11:04 AM

«Looking through Darlah’s shelves, I found something pretty interesting, in addition to the ingredients I needed.»

«‘Holy Water of Malsenial’… what is that?»

«Boy, the name on the label seems pretty self-explanatory.»

«It’s not.»

«It’s holy water, blessed by the goddess Darlah worshiped.»

«I figured out that much, then?»

«So it can protect us from the Fearkan, at least some of their attacks. The Paladins of the Holy Chrism use the sacramental oil of Sylyphyr, but in practice the god who performs the miracle is irrelevant. If your soul is protected by one deity, another can’t steal it.»

«I’ve learned my lesson. With you, I’m better off just nodding and listening to what you say without asking questions.»

«…»

«Ouch! Damn, what is that?! Acid? My hand is on fire!»

«What the hell are you talking about?! Give it here… look! It’s completely harmless.»

«No, judging from this burn, I wouldn’t say so.»

«Bah. That’s new.»

«I must be allergic.»

«Allergic to water?»

*****

Viryl uncorked the vial he had just removed from his belt and, after holding it over his head, poured out the contents, which ran in rapid rivulets down the back of his head and neck. The unpleasant sensations of the damp leather of the hood touching his skin and of the rivulets of holy water continuing their descent, soaking the linen doublet beneath his armor did not distract him. Viryl gripped his javelins and went into guard position.

Anker’s saber was on the ground, a few feet away from him, but he feared that if he bent his knees to pick it up, he would hear an unpleasant crackling coming from his joints. For now, all he had to think about was how to escape the attack of that hideous annelid, and his best option seemed to be dragging himself away with his grappling hook. He fished it out of his pockets and wrapped the end of the monofilament around his right arm, then fired the nail toward the wooden roof of the shed.

With a sudden dart, the monster lunged forward, opening its circular, toothed jaw. Viryl and Anker briefly glimpsed hundreds of writhing larvae in the beast’s dark maw, before they both darted off in opposite directions to escape the charge.

While Viryl’s sideways dash was enough to avoid the worm’s onslaught, Anker was caught in mid-air as he was rising up on his grappling hook, and was gobbled up in one gulp. The Fearkan, however, was unable to stop its course, and, with the cable secured to Anker's arm still sticking out of its jaws, like fishing line from the mouth of a hooked fish, it crashed into the brick wall. It didn't break through, but its head was smashed into thousands of little worms that partly splattered onto the wall and partly crashed onto the debris of the fallen balconies. Anker also fell with the latter, while his body was crossed by discharges of reddish electricity.

The Fearkan was not particularly damaged by the impact: it retracted its neck and fluidly regenerated its cephalic portion. The same could not be said of Anker who, once again on the ground, vomited gastric juices and worms, with all the mucous membranes red and irritated by contact with the entrails of the abomination. Two or three retchings followed the first, induced by the sickening smell of putrefaction of the slaughterhouse.

The monster fixed its monochromatic black eyeballs on the prone knight and reared up with a growl, like a snake that had tried to bite a cat and gotten a slap in the face. Anker must have been a hard nut to crack.

The creature turned toward Viryl with a wide swipe, and a loop of its sharp, flexible body flared dangerously toward Anker, threatening to crush him against the wall and tear him apart with its blades. Still gasping, Anker gave his grappling hook another thrust, this time managing to leap forward and to the right about twenty yards, which was enough to pull him out of his opponent’s reach.

Viryl saw the Fearkan’s head closing on him with the speed of a crystalway train locomotive, and he deflected the creature’s bite by holding both javelins parallel and pointing down. Blue sparks flew from the impact, a sign that Malsenial’s blessing had been effective.

The giant worm continued to crawl along its path, and Viryl, intent on studying the enemy’s defenses in order to be able to develop an effective attack strategy, unleashed a double piercing thrust on the beast’s flank. The tips of the spears sank without any resistance into the creature’s flesh, and as it continued to advance, they created long furrows. Hundreds of maggots slid down from the open gashes.

