I'd carved with close-range shots. Fingers tapped the crater, coming away slick with melted gel.
If he'd been bare-faced, I was pretty sure I'd be seeing the exact same expression I wear when I realize a weapon I underestimated just put a hole in something expensive.
Annoyed. And…begrudgingly impressed.
"Primitive," he said at last, almost conversationally. "Crude."
His helmet turned, lenses fixing on World Cleaver in my hand. On Warcrime holstered at my hip. On the revolver, the Railwhistle, the Nanoboy bracer welded to my wrist.
"But effective."
His gaze slid to Cesar, who was prowling a slow circle through the smoke, hackles up, eyes never leaving the trooper. The big wolf's lips curled, just enough to show teeth.
"And then there is your command of the Cerberus prototype," he added. "You realize what that means, don't you?"
I didn't answer. Mostly because the part of my brain in charge of snappy comebacks was busy calculating how many more hits my ribs could take before they turned into gravel.
He continued anyway.
"I was starting to think," he admitted, "that I wasn't going to win this fight."
He said it like he was discussing weather patterns. No bravado, no mock outrage. Just flat assessment.
My fingers tightened slightly on World Cleaver's haft.
"So," he went on, "let's stop wasting resources."
There it was.
He shifted his stance, lowering the pistol a fraction, not quite pointing it at me, not quite not. World Cleaver hung loose in his other hand, tip buried in the dirt like a flag stuck between us.
"We don't have to be enemies," he said. "I understand why you sided with the primitives initially. You didn't know your people were still alive."
Your people.
He really had latched onto that "ancestors" line.
"Now you do," he continued, like he was laying out a reasonable employment offer and not standing in a crater full of his own dead. "You are wasted out here, playing champion for cavemen. With us, you'd have access to real tools. Real infrastructure. Think of what you could do with your…anomalous traits under proper guidance."
Cesar let out a low growl at the tone of his voice. I reached back without looking and brushed my fingers over his neck. He settled a fraction, though his ears stayed pinned.
I watched the trooper as he talked.
The way his damaged leg favored certain angles. How he kept both of us in his field of view. How his shield generator had gone dark, still rebooting. The tiny, tense pause before each "we" and "our" like he was reading off an internal script.
He was buying time.
Trying to get his Tesla coil back online. Trying to figure out how to call in backup without me noticing. Trying to decide if dropping a few more bodies on his side was worth the risk of pissing off whatever superior had written "Capture Cerberus alive" on his mission brief.
"You're not stupid," he finished. "You know where this world is heading. With us, you help rebuild it. Without us…"
He let the rest hang.
I could practically hear the subtext in his silence: Without us, we keep coming. And eventually, you slip.
I snorted, a dry, humorless sound that pulled at still-healing ribs.
"Yeah," I said. "See, I'd almost buy that if you hadn't tried to kill my dog, kidnap my people, and trample half a forest getting here."
He didn't move. Didn't argue.
I took a step closer, axe low, Cesar pacing just off my flank.
"Let me guess," I went on. "The only reason we're having this little heart-to-heart is because you're getting your ass kicked, and whoever's above you likes the phrase 'Cerberus asset intact' on their reports."
His lenses flickered.
Hit a nerve.
"And if you go back without your pet monster?" I added. "Maybe with a few holes in that shiny armor? That's a bad performance review, isn't it?"
Silence.
Not the contemplative kind this time. The tight kind.
He straightened by a millimeter, machine pistol angling up again.
He didn't say "last chance," but it hung there.
Then the machine pistol twitched up that last few degrees and all the polite bullshit evaporated.
"Yeah," I sighed. "Thought not."
I moved first.
World Cleaver came up from my hip in a rising cut, the exhaust heat along the edge making the air shimmer as it carved through it. He brought the pistol arm down to block, the axe smashing into already-abused forearm plating with a shriek of metal.
The impact knocked his aim wide. The first burst from the pistol shredded the air over my shoulder, rounds screaming off into the trees. I stepped in, inside his reach, and drove my boot into his dented thigh.
Knee joints complained. Servo whine jumped an octave.
He answered with his other arm, fist like a cinderblock slamming into my ribs. Freshly stim-knitted bone protested, vision white-outing for a heartbeat. I rode the hit, used the momentum to spin, and brought World Cleaver down on the side of his helmet.
The axe bit into the edge of the skull plate, skidded off, and chewed a gnarly groove through an ear housing instead. Sparks flew. His head rocked sideways.
Then his vents flared.
"Shit—"
Explosive vent again.
The blast out of his back jets turned a step into a lunge. He drove his shoulder into me, catching me mid-recover. I went tumbling, axe ripping free of his armor with a screech as I lost my grip and hit the ground hard enough to dig a shallow trench.
I rolled, came up to one knee.
He was already pivoting toward me, pistol coming around.
Cesar hit him from behind.
The Wolf Lord slammed into his back, jaws clamping over the same mangled leg and wrenched him backward. The shot meant for my chest went into the dirt between my knees instead, kicking up a spray of soil and stone.
"Persistent little abomination," the trooper snarled, twisting, trying to shake him loose.
He ignited the Tesla coil again.
Blue lightning crawled over his armor, racing toward Cesar's muzzle. This time the wolf saw it coming. He let go at the last second, dropping away as the electric wave burst out.
I still caught enough of it to lock my jaw and make my fingers spasm, but I stayed upright. Cesar shook off the aftershock, sliding back into the smoke, a black shadow circling.
The trooper's breathing was harsher now, louder in the audio mix leaking from his suit. Damaged leg dragging. Right arm slower. Armor held together by gel, faith, and Enclave engineering.
He lifted the pistol again, tracking my center mass.
Okay. Enough chipping.
Time to flip the breaker.
I let World Cleaver lie where it had fallen and reached back over my shoulder, into the Nanoboy field. The bracer hummed, light crawling up my forearm as compressed matter unfolded into my hand.
Zeus's Wrath dropped into my grip like a thunderhead.
The Enclave heavy hesitated for half a second, lenses flicking to the cannon, doing threat assessment in real time. I saw the moment he recognized it as the source of the initial Vertibird strike.
The Tesla coils along Zeus's Wrath spun up with a rising whine. Air thickened around the barrel, hairs on my arms prickling even through the undersuit. Lights along the housing shifted from dull blue to bright, hungry white.
