The green bile erupting from the Hydra’s left head was not liquid.
It was a high-pressure jet of blazing bright rotting acid.
A three-foot stream of glowing bile shot across three hundred yards of open canal water chute.
It struck Timber Watchtower Two squarely upon the western granite stone retaining wall.
The twenty-foot spruce tower didn’t merely catch fire.
The acid dissolved the twelve-inch framing timbers in six seconds.
The wood hissed, turned to boiling black tar, and collapsed into the canal ditch.
Only the wet granite foundation piers remained standing above the smoking silt.
“Tower Two liquidated,” Toby Karr shouted through the copper speaking-tube.
His knuckles were white against the brass funnel.
“The venom melts seasoned timber faster than boiling water cuts animal fat,” Toby called.
Along the low roof wall, Sergeant Rook Red-Mane kept his veteran crossbowmen crouched low behind the heavy timber mantlets.
“Keep your heads down,” Rook ordered, his rough voice carrying along the narrow high walkway.
“That filth will scour iron plate down to red rust in ten breaths.”
The veterans obeyed without a murmur.
They checked the oiled ratchets of their heavy steel crossbows and waited for the command.
Across the water, the Hydra’s right head reared sixty feet into the night sky.
Its snake-like throat swelled with a second pool of high-pressure acid.
The glowing neck lined up toward the timber gate of Sluice Lock One.
Giles Croft stood on the steel platform of Battery Alpha at Mile Marker Zero point five.
His slide rule rested between his thumbs.
His oilskin coat fluttered in the hot draft coming off the canal water.
“Discharge rate is about eighty gallons per second,” Giles said.
His voice was steady in the damp darkness.
“Internal pool pressure reads one hundred and twenty pounds of pressure,” he noted.
“Left head operates on a lateral cross of thirty degrees.”
“Right head tracks vertically at twelve degrees height.”
Duchess Rowena Wintermere leaned over the northern castle wall low roof wall.
Her fingers gripped the handle knob of her broadsword.
The green glare from the swelling venom sac lit up the battle-lines of her jaw.
Around the huge titan hovered the thirty-yard sphere of its emerald mana-shield.
The barrier glowed like a tiny sun over the water.
It remained flawless by the heat of the peat-tar fires.
“Aim for the belly,” Rowena shouted down to the flatcar.
“The barrier looks thinnest beneath the breastplate.”
“The belly is protected by sixty tiny fractions of an inch of ventral hard shell,” Giles replied calmly.
He didn’t look up from his brass fine-scale.
“Behind that hard shell lie three feet of dense blubber,” Giles continued.
“A torso impact dissipates striking force without neutralizing the chemical delivery system.”
“We disable the load-bearing hinge points.”
He rotated the brass cross wheel of Battery Alpha two precise clicks.
The flatcar’s steel carriage shifted smoothly upon its greased bronze turntable ring.
“Borin, lay Battery Alpha on the left neck,” Giles spoke into the pipe.
“Align crosshairs upon the third neck articulation.”
“Kenneth, lay Battery Bravo on the right venom pool beneath the jaw hinge.”
“Timed together fire on the map point mark.”
Down at Battery Bravo, fifty paces along the levee, Kenneth Drake leaned over the optic.
Beside him, Master Borin Bronze-Lung held the heavy cross lever.
The dwarven smith clamped the geared teeth against the rail frame.
Kenneth wiped coal dust from his goggles with the back of his leather sleeve.
“Recoil buffers are high-pressure to two crushing deep-sea pressure,” Kenneth reported, tapping the brass dial.
“Twisting force arm pins are fully engaged in the drive block.”
“Good lad,” Borin grunted, resting his calloused palm upon the release sear.
“When Giles gives the word, drop the hammer clean and true.”
“Battery Bravo locked on the venom sac,” Borin roared through the pipe.
His bearded face was smeared with soot and gear grease.
“Heavy dark metal dart seated in the brass guide,” the dwarf reported.
“Twisting force leaf-springs cranked to four hundred thousand foot-pounds.”
The Three-Headed Rot-Hydra lunged forward through the smoking canal water.
Its eight massive claws tore deep furrows into the curing concrete floor.
The right head opened its jaws forty feet above the water chute.
Inside its throat, the green venom gathered into a blazing bright sphere of rotting acid.
It prepared to unleash eighty gallons of death against the water gate gates.
Giles brought the crosshair of Battery Alpha down onto the lateral nerve junction.
He felt the rhythmic thrum of the flatcar beneath his heavy boots.
The river wind blew across the sights, cold and carrying the stench of swamp rot.
“Correction for crosswind is zero point two mils west,” Giles murmured.
He adjusted the small brass thumbscrew on the eye tube.
The fine silver wire centered upon the junction between the dark scales.
Along the levee, five hundred militia riflemen held their breath.
No man fired a musket.
Every eye remained fixed upon the two brass rail-lances resting on the tramway tracks.
“Three,” Giles called into the speaking-tube.
“Two.”
“One.”
“Loose.”
Both lanyards snapped back with a sharp clockwork click.
TWANG-CRACK.
TWANG-CRACK.
Two faster-than-sound detonations tore across the canal cut.
The twin cracks merged into a single roar of sky thunder.
The blast wave blew the leftover animal fat lanterns off the stone retaining wall posts.
At the muzzles of both fourteen-foot launch guides, the split ash sabots parted cleanly.
Four wooden shoes flew outward in an arc of burning sparks.
