He could not master making wormholes by the end of the day, and that was okay.

The third and final week of the month that passed was monotonous, but not uneventful. Immanu wasn’t static; a village comprised of a hundred and eleven children, most under the age of ten, meant there were lots of mouths to feed and too few hands to go around for the relatively difficult chores.

While Sparrow hadn’t seen everyone gathered together even after an entire month, he could tell there weren’t many boys around his age who could handle the intensely backbreaking labour, which was mostly warping up and around the village as a piggyback giver for children who couldn’t warp around by themselves—Ninmah had told him children under the age of ten could only warp in groups of four to prevent accidents from occurring, so if someone wanted to go somewhere alone, he had to accompany them no matter how boring the motive was.

Since most of the children were too young to handle incredibly difficult labour, the Worm Mages were roughly split into cooks, washers, haulers, harvesters, and patrollers, given new roles and chores to do every day. Ninmah was the village chief and the oldest child in the village, so she did just about everything where extra help was required; the same couldn’t be said of the youngest. Most between the ages six to eight were split between the cooks and the washers, responsible for preparing everyone’s basic meals and cleaning clothes and beddings and fabrics in the crystal river streams. Ages nine to ten were mostly haulers and harvesters, responsible for plucking and getting the daily vegetables to the kitchens, as well as general cleaning and tidying duties for the rather cluttered village.

The patrollers were all the oldest children in the village—all between ten to thirteen years of age—and even now Sparrow had yet to see a single one on his usual morning runs. According to Ninmah, they were always diligently warping around the edges of the mountain range, keeping a lookout for anything that might be trying to break into their village. Unless he explicitly went out searching for them, he’d never bump into any of them inside the village.

It was quite a shame, really. He’d wanted to see if the village guards had any special worm system techniques he could learn by observation, but he might also be getting ahead of himself. After all, it’d been a week since he first learned how to open a wormhole, and he still couldn’t make more than one the size of his fist a day. The strain was too much, and he’d need a lot more attribute points just to increase his strain limit to a level where he could make two small wormholes a day.

… It wasn’t worth spending his remaining points on increasing his strain limit. He was thinking he’d either unlock a tier one mutation or deposit all of it into increasing his attribute levels, but he wouldn’t have to think so hard if he just had a steady source to draw lots of attribute points from. Preferably, he wouldn't have to rely on Ninmah's sporadic snack worm delivery.

So now it was exactly noon, first day of his second month in Immanu, and after he finished helping Ninmah out with her morning crop harvest, he started warping past the fences and past the boundaries of Immanu—not intending on straying too far from the village, but just far enough that he could maybe stumble on a patroller.

Sometimes, the stew they feed me has small chunks of meat.

Not insect flesh, but still actual chunks of meat.

Heading in the exact opposite direction from his cabin, he crossed mounds of ice, scaled blackrock hills, and made a point to look out for any critter beasts scampering across the snow. He couldn’t really ask without knowing the Worm Mage’s tongue, but the meat he tasted in his stew was always some sort of venison—he’d had it once or twice as a bullet ant soldier—which meant the patrollers must be hunters on the side as well. If he could find one of them and get them to tell him where their usual hunting grounds were, he might stumble upon a giant insect and be able to devour its flesh for attribute points.

After all, his eyesight was the best among all the battalions under the General’s command.

And it didn’t take him long before he spotted the shadow of something burrowing underground, tunnelling through the snow to get away from him.

A giant insect?

He followed it without hesitation, his bayonet rifle already gripped tight in his hands. Warping up to the boulder where it’d just been mere seconds ago, he looked around the mountain range before seeing its shadow squirming away ten metres off to his right. He warped after it again. Whatever it was, it seemed to be just a little bit faster than him at all times; maybe he should be a bit more careful in case it was a giant insect, but with his current attribute levels and mutations, he didn’t think a single insect would be much trouble for him.

