The shrieking noise was definitely coming from the creature that now held his gaze. A smaller Arcane-worm was pulsing a dozen yards away from him. It was about a foot long, but it radiated power. Bomond was sure of it. It had four well-developed legs, and more importantly, it was not glowing with a dull silver. No, this worm was gleaming a bright gold.

Just when Bomond managed to find his wits, the worm turned around and began to flee. Bomond spared the cocooned Emojen a quick glance and made his decision. He burst forth and began chasing the still-yowling worm. He hadn’t taken three steps when the worm suddenly vanished.

Bomond was dumbstruck. He ran to where the worm vanished and now found a shimmering wall in front of him. It was… an illusion? As he placed his hand onto the pulsing air in front of him, it seemed to give way, and his hand vanished.

With a yell, Bomond pulled his arm back, relieved to find that his hand had not been cut off. He flexed his fingers. Yes, it was okay. Curiosity and desperation spurred his actions. Keeping his left leg where he stood, Bomond put his right leg forward, and the air split around him, and the world changed!

With the right half of his body through the portal-field, Bomond remained astonished as he took in the sights. A sparse wasteland with a few thorny shrubs littered the mountainous landscape. The ground was a shade of red and brown. But the most undeniable sight was where Bomond was looking. Straight ahead, a mountain loomed above him.

And it was a small volcano! The summit was about two hundred yards away. Bomond nearly screamed before he realized that it wasn’t hot lava that was spewing forth. It was liquid flame! The Flame-Rain!

Vast jets of the purple Flame-Rain shot impossibly high from the volcano’s mouth. It created an enormous pillar of purple flame that touched the sky. In the golden sky, the purple rain mixed with the air and light. ‘Was this the real Mount Veren?,’ wondered Bomond. The slope certainly seemed connected. And the cold Flame-Rain was pouring down here too.

Bomond erupted out of the illusory air as he saw them: the worms. There were golden Arcane-worms all over the mountain. There didn’t seem to be any other lifeforms around. Dozens of glowing, golden worms were milling near the volcano’s summit. Bomond was running towards his prey. The small golden worm he was chasing was now crawling a mere ten yards away from him.

Bomond charged ahead, and he saw four larger worms were racing down towards them. ‘Oh, no, you won’t’, swore Bomond as he put a final burst of speed. ‘Alympia’ was the name spurring him faster than he thought possible. In seconds, Bomond leaped onto the shrieking worm. The crash hurt him everywhere, but he barely noticed. His hands felt throbbing flesh. He had done it. He had caught his prey. Bomond looked to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. No, his fingers held his salvation.

The worm was screaming and squirming in his grasp. This one was different from the dull, silver worm Emojen had consumed. ‘No, I will not fail this time,’ thought Bomond as he brought his falx out with his free right hand. With his left, he placed the worm on the ground and held it as steady as his strong arm could. The worm kept shrieking, but Bomond was determined.

As his heart trembled, Bomond decided to end it as quickly as he could. He raised his falx high with the pointed hilt two feet above the worm. This was it! There would be no turning back. And then, another massive screech struck Bomond. But this time, it was not something he heard. It was something he felt too. His mind seemed to swirl out of focus. There was a clear ringing in his ears as well.

Bomond shook his head while holding on to the worm with everything he had, lest it managed to escape while the screeching noise invaded his mind. But, the worm had stopped squirming as if it had accepted its fate.

Eventually, Bomond managed to a grip over himself, and when his eyes cleared, he looked down at the worm still held in his hand, and he found control by thinking about everything that had drawn him here to this moment. He thought about his family. He couldn’t let them down. He aimed his falx-hilt point for the worm’s head, held it firm, and…

“Pleeeeeeeaase…”, Bomond was nearly struck senseless with the powerful noise afflicting his senses. He couldn’t believe it, but he knew he had heard the word ‘please’.

“Pleeeeeease………..child!”, the voice echoed in his mind. Bomond looked down at the worm. It was still now… It wasn’t pulsing. Even its golden glow had subsided a bit. Bomond tried to clear his head again.

“Pleeease…….. MY child!”. This time it resonated clearly in Bomond’s mind. He looked in front to see five worms about forty yards up front. Four of them were as small as the one he held down in his left hand. The larger fifth worm was some distance in front of the other four, and it was vibrating with incredible speed and was blazing most brightly. Its legs were tucked in, and it seemed in obvious distress.

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Some instinct made Bomond quickly put his falx back into his waist though he still held the worm on the ground. But his eyes were focused on that distressed worm ahead. Then he heard it again, “Please….no…end…my child”, and the shrieking worm in front just collapsed and stopped shining altogether. It was no longer pulsing.

‘The worms are intelligent?’ considered Bomond with a rising horror that pervaded his body. Then it dawned on him. This worm in his hand was the child of that large, collapsed worm ahead. He was sure of it. He thought about forgetting what he heard and just killing his …. ‘Prey’? ‘No,’ Bomond realized.

Despair flooded him as he thought about failing his family. ‘Alympia’, he groaned. What would he be willing to do to help his family? In all the moments of planning he had done before, he had thought he could do anything. But now, he had failed. He knew it. His hands began to tremble. He bit his lips hard, and he felt his eyes moisten. He had to get a grip.

