When Sparrow woke, he had no idea where he was. It didn’t help that his head was still ringing with all the pain of getting hit by a giant insect, but darkness was the thing that really inhibited his ability to tell where he was.
Wherever he’d been picked up and brought to, it was pitch black. Unable to orient himself by sight, he sat up and tried to find his bearings by touch—feeling a blanket over his lower half, a soft bedding beneath him, and some sort of salty incense hovering in the air. Moving around just served to highlight how everything ached, but, more importantly, how could he taste by simply swishing his arms about?
… Activate status screen.
Light tried to appear next to his head, but it fizzled out with a little blue spark before the status screen could open. He frowned and searched around his bed for his rifle as he tried again, willing his status screen into existence; it was of no use.
Something wasn’t right. Unlike rifles that could jam and blades that could dull, the Swarmsteel Systems designed by the Attini Empire were supposed to be infallible equipment that never required maintenance. A soldier could fight their entire life without having to remove their system even once, so how was it–
[Error;; Error;; Error]
[Unauthorised Modifications Detected]
[Re-linking Swarmsteel System with Cervical Spine]
[Automatic Repair Complete. Reallocating Attribute Points. Swarmsteel System reactivating in three, two, one–]
[T1 Mutation Unlocked: Wormhole Core]
{T1 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ???}
Now light exploded into his eyes, filling his vision with blurry, disorienting images of a bonfire-lit two-storey log cabin. A small flame crackled in the fireplace at the back of the room. The ceiling was slanted and arched with wooden beams, the earth-tone walls hung with what seemed like jars of crystals and glowing minerals. Baskets of translucent fruits and melons sat on the round table in the centre of the room, refracting firelight in tiny, blinding star-shaped sparkles. Planters lined the tall, wide windows, and the air smelled stronger with salty incense than ever.
Confusion.
The sensory overload made him whip his head away to the other side of his bed, away from the fireplace, but then he was immediately met with someone sleeping—kneeling on the floor with their head resting on the bedding next to his legs.
He froze, tensing his muscles.
… Calm down.
Assess your surroundings. Recall the events leading up to this point.
Staring at the sleeping child cloaked from head to toe in thick white layers, he retreated into the corners of his mind and recalled as much as he could: receiving his final orders from the General, killing twenty-nine bugs, falling face-first into the snow after nearing a hundred percent in strain, and that… was about it. He didn’t remember suffering any neck injuries that’d impair the functions of his system. If there were any, they were certainly not to the extent that his status screen would fail to open the first time around.
He looked around, turning his head painfully slow, and eventually found his heavy rifle standing upright on the nightstand to his right.
His captors didn’t take his weapon.
Why?
Activate status screen again.
This time, there was no error. No delay. It popped out next to his head, and he studied it as quietly as he could; he didn’t want to wake his captor up by accident.
[// STATUS]
[Name: ‘Sparrow’, Human]
[Class: Worm]
[Origin: Attini Empire]
[BloodVolume: 2.3/5.2 (44%), Strain: 55/510 (11%)]
[Unallocated Points: 82]
[Strength: 4, Speed: 3, Dexterity: 8, Toughness: 4, Perceptivity: 2, Strain Limit: 510]
[// MUTATION TREE]
[T1 | Wormhole Core]
{T1 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ???}
[T2 | Vibrational Senses | Wormic Bones] 50P
{T2 Branch Mutations | ??? | ???}
And he was just as confused looking at his status screen now as he was before.
Furrowing his brows, he picked up his rifle slowly and gently. The points he’d allocated into raising his strength, toughness, and strain limit were still in effect, but he didn’t remember having eighty-two extra points. Neither was his class spelled with four letters, nor his tier one mutation spelled out in that particular order of shapes—upgrading and evolving into different classes within the same insect type was one thing, but he’d never heard of anyone being able to completely switch out their insect type for another one.
… No matter.
Decree One: Accomplish your mission no matter the cost.
