For a good few seconds, nobody in the Wormnest was able to move. Exhaustion was part of it, and injuries too, but the fact of the matter was, none of them had been prepared to see one of their own coming back from the dead—and they’d certainly not been prepared to see it inside their shelter, the one place in the world that was supposed to be safe.

It didn’t matter how strong their blockade to the outside world was.

The General was in here with them, and his eye made of zombie ants looked down at Minki’s body, as though he himself couldn’t believe what he now had access to.

“... What did you do?” Ninmah said, her voice quiet as a whisper, turning away from Sparrow to stare at Minki. “You… when did you–”

“When she was holding onto Kuraku, I made sure to spread a few of my ants onto her back in the event she perished,” the General said, making Minki shrug nonchalantly. “I always have contingencies for all of my weapons. If one falls, I can bring them back stronger, though it takes a fair amount of concentration for me to control even one corpse precisely. Controlling three with precision is my maximum, as you saw with the bullet ant soldiers, but when it is just one corpse with one particularly powerful insect class, I can be quite powerful—”

“Give her back.”

Minki tilted her head at Ninmah’s quiet request. “You truly are a child, as Kuraku said you were. All of you live too peaceful lives, so much so that the concept of ‘death’ eludes you,” the General said, before jamming Minki’s nail into her own throat, making everyone flinch and reel away. “When someone dies, there is no coming back. Not even Regalia, the Great Mutant of the South, can achieve such a feat. M1N-K1 has already fallen in battle–”

“Give. All. Of. Them. Back.”

Ninmah lashed out, forming two wormholes in her palms as she tried to yank Minki in, but Minki was stronger and faster than even the bullet ant soldiers’ well-trained bodies—the General grunted and had her flick her rifle in a wide circle, firing four times in a single second. Four more elders fell in an instant, and it was just Sparrow, Ninmah, and thirty children remaining.

Something spurred in Sparrow’s chest as he watched the triplet brothers and Enli fall, their bodies falling lifeless next to Utu’s, and with strength he didn’t know he still had in him–

He grabbed Ninmah and warped away with her, taking cover behind a workbench as Minki began a wild shooting spree at all the remaining children.

[Strain: 82% → 78%]

“This must be where your worm systems originated from, and that silver worm in the ceiling must have been your god,” the General said calmly, and Sparrow had to sink his nails around Ninmah’s waist just to stop her from screaming out, rushing out to her death; neither of them had enough strength right now to protect the children. “The blueprints, the prototype, everything… The technology in this room is astounding. I thank you for leading me to this place, Sparrow. All of your sacrifices will not be in vain.”

The screams hurt his ears. The cries of resistance were nails in his heart. The children raised their shortened bows and picked up scrap metal from the workbenches, throwing whatever weak projectiles they could throw at Minki, shouting for the General to let go of their beloved older sister—none of it was of any use. Sparrow couldn’t see her physically while hiding behind cover, but he could hear it. The General was learning how to warp, how to make wormholes, and he was slowly getting used to Minki’s insanely enhanced body that Sparrow had helped make into what it was.

None of the children were of any match to her, and Sparrow had to stuff his forearm across Ninmah’s mouth; he’d let her bite through his skin and wring out as much blood as she wanted if she could just keep quiet for a little longer.

“Unsurprisingly, your bodies are rather durable as well. As expected of children who reside in the wintry extremes of the Hagi’Shar,” the General commented, and the last child stopped crying over the workbench; Sparrow had to bite his tongue as Ninmah sank her teeth into his arm hard enough to crack his rigid annuli. “Say, where are all of their parents? I assume there are none left alive, else they would have participated in this siege a long while ago. How long has it been since they perished? Is there a cemetery around this village? Would their bodies be intact enough for me to attempt raising them from their graves?”

…

[Strain: 78% → 70%]

He’d waited far too long.

He’d sacrificed all of the children for this.

Ripping away from Ninmah, Sparrow vaulted over the workbench and immediately warped into Minki’s face, faster than he’d ever warped before—his knee broke her nose and sent her tumbling over, and it was obvious the General was still a little unfamiliar with his new body. The Minki he knew would’ve gotten back up in an instant, but instead she was just half a second slower, allowing him to warp around her and lock in her chokehold with his rifle.

