“I think you woke it up.”

“I’m aware, Thistle,” said Mace.

An enormous worm slithered down the grotto wall, its long, segmented body undulated as it got closer to the group. It had opalescent skin, with a sickly sheen. Luckily it didn’t have any arms or legs, but limbs would’ve been an afterthought compared to the wriggling tentacles sprouting from its mouth, or at least the closest thing it had to a mouth. It had no noticeable eyes nor ears, but no one wanted to chance it. They stood as still as possible.

“It…evolved?” whispered Tria.

“Into a wormhole,” Mace whispered back.

She felt the others give her a look. “Well that’s what they’re called!” she whispered emphatically.

The hulking worm fell to the ground with a dull thud. It raised its greasy head, gulping in air as its tentacles flailed. Its head swung around the grotto, seemingly searching for something through smell.

“Enemy,” it said. Though said wouldn’t be the proper dialogue tag. Its thought emanated outwards and barged into their minds.

It lunged towards Tria. She barely dodged out of the way as it engulfed the scare-god she had been working on. Feathers, wood chips, and salty spittle flew everywhere as it ripped it apart.

Mace and Thistle dragged Tria away as quickly and quietly as possible. Mace hoped that it was satisfied with just destroying what it thought was an enemy god.

“Can it hear us?” Thistle murmured.

“It doesn’t have any ears, but-”

Arnie and Nate took off running before Mace could finish the thought. “It can sense vibrations!” she shouted after them.

The worm sprung forward. “Enemy…worshippers!” came its booming thoughts.

Mace was moving before she had time to think.

“Welp, time to test a theory,” she grunted bitterly. She sprinted, whipped out the soap seal, and dove in between the worm and the twins. She slid on her back and held up the charm, desperately hoping that she did one thing right. She shut her eyes, waiting for the tentacles to tear her apart.

Nothing happened.

She risked a peek. The worm was reeling up and hissing. Its tentacles were pulled back. Its head was bobbing to the side, as if searching for a way around an obstacle it couldn’t see.

“Run you idiots!” she hissed at the twins. They nodded and escaped down the tunnel. Mace slowly got to her feet, forcing the creature to slowly retreat.

“That’s right,” she gloated. “It’s your natural predator, you slimy little god.” She had only been about sure that it would actually work, and now that it was, she allowed herself to feel a little powerful. She’d pay money to see her uncle try to fend off an eldritch god with nothing but soap.

Thistle and Tria slowly crept around while Mace distracted it. She basked in Tria’s expression of shock and awe. That’s right, now you owe me one, she thought. Mace was so wrapped up in pride that she failed to notice the creature opening its mouth, in a dimensional sense.

Ocean water blasted out of its gullet, knocking Mace backwards toward the ground. She lost grip of her seal. It skittered into the shadows of the grotto. Mace tried to get to her knees before another torrent sent her sprawling.

Tria morphed her arms into anacondas and threw them around the worm. She pulled as hard as she could. The worm let out a choked gasp before heaving its body to the side. Tria was lifted off her feet. She slammed into its skin, but didn’t let go. Her leg transformed into a cobra, which sunk its fangs into its slick hide.

It spewed up seafoam as Thistle rushed to Mace. Its tentacles tried to pry Tria’s anacondas from its neck in vain. Mace knew all too well the grip of Tria’s snakes. It started to panic, and flailed from side to side. Its massive body slammed in the grotto wall, making the entire ground shake. Thistle had barely helped mace up before they fell again from the quaking. The creature repeatedly slammed itself into the wall, taking a dangling Tria with it. She scraped against the rock wall but still refused to let go. Its tail swung out, nearly hitting Mace and Thistle, and into the side of the grotto’s entrance. The wall buckled and groaned. The roof of the tunnel collapsed as a cloud of wet dust caked Mace and Thistle. The two women wiped their eyes, looked at the tunnel, at each other, then at the creature. They were now trapped with an angry god.

Dozens of bite marks scored its skin as Tria was trying to sink venom into it. Her grip was loosening as her body was bloody and bruised. In the rush of emotion, Mace couldn’t think of anything else to do but pick up the sharpest rock she could find and jam it into a bite mark as hard as she could. The thing screamed. She took another rock and hammered the other deeper and deeper. Mace only stopped when she noticed the wound begin to glow. All the snake bites were glowing. Mace’s head whipped round to see Thistle repeatedly stabbing the creature’s flank with the rusty bronze sword that the twins left.

The worm’s body seized up as its skin became red hot, like it was being cooked from the inside. Tria finally let go and fell to the ground. Every segment in the worm's body tensed as let out a last howl, they burst into blinding light. Mace stumbled back trying to shield her eyes.

When her vision cleared, the only thing left of the worm was a ball of water hanging in mid air. It quietly undulated. Mace looked around the now silent cave.

Tria was sitting up. Her arms and torso were bruised, but it didn’t look nearly as bad as Mace as initially thought. Thistle was gawking at the old sword.

“I didn’t think that would work,” she said, astonished. Thistle held up her sword reverentially. “A magic sword,” she whispered to herself. “A real magic sword!”

