((Triple Wednesday -- Page 1 of 3))
The iron boulder shot forward with a thick gust of wind that was strong enough to knock him clean off his platform. Its shape distorted in midair, and it hit the worm dead on, causing as much of an explosion as the beast’s own lightning had earlier.
‘Hector, what the fuck was that?! How did you just--?!’
He was only half-listening to the reaper. He was still a little disoriented from the blowback. Even though he’d tried to brace himself, he hadn’t expected it to be quite that powerful.
Garovel was still talking, saying something about wind speed, but Hector needed to maintain his focus.
The worm needed time to recover, too, which was already more of an effect than a simple impact from his iron had previously had, but there was no doubt in Hector’s mind that it would recover--and soon.
That was a good test run. A good foundation from which to build. Now he needed to refine and improve it.
Two more cubes appeared in orbit around him. And this time, he changed their shapes preemptively as he grew them. He knew they would begin to distort as they left his control, but he still wanted them to be less boxy.
He wanted them to be blades.
From everything he’d come to know of worms in his multiple encounters with them, he knew that the bigger they were, the more they could withstand blunt force and explosive impacts. He needed to cut it down to size.
And fortunately enough, the worm had already split itself up into three again. No doubt, it wanted to replicate its previous success with that strategy, but it was going to be sorely disappointed.
He started bounding away on rising platforms and waited for them to try to surround him.
It didn’t take long.
He made it up to the second floor, which was now mostly gone, and sure enough, one of the worms rose up right in front of him while the other two chased from behind. Its mouth was already wide open as it lunged at him.
He loosed one of the blades--a circular disc with a saw-tooth edge--and cleaved the worm in two from mouth to tail. He chased the half that splattered off to the right and loosed the second disc, bisecting it again.
Those two chunks splattered against the wall, and Hector immediately boxed them in with iron while also readying more discs for the worms at his heels.
His strategy didn’t end there, however. He knew from earlier that just boxing the little ones in wouldn’t be enough, not when the big ones could free them.
So he brought them with him.
The two boxes full of sludge--he launched them toward himself and put them into orbit along with the still-growing discs.
The boxes were unfortunately still rather cumbersome. He could see them shaking as the sludge tried to free itself, which it probably soon would, Hector figured. But he would be ready.
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