"Now," Evan said—and the gate learned whether it could teach.
The thing filled the doorway with bristle and will. It didn't charge. It arrived, each step sinking past honesty and into authority. Tusk met the leaning post with the intimacy of a handshake you can't escape. Wood whined. The rope went from slack to song.
"Hold," Evan said.
The Mech Goblin stepped into his hip, wrench angled to slide ridge over tusk and steal momentum instead of meeting it. Aurora ghosted high at his right shoulder, lightning combed into a neat stitch along their forearms.
The boar tested the glue skin with contempt and kept its front right hoof there anyway. Confidence can be purchased. He planned to collect.
"Eye," he said.
Aurora flicked a bolt across the eye ridge. The beast blinked in the slow, offended way of royalty. Evan bled a sting from the Pumpkin Staff not at flesh but along the inner foreleg, a mean little instruction to misplace weight.
[HIT][STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—VERY LOW] — [FAIL]
It did not stumble. It decided. The shoulder rolled, widening the doorway by existing harder. Bristles sang against the broken hedge. The post complained in a higher pitch, as if remembering better days.
"Left cheek," Evan said.
The Goblin slid the wrench under the jaw, seeking lever, not impact. Tusk popped a thumb's width free of wood. The rope answered by finding a new note and threatening to learn grief.
"Slack—then pull," Evan snapped, and the two at the posts obeyed like people who finally love orders. The line breathed and sang again—not tight, not loose, exactly afraid.
The beast found the corpse wedge and pressed; bodies tried to remember being useful. Evan put his boot into the nearest carcass's ribs and rolled the weight to worsen the angle. Ugly problem, uglier solution.
"Glue reset," he said.
"Spent!" the taller called, panic blurring the edge of the word.
"Then you're on rope and prayer," Evan said. To Aurora: "Tap only on my word. I need seconds, not smoke." To the Goblin: "When it commits, shave left and make tusk respect wood."
The boar obliged with a small, imperial lunge. The wrench slid; tusk carved splinters but failed to evict the post. The rope burned his ears with sound. The fence behind them answered with a low, private groan that meant I was not hired for this.
The tusk climbed, greedy for Evan's ribs. He fed it sleeve instead, turning a half-step, letting cloth die where his skin had intended to live. The world narrowed to breath and angles.
"Again," he said, calm because calm buys thinking. "Same hinge."
Aurora threaded a bolt under the jaw. Evan laid a sting under tendon. The beast gave up a quarter-step like a king tossing a coin at a beggar to demonstrate he still owns value. The Goblin took that coin and invested it in lever.
[STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—LOW] — [SUCCESS]
The head dipped and stayed an instant longer than pride allowed.
"Drive."
Wrench met the skull-spine hinge. Not a kill blow—an argument. The bristles rose and shook. The gate held on a belief and some rope.
A flag blinked at the edge of his sight, gold pretending not to gloat.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: BOSS CONTROL — COINS / REPUTATION] [CHECK]
"Later," he told the UI, as if it were a junior clerk with good news at the wrong time.
The beast adapted. It stopped wrestling the post and started pushing the ground. Hooves churned, turning soil to a smear that made rope angles lies. Evan adjusted, half-step right, giving the Mech the new line and stealing the old one from the beast.
"Rope—slack—then pull," he repeated. They gave and took like lungs.
"Chief," he called over his shoulder without looking. "If it breaks, do not flood the beans. Make the lane into spears and let it regret opinions."
"Understood," the Village Chief said, close enough now that Evan could feel the steadiness in the word.
The boar feinted right with the head, then committed left with the body. Good move. It deserved to work. He refused it.
"Cheek," he said.
The Goblin shaved left again, tusk grating across wood with a sound that made villagers flinch. The post stayed. Posts are brave when you give them a job.
Something hit Evan's thigh—foreleg or fate—turning the earlier ache into a declaration. He let the leg exist as pain and not decision. He did not change the line. He changed the next line.
"Cut," he told Aurora.
The sprite killed the visible lightning to a whisper. The beast blinked at the sudden lack of bright insult. Muscles relaxed a fraction in the face of less noise. That fraction made room for physics.
