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The V-fin Locke had added to his titan’s forehead might have been a bit much, but he didn’t particularly care.

Then again, Titan Chimera was already a two-story-tall suit of bright red armor, with five different magic-channeling catalysts and a fresh polish that made it gleam in the rising sun like it had already won today’s battle.

Compared to the heroic badassery of the rest of it, his little decorative indulgence was nothing.

And besides, with all the ass he’d kicked these past nine months, he’d earned it.

Now his titan stood by the open hangar ramp of the airship Blue Heron, arms crossed boldly over its knightly chest as Locke surveyed the scene below him.

The Harper’s Harriers’ star had been rising, but the success of the bounty with the dragon three months ago had rocketed that star straight across the whole sky. Now they no longer had to compete with other companies for bounty assignments; potential employers competed to hire them by offering pay that matched their reputation. This was one such bounty.

But with increased pay came increased challenge.

The Blue Heron had three titans now, and today it would need all three of them.

“That’s the biggest bramble hulk I’ve ever seen,” Locke marveled, observing the thing through the visual sensors in his titan’s eyes. “No wonder Lord Argothine’s paying so much.”

“Well, it’s eaten at least twenty farmers and two mercenary crews,” Ember said from his right, in Titan Long Shot.

“The more meat it eats, the faster it grows, right?” added Sloan from Titan Deathly Rhythm on his left.

“Exactly,” Locke replied. He’d fought bramble hulks before, but the way Lord Argothine’s emissary had described this one, it was levels above anything they’d yet faced. His original, unabridged copy of The Encyclopedia of Monsterkind had been next to useless this time, so he’d used it as a reason to upgrade to the more comprehensive multivolume edition and had been reading up on the creature ever since.

Bramble hulks were a plant-based form of monster, and not only carnivorous but predatory, even in their simplest form. Standard bramble hulks reminded Locke vaguely of the one plant from Little Shop of Horrors, with a fleshy mouth for a bud and vines it could use for locomotion. (Though to his knowledge, bramble hulks didn’t sing.) In that form, they usually subsisted on small forest creatures and didn’t live long before they met a forest creature that would eat them back. But occasionally one would win against the larger attempts at prey and grow proportionally, and a reign of terror would ensue.

Argothine was the lord of Greenvale, which was not only the most verdant area of Haven—with plenty of places for even a larger bramble hulk to hide—but its breadbasket. This meant that the population he managed was mostly farmers spending most of their lives outside, and vulnerable to the monster stalking the forests around their crops.

The creature had only eaten ten farmers when the lord had first hired the Harriers, but by the time they’d arrived in Greenvale, that number had doubled, and the creature’s power with it.

The monster beneath them now had the same basic shape as a standard bramble hulk, but its size towered to nearly the same height as Locke’s titan, and the vines and leaves at its base spread out in a bushy tangle twice as wide and thick enough that it could be hiding any assortment of nasty surprises.

“That’s a fully mature monster,” Locke reported to his companions. “It’ll probably have pods that spit digestive acid somewhere in there, as well as sticky nectar beads to trap victims, so be aware. We may have titans, but this thing’s already taken down at least one titan.”

“How are we going in, then?” Sloan radioed from Deathly Rhythm.

“Standard opening strategy,” Locke replied. “Ember, you freeze it while Sloan slows it and I whale on it. With any luck, it’ll be as simple as that, especially since it’s still morning.”

They’d tracked the creature all day yesterday until it settled on the edge of this clearing and then monitored it, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Bramble hulks would go briefly dormant when the temperature cooled, as it did on these autumn nights. They were always at their most dormant just before sunrise, before the day began to warm, and so they’d waited until this moment to attack.

“Ha!” Ember laughed from Long Shot. “When have our bounties ever been as simple as that?”

“True.” Locke laughed back. “But we’ve gotta start somewhere. We’ll adapt as it reacts. Everyone ready?”

“I am,” Sloan replied.

“Let’s do it,” Ember echoed.

Titan Chimera’s head nodded. “Then, Alyssa, take us down.”

“Got it,” Captain Alyssa radioed from the Blue Heron’s bridge, and slowly, the airship began to sink toward the ground.

Locke took a deep breath as he felt the gentle sway of the airship’s motion, and let all the sensation of his cockpit sink into him—the gooey slosh of the conductor fluid enveloping his body, the easy press of the insulating neck ring that kept it from splashing into his face, the strange awareness of his reflex link, as it connected his very consciousness to his mech so he could command it without controls.

He became aware of the energy catalyst in his left arm, the matter catalyst in his right, the time catalyst in his right shoulder and the … oh. He’d almost forgotten.

“Remember,” he added, as much for himself as his crew, “I’m out both gravity catalysts while Bexley’s building my flight unit.”

“Hey, I’m workin’ as fast as I can,” Chief Engineer Bexley radioed from her hangar workstation behind them. “You can’t rush genius.”

“Of course not.” Locke redirected his attention back to his fellow pilots. “My point is, I can compensate for speed with my time catalyst, but don’t expect me to be doing any super jumps or kicks this time around.”

The other two pilots confirmed their understanding, just as the airship shook with the gentle nudge of landing.

