My theory was correct. If we didn’t move, it couldn’t sense where we were.
The wyrm wasn’t in position yet, not for what I wanted. I would have to move again to get it to come after me and set it up for my trap … if my trap even worked.
I knew the wolf’s head weapons were powerful, but were they powerful enough to dislodge the enormous stalactite from the ceiling?
There was only one way to find out.
“Remember, you all need to fire those wolf’s heads at the base of the stalactite exactly when I tell you to,” I whispered to my party, hoping the vibrations caused by my talking weren’t strong enough for the wyrm to sense them. The monster didn’t move, so I figured I was right.
Rollar took my lead and whispered in return, “We’re ready, Lord Vance. Just give us your signal and we’ll blast the hell out of that rock.”
“It’s now or never,” I whispered to Fang. “Let’s take this big lump of living stone out with a big-ass chunk of dead fucking stone. Death always wins…”
I commanded Fang to charge forward. The instant my huge undead lizard started to race across the cavern floor, the wyrm roared out in aggressive fury and surged forward in pursuit.
I veered in a wide arc, keeping an eye on the wyrm as we raced our deadly race. With the monster in pursuit, I hastily performed a series of calculations in my mind. The numbers rattled in my head as I tried to figure out the timing, to get it just right.
One second off, and the plan would fail. The timing had to be utterly perfect.
As I’d predicted, the wyrm cut in a diagonal path across the cavern toward us, cutting its pursuit of us down to the shortest and most direct route.
It was a ruthlessly efficient predator indeed. This was just what I wanted, of course, for its route of pursuit put it directly below the massive stalactite.
It was gaining on us rapidly, closing in with magnificently brutal speed.
Out here in the open, there was no way we could outrun it. If this gamble failed to pay off, me and Fang would be inside the wyrm’s jaws in seconds.
Could I survive being swallowed up by fortifying my armor with Death power, and hack my way out of the beast from the inside?
I figured it might be possible, but I didn’t want to have to find out.
The wyrm plowed through barriers of stalagmites, which created rows of imposing walls that divided up the interior of the cavern like hedges across a field. The beast’s gigantic mouth and multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth simply obliterated the rocks, smashing them to dust as it pursued us with relentless speed.
I glanced over my shoulder as I raced along. The wyrm was almost in position.
I counted down in my mind, hastily making calculations of speed and distance.
“All right,” I said to myself, watching the wyrm barreling toward us. “Three, two, one … fire!”
With a collective boom that shook the walls and every stalactite and stalagmite in the cavern, my party fired all the wolf’s head weapons at once. Multiple explosions rocked the base of the gigantic stalactite as the wyrm surged beneath it, oblivious to the danger coming from above.
The simultaneous impacts did their job, severing the stalactite’s connection to the ceiling of the cavern. With a mighty crack, the huge chunk of rock plummeted earthward, falling like an arrowhead shot down from the skies by a titan.
My timing was perfect. Just as the wyrm’s head snaked forward, the house-sized chunk of rock smashed into it from above.
I sensed the wyrm’s death before I saw it, for the stalactite exploded into a shower of rock fragments and a blooming cloud of dust upon impact. The dust billowed through the cavern, filling up the entire space. Soon, we were all coughing and choking on it.
Rami-Xayon called up a strong wind to blow the dust away. When it finally cleared, we saw the huge wyrm lying dead on the cavern floor, its head buried beneath the enormous pile of boulders that used to be the stalactite.
“You did it, Vance!” Yumo-Rezu exclaimed. “You killed the wyrm!”
“We killed it,” I said. “If you all hadn’t fired those wolf’s heads exactly when I told you to, this ugly thing would be digesting me and Fang about now. It’s dead now, but it won’t be for long.”
I closed my eyes and sent a portion of my life force into the wyrm’s limp corpse, seeking out the beast’s heart. Its organs were arranged in a simple and almost crude manner; this thing seemed to be a much more ancient and basic lifeform than any other I’d encountered.
Resurrecting it took a decent chunk of my energy. But just as it had been when I’d resurrected the kraken, this massive beast was soon animated again, except with the energy of Death moving through its blood, not the spark of life.
A brutal sense of raw power surged through me as I connected my spirit to the wyrm’s undead body. Like the kraken, this was a being of primal and monstrous strength. Also, just as it had been when I’d hurled my spirit into the undead sharks for the first time, I experienced my surroundings in a very different and alien manner than anything I’d previously known.
I knew for sure now that my theory about the wyrm “seeing” through vibrations in the ground was correct. When members of my party walked across the cavern floor, I found that I could close my eyes yet know exactly where they were, as if their bodies were shining points of light in a sea of darkness.
Controlling the undead wyrm, I shook the pile of boulders off it and reared its terrifying head up. There were no