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“Congratulations, you now have a destiny,” said Mace sarcastically. She picked herself up, hissing through the pain. She was still soaking wet from where the worm blasted her, and her face covered in sticky dust from when the tunnel collapsed. Mace looked over to the rubble. Surely there would be another exit, she hoped.

“Help me find the seal so we can plug this thing up,” said Mace, gesturing to the portal. The thing in question began to vibrate violently, then exploded.

Waves rushed forward, sweeping all three women off their feet. A waterfall began gushing out of the portal, quickly covering the floor of the grotto. The water extinguished the torches and plunged the cave in darkness. A dim, blue light did emanate from the portal, but still too dim for the women.

“Hang on!” shouted Tria. “I’ll pull you towards me!”

“Wait what?” Mace could barely make out hundreds of small snakes swimming through the water. The front of her brain was amazed that Tria could not only transform her limbs into snakes, but split them off into smaller and smaller snakes. The back of her brain, which was driving the body, jumped and screamed at the hundreds of snakes swimming towards her. They slithered up her legs and took hold.

She barely took a breath before she was being dragged thrashing through knee high water. Both she and Thistle come up gasping next to Tria.

“Never…do that…again,” sputtered Mace through gasps of air.

“We’ll never find the seal before we drown!” cried Thistle.

“We’ll have to try and squeeze through the tunnel,” Tria answered.

The three tried to rush to the cave’s entrance, half swimming through the now waist high water. They heaved rocks out of the way while waves lapped at their backs. They had just managed to make a gap wide enough for a person when they saw a solid wall of rock just behind the rubble. In desperation, Thistle began whacking the rock with her rusty sword. Remarkably, the sword was undamaged, but left the rock undamaged as well.

Mace turned to Tria. “Can’t you transform into a snake or something and crawl up to the surface for help?!”

Tria shook her head. “I’d have to transform into a swarm to conserve my body’s mass, and swarms are really hard to control. And even if I could control them, I used too much phlogiston already, I’d pass out before I got to the surface.”

Mace knew she was right. For as much power and control as scions had, the snakes that made up their bodies only had a piece of their minds.

“No way out,” Thistle panicked.

Mace searched the library that was her brain for anything useful. Come on, she scolded herself, you spent everyday learning about magic you couldn’t use and about a universe that seems to have it out for you, there has to be something.

There was, but the others wouldn’t like it.

“There is one way out,” she said.

Thistle and Tria looked at her. She pointed to the portal that was currently trying to drown them.

“Have you completely lost your mind?!” yelled Tria.

“Well it’s either drown here or risk whatever's on the other side!” mace snapped back. “Stretch a snake into it and grab onto something, then pull us through!”

Tria looked at Mace with a mix of anger and confusion.

“So you did lose your mind. Look at that torrent! I don’t even know if I have the strength to put a snake through let alone us! And grab onto what?! Another giant god worm?”

“Again, it’s either die here or a risk of life there.”

“I can’t believe that-” Tria was stopped by Thistle’s gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Tria,” said Thistle calmly. “We have to try.”

Tria looked at Thistle. The water was already up to their shoulders. Mace couldn’t imagine what Tria was feeling as she looked into Thistle’s serious, but calming expression.

“Ok,” she whispered. “We can at least try.” She breathed in, lifted her arm. It transformed and shot towards the portal. Her face was focused as the snake fought up and through the waterfall.

“It’s really turbulent,” she muttered. Tria breathed heavily, using what she had left to fight the current. She shut her eyes, searching for anything to grab onto.

Her eyes opened. “I’m through! The water I mean!”

“What?” asked both Thistle and Mace.

“There’s…empty space beyond the water. Hang on, I’ll get a better look.” She shut her eyes again.

“You can… look through the snake?” questioned Thistle.

“It’s nervous system is connected to mine,” she stated. “It’s not perfect, a few missing colors, but it’s close enough.”

“What do you see?” asked Mace.

“It’s a big, cloudy void,” she described. “No sun, but it’s pretty light here. Wait, there’s something beyond the clouds. A mess of spider webs?”

“Oh gods,” said Thistle.

“Wait…they’re not webs, they’re…roots?”

“Roots?” asked Mace, a thought dawning of her. “Is there anything weaving through the roots? Rivers that seem to flow in mid air? Stone staircases?”

Tria was quiet for a bit. “Yeah, there are?” she finally answered in a tone of confusion.

“The Weaving Plane!” Mace exclaimed. “Tria, try to find anything solid to grab onto!”

“The Weaving Plane?” asked Thistle.

“It’s like a crossroad of dimensions!” said Mace, excitedly. “The roots of world trees, stairways to various heavens, rivers to certain hells, they all cross over there!”

“There’s a stairway near us!” said Tria. “Hold on everyone, this is going to get rough.” Her legs shifted into snakes and wrapped tightly around Mace and Thistle, and they were pulled forward.

Because our heroes were now outside of the universe, what happened next went unrecorded in this book. Omniscient narration was a bit of a misnomer, as it only extended to the borders of known reality. Fortunately, what happened next was recorded in another fantasy series titled The Bloodstone Chronicles by E. G. Wolfe, a dark fantasy saga that follows the anti-hero Shura Nightblood on his quest for vengeance (in stores now).

We will now pick up at chapter 86 of book 13, The Vultures of Hell.