Beardy Beardingsson's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Beardy followed the glowing trail down the slope, screen humming in his palm. Then the lens cracked with a sharp pop. The needle went wild. The trail blurred into smears of light. He cursed and shook the box, but the glass was split clean through. Without a steadier housing, the shard would burn out before he saw a thing. A wet slither stopped him. Three snails crawled from the rocks, each shell wide as a shield, each bearing the painted face of a pop singer he'd glimpsed in a traveling poster. They sang in awful harmony, mouths leaking acid that hissed on stone. Beardy swung the cracked box like a hammer. He smashed one shell, then another. The third lunged. He drove his boot down hard. Slime burst across his leg, but in the wreckage of the third shell sat a smooth iron ring — a perfect housing, sent by the enemy as a trap, now his by right. He fit the shard inside. The screen steadied. The trail glowed bright again, and led straight toward whoever had sent the singing snails.