Tiny Horror

The shriek of the wounded beast echoed down the basalt veins, a discordant ringing that made Arvid’s vision swim. He dragged himself toward Einar, his left leg a dead weight of agony. The air here was no longer humid; it was scorched, the scent of the forge replaced by the smell of a dying fire.

"Don't... stop," Einar wheezed. His skin was the color of a winter sky, translucent and pale.

Arvid looked toward the far end of the chamber. The Lindworm retreated to a jagged ridge overlooking a pool of stone-blood: a sluggish, dying vein of lava that glowed with a sickly, dim orange. The creature was no longer lashing out. It was huddling. It draped its shimmering bulk over the cooling stone, its crystalline ridges clicking as they contracted in the fading heat. It was a mournful sight, a predator trying to hold onto the last warmth of a dying world.

"It’s not fighting. It’s freezing."

"The inner fire is out," Einar said, his voice a dry rasp. "Look at the crust on the pool. The mountain's heart has stopped beating. That is why it went to our shores, Arvid. It wasn't seeking meat for its belly. It was seeking the heat of our hearths to keep that egg from turning to stone. Our lives were just fuel for its fire."

A strange, hollow silence settled over the ossuary. Arvid thought of the villages he saw: the roofs peeled back not by a hungry animal, but by a creature desperately trying to gather burning embers and dry timber to bring back to this cold tomb.

"It's the last one," Arvid whispered, looking at the calcified egg sitting amidst the bones of his brothers.

"And it is a bone that will break the world if it hatches," Einar countered. He grabbed Arvid’s tunic, pulling him close. His eyes were wide, burning with a final, desperate clarity. "The creature is too strong for your blade, boy. The hide is too thick, and your strength is spent. But the mountain... the mountain is already unmade. It is a structure waiting for the final collapse."

"The lock-stone," Einar whispered. "That pillar holds back the heavy tide of the ocean overhead. The rock is cold now, cracked and waiting. One clean bite of the axe in the right seam will bring the roof down. We will make our end here, Arvid."

"You bid me carve our grave-mound."

"I bid you be the hammer," Einar said, a grim ghost of a smile touching his blood-slick lips. "The beast shields its nest. It will not flee from the egg. If the mountain crashes, its blood-line dies. Our people will wake to warm hearths because we stood as the stone that would not yield."

The tale continues...