They attacked, mindlessly hurling themselves in a pincer movement, trying to cut off Roger and Mary from Mavis and so surround the Dragon’s egg and gain that precious prize for their all-powerful Master.
Mavis though, heedless of her own peril, now turned and fired a broad, raking sweep of yellow-red attack-flame, clearing the area between the children and the attacking Minions. She had just enough firepower to have the desired effect. But more Minions were coming.
Trinimicusss had not stood idly by. He took his opportunity and lashed out at the valiant Dragon Queen, searing her exposed flank with another gout of his flaming venom.
Mavis screamed in agony, hissing and spitting and her broken wing now aflame with the venomous fire and literally, going up in smoke. The acrid smell of burnt flesh and singed leather filled the air with its noxious stink.
But Mavis somehow turned herself toward the Trydra and snapped at her own wing stub as she did, ripping it from her tortured torso. While doing this she somehow lifted her one good wing and slammed it down between the children and the advancing minion horde.
Mavis had been very badly wounded by Trinimicusss, and was expecting even more damage to come, both from the Minions advancing suicide mission, as well as the relentless assault of the deadly and persistent Trydra, Trinimicusss.
And although Mavis had managed to turn around, dragging her one wing behind her in such a way as to still give some protection to the children; She was now totally spent and exhausted.
And she well knew all their lives could be finished at any moment, if she now failed to defeat this vile Trydra monster. Mavis had blown a great gout of yellow-orange flame, which had hit Trinimicusss squarely in his trio of heads and two of these had immediately caught fire. But he had evaded the total destruction that Mavis had intended and hoped for and was even now re-growing those damaged heads.
“The potency of my attack-flame is weak,” she sighed to them. “Your only hope is to flee with my Egg and try to make it to the surface as best you can. I will stay and do my best to see to the end of this ophidian filth, even though it will cost me my rightful death tomorrow.”
The Trydra however, had already regenerated one head and was very close to gnawing away the second burning head; And if it managed to do so, then again, it would be at full power.
“Ssso, Queeen of Ssssluggs, you sssee, you and your ussselessss egg will sssoon be oursss after all!” he hissed at her, sensing his looming victory.
He tore away his second head-stump and immediately a new venom-filled, fanged skull began to form. The cavern was still full of swirling smoke and Trinimicusss used this to his advantage. He began to sidle nearer, towards the Egg, swaying in rhythmic time to the ever-swirling smoke as he came. Causing a strange, hypnotic effect on those who looked upon him, not knowing his insidious powers of mind control.
Normally, Mavis would be impervious to such a brash and, to her, primitive deceits of the mind, but she was much weakened now, both physically and mentally.
And the children were no longer protected by her blue-flame, they were once more choking and coughing, their eyes stinging and streaming from the churned-up smoke. Roger looked all around him, but peering through his tears, he could see no obvious and direct course of escape whatsoever. They now were at the mercy of the advancing Trydra.
“How in the Pesky Pascal can we get out of this murder hole?” Roger muttered grimly. “And that blasted three-headed giant-cobra monstrosity has somehow survived everything that Mavis can throw at it and will be on us any second!”
The gigantic, last surviving Trydra reared over them again, its charred and scarred body, smoking and glistening in the blood-red glow of the seething smoke-clouds all around them. Its rhythmic swaying form disappearing within the coils of grey smoke and then reappearing. Its three sets of venomous fangs once again poised and ready to strike triple, fatal, blows, raining poison down upon them all.
Mavis mustered the very last of her red attack fire from her bruised and aching lungs.
She brought her head around level with Trinimicusss, staring him steadfastly in his cold, soulless eyes, ready to blast him with her very last bolt of attack flame.
But then, without warning, a mighty crash and craaaak, resounded in the cavern and the rocky floor between Mavis and Trinimicusss, suddenly split asunder!
There, boring through the crumbling rock floor, came a bluely glowing, Giant Erf-Worm! Then came another and yet another until there were now three of the huge, tubular creatures, speedily undulating towards Mavis, the two children and the Egg.
They were gigantic but graceful beasts now flowing relentlessly across the cavern floor.
As they moved, they flattened the few remaining minion worms who had still somehow escaped Mavis’s blasts of attack flame or had been crushed in the battle with the Trydra.
“They somehow remind me of Blue Whales, you know,” Roger gasped, incredulously.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” whispered Mary, replying in awe at the spectacular sight unfolding before them. “They’re just fantastic and truly majestic, aren’t they, Roj!”
The Giant Erf-Worms or Megadriles as Roger scientifically called them had once more come to his rescue. But not just his, this time they had saved them all.
Mavis acted instinctively at the sight of her swooping saviors. She immediately lowered her bulk to the floor and allowed the Giant Erf-Worms a distraction-free access to the Trydra, while at the same time ensuring the children and her Egg were still protected.
The three Erf-Worms headed directly at speed for Trinimicusss.
The lone Trydra leader stood momentarily stunned. Three Giant Erf-Worms plus, even a mortally wounded Dragon, were too much for him. He knew that he was done for. He now crumpled onto the cavern floor, cowering and squealing in terror like the coward he was.
“No, you mussstn’t do thisss!” he hissed, pleadingly to the advancing Erf -Worms.
Roger could sense his terror and fleetingly felt a pang of compassion for the evil brute. But this soon passed, as he remembered how close it had come to slaughtering the noble Dragon Queen; And then no doubt, intending the very same for them.
The Giant Erf-Worms curled themselves around the Trydra’s blistered and quivering torso, in ever-tightening, strangling coils. However hard Trinimicusss tried to spit his hot venom at them or bite them with his seething fangs; It was all to no avail. These Giant Erf-worms were some of the toughest creatures in all the many worlds of the Under-Erf.
Soon the wrecked body of the Trydra leader was crushed within the seething coils of the three, great Erf-Worms who worked together in perfect harmony, like three practiced street dancers, as they slithered and pulled the flesh-pulping noose of their vermicular coils tighter.
Roger knew it was all over for the Trydra now. All he could see was the occasional globs of green and grey, fleshy sludge, oozing out from between the Erf-Worms’ coils.
Trinimicusss had been crushed and squashed to a jelly!
The Erf-Worms slowly uncoiled themselves from its limp length of seeping, pulped flesh, that lay squashed and oozing in steaming puddles of grey slime. Its lifeless, unrecognizable carcass now left on the cavern floor to rot away in its own putrid poisons.
Then they made their rippling, methodical ways toward Mavis and the two children.
Mavis lifted her wounded head towards them and gave out a final, weak blast of flame, setting alight the hideous remains of Trinimicusss they left behind them.
The Coup de grace had been delivered by the Dragon Queen herself.
“Thank you, oh, great brothers of the Under-Erf,” she mind-cast to the three Erf-Worms, “the illustrious line of the Sivads is forever in your debt.”