Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

shockwave that exploded from the sonic harpoons. The Sandworm Empress wailed as they struck her, sending molten cracks through her black carapace.

[Siren Array deals 57,481 damage to Voidwyrm Empress!]

[Voidwyrm Empress HP: 982,519/1,040,000]

“Thank goodness! They work!” Rin cried excitedly.

“What do you mean ‘Thank goodness’? Didn’t you test these?” Gar snapped.

“No! I mean, yes, kind of! I mean, we didn’t get to test them on sandworms!”

“This is an experiment!?” Gar snarled something in Spanish. I only recognized one word, and yes, it was puta.

“This thing has over a million HP!?” Karalti yelped. “Hector-!”

“Hold steady! That one barrage chopped nearly four percent off the fucking thing! Hit it again! I roared over comms, tensing with excitement. “We can do this!”

The sandworm did not like losing that much HP in one single attack. She forgot us, pivoting her mouth toward the ships. My eyes widened as I saw a familiar ball of vantablack darkness build up within her jaws, gathering with coils of energy. Karalti read my mind as I sighted down, diving for the Empress at top speed. The dragon’s lungs filled, her jaws gaped, and she sprayed a plume of fire right along the back of one writhing tentacle.

[Ghost Fire deals 1124 damage!]

Our puny attack was enough to distract the Voidwyrm just slightly, allowing the ships to peel away from the shrill beam of void energy that tore through the air. All but one of the freighters managed to get away as the beam slashed from the earth to the heavens, tracking Karalti as she tilted her wings. The freighter’s engines whined as it careened, smoking, toward the sands. It was the Lockhart.

“Fuck!” I hissed.

Karalti heaved for breath, blinking out of existence and reappearing high over the ships and the Empress herself. The great worm twisted, surging up underneath us, only to be struck from all sides by blasts from the Symphonic Arrays. It let out a warbling, ear-splitting roar as sections of its black chitin armor shattered, and knobby protrusions all over the worm’s body flared open, exposing simmering orange ichor.

“It’s catching its breath through those spiracles!” Gar’s voice crackled over PM. “Get the artillery on ‘em while the Launchers cool down!”

The ships, already to either side of the writhing worm, opened fire on his command. Cannons boomed, mortars whined, and the voidwyrm began to let out piercing, squealing cries loud enough to make my eardrums pulse. The notifications from the artillery were not measured in individual attacks: instead, Navigail gave me a Mass Combat DPS reading: we were hitting the Voidwyrm for 1041 points per second of constant fire, but when the Symphonic Arrays went off, it jumped to over 50K. At this rate, we were picking off 1% of its HP per minute.

“Give me one of those stamina potions! While we have the chance!” Karalti wheeled up higher, her wings rippling.

“Right.” I took one out of her inventory and crawled up along her neck to her head. Gripping one of her horns, I leaned out and jammed the neck of the clay bottle into her jaws. She tilted her body to the left and climbed, letting physics do the work of dumping the potion down her throat. When she leveled out, she spat out the flask. I clambered back down, and watched the bombardment continue.

The noise coming from all sides fouled the creature’s tremorsense: it lashed its head, the petals of its mouth furling back, then swung out blindly to try and strike the airships. They were far enough away that it missed, but the turbulence threw the cannons off. I heard a shell whiff past us and winced.

[Voidwyrm Empress HP: 862,641/1,040,000]

The spiracles closed as the worm cottoned on to what was happening. Bellowing, it drew back into the earth, burying itself. I searched the ground as the earth shook... but unlike last time, the Empress wasn’t snaking close to the surface, but deeper in the earth.

“Split up those ships! Now!” I barked. “Karalti!”

“Here we go again!” Karalti tucked her wings in and dived.

Bent low over the saddle, ass in the air, I fixated on the ground. Now and then, I thought I saw the sand stir, but nothing came to the surface.

“Did we drive it off?” Rin asked, after nearly a minute had passed with no signs of life.

“No. Don’t count on it.” Eyes darting, I scanned for signs of movement—and saw them, as sand began to collapse in a circle right under the Aspern. “Suri! It’s targeting you!”

“Of course it fuckin’ is.” Suri cut off to sound the alarm—and Lord Soma’s ship veered sharply starboard, its engines flaring as he gunned it to full speed. The sand around the Voidwyrm’s buried mouth sucked down into the monster’s gullet, and a bone-deep vibration rolled through the air. A whirlwind began to form—then a full-blown tornado, sand whipping in a funnel that grew wider and wider and began to suck in everything around it. The wreckage of the Lockhart slid into its jaws, crushed into kindling. Any people who hadn’t fled out into the desert were pulled in, their screams drowned by the howl of the wind. The ships were far enough away to avoid being sucked in—but we were not.

“No! NO! Gods damn it no!” Karalti frantically beat her wings, honking in alarm as the vortex hoovered us toward it. It took all of her strength to not lose control and flip onto her back.

“It can’t keep this up forever! You can do it!” I urged her. “Teleport out!”

“I can’t! It’s dispelling the magic!” Karalti snarled, lips peeling back as she briefly tumbled, flipping over, and began to flap as hard as she could. Just before her stamina hit the yellow range—the tornado left off. My dragon surged forward, panting and panicked, and struggled for altitude as the Voidwyrm lunged out of the sands toward us. I made