He ran, every step agony, blood painting his trail. The wurm followed, carving through pillars of bone, its blades cleaving entire ribs in a single sweep. Shards rained like hail. When he reached the Gardens it stirred as if sensing a great predator trespassing on its territory. Teeth began to rise from the soil, gnashing hungrily. Artorius sprinted straight into them. The wurm lunged after him, blind to the trap. At the last instant, he dove aside, throwing himself behind a rib-spire.

The wurm plowed headfirst into the garden. The ground erupted. Hundreds of teeth snapped shut in unison. The wurm shrieked not with its vocal cord, but in bone, a grinding scream as its body was caught and shredded. Its scythe-limbs slashed, tearing dozens free, but every movement drove it deeper into the maw.

Then the situation changed on its head as the bone wurm’s hollow sockets flared bright with ghost-light. The air thickened, trembling. Artorius felt it before he saw it, an awful pressure, a storm gathering around death itself. 

The wyrm reared back, its scythes outstretched. The glow in its sockets pulsed faster, brighter, until every bone in the Garden hummed with resonance. Then it unleashed hell.

The air exploded in shrieking arcs. Blades of bone, dozens upon dozens, spun from its limbs in a storm of cutting wind and motion. Each swing threw fragments like shrapnel. The Garden convulsed under the assault. Ribs shattered. Pillars cracked. The gnashing mouths wailed as their teeth were torn from their sockets and hurled skyward.

A storm of sharpened femur and shattered jawbones scoured the clearing, ripping flesh and stone alike. Artorius ducked behind his spire, arms over his head, feeling the storm flay the stone from the pillar. His cover held but barely. The Garden was dying, carved apart by the wyrm’s frenzy.

Then the ground shook. A sound like a bell tolling in the deep long, hollow, and furious. From beneath the earth, something moved. The teeth stopped. Then it opened.

A great draconic monster rose from below, tearing through the corpse-field like an avalanche of rot. Artorius system flashed with a single line across his sight: [Underground Rot Wurm — Level 9]

Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/74239093853418932/

The rotting wurm was older and massive, its flesh sagging like mud, its ribs exposed and dripping pitch-black ichor that steamed on contact with air. Worms and larvae squirmed through its hollow sockets. What passed for its jaw was a mass of gnashing, half-formed skulls that chattered as one.

Artorius stumbled backward into the shadows, barely breathing. Two ancient terrors faced one another now, the bone predator and the carrion ambusher that had waited here for who knew how long to feed.

The Reaper Bone Wurm struck first. Its scythes lashed in a blur, carving into the Underground Rot Wurm’s chest. Each blow shattered bone and sent showers of decay spraying outward. The rotting wurm responded by slamming its bulk down, its massive body crushing entire rib-spires to dust. Its jaws clamped around the Reaper’s tail and ripped.

Bone shards and rotten sinew filled the air. The Reaper screeched and retaliated, its scythes igniting again, hurling arcs of bone-blades that tore chunks of rotting flesh from its foe. The rotting wurm reared back and vomited a flood of corpse-bile, sizzling acid that melted through the Garden floor.

They collided again and again, two horrors locked in death, tearing each other apart. Scythe met claw. Bone met rot. Each strike sent shockwaves through the Garden. The Reaper’s blades carved trenches through decayed flesh; the rotting wurm’s jaws crushed plates of fossil armor and its acidic spit corrading bone. The ground quaked under their struggle.

Artorius could only crawl away, shielding his face from flying shards of bone and acid rain. The air reeked of sulfur and death. Still though he had a plan in mind as he made it to a pillar overlooking the fighting and climbed the column, the fight shaking his perch. The air below was a storm of dust and blood, flashes of marrow-light bursting in the dark. He waited, silent, heart hammering, watching two giants of death tear each other apart.

At last, the storm began to fade. The Reaper’s movements slowed, its left scythe shattered, its tail half-gone and its skull half-caved in. The rotting wurm sagged, its flesh totally rendered in parts and gone, but it had come out on top. 