He didn't wait this time.
The machine pistol barked, muzzle flashes strobing. Rounds snapped past in a tight grouping, his aim still annoyingly solid even on a half-ruined leg.
I kicked the boots, sliding sideways, presenting a smaller target as splinters and dirt fountained where I'd been. The charge bar on Zeus's Wrath climbed.
"C'mon, c'mon…"
Another burst. A round kissed my bicep, numbing the arm for a beat. I gritted my teeth, locked the cannon into my shoulder with both hands, and sighted center mass.
No fancy joint shots. No head. Just the heart of the suit.
Zeus's Wrath screamed as it hit full charge.
I pulled the trigger.
Lightning didn't just leave the barrel, it erupted from it. A spear of white-blue energy tore across the clearing, so bright it burned an afterimage into my vision. It hit him square in the chest.
His suit went insane.
The shield generator tried to come online and died in the same microsecond, its half-formed hex-grid frying into a spray of glitching light. The Tesla coil mod, already hot, caught the surge and spat it everywhere—blue arcs ricocheting back into his systems instead of out.
For a heartbeat he was a silhouette made of lightning. Every cable, every plate, every seam traced in raw electricity.
Then the feedback found his gun.
The machine pistol in his hand was still mid-burst. Firing pins, feed mechanisms, tiny electronics all suddenly got a front-row ticket to an overvoltage event. The electromagnetic surge dove down the arm, into the weapon, and every remaining round in the magazine decided to go off at once.
Inside the gun.
The pistol turned into a fragmentation grenade in his hand.
There was a muffled WHUMP and the weapon disintegrated, the slide, barrel, and half the casing blowing outward in a cone of shrapnel. Metal shards bounced off his own chest plate, punched into already-cracked gel, tore up his forearm even worse.
He howled, more in shock than pain.
His arm flailed, fingers spasming, then hung limp, riddled with internal damage the armor couldn't compensate for. Smoke poured from the ruined holster on his hip. Little tongues of flame licked out before the suit's emergency systems hissed and smothered them.
He staggered, one leg half-dead, one arm trashed, suit flickering with dying sparks.
Zeus's Wrath hummed in my hands, hot and empty, barrel still glowing.
I exhaled slowly, chest burning, and let the cannon's smoking muzzle dip a few inches.
"Match goes to the primitive," I said.
I walk toward him.
Zeus's Wrath is heavy in my hands, humming down, the barrel still hot enough to haze the air. I thumb the safeties, feel the capacitors bleeding off, then push it back toward the Nanoboy field. Light crawls over the cannon and it dissolves into blue motes, folding away into my wrist.
That leaves just me. And the axe.
World Cleaver's haft sticks out of the dirt a few meters away where he dropped it. I reach down, fingers closing around the grip, and yank.
It comes free with a wet, ugly sound. The blade's glow has faded to a low smolder, edge dark with cooling friction burns and dried blood. My arm feels like lead. My lungs feel like they're full of knives. I don't bother trying to shoulder the axe properly; I just let it hang in my hand, tip dragging a shallow groove through the dirt as I walk.
Step. Drag. Step. Drag.
The Enclave trooper is still on his feet, somehow. One leg half-dead, one arm shredded, suit twitching in random little spasms as leftover voltage works its way out of his systems. The blue lenses stare back at me, dimmer now, but not gone.
I stop a few feet away.
"Any last words?" I ask, tightening my grip on the haft, lining up the swing that's going to bury this thing in his skull once and for all.
There's a wet, choking sound from inside the helmet. For a second I think it's a laugh.
Then, rasping through damaged speakers, I hear him croak, "…take…off…"
My eyes go wide.
The wind hits a heartbeat later.
A sudden, pounding gust slams into my back, whipping dirt and loose debris past my legs. The transport Vertibird's engines spool from standby to full, rotors spinning up into a blur. The downdraft turns the clearing into a hurricane, smoke and dust torn upward in wild spirals.
They're lifting.
They're leaving.
Rage hits like a second adrenaline shot.
I roar wordlessly and swing.
World Cleaver comes up and around in a brutal arc, all the pain and exhaustion and fury I've got left poured into the motion. The blade hits him just above the visor, bites through armor that's already been softened, and keeps going.
The axe buries itself deep in his helmet with a meaty, metallic crunch.
The blue lenses go out.
The Enclave trooper takes one slow, boneless step backward and collapses like someone pulled his plug, armor crashing into the dirt with enough force to shake my already-busted ribs. World Cleaver stands out of his ruined skull like a grave marker.
No time to admire the work.
The Vertibird is already rising, landing struts lifting clear of the ground. The ramp is halfway up, chains rattling as hydraulics whine. Inside, I can see shapes moving—guards, medics, prisoners, my people being flown away right in front of me.
"NO!"
I ran.
Legs screaming, lungs burning, I sprint across the churned clearing, boots slipping in mud and blood. The transport climbs, nose tilting, ramp yawning open over nothing.
I kick the thrusters.
The hydraulics in my boots fire, gravity momentarily optional. I launch myself up and forward, arms outstretched as the Vertibird surges away from the ground.
For a heartbeat I'm hanging in open air, fingers grasping at empty space.
Then my hands slam onto cold metal at the edge of the ramp. My fingers find a lip, a bolt, something, and clamp down. My shoulders nearly rip out of their sockets, but I hold.
Teeth gritted, every muscle screaming, I haul myself over the lip of the ramp, boots scraping, and finally get a look inside.
First thing I see is Sula.
She's sprawled on the deck, half-rolled onto her side, wrists bound in front of her. Someone at least had the sense to tie her that way so she didn't choke out on her own arm. Her face is slack, breathing shallow, a bruise blooming along her jaw where they tagged her.
Behind her, the girls.
They're tied up in a loose clump, backs to one another, eyes wide and red, rope biting into their wrists. One of them meets my gaze for half a second, hope and terror wrestling in her pupils.
Good. Still here. Still alive.
Then my eyes hit the body bag.
It's lying further back in the cargo hold where the med team dropped it, zipper half-undone. In the shaking light of the interior lamps, I catch a flash of glossy black armor and a slack, ruined face.
Stealth operative. The one Cesar turned into a chew toy. The one they'd been hauling before everything went to hell.
