Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

“I have no fucking idea, and I really don’t-”

The final words of my sentence were drowned out as a Godzilla-sized sandworm burst out of the charred sands in front of us.

Chapter 15

The Queen of the Sands was recognizable only because of her size. The Level One Hundred and Fucking Twenty [Voidwyrm Empress] was now as black as coal, jerking and writhing oddly as she exploded out of the sand.

A tic started beside my eye. This was Not Okay. The new and improved Stranged Sandworm Queen was now big enough to pop Karalti in her mouth like a potato chip. “Karalti? Please go sky now.”

Karalti didn’t need to be asked twice. She launched into the air, striving for speed rather than height. As she kicked off, the voidwyrm pivoted in our direction. Barbed tentacles lashed back and forth between the lobes, flickering and tasting the air, and then the creature’s mouth split open and she screamed. The banshee wail was some kind of attack: we were far enough away that we avoided the primary AoE, but the shockwave struck like the aftermath of an explosion. It was strong enough to send pieces of Withering Rose tumbling.

Karalti desperately winged away from the titanic monster, and I turned to watch in disbelief as the Voidwyrm Empress belly-flopped onto the ring of glass shards and crushed them to powder, taking no damage at all as she slithered toward us.

[Stranging has caused Teleport to fail. Leave the area to cast spells.]

“What the fuck are you waitin’ for!” Suri bellowed. “That bloody great cunt’s about to fuckin’ blow us out of the air!”

“I’M TRYING!” Karalti shrilled.

“Flatten out! Minimize wind resistance!” I roared at Suri, before shifting my focus back to Karalti. “Karalti! Cut around Withering Rose and use Wings of Deception!”

The dragon’s mind focused like a laser. Her Mana dropped by 50 points, and then her Mana and HP pools split by 50% each as she warped forward in a roiling cloud of dark energy. We burst out on the other side of it, veering to the right as her shadow clone flew to the left, identical in every way. Karalti’s scales heated sharply under my hands as she burned mana like a fuse to keep the clone active.

The Voidwyrm Empress reared up, sucking a pillar of light deep into her body as she tracked the fake dragon through the air. Karalti dived, but the worm swung forward and flung the lobes of its mouth apart to release the mother of all breath weapons. A ray of freezing black Void energy sang out—and obliterated everything in its path. The glass, the debris in the air, and the shadow copy were toast. Karalti seized underneath us, lurching as her clone was instantly cut in half and dematerialized, the fluttering scraps sucked into a huge scar of howling darkness that hung in the air.

[Voidwyrm Empress deals 20187 damage!]

Karalti’s back and chest flexed with enough force to almost throw me off as she strove for the open air with all her strength. Behind us, the Voidwyrm Empress wailed, jerking and popping, then twisting in our direction.

“Go! Go!” I yelled.

Karalti roared with effort as she burst out of the churning windstorm and over the threshold of the Stranging. There was turbulence at the edge of the storm that gathered under the dragon’s wings and thrust her up and forward into the thinner open air. She flapped for a moment, swinging her hindquarters in to avoid being sent tumbling.

“Back to Kalla Sahasi! Now!” I gripped the saddle tightly.

The bond surged as Karalti burned all but two of her remaining mana points, teleporting us away from the colossal shadow rushing toward us from the storm.

***

The dragon reappeared back in the cold air in the valley of Karhad, about half a mile from the castle. Given what we’d just run from, I couldn’t fault her for not sticking the coordinates quite right.

“Urrrgh...” Karalti’s wingbeats were off-tempo, dragging on the wind as she shakily veered toward the castle. “Hector... I don’t feel so good.”

“You got this.” I clapped her on the base of the neck—partly to reassure her, partly to try and keep her awake as we lurched starboard. “We’re gonna be fine as long as you stay awake.”

“Yeah... awake.” She shuddered beneath us, then briefly redoubled her efforts as my Will joined hers. “Gonna land. Hang on.”

I got into the dive position, rested my head down between Karalti’s shoulders, and bent my mind to the task of keeping her going. I felt her draw a deep breath, steadying her flight path as she teetered down toward the castle in a fast glide. She dipped to the right as we passed over the remains of the southern wall, but yawed back to center just before she backwinged and stumbled to a stop. She panted hard, wings drooping as Suri disconnected her harness and gratefully slid to the ground. I stayed on Karalti’s back, reaching out to embrace her neck.

“Ugh. That sucked.” She swayed on her feet, heaving for breath.

“You did great,” I said. “A couple weeks ago, we’d have crashed that landing. You pulled it off like a fucking pro.”

Karalti craned her head to sniff, then lick my face. “You helped.”

“Of course I did. I’m your personal cheerleader. And I want you to fix that image in your mind, clearly. Miniskirt. Pom-poms. Pigtails. All of it.”

The dragon groaned, and nudged me back with the tip of her snout. “Go to hell.”

“Is she okay!?” Suri called up to us from the ground.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.” Karalti carefully shuffled down on her hind legs, squatting until her chest touched the ground. “I’ll just... rest here for a while.”

I slid down her flanks to the ground, and removed her saddle. The heavy leather and metal rig vanished from her body into my Inventory,