by Eric Ugland
I looked over my shoulder, and saw my two compadres tangled up in the mud. In front of me, the worm did its thing. I heard muffled noises coming from the other side of the creature, almost like people shouting. Or screaming. My heart thudded in my chest as I realized that there was the very real possibility we’d tracked the creature through the mountain range over to one of the small farming communities that dotted the landscape between Osterstadt and the capital. People could be dying up there. Innocent farmers. Innocent farmers who would probably gladly give food to anyone who was so bold as to save them from the horrors of a worm attack.
The thought made me smile. If I could kill the worm, I might have found the perfect way to feed my people.
I pulled a spear from my bag, fixed my shield to my arm, and started up the slick trail to the worm-end.
The tail danced this way and that, but the worm didn’t seem to be moving forward much. As I got closer, I could see that the tiny spikes around the worm’s skin were sticking into the wall. That’s how the creature kept itself where it wanted to be.
My feet slipped, so I jammed the spear against one of the ridges. I may have face-planted into the mud, but I didn’t slide down.
After a second of struggle, I was back upright, moving towards the worm butt.
The noises at the other end of the monster were clearer now: definitely screams.
I probably only had one shot at a surprise attack.
Naturally, I made the worst of it.
I planted my feet and jammed the spear down as hard as I could, punching through the lighter colored band of skin. But even though I’d planned for it, I just didn’t have the traction to power through the attack. My feet immediately started sliding out from under me.
I hung onto the spear with all I had, and drove its tip through the creature until I felt it scrape against rock on the other side. The worm’s tail snapped reflexively, and it crashed me against the wall before sending me tumbling down the steep tunnel. I knocked over Ragnar and Skeld just as they took their first steps back up the hill.
There was a sickening splash as we landed in the mud-poop-slime-pool. If I wasn’t before, I was now liberally covered in shit. The noise from above got louder, more urgent. But by the time I’d gotten the mud out of my eyes and stood up, the worm was gone.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus on my other senses. I could just barely make out the worm’s movements with my tremor sense.
“Up,” I said, “Get your butts up, and fast. Worm’s coming back.”
The three of us staggered up the incline, bracing as best we could with spears to climb. It wasn’t a pretty ascent. We got about halfway up when I felt the banded worm coming. Fast, and directly toward us.
“On my word,” I said, “let go and slide down.”
Both Lutra nodded.
The worm came closer, at speed. It knew exactly where we were, and I started to worry I was going to misjudge the timing. How big was the worm’s mouth? How fast was it actually traveling?
“Now!” I shouted.
Both lutra shot their hands up and dropped into the slick muck, riding it down like a water slide.
I waited a heartbeat longer, but let go when I had no nerve left.
Just as I started sliding, the worm’s head breached the stone tunnel wall. It was a mess of teeth. Teeth basically everywhere across the front of the creature, almost rotating in directions I couldn’t understand. The mouth was opening and closing, but there were also layers of mouths, mouths within mouths, each one with more teeth. The inside of the worm looked to have a blueish hue, and thick ropes of dark indigo saliva hung between teeth and mouths and all the various bits of the worm.
One of the teeth caught my shoulder, and it spun me around. I managed to grab a bit of rock sticking out of the wall, and arrested my downward fall almost immediately.
But the worm didn’t stop moving; it just powered on, smashing through the other wall of the tunnel and continuing into the rock. It was like standing next to a train going by. The damn worm just kept on coming, whooshing by me.
“You two, up!” I shouted, trying to be heard over the noise of the giant creature moving through the rock, “up the hill!”
Thanks to tremor sense, I’d felt what the worm was doing — it was going to come around, this time aiming for the base of the tunnel’s upswing, the spot right were Ragnar and Skeld were sitting.
With only the barest thought of a plan, I hung on the side of the rock, angling myself so I could have a free drop to the bottom of the incline.
The worm came blasting through the rock where I’d seen Ragnar and Skeld last. My breath caught — I’d never seen Ragnar and Skeld move. They certainly hadn’t come up the hill, and given the point the worm’d hit, I couldn’t imagine they were hiding under the muck. The mere thought of them being hurt made me physically ill, and I had to completely swallow the idea that something worse had happened. Instead, I let that fuel some rage, and I acted.
I leapt off the wall, fell through the air for the barest of moments, then landed, spear-point down, on the worm’s body, driving my spear deep into the banded worm. But the damned thing had enough momentum tunneling along that it just knocked me off. The wooden spear haft split off as it hit the granite wall. I rolled along the worm’s body in some sort of cursed tumbling routine, doing flips and tucks and somersaults as the little spikes dug into my flesh and tore holes all over my body. Each hole came with a horrific searing pain and a poisoned debuff icon— the fucker had some sort of chemical excretion. I hated this damn worm.
The worm finally disappeared down the new tunnel. I dropped to the muck floor and laid there for a heartbeat, watching the worm butt fade into the distance. But I knew the creature would come back any second. I’d put two spears into the thing, definitely spilled some of its blood, but I saw no difference in the creature’s movements. Except that he seemed pissed off and focused on me. I doubted I was doing much actual damage. I had to rethink tactics. Or, you know, think tactics.
