Behind me, a series of deep, booming explosions rang out as my party fired the wolf’s heads. Accompanying them were thunderous fireball explosions along the wyrm’s side. The beast bellowed out an ear-shattering shriek, and chunks of stone and plumes of dust billowed out from where the red balls had struck its body and exploded. Where it should have been blown apart, it was by no means seriously damaged.
When the smoke and dust cleared, I saw that the red balls had put some cracks in its stone armor and taken out a few chunks of rock—the wyrm’s armor was made of living rock, it seemed. No blood flowed from the wounds. If anything, the wyrm appeared to be far more angry than hurt.
The massive monster ceased its pursuit of me, reared its head up like a cobra preparing to strike, and blasted out a deafening roar. The ear-splitting sound made my brain feel like it was about to boil, my skull as though it was going to shatter into splinters.
“Aim at its mouth!” I yelled at my party. “Try to get a shot inside its mouth; it’s the wyrm’s only vulnerable spot!”
Then the wyrm raced toward my party, who were desperately trying to reload the wolf’s head weapons. I whipped out my Death bow and loosed a few arrows at the charging wyrm, but they did nothing but chip some chunks out of its stone hide.
Rami-Xayon dropped her bow and called up a mighty tornado, hurling its full force at the wyrm. The wind was powerful enough to have bowled over a division of Jotunn warriors, but it barely slowed the wyrm down. It did, however, give my party enough time to fire the wolf’s heads again. This time, they aimed the projectiles at the wyrm’s head, trying to place a shot inside its mouth, as I’d instructed them.
A series of explosions rocked the walls of the huge cavern, and fireballs detonated all around the wyrm’s head, but none actually hit inside its mouth. The creature seemed to have no organs on its head except for its mouth, so the potent explosions of the red balls did nothing but take a bit of its armor off …
And piss it off even more.
With another ear-splitting bellow, it surged toward my party. There was no time for them to even think of reloading. Instead, they had to scatter and flee.
Rami-Xayon and Isu worked together, combining their powers in an attempt to hurt or at least slow the wyrm down. Isu called up her corrosive acidic Death mist while Rami-Xayon summoned her Wind power to blow the cloud of acid mist directly into the wyrm’s mouth. The blind beast sucked in the noxious green cloud, and it did have some effect, buying us a little time.
The wym roared and writhed, obviously experiencing some sort of pain and discomfort, but in a few seconds, it was back at full strength, roaring and aggressive as ever.
I realized that short of a perfectly timed, perfectly aimed shot of a red ball, direct hits of even our most powerful weapons wouldn’t do much except piss it off more. The only location on the beast that might be susceptible to damage was through its open mouth and down its throat. Given how fast the creature moved and how much it writhed and snaked around, getting such a shot in with the wolf’s heads would be very unlikely.
I had to attack the beast with a different strategy.
Some of the stalactites on the ceiling were monstrously huge; conical rocks that were easily the size of houses that had to weigh hundreds of tons. An idea hit me like an assassin’s arrow out of the shadows: I could use the stalactites against the wyrm.
Fang and I raced across the floor of the cavern, and I loosed a rapid-fire volley of arrows at the wyrm’s head as we ran.
“Aim the wolf’s heads at the base of that stalactite!” I yelled, pointing to the biggest stalactite on the ceiling, a monstrous chunk of rock that was the size of a huge cathedral spire. “Fire ‘em all at once when I give the command!”
I now needed to get the wyrm’s attention and lure it across the floor of the cavern to attack me. And to do that, I needed to hurt it—to cause monumentally more significant damage than anything we’d done to it thus far.
I tossed my Death bow aside and drew the Dragon Sword. This enchanted blade was supposed to be strong and sharp enough to cut through any substance in existence, and I had to assume that that included wyrm armor.
“All right Fang, let’s do this.” I spurred on Fang to charge straight at the wyrm’s side.
My mighty lizard thundered across the cavern floor. As soon as he did, the wyrm spun its eyeless head around to face us. I’d been wondering how the beast knew where we were, seeing as it seemed to possess no sensory organs at all, being deaf, blind, and unable to smell. Now, though, I knew how it sensed where its prey was: through vibrations in the ground. It made perfect sense for a creature that lived underground where there was no light or sound and little air.
With this realization in my mind, I pulled Fang up to a sudden stop. “Everyone, freeze!” I yelled. “Don’t move at all!”
“Have you lost your mind?!” Yumo-Rezu yelled back.
“Just do it, dammit!” I shouted back. “Nobody move a fucking muscle! Don’t even breathe!”
As counterintuitive as it was, everyone obeyed me and froze up … and the moment we stopped moving, the wyrm skidded to a halt in the center of the cavern. It raised its huge head peering around—if one could say that an eyeless thing could peer—in what seemed to be confusion.
The monster blasted out a thunderous, skull-cracking roar of anger and frustration