And my brain finally pings a detail I'd shoved aside mid-firefight:
I only counted three confirmed stealth kills before the Vertibirds went down.
There had been five.
"Shit," I breathe.
My hand goes to the Nanoboy bracer like it's moving of its own accord. Blue motes flare as I pull a small, angular bit of Enclave tech into reality: the spare Focus unit I'd scavenged from the Deathclaw nest.
Hadn't been sure what I'd use it for.
Guess we're about to find out.
The air at the edge of the ramp ripples.
Just a little. A shimmer where there shouldn't be one. Like heat haze, but colder. My eyes lock onto it just in time to see it resolve into someone.
The last living operative uncloaks mid-kick.
His boot hits me square in the chest.
The world lurches. Air vanishes from my lungs, ribs flare in protest, and suddenly the ramp isn't under my boots anymore. The sky is where the floor should be. The clearing is rushing up toward me with bad intentions.
As I start to fall backward, instincts and spite take the wheel.
I snap my wrist and let the Focus go.
The little Enclave device spins end-over-end, a dark blur against the interior lights as it sails deeper into the cargo hold, bouncing somewhere between Sula, the girls, and a very pissed-off stealth op.
Wherever they take this bird, that tracker goes with them.
Then gravity finishes its argument, and I'm gone.
I hit the ground like a dropped anvil.
The only reason I wasn't paste was because the Vertibird hadn't gotten that high yet. "Not that high" still translated to "very high" on the pain scale. My back slammed into the dirt, my skull bounced, and for a second all I could see were little white fireworks.
Air refused to go back in my lungs. Again.
I lay there wheezing, staring up at the shrinking belly of the Vertibird as it clawed for altitude, ramp sealing shut like a metal eyelid. Somewhere up there: Sula, the girls, one very angry stealth bastard, and a spare Focus I'd just yeeted into their laps.
Boots padded over to me.
Cesar's huge head dropped into my field of view, nose working overtime. He whined, snuffling at my chest and face, breath warm and frantic. One paw nudged my shoulder, not gently.
"I'm… I'm fine," I lied, which would've been more convincing if it hadn't come out as a croaky cough.
I managed to roll to one side, ribs complaining, and fumble another stimpak from my belt. Hands shaking, I jammed it into the meat of my abdomen and slammed the plunger down.
Fire raced through my torso, chasing the cold numbness away.
"Gonna be pissing blood for a week," I muttered as the healing heat settled in, breathing out through my teeth.
Time to see if my Hail Mary had stuck.
I tapped my Focus.
The familiar flicker crossed my vision as the interface flared to life, overlaid on the real world. I brought up the tracking program, fingers ghosting through menus only I could see.
One blip pinged back at me from the sky, moving east.
"Thank God it's working," I grumbled.
I glanced at Cesar.
He cocked his head, red eyes meeting mine, then flicking to the Vertibird's fading silhouette, then back. Question marks all over his giant murder-dog face.
"Yeah, buddy," I said, pushing myself to my feet with a groan. "We're not done yet."
He stood still when I grabbed a handful of fur at his shoulders, more confused than offended, muscles bunching under my hands as I pulled myself up and swung a leg over his back. The fact that my life now involved mounting my former apartment dog in his new raid-boss body was not lost on me.
The Focus UI glitched for a second.
A new prompt blinked into existence in the corner of my vision:
SHARE WAYPOINT WITH CBRS UNIT 0001?
I blinked.
"…you've got a chip in your head too, huh?" I murmured, patting Cesar's neck.
I mentally hit "Yes."
My HUD shifted. A new connection pulsed online, and suddenly I wasn't just seeing my own Focus data. A flood of signals showed up: multiple other Focus IDs, all Enclave-flavored, all talking to the same neural chip buried somewhere in Cesar's skull.
Telemetry. Commands. Pings. Leashes.
"Yeah, we're not doing that," I said.
Being this close to him, my signal was the loudest voice in the room. I followed the links back, grabbed hold, and cut them, one by one. The Enclave feeds dropped off my display, blinking out until only a single line remained:
FOCUS LINKED: CBRS UNIT 0001 [PRIMARY]
Cesar let out a long breath. Not quite a whine, not quite a sigh… something in between, like a headache he'd carried for years had finally let go.
"Better?" I asked softly.
He huffed once, then flicked an ear and looked out over the plains.
"Good. Now it's just you and me."
I pushed the Vertibird's waypoint to him via the shared link. For a second nothing happened… then a little pulse echoed back in my HUD, confirming receipt.
Cesar shifted under me.
Without waiting for any more encouragement, the Wolf Lord dropped his head, picked a line across the grasslands, and shot off in a ground-eating lope, paws drumming the earth.
I wrapped my fingers tighter in his fur, the Vertibird's signal flickering steadily in my Focus.
We ran hard.
The plains blurred into bands of green and gold, wind tearing at my hair, Cesar's muscles rolling under me like a living engine. The Vertibird's signal stayed steady in my Focus, a softly pulsing icon climbing, then leveling, then drifting.
They weren't sprinting flat-out. They were cruising.
"Good," I muttered into the wind. "Gives us a chance to catch—"
The world changed.
It wasn't gradual. One moment we were on vibrant grassland, dotted with normal scrub and the occasional tree. The next, the earth just…soured.
The green ended in a jagged, ugly line.
Beyond it, the ground turned dark and sticky-looking, choked with straggling red thorns that grew in furious tangles. Vines wrapped around each other like they were strangling for dominance, all of it pulsing with a sickly, oily sheen. A faint, chemical haze hung low over the ground, shimmering in the light.
The smell hit a second later.
Rot and metal and something caustic that made my nose sting even through the filters in my mask. Cesar slowed on his own, paws skidding a bit at the edge of the blight, hackles rising as his instincts screamed nope in three different languages.
My HUD pinged a warning. Blight markers. Toxic particulate density. A bunch of numbers I really didn't want to test with my lungs.
The waypoint in my Focus kept moving.
Right into the dead zone.
"Of course," I groaned. "Of course you assholes flew into a blight patch."
The marker drifted deeper into the red tangle, arcing along some invisible path. Maybe a hidden landing pad. Maybe just a clearing where the poison had killed everything extra dead.
Either way, it was smack in the middle of the toxic garden from hell.
I cursed, long and heartfelt.
