Chương 151: Chapter 227: Norworm

William Oh once turned over a rock and exposed a worm that would burrow through the gods themselves. Jasan Salazar"Tassos has been wounded, master." Aira murmured, her eyes fixed on the crystal ground beneath her feet.

"What? Wounded?" Fabron asked.

"The others have died multiple times and you never mentioned a thing. What's the difference?"

"They did not die, their physical forms were scattered. Tassos' essence has been truly damaged by an attack. Please dismiss him while he can still recover." Fabron looked down at the ornate signet ring on his hand, noting that the color of the flames around one of the seven skulls, had, for lack of a better word, corroded slightly. Waste not, Fabron thought, dismissing the wealth-obsessed fae.

The drain from having six of the seven fae manifested dwindled slightly as Tassos returned to the other side, but the other five were still burning through his life force at an outrageous pace. Curious, he inspected the flesh of his arm, noting where the fat of an aging Climber who no longer had the will to Climb was receding, revealing the cords of powerful muscle below, seemingly forged by a lifetime of hard labor.

"Did we get what we wanted?" he asked.

"Yes, master." She whispered. He'd mostly asked as a formality. He could feel Jakome and Madelhari return, and he knew they wouldn't dare return empty-handed. William Oh On the opposite side of the Stronghold, Will was dealing with the fallout. The burning fae had screamed, clutching his face for a tense moment before fading to nothing.

"Off!" Amanda said, reflexively shoving Will away from her. That's fair. Will thought. It stung a little to be hated, but he knew what was going on. Her mind had a scar on it: The most important person in her life being slain right in front of her by William Oh. It didn't matter that person was an evil mind-controlling bastard, because changing how you feel about something is tricky, even with solid evidence, time, and rationalization.

The fact that she didn't launch a Conflagration at Will's face was a testament to her progress. Amanda Akul – Is it Amanda Akul, or Amanda Wyrd, Or maybe Wyrd-Akul? Will mused as she arrested her fall with a shield blooming outwards into a pair of wings, her Build much like her nephew, father and uncle.

"Bravely done, Mr. Oh. Bravely done." Zodiac said as he approached, carried by a living platform of telekinetic power.

"Still a little pissed you didn't do as I asked and stay in your room, but I appreciate the quick resolution." Can all Lords fly? Will wondered. Or just the cool ones, like me?

"You're welcome," Will muttered, glancing out in the direction that the fae had been carrying Amanda. Phantom Eye. 166 Charges remaining. Will shot a Phantom Eye in the same direction at about half-speed, hoping to spot Fabron, if he was simple enough to drag Amanda straight towards him. Since the Phantom Eye could move faster than sound, there was a good chance it would catch up and spot him, if he was there.

Will took the tomahawk and started chipping away the burned hand, which was more charcoal than hand at this point. When he realized that there was no feeling at all, Will grimaced and began removing the whole thing. Every freaking time. What is this, five times now? Will thought, immersed in his work until he glanced up and spotted Amanda and Zodiac staring at him.

"It'll grow back." Will said.

"Right. It's just, you seem awfully casual about it." Zodiac said.

"Wouldn't be the first time." Will said, cutting back until it bled then drinking a Supreme Health Potion Sourdough 165 Charges Remaining. The potion turned into a dark red nodule only to puff back out into a Supreme Healing Potion as Sourdough restored the entire thing in an instant, thanks to the Ring of Explosive Doughmaking. The wound sealed itself, and any bits of charcoal remaining flaked off like a scab.

Why is it that my hand grows back even when the hand itself doesn't have the benefits of my Class applied to it. Is it because it's growing back from a stump that does have them, or is it something else? It was a question that Will had pondered many times and was no closer to an answer. Mostly because he wasn't quite far gone enough to cut off his hand as an experiment.... What would happen if I sacrifice my right hand to Phantom hand?

"We've got to find that Fabron lickspittle and twist his head off." Zodiac said, turning his attention to the Stronghold below him.

"I don't think he's in the Stronghold," Will said, slipping his tomahawk back into his belt loop.

"Oh?"

"Let's say I've got… really good Abilities for finding people and things, and I don't see him anywhere." Will said as he consulted his map.

