When Ninmah had said she was taking him somewhere he’d not seen before, he didn’t think he’d find himself back inside the Barrows, standing before the twenty-metre-long chasm that separated the human world from the worm world.
It was supposed to be dinnertime already with the moon already fully up and shining outside, but fifty children were crowded around him trying to see what was going on, held back only by the elders shouting at everyone not to get too close to him. For his part, Sparrow wasn’t even doing anything special; he was simply carrying the bleeding silver ant scout in his arms while Ninmah was the one standing with one foot off the edge, staring across the chasm as the Brightworms on the other side stared back at them.
Their empty, eyeless gaze seemed to question what they were all doing here at this time of night, and in response, Ninmah clapped her hands once—silencing the children around them and making the Brightworms tense up on the other side.
“... I bring a wounded with me, and hereby I request an audience with your king,” she said, her warping voice trilling the updrafts of wind and booming across the cavern. “She does not have much time left. Please inform your king that if she does not receive an emergency system transplant, her blood will be spilt on the snow of Immanu. She will be a body that we cannot bury–”
“Again?”
And the voice that boomed back from the other side of the chasm came from all around, vibrating low, hard, and layered—the children winced and their eardrums were broken, most of them losing their footing in an instant. Ninmah and Sparrow were the only ones who didn’t falter, who didn’t so much as wobble a step off the precipice; the village chief merely spread her arms and puffed her chest, her expression unabashedly stubborn and adamant to get what she wanted.
From who, Sparrow didn’t know.
He was all too focused on trying not to drop the scout and reach for his rifle.
“First and only rule of Immanu: we save everyone we can save,” Ninmah said, narrowing her eyes. “If she dies, her blood will be a stain on your pristine land of snow.”
“...”
A different sound reverberated across. It was like a clicking tongue, but not quite. It was more like a thousand teeth grinding against each other through a hollow metal tube, a coarse and rough echo upon the icy walls that made the twenty or so Brightworms on the other side wriggle forward, interlocking and intertwining into a bridge over the chasm that met them halfway—the other ten metres, they’d have to figure out how to cross themselves.
With wormholes, that was an easy enough distance to cross, but Ninmah didn’t try to open one. Instead, she took a few steps back before charging, leaping off the precipice to land right on the tip of the worm bridge.
But when she angled her head to look back at him, nodding at him to follow–
“The boy cannot enter.”
He ran into an invisible wall the moment he tried to jump after her, but managed to stay on his feet as he skidded back, feeling a stabbing pain in his forehead. When Ninmah whirled at the worm world on the other side, furious, more invisible weights crushed down upon his shoulders, making his knees buckle. He dropped to the ground with the scout in his arms, teeth chattering, an uncanny cold washing over his body. It felt like a cold mist had settled over him, making everything feel more… distant.
Even with his rigid annuli, he felt if he tried to stand, he’d shatter every bone in his body.
“Let him pass!” Ninmah shouted. “They are of the same ilk! He shares the girl’s blood! If anything goes wrong, he can offer you assistance!”
“You cannot offer my kind anything apart from trifling quartz crystal snacks.”
“That’s because you never ask for anything! I’ll happily give you snack worms too, you know?”
“The boy is an outsider. He has seen and understands war. If he so much as catches a glimpse of what Immanu was created to protect, he will bring utter ruin to the world–”
“The ‘boy’ is Sparrow, and he is a child of Immanu!” she snapped, jabbing a finger at the flower ornament above his ear. “He wears the moonflower, feeds our ancestors, and wars against your sworn enemies! What more can you wish for from an outsider? Release your weight upon him and let! Him! Pass!”
“...”
Silence. Dreadful pain and weight. Just as he felt his shoulders could bear no more and he was about to be flattened into paste, the invisible weights lifted and he gasped for air, sweat dripping down his brows. The elders immediately warped forward with worried hands grabbing him all over, trying to get him to his feet; he nudged all of them away and cracked his neck, working his jaw to dispel some of the built-up tension.
