Another month passed.
By now, it’d been five months since Sparrow arrived at Immanu. Exactly half a year. While he couldn’t say he’d gotten completely used to warping instead of walking with every step forward, the same couldn’t be said of the Worm Mages’ aptitude for slaying Boreus—they’d gone from freezing in the face of eight giant insects to dancing and drawing circles around fifty of them at the same time, laughing and cheering and competing to see who could bring down the most with just their spears and arrows.
At the very least, watching the eighteen of them pick off the Boreus charging up the slope to Immanu didn’t fill him with dread anymore.
“... How many heads in total?” he asked, tearing his bayonet out of a Boreus head as he did. “I lost count halfway through.”
Minki yanked her bayonet out from her target as well, peering back and up the slope where the hunters were finishing off the last of the Boreus. “Including the patrol we intercepted yesterday afternoon, eighty-one Boreus in total,” she said, in her relatively quiet warping voice. She’d picked up the Immanu tongue rather quickly. “If we were not certain before whether the Boreus knew the exact location of the village, now we know they know. They have never tried to invade the village from this direction before.”
And that was the cold and unyielding truth. He’d told Ninmah and the others as much before rescuing Minki and the rest of her Silver Ant Battalion—while they may have killed most of the Boreus charging up the slope back then, one Boreus escaped, and now the giant bugs knew exactly where all of their non-combatants lived. Every direction from every corner of the village was liable to come under fire.
To that end, the Boreus attempted to invade the village just yesterday afternoon by scaling the slope, likely hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. Minki noticed. With a few idle elders’ help, the two of them had managed to drive the bugs away, but just a few hours ago—right after the usual hunting group of twenty departed towards the glacier—Minki had noticed another group of Boreus trying to scale the slope, as though the bugs had timed the hunters’ departure and tried to catch them completely out of position.
Thankfully, Sparrow had anticipated this invasion somewhat, so he was able to recall the hunters to the other side of the village within a minute. If the hunters had gone any further during that time, though, it would’ve just been him and Minki against fifty Boreus they couldn’t spare any bullets for.
“What’s up?” Ninmah asked, warping down to the two of them while dragging two giant carcasses behind her. Sweat glistened off her snow-white brows as she grinned at them. “Impressed at our efficiency? We managed fifty Boreus this morning all by ourselves, and in unfamiliar terrain to boot! The slope’s pretty slippery and it’s hard to shoot down at an angle, but we still did it! We even taught some of the younger kids how to use a bow as well!”
Minki squared her shoulders and stiffened as though she was about to say something, but Sparrow interrupted her with a nod.
“Yes. You all did well today,” he said plainly. Ninmah’s blush was immediate, but just as Utu warped down to them with a severed Boreus head and a proud smile as well, he fixed the two eldest children in the village with a stern look. “But I think it is about time we come up with a plan to exterminate the Boreus from Hagi’Shar for good.”
The wide smiles on both Worm Mages’ faces quickly vanished, and then—just as abruptly—their eyes focused on him and Minki like never before.
While the rest of the hunters above them started hauling the carcasses up the slope, the four of them knelt where they stood. Minki needed no ordering. With her own bayonet, she drew in the snow between them a small but detailed map of Hagi’Shar; that left Sparrow to tap on his spinal implant, prompting all of them to pull up their status screens.
Ninmah and Utu did as obliged, and knowing Minki’s was probably about the same as his, he only needed to glance at his own for a little while.
