Blake fought the rising tide of a headache as his mind tried to process what his eyes insisted on showing him. Tentatively, he reached for [Warden's Insight] hoping to make some sense of the terrain before him.

  The paths leading deeper into the crater defied natural laws. Fragments of ship corridors hung suspended, with no visible means of support. Some twisted at impossible angles, creating an exploded view of the ship's interior as if designed for some cosmic maintenance manual. Sections of bulkhead floated, rotating slowly like the hands of a broken clock.

  "So we've traded physics," Blake muttered, his voice rougher than usual. "for a fucking art installation."

  [Warden's Insight] expanded outward, mapping the impossible geometry. Several corridors floated upside down relative to him. Another curved back on itself in a perfect loop. What appeared to be some manner of engineering room hovered thirty meters above, its floor facing sideways. Nothing obeyed gravity's rules—or any rules he recognized.

  "I have to say, I am not handling this input well," Kitt said. "Every scan shows a different configuration. The spatial dimensions keep... folding."

  Blake nodded, eyes narrowed as he studied the floating segments. "Is there a path through this mess?"

  "Yes and no. The segments connect in ways I can't fully interpret without getting closer. My best guess is we need to treat this like a three-dimensional puzzle where the pieces occasionally change position."

  "Great," Blake said, exhaling slowly. "Well then, let's get in there."

  Blake's boots hit the first patch of warped metal floor with a hollow clang. Then, as if on cue, came the growl—low, guttural, and wrong. It vibrated through the air, making his teeth ache. The shadows moved.

  A Ferroghest emerged, its cybernetic limbs twitching with strange staccato spasms. The creature's eyes glowed with a sickly green light, and its elongated spine arched like a coiled spring. More growls joined the first, echoing from unseen angles. Blake's hand went to Verdict, the weight of the weapon a familiar comfort.

  "Even better," he muttered, thumbing the safety off.

  The first Ferroghest lunged, its hydraulic claws extended. Blake sidestepped, letting the momentum carry the creature past him. He fired two rounds into its flank. The shots punched through the creature's hide, but the beast barely slowed. It twisted mid-air, landing on a floating section of bulkhead that hung sideways above him.

  Its legs compressed, ready to spring. The two smoking holes in its flank leaked a mix of blood and something that might have been oil. The creature growled, unimpressed.

  Blake fired again, three quick shots. Each found its mark, punching through the creature's cybernetic shoulders. The beast staggered but didn't fall.

  "These rounds aren't doing shit," Blake said, backing away as a second Ferroghest stalked around a floating corridor junction.

  "Standard ammo won't cut it," Kitt said. "Switch to the good ammo."

  "I'm trying to save those rounds."

  "For what? A special occasion? A dinner date?" Kitt's tone was decidedly East Coast when she was irritated, which Blake found amusing. "Clearly these things need something with a bigger kick."

  Blake dropped his partially-spent magazine. Due to his Bond, his fingers found a magazine of Kitt's 'displacer rounds' without having to consciously think about it. The new magazine clicked home just as the first Ferroghest launched itself toward him.

  There was a stronger-than-normal recoil as Verdict let loose the round, and Blake felt his mana pulled along in the wake of the payload. The shot flew true, and struck the ferroghest in its chest.

  Blake focused intently on the impact, pouring mana into his Mind and into [Warden's Insight] to attempt to perceive as much information as possible about how Kitt's special shots performed in live combat. The impact was standard, a small hole appearing in the hound's flesh, and cavitation caused by the physical round that was minimal—smaller even than Blake's standard rounds, if Insight was correct.

  But then the round detonated.

  Blake could sense it happening through his Bond, but he also observed a microsecond where space and time seemed to hiccup, disassociating from one another briefly in the immediate area of the wound before rejoining again seamlessly.

  Space tore itself apart in that moment, unmoored as it was from the principles that governed it: a swirling vortex of spatial mana that expanded rapidly from the size of the initial round up to the size of Blake's fist. This, Blake realized in a flash of insight, was the sort of attack Kitt had been attempting to help him create before he stumbled upon a similar solution with [Force Manipulation], resulting in [Kinetic Detonation]. Anything caught in that vortex simply vanished—displaced in space and deposited god-knew-where.

  The Ferroghest landed limply, bleeding life and momentum, and skidding to a permanent stop behind him.

  "Holy shit," Blake whispered.

