The hollow wounds in the bullet ant soldiers were riddled with wriggling black masses of zombie ants, and Sparrow watched as the three of them were reanimated—the symbiosis of ant and fungus jerking their corpses around like puppets hung on wires.
He’d heard rumours that all Twelve Forward Army Generals had the exact same class, and that the position could only be awarded after surviving an encounter with ‘Regalia’, the Great Mutant of the South past the World End Front. He’d also heard rumours that Regalia was a zombie ant, but he’d never believed in people being able to come back from the dead. It was as preposterous a concept as believing in abilities like warping and making wormholes… but here he was, lying on the snow with a bloody waist, and here the General was, raising an arm and single-handedly commanding a hundred more undead soldiers atop the ramparts.
It was like ‘magic’.
Immediately, he shifted his weight backwards and warped—eight metres instead of the usual ten. His waist screamed out in pain and he grimaced, looking down at his wound. His proliferating septa mutation was keeping him from bleeding out, but the bullet was still stuck inside, and something was moving. Digging through his flesh. Twirling around his ribs. He tried to stand to no avail; he only managed to warp another eight metres backwards as the General walked slowly forward, keeping his army poised and ready to fire.
“... From Kuraku’s observation reports, it would appear you Worm Mages have two manners of ‘warping’ through space,” the General said calmly. “One, you carve a circle in the air and create a ‘door’ that connects two spaces together. This appears to drain you and requires plentiful concentration to accomplish. Your second option is much more convenient, where you can simply disappear and reappear by taking a step or leaning your weight in the direction of your travel, but Kuraku reported you being able to warp ten metres at once. That you can warp only eight metres now means physical pain is a deterrent capable of slowing your movements.”
There was no point taking out his rifle. He didn’t have any chitin-piercing bullets loaded, and he had no idea if there was even any point shooting back at any of the soldiers—if they were already dead, how much damage would he have to do to their bodies just to keep them down? Could he even keep them down permanently? How many zombie ants can the General control, and how much of their bodies could he reconstruct with his zombie ants?
Were there any limitations to his ability?
No. There was no point thinking about it. Escaping was the smarter option here. He had to stand–
“Enki!”
Just as the hundred soldiers fired in an eight metre radius around him, making sure there’d be no escaping for him even if he tried to warp, someone else darted in and quickly warped him out of the death volley.
It was a fifteen metre warp.
“... Minki,” he mumbled, wincing as the former scout slung him over her back, her eyes glaring at the General far in front of them. “I told you… not to come. Why are you–”
“I figured something was going to go wrong!” she breathed, turning round to begin sprinting, warping, dodging volleys of bullets as they streaked through the blizzard and slammed into the snow all around. “Either you were going to break your promise and return to the army unconditionally, or the General was going to do something completely unpredictable and take you off guard—what is he doing? How are the bullet ant soldiers standing up? What did he–”
“He’s a zombie ant,” he rasped, glancing behind him to open several bullet-sized wormholes, warping a few shots away from them. “He can reanimate the dead and control them like puppets. I wasn’t wrong when I thought I killed Kuraku. The Capital sent only three thousand of us here because they were confident he’d be able to pull everyone through, alive or dead… and he definitely can with that ability. The Hagi’Shar Forward Army was never going to lose this campaign in the first place.”
He heard Minki grinding her teeth. “A zombie ant? Like… Regalia? How did he even get a class like that?”
“Not important right now. Focus on warping. We must return to Immanu and–”
“Your abilities are not ‘magic’, Sparrow!” the General bellowed, his voice tearing through the blizzard and making Minki shiver. “The worm systems will not remain as mere fairy tales! Your abilities will be unmade and understood! Surrender thirty systems to us by daybreak tomorrow, and I will not press your village any longer!”
…
And that was a declaration of war if Sparrow had ever heard one.
Through the blizzard, Minki carried him all the way back to the base of the mountains, and the Hagi’Shar Forward Amy began to rumble as it moved.
