Dear diary, today I went to war.

A loud booming sound wakes me up as the entire house shakes. I grab my head in anguish; my head hurts a ton, and I feel sick. I try to stabilise myself until I start hearing the bells ringing in my ears, their piercing whales making my headache only worse. I roll out of bed and try to go out, but before I can do that, I run to the bathroom to throw up most of my stomach. That at least makes me less nauseous.

I bring myself downstairs to see that a multitude of dwarfs have gathered here already. I see Altukar in one corner talking to people while Dur is bringing more dwarfs inside. A second shock hits the house, a thundering sound echoing as everything shakes.

“What is going on?” I ask the nearest dwarf after the shaking stops.

“We are under attack by a nondrion,” He says.

“And what is that?” I ask, unfamiliar with the term.

“The Ungla clan built these machines to help them mine and build, but they went rogue and attacked. They should have all been wiped out, but there is one still alive, at least, and it is about to attack our clan, so we are creating a task force.” The dwarf explains.

I nod and then run upstairs. I put on some proper clothes and, sling my sword on my back, and fasten the hand axe to a loop on my belt. I take a quick glance at my school bag, but I am not going to need that, I assume.

I run back downstairs, ready now for whatever problem is to come. Most of the dwarfs have quieted down and are waiting for something.

“Good, looks like everyone is here,” Dur says. “So some of the miners that were ahead have reported that it is a Nullworm; there is a mining model they have a drill at the front that makes our adamantium drills and armour plates that are almost impossible to cut.”

“So what do we do then?” one of the dwarfs yells.

“We trap it and drag it into the magma stream”, Dur says. “Blingor set up the magnetic traps along the east side. Bargo, you set them along the west. Let trap ourselves a worm.”

Everyone cheers and gets to work planning out the defence of the city. Slowly, most of the dwarves filter out of the house, heading towards their position or to gathering the necessary materials for the traps. Once only a few dwarfs remain, I walk up to Dur.

“Where should I go?” I ask him.

“I wish you would stay out of it, but I have the feeling that is not an option, so you are with me,” he says.

I smile at him. “Guess I don’t have to sneak out then.”

“You got your stuff then. Are you ready?” Dur asks.

“That I am,” I say with a big smile.

We head to one of the nearby towers on the wall. From there, we can see the trench that has been dug in front of it. Several dwarfs are quickly placing all kinds of contraptions in it. The interval between the earthquakes has been increasing steadily, making everyone more on edge.

Suddenly, a loud whistle echoes through the cavern, and I groan as the shrill sound agitates my headache again. All the dwarfs outside of the wall quickly stand up and run towards the gate. Once all of them are inside, the gates close, and they are locked with steel bars. And then we wait for everyone collectively holding their breath.

Then it happens, a massive impact unlike any that has come before it hits, spraying stone and debris everywhere as the worm breaks through the cave wall. I stand with my mouth agape, staring at the monstrosity. It's a giant worm-like thing made out of some kind of silver and gold metal. At its fronts, it has three hook-like libs that could probably be used to drag stuff into its massive maw containing numerous crushers and saw blades. The thing hits the wall, making the entire structure shudder as sparks fly off it.

It bounces off and to the side, sliding it further along the wall. The sheer size of it is staggering. It is taller than two trucks stacked on top of each other, and I can't even start to imagine how long it is. The thing seems to go on endlessly.

When it almost reaches the other side of the wall, I see Dur grab a horn and blow it. Suddenly, the beast shudders. I see sparks come off its inner mechanisms, and the beast slows down and slowly stops. Cheers erupt across the wall.

Then the creature suddenly explodes into movement again, side panels opening up and revealing gun barriers. The loud barking of the guns going off can be heard as it fires. Dwarfs and pieces of buildings are sent flying by the force.

Stolen story; please report.

“fuck it is not a minor. It is a fully operational war nundrion.” I hear Dur curse beside me.

Other panels slide open, and these spider-like bots come out walking on four limbs and using two other limbs covered in blades to slash at the dwarfs still on the wall.

I turn around, planning to head down and help, but Dur stops me. “Where are you going?” he asks.

“I am going down to help!” I shout at him over the noise.

“And how will you do that? You are not a trained fighter!” he shouts back

I frown, and he releases me. He is right, of course; I don’t know how to fight, so I would just be in the way, but there must be something I can do. I scan the battlefield, looking at the corpses. Some of them are spider bots, but most of them belong to the dwarfs. This is not good. And then I spot it.

On the side of the worm, in a script that is only ones and zeros, there is a message engraved: maintenance entrance. How I know binary is beyond me, but it helps. Now, I just need to get there. I look around the tower, but I am alone; Dur has decided to help the others.

