171 CLXXI. | 'The Lord of Darksteel...'

The overwhelming sensation of emergence in that particular moment was not immediately helpful. If anything, it made matters worse, because the feeling took him by surprise while he was mid-swing with the Moon's Wrath.

Which threw Hector off balance.

Instead of smashing cleanly through the wall of sludge in front of him, the mace stopped halfway and got stuck there. It had still managed to make an opening for him to launch himself through, which he did, but in doing so, the Moon's Wrath slipped from his grasp and was swallowed by the amassing sludge.

Hector flew farther than he expected to, as well. His iron had launched him with much more strength than he'd intended it to, and he ended up hitting the wall on the far end of the chamber, though he did at least manage to catch himself on it instead of slamming into it face first.

He slid back down to the ground, armor scraping against rock, and turned around to observe the worm.

It had stopped chasing him, for the moment. It was perhaps impossible to know what the beast was thinking or feeling--assuming it could do either of those things--but Hector got the impression from the way it was sloshing up and down that it was quite pleased with itself.

Pleased with its prize.

'It's okay,' Garovel was saying. 'Don't panic.'

Hector wasn't. As much as he might've liked to hold onto the Moon's Wrath, losing it didn't bother him terribly. Not now, at least.

Instead, he was already thinking about what he was going to do next. What he could do next.

Just before the emergence, there had been something he had wanted to try, something he had done a while ago but had yet to properly integrate into his fighting style. And now, well...

He was certain that he could get it to work.

A single iron cube appeared in orbit around him.

He added to it, doubling its mass. Tripling it. Quadrupling it. Increasing it still further, larger than anything he had yet tried to put in orbit. It became so big that he had to raise himself up on a platform so that the cube didn't scrape against the ground.

Soon enough, it was the size of a car.

The worm, having concluded its little celebration, finally noticed him again and started sloshing toward him.

Hector ramped up the speed of the cube's orbit. Faster. Faster. Still faster.

He added his soul to the boulder, though of course he knew that he couldn't compete when it came to soul-strengthening. It was just for that little bit of extra oomph. Because really, he intended to make up for that difference in power with sheer physical force.

So he didn't stop increasing its speed, even when the giant cube began whipping up a whirlwind around him, even when he could feel himself beginning to lose control of it. That was the ultimate goal, after all. He just had to focus and allow himself to lose control of it at just the right moment.

And he did.

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.

Moving with his iron was easier than ever. He hardly even had to think about it. He only had to know where he wanted to go and how he wanted to get there, and his iron carried him as if on the nose of a train--or in the mouth of a snake, perhaps, considering how trivial it was to weave in between piles of rock and eager slime. And the Scarf of Amordiin was certainly helping in that regard, too. Being able to sense the worms attacking before Garovel even had a chance to warn him was immensely valuable.

Another of the worms dove in mouth-first, and Hector slid out of its path on a suspended railway of iron. The opening was clear, and he took full advantage, loosing another sawblade. He had tried to evolve it another step, though, and added a second, perpendicular disc to it. So instead of splitting the worm in two, it split in four.

He didn't let up on the pressure, either. His next work was three sawblades melded into one, and he loosed it on one of the four sections he'd just made, dicing it up even more.

Those looked small enough. He boxed all the little sludgy chunks in iron and added them to his orbital collection as he readied still more discs.

These six new boxes were clearly much more stable than the first two, Hector sensed. They weren't shaking nearly as much and--

Yeah, the sludge was already breaking through the larger two, drilling holes into them and trying to goop its way out.

He could've just added more iron to the boxes to try and keep the troublemakers where they were, but he didn't want to do that. Instead, he saw an opportunity with the next worm lunging after him.

Hector annihilated the first two boxes and allowed the sludge therein a blissful moment of freedom right as the nearest worm dove in and missed. Then a multi-sawblade sliced through all of them at once, creating a fresh new batch of collectible sludge.