"But just based on logic, I don't think you're going to find him. If it were me and I had control over powerful disposable minions like the one that kidnapped Amanda, I would hang out next to a Key site so I could clear it and leave immediately if things went poorly. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"He can make his own Doors." Zodiac pointed out.

"But he's probably is on cooldown I bet he made a Door to get here on time," Will thought aloud.

"Key sites don't have a hard time limit for personal use. I'll bet he's thinking getting Acclimation sickness is better than catching a case of Zodiac to the face." Will created a physical map of the surroundings and laid it out in front of them.

"Can you point out which Key Sites are primed for transport?" Will asked.

"Make the port north." Zodiac said, looking over the map with Will.

"Last I saw my husband and uncle they were fighting for their lives, so if you don't mind-." A blast of air ruffled their hair as Amanda Wyrd's shield-wings propelled her back towards the palace. The two Lords watched Amanda fly off, glanced at each other and shared a shrug before returning to the map. Will oriented the pointy tip where the Stronghold's port was as 'North' on his map.

"Make the scale ten miles to one inch." Zodiac said, pulling out a dotted length of twine.

"Hold this string here, what is it…a Tuesday?" Zodiac muttered, measuring out up and to the southwest.

"There's one here, and one here that are ready to go." Zodiac said, gesturing to two empty spots far outside the range of Will's Map. Phantom Eye. 163 Charges Remaining. Two more Phantom Eyes shot off in those directions. From Zodiac's flickering gaze, the old man could feel them, but he couldn't necessarily see the goat-like eyeballs the size of a man's fist speeding off into the distance.

"Now, I'll confirm that this upstart truly fled." Zodiac said, his telekinetic ropes writhing around them like the limbs of some enormous abberation. On the telekinetic ropes, little nodules arose, whose Miasmatic structures were similar in many ways to Phantom Eye. Sensors, most likely. Not wanting to miss an opportunity, Will added a reproduction in his Legend so he could compare the two later.

The ropes of sensor-studded telekinetic force unfurled and entwined until it formed a net capable of engulfing the entire stronghold. And then it did so. Zodiac gently laid his sensor-studded net of telekinetic force across the entire Stronghold, as softly as a feather landing. People easily walked through the delicate strands, scattering them with nearly no resistance.

Only the most perceptive Climbers realized something around them had changed, but without Will's eyes, they couldn't actually see what Zodiac was doing.

"Balls." Zodiac muttered, his leathery face paling.

"Balls?"

"There's two people missing their heads, tossed aside in alleyways."" Two?"

"You say that like you already knew about one." Zodiac said, glancing at Will.

"Yeah I saw one," Will said.

"Why didn't you say anything!?" Zodiac demanded.

"Because I don't know what the significance is?" Will said with a shrug.

"I suspected foul play, but a lot of people can blow each other's heads off. What is the significance, anyway?"

"And show me on the map where they are." Will added, expanding the stronghold.

"There are certain…things in the higher Floors that can enter through the nose and take up residence in the brain stem, controlling a Climber's body like a puppet. When they change bodies, they violently explode out of the skull and leave behind corpses that look just like this." As he spoke, Zodiac marked two spots on the map.

"One exploded head is a coincidence, two is alarming, and if we find a third, it's a problem." One of places that Zodiac indicated a corpse was in an alley beside the bar that Kyle and company had tried to convince Fabron to attack Will only the night before. Shit. Will swooped down, cutting through the air and landing in the alleyway where the corpse of a headless man in dockworker gear had been dragged underneath a bit of trash.

"Only dead about a day. A bit less." Zodiac mused as he arrived beside Will, squatting down beside the corpse.

"Hasn't quite started bloating yet." Note to self. Knowing the age of a corpse is a good skill to have.

"Anaisa's cunt hairs." Zodiac muttered, seemingly dropping all the decorum that he'd observed over the last three days.

"What?" Will asked, squatting down beside the corpse.

"You see that?" Zodiac asked, his telekinetic strands turning the exploded neck towards them.

"See what?" Will asked scanning the mass of flesh.