"Really appreciate your commitment to being the worst, Enclave," I muttered, staring at the waypoint as it marched deeper into the hazard zone. "Couldn't have landed in a nice, normal, non-lethal field, huh?"
I pulled up the map in my HUD and immediately hated everything.
The waypoint pulsed cheerfully somewhere in the middle of the blight, the overlay helpfully tracing out "safe-ish" routes and then slapping big red Xs over all of them. Even if my helmet filters were still at factory spec (spoiler: they weren't), there was no way I was crossing a toxic briar patch like that and making it to wherever the Enclave had set down in under two hours.
And that was if I didn't lose a lung on the way.
"Son of a bitch," I muttered, zooming the map in and out like that would magically make a road appear.
Nothing. Just thorns, poison, and bad life choices.
I exhaled hard. "We can't go straight," I told Cesar, rubbing his neck. "Gotta regroup. See if the Kansani have some blightland parlor tricks they forgot to mention."
He huffed like he didn't love the idea of retreat either, then turned without needing more direction, loping back the way we came.
◇ ◇ ◇
By the time we crested the last rise and the clearing came back into view, smoke still curled lazily from the ground and the air smelled like burned metal and ozone.
Wasn't empty anymore, though.
Boone's silhouette was the first thing I picked out: long rifle slung, posture that said "I am relaxed" and micro-adjustments that said "I can put a round between your eyes before you blink." Beside him stood Warchief Jorta, Sula's uncle, broad and stone-faced, striped armor splashed with fresh dust. On his other side, one-armed Tarn, stump wrapped and spear lashed across his back in a way that said missing a limb was an inconvenience, not a disability.
Behind them: a full Kansani war party, picking through the wreckage like very angry, very armed crows.
They were dragging Enclave bodies into rows, poking curiously at the Heavy's corpse, cutting cables off the fried net that had held Cesar. A couple were already arguing over who got which piece of unfamiliar tech.
Then somebody finally looked up.
A warrior near the edge of the clearing froze, eyes going huge as he took in the sight of me riding a gigantic black wolf out of the trees like something from a very specific kind of nightmare.
His spear clattered out of his hands.
"WOLF LORD!" he screamed, voice cracking. "THE WOLF LORD COMES!"
Dozens of heads snapped our way. Bows came up. Spears leveled. A few of the younger warriors outright panicked, shouting over each other in Kansani, the words "demon" and "bad omen" somewhere in there.
Cesar tensed under me, muscles going tight, a low growl starting in his chest.
"HOLD!" I roared, my throat already raw.
The word cracked across the clearing like a shot.
Tarn stared at me for a long beat like his brain was buffering, then barked out a laugh that sounded like it hurt his ribs.
"You would somehow be able to tame such a beast," he guffawed. "Can't pick up an orphan pup like a normal person, nooo, got to go for the king of beasts."
A few of the warriors snorted despite themselves. The one who'd screamed was still clutching his spear like it owed him money and might run off to join the Legion at any second.
Cesar shifted under me, muscles tight, eyes tracking every Kansani with the hyper-focused stare of something that had spent five years being shot at by everyone. He was one bad twitch away from deciding this was a trap.
Jorta stepped forward.
The Warchief walked like the clearing belonged to him and the earth was just borrowing itself. Stripes stark on his armor, one hand resting casually on the haft of his axe, not a hint of fear anywhere in his stride. He stopped a few paces from Cesar's nose.
Cesar growled, deep and warning, lips curling just enough to show teeth. A couple of younger warriors flinched like they expected him to leap.
"You two know each other?" I asked, because I could read the body language and I did not love what it was saying.
Jorta did not flinch. Did not reach for his weapon. He just watched Cesar like a man inspecting an old scar.
"We have fought," he said. "In the past."
There was a lot packed into the way he said past.
"That's all it is now," I said. "Past."
Cesar rumbled, clearly filing "past" under "suspicious human concepts."
I reached down and flicked him lightly on the ear.
He stopped growling. It wasn't instant, but it was definite. He huffed, looked away, and did the wolf equivalent of sulking, which mostly involved pointedly ignoring the man he'd apparently tried to eat before.
A ripple went through the war party. That was the moment it stopped being "the Wolf Lord" and started being "Rion's…thing" in their heads.
"We will see," Jorta said, eyes lingering on Cesar for a heartbeat longer before he turned to the rest of the clearing.
Boone gave me a little nod from behind him, the "you didn't die, nice" variety. Tarn just shook his head like this was somehow exactly how he expected my afternoon to go.
Jorta took it all in at once. The cratered earth. The shredded net. The ruined power armor with World Cleaver still buried in its skull. The Enclave bodies in their thick, unfamiliar armor. Smoke still curling off a few cracked plates.
"Boone told me of shadows and abductions," he said. "Girls taken from the Grove."
He didn't waste words asking me to re-explain. He just looked at the Enclave heavy, at the scorched gouges where Vertibird rotors used to be, at the absolute state of the battlefield.
"Seems it was more than shadows," he said quietly.
To the Kansani, the Enclave had been rumor. Legion whispers about other raiders in the dark. Stories told around fires, about "ghost-soldiers" with thunder rifles and metal birds. Stuff you tell kids to make them stay close to camp.
Now there were corpses in unfamiliar armor at his feet.
Proof.
Jorta's jaw tightened. "Their first act toward us is to steal our young." He didn't raise his voice, but every warrior within earshot went still. "That makes them an enemy. One to be wary of."
His gaze followed the churned trail of my return, out past the grove, to the horizon where the bright plains bled into that ugly line of red thorns and poison.
"They are in the Blighted Land," he said.
Not a question.
"It would be the only reason you are not still chasing them."
I slid off Cesar's back, boots squelching in churned dirt, ribs filing their usual complaints. "Vertibird set down somewhere inside," I said. "I've got maybe two hours in that crap before my lungs go on strike. Timer stops in ruins and caves, so I can hopscotch through those, but…"
I spread my hands.
"We both know that's not enough to wander blind. Best case, I drop halfway and die in a very ironic bush. Worst case, they move while I'm busy choking to death."
I nudged one of the Enclave corpses with my boot. "Their helmets probably handle the blight better than mine. Filters, gel, whatever other nasty surprises they packed in there."
Jorta's eyes went to the bodies.