That was twelve more little boxes in orbit. And after another two discs for the worm that had so graciously offered itself up to him, Hector had another batch of six on top of that, bringing him to a grand total of twenty-four boxes so far, all orbiting around him as he eased himself onto the third floor.

Even with all of that work, there was still plenty more slime sloshing around below. Math wasn't really his forte, but from his estimation, it looked like he'd reduced its overall mass by maybe a third or so.

However, the sludge that remained seemed to be thinking twice about chasing him now.

'Sweet Cocora,' said Garovel. 'Hector, that was... I'm not even sure what to...'

Hector didn't want to be too pleased with himself. 'It's not over yet.' He double-checked the boxes in orbit around him. They were trembling a little but holding, nonetheless.

There were so many moving parts. The shifting armor with its cooling effect. Twenty-four boxes in orbit. And five more discs, orbiting at a much higher speed, ready to be let loose.

Yet he wasn't struggling to maintain it all. He felt as if he could handle much more than this, even. But he did want to organize it a bit more. So he started allowing the twenty-four boxes to collide and attach themselves to one another. The walls of each of the cubes were maintained, however. He only wanted to group them together, like miniature hotels, perhaps. Each piece of sludge stayed where it was, in its own room, but now the rooms were grouped together horizontally.

He found it even easier to keep track of, and perhaps most importantly, it freed extra space in orbit around him. He was going to be needing that soon, he felt.

The worm below had amassed itself back into a single beast again. It appeared to be biding its time, searching for debris to devour and absorb while it waited for Hector to come for it.

Somehow, he didn't much care for that. At this point, he almost would've preferred it to keep acting like a rabid animal.

And perhaps that was why it wasn't doing that.

The thing wasn't nearly as stupid as he might have hoped, Hector knew. If it wanted him to attack first, it was probably going to try something sneaky. And it hadn't used its lightning in a while, either, as it had been divided.

That was going to be a problem, with all this iron swirling around him. He'd have to be even more mindful of it.

'Hector, wait a minute,' said Garovel.

'What?' He'd been just about to leap down there.

'The treasure pile over there. There are a few mirrors in it. I want you to grab one. The largest you can carry unhindered.'

Hector saw the pile he was referring to and started making his way over. It was a bit scattered compared to when they'd first arrived but still mostly intact. He still had to ask, though, 'Why a mirror?'

'Just a precaution,' the reaper said. 'The worm ate the Moon's Wrath, remember? And there are rumors that these bastards can absorb powers.'

Hector understood. It would be like the time he fought Harper, in other words. Thinking back on that experience, he very much hoped it didn't come to that.

He found a mirror that seemed suitable, if maybe a bit expensive-looking with its bejeweled and golden paneling. According to the Scarf of Amordiin, it was the largest one here, being slightly taller and wider than Haqq's shield. He decided not to carry it, though, wanting to keep his right hand free, and instead chose to encase it in iron and add it to his orbital collection.

Garovel chuckled. 'That's pretty handy.'

Hector could only agree.

He started back toward the worm, going over his next plan in his head.

He didn't want to rush in and attack the worm directly. He had a feeling that that would be playing into its slimy, nonexistent hands and would probably get himself counterattacked in some way. And at this distance, simply launching more discs probably wouldn't do much. They were fast, sure, but the worm's reactions were pretty fast, too, from what he could tell, and he wanted to save the discs anyway for an opportune moment. Right now, they were probably his best means of getting out of a very bad situation.

So he decided to go for something different--something that would allow him to easily harass the beast from afar and hopefully piss it off.

He'd been wanting to try using temperature manipulation offensively since the beginning of the fight, but he knew that it was still unstable here in the Undercrust. The moment he materialized any freezing iron, the ambient heat would cause it to weaken or even explode. Not particularly useful for caging a worm--and having endured one of those explosions himself, he was pretty sure they wouldn't have enough force behind them to actually damage this monster.

It might be enough to annoy it, though. And he wanted to see if he could make the explosions any more powerful now, too.