----------------------------------------
Unsurprisingly, the Worm Mages were all peering over the edge of the slope as Minki finally clawed her way up to the village, and by then, both of them were utterly shaken—Sparrow from the bullet still lodged in his waist, and Minki from having been warping for at least twelve hours straight.
The former scout fell on her face the moment they reached the village, and immediately, a dozen elders warped them both into the closest communal kitchen. The stoves were still lit, pots and pans still bubbling with leftovers from dinner; this was probably the warmest room in the entire village. As the elders shouted at the youngest of the young to seal the windows and drag a few mattresses in, Ninmah hoisted him onto a table for the time being, pressing the back of her hand on his forehead.
He didn’t need to feel the sharp, stinging cold of her hand to know he was burning up.
The bullet he’d been shot with was no ordinary bullet.
“... You’re too late for dinner, too early for breakfast, and we don’t serve supper here,” Ninmah whispered, her eyes teary as half a dozen elders panicked around her, warping in and out as they searched for their medical supplies. “You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. There’s no exit wound on the back of your waist, so… we can probably pick out whatever’s lodged inside you. Yep. We’ve done it many times before whenever some of the younger kids step on crystal shrapnel, so–”
“It’s a bullet laced with parasitic fungus,” he hissed, snatching her hand when she tried to place it on his waist. “Don’t… try to remove it with tongs or pincers. The bullet’s spreading its roots inside me, and if you try to tear it out, the roots will take my flesh out along with it. I doubt even my proliferating septa will be able to stop the bleeding then.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
As Ninmah blinked and tilted her head in confusion, Minki clicked her tongue and groaned, lying face-down on an adjacent table.
“I thought we didn’t come to Hagi’Shar with any parasitic bullets,” she mumbled, as Utu threw a blanket over her and fed her steaming soup from a pot; somehow, she still had enough strength to turn and scowl at him. “They’re rare bullets, aren’t they? Even the Capital can’t manufacture them in bulk because the fungi takes so much time to cultivate. If the General has parasitic bullets, then–”
“Okay, stop!” Ninmah clapped her hands, cutting their conversation short. “Not important! Don’t care how the bullets are made! Just tell me what’ll happen if we don’t remove the bullet!”
Sparrow grumbled as someone slipped a pillow under his head. “If left unchecked, the parasitic fungus… will use my body as nutrients and gnaw away at my flesh from the inside-out. Within twelve hours, I will become a drained husk.”
The children in the back shuddered, and the elders stopped making the kitchen a more comfortable infirmary as their faces blanched; it was only Utu shouting at all of them to keep lighting the braziers that they started moving again.
“... Alright.” Ninmah stayed by his side, biting her lips and squeezing his hands. “Twelve hours. Okay. That… sounds terrible. Now, say you accidentally get hit by one of these bullets in battle—what do you do to get it out? What’s the typical procedure to deal with it?”
Minki and Sparrow answered as one. “Typically, we die–”
Ninmah whacked him on the head, scowling fiercely. “No. Think again. You said it’s a type of fungus? Like a mushroom that grows throughout your body? That means it’s a living bullet, right?”
“Correct,” Sparrow muttered, nodding absentmindedly. His head was spinning, his vision was blurry; his mouth felt painfully dry. “It’s… categorically, a ‘living’ bullet. But killing it is impossible unless it’s outside my body, and if it’s already outside, that means I’m already dead. In that case–”
“Watch this.”
With a whistle, Ninmah called Enli and Hijo over, all three of them immediately slapping their palms around his bullet wound. He tried to lift his head and look at them strangely—it was his turn to be befuddled—but they didn’t give him the chance to protest.
Their arms started vibrating, a gentle tremor spreading from their shoulders to their elbows to their wrists to the tip of their fingers, and something inside him screamed. It felt like a hundred tiny knives flicking across his blood vessels, stabbing him in the gut, but… he gritted his teeth and did his best to unclench his stomach muscles. He had to relax. The parasitic bullet was getting vibrated to death inside him, and the moment he felt its roots fully retracted from his blood vessel, he’d give Ninmah the signal.
