Sparrow sat on his bed, watching snow pelt against the windows and listening to the winds churning up a nasty storm outside. His rifle lay beside him, and the broken bayonet shards were still left in a bowl on the table a few metres off, reminding him he was lacking both a knife to stab and bullets to shoot with—his rifle was little more than a glorified club until he could find the time to fix it.
The blizzard had been slowly dying down the past week, but he could tell by the worried looks on the Worm Mages’ faces whenever they passed that it wasn’t normal. Blizzards weren’t supposed to last this long, nor this ferocious and oppressive; he’d no doubt it was the Attini Empire’s doing. Their mortars and artillery cannons were designed based on the black sporespike fungi, which were mushrooms that ejected poison spikes far up into the air whenever a flying insect tried to pluck them from the soil—and the Empire had weaponised them against the Swarm. The General himself had gained half his notoriety by modifying hundreds of gigantic sporespike fungi that could eject shrapnel shells instead of normal poison spikes, turning them into the backbone of any siege. As far as Sparrow knew, though, the modifications weren’t perfect; the giant sporespikes still released a bit of poison into the sky whenever they fired.
Most likely, it was this same poison that was polluting the sky around the mountain ranges, resulting in the harsher-than-usual blizzard.
… But this also means the army should not be very far away.
This village of worms must be right atop the mountain range next to our overrun forward outpost.
It was difficult to see out the windows with the blizzard raging as hard as it was, but he had a rough idea where he was: at most a few dozen kilometres away from the first outpost the General had erected at the border of the wintry Hagi’Shar region. How high up he was into the mountain ranges was another matter altogether; at least now he knew he hadn’t been whisked away to some strange, strange dream while he’d been unconscious.
Still annoying.
But time to try again.
There were no clocks in his cabin. Nothing to inform him of the time. Still, he’d been trained to wake sharply at eight in the morning as a soldier, and he’d woken up only two minutes ago—given Ninmah and the other Worm Mages always visited him at nine at the earliest with baskets of crunchy snowfruits, he had about an hour to do as he pleased around the cabin.
He swung his legs off his bed, rose to his feet, and took a tiny step forward–
Headfirst into a wooden pillar holding up the second floor.
… Again.
Rubbing his forehead and tightening his jaw as he did, he took a single, cautious step back—and warped even further back this time, overshooting his bed and bumping into the nightstand. He scowled and looked down at his feet, pressing his heel so hard into the floorboards it left a small dent in the wood.
For the next ten minutes, warping around the cabin was all he did. Tables were run into. Potted plants were knocked off their windowsills. The curtain flaps he’d almost torn off their hooks a few days ago rustled whenever he passed by, which perplexed him to no end—was he not ‘disappearing and appearing’ between two locations, but merely moving at speeds imperceptible even to himself? He’d seen speed before, and he didn’t think this was superspeed; it was made even more apparent when the Worm Mages had been directly warping in and out of his cabin the past week without ever once opening the front door.
They weren’t just moving so fast his eyes couldn’t catch up, right?
[Unallocated Points: 71]
[Strength: 4, Speed: 3, Dexterity: 8, Toughness: 4, Perceptivity: 2, StrainLimit: 522]
In the end, he ran himself ragged after ten full minutes of continuous warping and plopped himself back down on his bed, sweat pouring down his brow. It wasn’t even about controlling his warping—if he couldn’t even stop himself from warping whenever he took a step, there was no way he’d be able to safely make the journey back to his battalion.
He'd rip himself apart before ever making it out of the village.
What is it that I am missing?
Dexterity for finer control?
Toughness for more physical durability?
More strain limit so I have more stamina, since every single warp drains me incredibly so?
Planting his arms behind him, he glared at his status screen and hesitated to do anything with it. Seventy-one points was a lot for him to deposit, and he didn’t want to use any of it right now if he didn’t have to. His dexterity and toughness were already eight and four times that of the average man respectively, and to increase his toughness level up from four to five, he’d have to deposit four times four amount of points—that was sixteen points into an attribute that may not contribute at all to him being able to control his warping. Raising his perceptivity level to three would be a lot cheaper, so it might be worth a try, but again—he had no idea which attribute was the limiting factor here. Maybe his basic attributes had nothing to do with controlling his warps.
Maybe I need to unlock one of the tier two mutations, then?
[T1 | Wormhole Core]
{T1 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ???}
[T2 | Wormic Bones | Vibrational Senses] 50P
{T2 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ???}
… But it was also a hefty fifty points to unlock each of the tier two mutations, and he couldn’t read. He didn’t know how to. Grunt ant soldiers like him were never taught in training; the best he could do was read numbers and memorise which of them correlated to which attributes in which row. For all he knew, he could be approaching his new class entirely wrong—what if the attribute locations had been switched around and he’d been misreading everything up until now?
