The rain hadn't stopped since morning.

Cold rain poured in sheets, hammering against the silver ant carriage, drowning the colossal fungi forest in noise. Though it was quite early on in the afternoon, even Zora, a blind man, could tell it was dark outside. The sway and jolt of the wheels over uneven ground, the damp scent of wet earth thick in the enclosed space, and the way the entire carriage shuddered every time a strong gust of wind blew by… his stomach churned unpleasantly with each bump.

The constant motion threw his body off-balance. He was sitting, but his footing was uncertain, and the rain and the wind turned his sense of hearing into a mess. He could barely hear fifty metres out. If a competent bug ambush were to come at him now, it'd go mostly unnoticed until the bugs were physically close enough to snap at him.

He supposed, after two months of fighting on carriages and trains and other fast-moving vehicles, that he was qualified and justified in saying he hated them.

All vehicles, really.

He inhaled deeply, pressing two fingers to his temple. A migraine was forming.

Never again, he thought. Never again would he get on a train or a carriage or any other wretched speed contraption once he left the empire. There was a reason why he'd marched down to the south on foot the past two years. He preferred feeling the earth beneath his feet, slow, steady, and under his own control.

A creak came from the front of the carriage as Ifas peeked through the small slit separating the driver's seat from the passenger cabin.

"Doing alright, Mister Fabre?"

He managed a small smile at the driver. "A man can live."

"As long as you're not going to die on me. Why's the Warlord of the Northwest sleeping like a corpse in front of you, though?"

Zora tilted his head slightly. The boy was still sprawled out across the seat in front of him, unmoving. 'Like a corpse' was the correct description. He didn't seem to need to breathe, and while Zora was ninety-nine percent sure he wasn't dead, there was also that one percent of 'maybe he is actually dead, and nobody would actually know'.

Zora chose to believe he was still alive.

"And where's the little lady?" Ifas continued. "And her… hound? Will we be returning to Nohoch Ik'Balam later to pick them up?"

"The heiress and her servant won't be coming with us."

Ifas let out a sharp whistle. "That right? Thought the little lady would be stuck to you like glue."

"She's injured," Zora said simply, "and a noble heiress should recover somewhere comfortable, not in a shoddy carriage rattling in the middle of a storm. No offence."

A short silence. Then, Ifas chuckled. "None taken. This shoddy carriage's making me good money, so as long as you're still paying, I'll be driving you anywhere, no questions asked."

"Then do please keep your eyes on the road."

"What am I looking for?"

"Anything unnatural," Zora said. "A trench in the earth. Disturbed dirt. Tell me if there's anything that looks wrong—"

But before he could finish his sentence, a sharp shift in air pressure made his skin prickle.

A presence stirred.

Then—

The entire carriage rattled.

A violent snap of essence cracked through the air, colder than ice, sharper than a drawn blade. The storm outside paled in comparison to the weight that crashed down upon them—a sudden, suffocating killing pressure that curled through the cabin like frostbite sinking into the bone.

Zora clenched his jaw, his breath misting despite the warmth of the enclosed space. He felt his own body react, his muscles locking, his fingers trembling from the sheer, unnatural cold that pressed against his skin. He could hear Ifas suck in a sharp breath from the driver's seat outside as well.

And then the boy's eyelids snapped open.

Zora couldn't see what colour they were, but he felt they were blue. A cold, striking, and breathtaking blue. Oh, and the shift in weight as the Worm Mage sat up slowly, the stiffness of his limbs, the unnatural way he moved—it was like watching a marionette adjusting its own strings. A machine fine-tuning its own mechanical arrays.

The boy felt wholly unnatural.

"... Once, there was a city of glass, where winter never came and warmth never left."

The moment the passage from a storybook from the far northeast left Zora's lips, the chill lessened. His essence-infused sound waves lifted the oppressive cold a little, and while the storm continued to rage outside, the warmth of his spoken passage filled the air inside the cabin, bringing the temperature back up to a manageable degree.