Return to the battlefield.
Exterminate the bugs.
The cabin layout was simple, and the ornately carved front door was but a measly ten metres away. He tested the creakiness of the floorboards by pressing the stock of his rifle against them, finding relief in knowing they were firm as rocks, unlikely to make a sound even if he were to skip across.
Swinging his legs to the right and avoiding the sleeping child at all costs, he planted both feet on the floor and straightened his back. He hadn’t noticed it before, but he hadn't been changed out of his army-issued trousers, tunic, scarf, and fur coat either. His short and messy hair was still braided at the back, his hands still wrapped in bloody bandages; strangely, he had no visible wounds where he remembered being cut and impaled by the bugs. There weren’t scars on his garments or even the slightest hints of wear and tear on his battle-worn coat—evidently his captors had gone to the effort of tending to his wounds and mending his clothes, but what sort of medicine could they possibly practise to raise him from the dead?
He decided he didn’t need to know right now.
So, pushing through the thudding aches across his body, he rose to his feet and took a step forward–
He ran his head into the front door, making the entire thing rattle on its hinges and earning himself a very, very painful throb in his skull.
… What?
He managed a coherent thought for only half a second before his entire world shifted, chrome and silver lines swirling in his vision. A wave of nausea washed over him as he stumbled back, to the left, to the right, knocking into the table with the baskets of translucent fruits and spilling them all across the floor; they clinked and shattered and sounded like miniature mortar shells in his ears, and the child sleeping by the bed most certainly heard him now.
Their head shot up from the bed, beady blue eyes blinking behind their deep hood—he blinked back at them for a moment as he clutched his head, struggling to tighten his grip on his rifle.
Mistake.
Time to go.
So he turned, tried to take a step towards the front door–
And ran into a window, crashing through the glass shoulder-first, before tumbling outside unceremoniously alongside a few potted plants.
… Snowy.
Windy.
Blizzard.
He exhaled coolly, letting the air fill his lungs.
Atmospheric pressure is weak. The air is fresh but thin. High-altitude is the only explanation.
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Where… am I?
He recalled the sensations from his childhood, training in the harsh military winter camps north of the Empire. ‘Cold’ was the word. The air hadn’t been dry or fresh, and when he breathed in his lungs would be scraped with crystal ash and sharp snowflakes. Winter, then, was a swaddling, sleepy thing that lured trainee soldiers to permanent slumber, and they were ant class soldiers with ant mutations at the end of the day—they weren’t naturally suited to survive in wintry conditions. Humid fungus forests were more their favoured terrain.
But as he lay on his back staring up at the swirling, spinning moon in the night sky, he found… he didn’t mind the cold that much. Snowflakes were falling gently onto his nose, the winds were blowing softly, reinvigorating his spirit; it wasn’t anything like the nail-biting cold he’d endured before.
Something was changing inside him.
[Strain: 11% → 29%]
The sight of his status screen popping up next to his head jolted him upright, brushing snow off his fur coat. Stop lying down. He hadn’t escaped yet. Sitting facing the log cabin, he scrambled to his feet while the child in white kicked the front door open, shouting in a strange, warping voice that almost seemed to physically bend the space around their body—and if that wasn’t an indication he wasn’t allowed to leave, he didn’t know what was.
Whirling away from the cabin, he dropped a metal pin from his belt before taking another step–
He lurched forward, feeling an intense wave of nausea. Before doubling over, though, he managed to look back at the now distant cabin. The metal pin gleamed under moonlight; it was a good seven or eight metres away from where he was standing now.
… My new tier one mutation.
Is it making me do this?
He confirmed his hypothesis as he took another step forward, turned around, and saw the cabin as little more than a glowing orange spot in the mighty blizzard. He had to be well over fifteen metres away from it, now, even though he’d only taken two steps away from it.
I see.