Eventually, he lost track of the shadow. He warped onto the precipice of a small cliff, overlooking a gargantuan glacier stretching out towards the horizon like a frozen river. Ten metres below, the ice was marred with a mosaic of cracks and crevices, the deep blue hues glistening in the sunlight. Blackrock mountains flanked it on both sides to the very end, icy behemoths each piercing the clouds in the sky, and he knelt to peer over the edge—assessing the distance to the surface of the glacier before catching a glimpse of the shadow ducking into a large crevice.

Taking a single step forward, he warped ten metres down to the glacier and pulled his bayonet back in a defensive stance.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t blink.

He kept his eyes swivelling in a wide berth in front of him, ready to catch even the slightest hints of an unnatural movement.

Is it a bug?

Am I being led into a trap?

The Hagi’Shar Forward Campaign was the Attini Empire’s attempt to retake control of the wintry Hagi’Shar blackrock mountain region, just north of the Capital, and the General was dispatched with five thousand soldiers to combat the ‘Boreus’ insects—a common name to refer to all giant scorpionflies and snow fleas that reside in the region. There weren’t many insects who could survive the cold and the rough mountainous terrain at the same time, so they’d underestimated the Boreus purely because they just didn’t have much information on their enemy; that was the reason their forward outpost had been overrun a month ago by more bugs than they’d thought even existed.

There was a chance, no matter how slight, that the bugs were smarter than he thought they were, and that meant he could be walking right into a whole horde of them right now.

… I just have to pay attention.

Be ready for anything.

If it turns out to be a trap, I can just warp–

Ice cracked in the far distance. The chilly winds picked up speed. Scattered across the endless glacier were crystalised boulders, some as large as houses, some draped in snow and others bare and stark—but his target was pure black and giant, long and scaley, a blemish in the otherwise frosted landscape. Its shadow dipped behind a boulder the instant his eyes caught it inching forward, and he raised his bayonet, ready to stab forward at a moment’s notice.

Black and giant…

Long and scaly…

What, exactly, am I hunting here?

In one place, then another, ice shards sprayed from cracks in the glacier and shot into the air, fogging his vision. As he tried not to flinch, a nauseating black splotch started worming straight towards him from the front, tunnelling just under the translucent blue surface and making the ice above it rupture in a long line. It was hard to focus his eyes on it; the falling ice shards made it hard to see anything at all, hard to tell how fast the splotch was moving, and just as he took a step back to warp away out of caution–

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All ten metres of the gargantuan black Brightworm exploded out the glacier in front of him, soaring into the air with its teeth pried open, and he finished his backstep without warping away.

His heart hammered in his ears.

Mistake.

Try to relax.

Remember the sensation of walking ‘in-between’–

At the last moment, someone warped in next to him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and warped him all the way back up to the precipice of the small cliff. The sensation of movement was jarring, to say the least; he doubled over and winced from the abnormally ‘fast’ warp as the Brightworm crashed into where he’d been standing just a second ago, gnashing a few metres deep into the surface as though it’d find him burrowed under.

Fortunately for his panting, trembling self, the young boy who’d warped him out of the way was kind enough to pat him hard on the back, nearly knocking him right off the edge while he spun to get a good look at the boy’s face—pale skin, blue eyes, and long white hair braided in loops around the ears. If the four-petal diamond flower ornament adorning his hair wasn’t sign enough that he was a Worm Mage, the insignia on the back of his cloak and hood was. He looked slightly younger than Ninmah, still, but he had a scar over his left eye that gave Sparrow the impression he was used to scuffling with beasts… that, and the fact he was holding a pearlwood bow while carrying a quiver of arrows behind his back.

The boy slapped Sparrow on the back one more time for good measure, chuckling as he peered down at the evidently perplexed Brightworm. The beast had no idea where Sparrow went.

"̵… Dark̷ hair! ̵W̷hy ̴yo̵u̴ he̶re?" the boy said, and the right-in-his-face warping voice practically grated his eardrums into shreds; he was reminded once again that only Ninmah knew how to speak his tongue. "Ayaa̷ah,̴ don̴'t̷ ̵hun̵t̴ ̷D̵arkwo̶rm ̷o̴n̷ yo̶ur̶ ̵o̵wn!̵ N̶eed̶... ̶uh̸, ̵qua̷rte̷t̵! Qu̴arte̷t̵! Four̴ peo̴p̶le̵!”