Zora relaxed his shoulders. Ifas, strangely enough, was no longer shivering as he closed the driver's slit to leave the two of them alone.

How curious, he thought. But he said nothing of it.

The boy remained upright for a moment, blinking slowly, as if calibrating his vision while he scanned the carriage around him.

While the boy tried to figure out where he was, Zora listened. The shift of clean cloth. The faint hum of biometal, carved with foreign glyphs and bioarcanic circuitry, scattered all across his skin and body. Very quickly, Zora realised he and the rumours weren't completely wrong: the Worm Mage wasn't wholly flesh. He was half-organic, half-inorganic—half-human, half-something else.

Then the boy's gaze locked onto him.

And the boy moved.

In one fluid motion, he seized his rifle resting by the side of the carriage, kicked the door open, and leapt out into the storm.

Rain swallowed him instantly, drenching his diamond flower cloak as his bare feet clunked against the earth. He may be standing right outside the carriage, scanning the colossal fungi forest around him, but Zora could tell: this was a boy who was used to being somewhere in one moment, and then being somewhere else in the next.

Zora jumped out after the boy with his staff and lifted a hand at Ifas. The driver immediately pulled the reins, bringing the carriage to a halt.

"Rain never fell in the city of glass," he said. His rain-proof dome spread out in a short area, preventing the entire carriage from getting drenched, but it wouldn't last forever. A longer incantation may mean a longer spell duration, but the boy wouldn't stay nearly long enough to enjoy the rain-proof dome.

So, as he felt cold essence twisting in the air before the Worm Mage—turning into the edges of a wormhole—he spoke "stop" and sent out a blast of wind, disturbing the wormhole's formation.

And for the first time, irritation seemed to flicker across the boy's empty face. He turned his head, gaze sharp beneath the downpour, and this time, Zora felt the weight of his stare.

"... Hello," Zora said plainly. "I am Zora, the Thousand Tongue, though you may know me as the Warlord of the Northeast. What might your name be?"

The Worm Mage didn't answer. He simply stood there, unblinking.

Then, at last, he spoke—sharp. Metallic. Reverberating. Hollow.

"Good work taking down the Mutant-Classes." The Worm Mage paused again. "I will take my leave now."

He turned again, but Zora did not let him.

"You wish to destroy the Swarm, do you not?" Zora asked.

That made him stop.

Zora took a small step towards the boy.

"There is a Magicicada God in the Divine Capital," he said. "A witch named 'Decima' has spent ten years weaving herself into the heart of the empire. She has pulled strings and weakened its strength from within, and I could hunt her alone," tilting his head, "but I could use another warlord's help."

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The boy turned. Rain trickled down his face, catching in the biometallic grooves carved into his skin, trailing along the vein-like glyphs. He may be still, but his eyes—those eerie, depthless eyes—remained locked on Zora.

Zora did not like that stare.

It wasn't threatening, nor was it really full of any suspicion, but… it was as if the boy wasn't really looking at Zora, but rather through him, peeling apart his words, his voice, and his very presence.

Even still, this was the only way he could speak to the Worm Mage.

The boy finally spoke.

"... Who are you?"

Zora gave him another small smile. "For the past two years, I've been marching around the empire in search of a witch to kill."

Still no reaction from the boy.

"I don't know who you are," Zora continued. "Not your name, not your past, and not what you were before you became the warlord—but I know what you do. You come like an army. You fight like a storm. Then you leave like a whisper in the wind."

Ifas was listening from the carriage behind him, but Zora paid the driver no mind as he clasped his hands behind his back. A show of peace.

"Rumours have it that in the past three years, you haven't spoken to a single person," he continued. "Haven't slept in a single settlement. Haven't dined or drank with a single regional lord. In the Sharaji Desert, where the days are long and the scorching afternoons are quiet with the sounds of men huddling under sandstone roofs to hide away from the heat, there is a word for travelling warriors who dare to brave the sun: Hasharana, meaning 'bug-slayer'. You're the truest bug-slayer there is, aren't you?"

