Melenia set her gaze upon her mortal enemy—determined to defeat it, no matter what price she must pay.

  It wasn’t a rampaging beast or bloodthirsty jailbird this time around, but something far more insidious. A foe that could never be killed, only subdued for another day before resuming its unending quest to conquer her desktop—paperwork.

  Mel would gladly trade either enemy for the stack of documents obstructing the desktop in front of her. Hell, she’d rather face the kaiju single-handed, naked as the day she was born. She was tempted to put it off until tomorrow, but that would be a fatal mistake. This was an adversary that would never retreat, and whose might would grow every hour she left it alone.

  How did I get myself into this mess? I should have turned down that promotion and let someone else handle this mountain of requisitions, reports, and receipts.

  While she grumbled, most of her attention was elsewhere, signing and stamping the various sheets with a brisk efficiency. The reason why Mel had agreed to serve as the peacekeepers’ third in command—second with Earl out of action—was the same reason she would keep annotating documents while deciding how to utilize the settlement’s limited resources. There wasn’t anyone more qualified to do the job, and her people needed her.

  Melenia had always had a good head for figures and logistics, although she preferred to solve her problems with the blade of her axe. While Spencer and the other quartermasters could help with the distribution, transportation, and maintenance of supplies and equipment, that was only one aspect of the peacekeepers’ operation.

  In the days following the disaster, they had expanded their role from maintaining order to serving as Puppet Town’s first line of defense and de facto military, though they weren’t the only heavy hitters in the settlement, thank the gods.

  Much of her time was filled with meetings, overseeing various operations in the Ivory Plains, and drilling new recruits on the public green. But every minute she could spare was devoted to logistics and management—tasks that were just as important to the town’s ongoing survival in their own way.

  Dialla and Emily were working around the clock—doing more than their fair share, if Mel was being honest with herself—and the leaders of the various factions and hunting associations were pitching in however they could. Even still, it was a desperate struggle to keep their heads above water. There was an endless list of tasks that needed to be completed before the kaiju arrived, and sleep was in short supply.

  In addition to resolving the day-to-day disputes that were inevitable in a settlement of this size, it was the keepers’ job to man Puppet Town’s watchtowers, scout the biome for emerging threats, and come up with contingencies to deal with a wide range of disasters. Not to mention, coordinate joint operations with the militia, reestablish contact with Ord’s other settlements, and put teams together to solve any serious crimes.

  Fortunately, the last item was a rare occurrence after Dialla had threatened to hang or banish anyone who undermined the town’s security, but the rest was more than enough to fill every waking moment of Mel’s existence.

  Some of those responsibilities had been placed on the backburner, since everyone’s top priority was preparing for the imminent invasion of undead beasts—an army that made the attack they’d endured a few days back look like child’s play. She thought they had a decent chance of defeating the horde, thanks to the explosive growth Edge and the town’s other elites had undergone since leaving for the Savage Garden.

  Even still, Melenia was deeply worried.

  The titanic cephaloid was capable of breaching the walls and leveling the settlement all by itself, and the big bastard was far from alone. According to Sakura’s report, it had somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand reanimated creatures at its command, including a dozen stage-threes comparable to the elite bear Edge’s team had destroyed.

  The only dry spot in this stinking deluge of shit was that the squid only possessed animal-level intelligence—perhaps even less, since the kaiju was undead too.

  That silver lining made the impending conflict far simpler than the war with the Crimson Claws from a strategic standpoint, though the firepower at the kaiju’s command was far greater than the entire gang combined. The cursed thing is a literal meat wall for fuck’s sake, and those undead critters are no joke either.

  Regardless of the details, Mel’s people didn’t have a choice other than to use every trick at their disposal and hit the squid as hard as they could. If they didn’t find a way to destroy the kaiju before it reached the settlement, Puppet Town was going to get wiped off the map, and everyone living here would be dead as sure as tomorrow follows today.