Still no sign of the boys. I looked up the tunnel. The innocent farmers, or whomever was up there, weren’t coming down to help. For better or worse, I was on my own.
I did a quick tally of what I had, realized I had little in the way anything useful, and decided to pull out Eona’s Magic Bow and a few arrows. It wasn’t a great weapon for fighting an oversized worm underground, considering there was very little space to actually get a shot off. But I had yet to see the effects it’d have on a monster — or any living thing, actually — and having to fire so close meant there was little to no chance of me missing.
I nocked an arrow against the string and grunted while pulling the string back. Then I stood ready, feeling where the worm was coming from, aiming at the spot I theorized was going to be the point the creature broke through the wall.
And I waited, listening to the rumbling of the creature tunneling.
I waited, hoping the arrow would be enough.
I took a breath. The wall crumbled as the worm forced its way through. Just as I could see the teeth, I let go.
There was a really loud boom — the sound of something rather wet being hit rather hard, followed by a sudden stillness. The worm had stopped. I think it was trying to figure out what had just happened. I couldn’t hear anything; my ears were ringing hard. My eyes, however, worked at that moment. I’d seen the arrow leave my bow, and then almost instantly smash into the worm’s face. It was beyond fast, seeming like there was an instant shift of the arrow from one point to another. It hit the worm with incredible power, and there was the explosion again as well, and the resulting injury was gruesome and gory. Thick dark blue blood seeped out of the creature’s face, and ruined bits of mouths and flesh hung off, connected by the barest of tendrils. Plenty of teeth were broken into pieces. The bow had made a serious dent in the creature, quite literally.
Had the creature had eyes, I’m sure we would have been looking at each other in that moment of stillness. Then, the worm seemed to
realize I was, perhaps, more trouble than I was worth. He cut a sharp right turn, and started through the stone again.
“Not today, tubby,” I said, grabbing onto his tail as he passed by.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I pulled on the tail, which caused something like a screech from the worm. He found a new gear, and was off. I tried to get my feet up to give me something to pull from, but instead, I just got shaken every which way by the loose end of the worm. Occasionally, the creature’s spikes drove into me by the worm’s ministrations. It went on for too long to know.
Finally, the creature slowed down a little. I was able to get my feet in against a ridge, and I started to pull. The worm stopped, not moving forward in the slightest. He released for a second, and I managed to move the creature back a foot.
“Ha!” I screamed out. “Call me the early bird, bitch, because I caught the worm!”
But the damn worm was just using our pause as a means to get its own feet, er, spikes, planted. In no time, the worm surged forward.
I had to do a jumping sort of thing to keep my feet against the ridges, but post worm-surge, I was in place once again to pull back hard, bringing his tail back again.
We repeated our dance. He’d slip, I’d pull. He’d surge, I’d desperately try to find new footing. I’d effectively slowed his advance to a crawl, but he was still crawling ahead.
I didn’t have time for this — I had to find my guys and make sure they were alive. So I decided to start pulling out daggers. I stabbed one into the beast. And another, followed by a surge forward. I just kept pulling weapon after weapon from the bag. I moved on to arrows, still stabbing as we pulled and surged. I was making use of one of my abilities dammit: The Sword of My Enemy is My Sword.
The Sword of My Enemy is My Sword: You’ve found that, in a pinch, every weapon will do. +1% dmg for each new weapon used in a combat.
I was just going to use as many weapons as I could, building up that bonus damage percentage until any hit on the bastard would destroy him.
In no time, I’d stuck him with fifty arrows, twenty daggers, three short swords, two spear heads, and a bevy of throwing knives, and the creature’s blue blood gushed from nearly limitless wounds. But after all that, he moved only minutely slower.
So I did a big haul, locked one arm around the worm’s butt, and I pulled out the Eternal Xiphos of Sharpness.
The Eternal Xiphos of Sharpness
Item Type: Rare
Item Class: One-handed Melee
Material: Magical Steel
Damage: 10-20 (Slashing)
Durability: 20/20
Weight: 4.8 lbs
Requirements: Str 12, Dex 12
Description: A sword having a cruciform hilt with a grip for one-handed use. The blade is narrow at the base and gradually widens into a leaf shape. The Xiphos of Sharpness is able to cut into anything as long as its durability is full. Eternal swords regain durability over time.
With a mighty swing, at least as best I could do in the confines of the tunnel, I swept the sword down and sliced all the way through the worm’s tail.
The worm held still for a moment, perhaps in shock, perhaps unable to discern what I’d done. The severed tail, on the other hand, flopped around like a FIFA player drawing a foul. Then the blood came, a bit like that scene with the elevators in that one Kubrick flick? Except the blood was thicker. And blue. And had a lot of bonus genetic material mixed in as well.
