"Alexandria!!"
Despite the injuries he suffered, Kingsley shouted at the top of his lungs in horror upon seeing his little sister's body thrown into the air.
Everyone looked up and froze in shock, helpless. Even Blaze, who was quick to react in these kinds of situations, stood petrified, nothing useful coming to mind to save the expedition's deputy commander.
Clank!
Terrified, Alexandria turned her body to try to see what had swept her into the air. But she didn't even have the time to react before the massive Earth Wyrm's deadly mandibles contracted, and a gruesome crunch could be heard as her body was split into two.
Fresh, red blood showered down in the air like rain, splattering on the stunned humans below.
Alexandria's futile screams for her brother's help were muffled as her body fell from the mandibles into the dragon's mouth, and there, her shouts faded away as she gave up, realizing that her fate was already sealed the moment she was caught. No dragon-slayer could save her now, and she knew it herself.
And in her last moments, Alexandria thought, the best thing she had ever done, was swapping places with Blaze to protect her older brother. She thought that without her brother, she could do nothing. But little did she know that she made him proud disobeying his orders and coming back with Colleen and Kaiser to save him, with courage. It was the first and last…
Below, Kingsley collapsed onto the ground, and his body went numb as if he were just struck by a bolt of lightning. No words came out of his open mouth, his wide, blank eyes seemingly lost in another world.
He thought…he finally got to watch his little sister grow to become an adult, making decisions herself without the need for his lecturing. He had held an inexplicable feeling in his chest, thinking that he finally let her go on her own path and make their parents proud. But it seemed that feeling didn't last very long…
Should he just…give up?
"!!!!?"
The sound of bones and flesh crunching gorily jolted the dragon-slayers back to their senses, eyes growing wide. One lurched and clamped a hand over their mouth nauseously, feeling the urge to throw up as others began screaming their heads off until the Earth Wyrm silenced them with a glare, not daring to move an inch. They didn't want to become the next to be eaten.
"Oh…shit," Blaze whispered.
Blaze knew something was amiss since earlier, but she didn't have the time earlier to properly comprehend her thoughts watching Alexandria get…eaten before her.
But this Earth Wyrm had a body that was at least ten times thicker and stronger than the ones before, and seeing its unique, crown-like faceplate, she finally realized it. It was only because of their numbers jumping at them that made them all fail to notice the obvious power disparity.
"We're…inside a nest…," Blaze wittingly said, dread slowly crawling into her voice. She didn't break eye contact with the beast as she slowly continued. "Those Earth Wyrms we fought so far inside the dungeon were significantly weaker because they were newly hatched dragons. And this vile creature…is the mother…"
As soon as Blaze spoke, everyone turned towards her in shock, realizing that she was right. It was a fact none of them could contend with. Were these the wits of a dragon-slayer?
But still, couldn't there be something good? Why was it bad news after bad news after more?
Their instincts were telling them to quickly run, to escape, to survive and cherish their lives that had yet to complete… But they could only swallow their dry saliva, frozen stiff, waiting for a miracle to happen as the mother dragon let out an ear-splitting roar, shaking the grounds.
They instinctively shielded their faces from the violent gust and debris, their partly covered vision preventing them from seeing the underdeveloped Earth Wyrms drive up through the ground all around them, biting off the heads and shredding the bodies of their oblivious victims.
Colleen was the first to move. "Come on, Blaze, take in charge like you always do!" she urged. "Kingsley is no good. Think of a plan before we all die here!"
However, her friend remained stuck in her place, not moving an inch despite the bloody chaos happening around them. Colleen couldn't believe it. It was the first time she saw Blaze freeze like that.
Blaze fell to the ground as the dizziness from the sickening odor took the best of her. But above it all… above it all… a familiar scent reached her nose from faraway, a scent that she had grown to recognize after all these years. "This smell..."
"We're going to die. We're going to die. We're going to die," Kaiser endlessly chanted beside Colleen, his nervousness only infuriating her even more.
Without Blaze, they couldn't think of a way to escape their predicament, and so Colleen shifted her gaze to the next best thing she knew and proceeded to smack the idiotic f*cker standing to her left across the back of his head. "Stop saying that and use your head to think of something instead, asshole!"
But he was sure they were about to meet their end, giving the coward of a dragon-slayer the "last moments courage" to argue back. "What do you want me to say?" Kaiser snapped back. "Do you think I didn't think of that before you told me to? There's no way we can survive this, even with Blaze. We're finished, do you hear me?"
Colleen blinked at him in surprise, speechless. She didn't expect Kaiser to talk back to her, especially in a moment like this. 'This crazy bastard really-'
"Uhmm...anyway, before we die," Kaiser suddenly started again, cutting off her thoughts. This time, he was back to his cowardly self. He scratched the back of his head, hesitant to ask, but he did it anyway. "C- Can you let me…touch your breast?"
Colleen choked on her saliva upon hearing such shameless words for the first time, her face reddening with embarrassment. "A- are you serious?! You're crazier than I thought! What situation are we in right now? I can't believe you! What woman in their right mind would just allow you to touch her breast-"
"Well!" Kaiser interrupted her again. "Uh…well, you are the reason I'm going to die today. If you'd only allowed me to leave back there, I wouldn't meet my end, and…this is embarrassing but I'm already past twenty… I don't want to die a complete virgin-"
"OKAY! OKAY!" Colleen shouted, flustered, her entire face and neck burning red. Kaiser wasn't wrong, and she did feel a bit guilty. Plus, she couldn't stand that pitiful tone of his as he stated his last wishes. Either way, she must be out of her mind to consent to this but…
In the midst of the chaos, Colleen awkwardly pressed the tips of her fingers together, and reluctantly, she said, "Okay, but just for a minute… any longer and I will chop off your balls."