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((Triple Monday -- Page 3 of 3))
It only kept getting more ridiculous. The worms would change their pattern, and so would Hector. They would try to trick him, and he would find the escape route or make one.

But most importantly, he kept to the plan. To isolate little bits of sludge whenever he could, to prevent them from making it back to their three big brothers.

Hector had come to realize the key factor, though only in the back of his mind.

It was the size of the worms.

When they were too big, his iron couldn’t do anything to them. They would have enough mass to break or otherwise overwhelm it. But when they were small--the size of a dog, maybe--he could successfully box them in.

He could only spare enough time and mental capacity to sense them in fleeting moments, but they were there, more and more as the madness continued. His iron boxes. Littering the battlefield.

Yes. He was beginning to think that this plan could actually work. The little worms weren’t able to break free. If he could just--

He sensed one of the big worms slam down and smash a dozen iron boxes, undoing half his work in an instant. And the other half? Those boxes were vibrating on their own now.

The little worms tore their way through his iron like corkscrews. Come to think of it, he’d seen worms move like that before, back when the train was first attacked. It was how they were able to tunnel through solid rock.

The worm was still learning. Still discovering its own abilities.

Insanity.

Hector was just about at the end of his rope.

What the fuck was he supposed to do here? Was this just impossible?

Well.

Of course it was.

It had been impossible from the beginning. He’d been an idiot to ever think otherwise, really. To ever have hope that he could actually win a fight like this, against a literal monster, the kind that he would’ve thought only existed in legends and nightmares.

He and Garovel were going to die here.

A part of him had felt that way the whole time, if he was being completely honest with himself.

But then again, a part of him always felt that way. In fact, at this point, he would’ve felt weirder without that feeling constantly there in the back of his mind. The only difference now was that the feeling was in the front of his mind, instead, demanding his attention.

And that was no excuse to give up.

That was no excuse for anything.

As his feet struggled to keep their balance, as his senses became crowded with waves of hungry sludge in all directions, as his hand gripped the Moon’s Wrath, as he tried to brace himself with his shield, and as he angrily thought that, actually, there were still a couple things left that he wanted to try on this giant pile of sentient shit--that was when he finally felt it there in his mind.

The response.