The unexpected outcome of the offensive action surprised Viryl, who got lost in his own considerations. Apparently the Fearkan was able to decide autonomously whether to maintain a material consistency or to disintegrate into the worms that constituted it. A choice that was not only voluntary, but perhaps even rational. For example, when it had broken off its head by smashing it against the wall, it had made a decision inconceivable for a pure predator: the Fearkan, rather than damaging the load-bearing wall of the slaughterhouse, had preferred to let its prey escape from its mouth. Although this intellectual characteristic made it a much more fearsome opponent than expected, the fact that at an elementary level it remained made up of very common larvae opened up the possibility of trivializing the entire fight: from the beginning Viryl had foreseen that —

The straight and sharp cut of a cleaver emerged from the Fearkan's body and lodged vertically with a crunch in Viryl's left hemiface. Its hilt was held in the hairy, sinewy, black slime-covered arm of one of the butchers of the Worm-Cult, who had slithered out in a shower of maggots. The damage done by the slash had been terrible but not fatal, and Viryl responded by drawing back the javelin and blindly plunging it into the body of the beast, where he expected to meet the cultist's chest. The blow connected, and the opponent swung the cleaver back, sliding it down, before falling to his knees, gasping, slipping out of the Fearkan's membranes.

Viryl, his vision blurry and dripping with blood, in raw, searing pain, retreated a few paces, telekinetically fluttered his right javelin, and pulled a vial of Venemesta infusion from his belt.

His eye socket had been shattered and his left eyeball had exploded into a slimy pulp. His zygomatic and maxillary bones had been fractured and he had lost a canine and an upper incisor. A long gash ran across his face from his eyebrow to his lower lip.

Viryl forced his jaw down through the stinging pains and sipped the potion. Healing began immediately, but the damage to his eye would likely be permanent.

The worm launched a new attack from the left, Viryl’s blind side, but the sound of it slithering across the metal grate gave him time to react.

«Bahf… tards…» Viryl mumbled, pulling a smoke bomb from his belt. When the annelid's jaws were a couple of yards away, Viryl tossed the activated device to the ground, and scrambled back, narrowly avoiding being gobbled up.

*****

12:15 PM

«I also managed to peek under the grate of the large room. There’s a cavity about eight feet deep, filled with worms, lined with pipes.»

«Really, worms?»

«Yes. They look like maggots, maybe fly larvae, that fell off the bodies. Do you think that has any relevance?»

«Well, we’re going to raid an organization called the Brotherhood of the Crawling Worm. That must have something to do with their cult, right?»

«I agree with that, but what does that make any difference to us?»

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

«Oh, sure it does. I found the ingredients in Darlah’s shelves that are enough to make a few doses of insecticide. If we spread it efficiently, we could kill most of the worms without having to go to too much trouble.»

«I have some smoke bombs with me. I can try to modify them so that they nebulize the molecule you’re trying to synthesize, if you want.»

*****

A whitish curtain rose from under the worm's belly, enveloping it. After about ten seconds, a large portion at the proximal end of the Fearkan, still wrapped in the impalpable mist, began to crumble from below. The larvae fell to the ground rigid and curved, lifeless, and a naked and disoriented cultist was left exposed.

As soon as the image of his opponent was imprinted on Viryl's retina, he telepathically threw one of his javelins at his head, piercing it from side to side.

Viryl still felt the pain in his left jaw joint, but he found the strength to scream: «Boy, be careful! The cultists didn't get eaten, they hid in the Fearkan!»

Anker, who was on the other side of the room, beyond the creature's colossal body, replied still breathlessly: «Wonderful! Don't you have any good news?»

«The insecticide works!»

The grimace of fatigue drawn on the knight’s face relaxed, giving way to a mischievous grin. «Really? This changes everything!» Anker said cheerfully, rummaging in his belt. He took out the magic trigger pipe and a dozen marbles, plus three explosive automaton drones and exclaimed: «Flush ‘em out!»

«With great pleasure!» Viryl replied, and after calculating the number of smoke bombs needed to envelop almost the entire mass of the annelid in the curtain, he launched four. The beast showed that it had understood the deadly threat hidden in the fog, but even as it wriggled, twisted and moved, the area covered by the chemical weapon was too large for it to avoid irreparable damage.

