Bird and worm.

  Both need to be dealt with, rapidly too, before they cost me too much.

  ‘Bird takes least effort.’ Launching my gaze from the worm towards the surface, I started sending out a steady stream of commands to my harvesters via my veins. First at a hellish rate that damaged my veins, flesh cooking inside of the stone due to the size and numbers of commands I were sending. It was unsustainable to keep sending that large of a volume of commands, but I only needed it for a short period.

  After confirming that all harvesters had managed to get their individual commands I changed the river of commands to a trickle. Relatively speaking that is, I were still sending at minimum a dozen commands every second. But these were small commands, simply to keep my trap in tension.

  A few moments more to make sure the commands flowed unceasingly while checking the situation on the surface.

  The Bird were still gone, but so were most of the deterrence gas. Maybe the bird send a gust of wind to clear it out. ‘Or perhaps misfortune simply caught up to me with a sudden gust of wind.’

  Whatever, everything had been set up for the Bird.

  ‘Now the bigger threat’, I shifted my gaze back towards the worm knowing full well the challenge of driving the worm away while keeping my bird-trap ready.

  And as expected it had not been idle.

  A sizeable tunnel had been dug through my walls, and onwards. It had consumed my veins and several lumps of stored metal in the walls, and passed the activated acid traps and several more experimental traps for the worm. My latest attempt of large caltrops in the walls didn’t work either, as half of one sitting snugly against the worm tunnel. Cleanly bitten in half.

  Worse yet, it had found one of my water rooms, and it was currently drinking it dry.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  Screaming with rage I forced another command towards the nearly fully plundered room, completely ignoring the damage my veins and core endured due to over-straining them both.

  Command rushing towards the worm, ordering explosives nearby the worm to detonate to cause some damage, to extract any form of price from it plundering my water supply. But the command didn’t reach it. Slowing down the closer it got to the worm it eventually got snuffed out at the edge of the nearby room where the worm had traveled. The command that had taken a more indirect room were also snuffed out, closer to the explosives but still not managing to reach them.

  I had hoped something would have changed since the last time. No such luck. Perhaps if I were not distracted by the need to keep the bird trap open I would have succeeded.

  But that was just wishful thinking. Also thinking that should be done after driving the blasted worm off.

  Mind pounding from anger and damages, I took a momentary break. Couldn’t do anything to the worm at the moment, and my next command would probably be just a intensive and the previous one.

  Staring balefully at the worm as it continued to drain my water I held back my near instinctive urge to send another command towards the traps near the Worm.

  Shifting part of my gaze, if only to keep myself from acting rashly, I sent it spiraling upwards. The worm turned to fuzzy outline in my mind, still recognizable due to it’s size but nowhere near as clear as it had been.

  As the bastard drained my water I checked on the surface, scanning a small area to be able to see decently and saw nothing. The gas had presumable been carried away with the wind. And since the bird wasn’t in sight on the ground it was assuredly in the skies, picking it’s next target. That meant that I had to keep up my continuous commands to the surface.

  ‘Wish I knew why the blasted birds keep going after my water harvesters. Do they eat metal or what? Are they like magpies and simply like collecting things? Or do they have some sort of sense of nearby water storage areas are?’

  Idly mulling over things as I impatiently waited any action to happen once more I removed the gaze from the surface and agitated the defenders near the worm area. Severely. No expense were to be withheld to drive of the damned Worm.

  After sending the scorpions into a frenzy, causing plenty of casualties amongst themself, and concentrating wandering wrappers towards the worm area took a peek at the worm once more.

  It had almost drained the entire storage area. Which meant it were about to attempt to seek out another one.

  Feeling the blood surging inside my core I were determined to prevent it from reaching another one. Focusing once more I prepared to set off several more traps to attack the worm. All I needed were the direction the worm would travel and all available paths would be set the activate.

  Just need a direction.

  Just one.

  One. Simple. Direction.

  ‘Hurry up you god forsaken creature.’

  It was getting difficult to hold back, seeing the abomination meticulously slurp up the last puddles of water. I could hear it, it was taunting me. It was laughing with malicious glee as it was plundering my stores. It was whooping with joy as it plundered and pillaged my hard earned work. It was going to come back for more and bring with their friends. IT WAS GOING TO—.

  It bit into the side of the wall.

  ‘Right angle from straight to my core. Upwards and to the right.’

  By the time I comprehended that I had a direction the command had already been ejected from my core. Explosives were set to explode on a timer. Harsher acids and bases were created inside the walls, so harsh that the walls and veins themself couldn’t stand up to them. Another wave of pheromones and sound were released, ramping up the casualty rate of from bad to atrocious.

  The Worm started digging. It was going along a path that I had prepared for. Hope mixed with rage as it was about to intersect with a primed trap just as it were about to detonate. ‘Work. Work. WORK.’

