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The oversized worms reared up, shrieking and undulating. Their end-of-life cries spiraled deep into the belly of the volcano, echoing like haunted souls.
Their death cries alerted the two remaining hellsna to the imminent danger. Long bodies hammered the edges of the bowl as they whipped around with shocking speed, scanning for prey.
The straightforward part had ended. If Devile had sent a trained team, we would’ve killed them all in their sleep. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Four darts deployed. In. Out. Done. Now, with a lot of strategy and a heavy dose of luck, we might just make it.
Tuga rushed to my side, shouting, “Let’s work the magma to our advantage.”
Acting on their own, Nebula and RitRat launched themselves at one monster, bathing it in a wash of pungent mist.
Tuga and I crouched knee to knee in the shadows.
“Blant, we’re lucky to have them on our side,” Tuga said.
“Their intuition is every guard’s dream.”
I crept along the ledge behind the other veiny bastard, Tuga at my rear. We needed to reposition ourselves in front of it or else get it to turn its head, but the river of boiling magma halted our progress.
Nebula and RitRat raced up and down the domed ceiling over the second giant bastard’s head. As if reading my mind, the dorats split up, Nebula darting toward me.
In a flash, the launcher met my lips. Blant. Wrong angle. I shifted. The giant beast towered above me. I charged to the cavern wall with the launcher in my teeth and climbed. The magma heated my skin where it sputtered and hissed beneath me. Sweat poured down my arms and dripped into my eyes. Mygrip slipped. The sharp jerk dislodged the dart from my mouth, and it clattered to the ledge below, a hairsbreadth away from rolling into the hissing magma.
“Blant!” I shouted.
Numb to the deafening shrieks that had gone on for so long, I stared at the lost dart as if it were water in the desert. With a steady hand born of endless drills, I retrieved the last dart from my knife belt. My toes lodged into the brittle volcanic rock, and with one hand on the wall, I turned. The beast lurched toward me, easy pickings as I clung sideways.
I sucked in a lungful of humid air and blew.
The dart sailed through the air and pierced the roof of the hellsna’s mouth. But, in its final race from death, it rocketed straight toward me.
“Watch out!” Tuga yelled.
My arm shuddered, and blood dripped from my hand. The sharp volcanic rock was tearing through the skin holding all my weight. Pain ricocheted through my half-healed muscles, stretched to their limit. Blisters started to form on my skin as the magma’s heat took its toll. The wall grew so hot I could no longer tell whether the suffocating heat emanated from the churning volcano or the worm’s rotting breath.
With strength I didn’t know I possessed, I threw myself against the wall, latching on with both hands. Urged forward by another wailing death cry, I half scurried, half jumped along the vertical face.
On my heels, the dying monster was gaining on me. Time to redirect.
Chest heaving, I promised Sola my undying loyalty if she would only spare me. I could no longer feel my hands. They were shredded to a pulp. But I blindly leapfrogged down the wall in larger, riskier jumps, trying to escape.
With its last threads of life, the beast smashed into the wall above me and fell.
Time stopped as the dead weight of the worm corpse hung like an anchor suspended over my head.
“Jump!” Tuga’s voice echoed through the cavern.
Eye to eye with the dead beast, my life flashed before my eyes. A future with Ginger… My voice broke as we fell. “Tell… Ginger… I….”
I launched myself toward a dangling vine, going through the motions of grabbing for it though my fingers held no feeling. The hellsna’s body crashed into a rocky shelf, raining debris on me and slowing its descent. Orange fungus broke off in chunks as I smashed through one large cup, then another and another, taking down the whole stacked cluster. They eased my fall onto the moss floor below, and with half a heartbeat to spare and no oxygen in my lungs, I scooted backward on my ass. A moment later, a ton of worm corpse landed on me.
Pinned beneath the vile body, my legs tingled. Blant, I’d be dead if it hadn’t got hung up on that rock shelf. Nebula raced around my heavy head. Her nervous ears flickered with so much speed they looked like they’d lift off and fly away.
“I can’t believe I dropped a dart.” I punched my fist into the ground, growling, leaving behind a bloody smear.
No matter how much I struggled, the beast still pressed down on my legs. Waves of heat throbbed through my lower limbs, swelling my feet until the leather of my boots bit in. My head spun from the fall, and nausea stirred like acid in my stomach.
I couldn’t blanting see over the reeking corpse trapping me.
Where in the goddess Sola is Tuga?