In that case–
There was no time for more speculation. Still turned to face the cabin he’d escaped from, his eyes narrowed as he spotted a dozen, two dozen, a hundred more orange spots glowing in the far distance—evidently he’d been brought to some hidden village off the maps of the Empire, given he’d never heard anything about anyone living in the high altitudes of the wintry north—but now wasn’t the time to ponder just how deep he was in foreign territory.
Getting as far as he could from his captors was his primary concern.
He took another step forward, becoming a swirl of motion and sensation as he felt himself hurtling through distorting space. Snow and wind whirled around him, smashing into his face and cutting into his skin. At times, he’d hear and feel pursuers on his back, teleporting through the knee-high snow with that same warping noise that telegraphed their movement. Whenever he felt they were about to catch up, he’d quicken his pace and warp even faster, even harder—and it was a real strain on his body.
Combined with the crunch beneath his boots in the snow and the rough rustles of his clothing, he felt as though each warp was him pushing through a thick wall of snow; he’d end up on the other side of the wall immediately, but the strain was felt afterwards and magnified by how frequently he warped, how little control he actually had over the distance he travelled. He couldn’t even be sure if he was warping only eight or so metres with each step or not.
[Strain: 29% → 56%]
But it was… fascinating. And powerful. As he warped over frozen streams, blocks of slick ice, scaling steep inclines and gradually throwing off the ‘scent’ of his pursuers behind him, he felt his heart thumping in his chest and his eyes glimmering with some sort of… emotion.
He’d never moved so fast before.
He’d never moved so freely before.
Sure, he was lost in a blizzard, and sure, he didn’t know where he was going—but with a tier one mutation that allowed him to warp, no cabin could ever bind him. No wall could ever prove insurmountable. Eventually, he’d break out of the blizzard and be able to survey his surroundings; then, surely, he’d be able to navigate his way back to familiarity.
[Strain: 56% → 78%]
Deposit twelve points into strain limit.
More stamina, more warps.
[Strain Limit: 510 → 522]
[Unallocated Points: 82 → 70]
He continued stumbling through the thick snow, looking over his shoulder with every few panting breaths, but those who’d been trying to pursue him seemed to have long since given up on following him through the blizzard. It made sense to him. He was a bullet ant soldier trained to be equal parts fearless and reckless; he had to be close to breaking through the blizzard. He could just… feel it. If he reached his hands out and clawed at the air, he felt he’d be able to grab the fog and physically twist it out of the way. That was how close he was to being able to see again, and–
"S̶t̶o̵p!"
Someone tackled him from behind, having blurred forward faster than any other pursuer, and the two of them fell forward with his rifle disappearing into the snow. He cursed internally. Letting his weapon go was a grave mistake, but an even bigger mistake was his tackler not immediately grappling him into a chokehold—he managed to twirl, snarl, and kick outwards all in one swift motion, the hardened sole of his boot smashing into the tackler’s nose to get them off him.
The warped voice that cried out in pain was shrill and young, undoubtedly female, but he hadn’t the time to feel pity for his captor. He saw the flicker of bright moonlight at the edge of the fog, at the end of the blizzard, and he warped one last time–
Before being dragged to a halt by the girl he’d kicked in the face just seconds ago, his entire body tugged back by the collar of his coat.
Just in time.
If she hadn’t pulled him back, he would’ve run himself right off the edge of the thousand-metre slope, tumbling to his death in the snowy, sky-piercing mountain range.
… Where am I?
As he fell on his rear and panted for breath, his stamina giving in from his strain, his eyes fluttered across the world and he immediately zoned out. The sea of fluffy, sparkling clouds a thousand metres beneath him that stretched from mountain to mountain, horizon to horizon—he didn’t know where he was. There were no traces of smoke from bonfires anywhere, no sounds of faint mortar shelling in the distance; there were no landmarks with which to estimate his current location.
He couldn't even tell which direction the Attini Empire was in, and the Empire was the largest realm on the continent. Even if he couldn't see the Great Fungus Forest or the Capital itself, could he not at least see the Crawling Seas themselves?