He materialized a frozen boulder of iron, as big as the worm itself, and let it drop on the beast's head.

It didn't do much. It certainly didn't explode. It must've had too much mass for the heat to compromise its structure that quickly. The worm didn't seem particularly bothered by it, either, and just oozed out from below it and continued on its merry way, gobbling up debris.

Dammit. He annihilated the boulder.

Maybe this wouldn't even work. He was going to have to figure out the optimal mass for these particular atmospheric conditions, and how many guesses would that require?

Or maybe...? Maybe he could keep the mass the same and just keep decreasing the temperature?

Hmm.

Surely, the lower the temperature of his iron, the more intensely the heat of the Undercrust would clash with it.

Worth a shot, he supposed. He had no idea how low he could push the temperature now. Hell, he didn't even know that before the emergence. He hadn't had the occasion or the notion to find the exact limitations of his ability to manipulate temperature.

But now was as good a time as any to find out.

Temperature manipulation was a funny thing. He'd come to realize that it wasn't like other techniques. He couldn't achieve it by just visualizing it in his mind the way he did when he was creating shapes or adding iron to things. With temperature, it was more like a command, as if he were giving his iron an order that it had no choice but to follow.

Velocity states were similar in that regard, but still not quite the same. With velocity, spatial awareness was as equally important as the command was, but with temperature, it was more... emotional.

Yeah. That was exactly what it was, Hector was beginning to realize.

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.

Hector went to work while he could, boxing up every bit of isolated sludge that he could sense. It was everywhere, but so was his spatial awareness, and iron clapped together in rapid succession. He pulled them all toward him. More for the collection. So much more. It was almost complete now.

He hit the ground floor just after his arm did.

'You alright?' he asked.

'Yeah,' said Garovel, though he sounded a little shaken and followed it up with a sigh.

Only a few puddles of sludge were left after all that, and Hector could sense exactly where they were while he retrieved his shield and reaper. His arm was still regrowing, so Hector took his time but never stopped keeping track of his opponent, even in its weakened state.

Hector felt like Garovel could use some encouragement. Without a doubt, that had been one of their closest brushes with death, just now. 'Ah... you were right about the worm absorbing the power of the Moon's Wrath.'

'Mm. Looks like you didn't need that mirror, though.'

Hector eyed the iron-encased mirror as it orbited past his field of view. 'It'll make a good souvenir. Or maybe we can sell it. It looked expensive.'

'Would you mind just finishing the fight, already? You're making me nervous.'

His arm still had a bit more to go, but maybe he didn't need it.

The last bit of sludge had managed to reaccumulate into a cow-sized lump, and it was hiding behind a pile of debris on the other side of the room.

That was too big to add to his collection, so he'd have to break it up.

With a wave of his hand, Hector dropped a cluster of deeply frozen javelins on it. They exploded and blew the worm to pieces.

He boxed the final remnants up and started gathering them. Little iron boxes, sliding across the uneven ground toward him, pushing themselves along a track in the same way that he had made his iron do many times before.

And he completed his worm collection.

He exhaled a ragged breath. Dozens upon dozens of iron boxes floated around him in synchronous orbit, crowding up the space around him with so much mass that it completely blocked his normal vision, at times.

And they were all clear to him, in his mind. There were seventy-two of them there, including the larger, hotel-like one that he'd made earlier. And a couple discs, as well, which he now decided to dematerialize.

'Well done, my friend.'

Relieved as he felt, Hector was also a little confused now. Was the fight over? He was pretty sure he'd won. The worm couldn't break free of its many tiny cages, even if it wasn't technically dead.

'Uh... so now what, Garovel?'

'Good question. I figured Malast would've teleported us by now.'

'Hmm.'

'Do you think you can destroy the little chunks of the worm, one at a time?'

'Uh... yeah, probably.'

'Try that, then. It might take a while, but you'll work your way up to destroying ninety percent of its body mass eventually, right?'

'Alright.' He set to work.