The brush spat something heavy and multiple. Evan did not turn. He watched the space they had chosen to live in and measured whether it would still be there in three seconds.
"Second gate!" he called, already stepping the furrow. "Rope—tie new posts. Waist height. Slack until I say."
The taller newbie sprinted to the right post, hands better now that fear had taught them a course. The shorter hit the left, fingers moving like he was learning the shape of a knot he would never forget again.
The Mech Goblin back-stepped with a dancer's balance, wrench kept at an angle that promised pry over block. Aurora slid over Evan's left shoulder, lightning braided tight, barely singing.
Bodies thumped into the previous wedge—three pulses, then a mess. The hedge-hole vomited a fourth shape into the breach but the distance grew with each row they gave up with discipline.
"Glue on 'carpet' only," Evan said. "Don't guess."
The gap in the hedge widened with a sound like a zipper trying to find new teeth. Earth shivered under his boots. He lifted the staff head and let it kiss his palm—habit, anchor.
"Ready on the rope," he said. "Hold your breath."
The first trio crashed the new gap badly—one eager, one hesitant, one thinking he could be clever by splitting right. People teach animals how to be wrong.
"Carpet," Evan said.
The taller threw clean; the glue burst low and mean across the dirt just inside the gate. The eager one planted a front hoof into contempt and found friction had left the conversation. The hesitant one balked; the clever one tried to go wide and met a post and the Goblin's idea of what skulls are for.
"Meet," Evan said. The wrench slid a tusk onto wood. Aurora tapped the first eye ridge. Evan put a sting inside the first foreleg to keep cadence broken.
[HIT][STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—LOW] — [SUCCESS]
The rope went taut exactly when he wanted it.
"Hold," he said. The two did. The line sang like an old string.
"Second head," he called. He shifted half a step; the hesitant one took the lane he offered like a bribe. The Goblin changed the angle and turned the bribe into a bill. Aurora stitched a bolt under the jaw. Evan stung tendon. Grain flattened under hooves into ugly gloss.
"Third—left pivot." The clever one tried to bite his hip off. Evan gave it a sleeve instead, cloth tearing with a sound his skin didn't want to hear again. He rolled a knee, let the tusk spend its rage on air, then bought a half-second with a touch of charge to the back knee.
The bodies tumbled forward and turned into furniture.
[ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
A gold-tinged flag blinked at the edge of his sight, smug as a cat.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: DEFENSE CHAIN — COINS / REPUTATION] [CHECK]
"Not now," he said to the UI as if it had feelings.
The next two slammed into glue and learned different lessons—one about leverage, one about commitment. The Goblin bullied skull ridges into the wedge. Aurora wrote blue lines where joints negotiated with gravity. Evan rationed his staff stings to the spots where split-seconds turn into seconds.
The right post groaned. Wood has a voice when it is considering betrayal.
"Swap it," Evan said.
"How?" the taller yelped, already looking for a miracle that didn't exist.
"You're the miracle. Left—hand me the rope. Right—new post, plant, then hand back."
The shorter flicked the loop and put it in Evan's palm. Evan dipped his shoulder, took the line over his forearm, and became, for three beats, a post with opinions. His thigh screamed in the voice of the earlier near-gore; he ignored it by making it expensive to mention.
"Now," he said.
The taller shoved in a new stake, foot grinding it to a root. Evan looped the rope back, found tension, and gave it back to hands less likely to bleed.
The next boar hit like a door kicked by a friend who owed you money. The Mech Goblin met it too early and on purpose, wrench biting under jaw. The construct took the impact like rent paid late—full, ugly.
[ALLY DAMAGED: MECH GOBLIN — INTEGRITY 54%] [CHECK]
"Good work," Evan said over the noise. "Again."
The rope hummed. The glue puddle thinned to a mean skin. Aurora's lightning was a scalpel laying down tiny surgical refusals.
"Drive." The Goblin hammered hinge and hinge and hinge until the head decided "down" was a lifestyle. Evan laid a long sting into the skull-spine seam. The boar flailed at being told a story it didn't like and then edited itself out of the scene.
[ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
The lane behind them held a line of villagers with poles—from rake handles to something that had ambitions of being a spear. The Village Chief stood with his staff braced, eyes counting. He'd kept his people off the beans as ordered. Good man.
"Keep the lane," Evan called without turning. "No heroes. If it opens, poke and yell, don't chase."
"Yes!" someone shouted with the relief of being given a verb.