  A second Ferroghest charged. Blake pivoted and fired twice.

  The first round sheared through the beast's front leg, creating a spatial distortion that twisted metal and bone into a spiral before vanishing. The second hit its skull. The creature's head didn't explode—it inverted, turning inside-out before collapsing into a singularity that winked out of existence.

  "Well, shit fire and save the matches!" Blake crowed. "You were not over-selling these bad boys, Kitt!"

  He knew these rounds weren't unlimited—each one cost Kitt something of herself to create and empower, and each shot drained a small amount of Blake's mana. But hot damn did they feel satisfying.

  Another Ferroghest came from his blind spot, leaping off a vertical wall that Blake would have bet money wasn't there a moment ago. Blake dropped into a crouch, letting the creature sail over him.

  He snapped off another shot, catching it in the chest. The impact sent it spinning into a gravity-defying corridor that looped back on itself.

  Three more Ferroghests clawed their way over a warped sheet of hull plating, their corrupted forms silhouetted against the sickly green luminescence pulsing from the organic spire. Blake raised Verdict, the weight solid in his grip. A tight, unpleasant smile touched his lips as they fanned out, their movements jerky but coordinated. Pack hunters, even mutated ones.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He squeezed the trigger. A displacer round spat out, crossing the ten meters in an instant. It struck the center Ferroghest square in its chest cavity. Space folded inward, then snapped back, leaving a fist-sized void where metal and corrupted flesh had been moments before. The creature crumpled, its forward momentum carrying its lifeless body tumbling.

  The other two were on him before he could acquire a second target. Snapping jaws filled his vision, one aiming for his throat, the other for his thigh. No time to aim. Instinct took over.

  Blake dropped Verdict. The heavy pistol clattered as it struck the ground, but Blake trusted in its durability. He let his stance soften, sinking slightly as he flowed into a movement he hadn't practiced consciously in years. His hands rose, palms out, guiding rather than striking. He met the Ferroghest lunging for his throat not with force, but with redirection. Mana surged, fueling his Telekinesis, extending his will beyond his fingertips. His left hand brushed the creature's shoulder, but the real work happened invisibly. He caught the beast's momentum, augmented by its own powered limbs, and shoved, not physically, but with a wave of kinetic force rooted in the swirling motion of his body. The Ferroghest flew sideways, slamming into a jagged piece of wreckage with a sickening crunch.

  Simultaneously, his right hand swept downward in a mirroring arc. He dipped low, guiding the second creature’s lunge past his leg. Again, [Telekinesis] flared. He pushed upward, adding his mental force to its leap. The creature went airborne, sailing over Blake's head and crashing onto the deck behind him with a shriek of mangled metal and torn tissue.

  And here I thought Tai Chi wouldn't ever actually be useful.

  Silence, broken only by the low hum of the corrupted Leviathan and the drip of something viscous nearby. Blake straightened, breathing steadily. He felt a flicker of something in his Core, a resonance within his Battlewright skill. It's just like I thought. Using different tools, not just guns and knives... that's how it levels. I've got to keep broadening my arsenal. The insight was fleeting, pushed aside by the immediate threat.

  With a flex of his Intent and a focused pull of [Telekinesis], Verdict leaped from the floor, slapping back into his waiting palm. The grip settled comfortably, the weapon an extension of hand will once more. He scanned the twisted landscape, eyes narrowed, ready. The fight wasn't over. Not even close.

  He sprinted toward a floating section of deck plating, his [Unfettered Stride] allowing him to scale the vertical surface with ease. The Ferroghests followed, their cybernetic enhancements giving them a disturbing agility in the warped environment. Blake fired downward, catching one in the head. It dropped, but the others kept coming.

  "Left!" Kitt’s voice was sharp in his ear.

  He spun, barely avoiding a claw swipe from a Ferroghest that had materialized seemingly from nowhere, clearly familiar with using the folded space to ambush prey. The creature’s movements were fluid, almost graceful, as it navigated the impossible geometry. Blake ducked under another swipe, driving his knife into the creature’s exposed cybernetic joint. [Phantom Edge] allowed the knife to cut through the metal as if it were muscle, and once more Blake found himself acting on a spur-of-the-moment idea.

  With a flaring of mana and Intent, he forced the thin cutting surface of [Phantom Edge] to expand rapidly in width and length. The result was the complete collapse of the technique and a near-completely bisected ferroghest. It screeched, the sound modulated and unnatural, before collapsing.