He gave the smallest jerk of his chin. That was enough.
Kansani broke off in small groups, moving with that grim, efficient purpose they save for salvage and funerals. They started stripping helmets from the Enclave dead, checking seals, tapping lenses, weighing them like they were poisonous fruit.
The usual Kansani giddiness around new tech just…wasn't there.
An Ironbone woman I recognized by the burn scars on her forearms took a helmet from another warrior and turned it carefully in her hands. A small doll with one arm ripped off hung from her belt, tied there with a scrap of cloth.
Parent, my brain supplied. Probably of one of the missing girls.
She stared at the helmet a beat too long, then passed it to another Ironbone without a word and bent to pick up a fallen rifle instead, grip tightening until her knuckles went white under their ash paint.
"This'll help," I said, nodding toward the helmets. "But it'd be better if we had a path. Someone who knows how to walk that rot without dying."
Jorta nodded once. "I can think of only one."
"Please tell me you're not about to say 'the cursed hermit beyond the poisoned river,'" I said.
"Carrion," he said.
I blinked.
Took my brain a second to dig it up. Sula's voice, months ago: big bastard, spine blade, doesn't talk much, takes what we give; Focus on his head glowing like mine; lone trader rule; "we don't bother him, he doesn't bother us."
"The greenskin trader," I said.
"Greenskins are immune to the sickness of the blight," Jorta said. "We have seen them walk through it. Eat it."
He did not bother to hide how much that sentence disturbed him.
"If anyone knows the pathways," he finished, "it will be him."
"Any idea where he might be?" I asked.
Jorta's mouth flattened.
"No," he said. "Carrion does not keep a regular trail. He comes when it suits him. Leaves the same way."
Boone shifted his rifle, speaking up from behind the Warchief. "He's always been hard to pin down. Not a clumsy brute like the others. You don't hear him unless he wants you to."
"Can't just go knock on his door, then," I muttered.
Boone shook his head once. "Other Greenskins don't like him either. We can't even check their camps. Closest you get to 'help' is them trying to eat you."
Typical Greenskins: big, loud, deeply stupid, and convinced anything smaller than them is either food or a projectile.
"Right," I said. "So using them as guides is out on account of the whole 'being on the menu' thing."
Jorta looked past us, toward the horizon. The sun was sinking, painting the edge of the blight in ugly red and gold. He let out a slow breath through his nose.
"We return to the Grove," he said. "We will speak with the merchants who trade with Greenskin clans. Ask where they have seen Carrion, where he takes his wares."
A murmur went through the warriors. Shoulders sagged a little. No one argued.
Jorta continued. "We move into the blight without a path, we die in it. Rest for now. At first light, we begin searching for him."
He didn't need to say the next part. Every Kansani here knew the ledger: every hour lost was an hour the girls were deeper behind enemy lines.
I let out a breath that felt too big for my chest.
"Yeah," I said softly. "Tomorrow, then."
I walked back to the Enclave heavy's corpse.
World Cleaver's haft stuck up like a flag out of his shattered helmet. I wrapped my hands around it and yanked. There was resistance, then a wet crack as metal and bone finally gave and the axe tore free.
Smoke curled up out of the hole in his skull, carrying the distinct smell of cooked meat and burnt wiring. Whatever systems he'd had left were past saving. Whatever was left of him wasn't far behind.
"Shame," I muttered. "Would've been nice to steal the suit."
I looked over the ruined armor: warped plates, blown-out joints, gel turned into useless slag.
Survival outweighed greed.
I turned away, scanning the battlefield one last time as the Kansani started their organized chaos of salvage and departure. Broken trees. Spent casings. Scraps of Enclave armor. The shredded remains of the net that had held Cesar.
Something tan and familiar half-buried in the dirt caught my eye.
I walked over and bent down, pulling it free.
My Deathclaw leather coat.
It was scuffed, dust-choked, one sleeve torn, but the weight in my hands was the same. I lifted it to my face and inhaled.
Under the smoke and blood and ozone, it still smelled like me… and just a hint of something warmer. Sula's scent, clinging to the collar where she'd leaned into me, laughing, annoyed, alive.
My throat tightened.
"I'll get you back," I said, quietly enough that only the coat and maybe Cesar could hear it.
I shrugged it on, the leather settling around my shoulders like a promise, and followed the others as we started the long walk back to the Grove.
The walk back to the Grove felt wrong.
Kansani marches were usually loud. Even after a battle, even carrying their dead, there was always bragging, shit-talking, arguments about who got the best kill, someone reenacting a particularly stupid axe throw. Grief and bravado came braided together.
This time, they were quiet.
Boots crunched over dirt and stone. Armor creaked. No one sang. No one laughed. The young had been taken, and their lives were too new for cheerful tales to have grown around them. No stories yet. Just absence.
Cesar padded under me, each step heavy but careful, like he knew he was in someone else's village and was trying very hard not to break it.
By the time we reached the gates, the vanguard had clearly done their job: word of "the Wolf Lord walking with Rion" had raced ahead of us.
Did not make the reaction calmer.
People on the palisade walls leaned out, eyes wide. A few outright screamed when they saw Cesar's full size, pointing and shouting Wolf Lord! and demon hound! in equal measure. Mothers dragged children back from the main thoroughfare. Warriors grabbed weapons on reflex before recognizing Kansani colors around us instead of raiders.
Cesar huffed, ears flicking back, clearly picking up on the fear and not loving it.
"Easy, boy," I murmured, scratching his neck.
"Enough."
Jorta didn't shout, but his voice cut through the noise like a blade. The Warchief stepped forward into the open, between Cesar and the tightening ring of nervous Kansani. His presence alone straightened spines.
"Calm," he commanded. "All of you."
The shouting tapered, not gone, but tamped down enough that one voice could punch through.
"Jorta!"
A woman pushed through the crowd, scars like a map across her arms and throat. She still wore part of her war harness, as if she'd come straight from patrol or training. Her eyes were wild.
"Jorta," she said again, fiercer. "Are the rumors true?! That men of shadow have taken our children?"
The crowd leaned in on that word: children.
Jorta turned fully to her, giving her the respect of his full attention.
"Yes, Kanker," he said, naming her. "Men who walk through the shadows have taken our young."
A ripple of anger went through the onlookers at confirmed, not rumor.