I shrug. I guess he can’t stop me then. I head downstairs and wait at the entrance of the tower to the wall. The top of a wall is a mess of dwarfs desperately fighting for their lives, and it does not really look like they are winning the fight. I wait for the right moment between the gunfire and run and jump. Leaping over the wall is not all that hard, with the dwarfs being as small as me, which means that the balustrades are also rather small.

I land on the cold, hard shell of the worm and slowly start to crawl towards the hatch. Once I reach it, I twist the hand at the panel, and it pops open rather easily. Well, that is lucky. I crawl my way in, landing hard on my arms. The space is tight. There is not even enough room for a dwarf to stand up, so I need to crawl if I want to get further.

As I slowly crawl through the maintenance tunnel, a sound suddenly starts playing: a combination of electronic beeps and whistles that, whatever power I have, automatically translates. “Intruder detected, state your business or be eliminated.”

“I am maintenance. I came here for the repairs,” I say in the same beeping language, which is something I can do now, apparently.

“Accepted. Follow the green arrows to the engine for repairs.” The thing says, and suddenly, arrows appear on the floor.

I can’t believe that that actually worked—no time to wonder about that. I slowly crawl further in, following the arrows until I reach a somewhat bigger room I can actually stand in. In the middle of this room, there is some kind of orb pulsing menacingly with all kinds of dials and buttons around it. I quickly take stock. Pressure, overflow, energy throughput, weapon charge. All wonderful labels, but I have no clue how to use them.

So, instead of pressing random buttons, I get out my hand axe and smash it as hard as I can into the orb. Suddenly, an alarm goes off, and I hit it again; dark electricity starts to spark in it now.

“Critical energy failure antimatter implosion in ten seconds.” The voice announces.

Well, that is not good, or it is implosion is the one that does not create a lot of damage, right? Then again, ten seconds is too short of a time frame for me to crawl out of here, so instead, I grab the amulet. You better be charged your piece of metal; otherwise, I am in big trouble. Green, blue, purple, green.

Suddenly, it is a lot quieter. The sound of bird calls replaces the whirling of the machining, and the beeping of alarms, and a wave of hot humidity hits me. I look around at the mass of green plants. I am not home, that is for sure; instead, I find myself in a jungle.

I carefully step around, trying to make sense of my immediate surroundings, but there is not much to distinguish. Massive trees that mostly block out the sun above. Vern’s on the ground as tall as an adult human in densities that make it almost impossible to look through.

I stand there a bit dumbfounded. Well, at least it is not a dark cave, I guess, so that is progress, but what am I supposed to do in a jungle? I look around again, but there is nothing but green, as the eye can see.

“Guess I just pick a random direction and go that way then,” I say to myself.

Okay, my list of worst places has changed. I would much rather be in a dark cave than here. It is so hot, and I am drenched in my own sweat, which is increasing my headache even further somehow. As for distance, I have covered some can’t say how much because every fucking tree feels the same around here, but that does not mean I have made no progress. I can hear water in the distance, and that is always a good sign, so I have been heading towards that sound for a while now for a while now.

I break out of the green hellscape and find myself at the edge of a river. I slowly walk over to the body of water, sitting down on my knees, and sticking my hands in to scoop up some water to drink. I try to get a second scoop, but when I do so, a fish bites into the palm of my hand. I scream out as I tear my hand out of the water. But the fish does not want to let go of its price and is still stuck on it, biting deep into my palm.

I grab my trusty hand axe and smash it into the fish cleanly cutting its head off. Then I slowly pry its jaw loose from my hand. The bite mark is deep but not big. I don't really know if that is a good or bad thing, but I do know that bandaging a wound is important. So I rip a piece of cloth off my shirt and use it to bandage my hand.

I look at the dead fish. I am almost certain that it is a piranha, but I thought that they did not attack humans. Well, on the bright side, at least I have food. I try my best to file the fish and eat it, but raw fish is hard to swallow, especially with a hangover.

Once I have forced most of it down, I look around again. It is quickly getting dark, so finding a place to sleep would be necessary, but it is all trees and ferns. I look up at the tree and decide that climbing up and sleeping in the branches sounds a lot safer than staying on the ground with whatever prowls around at night.

I find a big tree with several vines growing across it and start to climb. I really didn’t appreciate my increase in strength as much as I should have. Normally, I wouldn’t have been able to climb up, but now, I reached the top of the tree just in time to watch the sunset.

Once the sun goes down, it becomes really dark. The only light is that of the millions, and I do mean millions of stars in the sky. It is probably the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. It sucks that it is in these circumstances; otherwise, I would have probably stayed up the entire night just to watch. Now, I am just looking for some stable branches that I am least likely to fall out of. And try my best to fall asleep.