Worm Mage

When Ninmah had said she was taking him somewhere he'd not seen before, he didn't think he'd find himself back inside the Barrows, standing before the twenty-metre-long chasm that separated the human world from the worm world.

It was supposed to be dinnertime already with the moon already fully up and shining outside, but fifty children were crowded around him trying to see what was going on, held back only by the elders shouting at everyone not to get too close to him. For his part, Sparrow wasn't even doing anything special. He was simply carrying the bleeding Silver Ant Scout in his arms while Ninmah was the one standing with one foot off the edge, staring across the chasm as the giant worms on the other side stared back at them.

Their empty, eyeless gaze seemed to question what they were all doing here at this time of night, and in response, Ninmah clapped her hands once—silencing the children around them and making the worms tense up on the other side.

"... I bring a wounded with me, and hereby I request an audience with your elder!" she said, her warping voice trilling the updrafts of wind and booming across the cavern. "She doesn't have much time left! If she doesn't receive an emergency operation, her blood will be spilt on the snow of Immanu! She will be a body we cannot bury—"

"Again?"

And the voice that boomed back from the other side of the chasm came from all around, vibrating low, hard, and layered—the children winced and their eardrums were broken, most of them losing their footing in an instant. Ninmah and Sparrow were the only ones who didn't falter, who didn't so much as wobble a step off the precipice. The village chief merely spread her arms and puffed her chest, her expression unabashedly stubborn and adamant to get what she wanted.

From who, Sparrow didn't know.

He was all too focused on trying not to drop the scout and reach for his rifle.

"First and only rule of Immanu: we save everyone we can save," Ninmah said, narrowing her eyes. "If she dies, her blood will be a stain on our pristine land of snow."

"..."

A different sound reverberated across. It was like a clicking tongue, but not quite. It was more like a thousand teeth grinding against each other through a hollow metal tube, a coarse and rough echo upon the icy walls that made the twenty or so worms on the other side wriggle forward, interlocking and intertwining into a bridge over the chasm that met them halfway—the other ten metres, they'd have to figure out how to cross themselves.

With wormholes, that was an easy enough distance to cross, but Ninmah didn't try to open one. Instead, she took a few steps back before charging, leaping off the precipice to land right on the tip of the worm bridge.

But when she angled her head to look back at him, nodding at him to follow—

"The boy cannot enter."

He ran into an invisible wall the moment he tried to jump after her, but managed to stay on his feet as he skidded back, feeling a stabbing pain in his forehead. When Ninmah whirled to glare at the invisible voice on the other side, furious, more invisible weights crushed down upon his shoulders, making his knees buckle. He dropped to the ground with the scout in his arms, teeth chattering, an uncanny cold washing over his body. It felt like a cold mist had settled over his inorganic parts, making everything feel more… distant.

Even with his rigid annuli, he felt if he tried to stand, he'd shatter every bone in his body.

"Let him pass!" Ninmah shouted. "They are of the same ilk! He shares the girl's blood! If anything goes wrong, he can offer you assistance!"

"He cannot offer our kind anything."

"That's because you never ask for anything! I'll happily give you snack worms too, you know?"

"The boy is an outsider. He has seen and understands war. If he so much as catches a glimpse of what I truly am, he will bring utter ruin to the world—"

"The 'boy' is Sparrow, and he is a Child of Immanu!" she snapped, jabbing a finger at the flower ornament above his ear. "He wears the moonflower, honours our family, and wages war against our sworn enemies! What more can you wish for from a human? Release your weight upon him and let! Him! Pass!"

Silence.

Dreadful pain and weight.

Just as he felt his shoulders could bear no more and he was about to be flattened into paste, the invisible weights lifted and he gasped for air, sweat dripping down his brows. The elders immediately warped forward with worried hands grabbing him all over, trying to get him to his feet. He nudged all of them away and cracked his neck, working his jaw to dispel some of the built-up tension.

Scowling, he took a running start and leaped off the precipice, landing right behind Ninmah on the worm bridge. He almost slipped and fell backwards, but Ninmah pulled him in with a small wormhole on her palm, her lips slightly trembling as she patted him up and down.