The only way he could get tons more unallocated points was if he consumed giant insect flesh, and he highly doubted he’d be getting any more anytime soon. Ninmah's snack worm supply was exhaustible as well, so maybe he could count on her being able to give him one or two points a day, but that wasn't nearly enough to make any meaningful progress.
... What a pain.
He kept on sitting and staring, but only for a little while longer. ‘Idling on the battlefield is like a cicada unaware of the mantis behind it’ was the phrase the General liked to tell all of them low-class ant soldiers, and it’d been beaten into them during training, during battle, during war, over and over and over again. He took a peek at his strain and noticed it was only at sixty percent, which meant he could afford a few more warps. Just a few more. Surely, if he kept on practising, something would just click in his head about which attribute he really had to raise. The insurmountable wall would be no longer–
And he warped into Ninmah the exact same moment she warped in by the front door, both of their heads knocking together as they stumbled back, groaning.
“Ow,” she grumbled, rubbing her rosy nose as he took an involuntary second step backwards, warping right back onto his bed where he fell against the bedding. He couldn’t help a quiet wince this time; her head was a lot sturdier than any wall he’d ever run into.
Tough on the skull as well, huh?
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Several more Worm Mages warped in and out of the cabin, bearing baskets and flowers and fresh towels for him to wipe himself down with, and Ninmah coordinated all of them to leave their gifts on the table so fast he barely even caught a glimpse of their faces. They’d been more curious the first few days of the week, constantly arguing with Ninmah so they could stare and poke and prod at his funny appearance, but the young girl had been adamant about him getting his rest—at least, that was what he thought she’d been saying. Whenever she switched back to her native tongue with her warping, air-tearing voice, his ears would start ringing and he’d cover them with his blanket.
Whatever she’d really said to them, though, had made them all come to a reluctant agreement: until he was well enough to step foot outside the cabin, only Ninmah would be allowed to talk with him. No arguing about it.
He didn’t really mind the silence from his end. Getting ignored and ignoring his captors meant he had more time to practise on his own.
Today, too, was looking just about the same as the past ten days when Ninmah turned and saw the shattered potted plant under the windowsill. He’d half a mind to get up and clean the mess himself, but before he could even stand up again she’d already drawn a circle, made the shards fall through, disappear, and warped over to his bed with a basket of snow melons held out in her hands.
“... You still won’t talk to me, huh?” she mumbled, pouting as she pushed the basket into his arms. “I’m calling you strange names in my head, you know? Dark hair, black teeth, spiky hair, runaway boy, break-a-new-potted-plant-every-time-I-check-up-on-you… you do have a name, don’t you?”
He narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak, but it was more so that all bullet ant soldiers were all vastly incapable of coherent speech. No matter who it was, all bullet ant soldiers had the same tier two mutation, ‘Vicious Paramandibles’, which sharpened their teeth into tiny black saws that could let them chew through all sorts of materials. It was a useful mutation in battle when they had to eat and digest whatever organic material they could get their hands on to recover their stamina, but as a tradeoff, their teeth were so sharp that if they were to try to talk, they’d end up cutting their tongue to pieces.
Even with his ant system switched out for a new one, his teeth had yet to unsharpen. If Ninmah wasn't lying when she said it’d take about a year for all his old mutations to fade away—and he’d not the faintest idea how that could possibly happen—then he wouldn’t be speaking actual words for another year.
… Not that he thought he’d have much to say, anyways.
So he took a look at the snow melons, hesitated for a second, and then raised one into his mouth. The crunch was crystal, the sweetness too overbearing on his tongue, but he wasn’t about to complain; the food low-class ant soldiers were given at the outpost was much, much worse. He wasn’t too picky with his food. Anything that could give him the energy needed to fight the Swarm was good enough.
“Alright, then. No name for you,” Ninmah continued grumbling, though there was a smile tugging on the corner of her lips as she dabbed his forehead with a small towel, wiping sweat off his brows. “You know, all of us can hear you warping around in the middle of the night. Your movements are very… um, loud. Why not go to sleep? Your body’s still in the middle of adapting to your new system, so you need to rest and spend most of your time sleeping, not practising your warping. Can’t you wait just another week or two before trying to run around?”
He scowled, resisting the urge to slap her towel away.
No.
I am a soldier of the Attini Empire.
I cannot be idle.