The rotting wurm reared, victory in its bellow, preparing to drive its mass down for the killing blow. That was when Artorius moved. He climbed, breathless and shaking, higher up the pillar until he was at the summit where the wind thinned. Then he leapt.

He fell through dust and ruin, spear gripped in both hands, Heroic Blow blazing like a falling star. The rotting wurm never saw him coming as he shot towards it like a falling star.

The spear struck behind its head, where the rotted flash thinned. The impact tore through its spine in a burst of golden light. The creature convulsed once then collapsed onto the ground, dead.

Its vast carcass crashed into the Garden, shaking the world. Splintered ribs rained down. The shockwave threw dust high into the gloom. Artorius landed hard beside the ruin, half-buried under falling shards. He dragged himself upright, trembling, vision swimming. Before him lay the Reaper Bone Wurm, the monster that had hunted him, that had carved through the forest like a god of death.

Now it was broken before him, the situation reversed as he had become the hunter and it the prey. One scythe was gone, its long body half-severed and it coiled in around itself in protection and what he knew was fear.

Artorius limped closer, spear dragging in the ash. The ghost-light still burned faintly in the wyrm’s hollow eyes, flickering like dying embers. He raised his weapon. His voice cracked but carried, raw and commanding. “Surrender.”

For a heartbeat, the light inside the Reaper’s skull pulsed once then dimmed, almost as if obeying. Artorius thrust the spear forward, Heroic Blow igniting once more. The tip punched through bone, through the dying flame, pinning it to the ground.

The Reaper shuddered once, then went still. Silence fell over the Bone Gardens. The System whispered: [You have slain: Underground Rot Wurm — Level 9]

[You have slain: Reaper Bone Wurm — Level 7]

Congratulations! You have leveled up.

Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] has reached level 2!

Congratulations! You have leveled up.

Archetype: [Leader] has reached level 2 – Stat points allocated, +1 Int, +1 Will, +1 Char!

Looking at the messages, he was glad to see double levels which really had to show how tough these two foes were. Picking over the corpse of the two great slain enemies, Artorius found there really wasn’t anything to take except some bone and rotting flesh. 

Pressing forwards, Artorius knew he couldn’t stop here even if he had a great victory as there were even greater dangers here and might come looking into what all this ruckus was. 

Traveling through the strange and alien landscape, at long last, the forest broke. He then came upon a canyon yawning wide, its walls jagged, its floor buried beneath the skeletons of uncountable hatchlings, drakes, wurms. Bones piled upon bones in grotesque heaps, a sea of white and rusted ash, their shapes twisted in death. The wind blew through the place ringing against the ancient bones causing strange, eerie noises like a cathedral of despair. 

He walked among them, every step echoing, every sound answered by the wind’s mockery. More than once he thought he heard words in the moaning chorus, half-formed syllables in a dead tongue. At the canyon’s heart lay something stranger still.

The bones curved inward, not at random but as though dragged into a single shape: a throne, vast and broken, carved from the remains of countless dead. And behind it, carved into the mountain itself, a doorway opened — scales fused into its stone, faint runes glowing with ember-light. 

The air grew heavy, pressing against his lungs. His pulse slowed, each beat louder than the wind. This was no accident or battlefield. This was a tomb. He hesitated then he stepped inside, hoping to find something to give him answers. 

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A/N: The Dragon Lancer is inspired by Hollow Knight. I have been playing too much silksong recently. 

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Chapter 5 Recap!

Leveled up Class: Storybook Squire to Lvl. 1!

+1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Will, +1 Char, +1 Luc!

Leveled up Race: Royal-Blood DragonMen to Lvl. 2!

Leveled up Leader Archetype to Lvl. 2!

+1 Int, +1 Will, +1 Char!

Found Lancer (Tier 0) Class Token!

Found Extendable Lance Uncommon Magical Item!