Trying to get his point across, the boy raised two fingers and chided Sparrow in a teasing voice; Sparrow felt he could understand some of the boy’s warping words, though he still hadn’t gotten the hang of the Worm Mage’s tongue completely. They were less words than they were… vibrations. Frequencies he had to tune inside his ears. For now, the best he could do was decipher their intentions via hand gestures and general facial expressions—and while the boy may have seemed a bit irritated just mere moments ago, he was now pointing excitedly down at the Brightworm.

"̵G̴o̷od̴ on yo̵u!" he said, nocking an arrow onto his bow and grinning at Sparrow as he did. "H̶ow̵'d̷ ̸you̸ f̶ind̷ one?̸ Yo̵u̴ m̵u̴st h̴ave̷ ̵in̴cred̷ible̴ e̸yes, ̴eh?"

Sparrow blinked, tilted his head sideways. The boy blinked back before slapping his forehead, pointing at the scar on his eye.

“Utu!” the boy said slowly. “Y̵ou… ‘Sparrow’, O̷ka̸y?̴ ̵Nin̴m̵ah̷ t̴o̴ld̵ ̴me! ̵Y̴o̷u̷ ̵sl̷ow̶ ̴lea̵rn̴er̷!"

His name. The boy’s name was ‘Utu’. Somehow, Sparrow felt he was understanding more and more of the Worm Mage’s tongue—and he scowled when he felt as though Utu wasn’t exactly saying something nice about him—but now wasn’t the time to feel accomplished with his slow learning.

Utu’s voice was loud, and the gargantuan Brightworm beneath them heard him speaking. The entire glacier rumbled as it burst vertically up at them, a blur so fast Sparrow couldn’t possibly have reacted to it on his own; Utu grabbed him and warped them twenty metres back behind a boulder as the Brightworm crashed onto the precipice, its whole squirming body exposed to sunlight.

Sparrow was about to dart back in with his bayonet when Utu whacked him with the tip of an arrow, shushing him to be still.

"No fig̷h̴t̴ D̵a̶rkworm̶ ̶wi̴th kni̵f̵e,̵" Utu whispered, before pointing back at his eyes. "̴Wat̷ch̷, ̸s̴lo̴w ̷le̷arne̵r̵. ̸Th̷is ̷h̴ow̶ ̵I̷m̷ma̷n̵u̵ ̴h̵unt.̵"

“...”

Somehow, again, Sparrow felt like he got the message. He took a quick half-step back behind Utu’s shoulders, let the boy notch an arrow, pull the bowstring back, and aim.

Frankly, he didn’t think the Worm Mage’s arrow could pierce through black crystal plates as thick and gnarly as they looked on the flailing Brightworm. Even if a worm wasn’t exactly a giant insect, the Attini Empire still had to import specialised anti-chitin weaponry from the northeastern front just to be able to put a dent in their carapaces from afar; he’d no doubt the Brightworm’s armour was about as effective as any giant insect’s chitin at deflecting simple projectiles.

Unless, of course, Utu showed him a trick only the Worm Mages of Immanu could do—and that was exactly what he did.

Sparrow narrowed his eyes as Utu whistled aloud—a song sung with his warping voice, drawing the Brightworm’s attention with a snap—and then he quickly twirled the tip of his arrow in a circle.

Light bled out the sharpened flint tip, and a wormhole opened right in front of his arrow.

… What?

And there was no delay, no hesitation; Utu released the arrow with barely any strength, and the projectile bypassed the strong winds, the foggy mist, the twenty metre distance, and flew right into the Brightworm’s fleshy mouth. The great beast seized like it’d been electrocuted with lightning, crystal plates cracking, segments contorting and jittering around like it was being twisted by a hundred invisible hands—and then it fell slump, sliding off the precipice to land where it’d just been moments ago with a loud boom.

For his part, Sparrow was still staring at the side of Utu’s delighted face, quite unable to take a step forward.

He opened a wormhole with the tip of his arrow and then shot through it.

I thought… I needed to use my finger?