Two sixteen-inch heavy dark metal needle penetrators sped up into the open air.
Their speed reached Mach two point eight.
Three thousand one hundred and fifty feet per second.
The transit across two hundred and eighty yards took less than zero point three seconds.
Then occurred the phenomenon that contradicted every doctrine of the royal academies.
The Hydra’s thirty-yard emerald mana-shield hung in the air, glowing with sky pride.
The two heavy dark metal darts reached the boundary of the magical lattice.
The physical interaction between the pointed tips and the barrier was instant.
Transit duration through the field was thirty-one point six split-seconds.
The hydra’s central nervous system was seated deep along its spinal ridge.
Its neural nodes needed two hundred and fifty split seconds to detect impact stress.
It needed a quarter of a second to route mana to the point of contact.
Thirty-one split-seconds was too brief for the magical barrier to respond.
To the emerald field, the two darts were faster than the propagation of intent.
The needles punched through the glowing shield like sewing pins through dry parchment.
The emerald dome didn’t ripple.
It didn’t dim.
It didn’t shatter.
The barrier remained hovering over the water, ninety-nine percent intact.
It didn’t register that its defensive envelope had been breached.
On the second-tier terrace, Sister Teresa stood with her hands clasped around her copper focus rod.
Her healing acolytes stood ready beside wooden stretchers loaded with clean linen bandages and antiseptic wash.
She watched the needle points vanish through the emerald dome without a flicker of divine intervention.
“The heavens didn’t stop them,” Teresa whispered, her breath frosting in the damp river air.
“The speed of the iron simply outran the miracle.”
A fraction of a split second later, the heavy dark metal needles struck living flesh.
Battery Alpha’s dart took the left snake-like neck at the third vertebra.
Sixteen megajoules of striking force discharged directly into the spinal column.
THWUMP-CRACK.
The third vertebra didn’t crack.
It turned into fine bone flour.
The faster-than-sound high-pressure blast wave tore through the surrounding muscle tissue.
The flesh blew outward in a violent spray of dark purple blood and shredded sinew.
The entire sixty-foot left neck cut clean from the shoulder socket.
The decapitated head tumbled through the air like a fallen log.
It crashed into the canal water with a heavy, bone-shaking splash.
At the same time, Battery Bravo’s dart struck the right head beneath the jaw hinge.
The dart pierced straight through the center of the high-pressure venom pool.
KA-BOOM.
The impact blew up the chemical organ like an iron bomb.
Eighty gallons of white-hot acid flashed into expanding gas within the beast’s throat.
The right head didn’t bleed.
It burst outward in an eruption of green chemical fire.
Shreds of jaw bone, teeth, and burning acid sprayed across forty yards of canal dyke.
The acid sizzled against the titan’s own shoulder scales, eating through horn and fat.
The right neck slumped limp, gushing dark blood into the boiling water chute.
Up on the northern castle wall coping, Dwarf Trade Envoy Thorgan Ironvein leaped upward.
He tossed his war-pick into the air and caught the wooden handle with a bellowing laugh.
“Two heads in a single breath,” Thorgan roared into the wind.
His grey beard bristled with pure glee.
“By the stone roots, he shaved the monster with two needles,” Thorgan yelled.
High atop the central spinal crest of the hydra, disaster struck the cult’s master.
The violent recoil of the cut left neck snapped the heavy tendons along the spine.
The bone platform lashed sideways like a released catapult arm.
Hesketh the Rot-Weaver lost his footing on the slick moss flooring.
The necromancer shrieked as his dragon-bone staff splintered against the armor plates.
He was flung forty feet through the smoke.
He tumbled through the air and hit the shallow canal muck near the foot of Sluice Tower One.
The Hierophant of the Black Mildew dragged himself through the black silt on his hands and knees.
His stitched green robes were soaked in foul mud.
He coughed salty water, clutching two broken ribs with trembling, clawed fingers.
Yet out in the center of the water chute, the titan was not dead.
The central head remained.
It was the largest of the three.
Its skull spanned nine feet of dense, stone-hard horn and thick grey bone.
Its single ancient heart hammered with wild, ancient rage.
The central head looked down at the two smoking stumps on its shoulders.
Its crimson eyes fixed upon Rail-Lance Flatcar Number One sitting on the levee fifty yards away.
An unearthly roar tore from its single gaping throat.
It was a sound of ancient, feral fury that shook the gravel beneath the ties.
Deprived of its venom reservoirs, the beast didn’t pause to cast spells.
It dropped its massive snout level with the water line.
Eight heavy claws dug into the concrete stone retaining wall, gouging deep trenches in the floor.
The monster lunged forward into a full battering-ram charge.
Forty tons of furious reptilian mass surged down the canal water chute at thirty miles per hour.
Its huge bulk bore down directly on Sluice Tower One and the brass rail-lance.
The bow wave of dirty canal water rose six feet high before its chest.
Giles Croft stood on the deck of Flatcar Number One.
He looked straight into the crimson eyes of the charging beast.
His heart rate didn’t spike.
He reached into the wooden ammunition rack at his side.
He lifted the final heavy metal dart with both hands.
He slid the smooth tube-shaped casing into the open brass breech track.
He pulled the toggle latch until the iron teeth bit home with a metal click.
“Single target leftover,” Giles said into the speaking-pipe.
His tone was quiet, measured, and fully calm.
“Central skull hitbox.”
“Hold fire until fifty paces.”