The scenery in this direction was... interesting, in its own way.

The original city had naturally been built outside the mines that drove the raw production power of the planet. Those mines had also been worked out over the millennia, all the metals and ore removed, forming monstrously big pits, dozens of miles across, and tunnels that snaked out into the mantle for miles in all directions.

But then it was on to the next dig site, and where better to put the waste then all this open space?

So, that’s what happened. Every time an old mine was worked out, a new one would be opened, and the tailings dumped into the old one. This was neither unique nor strange, but what it did is breed its own kind of infestation, namely the Sand Wurms.

The Wurms existed behind the shielding mountains to the west, tunneling endlessly through the alkaline sands of the lands beyond. They should have had no presence here, as they dug through solids with only great difficulty and time... but the miners had, in effect, created the perfect environment for the wurms, with loose soil, many tunnels they didn’t have to dig out, and potential prey at the periphery.

Nobody knew exactly how they got here, although the general agreement was Warp Cultists wanting to create some havoc had somehow found some eggs and brought them in. Within a few years, all the old mines became great lakes of Wurm spawning grounds.

With no natural predators from the greater desert here to prey on them, the Wurms grew as big as their food supply, and the massive vibrations from the city beyond were like giant meal signs blaring in the distance.

They REALLY hated how far down the Shield Wall went. Their tremblesense could identify any weak point, and they would work on it mindlessly until hunger forced them away, only to come back again to worry at it. Whole packs of wurms would take turns pounding at the duracrete mix, tearing at it with diamond-hard teeth and hissing acid, trying to get through it to the promise of the meals beyond.

Ergo, Sand Wurm incursions were a thing on the Shield Wall, and one of the more dangerous things Termites had to clean up down below. They were dangerous because the Wurms were tough, not that they were all that adapted to burrowing through halls of plascrete and durasteel, looking for all those free meals echoing in their vibration-sensitive hides.

I’d killed a few of them in our territory. Now I was going to kill a few of them in theirs.

Random sand wurm kills were awarded a bounty by the mining corps, because every wurm was a potential miner-muncher and machine-eater. The problem was generally one of finding them, as the worms were not mindless, and normal lures rarely worked on them more than once. They were hard to track and follow in the scree and sands of this area. Naturally, going down to the ground here was close to a death sentence.

So naturally that’s what I was doing, running across these recessed sand lakes, where the grit and sand filtered down and filled in much of the scree, which was churned and cycled over endlessly by the wurms, rising, grinding away the intact stone around, and expanding slowly in area.

The only overland route was the rail lines, built on durasteel and high up on rock, away from the wurms, endlessly transporting loads of ore and workers to and fro from the city, and feeding the vast machinery and furnaces of the underhive in their ceaseless output of materials. Trying to build a road was stupid, as any vehicles not force-sealed would just get corroded away, and attract all kinds of things looking for lunch. The metal tanks shielded inside a magno-tube, not so much.

Me going on foot, and especially just over the sand pit lakes, was just crazy.

Well, maybe not so much.

The Wave-Skating Steps worked perfectly well off my +10 Melee Attack Bonus, and I skimmed four inches above the sands, barely leaving a wake, and definitely leaving no sound of footsteps. So, I was invisible to them for all practical purposes, as they basically lived and died by tremblesense.

They were not, however, invisible to me.

I was playing holovid travel agent at the moment, in Markspace, and incidentally recording it on the Quanta just for fun. Those in Marklink were enraptured, because my eyes were far more acute than theirs, I saw more colors, and I could see right through the swirling sands and dust without a problem. The moan of the wind with the aggressive rasp of the sands hissing past around my Vajra and the little differences in intonations coming off mounds of wind-scoured rock left from mines of the past reverberated through the air in a complex mess of sonar. Electrical charges danced between the sands, occasionally discharging in snapping bolts and sparks, waves of heat bubbled and boiled in ceaseless rhythm, while below me, the lake of sand and scree peeled past in endless slow-motion waves and currents, trailing out behind me and adding to my realspace lived-line.

I had no fear of getting lost, since my Visual File was literally tracking me in time and space, and I could retrace my steps perfectly across this shifting sand lake easily.

Then the long body flowed by in my tremblesense below. I /heard breaths hitch as they caught my visualization of the sand wurm lying below, and I let some of my weight rasp against the sands.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The bounty on the sand wurms was meh. To most hunters, it wasn’t worth their time and ammo to hunt one, nor the danger. The real money was in two places... a nexal stone half again as big as usual for something their size, probably related to it processing and burrowing through so much crystalline gunk, and its teeth.

Its diamond-hard, symmetrical teeth, arranged in geometric rows on its trifold opening snout, were one of the very, very best things to make Focuses out of for Mindblades or Athame. The material was suitable for QL 40 workmanship, and so high-end psions could never get enough of them. Mechanists wanted them for psionic circuits for TL 15+ gear replacements. They were worth good money, if you could get them.