When Titan Chimera strode off, it was with the bold, heavy steps of a giant machine that knew exactly what it was here to do and how it was going to do it. Titan Deathly Rhythm strode out behind it in much a similar fashion—a welcome change from the timidity with which Sloan had approached her mech three months ago. Back then, she’d still been learning, albeit swiftly. Now she was a time-accelerated ass-kicking machine.

Once the two had disembarked, the Blue Heron lifted off with Titan Long Shot still on board.

“Awaiting your signal,” Ember radioed as she rose, and her titan crouched to a more stable position.

Titan Long Shot was a sleek blue and silver mech with graceful, athletic lines, but its most defining feature was the great shoulder-mounted cannon that presently rotated from its back to position itself to the right of its head. As an energy mage, Ember commanded energy catalysts in both forearms, but the energy mega-catalyst in her cannon was what saw the most use in battle, and even now Locke spotted the clear honeycomb of its crystalline rod charging to icy white.

“Ready, Sloan?” Locke said.

“I am!” Sloan chimed cheerily from beside him, and Locke grinned inside his mech.

“Then have at it!”

Sloan’s mech sprinted into action before he’d even finished his order. Titan Deathly Rhythm was the Harriers’ newest addition, an elegant teal machine with black and silver highlights that moved with grace equal to that of its smooth curves. It only had a single time catalyst in its right arm, but Sloan had adapted to its capabilities with ease, and now it glowed bright green as she sprinted for the slumbering bramble hulk at over double her regular speed.

The bramble hulk stirred, vaguely aware that something strange was coming toward it, but not awake enough to react.

That changed when Sloan snatched a short sword from Deathly Rhythm’s back and plunged it straight into the monster’s centermost fleshy bud.

The creature’s mouth began to open in a startled, agonized shriek—but it could only begin to open. Sloan’s time catalyst flared an even brighter green as she conducted her time magic through the sword and into the monster. Instead of speeding up, the bramble hulk slowed down to half speed.

Locke saw its leaves and vines begin to move in slow motion, but they weren’t nearly fast enough to be of use.

“It’s ready!” Sloan reported happily. “Shoot it!”

Her tone was like that of a student presenting a gift to a favorite teacher, or perhaps a cat presenting freshly-caught prey to a favorite person, and Ember showed her thanks with a frigid white blast from her cannon. A beam of glowing particulate ice shot into the brambly base of the monster, then crackled up along the thick flesh of the mouth pod.

“Nice start!” Locke shouted, and strode forward. “Now it’s my turn!”

It was his turn that would make this battle—had made all their battles over the past nine months. Most mages on the world of Haven were adept with only one magical element. Though they might have minimal aptitude with a second, few were apt enough to use more than one, and that was what made Locke special.

He was a void mage, a mage with high aptitude for all four magical elements—matter, time, energy, and gravity—and that gave him power and versatility beyond any other titan mage in his company. Ember could only wield heat or cold; Sloan could only speed up or slow down herself or her opponents—but Locke could do that, and matter-shift his own weapons on the fly, and jump and kick (and eventually fly) with wild manipulations of gravity.

And now he funneled magic into every one of his catalysts as he stomped toward the titan-sized beast.

By now, he had a process for bramble hulks.

First, a matter-energy combo attack.

Within his back armor rested a tank of semiliquid swiftmetal, connected to both his energy and matter catalysts. He willed his energy catalyst to charge the swiftmetal with heat magic—all he ever needed was will; the titan did the rest—and then commanded his matter catalyst to spool it out of a barrel under his right hand. The thin wireframe shape of a long blade spun out of the opening, and then flash-filled with glowing white swiftmetal a moment before he reached the monster.

His timing had been perfected over scores of lesser bramble hulks, as had his techniques, and now he charged his time catalyst and dashed around the monster’s circumference, slashing its leaves and vines away like he was some fantastical (if sloppy) gardener, albeit one that kept killer plants. He didn’t move as fast as Sloan could—his time catalyst was a lower tier than hers—but it was still fast enough to make quick work of the frozen brambles, and soon he’d exposed the monster’s most essential center.

It looked like a root ball positioned just below the fleshy mouth pod. Brown tendrils of wood-hard roots curled down from the pod-like protective claws, encasing what Locke knew to be the vital organs of the monster.

“I’m to the core!” Locke reported. “Ember, can I get a heat blast? The root armor’s thick.”

“Not too hot, though!” Sloan added. “Don’t incinerate me.”

It was a reasonable warning; with Long Shot’s upgrades, Ember routinely incinerated weaker monsters to ash—but she was also precise in every aspect of her handling, from aim to power.

“Ready,” Ember reported. “Stand back.”

Locke zipped out of her line of sight, and soon a hot red beam bored into the root ball.

An explosion of burning splinters blasted from the wooden knot, and a plume of flame billowed out as the wood began to burn.

“Eew! It stinks!” Sloan groaned as a cloud of smoke wafted up toward her.

Locke didn’t disagree; bramble hulk smoke always carried on it the unpleasant scent of decomposition and wood rot … but there was something different about the smell of this advanced bramble hulk.

It smelled like that, and burning blood.

“What’s the verdict?” Ember called down. “Need another—wait, Locke! Look out behind you!”