The combat had just changed scales. And Lloyd was not going to stop until the Mountain Eaters were nothing more than another footnote in his history.
Zana e Verdha' s drill spun with a low hum, a resonant frequency that vibrated the crystal plates of the surrounding desert. Lloyd evaluated the movement of the three beasts not as a warrior, but as an analyst facing a runaway internal combustion engine. These creatures were, essentially, closed biological systems of terrifying efficiency, but every system has a kinetic breaking point.
He did not attack immediately. His eyes swept the terrain, measuring the parabolic trajectories of the worms and the force vector they applied upon emerging. Those things did not fight with tactics; they moved by chemotaxis and mechanoreception, guided by hunger and the vibrational stimulus of his footsteps on the ice.