Got… you.

He warped in place when Minki tried to warp away. After all, they had the exact same abilities. The General could enhance her strength, but his strength was higher to begin with; they were evenly matched at worst, but he felt he was still a bit stronger than her.

And he didn’t want to scar her body any more than he had to.

Throwing Minki to the ground, he kicked her rifle out of her hands and shot Ninmah a firm, painful nod. Ninmah’s eyes were bloodshot peeking over the workbench, but she read his mind ‘in-between’ and warped in front of Minki, two wormholes swirling in her palms.

“Suck them all out!” he hissed, struggling to hold Minki back. “The zombie ants! If you can get them out of her head, there’s a chance–”

“That M1N-K1 would come back?” the General said, laughing sardonically. “You are Sparrow, designated marksman of the Eighth Bullet Ant Battalion. You have drawn more blood from men than bugs in the two years you have been a bullet ant soldier, and you believe the dead can come back to life? There is no place for them to go to. There is no place for them to return from–”

“Shut it!” Ninmah roared, slapping her wormhole palms on Minki’s face to begin sucking out the zombie ants; Sparrow had no idea how many the General had gotten inside her, but it had to be a fair amount. “You… your Empire hunted our grandfathers down and exterminated them for their systems! You believed you could achieve more with the derivative systems you based off of ours, and you know what? That’s fine! I’ve never seen what your Empire did to our grandfathers! The first person I met from the surface world was Enki, and he’s a joy to be around!”

Minki lurched forward, trying to throw Sparrow off her back, but he held firm and Ninmah kept her palms glued to her face; neither of them would relent here.

“Do you think we wanted this? To fight you and your Forward Army like this? Your ancestors thought you could do better than the Worm Mages with your new systems, so just leave us alone, then! Let us retire from the war against the Swarm in peace! I wanted to keep playing with everyone, keep feeding Brightworms with everyone, keep worm dancing with everyone… why do you have to come back decades later just to mess with us like this?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Because humanity is still on the losing end of this war,” the General growled. “I know not of your people’s history. I was not born back then, and I do not care about your past; right here, right now, your systems will be invaluable to humanity. I swear this to you. Forfeit your lives and give me your raw systems, and I will lead humanity to victory.”

Ninmah’s eyes burned with rage. “I’ll gladly give mine to Sparrow if he can combine our worm systems to make an even stronger system, but to you? You? Don’t make me laugh. As if I’ll ever–”

A sudden flash of light dragged Sparrow’s attention down, but he was too late, too slow—Minki unsheathed her obsidian knife and plunged it into Ninmah’s chest, making the chief reel and gasp, stumbling back and closing her wormholes in one swift motion.

He lost his focus.

His mind went to the gutters.

Minki regained ground for just a split second, but that was enough for her to flip him over, slam him into a workbench, and pick up his rifle before he could even register what’d happened.

Ninmah–

The cold barrel of his own rifle pressed into his forehead, and at the General’s will, Minki could pull the trigger.

Sparrow froze.

He didn’t breathe.

He didn’t move.

He was faster than Minki, but not that much faster; certainly not faster than she could pull the trigger the moment she saw the air twisting around him, the telltale sign of a Worm Mage about to warp.

…

But, for some inexplicable reason, the rifle was shaking in Minki’s hands, and the General’s zombie ant eye swerved to look down at her hand.

“You…” he whispered. Minki scrunched her brows and gritted her teeth, tears leaking out the corner of her milky white eye. “Even Kuraku only maintained her consciousness for a few hours after death because her brain was not severely damaged, but your face is blown open. How are you still–”

Sparrow moved, unsheathing an obsidian knife from his back to slice off Minki’s fingers before ripping his rifle back, kicking her to the ground. The General didn’t resist, no– Minki didn’t resist. If she still had enough control of her facial muscles to wince, she didn’t show any pain as he slammed scrap metal into his rifle, firing four times to shatter her elbows and knees.

That was her movement sealed, so he warped over her body, ready to smash the stock of his rifle down into her skull for good measure…

…

And he found himself hesitating.

