Lucas felt the branches of the fallen tree crack underneath his step, and he paused to look down at the rows of broken trees leading a path past the mountainside. There were prints and disturbed foliage, and yet no sign of the giant that had laid waste to the area through the simple act of moving. He relocated his walkie talkie - modified courtesy of the professor to cut through interference - closer to his mouth. "How the hell did we lose a building-sized lobster?"

"Maybe it went back to the lake?" Wyland suggested over the line. "Like in a really roundabout way."

"Vivian says the new ice hasn't been touched," Raya added. "If it went back in we'd know. Must still be looking for me."

Lucas looked over to the side, where Raya was standing with a large satchel of bombs. "Remind me why we can't just use one of Barrett's dark matter rounds and poison the big guy? Wouldn't that be more efficient?"

"You wanna buy one? They're a few hundred million credits each. You only need one, sure, but it's gotta be approved by the Ministry first. And then the cleanup is going to involve them sending a small army up here to clear the residue..."

"Okay yeah I see your point," Lucas said, holding up the spyglass in his other hand. As he peered through it, a single thought ran down the nerve in his arm and to the fingers grasping the device, causing the sigils in the metal to glow and its parts to spin around, automatically refocusing for the distance he was looking over. "Seriously, where can this thing even hide?"

"We did go to that lake by the time and never noticed it," Raya said. "Maybe it can change size?"

"That would be fucking terrifying and I did not sign up to fight that nonsense."

"If it's small you can just step on it."

"It could also just crawl up my butt and grow and then I'd just explode!"

"That doesn't even happen in movies," Wyland said. "And I grew up watching the wildest stuff that came out of the UCF. It's not going to climb into your rectum and exp-"

"Wait, shush! Shut up!" Lucas adjust his grip on the spyglass. The colour of his view through it shifted as the lens inside deformed, becoming almost desaturated. Occasionally though, he would see starburst, popping out of thin air before fading back into nonexistence. "What did the professor say about magical fallout again?"

"She didn't?"

"She said it to me when she came to the bar. Didn't really elaborate though."

"That's the stuff causing interference, right?" Wyland offered. "I once read it's something to do with magical particulate, like from whatever a spell was conducted through getting vaporised or a field so strong it generates magically conductive material in the air, and then that energetically interacts with the air particles, which releases electromagnetic radiation. Which then interferes with equipment."

"I'm getting quite a lot of that, yes." Lucas adjusted his view, swinging it around and up. "It's like a goddamn cloud chamber in here. But..." he twisted another section of the spyglass, tinting his vision blue. The starbursts no longer were visible, and in fact, with the incredibly high contrast, not much was. "I'm not getting conductive materials at all. Like completely blank."

"What?" Raya asked. "Are you sure?"

He pointed the spyglass at his own arm, which under that mode, showed him an incredible glow emanating from within the blood vessels inside his limb, and clusters dotted across the surface of his skeleton. Then he looked up again, at the path carved through the forest. Nothing. "Okay, what the fu-"

He was cut off by the realisation that the sound of more twigs snapping wasn't coming from beneath him, but rather to his right. "Guys," he said quietly. "I think it's right there."

The canopy above shifted as Wyland lept from tree to tree, trying to get a better look. "Oh. Yeah, it's right there."

"What do I do?" Lucas stared at the sliver of moss-covered blue he could see through the trees. "Guys?"

"Just don't run backwards, that's where I am. Ready to throw,” Raya said.

Lucas grit his teeth, and then put both hands up, waving vigorously at the hidden creature. "Hey! Fuck you! You don't get to mess with my bar!"

The blue mass shifted, and with knowledge of what angle of the creature he was looking at suddenly Lucas figured out what the area he had seen was. A blue-skinned, human-like face attached to the underside of the lobster's front stared back at him with a pair of glossy black, scleraless eyes. And then it started moving, the bulk of its body slamming through the space between the trees.

He didn't waste any time and started running along the path to his right, pumping his legs as fast as he could. Thankfully, there had been little new snow this far in from the edge of the dome and the lobster's earlier passage has flattened the ground somewhat, allowing Lucas to make good speed away. Behind him, he heard trees crashing down as the creature burst out onto the path...and then an audible popping. With a hesitant glance back, he saw that one of the adhesive grenades had burst open, clinging to the back part of its shell. Another flew out of the bushes, this one gluing itself closer to the head, and the lobster stopped in its tracks, trying to claw at the bombs.

