CHAPTER 69: FOUR MAGIC BULLETS

The world erupted in a symphony of glorious, beautiful noise.

Forge’s roar was a physical thing, a shockwave of pure, stubborn grit that rolled across the battlefield. "IRONHEARTS! TO ME!"

A wall of battered steel and grim determination slammed into the Umbraxis’s western flank. It was a beautiful, suicidal charge, a glorious act of defiance. Hammers fell, shields flared, and a dozen grizzled veterans who had probably forgotten more about fighting monsters than most Hunters ever learned began their final, desperate dance.

They were the anvil.

And up in the skeletal, blackened branches of a dead oak tree, Jinx was about to become the hammer.

"Alright, Boss Lady," she murmured into her comms, her voice a low, steady growl. "Anvil is in position. Ready to start chipping away at the pretty boy’s pillars."

Her world had shrunk to the circle of her scope. The chaos of the Great Lawn, the screams, the explosions—it was all just a distant, blurry backdrop.

In her sights, four shimmering, almost invisible distortions danced around the raging Umbraxis. They were like heat-haze on a cold day, glitches in reality that her eyes told her weren’t there, but the rifle’s high-tech scope screamed were very, very real.

The Royal Guards.

She chambered the first round.

It slid into place with a soft, satisfying click that was drowned out by the roar of the dragon.

The Phase-Disruptor. Her masterpiece. Her legacy.

All that was left of the Rust Dogs, boiled down into four perfect, impossible shots.

Don’t screw this up, Jinx, she thought, the cynical, pragmatic voice of her own survival instinct her only company.

"First target is on the move," Michael’s voice crackled in her ear, a thin thread of focus in the storm. "Phasing northeast, behind the wreckage of that Vanguard transport."

His [Void Sense] was their real targeting system. Chloe’s tech could give them data, but Michael could feel them. He could predict them.

"I see him, Spooky," Jinx grunted, her eye pressed to the scope. "He’s a slippery bastard."

"Atmospheric distortion is at twelve percent," Chloe’s voice added, a stream of cold, hard data. "Compensate for a three-degree thermal updraft from the beast’s fire."

"Yeah, yeah, telling a fish to swim," Jinx muttered, her fingers making microscopic adjustments to the scope’s calibration.

She didn’t aim where the guard was. She aimed where it was going to be.

She trusted Michael’s read.

She trusted Chloe’s math.

She trusted the ghost of her own damn genius.

"Hold..." Michael’s voice was a tense whisper. "It’s about to solidify to cross the wreckage... hold... NOW!"

Jinx didn’t think. She just fired.

The rifle bucked against her shoulder with a vicious, spiteful kick, a starburst of pain flaring from her old wound.

CRACK!

The sound of the shot was a sharp, clean note in the chaotic symphony.

The silver-blue needle of the disruptor round screamed across the field.

For a split second, the first Royal Guard solidified, its form becoming a shimmering, spectral knight.

The round hit it dead center.

There was no explosion. Just a high-pitched, electronic SCREEEEECH of a thousand systems failing at once.

The guard convulsed, its form flickering violently, then it dissolved into a shower of dying, digital sparks.

One down.

"Target neutralized," Jinx reported, her voice a flat, professional monotone that betrayed none of the tremor in her hands.

"Good hit, Jinxie!" Jax’s cheerful, pain-laced voice yelled over the comms. "Threaded that needle like a pro!"

"Don’t celebrate yet, Boomer," she growled, already scanning for her next target. "The locals are getting restless."

A pack of gargoyles, their attention drawn by the unique energy signature of her shot, let out a series of piercing shrieks and took to the air, their leathery wings beating a frantic, hungry rhythm.

They were coming for her.

"I’ve got to move," she hissed, unclipping from her perch.

She moved, a phantom in the trees, swinging from one blackened branch to another with a practiced, desperate grace.

The gargoyles were on her, their claws tearing at the branches she had just vacated.

"Second target is breaking east!" Michael yelled. "It’s using the gargoyle swarm as cover!"

Jinx found her new perch, a precarious spot on a high, moss-covered rock. She didn’t have time to set up. This would have to be a snap shot.

