Akroma dived toward the teeth of the deathwurm. Foul breath blased up from its gullet and plumed over her. She raked her lightning lance out, bared her teeth in a shriek of fury, and hurled the weapon.
It thundered down into the beast's rubbery muzzle, sparked on a nostril, and jabbed within. The lance disappeared, and the puny eyes of the wurm lit. Charges arced through the creature's brain. It roared, its mouth snapping spastically.
Akroma tried to dive aside, but the jaws were too quick. Translucent fangs cut into one of her forelegs. the other leg came down on the beast's black gums, dug its claws in, and shoved off. She pulled free. Angel wings spread, gripped the darkness, and hurled Akroma away from the beast. Another pulse carried her over rushing convolutions of flesh.
The leviathan shuddered, floating in space. The lance sent surges of agony through it, but even that peerless light could not survive long in a brain so utterly dark. Its final charges flared in the eyes and mouth of the beast, and it was gone.
Akroma banked low across the tail of the moster. She had no weapons, but during the Nightmare War, she had slain deathwurms by turning their teeth against themselves. Plunging, Akroma grasped the tail of the creature and clung on. Her claws sank through folds of flesh, stinging the beast.
A league away, the massive head rose and arched, neck spreading like the hood of a cobra. It saw her, a stinging fly on its tail, and curled back on itself.
Akroma dug her claws in deeper. She wanted the wurm to be infuriated, wanted to wait for the final possible moment. Beneath her, dark muscles slid and tightened.
The moster trembled. It curved into a huge loop, the head crossing miles in seconds. Jaws gaped, and the throat sucked a cyclone of air.
Still, Akroma waited. If she leaped away a moment too soon, the wurm would not bite its own tail. If she leaped too late, it would swallow her whole. jaguar legs gathered to spring, and eagle wings folded to fly.
The deathwurm's head eclipsed all else, its teeth a deadly horizon.
Akroma leaped . . . . too late.
A moment too late, Phage realized her foe was a living hole. She plunged through him, the knife cleaving the shadow's head. What lay on the other side? The portal man swallowed her from fist to feet, and the roar of the coliseum diminished. She vaulted into a long, low chamber filled with ogres.
They had not expected her; They hunched around a harpsichord, plinking tunes with their filthy claws.
Phage, still flying, introduced herself by landing, dagger-first, on the throat of the nearest ogre.
"Huh?" it said.
The blade ripped out its voice, and the pommel tore out its soul. Her feet landed on the thing's chest and rotted out two deep wells. Like a woman sinking in mud, Phage ran. Her feet sucked with each step up the collapsing monster. She hurdled its face, giant eyes glazed in death, and flung herself to attack the next ogre.
It was quicker than its cohort. A huge claw grasped Phage and squeezed. The moster smiled as flesh pulped in its trip. The flesh, though, was its own--rancid, gray-green tissues. The ogre howled, its hand reduced to white sticks.
Phage tumbled free and landed on the stone floor.
At least twenty more ogres converged.
She turned, spotted the standing shadow of the man, and dived.
With a dull roar, the ogres lunged, piling atop her. The weight was immense until her skin ate a soft spot. Phage tried to lever the monsters off of her or to crawl from beneath them, but she could only rot deeper into the pile. More beasts landed. Phage was burried alive in ogres. There was only one way out, to dig up through the suffocating heap and hope her breath lasted long enough.
Scooping gobbets of slimy flesh with her fingers, she swam through dying bodies.