“This isn’t good,” Kegohr muttered.
“No shit, big guy,” I replied.
Chapter Twelve
The creature turned its attention to us and filled the shrine with a rasping hiss. The monster’s muscles flexed as its deep-blue body slithered out from the hole in the floor and coiled into the chamber. It slammed into a pillar, knocked it to the ground, and dislodged tiles and chunks of ice from the ceiling above.
My heart hammered in my chest as my mind struggled to make sense of what we were facing.
“What the hell is that?” I shouted as the ground shook beneath my feet.
“Tidal wyrm,” Vesma answered. “They’re legendary monsters that live out in the ocean Vigorous Zones.”
“How the hells do you always know this stuff?” Kegohr yelled as he darted clear of a chunk of ceiling.
“I read a lot, okay?” Vesma replied as she engulfed her spear in flames.
The tidal wyrm reared up and paused to sniff the air. A forked tongue as thick as my forearm flicked out from its massive maw. In a flash of movement, the giant snake slammed face-first into the floor. Tiles tore themselves free as it burrowed into the ground and made another gaping hole. The floor ahead of it rippled and shook as it wormed its way through the earth beneath and left a ridge of dirt and shattered mosaic tiles in its wake.
Vesma dived clear of yet another statue as it wobbled and crunched into the ruined floor where she had been a moment before. The ground between us ruptured as the wyrm burst to the surface once more. The long, scaly body came tumbling out and slithered toward a lure. The scraping of its scales against the tiles rasped and created a wall of noise that grew as it reverberated through the room. Icicles fell from the ceiling and disintegrated harmlessly against the beast’s hide.
One of the icicles plummeted toward me, and I dived away before it exploded on the ground from away from my face. Razor blades of ice hurtled past my head and sliced the skin of my arms. Thin rivulets of blood splattered across the white and blue of the tiles.
“What’s it doing?” Kegohr asked as he scrambled out of the wyrm’s path.
“Looking for the lures,” I said. “Though I don’t know why it doesn’t just go for them.”
My Vigor ebbed low within me; I didn’t have enough juice to take this thing on with pure Augmenting power. The minutes I’d had to meditate hadn’t been nearly enough to replenish my stores.
“A tidal wyrm’s senses become addled on land,” Vesma said. “It takes it time to adjust.”
“So, it’s just going to keep thrashing around like this?” I asked.
“Until it spots the lures, yes.”
“Then, let’s help it.”
I dodged falling icicles and the wyrm’s erratic path as I ran across the room and snatched up the lure Kegohr had found behind the statue. I danced around the monster’s rippling body, leaped over a statue, and grabbed the other lure, the one Cadrin had left behind. The chains of the magically imbued cages were icy cold in my hand, but I ignored the sting and clung to them tightly. If we allowed the monster to run riot through the temple and beyond, countless people could be injured or killed. My friends among them.
This ancient building, the religious heart of the Qihin Clan, would be destroyed. And a beast like this, a powerful monster out of the ocean’s Vigorous Zone, had to have a powerful core. This tidal wyrm’s body likely contained an astonishing technique. And that was something I wanted.
“Hey!” I shouted, waving the lures over my head. My hope was that once the wyrm had spotted the glowing lights within the cages, it would follow them. And if not… well, I’d work something else out.
“Kraken reject!” I yelled as I continued brandishing the lures. “Over here!”
The wyrm halted its erratic movements and turned to look at me. Its eyes were huge black bowls on either side of its head, and I felt the weight of their power bearing down on me.
I waved the lures through the air. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
The wyrm whipped its tail around. The tip hit a statue and sent it flying from its pedestal. It shattered against the wall, and broken pieces of some ancestral Qihin figure tumbled onto the tiles. Then, the wyrm shot forward, straight toward me.
I whirled around, thrust the lures through my belt, and ran as they dangled a few inches short of the ground. The wyrm slithered after me and destroyed sacred pedestals and precious artifacts as it went. I pressed my back against a wall and dived out of the way a second before the wyrm would have crushed me. Its head smashed into the wall and produced a small cavity.
As the wyrm circled back, I darted around it before running through the small gap in the wall and into the yard. I took a hard left, past the towering carvings of the ancient Qihin, and followed the line of the walls toward the temple’s exit.
I tried to work out a plan as I ran. I didn’t want to lead this monster back into the city, where it would cause carnage among the already-traumatized population. Nor did I want to let it get away, not when I had the chance to harvest the powerful core of such an intimidating beast. That meant trying to deal with it inside the temple.
A chunk of the wall crunched into the ground behind me, toppled a corner of the guardhouse pagoda, and ripped part of a
