In a split second, the creature charged at a speed nothing that huge should ever have the right to move at, Shawn took a quick assessment, feet tensed and ready to spring away.

  This thing was massive and armored, and those spines on it could likely rip right through any one of them. He wasn’t sure his barrier would withstand a concentrated force of two tons of angry monster. “Garrett, get to high ground with Regia, stay out of its range! Trask, Raine, hit-and-run tactics! Cire, Varrick get up on that scaffolding and out of its range, there's more barrels of oil up there!”

  “What the hell are you gonna do?!” Cire screamed out

  “Find a soft spot!”

  He triggered the fme dart reserves that he’d mentally prepared, flicking two of them in rapid succession at the charging creature, while everyone dispersed. The fiery bursts impacted and failed to ignite the ursina, sending a tingle of dread down his spine. This thing was built differently, and his normal tricks weren’t going to cut it. The beast rampaged across the distance as various rifle rounds peppered its hide and body. The bullets from the team all failed to penetrate that thick skull, and it charged at them with a flurry of six legs and leaped through the air with murder daggers on its forwardmost limbs–starting with Shawn.

  He waited for it to commit, then sprung to the side with a burst of speed, using his wings to propel him out of danger, going into an evasive roll and coming out of a tumble and back up on his feet in an instant. He cycled the action, right as the creature rammed into the cart he’d been adjacent to, sending it tumbling and crashing into the cavern wall.

  Shawn took the opportunity to fire at point bnk, and shoved the barrel against its side and fired. The fireball at the end did more damage than the bullet did, and the beast recoiled in pain for a brief instant. It swiped the weapon from his hand, lunging with a maw of jagged teeth. His golden barrier was the only thing that kept it from chomping down on him, tumbling with the gncing blow that left him gasping.

  “Cover Shawn!” Cire screamed out. She fired relentlessly after she had shimmied up the scaffolding, taking potshots when she could.

  Shawn was already scrambling out of the way, firing off an icy burst with his other hand, coating the beast's forward limbs in ice and slowing it down, but not stopping it. It bashed the ice and shattered it, but it bought him a moment to fire off two more fire bolts, striking it in the chest. Once again, the fmes failed to take hold. “Fire ineffective, Garrett, we need a new strategy!”

  “Their hide is weaker on the fnks and under the belly!” He called out, while Regia and he flitted to the fnks. But this creature wasn’t limited to the ground, and pounced through the air, barely missing Regia as she swerved her body mid-air.

  “We need to slow it down, death by a thousand cuts!” Shawn called out, taking aim at the fnk and getting a few wounds that drew blood, but the immediate impact wasn’t apparent.

  Trask appeared in a crawling, vaporous mass of shadows and went in for a quick strike with his daggers before fading back into a shadowy mass while the ursina was distracted by Regia. She swerved away from a deadly raking strike of cws and fired a torrent of high-pressure water--a thin, narrow beam of concentrated force. it cut through the flesh, like a powerful water cutter he'd seen and used in industry.

  Note to self, if we survive this, Regia might have a solution to some of our production issues--

  This thing is going to eat us, and you're worried about mad science?!

  The beast sailed through the air–this time, he knuckled down, feeling the electric spark in his arms and legs as he drew his force barrier, pulling a massive charge from his core. He managed to deflect away the blow from the creature with a bash of the powerful barrier.

  Meanwhile, Trask leaped onto its back and swayed as the fierce monster tried to buck him off, and he fired straight down into the spine. The round did nothing but piss it off, and the others continued to try fire. Trask, however, had much better luck with his raking cws, now taking on a shadowy, shimmery texture and tearing gouges deep into its back.

  Raine tried to find a spot as well with a spear, but the weapon splintered from a side swipe of one of those deadly limbs, and was smashed to the side by one massive paw, rolling and blood spilling from a deep cut that penetrated the armor. He shouted in pain and tumbled to a halt, blood seeping from the deep wound.

  This isn’t working Shawn, we need to immobilize it, our weapons and gestalts aren’t powerful enough to deal with this thing!

  Tell me something I don’t know! He needed a grenade uncher or something with armor-piercing capabilities, even as the hide was riddled with wounds that barely did any damage.