"Hold on. Hard to see if you don't know what you're looking for." Zodiac's telekinesis formed a blade and sliced off about a quarter inch of the bloody stump, leaving a smooth surface rather than the ragged mess it had been.

"See it now?"

"See what?" Zodiac leaned forward and grabbed the stump of a neck, twisting the flesh a bit with his thumb. The pale flesh in the very center of the spine gave a soft pop as a small hole in it revealed itself, seemingly receding deeper into the neck, travelling down the spine.

"I'd like to point out that I haven't seen enough headless corpses to know if that's normal or not." Will said, his stomach turning a little.

"It's not normal. There's not supposed to be a hole going down the length of a man's spine. That was dug out by a Norworm. Bad news."

"I've got more bad news. Fabron was in that tavern last night." Will said, pointing at the building across the street. Zodiac turned and looked at Will with wide eyes.

"…And he was behaving differently this morning." Will added with a wince.

"Are you telling me that a body-puppeting parasite made off with a Lord's body and his Set!?" Will recalled what 'Fabron' had said to him at the wedding. I wasn't in the right mind last night, and I wanted to thank you personally, William Oh. I wouldn't be here without you, and I can't properly emphasize how grateful I am for that.

"You stir things up. And a little guy like me can rise pretty high if he's quick on his feet and ready to seize opportunities." Will stiffened as his Phantom eye arrived at the Key Site, only to find the monsters there burnt to ash. Among the ashes of the monsters was a single headless corpse wearing Fabron's ostentatious clothes. The crown, amulet, rings, scepter and dagger were missing.

"Yeah…I guess I'm saying that. Also, I just found Fabron's headless corpse." Will said.

"What, where!?" Zodiac demanded.

"At the Key site."

"Damnit."

"And his Set is missing."

"DAMNIT! Now we have no idea who it is."

"I think it was trying to grab Amanda because…" Will paused. Amanda was being carried in the complete opposite direction of the Key Site. She was a distraction, chosen because a large fraction of the Lords in attendance would move to prioritize her safety (Zodiac, Will, Mark, and Luis). Did he go after Luis? But it sounded like Mark and Luis were killing them as fast as they could reform, not getting snatched. To confirm, Will checked his mental map and spotted Luis Akul's tag, still in the Palace.

His tag was standing beside Amandas and Mark's tag, actually, meaning they had rejoined forces and none of them had been taken. But… who then? Why distract the entire Wyrd/Akul gathering just to kidnap some other rando? Wouldn't it have been easier to kidnap someone quietly where they wouldn't notice? I don't think there were even any other Lords in attendance who had compatibility with fire magic.

Will scrolled through all the tags he'd placed over the last few days, confirming the position of Bakton and all the other young Lords and guests… Oh, shit, Will thought, his skin going cold, scanning through the list again and again, praying to find the name on the map somewhere. … Godsdamnit.

"I just scanned the entire Stronghold, and there's a couple people unaccounted for." Zodiac said. Don't say it.

"A random dockworker who probably got murdered the regular way… and Void, Mark Wyrd's Vassal. I don't see him anywhere." But why? Why abandon a body with Lord Status for a Vassal? He doesn't even have fire- Will paused as a thought occurred to him. … The Burning Court all count as undead, don't they? Will had hypothesized that this thing was looking for a Build that suited the set, and this seemed to hold true. He had just assumed it was entirely fire-based.

On a Necromancer Build with passive Abilities specifically to bolster them, the undead fae who could already give a Lord a hard time… might be damn near unstoppable. Shit… nobody noticed he was missing until it was too late because everyone hates him. Well, on the bright side, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, and now I have an excellent excuse to kill him. Nice.

"This is bad." Zodiac muttered, clutching his temples.

"I get the sense that it's bad, but how, exactly?" Will asked.

"Because these things reproduce." Zodiac said.

"Typically they refrain from spawning more of themselves, because they know if they're discovered, a thorough cleansing is performed." Will connected the dots.

"But…since this thing already gave itself away by hopping bodies so often, it's got no reason to stay hidden, and with the Set, he's got Lord-level strength to acquire tons of Climbers to lay eggs in, who in turn must be found and killed?"

"Precisely."

"…That is bad," Will said.