But I was on level ground before falling unconscious.
How far up the Hagi’Shar mountains did my captors take me?
…
… Irrelevant.
He gripped his fist in the snow and found his rifle after a second of blind searching, resolving himself to descend the incredibly steep slope. It wasn’t completely vertical, so he could find solid footholds here and there if he just really, really focused.
Fearlessness and recklessness in equal parts; he liked to believe he had more of the former.
If I can warp short distances, maybe I can also warp long distances.
Once I get up, I–
The girl behind him had other plans. Yanking him back with a mere telekinetic shout, she pulled him onto his back before warping over him, straddling him with her hands gripping onto his scarf. He tried to raise his rifle and jam his bayonet into her neck, but failed to draw any strength from his arms. Was he really that tired and drained after all?
Irrelevant.
He had to–
“Stop,” the young girl breathed, pulling her hood back and her scarf down to stare him in the eyes—and hers were the brightest, most striking sapphires he’d ever seen in his life.
They were ‘pretty’.
…
He stared up at her in silence, unable to comprehend just how pale the rest of her face was in the moonlight, and—ever so slightly—her lips shifted into a faint smile seeing him completely pinned under her gaze.
“You do understand me, then,” she said, her smile morphing into a wide, triumphant grin as her cheeks flushed red in the cold. He couldn’t resist a frown; her lips weren’t even parted, but he could hear her voice ringing in his eardrums. How could she speak without opening her mouth? “Good. Very good! I was worried for a second you were deaf and couldn’t hear us yelling at you to stop warping around like that—do you know just how many pitfalls there are in the snow around here? One misstep, and kaka! You’d be falling into the deepest of crevices this continent can offer!”
“...”
The girl frowned. He continued staring at her through narrowed eyes. The silence persisted for a moment longer before she quickly realised she might be sitting on him a bit too hard, so she warped off him before offering him a helping hand; he couldn’t help but notice her fingers were abnormally long compared to his, like worms grafted onto a human hand.
“I’m Ninmah. You can call me big sister, though,” she said, her lips gradually turning a soft, pinkish shade of purple as she smiled again. “It’s cold out here, isn’t it? Why don’t we go back together? Come on, I’ll give you a ride. I’ve had too much practice carrying kids around on my back to struggle with you… I think.”
“...”
“Oh, don’t just stare at me like that. Up we go.”
She didn’t ask for permission. Something small and circular glowed in her palm for half a second before she jerked her hand up, pulling him onto her back with an invisible force. His muscles ached and he couldn’t resist a flinch as he found his arms being wrapped around her shoulders; it was like he was a puppet being pulled around on cold metal wires, and there was quite literally nothing he could do to counter it.
But, compared to when he first woke up in an unfamiliar cabin, he wasn’t so agitated about not immediately returning to the battlefield now.
This system is powerful, he thought. And she has one in her spine, too.
He didn’t need to feel the bone protrusion on her nape to know; the very fact that she and all of the attempted pursuers could warp was proof of their having the same abilities as him.
So his mind spurred into action.
If he could stay alive in their presence and observe them, study them… maybe he’d be able to bring more important information back to the General than if he were to attempt escaping now.
… Fine.
Letting his strain drag him down into dark slumber for the second time in what, to him, felt like mere minutes apart, he rested his head on Ninmah’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Most likely, they weren’t going to kill him. They wouldn’t have patched him up, put him on a warm bed, and transplanted a new system into him otherwise. It made more sense if they were his 'saviours' rather than his 'captors'.
Still, he'd be wary.
If they made a move on him, he'd–
“Here,” Ninmah whispered, and he pried an eye open to see her reaching into her cloak, holding something out at him. “Have a snack.”
He stared at her, his gaze blank, but she was completely, earnestly serious about the small white worm wriggling in her palm.
She wanted him to take it.
"... Come on," she urged. "Eat the worm."