Scowling, he took a running start and leaped off the precipice, landing right behind Ninmah on the worm bridge. He almost slipped and fell backwards, but Ninmah pulled him in with a small wormhole on her palm, her lips slightly trembling as she patted him up and down.
“Are you alright?” she asked, worry tightening her voice. “He didn’t use too much weight on you, did he? Can you walk? Do you need me to carry you? I can carry both of you at the same time, so if you can’t–”
“No time.” He tried to give her a thumbs-up, but since he had no free hands, he settled for a firm nod instead. “She bleed out in three minutes.”
“... Right!”
Ninmah immediately stopped fidgeting, relief plain on her face as she clapped his shoulders with a small smile, and then she immediately beckoned him to follow.
He was only slightly aware they were running on a bridge made out of twisted Brightworms, because once they stepped off the crystal plates and started running through the fields of tall crystal weeds, it was just like running on damp soil in the war-torn plains of the surface world. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, either—he’d stopped wearing them a month ago at Ninmah’s counsel—so he was even more keenly aware that gravity was weaker on this side of the chasm. His strides were longer with less force, he felt he could jump and easily hit his head on the ceiling of the cavern; soon, though, they reached the end of the cavern and found themselves staring down the open mouth of a giant Brightworm.
It was a dead Brightworm, several times larger than the largest worm he’d seen. It had to be at least fifty metres long, five metres thick in diameter, and half its body was stuck in the wall like the last thing it’d done with its dying breath was burrow its head out into the cavern. For her part, Ninmah didn’t hesitate. She nodded back at him only once before stepping over its giant teeth, straight into its mouth, and then… promptly slid down the hollow carcass, disappearing into whatever lay at the tail of the worm.
He squinted, trying to peer into the abyss at the end of the giant carcass, but he was a bullet ant soldier. Taking the plunge was what he was good at. He stepped over its teeth, his bare feet squishing against its cold and fleshy insides, and then he immediately lost his footing.
The slide lasted ten seconds in suffocating darkness.
Then, there was light. Bright, silver light at the bottom of the slide. Scrunching his face, narrowing his eyes, he prepared for a hard impact—and he slammed feet-first onto hard, silver flooring.
…
He’d slid out the tail of the giant worm and into a ‘room’.
More tall than it was wide, silver—so pristine it bordered on ethereal—dominated the entire dome-shaped room from floor to ceiling, the whole place lit up dimly by fluorescent tubes running in circles around the dome. It looked like a research laboratory he’d seen in the Empire, but a hundred times more advanced; arranged all around were sleek, curved workbenches made up of single chunks of alabaster, upon which lay forging tools, unfinished components, and metalworking instruments he didn’t recognise. There were vials and test tubes filled with shimmering liquid floating in the air, hovering blueprints and schematics the vials simply phased through when touched, and… at the very centre of the room, where all the workbenches and glowing tubes were circled around, dangled the master of the laboratory.
A giant worm hung suspended from the very top of the dome, but unlike its friends outside on the chasm, its armour plates were forged from the same silver that defined the walls of the laboratory.
… This place is not human made.
What… is this?
Ninmah was already standing under it, waving him over, and he managed to swallow a nervous gulp. As he stepped forward, careful not to walk into any floating vials or scrap metal defying all known principles of gravity, the silver worm suddenly snapped its head over and opened its crown of teeth at him. A cone of white light shone out its mouth, blinding him, scanning him from head to toe—he barely managed to squeeze his eyes shut before it stopped, just as quickly, and began to breathe.
At this point, it didn’t matter how much strength he had. One breath from the silver worm was enough to yank the scout out of his arms and into its mouth, at which points it immediately snapped its teeth shut and returned to its neutral position: just dangling vertically from the ceiling, all fifty metres of it wiggling left and right as its armour started shimmering, going half-transparent.
