As we all gape in horror at our nemesis, the giant Wyrm that looks to be the size of a three-story building, there is suddenly a shrill cry, the shriek of the spirited alley cat, and suddenly Jimmy is bounding across the intervening space aimed right for the gigantic spirit.
“WTF IS HE DOING??”
“JIMMY WAIT -- !!!”
Everyone’s first shocked that the normally non-committal Jimmy who rarely participates in a straight fight is the first one to directly charge this monster.
We’re even more shocked when the Wyrm lurches forward, snatches Jimmy up in his mouth, throws back his head, and gulps him right down in a single swallow. It’s barely been ten seconds since we opened the door.
“HOLY SHIT!” There are multiple gasps at the sight.
No one saw her disappear; but suddenly Clarisse reappears near one of the base coils of the monster, punching the poison dagger into it. But even her strong arm can’t get through the creature’s thick scales and the blade tings off.
Sophia is frantically casting, to little noticeable effect, as Linda steps to the side and opens fire, again with her stream of bullets ricocheting off into the corners of the room. Rika starts weaving a protection around herself, while Gershom activates his Corrosive, and Helman starts doing, well, something. “Incoming!” shouts Fred.
Ruggos charges the Wyrm, while growing to a hulking 12’ of muscle, and dives onto the creature, pulling himself up along its scales to reach the huge head. He is followed by a charging Garu werewolf, but Jax’s claws also fail to penetrate the Wyrm’s tough scales.
James shouts something about this monster just being a distraction, but everyone is so heavily invested by this point that he’s difficult to hear amid all the noise. Swearing, he disappears up one of the side tunnels accompanied by Arthur, leaving the rest of us to our fate. In true dragon fashion, the Wyrm sprays gouts of acid at anyone still near the entrance door.
Seeing she can’t directly hurt the monster, Clarisse pulls out the ball and control device we stole from Qi-Gen previously and summons the “Eyes of Airborne Doom.” In the upper reaches of the room, a swarm of 12-20 large archeopteryx style birds shimmer into existence, except these have pairs of eyes running down their underbellies to the base of their tails and elongated snouts bristling with sharp teeth.
“TEAR OUT THE WYRM’S EYES!” she commands, and a number of them swoop down screeching to comply.
At the same time, the Wyrm starts his own summoning. Three smaller wyrm spawn slither out of a different side corridor, charging the main group left at the door. With a motion from Sophia, one of them suddenly veers dumbfounded and slams into the wall.
Linda starts shucking armor covered with acid, to get it off her, while Rika magically flings falling acid at the coming spawn. Fred sets out a spread of autofire that shreds one of the spawn, which have been joined by three more now. Helman throws up a warding sigil to shield anyone nearby.
Clarisse meanwhile is wrestling for control over the birds, who have strong wills. Two are tearing at the Wyrm’s eyes and actually hurting it; it lurches back with a bellow of pain and starts reflexively spewing acid around the room, making the scene a madhouse. The others swoop around for more targets. Most of them attack the Wyrm’s flanks, doing little damage. One smacks right into Helman’s shield. Gomez is grabbed by another and lifted into the air; weirdly, somehow Vlad takes control of it and swings (his shirt hanging in shreds) onto its back, directing it about like a scene from Heavy Metal. Another bird swoops for Linda but she easily dodges it.
“GIVE! HIM! BACK!” bellows Ruggos, trying to crush the Wyrm’s esophagus enough to force the spirit to vomit Jimmy out. Jax roars Jimmy’s name and tears further into the Wyrm, this time managing to pry up a scale and dig into its softer flesh underneath.
As for the missing Jimmy, he’s still alive but just stuck in the Wyrm’s throat, trying to avoid dropping down into its stomach. He has been tearing at the lining of the spirit’s throat (“All that, for a drop of blood?”), and now Jimmy can hear its thunderous voice in his mind. “JOIN THE UNITY OR PERISH! OR TAKE OF MY BLOOD TO BECOME STRONG!”
