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The command had to be impassioned when it came to temperature. Not angry or anything like that. Just emotionally stronger in relation to the degree of desired change.

At least, that was the easiest way for him to conceptualize it.

The next boulder that he dropped on the worm was well below freezing, but it was still only enough to make it crack audibly. It did seem to annoy the worm a little more, though, so that was something.

The beast reared its head back and vomited lightning all the way up toward him.

Hector was already dodging. The explosion rocked the third floor, but he was well out of its blast radius and only had to endure a few pebbles bouncing off his armor.

Third time was the charm, he felt. The next boulder was even colder still, and it did explode as it materialized above the worm’s body.

The blast splattered the worm across the bottom floor, and he could see the sludge bubbling with what he thought might be irritation.

So he annihilated the scattered chunks of iron and did it again right as the worm was reforming.

After that, the worm didn’t even bother fully reforming before it started sloshing its way upward like a vertical tidal wave.

Yeah, he was pretty sure he’d pissed it off now.

He leapt up, above the enormous chasm in the third floor, and loosed another disc at max speed. The knockback from the sonic boom was enough to send him up higher through the air and touch the ceiling briefly as he watched the disc cut through the sludge like a knife through warm butter.

He took advantage of his position and bounced off the ceiling in order to shoot himself straight downward, eager to pick up more boxes of sludge for his collection.

The glaring crackle of lightning got in his way, however, and he only had a split second’s warning to materialize a lightning rod for himself there in midair. He only just managed to ground it against the rock wall before it exploded right in front of him.

Haqq’s shield took the brunt of the impact for him, and he continued through, smote black and covered in iron dust but no worse for wear.

Then he saw the laser.

It was too fast to react to, appearing all at once, as lasers do. He only knew that it originated from straight ahead.

The shield took the brunt of it. But not all of it. The beam was just a little too broad, and everything immediately around the shield got hit with the beam as well.

Hector’s body was split in two. The beam cut through his armor like it was nothing, making his shield-arm separate from the rest of him.

The same arm that was holding Garovel.

And it was falling into an ocean of sludge.

Hector reacted without even thinking, loosing every disc he’d had in waiting while simultaneously growing a half-dozen more.

And the ocean parted.