Ninmah watched him eat in silence, munching on his melon with two hands, and before long she sighed and pulled him up by his ear—as easy as a child could pluck a bean sprout from the earth.
This time, he didn’t resist the motion and finished his melon, swallowing quickly as she started patting him down from head to toe.
“You’re not wearing enough,” she said plainly, her head shooting up while she was kneeling to frown at him. “And I don’t think you’ll be good with cold, right?”
… No, not really–
“Wait a bit. Here, have a snack.”
She reached into her cloak, rummaged around, and dumped in his hands two small white worms before warping away.
Begrudgingly, he tossed the snack worms into his mouth and forced himself to chew.
[Unallocated Points: 71 → 72]
He waited three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds was all it took for her to blur up and down and across the cabin, rummaging through the closets and cabinets before warping back in front of him with a bunch of identical white cloaks clasped in her hands. Then she became an afterimage again, warping behind him over and over as she measured which cloak would fit him best from the shoulder down; it was almost impossible to catch her between warps, and for a moment he just tried to stay as still as possible, wondering if his superspeed theory could actually be true.
Maybe I need to raise my perceptivity level as well.
Too many attributes he had to raise, too little points to work with. Ninmah was done sizing him up by the time he finished his thought and flung the plain white cloak around his shoulders, hooking the blue tassels in front of his collarbones together to keep it from falling off.
“There,” she said, patting her hands as though to wipe off any residual dust. “I didn’t want to take you out until you were fully rested, but if you’re just raring to go, then… alright. With this cloak, you should be fine to go outside. The blizzard’s about to subside in a few days, too, so the cold shouldn’t be unbearable for much longer.”
He looked over to the army-issued fur coat he’d taken off, scrunching his face. My normal coat would have been good enough. This one is too thin, anyways, to actually ward off the cold–
Ninmah interrupted his thoughts by grabbing his left hand with her own, raising them before their faces.
“Don’t let go, okay?” she warned. “I don’t know where we go in between warps, but our ancestors always said if people get flung off halfway through, they’ll disappear like the wind and never return—so don’t let go.”
And where are we going–
He was slow. Ninmah took one casual step forward and dragged him through her warp, pulling both of them right outside the front door, and the movement was… ‘slow’, too.
That didn’t feel right.
He pursed his lips and looked back at the front door, wondering why his jerky, uncontrollable warp felt much ‘faster’ than hers—she was supposed to be far stronger than him, after all—but Ninmah didn’t give him a chance to contemplate. As the first wave of gently falling snowflakes blew into his face, she took a second, third, fourth step, each warp pulling him away from the cabin and through into the misty blizzard, filling his vision with nothing but muddy nausea and bright, spinning stars.
Not too fast, but still… painful.
Should I be walking with her?
Tightening his fingers around her hand, he tried matching his steps with hers, hoping the simultaneous steps would make the warps more manageable. It was of no use. He could barely see five feet ahead of him while getting dragged around, let alone catch a glimpse of her leg movements or the blurry village they were passing by in continuous flashes of light—the best he could do was bite his teeth, try to keep up with his own set of panic steps, and hope they’d reach wherever they were going soon enough.
‘Soon’ arrived quickly.
Ninmah stopped all of a sudden, throwing her hands into the air as she laughed out loud, and Sparrow couldn’t stay on his feet as he collapsed onto one knee. His vision was pure white, his eardrums were ringing with the lingering thrums of the warps; he hadn’t strained himself by even one percent of his system’s measurement, but it felt like he’d been the one warping.
Even still…
The way she warps is different from how I warp.
As he panted for breath and Ninmah stood over him, patting his back and humming a soft song to calm him down, he stole a glance at her bare feet.
There was no snow on top of them, as though she hadn’t even so much as attempted walking in a hurried manner.
He tilted his head in quiet befuddlement.
Is it not about attribute level?
If it is a walking technique, then–
More hands started patting him on the back and he tensed up, truly opening his eyes and ears for the first time in a week.
He looked up, and about a dozen thickly layered children stood around him, laughing and giggling as Ninmah instructed them to comfort him with their pats.
… What is this place?
And then he looked further past the children, past the snow, past the blizzard—his eyes immediately drawn to the gargantuan hundred-metre chasm in front of him, bridged across by a web of frayed ropes that looked as though they hadn’t been maintained or replaced in several decades.
Ninmah crossed her arms and puffed out her chest, smiling proudly out at the chasm.
“This is Death Rope Passing, where we train our young to warp,” she said, her eyes twinkling with excitement as she grinned back down at him. “In Death Rope Passing, either you'll learn how to warp today or you'll die trying—so there’s only one trick you have to learn!”