He continued, voice steady, carrying to the gathered.
"The Legion's tales of the Enclave, of old ones corrupted by greed, are not merely stories to frighten recruits. They are real."
There was a sharp intake of breath at Enclave. The word had been ghost and rumor until now.
"But they are not gods," Jorta went on. "Just as the Old Ones were not gods."
He lifted his hand and pointed back through the open gate.
The Kansani dragging the Enclave heavy's corpse by ropes chose that moment to pass through, armor scraping over the packed earth. The metal was gouged and scorched, World Cleaver's hole still visible in the ruined helmet.
"They are merely men encased in metal," Jorta said. "As you can see, they can bleed."
The corpse bumped over a rut. A smear of dried blood streaked the dirt.
"They can die."
Some of the fear in the crowd shifted, curdled, turned into anger.
"But they hide like cowards," Jorta continued, "using the Blight to shield themselves from our wrath."
He met Kanker's eyes, then those of others whose faces I recognized from the dance circle, from the training yard, from the noise and color of Kansani life.
"If not for the poisoned paths of the Blight," he said, "we would still be pursuing these vile cowards."
Murmurs this time. Agreement. Frustration. A shared understanding: it wasn't reluctance holding us back. It was the fact that the land itself would kill us if we just charged in.
He let that sink in, then shifted gears without softening.
"We will change this," he said. "We will find a path."
He turned slightly, so everyone could see his profile, the Wolf Lord at his back, the Enclave dead at his feet, the war party around us.
"We must find Carrion," he said. "The Greenskin trader. He walks the Blighted Land and returns alive. He will act as our guide."
He swept his gaze across the assembled Kansani.
"All those who have traded with Greenskins, who have seen Carrion, who have heard where he walks, will come to my hall."
His tone went from command to sentence.
"You have one hour."
There was no argument. People scattered instantly, some sprinting toward the merchants' quarter, others for the longhouses where traders and scouts slept.
I slid off Cesar's back, boots hitting packed earth, my body reminding me it had been a very long day.
Cesar stayed close, looming like a living shadow at my side. The Grove stared back at us: scarred, angry, scared.
I adjusted the collar of my Deathclaw coat, feeling the weight of leather and the faint scent of Sula still clinging to it.
"Hang on," I muttered under my breath, eyes flicking unconsciously toward the blighted horizon beyond the walls.
.......
The Warchief's hall felt too small.
An hour after we got back, it was packed wall to wall with Kansani. The air was hot with body heat and dust and fear, all of it boiling over into noise. Parents shouted over one another, warriors barked questions, elders tried and failed to calm people down.
One woman near the front wasn't shouting at all.
She was on her knees, palms pressed to the floor, shoulders shaking as she bawled openly. Every time the noise dipped, you could hear the broken edge of her sobbing slide through the hall like a knife.
Cesar lay at my feet, chin on his paws, eyes half-lidded but alert, watching everyone. Most people gave him a wide berth. The smart ones gave him two.
Boone stood a few paces away from me, back straight, spine stiff, the set of his jaw doing a lot of work. His rifle was slung and unloaded, which was good, because the mood in here was rapidly approaching "someone gets stabbed just to vent."
It didn't take long.
A warrior near the front snapped, surging forward through the crowd. Other Kansani tried to grab him, but he shrugged them off, face twisted with grief and rage.
He had a sword in his hand.
He didn't come for me. That was almost funny, in a bleak way. I was the outsider, the guy riding the Wolf Lord, the one who'd brought doom on their heads if you squinted at the timeline wrong.
But I'd also put Enclave bodies on the ground.
Boone, on the other hand, had come back without a scratch.
He was closer too.
"That's who you go for?" I muttered under my breath.
The warrior lunged, blade up, shouting, "You! We trusted you to look after our children in the plains!"
Warriors on either side grabbed his arms, wrestling his sword off its killing line. The edge never got closer than a few arm-lengths to Boone, but symbolism counted.
Boone didn't flinch. Didn't even raise his hands.
The warrior fought his own people like they were the enemy. "How could anyone sneak up on you, Sharpshooter?!" he roared. "We trusted you!"
He spat on the floor between them.
"You are a traitor," he snarled. "I will never accept you as War Chief when the time comes. I will kill you first."
The hall went dead quiet at that.
Future War Chief stuff isn't exactly whispered in Kansani circles, but it's not something you yell in front of the Warchief and half the tribe either.
Boone's expression didn't change. If anything, his shoulders dropped half an inch, like the words found a spot they'd been aiming for all along.
The warrior wasn't done.
He jabbed his chin toward me without taking his eyes off Boone. "And where are your wounds, Boone?" he shouted. "How come the Witness is caked in his and the enemies' blood—"
A few heads turned my way. Yeah, still stained. Still smelled like Enclave and ozone.
"—but you are unharmed? Clean of dirt and blood!" he demanded. "Did you not fight for our children?!"
Boone didn't answer. Didn't protest. Didn't point out the dart prick on his neck or the missing hours. He just stood there and took it, like every word lined up with something he already believed about himself.
The worst part was that the concept of sleep darts is hard enough to explain to me, and I speak Pre-Fall. Trying to tell a guy who killed his first machine with a spear that his war hero got tagged with a fancy nap-needle?
Not going to land right now.
The warrior strained against the hands holding him. "He abandoned them!" he howled. "He LET them be taken!"
Cesar lifted his head, ears tipping forward, a low growl starting in his chest. No one wanted to be the guy who got within snapping distance of the Wolf Lord, but grief makes bad decisions look noble.
Before it could get uglier, Jorta moved.
The Warchief stepped between Boone and the warrior so sharply it was like he'd teleported, cloak flaring, axe at his side. He planted himself there, full height, full authority, and the room remembered who he was.
"That is enough," Jorta said.
The warrior kept glaring, chest heaving, but he stopped fighting the hands on his arms.
Jorta didn't bother with subtlety.
"They passed Boone because they were not fighting him," he said, voice carrying to the back of the hall. "They drugged him. Stole time from him. Stole his strength with poison."
Murmurs. The word for that in Kansani carried the weight of "coward's tactic."
"If anything," Jorta went on, "the fault lies with me."
He turned, including the entire hall in his self-indictment.
"For not sending more warriors with Boone and Sula," he said. "I believed they would be safe, being only a few miles from the Grove."