The worm flexed forward, starting to move once again. With his tail gone, the worm’s body lost a bit of its ability to maintain dimensions. So the worm swelled up until he completely filled the tunnel, and, by extension, since he had no tail left, I had nothing to grab.
But I wasn’t done yet. I still had one more stupid plan to go.
I grabbed two daggers free and took two big steps before jumping after the big fuckoff worm who’d already started moving. Both daggers slammed into and sliced through the internal fleshy bits of the worm.
Because I’m a fan of poetic justice, I used those daggers to carve my way into the worm, and tunneled through the bastard from back to front. The worm fought for a good minute or so, but there wasn’t much the beast could do once I was inside. It was gross, but apparently I’d become rather skilled at killing monsters from the inside.
Cool Beans, you’ve invented the skill Internal Monster Butchering. Now you can cut your way through the inside of Monsters, Beasts, Abominations, Devils, Demons, and other such creatures with verve, vim, and vigor. +5% usable resources available from creatures killed in this manner. Bonuses to finding your way around inside creatures.
I lived in a weird world.
My muscles and lungs were burning by the time I pulled myself through the mouth of the banded worm. It was events like this why I kept my ring of water breathing on my finger at all times. And why I was extremely happy said ring had a rather relaxed definition of water. Though, I do admit, I always felt extra special gross after I’d been ‘breathing’ monster blood. And doubly so in this case. I took a look at him from the front. There were some wounds up there that I certainly hadn’t done. Small bolts sticking out here and there, which made me believe at least one of the farmers had a crossbow.
Congratulations! You’ve completed a QUEST!
Fight, Move, or Die
A banded worm has discovered your home. You killed the creature without a hint of remorse.
Reward for success: 8000 XP, Followers and Holding occupants gain bonuses to morale, increased chance of rare and exotic mineral spawns within the holding.
The quest reward was interesting. Mineral spawns were a thing? I made a mental note to talk to Harmut about it later. He seemed like the best person to speak to on matters of minerals.
Luckily, there was no sign of Ragnar or Skeld in the belly of the beast. There were, however, plenty of other ingested but not yet digested bits, most of which I couldn’t identify. It could very well have been human remains. Just, well, the banded worm’s stomach was rather impressively acidic.
Staring at the teeth, the skin, and the bits riding out on the frothing blood, I knew they’d come in handy somehow. Luckily, I had a vague sense of how to skin and harvest the motherfucker.
So I did. I worked as quickly as I could, trying to keep up a feverish pace. It was a relative miracle I emerged with all fingers still attached. Which might have been purely because of my regenerative ability, but I’ll never tell. I’d skinned the worm, taken his spikes, removed his stomach, and bottled up as many jars as I had with his blood. I also took some large hunks of flesh thinking there was a chance it might provide a meal or two. Also notable, there were a ton of gems and metals within one of the organs of the worm, almost like there was a spot where the creature stored stuff it couldn’t digest before it shat those things out.
Finally, I cut the worm’s head off in one piece. I had to do a little extra squishing before I got the whole thing into my bag. I was planning to mount it on one of the walls in my room. Not like I had eBay to score nostalgic movie posters from anymore, and I hated bare walls.
Chapter Thirty
I had to run at a pretty decent clip to get back through the tunnel because some sort of bonus magic was at work. During my wild ride with the worm, he’d eaten a whole new tunnel, and after I started my trip back to the main tunnel, I realized there was a rather important distinction between the two. The main tunnel, the one we’d taken from Coggeshall to wherever we were, was made on the worm’s own time. The poop slime muck stuff was just that: poop slime. But the stuff he’d left behind during our fight and chase was something completely different. It wasn’t viscous, it wasn’t dark brown, it wasn’t sticky or full of gems. This stuff was a lighter grey, and, probably the most important distinction, it was a foam, not a slime. And it was growing. Quickly. And as it grew, the lower parts of the foam, the stuff that had been around the longest, firmed up into a very hard rock. It was filling up the tunnels.
Whatever magic or skills the cr
eature had to allow it to burrow through solid rock at speed was now backfilling the tunnels after the creature passed. Thinking about it, it made sense in a certain way. Give a creature of that size enough time to eat through rock, and there’d be mountains collapsing left and right. This way, though, he just altered the composition of the mountain somehow. I wished I could have managed to catch the creature, just so I could study it a bit more. He was pretty nasty, but he also had some serious economic and construction potential. Build concrete forms and pour the foaming stuff in there, and you could grow a castle in a day.
As neat as it was, though, it meant I had to run at top speed in an increasingly smaller space. I was ducking and scraping my back along the ceiling by the time I finally made it into the main tunnel, sliding through the collapsing hole like my pseudo-namesake. But I kept my hat on my head. And by hat, I mean helmet. And I suppose by helmet I mean helm. Whatever.
I slipped into the main tunnel, splatting down in the muck just as the tunnel behind me closed up.
There was a small hand on the back of my neck.
“You deal with the worm?” Ragnar asked.
I pushed myself out of the mud, and gave both the Lutra standing there big hugs.
“He’s dead,” I said. “I thought he’d eaten you.”
