✍🏻 Bonds of Fear (Loki)

24 - From bad to worse

Loki

The silence was deafening. 

I could hear the sound of my rapid heartbeat, my mind racing to figure out a way to protect Feer in case the creature would turn our way. We were near a crossing and if the worm that was coming from the side would turn to our tunnel, it would squish us against the rocky walls, killing everyone with normal human bones. The path back was straight for far too long, none of them would make it to the next crossroad in time and there was no scenario in which I could save Feer from that fate.

My eyes instinctively found her but she bore no signs of alarm while my panic was solely based on my fear for her. She was kneeling on the ground, assembling her sniper rifle with swift and precise moves, barely making a sound. Hawkeye already had his bow ready, arrow placed against the stretched string, and aiming at the tunnel's far end. Everyone cleared the path for her as she moved closer, and assumed her pose, the rifle pressed to the side of her cheek and eyes on the scope. There was no tremble in her arms as she held the gun at shoulder level, feet steadily apart for balance, creating an image of calm focus. I watched her intently, my panic decreasing as I didn't see any in her and the only sound now was the vibrations under our feet as the beast traveled closer.

It felt like time had stopped and when I dared to glance at the map, it showed that the worm had slowed down. It knew something was up. It was cautious. Deliberating which turn to take. Trying to identify from where it heard the sounds. Thor clutched harder on his hammer, Fury's knuckles turned white around the grip of his gun and Banner's skin was getting a light tint of green.

And then it came into view.

It stopped at our crossing.

Its head was as large as its body, with no neck, ears, or eyes. Its mouth was massive, showing several rows of thick teeth, with the front part of the snout covered in something that resembled the rocks all around. Hard and impenetrable. Everyone's lives were now hanging on the creature's decision if it would keep going straight or turn left and head for us. Feer's index finger soundlessly slipped into place on the trigger and my heart skipped a beat as the creature set its body in motion again.

It went straight.

Everyone released a quiet breath they were holding and right after faint swooshing sounds of Hawkeye's arrows and Feer's bullets could be heard as they traveled through the tunnel. The creature could no longer go backward, the front of its body in another section of the caves, and entirely at our mercy.

It moved by spinning its large body around its axis, filling the tunnel's diameter, and creating an illusion of a drill as it kept moving past us. Each of Hawkeye's arrows broke off whenever the part of the worm's body moved from our window of vision and hit the wall but the poisoned heads stayed inside its skin. Feer's bullets were shot with equal precision, only an occasional one hitting the thick skin and dropping down but the majority went through as she aimed for any prior laceration the worm had in its skin. Whenever she ran out of bullets, she changed the magazines swiftly and with ease without taking her eyes from the target ahead, her hands steady, and brows lacking even a slight frown.

The creature didn't seem to register anything was happening to it and by the time its tail disappeared, there was no telling if it all worked.

"What now?" Feer asked as she lowered her rifle, unfussed and collected while everyone else was still catching their breaths and quietly murmuring. "Can we go back?"

"Now we track it," Fury announced, equally calm but unlike Feer, he had no powers to help him stay that composed. He was just a dick without a care for anyone's life. "The poison will now start doing its job and the thing can't move backward so we just follow it until it dies." He looked around and when he saw the hesitancy in everyone's eyes, he added with confidence. "We can only hope it'll take us to its lair where the lost scientists might be. There's still hope. And as long as we stay behind it, it can't harm us."