[// STATUS]
[Name: Sparrow, 'Human']
[Class: Worm]
[BloodVolume: 5.4/5.4 (100%), Strain: 146/2410 (6%)]
[Unallocated Points: 468]
[Strength: 9, Speed: 7, Dexterity: 9, Toughness: 7, Perceptivity: 6, StrainLimit: 2410]
[// MUTATION TREE]
[T1 | Wormhole Core]
[T2 | Vibrational Senses | Wormic Bones]
[T3 | Segmented Setae | Rigid Annuli | Sclerite Jaw]
[T4 | Proliferating Septa | Salt Epidermis | Filtering Gills | Omnidirectional Ocelli] 450P
[T5 | Peristaltic Vibration | Rapid Reconstruction | Cryogenic Release | Inorganic Digestion | Distending Limbs] 1350P
He hadn’t unlocked any new mutations since filtering gills, nor had he increased his basic attribute levels by much at all. Ninety percent of his point income over the past month had been dumped into increasing his strain limit so he wouldn’t tire from his abilities as quickly, and, as a result of that alongside his filtering gills passively increasing his stamina at all times, he could now indefinitely sustain a fist-sized wormhole as long as he was staring at it really, really hard. It was still a far cry from how much stamina Ninmah and Utu had now—both of their strain limits were well over eight thousand—but he was undoubtedly strong enough to warp at a leisurely pace from dawn to dusk without having to take a single break. With everyone pitching in to give some of their points this month to Minki so she could completely catch up to his strength, he was sure Minki was about as strong as he was now as well.
So the plan was simple.
“... We cannot afford to be on the defensive against the Boreus,” he said, closing his status screen and looking at Minki’s map; the circle representing the village was dead centre in the middle of Hagi’Shar, and the cross representing the Boreus nest was at the northern end of the glacier north of the village. He pointed at the cross, directing Ninmah and Utu’s attention there. “Minki and her Silver Ant Battalion narrowed down the location of their nest somewhere around this section of the glacier, so once Minki and I unlock all of our tier four mutations—and we will be focusing on doing so after we get our strain limits to two thousand and five hundred—we will launch a preemptive attack on the nest. We must catch the Boreus off-guard within the next month.”
Ninmah raised her hand. “Why do we gotta attack so early, though? Aren’t we making good progress? None of us have unlocked any new ‘mutations’ since you told us to focus on our stamina and basic attributes, but if we just keep hunting Boreus as we are, we’ll eventually outpace their strength, right?”
“No.”
“... No?”
“We are running out of time,” he said, and Minki drew several arrows branching out from the Boreus nest, surrounding Immanu from every direction. “Yesterday and today’s attacks have shown us they know exactly where the village is. They know where our homebase is. They came yesterday with thirty, today with fifty—tomorrow, they may well come with a hundred. No longer are they purely on the defensive, trying to get rid of us hunting them on the southern end of their glacier. If we let them probe us over and over with small forces, they will eventually realise the limits of our defence and invade with everything they have. It will be too late to do anything at that point.”
Ninmah bit her lips, her face a dark grimace. “We can’t win if they invade all at once?”
“No,” he said.
“We will die,” Minki added.
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“That is why for this next—and hopefully final—month, we must change our daily schedules accordingly,” he said, picking up his bayonet and drawing a wide circle around the village. “This is the final stretch of Immanu’s battle. From tomorrow onwards, nobody leaves to whittle down the Boreus’ numbers by the glacier. All hunters will be placed on rotational defensive watch around the village, and we will clear out all the Boreus meat we have stored to accumulate as many points as possible. Exactly one month from now, we will leave five elders with the young children to defend the village while the rest of us launch a sortie on the Boreus nest—it is only at that point that we will raise our attribute levels as much as we can to catch the Boreus off-guard, using our sudden explosive increase in power as our greatest weapon.”
“During this month, I will also attempt to triangulate the exact location of the Boreus nest,” Minki said, tapping the cross on the mind. “Our attack on the nest must be swift and sharp. The moment the Boreus catch wind of our leaving the village, they will no doubt launch a counterattack in order to drag us back. This will give them time to adapt and fortify their defences. Since their nest may not have been attacked before, we have a decisive advantage—our first attempt to attack must be our very last.”
Ninmah gulped. “And… if we fail?”
Sparrow and Minki looked up at her, their eyes cold and steady.
“They will adapt, and we will die,” they said.
“...”
Tense silence. The usual brightness in Ninmah’s eyes dimmed as she lowered her head and breathed out a loud sigh—and it was Utu who broke out into laughter first, waving his arrow around with the severed Boreus head skewered on.
“So it’s just like every single day we venture out to the glacier to hunt them down, then,” Utu said, looking almost excited as he beamed at Ninmah from ear to ear, flinging the Boreus head away. “We got this. I know we got this, big sis. We don’t have anything to worry about as long as we keep to what we’re good at: being annoying worms those giant bastards can’t ever catch on foot.”