  It exploded, the worm recoiled, and my sight went fuzzy.

  When I caught wind of it again the worm seemed no worse for ware. Perhaps a bit concussed, but shortly thereafter it was moving once more, merely slightly slower than before.

  A curse erupting from my mind I attempted more traps, some old but most new and experimental.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The acids were ignored. The base were sought out and consumed. My defenders useless since it kept itself to the walls.

  More attempts were made. Synthesizing poisons inside of my veins. Creating shards of glass and metal and bone and everything else that I could think of to wound or at minimum drive off the horrid monster.

  ‘Would radioactivity work? Perhaps the explosive were not enough.’ Desperation warred with survival needs. I needed to get rid of it with less resources that I were spending at the moment.

  Then came a signal from the surface.

  Temporarily throwing my focus upwards from the worm I saw that the Bird had decided to take another shot at stealing a water harvester. It was currently gripping the harvester in it’s claws while flapping hard. The anchoring veins held for just long enough for me to witness the harvester being ripped from the ground. Bracing myself for another dizzy spell that would be incoming I started a countdown.

  ‘Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen...’ At 16 the bird managed to get a good enough grip on it’s price to start flying straight up and out of my view.

  By 10 I were struck with a wave of dizzying signals. I endured without much dropped focus. But my counting had manged to get thrown off.

  Restarting from 10, the countdown crept closer to 0.

  ‘Four.’ Something pushed sand on the surface around. Another bird or perhaps...?

  ‘Three.’ Tension rising as I keep my gaze resolutely on the surface.

  ‘Two.’ I kept myself from moving my sight back to the worm, if I could stop sending signal to the surface I might get rid of it before it finds another water room.

  ‘One.’ Something where falling onto the sands and harvesters over a wide area, some pieces bounced off the harvesters with metallic noises and other simply splattered on top of them.

  ‘Zero.’ A form crashed haphazardly into another harvester and crumbled it completely.

  It was the bird.

  It was not moving.

  It was now a corpse.

  ‘Yeeees!’ Triumph surged within me. ‘The delayed explosive worked!’

  Swiftly changing the continuous commands upwards to disarm and neutralize the unstable compound that would detonate without the signals. I waited with bated breath for the command to reach the surface.

  Once I had shaken off another wave of dizziness from the birds crash landing and confirmed that the explosives were neutralized I hurled my gaze back downwards with renewed vigor.

  Now I could focus everything on the Worm.

  Upon getting the worm in sight I noticed that it were moving substantially slower. It would seem that the relentless traps had managed to slow it down. Now to drive it off, or if fortune smiled upon me, kill the treacherous thing.

  Sending another wave of commands to the possible paths the worm could take I then saw why it were going the directions it were.

  It was closing in on another water storage room.

  ‘Oh no! YOU are NOT getting another price from me!’ With reckless abandon I pushed a new command with all the force I could muster in a intercept course for the worm.

  My core suddenly sprouted a fountain of high pressure blood on the side, dyeing the sands in a dark red color. Veins that were barely keeping up with my commands now gave up completely, getting cooked and overheated to the point of frying them like a hunk of flesh. My cooling veins outside of my core were sagging, cells holding them up were getting so worn down that they no longer could keep themself spread apart to cool of the blood.

  But the command managed to reach the general area that I had sent it to. Just as the worm arrived.

  It managed to snuff out a good portion of the signal. Adjacent walls were barred from receiving my command.

  But the shear size of the area that I had sent the command too were enough.

  Suddenly, explosives were getting detonated. Walls were crumbling due to part of them getting converted to sand. And it was happening in a sphere. A sphere that contained the worm.

  Suddenly the wall the worm were digging through collapsed downwards. All adjacent rooms to the one that the worm were in collapsed down.

  With a mighty crash and a sudden loss of my gaze I felt the sudden cave in of several rooms. Even some that I didn’t mean to collapse fell down. A few on the side but most were on the bottom, suddenly having to support several times the weight didn’t work for the rooms below. The new roof fortunately managed to keep stable.

  Redirecting my gaze I attempted to find the worm again. Veins started digging through the rubble at the bottom of the room. So far I only found some lucky survivors, scorpions and Wrappers both. No clue how any of the survived but both were digging upwards to surface.

  So far I had managed to collapse all the walls completely. No large intact walls were found. So hopefully the worm did die. Or get stunned at minimum.

  More survives found, and then I noticed that the wrappers were digging upwards at an angle. With a bad feeling spreading through my core I sent my scouting veins at the same angle. And sure enough, there were the worm. Still alive, but seeming quite sluggish at the very least.

  ‘Right. At least it seems to be quite hammered. Not a total waste of multiple rooms.’ Observing it for a moment, frustration mounted as I realized that it were still going towards the water rooms direction. So I still needed to device some way to deter it.

