[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He had to use the sword before he was forced to drop it.He ended the spell and took hold of the sword with both hands.Before he could stab the monster, the flipper that John had been swimming behind shifted, lifting up so that one of Scylla’s heads could see what was causing the water to heat up alongside it.John was suddenly face-to-face with a live head.The creature saw John and the sword, and it knew what he intended.Without having to think about it, the head snapped forward at John.He was just as terrified as the first time he had seen one of the monster’s heads, but this time he was armed.He held out the sword in front of him, hoping that the Scylla head would impale itself on it.It didn’t.The head couldn’t reach him; it came up two feet short.John knew this was his one chance.Now that the monster knew he was there, it would have all of the advantages and would eat him in short order.He turned to the beast’s body as it took the biggest breath that John had seen, its side coming all the way out to him.John saw the tip of the sword was still a dull red as he stabbed the creature as if his life depended on it.Chapter 51Fitzber was down to his last two arrows, for all of the good they would do him.He looked down the length of the wreckage that used to be a ship.Three heads left to kill and three heroes left to do it.While he would never give up, the realist inside of him knew their odds weren’t very good.After his last two arrows, he was down to his short sword and dagger.He didn’t think that Scylla would notice either of them as it swallowed him.Father Telenor was fending off a second head with a boathook.Fitzber doubted that battle would last long.Ghorza was fighting the third head, and she unleashed her black enfeeblement ray.If Scylla noticed, it wasn’t obvious to Fitzber.“Come out, little gnome, and I will make it quick,” said the Scylla head to Fitzber as he ducked back around the forward mast.Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the head Father Telenor was fighting bite down on the boathook and pull it from his hands.Father Telenor dove to the side as the head tried to snap him up.“Not while I have arrows,” said Fitzber, firing his penultimate arrow at the head.He made his shot, even with the gale force winds that had sprung up, and the arrow vanished into a nostril to prick the sensitive membrane inside.Unfortunately, the arrow caused the head to sneeze and the whole body spasmed.The port side of the ship gave way, boards snapping and wooden rivets popping in a spray of broken lumber.The ship had already been settling into the water; now it rolled to port as water flooded in the broken side.The aft mast, already weakened in the earlier dragon attack, snapped off.The ropes holding the sail parted, and the sail blew away, the canvas flapping in the breeze.The remaining companions and the two little girls were thrown overboard as the ship keeled over.The head closed to within several feet of Fitzber so that it could look at the gnome with its remaining eye.“And now, I have you,” it said.Lightning flashed as the head turned back to him and the mouth opened.Fitzber could hear the little girls screaming as the mouth came toward him.As the rain began pelting down, he saw that there was nowhere else to go.Chapter 52Being swallowed alive was a totally shitty plan, Dantes thought; unfortunately, it was the only one he could come up with at the time.They had used up most of the crew and had only killed half of the heads; Dantes didn’t see how the few remaining people would be able to kill the other three.As expected, Dantes survived the process of being eaten.Solim had been so mad that he hadn’t stopped to chew Dantes before swallowing him.The whole reason for the force missiles was to infuriate Solim enough to get swallowed whole.Dantes’ skin was incredibly dense, due to his heritage, and he might have been able to withstand a little chewing without completely coming apart, but he didn’t think that he would have enjoyed the process very much.The acid in the creature’s digestive system was slowly wearing away his skin as he slid down Scylla’s esophagus.Full-blooded devils were able to withstand the acid pools in the first level of hell, so Scylla’s stomach acid was less effective on him than if he’d been made of flesh.His father would have laughed at the weak acid while clawing his way out of the belly of the beast.Of course, his father wouldn’t have been eaten in the first place, though, since he would have been on the orc ship with the rest of the evil creatures.Dantes dropped into the creature’s stomach.He tried not to think about the things he could feel bumping into him.Acid found a way into a cut he had received fighting the heads, and it burned.A lot.He figured that he had about three minutes until either the acid killed him or he ran out of air.Unfortunately, ‘hard to kill’ wasn’t the same as ‘impossible to kill.’ He sighed.This really was a shitty plan.He hoped it worked.“Murus Incendi!” he said, casting a Wall of Fire spell.A 10-foot tall curtain of deep-red flame sprang up in a five-foot radius around him.The light it cast danced and shifted, giving him a view of the inside of Scylla’s stomach.Even for a half-devil, whose father had forced him to see many a disturbing sight, it was too much, and he closed his eyes.The stomach acid and other assorted fluids came to a boil, and a toxic mist soon filled the beast’s stomach and began pushing it out.As Dantes had hoped, the valves in the monster’s digestive tract were all one-way.Things were pushed through, and then they closed and wouldn’t let anything back up.While normally a helpful mechanism for a creature that swallowed live prey, it was not good if the beast needed to relieve gas pressure in its stomach.He had learned this from his father.As it turned out, his father had been good for something.When Dantes was young, his father had taken him to the seashore and had given him some chalky tablets to feed the seagulls.The birds would fly up, expecting a treat, and his father would have him toss the tablets into the air for the birds to eat.After several had been fed, Dantes asked what he was feeding the birds [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]