Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

at the meat wall. She attacked it with jaws and claws, raking at it, then taking a step back to hose it with fire. The body of the worm rumbled like an earthquake, and it moaned, twisting with pain as the fire seared into its flesh.

[Ghost Fire deals 4799 damage!]

The portal opened, and Karalti walked through.

The worm’s gut resembled a weird, green-glowing forest. Things skittered on the walls, mandibles clicking: parasites. But in the distance, we could hear the sound of hope: a deafening heartbeat, growing louder with every step.

“All we have to do is get through here.” I tensed as the roof of the cavern contracted, and a squelching growl rolled through the room. “We take out the hearts. Then we either teleport out of here, or cut our way out.”

Karalti hissed as the parasites oriented on her, mantling her wings and ducking her head as she jogged forward. The air was close in here, thick, acidic, and hard to breathe. Karalti charged through overhanging fleshy stalactites, crushing the silverfish-like creatures scuttling underfoot. The deeper we went, the more thunderous the heartbeats were. Plural.

“Shit. There’s more than one.” I was used to listening to the subtly different tempo of Karalti’s twin hearts beating in sync. “I can hear four of five of them. And they’re not in the normal spot.”

“You’re right. It’s like... they’re coming from all around.” Karalti snapped at a [Sandworm Parasite], driving it back. “We need to find them quickly. My feet are burning. There’s acid on the ground.”

I looked down. There was, indeed, a gross brownish sludge everywhere... sludge that was slowly rising, leaking from streams on the walls, which were slowly closing in on us. If we didn’t get out of here, we were going to suffocate.

“Find a thin patch of wall and tear through! We need to get out of here!” I held the torch up as a cough built in my chest. The air was starting to sear my throat.

“I can hear the hearts to the left! There!” The dragon charged forward, toward a filmy wall of sinewy tissue. “Attack it! Help me pull it down! I think this is one of its lung channels!”

She didn’t have to ask me twice. I sprung from her back, charging the Spear, and blasted the organ wall with Master of Blades and Rain of Glass. The Dark lances shredded it, spraying us with ichor, and the worm lashed from side to side as we held our breaths and squeezed through. It was kind of like going through an old-fashioned car wash with the rollers and mops, except the rollers were made out of warm meat and the goal of the carwash to coat you, the car, and everything else in as much slime and blood as possible. I sheltered under Karalti’s torso as she burrowed her way through, holding my hands up against jets of nameless fluids.

“This, right here, is how I know Ryuko is a Japanese company.” I grimaced as a thick lumpy liquid hosed me down from face to knees. I was pretty sure it was lymph. I was praying to God it was lymph.

“C’mon, c’mon...”  Karalti muttered. The heartbeat was overwhelming now, shaking us on every thump. “Hector! We found them!”

Karalti squeezed through into a tight, close chamber. Above and below us, five huge organs the size of semi-trucks pulsed with blood. They didn’t look like human hearts—they were much less complicated, like huge tubes that expanded along their length and then contracted, filling arteries that stuck out from them like sewer pipes. The entire array of them stretched up and down the cavern, bands of cartilage being all that held up the ‘roof’ over our heads.

“Here’s what I say we do,” I said. “You start digging. I take these out. As soon as those arteries burst, this place is going to flood, and if we’re not out of here when it does...”

“Eew. Yeah.” Karalti rumbled, barely audible over the quaking ba-duk ba-duk ba-duk that rolled the room like an earthquake and drowned out all other sounds. “Go. I’ll try and find a way out. Gar was shouting about spiracles, and we just came through the lungs… so there’s got to be spiracles that open up here!”

I rolled my shoulders, tensed, and sprung out onto the first heart. I landed on it, sticking to it with Spider Climb, raised the Spear high, and drove it down into the surging artery.

[2136 damage! You deal a Critical Blow! Sandworm Artery HP: 1864/4000]

I struck again, dealing another two thousand damage, and the tissues split like tearing fabric before bursting apart. The Voidwyrm screeched, the sound reverberating through its body as blood gushed out in a great torrent, barely slowing as I moved to the next organ. I didn’t need any special attacks: just fire, as the flaming Spear of Creation plunged in and out of the vulnerable organ walls.

“I found an external lung channel! Keep going!” Karalti dug like a dog at the walls of the cardiac cavity, shredding meat with her claws and powerful jaws. By the time I punctured the third [Aortic Arch], the cardiac chamber was knee-deep in blood.

“How are we going over there?” I vaulted over to the next heart, the Spear raised to strike. “It’s starting to get a little close.”

“I know that! This wall has fifteen thousand hitpoints!” She rocked back on her tail and the pad of her pelvic bone to bring both feet up, kicking out with all her strength.

[You deal 5583 damage to Voidwyrm-]

[Critical hit!]

[Karalti deals 6722 critical damage to Voidwyrm Empress-]

[Warning: Mana concentrations-]

“Stop combat notifications!” I snarled at my HUD as the damage rolled in—and my HP began to tick down as the polluted mana-infused ichor sprayed me in a fashionable coating of crimson goo. I tumbled into the sloshing cauldron of it as the Empress gave an