The stone shook with heavy impacts. Each one sent chips of ice raining from the cave ceiling and made the floor jump under me.

  The worms sent garbled warnings through my body. I could make out shapes, feel the movement, and the danger approaching. The signals came in fragments. They were too depleted to give me anything clear.

  But I understood enough.

  Something massive pushed through the opening. A scaled head, half its face torn apart and bleeding. Black blood crusted thick around the wounds. Steam rose from torn flesh that was still knitting itself back together.

  It saw us. Broken. Helpless. Scattered across the floor like discarded toys.

  The dragon's remaining eye fixed on me first. Lingered for a moment. Then shifted to Zo's unconscious form slumped against the wall. Then to Sadie collapsed in a pool of her own blood near the back of the cave.

  The troll stepped between the dragon and the wounded.

  Its arm had been torn off during the fall. Cracks spread across its torso and legs like spiderwebs in ice. Chunks of muscle hung loose from its shoulders where the dragon had bitten earlier.

  But it drove its remaining fist straight into the dragon's snout. The blow sounded like a boulder hitting a stone, it rocked the dragon’s head back.

  The dragon lunged forward snapping its mouth towards the troll. Its massive teeth sank deep into the troll's torso, shredding the first covered muscles… The dragon whipped its head sideways and slammed the troll with enough force to leave a crater in the wall.

  Ice shattered. The wall cracked in a dozen places. The sound echoed through the cave like thunder.

  The troll kept fighting, driving its remaining fist into the dragon's torn neck wound. Black blood sprayed across the cave floor in thick arcs. The dragon screamed out in fury and bit down harder. I heard something inside the troll break. A deep crunch that made my stomach turn.

  The dragon thrashed, trying to tear the troll to shreds. The troll's body came apart in chunks. Strips of muscle, organs and bone fragments fell to the floor with wet thuds.

  I forced my body to move.

  One elbow. Then my knees. Blood spilled from my mouth onto the stone floor. The mental connection to the troll was still there… but it was weak and fragile.

  I sent through the bond.

  The troll acknowledgment. A wave of understanding that came back through the connection.

  It tore free from the dragon's grip, leaving chunks of frozen flesh that dangling from the creature's jaws. Then it drove its fist into the half-healed wound on the dragon's neck. Again and Again it continued to slam its mangled fist into the gash.

  Black blood spilled freely now in thick streams that pooled on the cave floor and steamed in the cold air. The dragon's scream shook the cave, making the ceiling groan. It whipped its head down and caught the troll in its mouth again.

  The troll kept hitting the wound.

  Each strike rained more of the black blood down onto the floor. The dragon's movements became frantic and wild.

  I saw Zo begin to move, her Origin had been storing energy while she slept. The dragon's fire. The impacts from the fall. The freezing cold that saturated everything. All of it, absorbed and ready.

  She tried to move. One arm dragged forward. Then the other. Each movement left a smear of blood and burnt skin on the stone.

  "Leg," I managed. My voice came out as a rasp. "Dragon's... leg."

  Zo dragged herself towards the dragon. It was still tearing into the troll, trying to silence the creature that kept reopening its neck wound. The troll's fist rose and fell. Rose and fell. Mechanical. Relentless.

  Each movement left more blood. Burns split wider as she crawled. But she didn't stop. She reached the dragon's leg. She placed both hands on the scaled limb, her palms flat against cold scales. And released

  The stored kinetic force exploded outward. The dragon's leg broke at the joint. Bone and scale blew apart in a spray of black blood and shattered scales. The sound was like a tree snapping in a storm.

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  The dragon collapsed. The entire cave shook from the impact. Dust and ice fell from the ceiling. The floor cracked beneath the dragon's weight.

  Zo collapsed too. Whatever energy she'd stored was gone. She lay motionless on the stone, her chest barely moving. Blood soaking the ground beneath her from the burns that had torn open during her crawl.

  The dragon thrashed. Its ruined leg dragged uselessly behind it. It tried to right itself but the missing limb threw off its balance. It fell.

  The worms formed a crude spear along my right arm. It wasn’t as elegant as my sword. But it would work. I reached the dragon's head.

  It snapped at me, blind with pain and rage… but I drove the spear into its remaining eye. The dragon shook. Its head whipped back and forth, trying to throw me off. Blood sprayed from its ruined eye socket. The worms burrowed deeper, tearing through it.

  Then a wave of dragon fire filled the cave.

  The worms absorbed most of the heat, they began pulling it into themselves like they'd done with the wyrm's cold… but some of it got through. My skin blistered and bubbled. The smell of charred flesh filled my nose.