Ninmah looked at him as though she were about to say something in protest, but then something passed through her eyes, and she decided to smile softly instead.
“... Right,” she breathed. Her eyes swirled with sapphire light once more as she clapped her own cheeks, rubbing them with her palms as though to dispel any worry or tension that might be trying to accumulate. “We’ve got you and Minki, and the children aren’t defenceless anymore. Even if they can’t hold the village while us elders go out to attack the nest, they can definitely run around the mountains for days and days on end without running out of stamina—us elder sisters and brothers can clean everything up once we get back.”
Sparrow and Minki dipped their heads in acknowledgement of her resolve to see this through to the end, and then all four of them stood up, Ninmah planting her fists on her hips as she puffed her chest out.
“Alright, then!” she said, giving Sparrow and Minki firm nods as they slung their rifles over their backs. “I’ll tell everyone about the change in schedule from now on! Nobody can leave the village for any reason at all this month, right?”
He frowned, both him and Minki glancing down the slope as a strange flash of light caught their attention. “Yes. No leaving. The Boreus will come and probe our defences no matter what, so we need not leave to hunt them ourselves. We can still gain points by playing defence.”
“Got it! Then, I’ll see you two at lunch! Don’t forget your morning chores of harvesting vegetables from the–”
“Wait.”
“...”
His eyes twitched as he stared down at the sea of clouds.
That flash of light was unmistakable.
So he yanked his rifle out at the same time Minki did, jerking the barrel down the slope—
And both their rifles exploded in their hands, throwing them back into the snow.
As Minki hissed next to him and he stuffed his burning hand into the snow, wincing, he fired blindly down at the sea of clouds, chambering each shot with only a single hand. Even if his aim was pinpoint accurate, though, he wouldn’t have hit anything. Five rectangular mushroom barricades immediately sprang up to absorb his bullets, forming a small horizontal wall a hundred metres below him; they were the Attini Empire’s instant blockades, and the carpenter ant builders in charge of carrying their spores used them as makeshift covers on the frontlines.
Carpenter ant builders.
From the Hagi’Shar Forward Army?
There was no time to think. Five more flashes of light, and five more shots rang out in quick succession. He managed to whirl where he lay and slapped Ninmah off her feet with his rifle, while Minki did the same with Utu, the two Worm Mages just barely avoiding getting their shoulders blown off. The rest of the incendiary bullets still exploded at their feet, kicking up a wave of blackrock shards and vapourized snow—and, with what little time the fog brought them, he turned onto his stomach to bellow up at the rest of the hunters whipping their heads down,
They couldn’t waste any time trying to see what’d made those fiery sounds.
They had to run.
“Retreat to the village!” he roared. “Do not look around! Warp in evasive patterns! Their bullets are laced with Vice-general Kuraku’s–”
“You children speak a different tongue, but my designation of ‘Kuraku’, the keeper of the fire wisp, remains the same no matter where I go.”
He whipped his head back, swinging the broken wooden end of his rifle, and the rest of it exploded in his uninjured hand like magic. More shrapnel stabbed into him, most bouncing off his rigid annuli. His face would’ve been shredded at such close proximity to the explosion, and while the natural bone-chilling temperatures of Immanu weakened it significantly, the same couldn’t be said for the source of the explosion—and Vice-general Kuraku waved the fog away away as she trudged through the fog, her long locks of hair completely crawling with thousands of crimson ants that gave them their fiery red sheen.
Bouncing onto his feet, he warped ten metres back alongside Minki and Utu, but Ninmah hadn’t yet recovered from the initial blasts. She was still coughing, and her ears were most likely still ringing by the time two carpenter ant builders emerged from the fog and wrung a wool sack over her head; kicking and screaming, she was dragged down to the sea of clouds while Kuraku scrunched her nose at the three of them, refusing to walk any further up to Immanu.
“... I notice none of you seem to be able to disappear and reappear at a destination you cannot already see,” Kuraku said, tapping the corner of her right eye as she did. “If you cannot see, you cannot reappear somewhere. That is consistently true with what I have been able to observe. Is it a mere limitation of your abilities, or is it crude and simple fear holding you back from reappearing somewhere you cannot perceive beforehand?”