That was now.
He nodded sharply once, and Ninmah twirled a tiny wormhole open above his wound. There was a low thrum. There was a final streak of pain, the sensation of his nerve endings getting ripped out, but then—the dull black bullet was dragged out by the wormhole, disappeared through the other side, and he quickly reached for a cup of freezing crystal water to disinfect the wound.
The wound was still throbbing a little, but the pressure in his waist was gone. He let out a heavy breath and lay his head back on the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut as the Worm Mages started celebrating around him.
He hated being the bringer of bad news, but he was the only one who knew it.
“Listen, all of you,” he began, voice haggard, quiet as a whisper. “The negotiations with the General… have failed. He knows he cannot transplant the worm systems into his soldiers without the Envoy, and yet he still desires the worm systems for dismantling and research, and he will kill you for them. The entire Hagi’Shar Forward Army will reach the base of the blackrock mountains by daybreak tomorrow, and when that happens… it will be a siege. It will be war–”
“You know, we guessed as much when you came back with a bullet inside you.” Ninmah chuckled back, caressing his cheek with a soft smile as the elders calmed the children down, telling them to be quiet. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got this. We’ll hold the slope and make sure nobody steps foot into our domain.”
Sparrow couldn’t help but twitch an eye.
“No,” he said, shaking his head as he sat up straight, clutching his waist as he did. “The Hagi’Shar Forward Army and the General… they are more fearsome than you know. The General is a zombie ant. He can revive the dead and keep up the siege for as long as he wants. All of you must pack your belongings, say your farewells to this village, and run deeper into the north where he cannot find you.”
“And what will you do?”
“Stay here and buy time for your escape. The General doesn’t know about the Barrows, the Envoy, and the Wormnest. If I can detonate and bury the entrance with some of the leftover quartz crystal bombs, I can make the General believe there’s nothing of worth in the village–”
An arrow whizzed past his ear at a speed his eyes couldn’t follow, and it struck a wooden pillar behind him with a solid thud.
Utu hadn’t even shot it from a bow; it was a thrown arrow, and both him and Minki glared at him from the adjacent table where they sat.
“... Nothing of worth, hah?” Utu said, shooting him a toothy grin. “We’re not leaving. It’s the same with the Boreus, and it’s the same here—it won’t do if mom and dad come back to see our village taken over by a bunch of a slow-learners, eh?”
“We can hold the village for as long as we want, too,” Minki added, nodding slowly. “We have the high ground advantage. We know the terrain. There is only one slope up the blackrock mountains for the Forward Army, and it will be a chokepoint. Taking the village will not be as easy for the General as you think it is.”
Ninmah squeezed his hands once more, and in the reflection of her watery eyes, he saw his own eyes were nothing short of sapphire blue as well; he’d been using the worm system for long enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up the next morning with white hair as well.
He wasn’t… a bullet ant soldier anymore.
“You would’ve died to that bullet if we weren’t here to help you,” Ninmah said softly. “I’ve let you have your fun. You met the General, you tried to meet him halfway, and it didn’t work out—so now it’s our turn to make him meet us halfway, ‘in-between’ this world and the next.” Then she shot him a smile as well, and it made his heart stop for a brief moment. “You were the one who made us strong. You were the one who taught us how to fight. Do you think we’ll lose to your General if we fight him together, Enki?”
“...”
Of course not.
The Worm Mages were living miracles.
They’d already removed an unremovable bullet from him; were they really, really so unreliable that he thought they’d have to run from an easily defendable chokepoint just to live the rest of their lives in hiding?
What sort of ‘peace’ would a life of hiding be?
“...”
So, he sucked in a cold breath and reached for his rifle slung over his back.
A hundred and twelve children looked back at him expectantly, faces full of pride, eyes full of fight.
“... Eight hours until dawn,” he said, returning a firm nod at Ninmah. “Shore up the defences. Rip into every last chunk of Boreus flesh we have. If the General wants a fight with the children of the ‘in-between’, then we’ll show him the world we live in—three thousand metres in the sky.”