His eyes widened as he saw the silver ant scout being sucked up to the end of the silver worm, moved along by thousands of tiny bristles. Just as abruptly, he felt vibrations and movement behind him; he whirled just in time to see a dozen Brightworms sliding down the tail of the giant carcass he’d dropped in from, but instead of slamming into the floor like he did and crushing him under their weight, they defied gravity.
The very same Brightworms he’d been feeding the past few months started wriggling through the air to join the silver worm in the centre, and only now did he realise the silver worm was much, much larger than its peers—it might be the same size as the giant carcass he’d slid in from.
“... Running diagnostics. Visual and sensory scans indicate a female human, fifteen of age, stricken with a severe abdominal injury,” the silver worm said in a cold, distanced voice, making the entire laboratory rumble as the other Brightworms wriggled into its mouth. It was certainly large enough to fit all of them inside. “The penetrating trauma to the epigastric region is resulting in deep lacerations and significant blood loss in the abdominal wall. Heart rate elevating at a hundred and thirty-three beats per minute. Probability of potential damage to the liver is high. Death is imminent in forty-four seconds–”
“So give her a worm system,” Ninmah said, scowling directly up at the silver worm. “You can save her, can’t you? You let us into Wormnest because you don’t want Immanu to be stained with the blood of an outsider, right?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
As the scout continued sliding up its body, pushed by the other Brightworms under it, the silver worm curled only its head to stare pointedly down at her. “And can you be certain the girl will not divulge Immanu’s existence to the rest of the world once she wakes?”
“...”
To that, Ninmah warped over to Sparrow and rubbed his head hard, smirking from ear to ear.
“We won Sparrow over with our snacks and toys and games,” she said confidently. “She won’t tell anyone about you, just like Sparrow won’t. Isn’t that right, Sparrow?”
He didn’t really need Ninmah’s help with nodding, but she made him bob his head up and down anyways.
A moment of tense silence passed before the silver ant scout reached the very top of the dome, and the silver worm replied with a voice dripping with scepticism.
“It is only your world and humanity at stake, child of Immanu,” it said, the rumble of its metallic voice reverberating through Sparrow’s bones. “She will be yours in three minutes. Sit where you stand, do not leave my line of sight, and do not touch anything else while you wait.”
With that, Ninmah kicked the back of his knees gently and made both of them plop down cross-legged. Inside the silver worm, all became clear—Sparrow flinched when he saw the dozen Brightworms curling over the scout’s body, extending, piercing the girl’s flesh and spewing white foam into her open wounds. The bigger silver worm contorted, twisted, its insides shifting the girl around as the tinier ones wriggled around her smaller cuts and tears, repairing damaged clothing and knitting torn skin together. He figured the giant silver worm itself provided a sterile environment while the Brightworms were each the individual surgeons.
It was a disservice to call them mere ‘surgeons’, though.
He watched, in utter awe, as the Brightworms brought the dead back to life—fixing a wound that no surgeon in the Empire would even attempt to fix.
“... But now you’re wondering how it’s going to ‘give’ her a new system, right?”
Ninmah was whispering, intentionally suppressing her warping voice so as not to disturb the Brightworms. He furrowed his brows as he refused to take his eyes off the Brightworms, but he really did want to look at her and reply; he just wanted to stare at the healing process above all else.
“I said before that the Worm Mages were tasked with defending and repairing the Wormwall, right?” she said, shuffling closer to him despite his awed silence. “Back then, when the Swarm first appeared six decades ago, the humans who were chosen to be Worm Mages were chosen by the remaining Brightworms who didn’t crystallise as part of the Wormwall. Each village had its own Barrow, an ‘Envoy’ that served as the link between this world and the Brightmoon, and a small group of assistant Brightworms that’d help their Envoy with whatever it wanted to do. The Envoy you’re looking at right now is the very last one, and he’s the only one who can transplant worm systems to create new Worm Mages.”
