He putall his energy into the wind, splitting the dragon’s maw wide, the sharpscreams of the gales almost louder than the furious bellowing of the dragon.
It keptcoming, sundering all the pavement in its path.
Atongue leaped from its mouth.
Isaacbraced.
Andjust when the long, slimy appendage was about to reach him, Zaria leaped outfrom behind, spearing the dragon’s tongue with her poleaxe.It flinched, jerkedits head in pain, and Isaac was struck with a speeding wall of mandibles,sending him tumbling across the pavement.He crashed into a stack of rationcrates, gasping and reeling, struggling back to his feet as blood leaked intohis eyes.
A shortdistance away, the sandwyrm had flattened its body across the remnants of thepalace courtyard.Its mandibles flexed and jerked, its closed mouth snappingfrom side to side.Finally, its head shot back, its maw opened, and Zaria wasflung into the air, flipping and spinning.
Isaacwatched in horror.
Thehyena was coated in green blood and saliva, her poleaxe still speared onto asevered chunk of dragon tongue, turning the weapon into a giant, fleshy hammer.Below, the sandwyrm snarled, rising to catch her in its mouth.She completedher arc into the air, catching herself just enough that, when the creaturestruck, it found her screaming and twisting and striking her poleaxe down withall her strength.
The wyrm swallowed her whole.
“Hey!”Isaac shouted.
As itcoiled back to the earth, it flinched again, snapping back and forth in pain, asif Zaria were still fighting within the depths of its teeth.Soon, its mawclosed, its ring of mandibles tightened down, and the ends of its body began toslither away, spooling into its giant burrow within the earth.
It wasretreating.
“Hey!”
Isaacran forward.The sandwyrm continued to snake into the shattered ground.Withoutslowing, he shot multiple salvos of sound.Each impact on its body cracked itsglittering scales, and the beast spasmed in pain, overwhelmed with noise andsensation.The assault only made it struggle faster.Isaac kept firing, aimingfor the mouth, hoping to disgorge Zaria from its grasp, but the wyrm’s scalyhide was too tough for his uncatalyzed spells, and its head soon vanished backinto the tunnels below, leaving nothing but a scarred hole in the earth.Thelast thing Isaac heard was a falling bellow of pain.
And,suddenly, he was alone.
Thepalace grounds were destroyed.The pirates had fled.Soren was gone.Only thesilence of the dead city remained.
Hestood at the edge of the giant crater, staring down the empty tunnel.
“Zaria!”
Theearth was silent.Only his voice echoed back.
All atonce, he heard a new sound.
It wascoming from behind.It was the same dry scraping he had heard in the catacombs.He turned, and an overwhelming ocean of bone surged towards him.
Hepaled in terror.
The seaof sliding body parts emerged from the depths of the necropolis, surging towardthe palace.The waves were taller than him, composed of an incomprehensibleamount of corpses, all mangled and blended together, gushing in streams andcurrents.It closed upon his position with all the monstrous weight of atsunami, smashing through what remained of the palace walls, leaping forward ina raging shower of bone.
He hadfailed.He had walked right into the sorceress’s trap.All along, she had justbeen waiting for the right time to strike.Now, it was here.
He wasalone.He had no chance.
He hadfailed his father.
Heturned his body towards the flood of bone.He kept his stance firm on theground, just as he had been taught.He performed the mnemonics for hisanti-necrotic light, building it into a solid dome of light around him.
Isaacput all his energy into the spell, bracing for death.
Amoment later, he noticed a shift in the tide of bones.It was splitting at thecrest, forming a gap, parting as neatly as a fork in a river.Once the wave ofcorpses rushed upon him, he found himself perfectly encased by two walls ofbone, streaming by with such weight and force that he was battered by theoverwhelming sound of scraping bodies.Only a few bones grazed the edge of hislight.
Instead,the bulk of the flood rushed into the tunnel the sandwyrm had left behind,creating swirls of limbs and skulls and spines.The ocean of bodies disappearedthrough the ground, as if sucked away by some malevolent force.Soon, it wasgone.
