The swarmling surged across the floor like a pool of ink, reaching out to embrace Nick. In less than a second, the deadly fluid would reach him, quenching his life as surely as a candle before a tsunami.
It was a bad situation, and it would have been the final moment of his life, if it hadn’t been exactly what he was waiting for.
The instant that the swarmling’s true form emerged from its ivory exoskeleton, Nick sprang into the air, drawing his knees beneath him while arcing his sword behind his back.
As the dark fluid passed below his boots, the magic blade came down. The sword intercepted the black goo, right at the base of the white chitin. It parted the soft tissue with ease, severing the connection between the puddle of alien goop and the shell that contained it when it wasn’t feeding.
Nick had bet his life that since his sword had been able to resist the crimson blight, it would be able to harm the nightmarish entity without being destroyed in the process. Luckily, his judgement was correct, and his gamble paid off. To his immense relief, the blade parted the swarmling’s tissue with minimal resistance, releasing a foul-smelling smoke where metal met ectoplasm.
He pushed himself off a piece of rubble, barely managing to avoid landing on his enemy in the process, then set his gaze upon his opponent. The swarmling let out a shrill shriek and tried to flow back into its shell. But before its reaching tendrils could touch the glossy surface, he leapt over it, racing over to the pale covering before the swarmling could react.
The creature glided across the stone floor, stretching for its shell. But Nick had already sprang into motion.
He leapt over the black puddle, grabbing the exoskeleton and tossing it out of the goo’s reach before it could slide back inside. The chitin carapace was surprisingly light. It flew a good ten feet before coming back down with a hollow clatter.
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The swarmling chased it across the floor. Its movements were sluggish without the reinforced exoskeleton to articulate its motion, allowing Nick to reach the carapace first.
He opened his bag and shoved the hellgrub’s shell inside, praying that it would count as a nonliving object and be accepted by the dimensional storage device. To his delight, it worked, and the whole thing vanished into the mouth of his backpack.
The killer blob let out a shrill shriek of rage, surging back toward Nick to exact its vengeance for the affront. Before its reaching pseudopods could deliver their lethal touch, he turned his sword sideways and smacked the swarmling with the flat of the blade, knocking it back.
He still had a dangerous fight on his hands, but his odds of survival had skyrocketed, optimism turbocharging the adrenaline singing in his veins. Without its armor, the grub was far less mobile, and while its touch was still deadly, it could no longer leap or bite or gouge.
There was just one thing left that he had to do, get the monster down into the hole. Fortunately, he had just come up with a way to do it.
Nick slid his bag free from his shoulders and struck with his pack, which had proven impervious to every attack so far. It slammed into the swarmling with a hearty whap, momentarily stunning the creature. Using his bag as insulation, he lashed out with one boot and kicked as hard as he could, shoving the grub back down into the tunnel it had emerged from.
He looked down, praying that this would work, only to discover that the swarmling was now stuck in the bottom of the hole. It couldn’t stretch far enough to climb back out, and couldn’t dig around the statue without its hard exoskeleton. At last, he had created an opening. Now it was time to finish the fight.
Nick threw blocks of rubble and shards of glass at the trapped monstrosity. While the barrage seemed to cause the creature pain, perhaps even inflict some trivial damage, it clearly wasn’t going to kill it. He set watch over the pit, praying that the foul entity was stuck down there, but not willing to chance it.
Nick was tempted to try to bury it alive, but was afraid that if he did, he would inadvertently provide the creature with a way to climb out instead.
That was when the last sliver of sanguine light from the blood moon vanished, as the moon sank below the rim of the crater containing the bog.
The puddle of nasty black goop, the true form of the chittering swarmling, hissed and writhed, trying to climb free from the pit, to dig deeper into the soil. But without its rigid exoskeleton to pilot, it was unable to do more than shuffle around the loose layer of dirt and debris.