With a powerful warlord like the Worm Mage, Zora would've preferred a bit more small talk first, but this was the absolute only way to talk to someone like him. The Worm Mage may be human, but he didn't care for anything beyond killing bugs. If Zora wasted his breath on anything but the point, the boy would leave. If he used difficult words, the boy would leave. If the boy was bored of his presence—if he could serve no immediate purpose to bug-slaying—the boy would leave.

There was no room for flowery words. The blade of summarised truth sharpened to its finest edge was the only weapon Zora could wield.

So, at last—the boy tilted his head slightly. Barely noticeable.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

Zora arched a brow. "Do what?"

"When you spoke," he replied, "you infused your sound waves with essence, and then the frequency of your voice disrupted my essence from turning into a wormhole. What is that ability?"

Zora blinked.

Ah.

He let out a quiet chuckle, shoulders shaking slightly in amusement. "I wasn't trying to do anything special," he admitted. "I was simply trying to stop a boy from running away before I was finished speaking—"

"I want to destroy the Swarm," the boy said plainly. "Do you also want to destroy the Swarm?"

For the first time, Zora hesitated.

Only for a fraction of a second. A blink. A breath.

Then he shook his head, because hesitation in front of someone like the Worm Mage was much worse than giving the 'wrong' answer.

"No," Zora said. "I have no grand vision. All I want is to kill the remaining Magicicada Witches, who will most certainly take revenge on my academy one day if I do not destroy them first."

The boy nodded curtly. "I see. Then goodbye—"

"But."

Zora didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. He tilted his head toward the towering fungi forest where rain drummed against the thick, swollen caps, wind threading through the gnarled stalks.

His rain-proof dome was still active, but a few droplets were already starting to slip through and land on his shoulder.

"... For two years, I have marched through the empire," he said. "I have seen entire settlements swallowed by silken nests, landscapes rewritten in chitin and bioarcanic flesh. I have watched as the Swarm devoured everything, and I have come to think… that perhaps I was not given the Magicicada Class just so I could hide in my academy forever." Then he turned back around, facing the boy sternly. "All men are architects of their own fate. And perhaps this is mine."

The boy didn't interrupt.

"What you do is admirable," Zora continued, "You burn brood nests. You tear through Mutant-Classes. But you are only fighting grunts in the empire, and to defeat the Swarm—to truly defeat them—we must understand them. We must understand why they came to this world, and what it is they really want from us." He dipped his head slowly, tilting it slightly. "Without understanding what the Swarm fundamentally is, humanity will never win. You will never win. You can hack at the branches and never strike the root, but I can."

Then he sharpened his voice.

"I can speak every tongue in this world, and Decima—of all the Insect Gods I know of—appears to be particularly intelligent," he said. "If I can question her and pry open the mind of something ancient and inhuman, I believe we will be one step closer to unravelling the true nature of the Swarm… but first, I must get to Decima.

"So what will it be, Worm Mage?

"Will you keep fighting grunts, aiding villages only to leave them for the next flood, or will you follow me?"

… And still the boy was too quiet.

The silence was unnerving. Zora could hear rain dripping from canopies and Ifas shuffling on the driver's seat, but there was no heartbeat from the Worm Mage. No breath. No muscle tension to betray any thoughts. He was used to listening for cues that could tell him whether or not he was getting through to someone, but this half-organic, half-inorganic boy from the gods only know where was a complete blank slate of a human.

But just as the moment stretched too thin, and Zora was just about to decide that perhaps his proposed alliance was too awkward a mistake, the boy spoke.

"Okay," the boy said. "If you can bring me to an Insect God, I will follow."

If Zora's eyes were open, he'd blink.

But I suppose this is just how he is.

So casual about it all, huh?

A smile tugged at Zora's lips as he extended a hand. He had questions about the boy—lots of them—but for now, a cordial handshake should be enough.