The surge thinned, the way a party thins when the keg runs dry. Two came, then one. The hedge kept breathing like a forge thinking about tomorrow's firewood. Evan rolled a carcass with his boot to improve the wedge and watched the furrows for patterns. The dirt had gotten glossy in front of the gate, the kind of shine that turns steps into rumors.
"Glue reset," he said, and the taller threw with a better hand. The new skin spread just where hope goes to die.
The last of the rush tried to be memorable and failed. Memory is for things with structure. This was only weight and opinion. The gate told weight where to sit and told opinion where to go.
They fell. He harvested what he could without moving his feet—quick cuts along the system's highlighted seams.
[YOU OBTAIN: BOAR HIDE ×?] [CHECK][COINS: +?][REPUTATION: +? (Novice Village)]
More gold flags blinked, sheepish now, like they knew better than to interrupt but couldn't resist.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: CHAIN DEFENSE / LOCAL RENOWN] [CHECK]
He didn't open any of it. Counting could wait. Lines couldn't.
"Breathe," he told the kids. They did, noisy and alive.
The field tried to remember being a field. Insects went back to their errands. A breeze returned that belonged to weather instead of will. The hedge-hole didn't close. It waited like a mouth that had learned patience.
The bell from the village changed again—long, long, three quick, then a drum-roll that sounded like a barrel deciding to become a drum again.
"What's that one?" the shorter asked, voice hoarse.
"Either someone thinks they saw something with a name, or the rope-maker's son got creative," Evan said. "Either way, assume worse."
Inspect rose in his mind like a good habit and broke like a rule.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
The Mech Goblin flexed its fingers around the wrench, the cracked lens glowing with stubborn brightness. Evan touched the dented plate once—ritual, not repair.
[ALLY STATUS: MECH GOBLIN — INTEGRITY 51%] [CHECK][ALLY STATUS: THUNDER SPRITE — STABLE]
Aurora drifted higher, lightning fizzing down to the ghost of a line along their forearms. They were reading the air the way birds do before a storm.
"Chief," Evan called without looking back. "If the big one breaks this, do not flood the beans. Fall to the lane and make a spear forest. Let it choose between posts and points."
The Chief's voice came closer, steady. "And you?"
"I'm the hinge," Evan said. "If I break, make the lane into a river. But let me try not to."
The fence behind them gave a small, private groan—the sound of nails admitting they had not planned for this much story. Evan measured distance without turning. A third fall would put them close to lane hands. Close is sometimes safety. Sometimes it's how you turn one problem into two.
"No third gate," he said quietly. "We hold here."
The shorter swallowed audibly. The taller checked the rope like a sailor who had finally learned to love knots.
The hedge exhaled wrong again. Leaves turned their pale undersides to the air and stayed that way, like a crowd holding signs none of them could read.
"Positions," Evan said. "Mech hip-to-hip. Aurora: eye seam. Rope—slack. Give me the song when I call for it, not before."
They set. He set. The staff hummed like a mouth about to form a vowel.
The brush tore. Not a burst—an unfolding, as if something had been wrapped there a long time and wanted the pleasure of being revealed. A tusk slid into view that had opinions about what walls should be. The shoulder followed, then another behind it that did not belong to the same body. Bristles lifted and settled in the way of grass under wind that knows names. The space darkened without losing light.
He let Inspect fail one more time just to keep score.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED][SUGGESTION: Retreat]
"Denied," he said softly.
The first step it took sank deeper than the others had. The earth didn't bounce back quickly. Mass does that. Or authority.
"On me," Evan said, awareness stretched thin and sharp. "Rope on my voice. Glue on carpet. Aurora—if I say 'cut,' you cut power and don't argue. Mech—if I get picked up, you break the arm that picks me up."
The Goblin tapped the wrench against its palm once, a small, serious nod. The sprite's hum became a thread.
A hoof tested the glue and didn't care. The next hoof landed where the dirt was polished by earlier lessons, and the ground pretended not to mind.
Evan set the staff low, point just off the soil. The Pumpkin orb at the head held a promise it had not yet decided how to keep.
Behind him, the fence voiced another complaint. He did not look. He measured the space ahead and the cost behind and chose the more expensive thing.
"Hold," he said, and the word was for the rope, the posts, the kids, the Chief, the villagers, the construct, the sprite, the field, himself. "No third gate."
The shape filled the doorway and then tried to make it wider with its existence. It came with that steady, sovereign walk of a thing that had never been told "no" by anything that mattered.
"Now," Evan said—and the gate learned whether it could teach.