*****

11:32

«My goodness, that smells of rotten eggs! What the hell are you concocting in those alembics?»

«Mind your business, boy. You have your task, I have mine.»

«The bug has made visual contact with the slaughterhouse, I just need to find an entrance and then I can proceed with the reconnaissance. Except, I was thinking…»

«You were thinking?»

«You don’t have anything for me, do you?»

«Tell me, what throwing weapons do you use?»

*****

The insecticide devoured the Fearkan’s flesh, carving out immense craters, and his body took on the appearance of a fat caterpillar nibbled and shredded by a hungry ant colony. The heaps of inert larvae that had detached from the colossus had clogged the grates, and nine hooded butchers had remained trapped in them, who now struggled to extricate themselves from that quicksand composed of dead worms, no longer imbued with arcane power.

The abominable annelid had not stopped moving: it soon began to curl up on itself and compact into a version similar to the first but of smaller dimensions. This at the cost of leaving its devotees at the mercy of Anker's attacks. The fiery projectiles Viryl had prepared for him activated on impact and stuck to their target, engulfing them in flames that would never be extinguished until all their fuel was exhausted.

The knight landed five of six shots, and two cultists, while being consumed by the flames, managed to emerge from the trap they were stuck in and pounce on Anker. Two of the three drones orbiting him launched themselves at the attackers and exploded, sending burning limbs flying.

Viryl took care of the four Anker had failed to finish off, riddling them with his spears, throwing them, calling them back, and throwing them again, until every muscle in them stopped moving.

When Anker and Viryl were sure that every single member of the Brotherhood of the Crawling Worm had been eliminated, they turned their attention back to the Fearkan. By now it was nothing more than a poor caricature of the deadly abomination that had given them such a hard time a few minutes earlier. It had taken on a squat and awkward appearance: its length was now less than fifteen feet, and its diameter was little more than five feet. Even its terminal end was now visible, for there were no more larvae to draw from in the cavity under the grate to lengthen its body.

The knight and the fallen faced this final obstacle, feeling victory now in their grasp. Anker retrieved from his belt a thermite tablet that Viryl had prepared for him, loaded it into the magic trigger pipe and set off on his limping legs towards the worm in the center of the large room. Viry instead embedded two piston-shaped vials of acid on the heads of his javelins.

The helminth was now frightened and attempted to flee in the direction away from its opponents with convulsive concentric contractions of its sharp body segments. With the fastest pace his lower limbs could carry him, Anker reached him and sent a pulse to the tube, which poured out a fountain of incandescent sparks cohesive in a wide blade of infernal flames. Viryl rained down his javelins from the sky just behind the Fearkan's black eyes: the corrosive action of the acid caused a shock to the ganglia of the beast, which froze for a few moments. Anker ferociously threw himself on the enemy's back, cauterizing everything that came under the flaming jet.

The dying being tried to reorganize itself one last time with the few larvae it had left, and gave birth to a creature with new features. A small, slender, four-foot-long blob, with a body segmented by seven folds, equipped with six rows of short limbs ending in prehensile appendages. On its head it retained the seven eyes and the round mouth of the monstrosity from which it had detached itself.

The miniature Fearkan ducked beneath Anker’s blistering blows and slid on its belly toward one of the three rear doors. When it reached the door, it lifted itself toward the handle.

«No, I’m not falling for it this time!» Anker shouted, and he launched the last of the three explosive drones still orbiting around him at the defenseless creature. The explosion obliterated every single living larva, but it also devastated the shutter the little beast was clinging to, knocking it off its hinges.

In the darkness beyond the newly blasted opening, Anker heard excited murmurs. He cautiously approached the entrance to discern what the voices were confabulating, and as he advanced he turned to Viryl: «We must be careful. The rooms ahead were shielded and I was unable to explore them with my bug. We do not know what awaits us.»

Viryl nodded as he sheathed his spears.

The thermite tablet was dying, and soon Anker would find himself without a melee weapon in his hand. Even if it was dangerous, he did not have the time to go back to the other end of the immense pavilion to retrieve his saber. He had to prevent this second line of enemies from doing the first move.

Seeing nothing, Anker strained his ears at the broken doorframe.