"I am Zora Fabre," he said, "just a language teacher at Amadeus Academy, though, as you can probably tell, I am a few ways off home."

The boy didn't even bother acknowledging his hand.

"Enki," the boy said curtly. "Child of Immanu."

For a single beat, Zora's mind blanked. His fingers twitched slightly in the handshake, his thoughts stalling as though struck by static.

Enki?

Immanu?

His hand hovered in place, but he tilted his head in befuddlement. "Those names," he said slowly, "I don't quite seem to recognise them from anywhere. Where is this 'Immanu' located?"

Enki didn't answer.

"What were you doing out here?" he asked instead, glancing at the carriage and the colossal fungi forest around them.

Ifas leaned in with a grin, arms crossed over his chest. "I would also like to know what I was supposed to be looking out for. Why are we out here and not resting comfortably in Nohoch Ik'Balam, or heading back to the Salaqa Region?"

Zora exhaled softly. He supposed those were both fair questions, and he didn't want to keep anyone in the dark.

"I'm trying to investigate the movement of the ants," he said, dipping his head at Enki. "You've been fighting in the northwest for the past three years, so you should know better than anyone how hard these ants have been to track. You'd think they'd be easy to spot from a distance attacking trains and caravans in such large numbers, but they're almost never spotted, correct?" He scratched the back of his ear and tried to listen over the pouring rain. "It's almost always an ambush that nobody sees coming until it's already too late to avoid. How, exactly, have they been moving undetected across the northwest these past few years?"

Enki blinked pointedly.

"Tunnels," he said.

Zora frowned.

"... Tunnels?"

To that, Enki lifted a foot and stomped.

And the ground crumbled.

It gave way beneath them. Earth split, roots snapped, and for a brief, weightless moment, all of them plummeted. Soil and rock collapsed around them, the carriage with the giant silver ant tipping and falling, Ifas yelping as they tumbled down, down, down—

Then impact.

Zora landed lightly with his cicada wings. As did Enki, whose knees bent to absorb the drop. A moment later, the carriage hit the ground behind them with a heavy, metallic groan as well, wheels skidding slightly in the damp soil before settling.

A tunnel.

They'd fallen right into the middle of one, damp earth reinforced by pillars of gnarled roots and thick, fibrous plant matter. Both ends of the tunnel seemed to stretch endlessly in their separate directions, and even from a cursory listen, Zora could tell it connected to many, many more in the area.

He hadn't thought about looking underground before.

"The ants have been using these tunnels to move," Enki said plainly. "As far as I can tell, these tunnels stretch across the entire northwest. I have been using them to travel, but no matter how many I collapse once I am done with them, more are made the next day."

Zora hummed. "Do you know if any of them lead to the Divine Capital?"

"I have never left the northwest."

Interesting.

This information should be news to the outer region lords, so if I want to help Baya strengthen his influence as the Salaqa Lord, I should have him tell the rest of the empire about these tunnels instead.

And that meant returning to the Salaqa Region undetected by the Capital.

"... Might I assume you'd like to return to the Salaqa Manor now?" Ifas asked, tugging on the reins of his giant silver ant to calm it down. "I've had experience navigating through tunnels before, so if we want to take the low road back to the south, we could try travelling through these tunnels. Hop aboard, and I'll take you straight to the manor."

Enki turned slightly, eyes narrowing. "Why are we going to the Salaqa Region?"

"Long story," Zora admitted, gesturing for Enki to step inside the carriage with his staff. "But since I know you don't care for politics or bureaucratics, I'll keep it simple while we ride."

To his surprise, Enki climbed into the carriage, obedient as a soldier.

Zora followed, brushing dirt from his sleeves as he did, and with a sharp flick of the giant silver ant's reins, the carriage started lurching forward into the endless dark.

If we're lucky, we won't encounter any giant ants on the way back.

But maybe I'd like to encounter one or two for information, after all?

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