  “Cire, I’m gonna lure it by the barrels, be ready to dump them over!” he called out.

  He shot off another bst of fire to get the creature's attention, and away from Raine, still recovering from the blow, with Trask pulling him to safety. Varrick had grabbed a massive rock pick, hefting it with both hands, lunging when the creature was distracted, angling at one of the rearward legs.

  The mining equipment might not have been intended as a weapon, but the sheer weight and sharpness did the rest. The pick head pierced into the limb with some resistance, and the creature reared in agony, shing out in retaliation. Varrick rolled to the side to avoid the rebuttal attack, colliding into a rock with his back as he dodged those furious swings.

  Shawn held off on his force barrier as he loosed another fire dart, even though it was little more than a trigger to get the creature’s attention. His force barrier could take a direct hit at full force--barely--but he had another idea: limiting the creature's movement. So far, he’d observed the barrier could be held and had resistance, but moved almost effortlessly.

  He was done pying around, this murder bear was a threat and had to die before it made a meal out of all of them. He spotted two tall clusters of stagmites opposite one another, and had an idea.

  The creature roared, narrowing its eyes and making a low rumbling sound. The quills on its back stood out on end, vibrating angrily.

  It didn’t take a genius to know this thing was the apex predator in this ecosystem for a reason, and those spines going on end meant he should not be anywhere near this thing. Garrett screamed out a warning. “Take cover, it can fire off spines!”

  The warning came too te for Trask as he was only partly in cover, firing his rifle and protecting Raine when a barrage of spines shot out, hitting him once in the torso and arm. He tumbled to the ground, screaming, and the ursina ignored them. It instead ran right at Shawn’s covered position, more quills standing on end and vibrating.

  He flicked out his hand with a mental release of Etteria energy once the creature was committed to the charge, spines flying and whizzing past his head at an uncomfortable distance. He flicked a bst of ice at the ground adjacent to its forward path, hoar frost climbing across the uneven, debris-strewn ground.

  “Cire, Garrett, get ready!” he screamed out. Once the ursina was close enough, he threw all his power into the second portion of his trap, all while eying with dread the maw of teeth open up on the beast, in anticipation of an imminent chicken dinner.

  His golden barrier went up with a fre of intense light–wedged between the two columns of stagmites. The creature stalled, skidding on ice and smashing into the barrier head-first. Bright yellow fissures emerged across the impromptu wall, but the barrier held, and the ursina grunted, disoriented, and shaking off the impact.

  "Now!"

  Cire and Garrett heaved the open barrel down and doused the creature in the viscous oil, spshing everywhere. Shawn wasted no more time and swerved to the side, firing once he was clear of the barrier with a single, well-aimed fire dart. “Try shrugging that one off!” he screamed out.

  The entire oil pool–and the ursina–erupted into fme hot enough that he felt the surge of heat over the distance. It let out a piercing scream that was felt like it almost ruptured his eardrums, leaving him staggered onthe ground, holding his ears in a futile effort to block the noise. Garrett was trying to shout something, but all he could hear was the cries of the damned thudding into his skull as the ursina turned its ire–at him.

  His eyes widened–this thing was using its st moments alive to make him dinner?! He sprung up to the air and used his wings to glide. He heard that violent vibration of spines quivering, and banked right just as a volley of spines flitted past where he’d just been, like a deadly stream of antiaircraft fire.

  He panted and fpped his wings with all his might, sliding between the narrow gaps between stactites, and the creature fired off fire-imbued spines, filling him with a slight moment of panic.

  He’d somehow made this fight even worse by setting this thing on fire. “Don’t let up! Keep shooting!”

  Garrett switched to his rifle and fired round after round of the shredder ammunition, tearing chunks of flesh off the monster–but its sheer scale allowed it to shrug off the damage. Another volley of quills shot at Garrett, embedding in the wooden scaffolding, and Cire ducked out of view just as a volley had shot at where her head had been. The deadly spines embedded into the rocks in one or two pces.

  The ursina had had enough of being on fire, and attempted to smother the fire by rolling on its side and belly, using the standing water that had pooled from Regia’s efforts to quench the fmes.

  A move he’d carefully calcuted.

  “Regia, hydro strike!”

