Grand Admiral Meng wiped a smear of spiritual life-blood off his trembling chin with the back of his Dragon-Blood gauntlet.
The man was coming unglued. His immaculate crimson topknot had come undone, wild strands whipping in the wind like frayed copper wire. His eyes burned with the twitchy, cornered madness of a career bureaucrat who had just watched a mortal tradesman treat the crown jewel of the Imperial Navy like a free coolant flush.
"He mocked us..." Meng rasped, his vocal cords raw from screaming. "The bastard gave me... a thumbs-up!"
He lunged sideways and caught the nearest formation elder by the silk collar, hauling the scrawny Daoist clean off the teak deck with one arm:
"Are we the vanguard of the Great Yan Dynasty, or are we a mobile repair crew for southern barbarian plumbing?! ANSWER ME!"
"W-We are the Imperial Void Armada, Supreme Commander!" the elder squeaked, sandaled feet kicking empty air.
Meng threw the old man against the deckhouse and drew his six-foot executioner blade, pointing the jagged steel tip straight at the lodge below:
*"ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS! Man the broadside batteries! Wind back the Thirty-Six Dragon-Bone Ballistas! Prime the Nine-Yang Soul-Piercing Harpoons! Uncap the demon-powder pots! If we can't freeze this son of a bitch, we’ll bore six thousand holes through his cabin and drop this entire ridge into the mantle!"*
Three hundred imperial marines scrambled across the multi-tiered decks of the eight-hundred-foot warship. Heavy bronze winches shrieked against their bronze bushings as deck crews hauled on iron levers:
*Clink-clink-clink-clink-clink!*
Gargantuan ballista arms forged from petrified leviathan ribs bent under hundreds of tons of tension. Six-foot black iron harpoons, slick with foul-smelling soul-binding oil, dropped into their greased tracks. Gun captains spun brass elevation wheels with frantic, sweating palms, lining their crosshairs squarely on the small cedar porch where Austin stood.
A heavy vibration rolled through the obsidian flagstones below.
It wasn't magic. It wasn't an incantation.
It was an eight-hundred-pound low-frequency bass idle, rumbling like a diesel semi-truck waiting at a red light:
*Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.*
Out from beneath the porch rafters trotted Cerberus Pug.
All eight hundred pounds of him.
The three-headed nether-solar hound moved with the swagger of a creature that feared nothing in the cosmos except an empty food bowl. His pitch-black coat gleamed under the sun, ripples of dense muscle bunching over heavy shoulders. His paws hit the stone like cast-iron skillet lids.
Pug stopped at the edge of the porch, dropped his front haunches slightly, and tilted all three broad, wrinkly heads straight toward the sky.
Six golden eyes blinked together.
Directly overhead, hovering three hundred feet above the plaza, hung the eight-hundred-foot iron belly of the *Sun-Slayer*.
Down below, any sensible mortal would have seen an invincible weapon of mass destruction—a flying fortress of cold-rolled steel, spiked siege engines, and ancient blood runes built to wipe sovereign kingdoms off the map.
Canine geometry works on different principles.
The object was long.
Pointed on both ends.
Hovered at an easy catching height.
And, best of all, nobody had their hands on it.
Across all three lobes of Pug’s nether-solar brain, a single, glorious conclusion lit up like a neon sign:
*STICK.*
*AN EIGHT-HUNDRED-FOOT FLOATING FETCH STICK JUST FOR ME.*
All three stubby black tails started whipping behind him in a blur of hydraulic velocity:
*Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!*
Every impact against the porch floorboards cracked like a pneumatic nail gun driving spikes into green pine.
Three blunt, leathery snouts twitched in rapid succession, pulling in the rich scents of hot spindle grease, sulfurous spirit-powder, and three hundred terrified sailors sweating through their armor. Six velvety, triangular ears pinned straight back in predator lock. Three wide pink tongues flopped out the corners of his jaws, showering the clean obsidian with ropes of bubbly, ecstatic drool:
*PANT, PANT, PANT!*
Austin glanced down from his clipboard, grease pencil hovering above the carbon duplicate.
"Pug?" Austin called out, his tone flat with foreman authority. "What did we say about harassing commercial aircraft? Those boys haven't settled their parking tab yet."
Pug heard nothing. Pug saw only the stick.
*KAAAAAAAA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
The obsidian flagstones cracked as four massive paws dumped thirty tons of nether-solar kinetic force into the bedrock. A shower of black gravel kicked into the air as eight hundred pounds of pure canine muscle launched skyward like an anti-ship ballistic missile!
*WOOF! RUFF! ARF!*
Three heads barked in wild three-part harmony as Pug rocketed three hundred feet straight up through the clear mountain air. Sunlight caught his glossy black fur as he arced directly over the flagship’s elevated poop deck.
On the quarterdeck, lookouts dropped their spyglasses:
"Incoming projectile from the ground! Is it a demonic warhead?!"
"It’s a dog! A giant three-headed black hound is falling out of the sky!"
*CRASH-SMASH-BANG!*
Pug’s eight-hundred-pound bulk hit the teak deck with the impact of a falling safe.
The entire eight-hundred-foot dreadnought rolled thirty degrees hard to port. Multi-ton bronze ballistas tore free from their deck bolts, screeching across the canted deck planks like runaway locomotives. Barrels of black demon-powder slipped their lashings, tumbling over the rail into the valley below.
Two hundred imperial marines lost their footing, skidding across the slick wet deck into the scuppers in a tangled mess of armor, halberds, and bruised pride.