‘NO’, he screamed at himself. ‘I would rather fail’, Bomond swore. Immediately a sea of anguish flooded his mind, but it was no use. A massive wall of determination cut its flow, and he managed to choose. Now, the tears began to fall freely. Ignoring them, Bomond lifted the worm and held it close to his chest. He began to trot up the hill. Weariness bit into his legs, but he persevered. He shut out every other feeling and only thought about getting the worm up to its family.

He didn’t know how long it took him. He had lost all sense of time. But he managed to reach the collapsed large worm. The other smaller worms moved back as they saw him running towards them. As Bomond reached down to put the worm-child he held next to the large worm, he couldn’t help touching the parent-worm. It felt strangely cold. Instinctively, he rubbed the parent-worm’s body, and it jerked to consciousness.

Bomond pulled his hand back. The two worms- parent and child- made strange noises as they pulsed golden. Bomond knew it to be a reaction of joy. But he felt hollow. This trip, all the risks he had taken, had been a waste. ‘No, Emojen had been baptized.’

His own hopes had been dashed. He would now have to return. He would have to try his rotten luck at the regular Stream of Power and live a life of obscurity. There was no way that he could now hunt a live worm. They were sentient creatures. They were advanced enough to speak into the minds of men.

As if on cue, the parent-worm turned to him and with what appeared to be great effort, it turned to him and began to pulse. Bomond felt waves of surprise, gratitude, and happiness flood his mind. ‘Thank you,’ it pulsed, ‘for my child’. Bomond felt blood rising to his face. He focused on the worm. Now it’s messages were so much clearer.

‘It must be the distance,’ Bomond thought, ‘must be easier to talk when I am next to it’. Bomond knelt down and patted the parent-worm, who seemed to be calmer and cooler to touch.

A devastating scream thundered through Bomond’s head and he collapsed on his knees. ”What the…AAAAAARGH,” he screamed. He felt the worm now pulse in obvious terror. Before Bomond could comprehend, a massive boom made the mountain shake. The sound came from behind him, and before he could turn around to look, some invisible force struck him from behind, forcing him to fall face-first.

Bomond willed himself to his feet. Every inch of his body was sore. His legs hurt. His back ached. He couldn’t feel his arms, and his head was pounding. But he managed to look back down the slope, and he yelled out in shock and dread.

A gargantuan beast was moving towards him. At around 8 feet tall, it dwarfed Bomond by two feet. Its body was enormous. It looked like a white mountain on legs. Lava-colored streak patterns were etched on the creature. The barely humanoid monster had two arms and four legs like a centaur.

Instead of running up the slope, it was climbing quite slowly. This made it seem all the more menacing, and when Bomond looked at its head, the abomination was sneering. Its insectoid head had black mandibles and horns on either side, and its mouth was filled with impossibly sharp-looking fangs resembling those of a serpent. It also had an enormous hat-like covering on top of its head. The semi-circular carapace looked like an impossibly large and flattened helmet.

When Bomond found its strangely human-like eyes, he saw them clearly. They were barely looking at him. The monster’s eyes were clearly on the worms behind him. It wanted the worms. Now, Bomond knew what the creature wanted. He knew there was no way that any man could stop this horror. He thought about taking as many worms with him and running back up to the summit.

That’s when his eyes fell on a small movement behind the beast. From the portal-field from where he had entered, Emojen screamed. ‘Oh no, her Baptism has been completed, and she has hatched,’ Bomond realized, making him even more aghast. Worst of all, Emojen’s yell made the beast stop and turn to look at her. The nightmarish creature then stood still for a moment and decided to move towards Emojen.

Bomond was not in control. He didn’t know what or why he was doing it. His incoherent war cry rendered the air. He ran at the creature with his falx held overhead with both his hands. He courted certain death. So be it. The monster responded to the non-challenge by returning his attention to the top of the hill.

When he was six feet away, Bomond jumped and twirled the falx from the overhead position to his right side. An attempted decapitation slash was his choice. He would only get one chance but Bomond didn’t know that nor did he care. Bomond had miscalculated. The monster merely took a step back and instead of its neck, the wayward strike struck the underside of its carapace-hat. It fell off the creature’s head as if it was a helmet of sorts.

The jump cost Bomond dearly. He crashed onto the hard ground next to the terrible monster’s front feet. Bomond barely noticed the hooves that seemed to have claws protruding from them. He screamed in pain as he felt a terrible pain in his back and he was lifted up in the air like a rag doll.

It felt like someone had stuck him through the back with a knife that had a fire on it. The beast tore his back with a single rake of its claws, splattering his blood all over the slopes. The sheer force of the removal of the claws from Bomond’s back threw him in the air. “Aaaaaa…,” he howled as he landed on his stomach painfully, back up the mountain from whence he came.

He was dying. He knew. “Alympia, forgive m…,” Bomond croaked, but his voice failed. He barely heard the beast screaming, Emojen yelling, and the worms pulsing. His body was broken. Just as his consciousness faded out, a horrible jolt cackled through his body. He was inexplicably being ripped from the inside,

The world turned black, and it was all over.