“No thank you,” Jimmy responds politely. After wondering again about his predicament, he quietly swallows some of the wyrm’s internal acid to trigger a magical immunity but only manages to burn his own throat horribly.
The Wyrm’s promise now is shouted to everyone outside, battering at our wills to make us join it. Everyone SEEMS to shrug it off, but…?
Clarisse regains control over the birds and hurtles them back at the Wyrm’s “nice gooey” eyes. While they are tearing and shredding at the monster’s face, she scans the creature to better assess its weaknesses. Along with the eyes, there is a third eye – or maybe a pearl of some kind? -- under its chin that is less armored than the rest of its body. But otherwise, aside from forcing something caustic down its throat, it seems very protected.
“GO FOR THE THIRD EYE!” she shouts to the others.
As Rika fires an energy bolt out of her finger gun at the Wyrm, Gershom sends dragonfire at the pearl. Maybe we have a chance at this fight, even if Fred can’t get out from underneath the spawn pinning him to the ground.
“ALL HAIL THE UNITY!” comes a sudden shout from near the doorway, and those of us nearby recognize that it’s fucking Helman. He launches into a spell and suddenly the Wyrm seems to be moving a lot faster. The wyrm lunges down and swallows Gerhom, then snatches Vlad out of the air and gulps him down as well.
Swearing, Ruggos pulls out a railway spike, jams it under the same scale that Jax pried up, then heats the metal red-hot.
Apparently Helman isn’t the only one – Isaac Anderson starts crowing about the Unity and shoots ectoplasm at Clarisse, missing wildly. Lost in his cultish reverie, he sadly doesn’t notice as one of the spawn rips off his dad’s arm, breaking his shoulder socket.
Clarisse grits her teeth and redirects the birds towards tearing at the spirit’s three eyes. As the huge flock of Eyed Doom batter and tear at the Wyrm’s face, it utterly freaks out and starts spraying acid everywhere, somehow coughing up Gomez and Gershom in the middle of it. Inside the monster’s throat, Jimmy has turned insubstantial and is flying his way upwards, but has the surreal experience of feeling gouts of acid spray upwards through his incorporeal body.
“WHERE DID JAMES GO?” shouts Rika, wildly motioning and somehow managing to dispel the Haste that Helman had cast on the Wyrm.
Helman has been our friend since almost the start, but there’s no way we can allow a Mage to be part of the collective, especially with James missing. After making sure the birds are still attacking the Wyrm, Clarisse gauges her distance to Helman and then whips the bottle of Hungry Ghosts given to her by Ralph. It’s a solid hit to his gut, and as the mage doubles over momentarily, the bottle falls to the ground and shatters, releasing a wave of wailing spirits looking for prey to devour. Seeing Helman, they go straight for him. He barely has a chance to straighten up before they swarm him and he faceplants into the ground, dead.
As the spirits look around for more prey, Linda shoves the spawn off Fred and drags him around a nearby corner. Gershom meanwhile directs more fire at the third eye, which now looks like it is cracking.
The birds continue tearing at the wyrm, which eats one of them. Isaac shoots at Rika but only glances her as she ducks around to help Fred. The remaining spawn continue their assault. Two of them manage to tag Ruggos and Jax. Jimmy flies up to the top of the head, then becomes substantial to attack, somehow digging in his claws deep enough to stay put on the wyrm’s head and assisting the birds tearing at the monster’s eyes.
The wyrm goes absolutely nuts and throws itself at the ground. Clarisse, Ruggos, and Jax are all caught underneath its bulk, and as Ruggos is knocked out, he turns back to his normal form and is crushed to death. Yet another member of the Court has now died.
“JOIN THE UNITY!” it is screeching into our heads incessantly, and more people turn. Not just people, but even some of the birds start squawking in unison with the Unity mantra.
Sophia disappears. Clarisse dismisses the birds before they can turn on anyone. Linda, shouting out the Unity mantra, shoots at Rika but barely clips her, and Rika abruptly vanishes as well. Gritting his teeth, Gershom slams magic at the third eye of the Wyrm again, and it rolls about on the ground in pain. The hungry ghosts decide to shred a spawn, then wheel on Isaac – then suddenly freeze as Gomez takes control of them.
