Normal worms limited themselves, Jig corrected. A twenty-foot worm with about a thousand teeth didn’t qualify as normal. Jig and the others might be nothing but rats to these beasts. It was not a comforting thought.

As Jig watched, the worm facing Riana went still. The teeth around one mouth folded inward.

“Look out!” Jig lunged across the floor and knocked Riana down. A thin black tongue shot over their heads. With a loud snap, it returned to the worm’s mouth, and the worm lowered itself to the ground.

Ryslind finished his spell. Glowing yellow fire floated from the tips of his fingers to the first segment of the worm menacing Jig and Riana. The fire clung to the worm’s pale flesh, and it reared up again, waving back and forth in pain. Slowly the fire spread to the second segment.

The worm lashed more frantically, smashing into the walls of the pit and bloodying the burning segments. The smell was horrid, like charred meat. The worm began to scream, a high-pitched whistle of agony. Jig hadn’t known they were capable of sound.

“Get off of me,” Riana snapped.

Without taking his eyes away from the dying carrion-worm, Jig rolled off the elf and slowly stood. Ryslind had already turned his attention to the other worm. Darnak and Barius had managed to keep it at bay with their weapons, but neither had done any real damage. The wizard raised his hands again and began another spell.

He didn’t finish. There was no warning as the second worm convulsed with such force that it left the ground. The burned, dead half of its body flopped back to the earth, but the less damaged part crashed against Ryslind’s back and knocked him into the wall. The wizard fell like a stone.

“Ryslind!” Darnak knocked his worm aside with a powerful two-handed blow, then rushed to the fallen human’s side.

The worm turned to track his movement, giving Barius the opening he needed. Even as Jig shouted, “No,” Barius raised his sword and sliced down, cutting the worm in two. Both ends fell still.

“No?” Barius asked, one eyebrow raised as he wiped gore from his sword. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I fail to heed the advice of a goblin on matters of battle.”

Jig didn’t bother to answer. Already the split worm was beginning to heal. Each piece ended with an oozing half-segment where Barius’s sword had struck. As Jig watched, those damaged segments dropped off, leaving two healthy, hungry carrion-worms. Each was half the size of the original, but that just made them faster. And hungrier. Carrion-worms were always hungry after they reproduced.