  This was a tactic they’d worked on a couple of times. He had a vague understanding of the combinations gestalts could create, either nearby or with physical contact, but this was one he knew for certain. She doused the creature in water, and then with a bst of the hoar frost from his power, dangerous depleting his Etteria reserves, he froze the creature in position. It heaved and cracked the ice, but they’d its belly was now exposed. Before, it wouldn’t have been possible to attempt the risky attack angle. But now, it was an open opportunity.

  “Keep wearing it down!” Shawn called out with a loud cawing sound, and fired his rifle with everything he had. The quills didn’t grow on its stomach, and he could fire with impunity without reciprocal fire turning him into a pincushion, steadily advancing. Trask limped into view having glided through the shadows, and had ripped one of the spines sticking out of his leg, and stabbed deep into the belly of the monster, thrusting with all his might.

  But it shattered the ice by extending its spines, propping it upright after a few hits. Shawn grabbed Trask and put up the barrier to shield them from a shing strike of one of its legs, sending them both spinning, with Trask groaning. his barrier shattered from the impact, but it had saved their lives.

  “This has got to be the biggest damn ursina I’ve ever seen! I’m eating its heart when we kill it!”

  “Assuming it doesn’t make us the next meal!” Shawn coughed. The barrier might cushion the blows, but it still felt like he got hit by a hundred and twenty kilos of American football linebacker. It was bleeding from the wounds on its stomach, fleshy bits dripping, and it coughed, shaking off the injury. It thrashed against the scaffolding, cracking the base support pilrs, and Cire and Garrett wobbled, holding on for dear life.

  “Cire, get out of there!” Shawn screamed, diving into the melee, grabbing the rifle, and rolling underneath its legs when it was distracted. He jammed the rifle point-bnk into one of the prior piercing injuries from Trask and fired unforgivingly, cycling the action as fast as Garrett.

  The piercing shriek of the creature filled the air, and he rolled back out before it could crush him, thrashing wildly as this new injury finally hit home in a way the others hadn’t.

  The cavern trembled more violently than before, and Shawn heard rocks crumbling around him. Those tremors from before had built into a full-blown earthquake, and the creature thrashed, firing off quills blindly, clipping Varrick in the wing with one piercing strike, and peppering the rocky terrain with deadly missiles. Shawn barely covered Trask against another deadly strike, the barrier cracking from the projectile hitting like a supersonic javelin.

  “Shawn, the ground is crumbling!” Regia screamed out. Shawn was still staggered–he’d used up too much Etteria from the protective barrier and felt a low burning in his chest, and a fissure opened up that resulted in the floor slowly colpsing. Trask hauled him to his feet, screaming to run.

  But Shawn wasn’t fast enough, and the ground colpsed beneath his feet, taking him, the ursina mere meters away, and sending them plunging into a sloping tunnel. He tumbled against the edges, his full body barrier fring, and he tucked his wings, to keep the limbs from being shattered from the impact.

  Pain was his existence as he bounced, slid, and ricocheted off the rocks in the sloped tunnel, one more gyrating mass part of the underground rockslide. This was pure survival, and his barrier flickered in protest against the assault. He pushed from his core with all his might, willing himself to force out one more second of protection.

  The sloped tunnel fed out into a narrow, necked-down shaft, too close quarters to fly. He fred his wings with all his might, anything to slow his fall, and heard Cire’s screams as the world above grew far away. He heard the whistle of air brush past as he scrabbled, slowing his fall–but not enough. A distant glow was below him, getting brighter.

  The unforgiving ground was coming up to meet him as he and the dying ursina tumbled to their deaths.

  But…when he looked down…

  …All he saw were the inky bck depths of the river.

  He saw Maggie, mouthing in fear, as the monsters took her from him, hair violently waving in the drowning depths. The biting pain of the icy water seeping into his body, and shutting him down, a bit at a time.

  Everything shutting down, in an ominous white static like old television channels with no signal. Death, coming to cim him, with a soul-shaking realization he wasn’t strong enough to save her.

  Don’t let me die, Shawn.

  He fred his barrier with every ounce of his being, and felt something split inside his core--a new sensation of pain as the ground rushed up to meet him.