It’s not a signal to celebrate, though: “All hail the Unity!” shouts Gomez ominously. Everything is just quickly going to shit.
Clarisse hears a muffled roar from underneath the Wyrm’s bulk and rightly assumes Jax has also been dragged into the Unity and is now trying to crawl his way to her position to eat her. “You’re a lousy friend, Jax!” she yells, struggling to squeeze out from under its bulk before he reaches her.
One of the few “unturned” who is left, Gershom casts Darkness over the area and makes Clarisse immune to it, which probably saves her life. Three spawn were squirming towards Clarisse to bite her, but now they can’t see where they’re going, and one even takes a bite out of the other by accident before deciding he likes it and swallows the bite anyway.
Jimmy emerges insubstantial from inside the Wyrm’s bulk but everything looks pitch-black and he can’t get a good swing on the Wyrm’s head. “HEY WHAT’S GOING ON -- DID WE WIN!!?”
“Not yet,” calls Gershom. The Wyrm swivels on him. For a moment Gershom considers disappearing, but that would probably mean it would turn on Clarisse or Jimmy, and he knows he can survive within its gullet – so he lets it take him and is gulped down into its stomach.
Clarisse squirms out from under the Wyrm, hearing Jax clawing his way closer. She scans the room and sees the ball, making a break for it, then heads for an escape tunnel. Her enhanced speed enables her to move more quickly than the other things in the room.
Down in the beast’s belly, Gershom gets his bearings, then starts burning glamour to go completely nuclear with fire. Those of us still outside the Wyrm see it rear back and slam into the ceiling, thrashing about from what must be the worst case of indigestion ever. The Wyrm feels like its stomach is positively aflame.
“HUNT DOWN THOSE WITHOUT THE MARK!” cries Gomez, directing the deadly ghosts now under his command. Clarisse veers back towards Gomez, to hit him with her own version of ghosts. Jax somehow emerges right as she passes and incredibly clips her in the dark, although Linda’s shot at her goes wide and hits the werewolf instead. Clarisse’s ghosts knock out Gomez and he collapses, losing control of the murderous spirits again.
Atop the Wyrm’s head, Jimmy takes a nibble of something to utilize echolocation. Meanwhile, Gershom can feel the Wyrm beating against his mind. He focuses and goes nuclear again in the beast’s stomach.
The pain of Linda’s shot helps Jax break out of the Unity, but this just leads to him being attacked by one of the spawn. The Wyrm itself looks reproachfully at Jax for leaving the collective and sends a horrific blast from the pearl, squarely hitting the werewolf, who collapses in a heap.
“Take this, you bastard,” grits Clarisse, tossing the ball and this time summoning the “Plague of Jewel-Shelled Wings.” She sends the cloud of beetles hurtling straight at the pearl on the creature’s chin. The sound of their wings is terrifying.
Nearby, Linda is dragging Fred towards the Wyrm. The murderous spirits swirl around them both and Isaac as well, killing Fred and Isaac and knocking Linda unconscious.
Gershom unleashes another blast inside the Wyrm’s stomach, right as the scarabs reach the pearl and bore loudly into it, shattering it into pieces.
The pearl explodes. The Wyrm shrieks.
Reality seems to warp in and out for a moment, before a huge brilliant ball of luminescent spiritual radiation rocks the entire room with an indescribable sound, leaving a huge crater in the Wyrm’s place. The scarabs are immediately vaporized, as are the rampaging ghosts.
Clarisse sways on her feet looking around. Gershom is climbing back to his feet from the middle of the crater. Jimmy is lying unconscious nearby, slowly bleeding out. As the doctor kneels next to him to staunch the wounds before he dies, there’s a rustling sound above her and like a final sad gesture by fate, Rika falls gracelessly out of the sky and lands dead on the floor.
Nothing else remains. The Wyrm is dead, true. But Jax is dead. And all of our allies who remained to battle the Wyrm with us are also dead.
And James, Arthur, and Sophia’s ghost are nowhere to be seen.
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