Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [39]
Only then did she realize that the cavern had fallen silent. The grimlocks had ceased their ecstatic chanting and stood rapt, their hands wide. Tremors shook the vast chamber. The creatures all turned toward the hole from which their god would emerge.
"What-" Taslin started, but a roar tore her words away, shattering the tranquility of the cavern. If the roar was loud to the elves, it was splitting to sensitive grimlock ears. The creatures fell to the ground, hands clasped to their heads.
A great serpentine form burst through the tunnel, its head letting out a mighty cry. Its purple carapace-smooth, thick, and solid as steel-creaked and twisted in the air high over their heads. Yellow-green spittle dripped from its jaws and dotted the floor, leaving the dark stone pitted and hissing as acid burned it.
A purple worm, Twilight thought. She'd never seen one this big.
The grimlocks, hearing and smelling their slitheting god emerging from its tunnel, gave a great cry of "Ithilnin!" and supplicated themselves, putting their foreheads down on the stone. The high priest intoned a phrase in his tongue and laid himself prone.
Twilight nodded grimly and stared up, resolved to look death in the face. Taslin did the same, gave a slight smile, and fainted. Curious-not the faint, but the smile.
Then Twilight looked up, wondering as to the source of her mirth. The worm did nothing more than loom overhead, cast its gaze back and fotth, and roar every so often. Then silence fell-absolute silence around them.
In the quiet, the worm was less frightening. In fact, she barely realized it was there. Twilight was about to express her confusion when she felt fumbling hands and her frown became a grin.
Working quickly, Slip and Liet severed the bonds that held Taslin and Twilight, while the worm distracted the grimlocks. Within a magical bubble of silence, they were as good as invisible. Slip mouthed instructions to follow her, then gestured-clearly the spell was set upon her-but Twilight knew the reach of such a spell.
She rolled off the pallet, dropped to the stone without a whisper, and padded over to the prostrate priest. The creature shook his head, but the silence kept him blind.
Just as her fingers were about to relieve the priest of her sword, Twilight felt Liet catch her arm to keep her within the magical silence. She wanted to struggle, but he was right-the spell did not extend over the priest, metely up to him.
Twilight realized her tricks at legerdemain would hardly work on a creature that sensed by nose and ear, rather than by eye. She loathed leaving Betrayal behind, but she understood necessity.
A shock rippled through the floor of the chamber, throwing a startled Twilight to the ground. She could hear nothing outside the silence, but one look at the scores of quavering grimlocks, blood running from their ears, told her enough.
Her eyes turned upward to the beast above them, and she saw not one, but two purple menaces.
The real Ithilnin had come.
CHAPTER Nine
The second purple worm loomed even larger than the first, its scaled carapace cracked and spiked with serrated spines. At its top, huge bone jaws like dozens of axes snapped wide enough to swallow a team of horses whole. At the other end of the worm sprang a stinger the size of an ogres two-handed sword. Dark veins of greenish acid, ran over its body, burning away the stone around its body.
But most astonishing, when the acid struck the first worm, the creature flickered and winked out of existence. Asson appeared, hovering in the air where the illusory worm's maw had been.
The grimlock high priest snarled-or so Twilight guessed, for no sound penetrated the aura of silence. He wove his hands through a counterspell.
Twilight leaped at him as he cast, scrabbling at his hands to ruin the spell, but she was too late. Sound rushed into het ears, including the mind-splitting roar of the grimlocks looming purple god.
Everything seemed to happen in a single moment. The huge worm lunged at Asson, who flew away, showering magical flame upon the creature