  Steam filled the cave. Thick. Choking. The temperature grew by a large degree, then dropped as the freezing wind from outside mixed with the superheated air.

  But the dragon kept thrashing, it was blind and crippled now. Missing a leg and both eyes. Its jaws snapped out. Finding my leg the pressure was immense. Crushing. I felt my bones start to crack.

  I screamed, and the dragon shook me like a wolf with a rabbit. It slammed me into the floor hard. My vision went white as light flared within the cave.

  A spear of pure white, condensed light had punched through the dragon's throat. Then another. And another.

  Sadie was propped against the far wall. Blood pooling beneath her from the dragon's bite. One hand extended. Shaking. Her eyes were glassy but focused. More spears materialized.

  Each one punched through scale and flesh, pinning the dragon's head to the cave floor. The dragon tried to move but the spears held it in place.

  Sadie's hand dropped… her eyes started to close. She had nothing left after this, she had lost too much blood.

  I dragged myself toward the pinned dragon. The worms poured out of me.

  Through my wounds. Through my mouth. Through the torn flesh where the dragon's teeth had crushed my leg. A flood of their bone-white bodies spilling across the stone and scale.

  They found the dragon's wounds. The torn neck. The ruined eye sockets. The shattered leg where Zo had blown it apart.

  And began to feed. Trying to end it. To make sure it stayed dead. To finish what we'd started.

  They drained whatever kept the dragon alive. Feeding on its life-force from its flesh, its blood, its bones. Consumed it in thick, desperate gulps that I could feel through the connection. Each pull sent a jolt through my body.

  The dragon whipped once more. Catching me across the back. The impact drove the air from my lungs. And sent me sprawling across its corpse. But the worms went deeper.

  They found the dragon's core. The concentrated mass of essence that powered its regeneration, its fire, its ability to keep moving even with fatal wounds. A knot of power buried deep in its chest. And it from the inside.

  The dragon's struggles slowed. Its massive body shuddered. Then stopped.

  The massive body went still. Steam stopped rising from its wounds. The blood stopped flowing congealed in pools around the torn flesh.

  It was actually dead this time.

  The worms were bloated. Swollen with consumed essence like ticks after feeding. They moved sluggishly as they pulled back into my body, settling under my skin in heavy coils that made my flesh swell and bloat.

  I collapsed on the dragon's corpse. I couldn't move. My chest felt compressed and broken. Like the dragon's weight was crushing me even though I was lying on top of it. Each breath was shallow. Painful. Wet-sounding.

  The cave went quiet. No more thrashing. No more screams. No more fire. Just the wind howling outside.

  I turned my head. Only movement I could manage.

  Zo was slumped against rock. Breathing shallow but alive. I could see her chest rising and falling, just barely. She had burns everywhere. Raw, weeping, and angry red against her pale skin. The dragon's fire had scorched her from shoulder to hip. She'd be in agony when she woke up. If she woke up. Her Origin had kept her alive but it couldn't stop the pain.

  Sadie was worse… much worse.

  The blood pooling beneath her had spread far. It was spreading in a slow circle that grew wider with each passing second. Too much blood. Too fast. Her chest barely moved. Her skin had gone grey.

  The dragon's bite wounds were still open. Dark, wet and deep. I could see exposed bones. She was dying…

  I felt movement under my skin.

  Mabel slithered out from my collar. Her body clicked soft and slow as she coiled near my face. She moved in that familiar undulating pattern… graceful even now, even after everything. Like she was performing for an audience that didn't exist.

  Her voice came out loud. But soft as a whisper. "I won't let you die here."

  I tried to respond. I tried to tell her I wasn't the one dying. My throat wouldn't work. Nothing came out. Just a wet rasp.

  Mabel moved away from me, across the stone floor. Her body left a faint trail in the blood and dust, a white line through the sea of red. Toward Sadie.

  Mabel reached Sadie. She climbed onto her chest. Her white body stood out against the blood-soaked fabric of Sadie's clothing.

  Her mandibles split open. Wider than I'd ever seen. The segments of her mouth peeled back like flower petals made of bone, revealing rings of needle-fine teeth.

  Then she plunged downward. Into Sadie's chest, burrowing deep into her. Disappearing beneath flesh.

  Sadie's body jerked once. Her back arched. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

  I tried to move. I tried to reach them. My body wouldn't respond. My limbs were dead weight. Just a useless mess of bloated flesh that refused to obey.

  My vision started to fade again.

  The last thing I saw was Mabel disappearing into Sadie's chest, her white body vanishing beneath her pale skin like a thread being pulled through fabric, and Sadie's body going completely still and lifeless.