  At least she would be able to participate in the decisive battle this time. She was still recovering from the concussion she’d received during the showdown with the Claws, but Doc had assured her she would be back in fighting shape before the undead arrived.

  The biggest problem… Well, the biggest problem is that supersized pile of rotten calamari. But the sticky widget is that we have to face the kaiju and its army at the same time. Each threat calls for completely different tactics, and we only have so many minutes, magicytes, and resources at our disposal.

  If at all possible, we need to figure out a way to distract, delay, or disable the horde, then concentrate our full power on the tentacled horror pulling the strings. Sakura said there’s a good chance that once the kaiju is out of the picture, Reanimation will run out of juice and the undead will collapse. Although, if we bet the farm on that strategy and that turns out not to be the case…

  Melenia shook her head and forced her thoughts away from such morbid topics. There was no point in worrying about variables that were outside of her sphere of control. She had enough on her plate to ruminate about as it was.

  It was her job to make sure her people were in the strongest position possible by the time the horde arrived. She just prayed that working together, the amazing warriors who called Puppet Town home could overcome the challenge at hand.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  We’ve been through hell more than once and lived to tell the tale. She picked up a fresh stack of papers, downed a cup of coffee in a single gulp, and started writing. I’ll just keep swinging my axe until they hit the ground or I do.

  ***

  Ander waved to the guards as he walked through the gate and stepped into the alchemists’ ward.

  The senior smith had spent considerable time here—learning how to use alchemical techniques to enhance various crafting processes—but it was his first time setting foot inside the walled-off section of district, since the anomaly had thrown their lives into chaos.

  He smiled as he eavesdropped on the apprentices walking by, discussing their latest invention or celebrating their success in synthesizing a new product. Ander devoted almost as many hours to teaching as he did to working at the Forge, and these animated conversations were music to his ears.

  Although many of the skills and ingredients they relied on were quite different, alchemists, smiths, and magitech crafters shared a great deal in common. All three professions used magic to infuse raw materials with various types of mana, allowing for combinations, transformations, and designs that would never have been possible using the conventional sciences Earth had relied on before the dawn of magic.

  Every form of crafting required diligent attention to detail, the vision to experiment with new ideas, and the dedication to keep hammering away until you ironed out the kinks and developed a finished product.

  Maybe I can set up an apprentice swap after this crisis is over. Having my people spend a month or two learning about alchemy will round out their education and broaden their horizons. Ander mulled the matter over while walking toward the building where he was meeting Melchior.

  Today, they had something far more serious in store than drinking and dancing until the sun rose or heading down to the firing range to test out the latest weapon one of them had cooked up, though the latter wasn’t too far off the mark from the reason they were meeting today.

  He bid good morning to the alchemist working behind the counter of the store filling the ground level of the structure, walked through a door in the back, and then made his way up a winding staircase until he reached the top of the tallest tower in the ward. Ander liked to tease Melchior about his “mad-scientist’s lair,” but the truth was he loved the view from up here just as much as his longtime friend and occasional rival.

  He didn’t bother to knock, since the senior alchemist had known he was coming from the minute he stepped through the gate, and stepped inside a spacious office. The walls were open to the Ivory Plains—warded so the wind didn’t disturb the contents—offering a spectacular view of Puppet Town and the biome beyond.

  Ander spent a few minutes gazing into the distance before greeting his peer. In part, to soothe his nerves before diving into the grim details of their dilemma, but mostly because the landscape stretching toward the horizon was just so damned beautiful. A jaw-dropping swath of magical planet that took his breath away, even after all these years.

  He would have stood there longer if the settlement wasn’t in danger, but since it was, he walked over to the chair in front of Melchior’s desk and plopped down with a sigh. If something is bothering you, the best way to deal with it is to roll up your sleeves, fire up the forge, and pound away until the metal is pure.