His jaw tightened. His voice rose.
"I believed our enemies were still Legion and machines. I did not account for shadows wearing the skin of Old Ones."
He slammed the butt of his axe into the floor. The sound cracked like thunder.
"The fault lies with me for my arrogance!"
The hall flinched at the volume, at the confession. You don't get many Warchiefs standing up and saying "this is on me" out loud. Even if everyone thinks it.
Respect for Jorta runs deep in the Kansani. The warrior who'd been ready to carve Boone into pieces finally stopped struggling completely. The fight went out of his shoulders, leaving only the raw, ugly grief behind.
He lowered his head, but didn't apologize. The glare he flicked at Boone from under his brows before he stepped back said everything.
This wasn't over.
This man was going to be a thorn in Boone's side from now on.
Once everyone had either shouted themselves empty or been stared into silence by Jorta, the Warchief turned away from the raw edge of grief and toward the cluster of merchants gathered near the hall's side wall.
"Traders," he said. "Step forward."
A handful did. Not many. Kansani merchants weren't a huge crowd on the best of days, and half of these had clearly been dragged in mid-meal or mid-haggle. A couple still had ink on their fingers. One had a bolt of cloth tucked under her arm like she'd forgotten she was carrying it.
"Tell me what you know of Carrion's trail," Jorta said. No preamble. No softening. "Where you have seen him. Where he takes his goods."
They traded looks the way skittish horses do, then one older man with sun-creased eyes and a chest full of trinkets stepped up first. Braver, or just used to talking.
"I saw him last," he said, "at the Bone Market. Two… maybe three moons past." He frowned, counting harvest days. "He traded machine hearts and blight-shrubs. Said he walked from the eastern pits."
Eastern blight. That could mean a hundred different cursed places.
"When next?" Jorta asked.
A younger woman stepped in, braids tied with metal washers that clinked when she moved. "Before the Legion pushed harder south, he sometimes came to the river road," she said. "By the broken bridge. Took our old metal, gave us medicines and strange liquor."
"Last time?" I asked, unable to stop myself.
She shot me a quick look, then answered, "Two weeks before word of the Bull coming north spread. After that, nothing."
Another trader, this one stockier, with a scar across his nose, grunted. "Once people started whispering that Legate Lanius would be in Kansani lands," he said, "Carrion vanished."
"Spooked him," the first merchant agreed. "He does not like the Legion. Says they 'stink of bad ends.'" His mouth twitched like he couldn't quite decide whether to be amused or disturbed at the memory.
"So the most recent trail you have," Jorta said, "is from before the Bull cast his shadow on our plains."
They all nodded, one by one. Weeks old, some months. Nothing fresh. Nothing you'd bet a rescue on.
It wasn't good news.
But no one in the hall turned on the merchants. There were no shouts of "why didn't you stop him?" or "why didn't you follow?" They brought what they had, and everyone knew the Greenskin trader moved like smoke when he wanted to.
If he didn't want to be found, you didn't.
Jorta absorbed it all, the way he did: no outward flinch, just a tightening at the corner of his eyes, a small shift in how he held his shoulders.
"Very well," he said at last. "You have done what you can. You are not at fault."
Some of the tension bled out of the merchants' faces at that. They bowed their heads and stepped back into the crowd, relieved to be spectators again instead of the center of attention.
I let my breath out slowly.
So: no recent sighting. No neat map. No "he'll be here at dawn like always." Just the knowledge that somewhere out there, in the poisoned red mess between here and the Enclave's toybox, was a Greenskin who knew how to walk the Blight and not die.
People started to drift out of the hall in clumps.
No wailing now, just that heavy, hollow silence of people who have to go home and look at empty bedrolls. The sound of sandals and boots on wood, the rustle of cloaks, the occasional choked curse. One by one, families and warriors peeled away until only a few elders and Jorta's closest remained.
I was debating whether to go collapse somewhere or go straight to beating myself up in a corner when a voice cut in from the back, smooth as oil.
"Perhaps," it said, "you are asking the wrong people where to look."
A man stepped out of the shadows near one of the carved pillars.
He wore Kansani-cut cloth, but the styling was off: layered like a Carja noble, orange and red accents worked into the fabric in ways that didn't match the Grove's patterns. His hood was down, dark hair cut close, face calm in that bland, politely interested way that always meant liar.
Jorta's eyes narrowed. "Did you remember something, merchant?" he asked, hopeful but wary.
"We haven't traded with the elusive Carrion," the man said. "But we have kept an eye on the Greenskin."
The voice hit my ears and my whole spine went cold.
I knew that tone. That smug, always-a-half-step-ahead cadence. The polite little blade hidden in every word.
My hand drifted toward my revolver on pure reflex.
He turned just enough that the light from the hearth caught his face.
Fox-sharp features. Dark eyes that saw too much. The faintest of smiles, like everything was going according to some internal script only he could read.
Vulpes Inculta.
"…you've got to be kidding me," I muttered.
"How the hell did you get into the Grove of all places?!" I snapped before my brain could suggest diplomacy.
Vulpes smiled.
Not wide. Not friendly. Just that small, foxish curl of the mouth that said he was enjoying this way too much.
"Now that wouldn't be very wise of me, now would it, Remnant?" he said.
Yeah. There it was. The nickname I did not remember giving him permission to use.
Behind me, I felt Cesar tense. The big wolf hadn't growled yet, but his ears went back a fraction, and his tail did that slow, irritated flick. He remembered the Legion smell.
Jorta's gaze slid from Vulpes to me. "You know this man?" he asked.
"Unfortunately," I said.
I took a step forward, not enough to block Jorta, just enough to make it very clear whose problem the fox in the room was.
"I believe he's called Vulpes Inculta," I said. "I don't know his exact rank, but he's part of the Legion's frumentarii. Their intelligence network. Spies, saboteurs, professional creeps."
Boone's fingers twitched where they rested near his belt. He did not like the word "frumentarii." Couldn't blame him. Last time he and Vulpes were in the same time zone, things had gotten…messy.
Murmurs ran through the few Kansani still present. Legion. Here. In their hall.
Jorta's face went very still.
"You walk into my Grove," he said to Vulpes, tone flat, "into my hall, under my roof… and reveal yourself only now."