« — completely lost your mind?"

«Maybe you don't get it, moron. Those pieces of shit defeated the Magnificent Vorxellon and killed all our brothers.»

«Doing so we'll kick the bucket too!»

«Are you shitting yourself? You knew there was a chance things would end up like this!»

«But Slimy Glory promised us it would be a piece of cake! Oh, Vorxellon, why did you abandon us?!»

The cultists' voices were interrupted by a loud crackling, and then a creaking. The first speaker uttered a final line: «You really did it! No, no! Oh, mercy!»

Then a deafening clatter of feet mixed with grunts and high-pitched animalistic cries reverberated in the empty, unexplored space.

«Viryl, I think they’ve released some pigs!» Anker emphatically informed his companion.

*****

11:16

«That green, bile-like liquid… is that Spitfire tonic?»

«That’s right, boy.»

«I’ve never seen anyone use it.»

«Because you’ve never been to war.»

«And that black sphere?»

«It’s Fuligine Stone filings bound with brittle putty. Back in my day we called it the ‘Naked man Pill.’»

«I’ve heard of it. It’s used to amplify the release of sympathions after you crush it on your body, right?»

«That’s right.»

«You really want to go all out.»

«Why, you don’t? Listen to me, boy, if things get ugly, run as far away from me as you can and throw yourself on the ground.»

*****

A herd of fifty or so large, voracious pigs rushed out of the dark room, bumping into each other and knocking down the bricks that lined the narrow passage they were forced to squeeze through.

Anker barely managed to retreat and flatten himself against the wall in front of him, out of sight of the animals who were running like crazy toward the mounds of worms stuck between the grates.

As comical as the situation might seem, the knight and the fallen immediately realized that the herd of hungry pigs was not to be taken lightly. They were a rabid multitude, far more resistant to their attacks than the cultists and armed with fangs far more lethal than cleavers. Killing them one by one was out of the question.

The pigs drooled over the larvae and began wolfing them down like delicious food, beneath the dangling corpses of their fellows. Viryl realized instantly that this could be the trigger for a second ritual of the Brotherhood of the Crawling Worm.

This time he would not allow them the luxury of seeing it through to completion.

He clenched the Naked Man Pill in his fist, disintegrating it, and sprinkled a handful of black powder on his battered face. Then he downed a vial of Spitfire tonic. A feeling of omnipotence similar to the one he felt wearing his silver Exoplion came over him. He had only one shot, because the black powder would be consumed instantly: he could not fail. It was time, after almost a quarter of a century, to use his ace in the hole. He had lost sight of Anker, disappeared behind his blind eye and the herd. He could only hope he was safe.

Viryl took a deep breath.

As he was about to unleash hell, he noticed water seeping through his boots, soaking his heels.

*****

12:16 PM

«Those pipes, do you think they’re water mains?»

«They could be. It’s a slaughterhouse, after all, they’ll have to use a lot of water to wash the blood off.»

«Blow them up.»

«It won’t be easy. I need to build a drone small enough to fit through the cracks in the grate and cause enough of an explosion to damage the pipes. Do you really need me to do that?»

«Trust me, boy, it’ll be worth it.»

«Fine! But I can’t promise I can do it.»

«You try. If I you fail, I have a backup plan.»

*****

Viryl grinned. His companion’s tiny drone had hit the mark, and the space beneath their feet had slowly filled with water, overflowing at the decisive moment.

The fallen spread his legs shoulder-width apart, opened his arms, and concentrated on his spell of solidification and liquefaction. He simultaneously threw his fists into the sky, and along with them rose hundreds of tough, sharp stalagmites of ice. The fifty pigs were impaled, and their red, hot blood ran down the cold, crystalline spires. They continued to writhe for a few minutes and grunt desperately, but their eyes were inexorably destined to go out.

Anker was stunned by the carnage. It was a tremendous magic, with an unheard-of scope for a knight without an Exoplion. It had proved indisputably effective: Viryl and Anker waited with bated breath, but there were no new surprises from the brotherhood of the Crawling Worm.

That battle had been won. Yet there was little to rejoice about: salvation was still a mirage.