"Are you alright?" she asked, worry tightening her voice. "He didn't use too much weight on you, did he? Can you walk? Do you need me to carry you? I can carry both of you at the same time, so if you can't—"

"No time." He tried to give her a thumbs-up, but since he had no free hands, he settled for a firm nod instead. "She bleed out in three minutes."

"... Right!"

Ninmah immediately stopped fidgeting, relief plain on her face as she clapped his shoulders with a small smile, and then she immediately beckoned him to follow.

He was only slightly aware they were running on a bridge made out of twisted giant worms, because once they stepped off the chitin plates and started running through the fields of tall crystal weeds, it was just like running on damp soil in the war-torn plains of the surface world. He wasn't wearing any shoes, either—he'd stopped wearing them a month ago at Ninmah's counsel—so he was even more keenly aware that gravity was weaker on this side of the chasm. His strides were longer with less force, he felt he could jump and easily hit his head on the ceiling of the cavern.

Soon, though, they reached the very end of the cavern—the very end of the Barrows—and they pushed through the fields of crystal weeds, stepping foot onto cold metal instead of damp soil. The temperature was bone-chilling here. The ground, the ceiling, and the walls on either side of the once gargantuan cavern all spiralled inwards into a single point in front of him, and his eyes naturally wandered forward, following the mesmerising curvature until he spotted the colossal worm curled up in front of him.

Sparrow froze.

Instead of normal chitin plates like the giant worms by the chasm, the colossal worm had metal plates for chitin and silvery veins running under it. If that wasn't telling enough about how unnatural it was, it was also at least fifty metres long with a crown of wicked silver teeth made—far, far, far unlike any worm he'd seen thus far.

'Powerful' was the only word to describe it.

…

Ninmah was already standing right before it, waving him over, and he managed to swallow a nervous gulp. As he stepped forward, the colossal worm suddenly craned its head over, and a cone of white light shone out its mouth like a giant spotlight, blinding him, scanning him from head to toe.

He barely managed to squeeze his eyes shut before the worm turned off the light, just as quickly, and began sucking in a deep breath.

At this point, it didn't matter how much strength he had. One inhale from the colossal worm was enough to yank the scout out of his arms and into its mouth, at which point it immediately swallowed her and closed its jagged crown of teeth.

For a second, his eyes widened and he worried it'd just devoured the scout, but then the colossal worm's metal chitin became half-transparent, and he saw the scout floating inside some sort of silver blood inside its body.

Just as abruptly, he felt vibrations and movements behind him. He whirled just in time to see a dozen giant worms wriggling through the fields of crystal wields, heading towards the colossal worm.

"... Visual and sensory scans indicate a female human, fifteen of age, stricken with a severe abdominal injury," the colossal worm said in a cold, distanced voice, making the entire Barrows rumble as the giant worms wriggled up its body and crawled into its mouth. The colossal worm was certainly large enough to fit all of them inside. "The penetrating trauma to the epigastric region is resulting in deep lacerations and significant blood loss in the abdominal wall. Heart rate elevating at a hundred and thirty-three beats per minute. Probability of potential damage to the liver is high. Death is imminent in forty-four seconds—"

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"So give her parts of your inorganic body like you did for Sparrow," Ninmah said, scowling directly up at the colossal worm. "You always argue and fight, but you always operate on the humans every single time because you don't want this village to be stained with blood, right?"

As the scout continued floating towards the centre of the colossal worm, it craned its head and opened its mouth, shining a bright column of light down at her. "And can you be certain this girl will not divulge our existence to the rest of the world once she awakens?"

To that, Ninmah warped over to Sparrow and rubbed his head hard, smirking from ear to ear.

"We won Sparrow over with our snacks and toys and games," she said confidently. "She won't tell anyone about us, just like Sparrow won't. Isn't that right, Sparrow?"

He didn't really need Ninmah's help with nodding, but she made him bob his head up and down anyways.

A moment of tense silence passed before the scout reached the very centre of the colossal worm, and the worm replied with a voice dripping with scepticism.

"It is only our peace at stake," it said, the rumble of its voice reverberating through Sparrow's bones. "Sit where you stand, do not leave my line of sight, and do not interrupt me while you wait. Whether she survives the operation and becomes a half-inorganic demigod or not will depend on her will to live."

