Page 1548

((The 14 pages of Valentine's Day + Double Wednesday -- Page 16 of 16))
Before Seyos could move, however, metal appeared all around him, fixing him in place with one hand still around the Pendant and the other still around the trembling core.

“Where did you go?” said Hector, only then turning to face him.

Seyos saw no reason to answer that. The magma of his body was already beginning to change the metal’s color, so it wasn’t unthinkable that he would be able to break out of this encasing--or even absorb it into him, perhaps. But the surface-dweller would probably just make more.

No, the only real solution here was to use the Pendant again and teleport away. He had to be careful, though, to make sure that he didn’t bring the core with him. And since he couldn’t physically drop it from his hand, due to the metal encasing, it required deliberate mental effort to leave the core behind, to ensure that it didn’t become enveloped in the Pendant’s power along with him.

But he managed it, just as the core was growing too violent in his hand. And in a blink, he was gone from the Chamber of Grand Desire once again.

Seyos didn’t know if he would’ve been able to defeat the one the others had been calling Darksteel in single combat, but he certainly knew that the “gift” he had just left behind would crush anyone. One day, all the world would know both the folly and wrath of the Hun’Sho as that foolish young invader was about to.

Seyos, in the meantime, intended to get a head start on killing the other remaining combatants.

-+-+-+-+-

‘Garovel, what the hell am I looking at?’

‘Ah--isn’t that a Hun’Sho core?’

Hector supposed it did look similar to the one he’d seen in Torveis’ chest, but what the hell was wrong with it? It was vibrating like crazy now, and just a moment ago, it had a ripped a hole through the empty iron shell that he’d made for Seyos.

He didn’t know where the guy had gone, but it was more than enough to put him on edge. For all he knew, Seyos could pop in at any moment and try to take his head off. That was why he’d made sure that Garovel was tucked away in the safest possible combat position--around the wrist of his shield hand.

‘Careful, Hector,’ the reaper said. ‘Something is very wrong with that thing. What I’m sensing is--I can’t explain. The ardor within it is spiking in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. I don’t know--’

The core expanded visibly, ballooning up to the size of a basketball, and dark goo started oozing out of it. The white-hot exterior cracked, releasing more. And then it simply broke apart entirely, replaced by a shooting column of murky slime.

Of sludge.

The mass grew all too quickly, and it wasn’t much longer before Hector began to realize what he was looking at.

He was watching a worm being born. And a very large one, at that.