The problem was that if the sand wurm died violently, the combination of the death pulse of it dying plus an instinctive regurgitation of its digestive fluids totally ruined the teeth. Getting a wurm with full teeth was well-nigh impossible in normal circumstances, and you could only cry and dig out the nexal you hopefully hadn’t blown apart with explosive rounds, go collect your bounty, and curse your luck.

I had discovered a much better method of harvesting them, although it admittedly was a little crazy.

==============

Some time ago...

It had all started with one of the wurms I followed into an access tunnel after it breached the Shield Wall. It was remarkably quicker and more agile than I thought it would be for a five-foot-high, eighty-foot scaled tube of flesh, and I noted it was using True Seeking to try and get a lock on me for an enveloping strike to swallow me whole. The problem was that I was Beyond Law and Chaos, and it couldn’t future-see me to do that... so I let it.

I’d always been curious about what it was like to get swallowed alive, and I wasn’t worried about it. I basically jumped in as the trilateral jaws opened and lunged, and down the stinking gullet I went.

The teeth didn’t scrape, as they were backwards-pointing, and I was in the esophagus and immediately starting to get crushed as it tried to move me down its gullet. Being inside it, I naturally had full access to the anatomical view from inside its phrenic field, noting the musculature, nervous system, lack of bones, tendons and sinews, sensory organs, psi-fueled heart and blood system, and other strange organs of the creature. There was the nexal, so that bunch of tissue must be what approximated its brain...

I measured its contracting force... about 6-36, coming in waves high and low. With DR 21/Holy Silver, I took nothing half the time, and when I did, I Fast Healed the damage away within seconds. Now, the acid was potent stuff, but ol’ Sama happened to have acquired Acid Immunity from being a Rantha Hag, so sorry, as if my 30 Resistance from Vajra wasn’t enough. The acid was pretty strong, but what was specifically geared to take out things with corrosion resistance were the arcs of bioelectricity shooting through me for impressive damage also... and to which I was also immune.

Phrenic creatures differ from magical creatures because most phrenics are alien in biology. Magical creatures tend to be creatures that are strange, but they have a ‘normal’ biology, only evolved into something weird because magic and Chaos are buds. Phrenic creatures tend to have utterly alien biology that has evolved to rely on psionic energy to survive and evolve in situations where natural biology just wouldn’t be possible.

Pretty much every living natural creature on this planet was immune to acid and bases by dint of phrenic corrosion resistance, NOT by somehow organically being able to ignore such things. Sorry, no, natural organics would die out here, science is very unforgiving. But, with psionic energy, creatures can live where they should die, see where they should be blind, and attack when they have no means to do so.

It also meant that when they died, their acid resistance goes away, and they can be conveniently digested. Ergo, the voltage, trying to shock me to death quicker so the eating could get to work.

I dug in my claws, anchored myself just below that nexal point as the wurm spun and moved for a bit, then settled down.

Settling down to digest its meal...

Chalice came out in my hand, and I slowly extended her point, all edge, up the inside of the worm. No nerves inside, hard to tell something was happening, stay calm, relaxed, yeah, keep trying to crush me, I’ll heal... and you’ll die subtly...

Fwick, cut those nerves, snip ‘em off, things go dark, painless, slow...

It quivered for just a moment, and I drove Chalice right into that major node, phrenic banefire shredding the corded tissue and making the psionic energy there spit and scatter.

The wurm shuddered a final time, and the convulsions around me stopped.

I cut my way up and out, grabbing its nexal on the way, and then walked around to the front.

I noted thoughtfully that the external cuts I’d slashed into its stony hide had been turned away from the floor beneath, as if to keep the raw cuts away from scraping on the hard surface.

I slashed off one of the three jaws, and as the triangle dropped to the steel floor, I saw the gleaming crystals of its teeth were all still intact.

Yesss...

I now knew how to hunt sand wurms for fun and profit. Profit was important...

================

Back to now...

Coming up behind me for a free meal was a sand wurm a bit smaller than my wall-breaker. I had to cut it a few times, making sure it wanted to keep those injuries above the sands, as I didn’t want to have to dig myself up from where it was burrowing. Then I’d get eaten, endure the mashing and juices trying to digest me, and kill it when it was at peace and non-reacting from stuff inside.

What was more fun, the carcass might attract other scavengers, which might attract more sand wurms...

I smiled as the wurm made its initial lunge, and I hopped up above it. My audience all inhaled in shock at the sensation of something that big and strong moving past... and the golden blade of Chalice sliding through its stony skin like tofu, administering a grievous wound crossing its scales, and then I slid down its side, dragging another spitting, angry wound along the break, crossing the t.

It rotated so the injured parts were away from the sand, and spun on me.

-If you make Seven, you can do this too...- I /told them, and they screamed as I jumped down into the flowering jaws in front of me. -Twenty points of DR and Acid Resistance, and some Fast Healing, and you’ll be fine...-

I /peeled off the advancement schema as they stared, acutely aware of the wurm’s insides around me, and my focus above me, at the winking solidity and power of the nexal... and further above, to the fortune that was all those teeth, intact!

I /smiled at all of them, and they waited and /watched with me, and finally I ignited Chalice. “You take me to all the weirdest places,” she said, and I laughed with her...