"Now," Evan said, and the staff's stored charge went full into the skull-spine hinge as the Goblin's wrench came down in a cruel, practical arc.
The head dipped to a knee. Not a fall—an admission.
[STATUS: KNEE—BRIEF]
"Again!"
Wrench. Sting. Silence waiting like a breath that decides who it belongs to.
The beast refused to stay humble. It heaved, turning the wedge into a sled. Carcasses shifted. The gate lost an inch of integrity and discovered how much a single inch weighs.
The rope across Evan's forearm bit skin as he took it for two beats while the taller scrambled to rewrap. Heat went up his arm and into his teeth. He held and then handed the duty back without ceremony.
"Mech," he said, voice thin with borrowed pain. "If it stands, bite the jaw and keep it looking at me."
The Goblin obeyed, a patient bully.
The post offered a new noise—shear, not bend. Bad family of sounds. The fence behind gave a companionable groan as if to say don't look at me; I'm old.
Evan weighed choices that wanted to be mistakes. Third gate meant panic and villagers and a lane full of points, which is how you get friendly deaths. Holding meant posts, rope, pain, and the chance at a clean ledger.
"No third gate," he said again, and heard the two kids breathe like people who had secretly wanted to be told to be brave.
The beast gathered itself. He recognized the coil: a move that decides the next three seconds for everybody else.
"Aurora—on my count. One… two—now."
Lightning stitched the tendon as the wrench shoved the jaw up and back. Evan slid the staff under and cracked a sting where the world had become hinge and argument. The knee hit dirt again—this time deeper. The earth did not immediately forgive the dent.
A villager in the lane made a noise shaped like prayer. The Chief shut him up with a look; discipline radiated off the man like heat from a brick oven.
The boss decided on contempt. It bull-dozed the wedge, slewing its chest to shove bodies into a new angle. The glue skin, thinned and tired, tore like old tape. The rope went silent for half a breath—the silence of fibers choosing sides.
"Tie, tie, tie," Evan said without looking. His palm offered itself to the line again; it burned gratitude into him. He tasted metal.
Aurora's hum flickered. They were not out of lightning; they were out of space to be clever.
"Last purchase," Evan said to the Goblin, which was both instruction and apology. "Spend your plate if you must."
The construct answered by shifting a foot wider, wrench higher, a stance that said if you go over me, you will go wrong.
He took a breath that belonged to him and gave it to the staff. The Pumpkin orb felt heavy and willing for the first time today—the kind of tool that knows what kind of story you're writing.
"Now," he said again, quiet as a bad decision.
He stepped in, not out, staff tip biting just under the jaw hinge as the wrench cranked down. Aurora lanced the tendon on the count. The beast's head snapped toward him, and for a heartbeat his world was tusk and the private heat of a mouth that had never considered him a person.
He did not retreat. He put the staff through the moment like a key.
The boss dropped to a knee with a noise that made the field remember silence.
[STATUS: KNEE—EXTENDED]
Everything wanted to rush. He did not. He spent the window like a miser who hates money. Wrench. Sting. Tiny bolt. Wrench. Sting. Tiny bolt.
The post screamed. The rope learned a high, thin note he'd never heard before. The fence behind them made a noise like a book closing for the last time.
"Finish," he said, not to himself.
The Goblin raised the wrench for the angle that ends arguments.
The beast moved in a way that wasn't strength—it was history. It shrugged the hinge away as if remembering a younger world. The knee pushed, the head rose, the moment closed its door on his hands.
Inspect popped up out of habit and died out of honesty.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED]
The boar stood—wounded, angrier, and patient about it. Its breath came in smoke-laced huffs. It had learned him; he had learned it; the field had learned both and decided to hold its grade.
Behind him, the fence gave a loud, fatiguing crack.
"Don't look," he told everyone, which is how you make people brave. "Line holds."
He slid his foot a finger-width in the furrow and felt for the idea of balance. The world felt heavier by exactly the weight of one decision.
"On me," he said, and the boss lowered its head as if accepting an invitation to a worse kind of dance.