22 The Sand Worm

As we were exiting the pyramid, I couldn't help but think back to the medallion.

"[The desert sand stirs...] What does it mean? It could mean that the medallion causes sandstorms, but that can't be the entire thing since whoever was living in this pyramid disappeared due to some reasons and left something that held such great importance... What was it that scared them away?"

I spent the rest of our short walk to the outside contemplating what had caused the abandonment of the pyramid.

The moment we reached the outside I decided to bring the medallion out to look at it in the natural light, not realizing just how much of a mistake I had made.

As I was taking out the medallion, Jacob noticed what I was doing and turned to me.

"Why are you taking the medallion out?"

"I want to see any details I might have missed when we were in that dark room."

"couldn't we just do that at home? No need to be so impatient."

"You're right, but I just want to see it in the natural light."

And so, I held it up to the sky, in hopes of getting the best view of the medallion.

While I was doing this, Jacob had a realization.

"Wait! I noticed that the people were holding up some sort of medallion whenever the sandworm was in the image!"

I heard him and came to the same conclusion as he did.

"I don't think that it could have lived for hundreds of years, do you?"

"If the depictions were accurate, then it might have lived longer... We might have just made a terrible mistake."

At the exact moment that Jacob said those words, the desert started trembling.

Isaac decided to finally join our conversation.

"We have definitely made a mistake."

And we looked into the desert only to see a GIANT worm digging through the sand.

It was at least 200 feet long, and at least 10 feet in diameter.

I looked back at the medallion and noticed the resemblance to the worm.

"I think we found out what the medallion does."

Isaac and Jacob could only voice their agreement with my statement.

"We definitely have."

I decided that I could try to look at what we were dealing with.

[Desert Scourge

hp 2990/2990]

"I think we ran into another monster like the King Slime. This 'Desert Scourge' has more health than the King Slime, and that does not bode well for us."

Isaac and Jacob only nodded in agreement.

I looked back at the Desert Scourge and noticed one detail that we had ignored until now: Where it was heading.

"It's coming straight at us, isn't it?"

Jacob looked at the direction it was heading and nodded.

"Yes, it is heading in our direction. And that is not a reassuring thing to know."

"We're gonna have to fight it, huh?"

"We are."

"F*** my life."

"I agree, F*** your life."

"This is no time for jokes!"

Jacob turned and looked me in the eye with a stare that could kill.

"I am not joking, this is entirely your fault."

I immediately looked away from Jacob.

"I can neither assure nor deny that statement."

"I watched you do it. There is no denying what happened."

"Ignorance is bliss."

"ignorance is what got us into this situation, you idiot."

"I thought that we agreed that I wasn't an idiot!"

"That never happened and you know it."

"Well, it should happen!"

Isaac chose to intervene at that moment.

"Kids, can we forget who caused this and focus on what we are going to do when that worm gets here?"

We both looked at each other and agreed that the incoming deathtrap is of greater importance than whoever summoned it to us.

And so we began planning.

I started by asking a single question:

"What should we do before it gets here?"

Isaac responded with a shrug and Jacob seemed just as unsure as I was.

"Ok, we have no plans for when that monster reaches us. Great."

Isaac suddenly looked up with his eyes flashing in a gleam that said 'I have an idea!'.

"We could try blowing it up!"

Jacob and I looked at each other and looked back at Isaac.

I decided to speak my mind.

"Why is that always your first resort?"

"Because it has never failed me before."

"What if it did though?"

"Then I'd have been dead years ago."

I just looked back at Jacob, who nodded at the idea of using Isaac's idea.

"Okay, we have a 'plan' now, I guess. We don't have time to make another one since the 'Desert Scourge' is going to reach us in about a minute."

"Well, plan A is to blow it up, but we have absolutely no contingency plans. I guess we are screwed if this goes wrong."

Isaac agreed with my reasoning.

"We absolutely will be, kid."

"Can you stop calling me kid?"

"If we get out of this alive I'll consider it, kid."

"WHEN we get out of this alive, you mean."

"Yes, when."

And then our opponent arrived in front of us.

It was much scarier when it was charging at you from a few hundred feet away since it was moving at the speed of a racecar.

I turned to Isaac and shouted:

"now would be a good time to start 'Plan A', Isaac!"

Isaac didn't turn to me, but he still responded.

"On it!"

I turned to Jacob.

"Jacob what can you do right now?"

"I could try and shoot some bombs so that they could explode inside the mouth of the monster, but would that help?"

"Any damage is good damage!"

"Fair enough."

And so he began shooting his arrows in hopes of setting off a few bombs.

And he did. Several bombs were set off inside of the mouth of the Scourge, hiding it in a cloud of sand.

We didn't have the confidence to believe that we defeated it, so we continued attacking the cloud of dust obscuring the massive beast.

As soon as the dust cloud disappeared, we noticed that the beast wasn't there anymore.

"This is bad! We don't know how damaged it is, and we don't know where it is. We're sitting ducks!"

We looked around in hopes of locating the large worm hiding in the sand.

I only located it when the ground directly under us started shaking, meaning one thing and one thing only.

"It's below us! We have to move! Now!"

There wasn't a response from Jacob or Isaac, but they followed my orders and ran away from our previous location.

A few seconds later the sandworm burst out of the stone beneath the location we were at before.

"F***! I thought it could only dig through the sand! Now there's nowhere safe!"

We were all separated, and the worm was focusing on me. I knew that this moment was a do or die moment, so I did the dumbest thing I could: I ran.

I ran away from my friends, in hopes of dragging the worm away from them. I ran into the middle of the desert; the home of the 'Desert Scourge', and my possible deathtrap.

'This is a terrible idea, and I can't even fix my mistake. I am as screwed as always.'

I looked behind me, seeing that the worm was still chasing after me.

'F***, I couldn't even get that far away from the thing. I am so going to die.'

And then I had an idea.

'I still have like 40 bombs in my inventory, I wonder how much damage that would do to this beast?'

And so I decided to test my idea out. In the dumbest way possible.

I waited for the worm to get close enough to launch itself at my upper body, and proceeded to throw an entire bag filled with lit bombs inside of its gaping maw. And then I fell to the ground in hopes of dodging the worm flying overhead.

I had dodged the majority of the damage, but I could not dodge the tail of the worm. It slashed my back, leaving a massive gash reaching from the base of my neck to my hip.

I watched in terror as the Scourge resurfaced about 10 feet away from me, readying itself to deal the final blow.

It was at that moment that the bombs blew up.

I had never been happier to see an explosion of viscera.

The scourge had been bisected by the explosion, and I had won. I survived.

I looked at my health.

[Talon

hp 12/120

State: Bleeding (Unable to regenerate health naturally)]

I couldn't help but laugh hysterically. I'd done it. I'd fought a fight I was supposed to lose. And I'd won it.

I was so close to death, yet I felt the most alive I had ever been.

I looked back to the corpse o the desert scourge, only to notice that there was a pile of items in the place of the mutilated worm.

As I looked at the place the body once was, a message began playing in my mind.

{If you are hearing this, then you have killed the aftereffect of one o my many mistakes. What you had killed was what had once been Amidias, the sea king. He had refused the request of my king to revive a long-dead god and was punished for his refusal. I had burned the seas and doomed him to a life of eternal hunger.}

I could only listen to the message dumbfoundedly. What had I just heard?

I would not know who left that message until much, much later.