With that, Ninmah kicked the back of his knees gently and made both of them plop down cross-legged. Inside the colossal worm, all became clear—Sparrow flinched when he saw the half of the dozen giant worms swimming around the scout's body, biting, nibbling on the girl's flesh and spewing liquid metal into her open wounds. At the same time, the colossal worm itself pulsed, contorted, shifting the girl around as the giant worms repaired damaged clothing and knitted torn skin together. It was like the colossal worm itself provided a sterile environment with its glowing silver blood, while the giant worms were each the individual surgeons, breaking sections of her necrotic flesh apart and replacing them with cold metal.

It'd be a disservice to call the worms mere 'surgeons', though.

He watched, in utter awe, as the worms fought to bring the dead back to life—fixing wounds no surgeon in the empire would even attempt to fix.

"... That is the leader of the worms we talked to while we were held captive and experimented on by the Kingdom of Eridu," Ninmah whispered, intentionally suppressing her voice so as not to disturb the worms. "He has a name, I think, but he prefers we call him the 'Elder Worm'. The other worms can't talk. He's the only one who can, and he was the one the researchers harvested parts from to forge the Whiteworm Symbiotic Systems."

He furrowed his brows as he refused to take his eyes off the scout, but he really did want to look at Ninmah and reply; he just wanted to stare at the surgery process above all else.

"I said before that we 'operated' on you to give you your half-inorganic body and your Whiteworm Class, right?" she said, shuffling closer to him despite his awed silence. "Well, we're not that smart, so we certainly don't know how to operate on people, but the Elder Worm knows. He and the other giant whiteworms are very smart. With their flexible bodies and super sharp teeth, they surgically remove the person's old mutations and cut away the necrotic organic parts. Then, they replace what they cut away with their own inorganic body parts. If the person survives this step—the 'inorganic operation' no outsider before you has ever managed to survive—then the inorganic parts become the person's new system, essentially overpowering their old class and altering it into the Whiteworm Class."

He blinked.

"But that not right," he said. "All systems on the continent are small spinal implants that curl around people's spines. What you mean that the inorganic parts will become their new system?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Exactly that. I'm... not exactly sure how systems work myself, but the Elder Worm once told me that Ant Symbiotic Systems and Beetle Symbiotic Systems contain about a hundred thousand 'Bioarcanic Glyphs', which can all be carved onto tiny spinal implants, but the Whiteworm Symbiotic System has to contain over a few hundred thousand glyphs in order to work. It's impossible to fit all of those glyphs onto a tiny implant, so the researchers in the Kingdom of Eridu decided to spread those glyphs out across the inorganic worm parts they replaced our organic parts with.

"Apparently, the Elder Worm remembers how to replicate those few hundred thousand glyphs from when he was held captive and experimented on, so while the giant worms give the person their inorganic parts, the Elder Worm carves those glyphs into the inorganic metal and turns half of the person's body into a giant system," she explained. "Basically, your Whiteworm Symbiotic System isn't actually in your neck like your old Ant Symbiotic System was. It's across your entire body, wherever you're made out of metal. Look down at your arm. See those tiny, super subtle glyphs?"

He looked down at his own arms as Ninmah instructed and squinted. Certainly, it was true—there were ultra tiny swirly patterns carved into the metal parts of his skin.

Now, he knew a little bit about these 'bioarcanic glyphs'—supposedly, they were some sort of magical patterns bugs used to control their essence-enhanced bodies and biomagic, and that humans learned how to harness the same glyphs to create bioarcanic constructs like Symbiotic Systems and the anti-chitin bullets the empire used against the Swarm—but he was no bioarcanic engineer. He merely used the weapons the empire gave him, and he was never taught what the glyphs actually were.

He could only assume Ninmah was in the same boat: she knew enough to remember what the Elder Worm told her, but not enough to actually understand anything about it.

"... And what giving us Whiteworm Classes have to do with saving us?" he asked. "Can't the Elder Worm just give half-inorganic bodies without carving the glyphs and giving us Whiteworm Classes?"

"But giving the people we're trying to save our Whiteworm Classes is important. To survive up here in these cold mountains, you'd want our 'Immortal Hearts', right?"