He was more scared than he’d ever been in his life. Sweat poured down his brow as terror raced through his chest. Anxiety had electrified his muscles, turning them into barbed wire so sharp it felt like just the slightest bit of movement would rip him apart from the inside out—his eyes glittered with water as his breaths came out ragged, his hands unable to bring his rifle down on Minki’s head.

He hadn’t even known her that long. It was much, much less time than he’d spent with his fellow bullet ant soldiers, and he’d killed some of his own comrades before for defecting. How was she any different from the soldiers who’d pointed their rifles at him as he caught them running from camp in the dead of night, aimless, unsure of where to go even if they managed to get away?

What was Minki to him?

A comrade?

A fellow child of Immanu?

Or was it something even more?

And in the end, it was only by staring straight into her milky white eye that he got his answer.

She gave him a small, small smile—just a tiny one that tugged on the corner of her lips—and nodded slowly, tucking in her chin so he’d have an easier time smashing through her skull.

So he obliged, if not only to give her mercy, and the sickening crunch that followed was the last sound he heard for a while.

… Ninmah.

He let out a sharp breath, dropping his rifle, stumbling on Minki’s lifeless body as he limped towards Ninmah; the village chief was sitting with her back to a workbench, eyes closed, both hands pressed around her chest wound as if that would do anything to slow the bleeding.

There was no bleeding.

Like him, she’d unlocked ‘Proliferating Septa’, which meant only direct strikes to any of their organs could fatally wound them.

In that sense, the General had won.

… Like hell he has.

His eyes flickered across the Wormnest, searching for any advanced-looking equipment he could possibly use to stuff her wound. Something like gauze or sponge or even just a wad of cotton—anything would do at this point if he didn’t have to see her clutching her heart with her breaths so shallow, her face so listless. This wasn’t how she looked. The Ninmah he knew was always so much cheerier, so much happier. This face just wasn’t right.

She agreed.

Snatching his wrist before he could warp away to look for something soft, she nuzzled her cheeks into his hands and dipped her head; her cold breaths stabbing like daggers against his bare skin.

“... You were so cold and distant when you first woke up on that bed, six months ago,” she whispered. “Now… look at you. Such a red face. Such colourful eyes. So… so warm, your hands are.”

“...”

“You’re not a ‘weapon’ anymore, Enki,” she said, lifting her head ever so slightly; her bleary eyes were focused so close, yet so far away. “You’re human, in every definition of the word, in every tongue there exists in this world, so if you’re still going to be stubborn and say you are a weapon, then… well, I guess I can’t stop you. The best I can do is ask you to pick the ‘in-between’, both human and weapon, so here’s… a snack worm for all your troubles the past six months.”

Slowly, she reached into her cloak and pulled out a single snow worm, placing it gently on his shoulder.

He didn’t bother looking at it.

He wanted to keep looking straight at her.

Because that was how he’d figured out who Minki was to him, and this was how he’d know who Ninmah was to him.

“I’ll give you another snack worm if you kick the General and the Swarm’s ass for all of us,” she whispered, beaming at him from ear to ear, flicking the tip of his nose. “All of us… will be waiting for you… in-between the sky and the earth, where the Brightmoon shines like nothing else in the world…”

…

Ninmah’s end, much like Minki’s, was a quiet but smiling one.

It was the exact same face.

It was the exact same tug of her lips.

The day he’d been ordered to stay behind and die on the battlefield, he’d seen JA1-NA smile the same way in her final moments—what was with that stupid, pointless expression?

They were dead.

The dead don’t go anywhere, and they have nowhere to return from.

Where were the Worm Mages going to wait for him, and for how long?

… The answer, he felt, couldn’t be found in this desolate room in the middle of a mountain.

It could only be seen with his two eyes, staring up at the Brightmoon.

So he remained kneeling, and stared at Ninmah for a few minutes longer—until he found, somehow, yet another burst of strength to stand up straight.

This was probably ‘human’ strength, quite unlike any power he’d ever drawn from before.

…

He turned around.

He kicked up his rifle.

He fastened the flower ornament in his hair.

And human strength was all he drew upon as he reached for the surface, where the Hagi’Shar blizzard was strongest.