"Edge," Evan said one last time, and had to choose whether to move her back or meet what was coming through.
He didn't lift the staff head. He dropped the butt of it, quick and neat, against the spearwoman's boot—just enough pressure to tip leather off rope to dirt. No shove. A correction, like a teacher taking a hand off a wrong key.
"Edge," he repeated, eyes never leaving the gap. "Archer, rope. Knife, rope. Chief—stakes ready, do not flood beans."
She accepted the correction with a flick of lids that said she understood both manners and math. Her spear butt kissed the lane again. The rope steadied under Evan's wrist like a live vein choosing to stay inside the body.
The hedge tore with intent. Bristles pushed through like wire dragged through cloth. A breath of musk rolled over the gate, thick with anger and something that read as grief translated into meat.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED: THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
"Positions," Evan said. "Mech—hip. Aurora—eye seam; only buy seconds. Rope—slack on my word, not yours."
Two brutes entered together—their shoulders touching like brothers who wanted to marry a doorway. Not smart, not stupid—just enough momentum to make the rope rehearse sorrow.
"Carpet," Evan began and bit it back. Glue was gone. "Meet," he said instead.
The Mech slid the left boar's tusk onto the post with a sparking squeal; the right boar tried to climb the wedge and found the corpse's hide a liar. Aurora flicked lightning across both eye ridges in a zipper. Evan laid a sting where the right boar's inner foreleg promised to be later and made the promise expensive.
"Rope—hold," he said. The line sang. The archer's hands took load like he'd been doing rope all his life and was embarrassed to admit it. The knife-man grunted once—a sound of weight met and not resented.
"Edge," Evan called, and the spearwoman gave the right boar a precise prod that insulted without committing. The prod told its body you want left, which was where Evan's wedge wanted it too.
"Tap," he said. Aurora threaded a tendon; the Mech bullied a skull ridge; Evan cracked the staff's charge in the hinge that turned arguments into obedience.
[STATUS CHANCE: STAGGER—MEDIUM] — [SUCCESS]
The right boar slumped, slid, and found itself furniture. The left punched the post with a tusk that wanted to grow up to be a tool; the post keened like old wood refusing to perform miracles on short notice.
"Slack—pull," Evan said. The two-beat gift let the tusk reposition to a worse angle. The rope sang again, not as scared this time; the archer matched pitch; the knife-man swore softly in a way that asked no gods to help and blamed none for listening.
"Drive," Evan said, and the Mech's wrench landed a practical sermon. Aurora tapped. Evan stung. The left boar folded into the wedge like a door that had remembered etiquette.
[ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
Gold flags blinked with the needy charm of a clerk clearing his throat.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: CHAIN DEFENSE / LOCAL RENOWN] [CHECK]
"Later," Evan said. "Edge team—carry outside only. Chief, mark hides. Nobody moves the wedge furniture yet."
They slid the carcasses by inches, not feet, the way you move a piano in a house you still want to like. The rope kept its song. The hedge snarled with a sound that made the beans want to shrink.
"Again," the hedge said with bodies. A single brute came mean and fast, learned the door, died polite. Another came in on its own out-of-breath logic and donated itself to the wedge like tithe.
[ENEMY DOWN][ENEMY DOWN][LOOT GENERATED]
A quieter pressure took the gap, a space-clearing, like guards stepping aside for a person who didn't queue. The spearwoman shifted her weight forward by an idea and stopped herself, as if she'd trained on the edge of rules before and could live there.
The thing behind the brutes didn't show all at once. First a tusk, not longer, just older, grooved by years of winning. Then bristle that lay in a pattern humans copy when they braid straw. Then the shoulder, carrying its own weather. The alpha they'd killed had been a king. This one moved like cousins pay it respect and decline to joke near its children.
"On me," Evan said. His thigh thrummed with an older ache that he accepted as invoice. The Mech leaned into his hip; Aurora compressed their lightning to a harsh whisper that made the tongue taste coin.
[INSPECT][SCAN FAILED]
No name. He could thematically call it matriarch. He did not need the word to do the math.
"Eye," he said. Aurora flicked. The creature blinked differently—not pain, appraisal. Its hoof tested the glossy dirt inside the gate and did not care. It rolled the shoulder like a man trying on a suit he intends to bleed in.
"Cheek," Evan said.
The Goblin shaved tusk to wood. The tusk chose not to be shaved and told the post so. Wood whined. The rope found a new octave and threatened to learn how to cry.
"Slack, then take—now," Evan said. Timing is the only magic he believed in. The line breathed. The tusk slid an inch. The spearwoman stabbed air—not meat—and the point slid along the boar's cheek, not in, not over, just enough to make its head ask a question with its neck.
Evan bought the answer with a sting under the hinge and got a quarter-knee for his trouble.
