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Hector bolted over the side of the third floor again, armor scraping against rock, and knocked himself straight downward with a velocity state in an iron boulder. He went to work on an iron web in order to slow himself once he was close enough, but it was going to be a very tight window, he knew. He was prepared to launch them on a platform of their own, if necessary.

And he caught a glimpse of the person.

It was a Hun’Kui. Eleyo, almost certainly. But he was wearing Seyos’ cloak.

In that same moment, Eleyo looked up and no doubt perceived his imminent demise. Hector falling toward him, chased by a giant mass of sludge and ardor.

Eleyo gripped a pendant around his neck, just as Seyos had done previously, and vanished into thin air.

And Hector was alone with the worm again--only now, he’d compromised his positioning, and the worm was nearly on top of him.

Not much choice now.

He ignored the immediate confusion and shot himself sideways with a horizontal pillar. When he was close enough to the wall, he followed up with a vertical pillar, adding extra mass to it as well as a slight curve to the tip, trying to help with the adjustment in his trajectory. He still ended up scraping the wall with his shield and armor, but it mostly worked, and he went flying upward again, feeling rather like a pinball.

The hope was to slip by the worm entirely, but the Scarf of Amordiin was telling him now that that wasn’t going to happen. The only consolation was that the concentration of sludge here was thinner than the main body.

He readied his grip on the Moon’s Wrath, then swung with all his strength as soon as he made contact.

Sludge splattered everywhere, but he made it up and over to the second floor.

He allowed himself to stop and check if he had any sludge on him. The Scarf informed him that, other than a few specks here and there, he didn’t.

He indulged a breath of relief, and then rumbling reminded him that he was still being chased, and he propelled himself away on still another iron platform.

‘Something’s different with that mace now,’ said Garovel. ‘It doesn’t feel quite so “empty” anymore. It has ardor in it.’

Hector wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

‘Hit the worm again,’ the reaper said.

‘Uh--are you sure? Didn’t you want me to--?’

‘I know what I said. But now we’re conducting research, and science is important enough to risk our lives for, right?’

Hector didn’t wholly agree with that sentiment, but he didn’t argue, because the result was what he’d wanted earlier.

The worm was climbing again, sloshing over rock and tossing bits of treasure around.

Hector took his chance and slammed a giant iron cube into it just as it was reaching the second floor.

The worm didn’t seem particularly bothered by the impact and kept on after him like so much flowing water, entirely undeterred.