Vulpes inclined his head slightly. Not quite a bow. More like acknowledging a point on a map.
"I walk where information walks, Warchief," he said. "The Grove is… important. These days, important places attract attention."
His eyes flicked to me, then to Cesar, then back.
"And interesting company."
Cesar let out a soft, rumbling exhale that sounded very close to a growl. I scratched his neck without looking, mostly to keep him from deciding "Legion spy" was just a funny way to say "chew toy."
Jorta didn't bother pretending this was fine.
"Give me a reason," he said, "not to have you dragged outside and fed to the Wolf Lord."
Vulpes didn't so much as glance at Cesar.
"Because," he said calmly, "you want your children back."
The hall went colder somehow.
"And I," he continued, "want the men who took them just as badly as you do."
The reminder hit me like a mental slap: the Legion hates the Enclave.
Not in the "professional rivalry" way. In the "there is a long, bloody story here and I absolutely do not have time for the director's cut" way. Whatever that history was, it ended in "Legion hunting Nazis."
Good enough for now.
"You're not doing this out of the goodness of your heart," I said. "You could go hunt them yourself if you wanted to."
"So what do you want?" Jorta demanded, voice hard.
Vulpes' smile sharpened by a fraction. "We could," he agreed. "We know they hide in the blight and have developed some methods to navigate it ourselves."
He folded his hands loosely in front of him, the picture of calm. "I have only shown myself because I have much to gain by doing so."
"Which is?" I asked.
His gaze flicked to me.
"Access," he said. "To the medical machine with Old One knowledge."
Click.
Curie.
My brain filled in the rest fast enough to make me queasy. Curie's diagnostics. Curie's databanks. Curie reading scans and saying terrible words in a gentle voice. Caesar, sitting like a man carved out of stone, pretending the pain was beneath him.
"You want her to try and cure Caesar's illness," I said.
For the first time since I'd met him, Vulpes actually looked surprised.
"How?" he blurted, mask cracking just a hair.
The Kansani stared at us in a ripple of confusion that hardened, all at once, into something much darker at the name.
Caesar.
The Bull. The Tyrant of New Rome. The reason half the border stories involve fire and ash.
Jorta's eyes went flat.
He moved.
One second Vulpes was standing there, smug and composed; the next Jorta had him by the throat, fingers like iron hooks digging into the cloth at his neck. He slammed the Legion spy back against the nearest carved post hard enough to rattle the hanging charms.
"You are bold," Jorta snarled, face inches from Vulpes', "to ask us to heal the Bull."
Spittle flecked his teeth on Bull.
"He has brought more death to my people than any plague," Jorta went on, voice rising. "I want those girls back. I would walk into the blight myself for them. But I would rather risk their lives, and the life of the girl who I have brought up as my own, by struggling through the Choking Red than help heal the Bull, who will kill far more."
His grip tightened. Vulpes' hands came up, not to fight, just to keep his airway intact.
"So tell me," Jorta hissed, "why we should agree to this deal."
Vulpes choked, coughed, and managed to get enough breath to croak, "Because… the next person… to wear the Crimson Laurel… will not honor the truce."
Jorta's fingers stilled for half a heartbeat.
Vulpes pressed on, voice ragged but intent.
"They will launch a campaign… on the Kansani," he rasped, "to consolidate their hold on the throne."
The words dropped into the hall like stones into deep water.
I felt the temperature change.
Because what he was really saying, under all the Legion polish, was simple:
If Caesar dies sick, whoever takes his place comes north with fire and banners.
If Caesar lives… the truce might hold.
Between us and the Enclave, the Blight, the kidnapped girls, and now the looming shadow of a Legion succession war, the knot in my head tightened another turn.
Cesar shifted at my side, sensing the tension, a low rumble building in his chest.
"Fantastic," I murmured, mostly to myself. "So saving the kids now might mean saving the Tyrant later."
I met Vulpes' dark eyes over Jorta's hand.
And for the first time since this whole mess started, I honestly wasn't sure which choice was worse.
Jorta showed, in that moment, why he was more than a man with a spear.
He was a leader.
And leaders made the hard choices that everyone else got to hate them for.
He held Vulpes' gaze for one long, murderous heartbeat, then unclenched his hand and let go. The Legion spy dropped, hitting the floor on one knee and one hand, sucking in breath like it hurt.
"We agree to heal the Bull," Jorta growled.
"Jorta!" Boone snapped, the word coming out sharper than I'd ever heard him speak to a Warchief.
Jorta's head turned a fraction.
"I HAVE SPOKEN!" he roared.
The hall flinched. Even Cesar's ears pinned back.
The Warchief stepped away from Vulpes, shoulders tight, expression like someone who'd just bitten down on a piece of metal and refused to spit it out.
"Once we have the girls," he said, the words like hammered iron, "and ripped out the spines of the Enclave, and dealt with Hell's Angel…"
There was a whole separate quest log in that name, but he rolled past it.
"…we heal the Bull."
He looked down at Vulpes like the man was something unpleasant stuck to his boot.
"That is the bargain," Jorta said. "Now speak what you know of Carrion's whereabouts."
Vulpes spit a little blood onto the floor, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and smiled that fox-thing again.
"This is why New Rome respects the Kansani," he said. "You honor your oaths, even when you hate what was promised."
"Out with it," Jorta growled.
Vulpes inclined his head. "We attempted to capture the one you call Carrion," he said. "We hunted him along the blight's edge. He proved… uncooperative."
"Good," I muttered.
"So we pressed harder," Vulpes went on. "Drove him toward ground we thought would corner him."
His eyes flicked to me, then to my Focus, then back. "Instead, he did something that made further pursuit… unwise."
"Which is?" I asked, already not liking where this was going.
"He entered a Cauldron," Vulpes said.
The hall went very quiet.
Cauldrons.
If you grew up in Horizon country, those weren't just words. They were the skeleton keys behind half the tribes' ghost stories. GAIA's machine wombs. Buried factories that still spat out creatures long after they should've gone cold. Dangerous machine nests where only the brave and the suicidally foolish went diving.
And that was before you added Blight and Enclave and Legion spies to the mix.
"Ah, shit," I said out loud.
A couple of elders gave me identical disapproving looks. I ignored them.
Because there it was, clear as any quest marker:
I had a dungeon crawl to complete.