With bright flash, they went off, the explosion producing enough force to rock the lobster back against the trees, the places where the adhesive had been now holes in its carapace with exposed translucent flesh oozing deep blue ichor. Lucas saw Wyland pass by over the creature, with each hop tossing a kunai wrapped in a talisman down to pierce the exposed flesh, each one lighting up with a bright cyan flame.

"Get away from it!" Wyland shouted over the radio.

Though he knew he was far away enough, and the warning was mostly for Raya, Lucas took a couple of steps back just in case it was going to explode. At two distinct points the hellfire grew, rising to envelop the beast and reduce it to ashes, and then-

Nothing.

Lucas felt sick to his stomach as he watched the hellfire flare up once and then go out completely. It left smoking, charred flesh where the kunai had been embedded, but the lobster itself seemed unbothered, turning to the trees Raya had been standing between. Swearing to himself, he quickly flipped the switch on his spyglass to turn on its internal projector, and shone the light directly in the lobster's humanlike face, making it recoil as the beam messed with its vision. Sufficiently angered, the thing shielded itself with its pincers, and ran directly at him.

Lucas took advantage of the gap between it and himself, he backpedaled along the path to a section they had come down from, along the edge of a high cliff. He stopped right before the drop - a cursory glance struck him with a tinge of vertigo when he discovered that thick mist totally obscured the bottom - and kept aiming the flashlight in the lobster-thing's face. He'd seen the clearance when Raya had blown it up, and the level of the flattened snow gave him some idea of how much space he would have. Still, theory and practical application were entirely different worlds, and one mistake was all it took to turn him into pancake.

"No!" Raya shouted over the radio, realising what he was going to do.

As the lobster neared, it let out a shrill, warbling screech, something that shouldn't have come out if anything crustacean or human. Trying his best to ignore the sudden dryness in his throat, Lucas twisted the frontal segment of his spyglass, focusing the light into a hardened blade, and dove forwards with it directly in front of him. The heat of the hard light sword cleaved through the snow on the ground, causing him to sink in. He pressed down as flat as he could in that moment, and blinded, the lobster lumbered over him. He felt the air it displaced rush over him, and then it just wasn't anymore.

Lucas rolled over, spitting out melted snow and gasping at the dark skies, above. Incredibly, the sun's rays still pierced through that layer, or perhaps it made its own light; it was all he could think about as he laid there, listening to the screams of the lobster-thing tumbling down the mountain.

Wyland rushed to the edge to peer down, his shotgun and the wicked axe head on the end of its barrel pointed the same way. "Shit! You alright?"

Lucas groaned as he sat up. "Did...did I get it?"

"Yeah, I think you did!"

Raya tackled him in a hug, pressing him against the snow. "Idiot!" she exclaimed, choking on the word a little. "Don't do that to me!" She took his face in her hands, the ears on the top of her head drooping. "I don't care who it has to be, just not you."

"I know, I just...thought about it and..." Lucas scowled as he looked at Wyland. "What the fuck man!? Your hellfire didn't work!"

"It should have," Wyland said quietly, still staring into the mist. As if on cue, the lobster's scream echoed upwards towards them, but it was further away. With each successive howl, it progressed towards the lake in the bottom of the valley. "It's not a yokai."

"Then what the hell is it?" Lucas snapped.

"It has to be...Fae. I've never seen anything like it. Only Fae gods get that big, as far as I know."

"That thing's a fucking god?"

"We can find out for sure." Raya got off Lucas and stepped over to a patch of blue lobster blood seeping into the snow. "Got a sample now."

"But no equipment to test it," Lucas pointed out. "My material analysis method only works on magical stuff, remember? Not whatever the Fae are."

"There is someone we can ask, though." She met his eyes.

A lightbulb went off in Lucas' head. "No, fuck no. How are we supposed to even talk to him with this barrier still up?"

"Yeah...but we don't have to leave the area. Even if this is Fae fallout we still have a better shot than magic."

"Hold up," Wyland said. "Who are we talking about here?"

"Oh, man." Lucas got to his feet, brushing snow off himself. "You're not gonna like this plan."