Chapter 44: The Mine Wyrm

Chapter 44: Chapter 44: The Mine Wyrm

It came from behind them.

Every one of them was watching the tunnel ahead, where the low sound had seemed to rise from. So when the wall at their backs exploded outward, nobody was facing it.

Rock burst across the tunnel in a storm of shrapnel. Marcus, at the rear, was thrown sideways into the far wall. And through the hole, filling it completely, came a head.

It was the size of a car. Wedge-shaped like the point of a drill, armored in overlapping plates of black basalt, with molten orange light glowing through every seam between them. Two eyes burned like coals in a furnace. Its jaws split open, wider than seemed possible, and inside them were rows of teeth made of raw crystal, and behind the teeth, a throat that glowed like the inside of a volcano.

Behind the head, the body kept coming through the wall. And coming. A serpent of stone and magma as long as a train, its coils grinding through the rock.

[WARNING: Boss-class entity detected.]

[Mine Wyrm — B-rank.]

The jaws came down at Marcus.

He was still on his back against the wall, dazed, rifle half raised. He wasn’t going to move in time.

Aveline got there first.

She didn’t block the bite. She did something Elias had never seen anyone do. She threw herself into the Wyrm’s open mouth, turned her shield sideways, and jammed it upright between the upper and lower jaws like a doorstop.

The jaws slammed shut on it.

The shield held.

Barely. Steel screamed. The Wyrm’s crystal teeth ground against the shield’s edges, throwing sparks, and Aveline stood braced inside its mouth with both arms locked and her boots digging furrows in the tunnel floor. Molten heat poured out of the Wyrm’s throat across her armor. Even through Tobin’s ember broth, Elias could see her face tighten with pain.

"Marcus," she said through her teeth. "Its throat. Now."

Marcus rolled to one knee, put his rifle barrel through the gap between the Wyrm’s jaws, inches from Aveline’s shoulder, and fired straight down its throat.

Once. Twice. Five times.

The blue rounds vanished into the molten glow and disappeared. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the Wyrm convulsed. A shriek came up out of its throat like a steam whistle, so loud that chunks of the ceiling broke loose and crashed to the floor around them. Its health bar, stretched long across the edge of Elias’s vision, dropped by a sliver.

Only a sliver.

"It’s armored everywhere," Marcus said grimly, firing again. "Plates on the outside, magma on the inside. The Link can’t find a soft spot."

The Wyrm’s jaws flexed. Aveline’s shield bent inward a centimeter with a sound like a car crash. She didn’t move.

"Tobin," Elias said. "The plates. Can you crack them?"

Tobin was already moving, cleavers in both hands. He hit the side of the Wyrm’s head where two basalt plates overlapped and drove both blades into the seam between them. Rock chipped. Molten light spilled out. The Wyrm screamed again and wrenched its head sideways.

Aveline went flying.

She hit the tunnel wall hard and slid down it, her shield clanging to the floor beside her, bent nearly in half. The Wyrm pulled its head back through the hole in the wall, its coils grinding and scraping, and for a moment, all four of them stood in the broken tunnel, breathing hard, staring at the darkness where it had gone.

Then they heard it.

Not in the wall. Under the floor.

"Link," Elias said. "Where is it?"

"Below. Ten meters down and circling." Marcus’s voice was flat and fast. "It’s moving through solid rock like water."

In Elias’s vision, the red shape slid beneath the tunnel floor, a long, sinuous coil drawn in faint crimson lines under the white lines of the stone. It wasn’t attacking. It was swimming in a slow circle beneath them, like a shark beneath a boat.

Then the circle tightened.

The red head swung inward. It rose. Elias watched it climb through the rock toward the floor, toward the spot where Tobin was standing, faster and faster.

"Tobin, move!"

Tobin threw himself sideways.

The floor where he’d been standing erupted. The Wyrm burst up through the stone like a whale breaching the sea, jaws open, a column of rock and fire exploding toward the ceiling. Tobin was caught by the edge of it and flung through the air, cleavers spinning out of his hands. Aveline, on her feet again with her bent shield, caught him by the back of his apron before he could hit the far wall.

The Wyrm rose until its head scraped the tunnel roof, the first quarter of its body standing straight up out of the ruined floor like a tower of basalt and fire. It arched backward, its whole neck curving like a drawn bow, getting ready to strike down.

And Elias saw it.

The plates.

