The horned helmet faced huge spreading jaws. Saliva as thick and green as wet grass dripped from teeth as long as table legs. They protected a raw purple throat which vomited a forked tongue, about three hundred pounds of red meat. The jaws belonged to a snake as thick as a full grown pine tree. The silver drapes of the Queen of Serpent’s bedchamber were drawn back to reveal its body behind the surrounding silver columns. Its head rose up out of the entrance stairway completely blocking it. Its lower jaw rested on the floor of the chamber. Cobra stood beside it, only a foot taller than its largest fang.
The monster hissed. The floor shook from its trembling weight, and several silver columns fell knocking Cobra aside. She staggered back, and stumbled down the entrance stairway out of sight.
Gath’s metal-clad body hurtled out of the smoke. His spear was leveled at the reptile. The blade drove between two white teeth and buried itself in the pulpy meat of the tongue. The tongue convulsed, cracked the spear against the jaw’s upper teeth and whipped the holder into the air. He twisted in midair, landed on all fours, and leapt up, bringing his axe with him. He caught a tooth with the blade, and cracked it off. But the impact flipped him tumbling back across the room empty-handed.
He rose slowly in the middle of the black swirling smoke, the helmet’s eyes glowing. His body, fed by battle, swelled. The chain mail bulged at his chest stretching the links from circles to ovals. The hides under the metal pressed through the small openings as if the steel was growing fur. Sweat dripped from the rim of his helmet, sizzled on his mail and ran in bright rivulets down his pulsing arms.
He backed down into the interior stairway and vanished within the smoke. A short time later he reappeared carrying a brass bucket of bubbling lava and marched for the mouth of the reptile. The snake obliged by spreading its jaws in a mindless repetition of what normally worked best for it. Gath charged through the gap he had made in the snake’s lower teeth and heaved the Sava, bucket and all, into the throat.
The lava splattered over the wet purple flesh. The monster mouth sizzled, foamed. Its tongue shot forward, caught Gath in the chest and drove him out as the upper teeth clanged down with shattering force.
Gath hit the ground, kept rolling and came up facing the writhing creature, dodging the flaming, smoking spittle, his axe back in his hands.
The reptile’s body thrashed and convulsed, knocked over columns and bulged out into the room with its mouth vomiting bits of teeth, chunks of tongue, and the gore of throat and brain tissue.
As Gath started forward, axe raised, the snake whipped forward, knocked him down, and rode over him. There was a dull smoky haze over its yellow gold eyes. It was blind.
The lava had reached the brain cavity. Then the head collapsed on the floor, spitting up melon-sized glands and a river of steaming blood.
Gath clawed through the gore and found the body blocking his escape. He climbed the reptile’s convulsing back, stumbled along it toward the entrance stairway. The last convulsion carried him up to the ceiling. He dropped flat and, axe in hand, slid down the slick wet back of the snake into the stairway. He dropped to the floor, squeezed past the undulating tail, and raced up the polished obsidian passageway, not seeing Cobra’s unconscious body partially buried by rubble.