He didn’t break eye contact with the silver ant scout, but he managed to get his thoughts in order—enough to muster up a single question.
“But, when we first met, you said you gave me last spare worm system,” he muttered. “Can this… ‘Envoy’ make more worm systems?”
Ninmah shook her head firmly. “According to our ancestors, the systems are made on the Brightmoon, and since there’s a limit to the number of Worm Mages each village can have, the Envoy can only transplant systems from Worm Mages who have passed away. Each birth must be accompanied by a death to ensure our population count doesn't explode to the point of revealing our existence.”
That only made him more confused. “Then, my system and the scout's… who we–”
“Worm systems can only be transplanted between people of the same sex, so you took my elder brother’s system,” she said, looking over to the scout, “and she will get my elder sister’s.”
“...”
That was what she’d meant by ‘last spare’, then.
So he didn’t press her on the topic.
Besides, the Brightworms had already finished repairing the scout’s surface wounds, and was in the process of putting on the finishing touches—that was, he spied the glint of a tiny silver worm wriggling up the girl’s nape, probing around with its crown of teeth before it suddenly stabbed into her.
He flinched when the tiny worm ripped out a similarly tiny metal ant, and the two critters fought for a while until the worm managed to swallow the ant whole.
Then, the tiny worm quickly burrowed into the girl’s nape, and more worms slithered around to stitch up the entry hole.
“... And that tiny silver worm–”
“That's the worm system,” Ninmah finished, nodding slowly. “They were designed by the Brightworms living on the Brightmoon, but I told you our ancestors were hunted down by humans as well, remember? When the Worm Mages were caught and experimented on, your people must’ve discovered the existence of those tiny metal worms in their necks, so they designed tiny metal insects of their own to implant into their soldiers… like you. When we brought you here for your worm system, you also had a tiny metal ant in your neck that fought back a little.”
He furrowed his brows as the scout started twitching, trembling, convulsing inside the giant silver worm; he’d done the same when his system had been upgraded from a carpenter ant class to a bullet ant class. “So all systems are just tiny… metal… insects? And shape of tiny metal insect determines your class?”
“Mhm. At least, that’s just what mama and papa told me a long time ago. I don’t know much about classes and stuff since I can’t read that advanced yet.”
“And when you replaced my system with worm, worm ate… my ant?”
“Your ant mutations—your sharp black teeth, basically—won’t go away quickly on their own, though,” she said, chuckling softly as she eyed him teasingly. “You know, what was that about you not talking your entire first two months here? Were your ant mutations stopping you? I thought you hated all of us.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her he did, in fact, disliked them at first. “Could not. Ant sharp teeth. If try talk, cut tongue.”
She hummed as though she didn’t believe him. “I see, I see. I wasn’t hurt at all, you know. Big sister doesn’t care if the little boy we saved isn’t grateful, not at all.”
“I not little,” he said, frowning. “I fourteen… I think.”
That got a blink out of her.
“You’re fourteen?”
“Yes.”
“... Oh.”
Falling so fast, her teasing expression turned into one of disappointment. He raised his brows slightly, trying to find some context in there, but just as quickly she coughed into her fist and sat up straight—refusing to look him in the eye as the slightest of smiles curled her lip.
“You can still call me big sister, though,” she mumbled. “I am still the village chief, okay? It’s not about age, okay? It’s about… um, who our parents appointed before they left. So I’m still the chief, okay?”
He nodded curtly. “Okay.”
“Good. Don’t tell anyone outside. I’m not thirteen. Now, let’s–”
“Do outside children know about this place?”
“...”
Ninmah offered him a weak smile.