As the Wyrm arched, the basalt plates along the back of its neck slid apart, the way the plates of the hydra’s chest had parted when three heads struck. Just behind its skull, where the neck bent hardest, the plates separated, and a long, thin seam of glowing orange opened between them. Molten light poured out like the gap under a door.

Then the Wyrm struck down, the neck straightened, and the seam closed.

"Marcus," Elias said. "Did you—"

"Saw it." Marcus’s rifle was up. "Marking it."

In the Link, a new red line appeared along the back of the Wyrm’s neck, just behind its head. Beside it, the Link stamped a tag: SEAM — EXPOSED WHEN ARCHED.

"That’s it," Elias breathed. "That’s the way in. Behind the skull, when it bends back to strike."

"I can’t hit it from the front," Marcus said. "The angle’s wrong. The plates only part on the back of the neck."

"Then somebody has to be on its back."

The Wyrm finished its strike, slamming its head into the floor where Aveline and Tobin had been a heartbeat before. The whole tunnel shook. Then it pulled back down into the hole it had come from, sinking through the stone with a long, grinding roar.

Elias looked at his dagger. The old Ironfang blade from the cathedral, its edge nicked and pitted from a dozen gates. He looked at the hole in the floor.

Somebody has to be on its back.

"Elias," Aveline said warningly. She’d seen his face.

"Next time it comes up," Elias said. "I go up with it."

Nobody had time to argue, because in the Link, the red coil beneath them had stopped circling.

It was diving. Straight down. Away from them.

"It’s running?" Tobin said hopefully.

"No," Marcus said slowly. "It’s going for something."

At the edge of the Link, far below the tunnel floor, a massive orange shape glowed, bigger than the Wyrm itself, wider than the whole mine. A vein. Not a thin line of molten ore like the ones in the walls. A river of magma, deep in the mountain’s heart.

The red coil reached it.

And broke it open.

For three long seconds, nothing happened.

Then the hole in the tunnel floor began to glow.

It started as a faint orange light far down in the dark, like a fire seen from the top of a well. Then it brightened. Then it rose. The rock around the edges of the hole began to sweat, little beads of molten stone welling up out of the cracks, and the heat came up out of the hole in a wave that hit Elias full in the face. Even through the ember broth, it was like opening an oven door and leaning in.

"Back," Marcus said. "Everybody back. Up the tunnel. Now."

They ran.

Behind them, the magma came up through the floor. Not in a trickle, but in a surge, a glowing orange tide pouring out of the Wyrm’s hole and spreading across the tunnel, swallowing the broken rock, the old rails, the dropped cleaver Tobin hadn’t had time to grab. Where it touched the walls, the stone hissed and cracked. Black smoke rolled up off its surface, thick and choking.

"My cleaver!" Tobin shouted, running.

"Leave it!"

"It was a good cleaver!"

Ahead of them, the tunnel bent upward toward the shifting levels. That was the way out. That was how they’d come in. Elias pushed himself into a sprint, Quick Step lengthening every stride, and then he saw it ahead in the Link, and his heart stopped.

The tunnel was closing.

The mine was shifting again, the way it had all night, section by section. The walls of the passage ahead were grinding slowly toward each other, cutting them off from the upper levels. Five meters wide. Four. Three.

"Marcus, is there another way?"

A pause that lasted a lifetime. "Not that I can see. The whole level is rearranging. It’s sealing us in."

The walls ground shut with a deep, final boom.

They stopped at the dead end, the four of them, with their backs against solid rock that had been a tunnel ten seconds before. Behind them, the magma kept coming, slow and patient, filling the tunnel from wall to wall. It was twenty meters away. Fifteen. The air was so hot it shimmered, and every breath burned all the way down.

[Warning: Heat Resistance+ exceeding capacity.]

Elias looked down. The soles of his boots were smoking.

Aveline stepped in front of the others, her bent shield raised against the heat like it could hold back a river of fire. Marcus had his rifle up, aimed at the glowing surface, waiting for the Wyrm’s head to rise out of it. Tobin was pressed against the wall beside Elias, breathing hard, his remaining cleaver clutched in one hand.

Ten meters.

In the Link, deep inside the magma, the red coil was moving again. The Wyrm was swimming through its own flood, coming back toward them, unhurried. It didn’t need to hurry. They had nowhere left to go.

Seven meters.

Then Tobin slowly reached into the pack on Elias’s back, past the thermos that said FOR LATER, and pulled out the second one.

The one that said COLD.

He looked at it. Then at the river of fire rolling toward them. Then at Elias.

"Lad," Tobin said quietly, "I think it’s time for soup."