Before he could poke and query Utu with a symbol, the younger boy grabbed him by the wrist, warping him forward, down, straight in front of the Brightworm’s carcass. The sudden motion made him jolt forward into its dark crystal plates, but while he braced himself for a hundred tiny cuts, the crystal plates turned out to be smoother than they looked—his palms were pressed flat against the side of its head without so much as a prick on his skin.

Utu walked up next to him, shot him a grin, and started carving between the seams of the Brightworm’s crystal plates with a small knife.

"Ca̷n't ̴b̴eat ̵a D̵arkwo̶rm ̷clo̸se̵-ra̷n̵ge̵, ̴y̵o̷u̸ ̷know?̶" he said cheerily, starting with the plates next to its giant teeth. "̷Y̷ou g̷ot̵ta̵ ̶hu̵n̴t ̷from̶ afar!̸ ̷O̵n̷e w̸ell̷-p̸lac̴ed̵ sho̸t ̷int̷o̵ ̶it̵s̶ ̵co̴re̷ a̴t ̵t̶he ̵end of̶ it̶s ̷mouth ̸w̶ill̷ d̷isab̶l̵e̵ ̶it̸ ̴i̵ns̸ta̷ntly̸, ̵so–”

Sparrow interrupted him with a tap on the shoulder, miming carving a circle in the air with his fingertip. Utu glanced back with a small frown, evidently puzzled, so he drew a circle again, pursing his lips and clenching his jaw to mime exerting a lot of effort; eventually the Worm Mage’s eyes lit up and he laughed, turning back around to continue carving the carcass.

"̷Ninm̵ah̴ ̴s̵tu̷pi̷d, to̵o!̶” Utu said, chuckling between breaths. “You̶…̷ ̴uh,̷ ̸can… circle̷…̷ ̸with…̸ a̴ny̷th̶ing.̵ ̵N̵o̶ nee̵d j̴us̵t̴ ̶fi̷ng̴er. Ok̶ay?”

To demonstrate, Utu carved a small circle with the tip of his knife, and a wormhole formed out of the light bled from the silver blade—it wasn’t nearly as big of a wormhole as anything Ninmah could open, nor was it opened as fast, but it was opened.

And that was all that mattered.

“N̵inma̴h̵ good̷ ̴at ̴s̸ewing ̸and ̸kn̴itting, so she taugh̵t̷ you̴ ̵to̷ u̵se̸ f̶inge̴r," Utu said, shaking his head in dismay before returning to his carving. "But ̷just u̷se̸ w̵hat ̶i̶s ̴n̴atur̴a̷l ̷to̵ ̴you. ̵I hu̵n̵t ̵g̷ood̷ ̵w̷it̵h ̸b̴ow̵ a̴nd ̴a̵r̴ro̸w̴, ̶so I̵ ̴twir̵l̴ circ̸l̵e ̴with̵ ̷arrow. You g̵ood ̸at d̷r̵awin̷g̸ c̶i̸rcles̸ ̷with̵ any̷ o̵f ̸your̴ ̴limb̴s, S̴par̶ro̴w?”

… I just need to draw a circle with something?

He couldn’t immediately come up with an answer. Not one that involved potentially helping him draw perfect circles, anyways, but if he didn’t need to use his finger, then that meant he wouldn’t have to bother levelling his toughness. He assumed there’d still be a need for strength to carve a wormhole open, but bleeding from his nails was no longer as major a concern as before–

The carcass wobbled.

Utu jumped back.

Sparrow tensed up.

And the two of them were quiet as they stared at the carcass for a good few seconds.

"... E̴h.M̵u̵s̵t'v̵e̴ b̷ee̵n̶ ̴the̴ ̶wi̶nds–"

The Brightworm snapped upright, whipping its crowned head a full semi-circle, and Utu swiped at Sparrow just half a second too late—the giant beast had already managed to slam its entire body into the glacier, making the entire ground crack and rumble and splinter into a dozen unstable chunks of ice.

Utu warped out of the way in time, but Sparrow had still been tense.

The Brightworm caved in the glacier and him along with it.