"I don’t have a clean line of sight, Spooky!"

"You will in three... two... one..."

A brilliant, dazzling flash of light erupted from the battlefield below.

A flashbang. A gift from Jax.

The gargoyles shrieked, their sensitive eyes blinded, their flight patterns becoming chaotic and panicked.

The swarm scattered for a single, glorious second.

And there it was.

The second Royal Guard, exposed and vulnerable.

Jinx didn’t even have time to aim properly. She just raised the rifle, found the shimmering distortion in her scope, and fired on pure instinct.

CRACK!

The second guard shrieked and dissolved.

Two down.

"Show-off," she muttered to herself, a grim, humorless smile touching her lips.

"Two remain," Chloe’s voice stated, a cold, hard fact. "But they’re adapting. They’re staying closer to the Umbraxis, using its body as a shield."

Jinx could see them. Two shimmering phantoms, weaving through the shimmering heat rising from the dragon’s obsidian scales.

The shots were impossible.

"I can’t get a lock," she said, her frustration a sharp, bitter taste in her mouth. "The heat is bending the light. It’s like trying to shoot a ghost in a funhouse mirror."

"Forge’s team is taking heavy losses," Chloe reported, her voice tight. "The diversion won’t last much longer."

They were out of time.

Jinx gritted her teeth. She had two rounds left. Two chances to end this.

Come on, you beautiful, broken bastards, she thought, a silent prayer to the ghosts of her old crew. Lend me a hand here.

She took a deep breath, letting half of it out.

The world slowed down.

She wasn’t a scrapper anymore. She wasn’t a survivor.

She was a sniper. And this was her art.

She focused, not on the two guards, but on the space between them.

On the rhythm of their dance.

"Michael," she said, her voice a low, steady whisper. "Call it. Both of them. Tell me when their paths are going to cross."

There was a moment of silence, filled only by the roar of the dragon and the pounding of her own heart.

"Okay," Michael’s voice came back, quiet and focused. "The third guard is on a descending arc. The fourth is rising to meet it. They’ll intersect in five... four..."

Jinx’s finger tightened on the trigger.

"...three... two..."

She didn’t aim for either of them.

She aimed for the single, infinitesimal point in space and time where their realities would overlap.

She was betting everything on his senses.

On her skill.

On a single, impossible, one-in-a-million shot.

"...NOW!"

CRACK!

She didn’t even wait to see if it hit. She immediately chambered her last round, her movements a blur.

The third guard, its path intersecting with the disruptor round, dissolved into static.

But the fourth... the fourth was smart. It phased a fraction of a second before impact, the round passing harmlessly through its shimmering form.

A miss.

She had missed.

The plan was a failure.

"No," Michael’s voice was a raw, desperate gasp in her ear. "It’s still there! Jinx, it’s coming for you!"

The last Royal Guard, its form solidifying, let out a silent, psychic shriek of pure, undiluted rage.

It turned its faceless, spectral head.

And it looked directly at her.

It shot towards her, a shimmering, unstoppable missile of pure, spectral vengeance.

She raised her rifle for one last, desperate shot.

Her final round.

But it was too fast.

She was out of time. She braced for the impact, a bitter curse on her lips.

This was it.

Just as the guard was about to slam into her, its form flickering, its spectral claws extended, a new voice cut through the comms.

It was gruff. It was angry. It was beautiful.

"NOT ON MY WATCH, YOU GLITCHY BASTARD!"

A massive, spinning object sailed through the air and slammed into the Royal Guard.

It wasn’t a bullet.

It wasn’t a grenade.

It was a two-hundred-pound, solid steel warhammer.

Forge’s hammer.

The guard let out a shriek of surprised agony as the sheer, brute-force physical impact, something it was not designed to handle, shattered its spectral form.

It dissolved into a final, glittering shower of dying sparks.

Four down.

Jinx just stared, her rifle lowered, her mind struggling to process what had just happened.

She slumped against the rock, her body trembling with a mixture of adrenaline and sheer, bone-deep exhaustion.

She keyed her comm, her voice a ragged, breathless, and deeply triumphant whisper.

"Guards are down."

"The king is unprotected."

"Your move, Jax."