The thing about the situation that bothered Will was that he could see the logic in an exploding Tainted. It maximized the number of potential targets, and since they were already basically falling apart there was no need for self-preservation.

But this was predicated on the assumption that there was some logical actor in the equation.

Maybe it was more like natural selection, where the most effective way to spread the disease was found through mindless trial and error.

The Tainted were beginning to employ more complex strategies, which similarly weren’t necessarily enacted by a central intelligence.

Ants, after all, could exhibit complex behavior as a colony despite being individually very simple.

All of this ran through Will’s head as he raised an arm to block bloody shards of bone from tearing into his face.

The dulling of pain made it feel like he was merely being stung by a large swarm of bees, even as serrated pieces of bone lodged themselves in his arm and side.

Will opened his eyes, which he had closed instinctively. Nobody made a move, but nobody appeared to have been knocked out.

The other ambushing Tainted, not having defended themselves at all from the blast, lay strewn about. Their flesh was already beginning to curdle.

“Is everyone alright?” Will asked. The red souls of the Tainted were already fading away, and he couldn’t see any blue souls floating around.

“What the fuck was that?” Dio lamented, brushing bone shards out of his flesh. “It just… exploded!”

“It took out the others, though," Will noted. “They didn’t think about friendly fire.”

“What?” Dio continued, helping Uther to his hooves. “What does that mean?”

Will blinked, attempting to recalibrate his brain. “It’s like… in some video games, you can’t hurt your teammates. Like, not just disallowed but physically cannot. But the Tainted don’t have that,” Will finished, realizing how strange this sounded.

“Well, yeah, of course,” Dio said.

“What I mean is they didn’t react like they would get hurt by the blast. It didn’t occur to them at all that it would hurt them.” Will continued.

“What does that mean?” Dio asked.

“I don’t know. We need to find a place to rest for a bit.”

Glory was hiding behind a metal sphere of his own crossed wings. Will knocked on the wall like he was knocking on a door, and he was surprised by the echoing, hollow sound it made.

Glory unfolded his wings, dropping Rex and Virgil to the ground with as much gentleness as he could manage.

“Where’s Skullcrusher?” Will asked.

“The greenhouse,” Glory said. “He ran off as soon as we were ambushed.”

“What? I didn’t think he’d abandon us,” Will said, disappointed.

“He didn’t exactly abandon us—“ Glory started, before he was interrupted.

“BEHOLD SKULLFUCK BONECRUSHER!” Shouted Skullcrusher from atop a three-legged fig tree. “YOUR DOOM—Wait, where’d all the monsters go?”

“They exploded,” Will said matter-of-factly. “Where’d you get the fig tree?”

“Found it. In the greenhouse. Behind a locked door.”

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“Put it back!” Uther shouted.

Skullcrusher sulked back to the greenhouse and returned a minute later on foot. Will noted that he ran on all fours, rather like a real hyena would.

“I thought it was nice,” Will said, patting the gnoll on the back.

Skullcrusher’s tail wagged like an excited golden retriever’s, but he said nothing.

“Will, we should get those spines out of your skin,” Glory said. He looked to Uther, who also had a few shards sticking out of his flank. “I’ll help you, and you help Will.”

Uther nodded and lined up between Will and Glory.

“Stay very still. If these are anything like a porcupine’s quills, they’ll resist being pulled out,” Uther said.

“I’m not sure they’re like a porcupine’s. These are bones, I’m pretty sure.” Will said. Uther ripped one out, causing Will to yelp, and held it up.

It was longer and thinner than Will had realized, almost like a little dagger. The edges were sharp, like they’d been broken, but Will thought it looked like they’d broken down a perforated line, like how a graham cracker would break into halves.

Will laughed at the absurdity of that comparison. Uther looked at him oddly as he pulled another bone out.

“Christ, I think they are barbed,” Will said.

Uther nodded as Glory pulled one out of his flank, then immediately sealed the wound with healing magic.

“Oh, yeah, let me make sure those wounds close,” Uther said, pressing two fingers to Will’s arm where one spine had been removed.

If Glory’s healing felt the way snickerdoodles tasted, Uther’s felt like the smell of rain. It made Will think of a grassy hill in spring, damp with morning dew.

The way pain dulled made Will think the wounds weren’t as severe as they were. Seven shards had stuck into him, and several more had left cuts or punctures.

Unlike the rest of the body, the Tainted bones didn’t appear to rot, at least not any faster than regular bones.

Will inspected the shards carefully. He suspected that the way they fit together, like interlocking scales, wasn’t entirely natural, or at least any more unnatural than the rest of the creature.

“I think someone designed this,” Will said, pressing two shards together that fit together like bloodstained puzzle pieces.

“Elaborate,” Glory prompted, to get Will to interrogate his hunch.

“The bones are hollow,” Will said, putting together more pieces. “And not spongy, like a bird’s, but totally hollow. They’re meant to break apart.”

“That can arise naturally,” Glory said. “Many creatures can break off parts of themselves in a pinch.”

“But no animal has bones with no marrow or internal structure whatsoever. It’s not possible to just evolve that.”

“It’s magic, Will,” said Virgil, shrugging. “It doesn’t have to obey rules like that.”

“Sure, but just because it doesn’t have to doesn’t mean it will,” Will said. “The creature is obviously designed to explode, but it’s still a living thing, and that means there’s some logic in how it’s put together. Bones meant only to work as shrapnel don’t obey that logic.”

“I think you’re making assumptions,” Glory said calmly. “We don’t know how the Tainted really work at all. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“Them acting purely on instinct is also an assumption,” Will said, confident he was bordering on an epiphany. This was actually what Glory had been trying to spur by providing friction.

The sharpening was paying off. “I don’t think the Tainted are working on just instinct. I think… Someone is trying to observe how we react. They send a monster, we kill it, they watch.”

“Outlandish,” said Glory, though his tone didn’t suggest that he disagreed. “We have no way of verifying this short of finding the culprit.”

“It makes sense, though, I think. Every time I’ve seen them they’re apparently acting unusual,” Will said. “Working together, spying, planting traps and bombs.”

“It’s not the behavior of something mindless, and they’re ramping up in complexity. I’m expecting something even more elaborate next time,” Will said.

“That’s terrifying. I genuinely really hope you’re wrong,” said Glory. “No offense meant, of course.”

“Why?” Will asked.

Rex signed something elaborate, long enough that Will could almost feel the desperation despite the language barrier.

“What did he say?” Will asked after nobody responded.

“Because then we’d be fucked,” Said Dio. “Like, giga-turbo-fucked. Giga-turbo-omega fucked six ways to Sunday. Giga-turbo-omega—“

“Okay, I get it,” Will said, interrupting. “It’s bad.”

“Fucked from dusk to dawn, face-up, face-down, prostate-pounding ass-blasting—“

“Enough!” Will shouted, exasperated. “I get it!”

“I’m just telling you what Rex said,” Dio grumbled, putting his hands up. “You were the one who asked.”

“That’s not what Rex was saying,” Glory said, and Rex nodded vehemently in agreement. “Rex was significantly more lurid.”