“... They know about the Envoy, and they know systems can only be transplanted here, but nobody apart from the long lines of village chiefs has ever been inside Wormnest before,” she said. “Even the elders outside haven’t seen this place and the Envoy in person. I fought to get you in here because you’re an outsider helping us against the Swarm, so I thought you should know, but what you see in this place has to be kept a secret from the rest of the world–”
“You know, then,” he said, his eyes drifting across the workbenches left to right, front to back, before eventually they were led back—by intricate design—to the Envoy repairing the scout’s uniform even without possessing the original fabrics. “These blueprints and components for weapons. Strong weapons. Better than rifles. Better than mortars. I… cannot understand how they work, but if Envoy can help make strong weapons, then can change war against Swarm.”
Ninmah’s eyes were focused far away, staring at the scout being lowered through the Envoy’s body. “Yes. I know. I don’t have to be able to understand a single thing being built in here, either, to know they’re probably powerful weapons that can turn the tides of war.”
“Then give to Empire. Give to other Swarmsteel Fronts. Give to humanity. If so powerful–”
“We, of Immanu, may not have completely given up on the idea of humanity defeating the Swarm, but our Brightworms already have,” she said, shaking her head as she rose to her feet quietly, looking at him to do the same. “Our Envoy may be our village's 'god', but he hasn’t made a single thing for us since the Swarm wiped out all but this last Worm Mage village. The Brightworms no longer believe in humanity’s power, so they spend their days relaxing in the Barrows, waiting for this village to fall as well. It was already difficult enough convincing the Envoy to transplant a worm system into you—and you saw his attitude when I convinced him to do it again just now—so there’s no way he’ll let you take a single thing out of Wormnest. He hates it when we even ask for fun.”
He glared at the Envoy, standing reluctantly. “Then, what it plan? Just let humanity die?”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “Most likely. Our ancestors said it’s not like they’d planned on creating humanity and all life in the first place. We were just byproducts of them creating the Wormwall to protect the Brightmoon, and now that we’ve failed to defend the Wormwall for them, it doesn’t really seem to care whether we go extinct or not. The Brightworms here don’t really seem to care if they die in the process as well—as long as the Brightmoon is safe, nothing else matters.”
“But why not just help us? Just give plans and components to us. It easy!”
“... To begin with, we don’t understand what they are, where they came from, and why they know the things they do,” she said, smiling wistfully. “Are there still more Brightworms up there in the Brightmoon? Does the Brightmoon have its own defences? What are they hiding inside? What is the Swarm, really?"
“...”
“Even us Worm Mages haven’t figured anything out in the past six decades, so it’s best not to lose any sleep over it.” She trudged forward at the Envoy, beckoning him to do the same as she winked back at him. “What we have to do right now doesn’t change, and that’s receiving our new Worm Mage with a bright, beautiful smile. I don’t want her to panic and run like you did when you first woke up.”
He looked at her for a long time, his mouth grim.
It wasn’t a satisfactory answer, but… she was right, after all.
Right now, as the Envoy pried its crown of teeth open and let the silver ant scout fall into his arms, there was only one thing they needed to do—make sure she wouldn’t freak out and go on a rampage once she figured out her old ant system had literally been eaten by a tiny worm.
“... In her memories, her designated name is M1N-K1,” the Envoy said, curling its crown and pointing at the tail of the giant carcass behind them. “Now leave and never bother me again. I have no more spare systems to implant.”
Sparrow stepped forward to speak, but Ninmah hurried past him, kicking his shins and whispering at him to go.
If the Envoy had eyes, he felt he’d certainly be glared out—so he didn’t give the worm the satisfaction of doing so and whirled, turning to follow Ninmah out of the Wormnest with the scout in his arms.
… Silver ant scout designated ‘M1N-K1’.
Not even worthy of a designated nickname like ‘Sparrow’.
As the two of them began their climb up the slippery slide—he had far more trouble than Ninmah since he didn’t have his wall-climbing mutation yet—he wondered if maybe he should’ve just ignored the scout and went after the last Boreus instead.
Maybe he’d regret it if he did, but either way, one thing was for sure: the winds were picking up speed in the Hagi’Shar.
He’d have to get much, much stronger if he wanted to pull everyone through the storm.