  Thankfully the scorpions would help a bit. I knew from previous periods that the venom worked in slowing the worm down. If it were due to discomfort or the venom actually hurting the worm I never figured out. And since there were surprisingly many surviving scorpions in the rubble I didn’t need to try to guide a few swarms there. They would sting and inject venom all on their own.

  ‘Okay. So prepare more mines, it should be just about ready to flee. I should be able to drive it off with only one water room lost.’

  As I prepared some more mines I saw that the wrappers managed to get to the worm too, said worm having dug up until it surfaced on top of the rubble now squirming it's way forward. And so far it seems like they didn’t discriminate against it being a worm. Not enough of the wrappers had managed to get to the worm to wrap around it yet but more were on the way.

  Actually, many more were on the way.

  As in two rooms over adjacent to the cave the Wrappers unfurled from their latest meal and where rushing in a mad frenzy towards the large cave.

  Halting some of my preparations. I decided to observe with some interest. Much rage had been spent with that massive command I had sent out and the fact of me being so close to driving the worm of soothed my anger plenty.

  As the worm had started to crawl towards a nearby intact wall more and more wrappers managed to catch up to the worm. The worm itself seemed to completely ignore them, either not caring about the fact that it was slowly being plastered by the wrappers or not feeling it. So far they had only covered a small portion of the worm, like a large growing circular patch.

  When said circular patch managed to connect to itself on the other side of the worm however something changed. First of all was that the already stuck wrappers didn’t start squeezing instantly. They simply held on as more and more wrappers seemed to prefer to make the connection wider. The incoming wrappers picked up speed, seemingly getting more and more agitated and in a hurry to get to the worm. Surprising, since they were already going faster than I had ever seen them go.

  The Worm still didn’t care overly much at first. But as more and more Wrappers managed to engulf the abomination it started to get uncomfortable. It attempted to rub off the patch I realized quickly.

  ‘Interesting. Might need to keep the Wrappers around if they could deter or make the worms uncomfortable.’ As I refined and changed some traps to use against the worm to be more effective, I studied this phenomena closely.

  Then, when the wrappers managed to transform their patch to an snugly fitted leather armband for the worm, they changed behavior again.

  They squeezed. All as one.

  And the Worm flew into a panic.

  I watched, stunned and in awe as the Worm suddenly let out a warbling deep screech and started trashing about.

  I had never seen anything like this from the worms. I though they were completely mute and nearly indestructible. Yet here it was, thrashing about and screeching like mad.

  Eventually the worm found the wall, and started burrowing in a zigzag motion, seemingly to scrape off the wrappers.

  Snapping out of my stunned awe I immediately tried to send another signal to collapse more of the area ahead, so the wrappers could have more time. Perhaps even kill it.

  But it failed. The previous damage to the core and veins simply made me feel a sudden sense of vertigo when I tried to send the command.

  I could do noting but watch as the worm slowly at first, but as more and more Wrappers got ripped loose from the ‘armband’ the rest seem to ripped from it faster and faster.

  Soon enough the worm were at the edge of my home, with only a few wrappers managing to close the loop on the ‘armband’. And then it was gone. Out and away into the endless sands.

  For a moment everything felt unreal. Like a mad dream.

  And my damaged core decided to remind me of the fact that I were not in a good situation by having the stone layer cracking all around, very loudly too.

  ‘Right. Core, veins, room and then defenders.’

  Starting with my core i stymied the blood geyser that was painting the sands red and quickly propped up the cooling system as a start. Going swiftly inside the core to make sure that i won’t keel over in a short while I then covered a few of the largest cracks with rock. Will have to fix it later.

  After gathering up the blood that were split I started working on the veins. Which would take a while, I realized. Couldn’t work fast due to the strain on the core.

  ‘Wonderful.’ Thinking with a dry voice, I decided to take stock of what needed to be done.

  ‘First, fix veins and rooms. Second would be to clean everything up, from the bird to the rubble that I caused. Third, bulk up the defenders once more, lost way to many with my agitation tactics. Fourth... Err... Ah yes! Fix the harvesters and make another water room.’

  I sigh, then remembered that I needed to feed and hydrate myself again after a fight. And after that I need to proceed to revive my Half Salamander.

  Sighing once more I start shoveling sand into my mouth while carefully drinking a water ration from another water room as I restored my veins. ‘Well, the Wrappers are going to be a staple for my dungeon. Still need to investigate them closer so I can replicate them if needed.’

  Noting that the sands were becoming thin in my room I realized that i still needed to make more feeding sands for the core room.

  ‘Well, at least i don’t need to make more stone to crush with the collapse’, a scoff sounded within my mind.

  ’Small comforts.’