“...”
“You do not need to answer. I will simply figure it myself, once I–”
Minki drew her obsidian-edged knife and charged at Kuraku. Utu nocked an arrow on his bow, aiming for the retreating carpenter ant builder’s heads with a wormhole to shorten the distance. Sparrow warped down after Ninmah, closing the distance rapidly as he reached his hand through a fist-sized wormhole, intending to rip off the lace keeping her hood tight around her neck–
Mistake.
He realised it too late.
The moment his fingers pulled the lace back, the line of crimson ants stuck to it burst into flames, blasting him through his wormhole and sending him crashing into the snow yet again. At the same time, Kuraku flicked a hand in front of her to cast another swathe of ants at the ground, detonating the slope to raise another massive fog. Everyone was thrown off balance. Utu's arrow missed the builders and Minki’s warp-stab was an inch off. Kuraku sidestepped the knife and slapped the flat end, and then there was a sharp hiss—followed by another point-blank explosion in Minki’s other hand, her knife shattering into a thousand fragments as she threw herself to the side.
Kuraku flicked her wrist before Minki could recover, and Sparrow couldn't roar at Utu to dodge. The blob of crimson ants she chucked straight at his face detonated mid-air, and it was a direct hit. A powerful boom. Utu managed to warp a single metre back, but the boy fell to the ground, screaming and clutching his charred left eye.
Sparrow immediately tried to pick up a wooden shard from the snow, but his fingers wouldn't curl, his burned hands wouldn't respond to him—Kuraku simply sighed and turned away from the disgruntled Worm Mages, brushing her hair out of her face.
“... I do not remember either of your designations, but you would do well to remember your Vice-general’s class,” Kuraku said, shaking her head in disappointment as she started trudging down the slope, sticking both her hands in her cloak pockets. “I am an exploding ant. I am a host of a thousand tiny bombs, and if I wanted to, I could have demolished this entire slope and caused an avalanche your village at the top would not have been able to survive. Be grateful I am not the General. He would not be retreating here.”
The carpenter ant builders she'd emerged with quickly retreated through the sea of clouds, dragging the struggling Ninmah down with them, and Sparrow tried to push himself to his feet. He gasped for air, but the fog was sticky with smoke and thick, acidic scents; he barely crawled to his feet by the time she walked past him, and she didn't spare even a single glance for him. There was only an irritated click of a tongue and another flick of her wrist—before he could gather his wits about him and warp in again, a fourth cloud of crimson ants flew into his chest, a light explosion blowing him right back against the slope.
This time, his spine arched and his mouth jerked open, but no cry of pain came out.
He was a good soldier.
And good soldiers wouldn't show their pain with something as pathetic as a ‘cry’.
As Minki warped down and grabbed his collar, trying to pull him back, he did his best to resist. He tried to warp down by shifting his weight forward. Minki responded by warping up, countering his attempts to charge in. He whirled and snapped his alabaster teeth at her, a violent, animalistic impulse he regretted the moment he did so—but Minki didn't let him go, and neither did Kuraku care about their tiny internal scuffle.
The Vice-general waved back at the two of them as the rest of the Worm Mages ignored his instructions, warping down as fast as they could in order to help.
“There is no need to worry. I do not desire to kill the girl,” Kuraku said with a small, scornful voice, barely audible over the howling winds and snow. “If she tells me everything I want to know about you people, then I will let her go unharmed. If she does not, then she will be acting in direct violation of Capital law. For both her sake and yours, do not attempt to make contact with us until we make contact with you—I trust former ant soldiers would remember the standard protocol for dealing with escaping prisoners.”
…
… Of course Sparrow remembered.
He was a bullet ant soldier; one of only ten in the Hagi’Shar Forward Army.
And yet, as he watched Kuraku’s silhouette wade through the sea of clouds and vanish with a puff of smoke, there was only one thing he said to Minki and the Worm Mages arriving to pick up the wounded.
“... The Barrows,” he growled, turning to grab Minki’s collar. “There is still one more place I have not shown you.”