[STATUS: KNEE—BRIEF]
"Again," he said, and they spent the window like men who dislike waste.
The knee left dirt with offended dignity. The head resumed its education. The post offered a sharp, shear-sick cry.
"Post swap in two," he said. "Knife—take line on my wrist. Archer—plant new stake, halfway behind."
"You're bleeding," the archer said conversationally, which is to say I see your forearm burned red by rope.
"Then I'll stop later," Evan said. "Now."
The knife-man took the rope: good hands, bad habits, corrected by fear. The archer slammed the post with a foot and three days of anger at someone, probably himself. Evan looped the line, handed it back, and became a man again instead of wood.
The heavy boar decided on contempt. It drove the wedge like a sled, carcasses squealing against earth. The spearwoman's spear whispered a line that suggested the boar consider humility. It did not.
"Cut," Evan told Aurora. The sprite killed visible lightning. Muscles that had been bracing against brightness relaxed a fraction into the wrong place.
"Now." Wrench. Sting. The knee hit dirt with a noise like agreement written badly.
[STATUS: KNEE—EXTENDED]
They worked the hinge: mechanic, miser, surgeon. The heavy boar insisted on being a problem worth remembering. He respected it with the cheapest compliment he had—consistency.
The villagers in the lane kept their poles down and their mouths closed. The Chief counted breaths the way farmers count rain. The rope learned a low, patient note.
The knee shook. The head rose. The window tried to end.
"Again," Evan said, because sometimes the correct answer is the same answer said correctly again.
They denied the rise. Almost. The post was now a sound with wood attached. A crack chased itself down grain like a fuse.
The heavy boar shook and turned the wedge into an accusation. Evan caught the rope again for two beats while the knife-man swore. Heat flared along his forearm—ugly, honest.
A flag blinked, honeyed and wrong-timed.
[HUNDREDFOLD: CONTEXT FLAGGED][POTENTIAL AMPLIFICATION: BOSS CONTROL / RENOWN] [CHECK]
"Later," he said, for the fourth time, to the world and to whatever clerk had designed the popups to arrive during work.
The hedge behind the heavy presence sighed the way crowds sigh when an opening act finishes. Not more bodies yet—just permission pooling. He could feel the field thinking about being a road.
"Drive," he said, voice thin with borrowed pain and borrowed hope. The Mech hammered. Aurora tapped. Evan found the seam he liked and fed it voltage.
The heavy boar took a breath that sounded like a forge resigning. The knee sank another inch, then another. The skull dipped until tusk kissed post. There.
"Finish—"
A noise behind him ended the sentence: the fence on the lane side—the one they'd moved back from twice and promised to respect—decided it had been respected enough. Nails reported their last day on earth in a series of popping notes. Wood collapsed in a musical sigh. The line of villagers staggered to regain their spacing as rails became confession.
Evan did not turn. Panic spends the future. He looked at the heavy boar's hinge and at the rope between him and the lane and at the new emptiness behind him where a fence had been a belief a moment ago.
"Chief," he said, still watching the hinge. "Make the lane a forest. Poles forward—no one steps."
"Done," the Chief said; the sound of many points obeyed like rain.
The heavy boar felt the change the way animals do—through the ground. It flexed, committed to one last contemptuous shove.
Evan slid one boot deeper into the furrow, took the rope for a single beat and gave it back, and said to the construct he had dented and leaned on all afternoon, "Spend your plate."
The Mech answered by grounding itself the way a wall does for a house you build in a hurry because weather is already here. Wrench descended, not like anger, like logic. Aurora burned a white line under tendon and went almost dark with the effort.
Evan drove the staff through the hinge as if it were a door, because sometimes hinges are doors if you insist.
The heavy boar's head fell the width of a man's hand. Not a kill. A promise.
[STATUS: KNEE—DEEP]
"Again," Evan said, and that was everything—command, prayer, insult, love.
The post shrieked. The rope screamed. The fence behind them—what remained of it—gave one last theatrical sigh and fell into the lane like a drunk learning to sleep.
"Gate or lane?" the archer asked, voice tight, polite, urgent.
"Gate," Evan said, without a blink. "Lane lives if gate lives."
And he was correct, and he might be wrong. The spearwoman's spear dipped toward the beans as if to reward honesty with treachery; she stopped herself and set the butt harder into the lane, eyes on the hinge as if measuring it for a future that involved her in places she wasn't welcome.
Aurora's hum returned as a thread. The Mech's cracked lens flickered and chose to be bright. Evan lifted the staff for the last sting this post would ever purchase.
"Now," he said.
The hedge breathed in. The heavy boar leaned forward in the exact same instant. Behind Evan the lane bristled with points and a hole where a fence used to live. In front of him, the hinge waited to accept or deny a verdict.
He drove, and the world tried to call two oaths due at once.