Pug stuck the landing on all four paws, his claws digging four parallel, six-inch ruts through the Emperor’s thousand-year heart-pine flooring:
*Scratch-skid-thud!*
He gave himself a violent, rattling shake from nose to rump, sending static sparks showering over the bulkheads:
*Flap-flap-flap-pant!*
"Repel boarders!" an imperial marine captain screamed, scrambling up the canted deck and thrusting a fifth-grade Dragon-Bone Spirit Spear with both hands. "Spear the beast!"
*CLANG!*
The hardened steel spearhead took Pug dead in the ribcage. The tempered point snapped like a dry twig. The ash-wood shaft exploded into kindling.
Pug didn't even flinch. He just leaned his left flank against the captain, convinced the nice man in the shiny suit was offering an enthusiastic rib scratching. He let out a rumbling sigh of canine bliss that knocked the officer ass-over-teakettle across a coil of heavy hawser.
Left Head got straight to exploring.
Snuffling along an ornate brass floor grate, Left Head picked up a sharp, humming tang. Down in the open utility conduit ran a five-inch braided steel cable pulsing with intense azure light—the master anti-gravity feeder line routing primary levitation essence from the First Epoch crystal keel up to the bridge thrusters.
To Left Head, it smelled like hot marrow.
*CHOMP-CRUNCH!*
Jaws the size of a bear trap clamped shut through braided steel, mineral insulation, and spiritual conduction mesh, severing the feeder line clean as a stalk of celery.
*BZZZZZZZZT-POP-BANG!*
Azure hydraulic fluid sprayed the bulkhead in an electric blue geyser. Secondary thrusters sputtered out with a dying, hollow *whine*:
`[WARNING: KEEL CONDUIT BREACHED. LEVITATION FLUID LOSS: 88%]`
Meanwhile, Right Head spotted an even better prize.
Perched on the raised navigation bridge was the flagship’s master helm—a ten-foot steering wheel fashioned from thousand-year dragon-blood ironwood, bound with gold leaf and engraved with royal navigation seals.
To Right Head, this wasn't an imperial symbol of state.
This was the undisputed king of all chew toys.
*CRUNCH-SPLINTER!*
Right Head pounced onto the dais, sank four-inch fangs into the upper half of the golden wheel, and whipped its neck back and forth in a frantic, muscle-straining puppy frenzy:
*Flap-flap-flap-snap!*
The thousand-year ironwood shattered into a cloud of yellow matchsticks. Gold leaf drifted across the bridge like holiday tinsel. With a wet *CRACK*, Right Head tore a four-foot jagged chunk of the steering wheel clean off the bronze spindle, clamping the splintered timber between its teeth with grinning pride.
Center Head trotted over to the bridge balustrade.
Grand Admiral Meng was still pinned there.
The supreme naval commander held his trembling blade in limp fingers, jaw hanging slack, eyes glaze-blank as he watched his multi-million-copper warship disassembled in forty seconds flat by an overgrown lapdog.
Center Head padded closer:
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
The blunt black snout sniffed Meng’s breastplate. It smelled scorched spirit-blood, brass cleaner, and a stash of salted imperial beef jerky tucked inside the silk sash.
Center Head decided this red-clad biped was definitely a friend.
Pug parted his black lips and dragged a massive, five-foot, warm pink tongue straight up Grand Admiral Meng’s face:
*SCHLUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP!*
The swipe coated the Admiral’s nose, eyes, braided beard, and golden helmet in a thick, warm, glistening glaze of nether-hound slobber.
Meng stood petrified. His gaze remained locked on empty air, his consciousness having permanently evacuated the premises.
Without its anti-gravity line and stripped of its steering helm, the eight-hundred-foot warship lost all trim.
Its heavy iron prow dipped toward the dirt.
*SCHWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOM.*
The *Sun-Slayer* settled into an unpowered downward glide.
The shark-shaped cold-iron hull caught the mountain updrafts like a five-thousand-ton kite. The broad ventral fins gripped the dense tropospheric air, leveling the giant vessel barely fifty feet above the eastern ridge.
The oak-and-iron landing skids plowed into the newly graded gravel terrace:
*THUUUUUUD-SKIDDDDDDDDD.*
Plowing two neat, uniform furrows through the loose pea gravel, the warship bled off its forward momentum over three hundred yards before easing to a silky, dead-level stop:
*Ssssssssssshhhhhh.*
When the dust settled, the flagship rested nose-first, sitting perfectly centered between two crisp white chalk lines Austin had snapped across the lot with an eighty-foot nylon reel.
*BOING.*
Cerberus Pug hopped off the forecastle, hitting the gravel with an easy, springy bounce.
He trotted across the Obsidian Plaza toward Austin, all three tails wagging in a blur of pure job satisfaction. Clamped firmly in Right Head’s jaws was the slobbery, four-foot splinter of the Emperor’s steering wheel.
Pug reached Austin’s steel-toed boots.
*Clink.*
He dropped the soggy piece of gold-leafed ironwood square across the steel cap of Austin’s left boot.
The hound planted his haunches on the stone, tucked his front paws neatly together, and looked up with six wide, worshipful golden eyes. Three pink tongues lolled out, panting happily:
*Pant, pant, pant!*
Austin glanced down at the drool-soaked wreckage of imperial craftsmanship resting on his boot.
He looked over at the eastern terrace, where the five-thousand-ton dreadnought sat squarely between the chalk marks, exactly four inches off the gravel curb.
Austin clicked his yellow grease pencil against his board with a slow nod of tradesman approval.
He reached deep into his dungaree pocket, pulled out three foot-long sticks of smoked beef jerky, and flipped one into each waiting maw:
*Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.*
Austin reached down with both hands, giving all six velvet ears a thorough, knuckle-grinding scratch:
"Attaboy, Pug," Austin muttered, a faint grin breaking through his deadpan scowl. "Proper parking enforcement. Right between the lines."