  While the men had sat like this many times before, today they were meeting in their official capacities as representatives of two of the town’s key industries—tasked to do everything in their power to eliminate the kaiju and its shambling legion with as little loss of life as possible.

  Dialla had granted them access to anything they needed from the settlements’ stockpiles, and together they hoped to make progress on two key objectives: devising a plan to destroy a portion of the horde as it crossed the Ivory Plains and coming up with a way to help the town’s elite warriors defeat the kaiju before it reached the settlement.

  Ander rubbed his temples, resisted the temptation to take a swig from the flask in his pocket, and then got down to business. With everyone’s lives hanging in the balance, he couldn’t afford to give this meeting of minds less than 100%, no matter how much he wanted to take the edge off his pervasive stress.

  He looked across the desk at what Melchior was working on—who was so absorbed by the design that he hadn’t spoken a word. It wasn’t the only project the man had been cooking up over the last two days, and Ander began thumbing through a stack of diagrams piled on one corner of the desk before reaching into his pack and pulling out a ream of his own.

  Eventually, they swapped stacks and kept reading, absorbing the plans the other man was proposing at a rate no one else in Puppet Town could match. When they reached the bottom of the pile, Melchior turned to him and said, “There are some clever ideas in there, although half of them aren’t feasible given the constraints we’re working under. But which are the best use of our limited time and resources?”

  This marked the beginning of an animated discussion that would continue throughout the day and well into the night. Ander lost track of the passage of time as the craftmasters bounced ideas off each other so fast that most people couldn’t have kept up—lost in an endless procession of concepts, arguments, and collaborations. Every now and again, he snapped back into the present whenever the discussion yielded an unusually promising proposal.

  “Unfortunately, most of my best products won’t work against this manner of threat.” Melchior sighed. “Since undead creatures don’t breathe or bleed, poisons are off the table, as are anticoagulants. Electricity will have a limited effect, as it can interfere with the signals controlling their muscles, but it won’t slow them down for long.”

  “Fire is a mixed bag,” Ander replied. “Surface-level burns won’t do anything at all, but if the flames are hot enough to consume their flesh, we can take out quite a few beasts at once. The problem isn’t creating a blaze that big; it’s finding a way to contain it. If we’re not careful, we will wind up overloading the prairie’s natural defenses and create a wildfire that will kill us all in the process.”

  “I have an idea that might work.” Melchior rubbed his chin.

  “But the fire will only be sufficient to eliminate a few hundred undead at most. Any bigger and we will destroy the settlement before the stampede gets a chance. Moving on to other elements, unless they are protected by skills, reanimated creatures are generally vulnerable to ice. They can’t freeze to death, but they can’t warm themselves back up either. Their mobility can be curtailed or eliminated if their tissue solidifies. Skeletal beings are another story, but these beasts have plenty of flesh serving as armor.”

  “Acid will work too, but it will take a lot considering the sheer biomass comprising that horde. We should probably save solvents for dealing with the kaiju itself—maybe find some way to create a weak point for our heavy hitters to exploit.”

  “I have an aerosolized acid that should be effective, though we’ll have to be extremely careful handling it and make sure we know which way the wind is blowing before we use it.”

  Over the next few hours, the conversation naturally transitioned from alchemy to magitech. The men took a break when an apprentice brought them dinner, then Ander wiped his lips and said, “I was able to repair the generators the Claws overloaded, but the northern turrets are a lost cause.

  “Both top-grade turrets are mounted beside the south gate, and all the smaller devices we installed to deal with the last stampede are still in place. However, we should build something in the middle—weapons designed to damage massive targets. They won’t be nearly as powerful as the devices we lost, but they could buy us time while the kaiju makes its final approach. The wall should hold up for a while since it’s so damned durable, but the buildings beyond can’t take nearly as much punishment…”

  Round and round they went as midnight came and passed. By the time the horizon had lightened with the coming of dawn, the foundation of a plan had been laid. Now Puppet Town’s crafters needed to hammer and weld until it could stand on its own.