He didn't break eye contact with the scout, but he managed to get his thoughts in order—enough to muster up a single question.

"This 'Elder Worm' being," he muttered, "Why he capable of talking??"

"We don't know," Ninmah said plainly. "But we don't pry, because he means us no harm."

"..."

He didn't press her on the topic.

Besides, the giant worms had already finished replacing half of the girl's body with inorganic metal parts, and were in the process of putting on the finishing touches.

"... Elder Worm very powerful," he said, his narrowed eyes drifting across the surface of the Elder Worm over and over again. "That creature… is incredible. If he can give people Whiteworm Classes, even if unreliable, then humanity can make more Worm Mages. Can change war against Swarm."

Ninmah's eyes were focused far away, staring at the scout floating back up towards the mouth of the Elder Worm. "Yes. We know. We may not know where it came from, why it has the power it does, and why it can talk, but I know—even amongst the Swarm—that it's a powerful bug that can either be the end of humanity or the end of the Swarm.

"Then give to the empire. Give to other Swarmsteel Fronts. Give to humanity. If so powerful—"

"We Children of Immanu may not have completely given up on the idea of helping out humans every now and then, but the Elder Worm already has," she said, shaking her head as she rose to her feet quietly, looking at him to do the same. "The Elder Worm had been held captive by the Kingdom of Eridu for much, much longer than us. We don't even know how long he and the giant worms had been experimented on for. We cannot possibly understand the pain it felt being abandoned by the Swarm, and then being dismantled by humanity before getting its organic flesh replaced by inorganic parts. He may be willing to help us whenever we ask him to give up some of his parts so he can operate on an injured human—and his inorganic parts can regenerate with time, so it's not like he's risking much by helping us—but for the most part, he doesn't care about anything anymore. He just wishes for our absolute peace and safety in this village, free from any distant conflict."

He glared at the Elder Worm, standing reluctantly. "Then, what it plan? Just let humanity die?"

"I told you. He doesn't care about anything anymore. From his point of view, humans who butchered his kind for experimentation are just as terrible as the Swarm who abandoned him to them."

"..."

"He says he's the last of his kind. The last intelligent worm in the entire world. Cut him a little slack, won't you?" She trudged forward at the Elder Worm, beckoning him to do the same as she winked back at him. "What we have to do right now doesn't change, and that's receiving our new Worm Mage with a bright, beautiful smile. I don't want her to panic and run like you did when you first woke up."

He looked at her for a long time, his mouth grim.

It wasn't a satisfactory answer, but… she was right, after all.

Right now, as the Elder Worm regurgitated and spat the healed Silver Ant Scout into his arms, there was only one thing they needed to do—make sure she wouldn't freak out and go on a rampage once she figured out her old Ant Class had been replaced by the Whiteworm Class.

But the scout was alive.

The Elder Worm had done it again.

Another person had successfully survived the inorganic operation after thirty-seven years of consecutive failure.

"... In her memories, her designated name is M1N-K1," the Elder Worm said, opening its mouth and shining a light back at the chasm. "Now leave. I have no desire to look at outsiders anymore."

Sparrow twitched an eye, but Ninmah hurried past him, kicking his shins and whispering at him to go.

If the Elder Worm had eyes, he felt he'd certainly be glared out—so he didn't give it the satisfaction of doing so and whirled, turning to follow Ninmah back into the fields of crystal weeds with the scout in his arms.

… Silver Ant Scout designated 'M1N-K1'.

Not even worthy of a designated nickname like 'Sparrow'.

How did you survive the inorganic operation as well, when all three thousand and eighteen humans before us failed?

Why are the two of us different?

As the two of them pushed through the weeds, he wondered if maybe he should've just ignored the scout and went after the last Boreus instead.

Maybe he'd regret it if he did, but either way, one thing was for sure: the winds were picking up speed in Hagi'Shar. The other Silver Ant Scouts he'd kicked down the slope were most certainly going to return to the General, and if any one of them could make a report before they inevitably died of frostbite, Immanu's existence would be revealed to the Attini Empire.

Things were going to change.

And he'd have to get much, much stronger if he wanted to pull everyone through the storm.