  "I haven't been all that impressed with this new Mind of mine until now," Blake said, moving out from under the creature's body.

  "You do seem to be coming up with new tricks," Kitt agreed.

  Blake continued along the corridor, which ended in another tear. The next segment floated above him, apparently upside-down. He jumped again, trusting [Unfettered Stride] as it urged him mid-air to tuck into a roll. Almost immediately, gravity flipped, and when he landed in the new segment, he found himself on what had just moments ago been the "ceiling."

  "Good thing I don't get motion sickness," Blake grumbled.

  "You're doing well," Kitt encouraged. "Now we've just got to figure out how to get to the ship proper."

  Blake's boots thudded loudly across the metal bulkhead. The corridor ahead twisted upward at a forty-five degree angle, then inverted completely twenty meters further. A Ferroghest corpse tumbled past him, its limbs twitching as it fell up into the ceiling that had become the floor.

  "Tell me again how this makes sense."

  "It doesn't," Kitt replied. "The spatial distortions are getting worse the closer we get to the main body."

  Blake fired two displacer rounds into another lunging Ferroghest. The first shot clipped its shoulder, shearing off a chunk of flesh and metal that vanished into a pinprick of distorted space. The second punched through its skull, leaving a fist-sized void where its left eye had been. The creature collapsed mid-leap, its momentum carrying it into a wall that abruptly wasn't there anymore—just empty air where solid metal had been a second ago.

  He vaulted over a floating section of conduit, landing on a strip of deck plating that shuddered underfoot. The plating tilted, becoming a ramp leading to a doorway that hung suspended in midair. Through it, Blake glimpsed what might have been the ship's mess hall—except the tables stretched into impossible lengths, chairs melted into the walls, and the far bulkhead warped like taffy.

  "Don't." Kitt's voice sharpened. "Step inside, and we might not step back out."

  Blake's jaw tightened. He hadn't needed the warning. He'd seen enough horror movies to know that walking into a room like that was a bad idea. Turning from the impossible room, he continued down the twisting and variable corridor. It was tempting to try and jump back outside, to make his way to the body of the Leviathan on the ground—but the one Ferroghest he had launched clear of the corridor had vanished before ever touching dirt. It fell from the sky a minute later, moving at what Blake estimated to be its terminal velocity. It didn't hit the ground then, either, and Blake hadn't seen it again.

  Definitely safer to stick to the MC Escher route.

  Blake traversed three more long segments, each transition requiring a shift in spatial orientation that left his inner ear protesting. Finally, he reached a section that overlooked the core of the crash site.

  What he saw made all the spatial distortions seem trivial by comparison.

  Below spread an obscene cathedral of flesh and metal. The Leviathan's remains had been transformed into something that shouldn't exist. Slabs of hull plating melded with bulging tissue, creating pillars that pulsed with sickly light. Organic matter flowed like liquid across metal surfaces before hardening into new, unnatural forms. Bundles of what looked like nerves or tendons stretched between floating sections, twitching in unison.

  A large central spine rose from this nightmare landscape, a column of weaponized biology. Its surface rippled with tumors that split open to reveal metallic teeth before sealing shut again.

  "Well… that's not normal," Blake said quietly.

  "No, it's not," Kitt agreed, her voice subdued. "Leviathans have organic components, yes, but nothing like this. I need you to understand that you're not bound to something like that."

  "Good. I want to say I'd still like you even if you're not pretty, but that… That is something else entirely."

  The entire structure pulsed with a rhythm like a heartbeat—slow, deliberate, and wrong. Each beat sent ripples through the mass, causing new growths to form and old ones to burst in sprays of fluid that solidified into fresh aberrations.

  "Can you sense anything from it?" Blake asked.

  Kitt was silent for several seconds. "There's... something broadcasting. Not radio, or any standard radiation. It's a pattern in the ambient mana. I'm having a hard time placing it, though."

  Blake spotted movement within the mass—shapes that might have been Ferroghests, but altered beyond recognition. Their bodies elongated, limbs sprouting additional limbs, eyes multiplied across twisted faces. They moved with unnatural coordination, as if controlled by a single mind.

  "And this outsider is keeping pets, too," he said, shuddering. "Any idea about how we're going to get in there?"

  "Yes, actually," Kitt responded, though she sounded oddly reticent to do so. "I'm fairly certain it will work, but it's a bit… risky."