The present still has lots to do...

The ground exploded in a shower of dark rocks and sand. A sound reminiscent of breaking boulders and protesting steel rang out over the empty land, carrying for miles.

Briggs hooked Endure on the corner of its mouth and levered down, dragging his Hammer behind him in Axe form.

Weight and strength ripped open the stony hide of the beast, tearing a gaping wound in its natural protection. If it dove into the ground again, the wound would tear open further and force it back to the surface.

The lunge upwards was stalled; it didn’t get the tasty prize it wanted, and the worm began to back down.

Five Glaive wielders ran forwards, shouting as they drove their Blades, edges topmost, into the sides of the white-ringed black worm. As it withdrew its massive body, their Glaives slammed down into the top of its tunnel as they grimly held onto the shafts, and it tore itself open on them as it pulled itself back and away.

Briggs hit the ground, ignoring the rumbling underneath him as he watched the worm retreat in his tremblesense. The five men carefully backed away from the hole, returning to their previous spots and pausing.

One, two... ten, eleven... thirty, thirty-one...

The bellow came from below, and Briggs smiled. He could feel the distant trembling of it starting to tunnel again, and then its pain as rocks and debris cut into the open wounds, especially around the jaws that were supposed to open the way for it.

That meant it could retreat, or come to the surface to heal along an existing route... or just sit still for a few days.

“Road clear on this one,” he grunted, and the men nodded. They picked up the thumper that had drawn the beast in with the sound of moving lunch, and headed out.

A lot of people were going to be moving through their Corridor, which meant these not-so-purple mutant worms had to be discouraged. Associating the sound of the thumper with pain would be a good start, if they did not kill them outright.

For some reason, he hadn’t been surprised that the Ironblood had experience fighting tunnellers, and after the Void Brothers warned them about the beasts, they took it completely in stride. At least four of the Ironblood had cut their way out of worm stomachs by now, while seventeen or so worms had been put to vivus, as human stomachs couldn’t tolerate their flesh.

As a point of trivia, it turned out that kobolds could eat them, and the little scaled bastards actually considered the worms a delicacy, because it was far more likely that the worms ate them, rather than the other way around. So, the Ferals were having a fun time slaughtering them, one Worm being enough to supply several tribes of kobolds for a week or more...

The river was the safest approach vector, because there was no threat to them from that direction... at least, not yet. To be honest, they hadn’t seen anything living in the cold, still river, but at least the water was drinkable once it was removed.

Men with tremblesense were advancing and marking the path, looking for the buried defenders of this land. So far, they consisted of scuttling thirty-foot centipedes and millipedes, immense buried scorpions and sun spiders, ant lions in their sand pits, various beetles big and small, and the Worms which hunted all of them impartially.

They’d had to burn out two giant ant nests in the Corridor after stirring up a bunch of two-foot, mandible-clicking poison-stingered killers. Collapsing the first nest had brought in no less than half a dozen massive Worms, who had a feeding frenzy on ants while people watched from the distance. The second time, it was scorpions and beetles, happily taking the opportunity to snatch up a bunch of ants who couldn’t burrow away.

Afterwards they had naturally killed as many of those creatures feasting as they could, not wanting to have to deal with them again, since the over-sized bugs were basically going to treat the people moving through the Corridor as a buffet line.

The planar instability that wafted along with the Warped chased away the vermin, so the Warpbands didn’t have to put up with much of their interference, which was rather unfair and lucky at the same time. It was highly likely that the bugs would have been rapidly enslaved by the Warp interference and mutated, but their instinctive dread of the Chaos Storms that swept across the place meant they avoided the Warped. It meant they still had to be killed, but at least they weren’t MUTANT bugs...

The Corridor shrank in width, since they didn’t want to sweep and guard a wide area of land. Oddly enough, the border was soon very, very clear, since the native vermin began to use it as shelter against the Chaos Storms, flocking to the fringe when the storms came, and either dispersing when they passed, or going to investigate the walking meals nearby, and hilarity ensuing as bugs met extraplanars with similarly lethal attitudes.

Sama’s attitude was fairly typical. “They are Karma. What are you complaining about? Kill them, make Baneskulls or add a Bane to your Slaughter. And someone see if we can cook ‘em. Scorp tail is a delicacy.”

Bug-killing duty was soon one of the favored jobs of the mercs hanging around, as it spared them from having to pay for rations, and the recipes for bug were easy to come by. Extras could always be sold to the Mess Tents, too, and pointedly, there were always more of them to kill.

-------

“So, how many infiltrators?” Briggs asked, as he hammered steel with Sama that night.

“Only a dozen or so, so far. Trying to pass themselves off as mercs,” she snorted.

“Aural scans?” he inquired. Easiest way to find them, but also to defend against, if they knew what they were doing.

“Better. One of the mages with a quirky mind took one of the overgrown ants as a Familiar. Guess what is sensitive to the Aura of the Warped?”

Briggs found himself laughing as he hammered a spear head into shape. “I see the vermin are avoiding areas with vivus, too.”

“They are sustained by agathic energies. Vivus eats them like extraplanars,” Sama explained, and he grunted.

“Why do they avoid the water?”

“It’s null agathic, sucks the power out of ‘em and neutralizes it. Kind of melts ‘em away.”

Briggs frowned. “That’s pretty damn weird for water...”

“I’m hazarding it’s like a release valve for the opposing energies here. Any overlarge conflict of energies just disperses into the water and is neutralized, preventing it from getting too out of hand.”

“That would make it a target of the Warped, wouldn’t it?”

“It might... if not for the fact that they don’t go near it. Why might that be?”

He laughed despite himself. “You’re right. They’re all swinging in from the desert, none of them really following the river. I think I might throw one of them into it and see what happens.”

“I’m guessing not lethal, but losing the handy Template gifted to ya by the Warp Gods is probably not too pleasant and all.”

“I’d agree.” He looked at the silver-white ribbon, snaking its way into the black and grey desert of the Dichromatic Plains. “It just worms its way through the place, and nothing can do anything about it, can it?”

“Well, the Brotherhood says it’s pouring into a deep hole in Yle Tyorm, when it used to flow through the city and out into the plains beyond. One of the reasons the northeast is such a crappy place to live is because the river doesn’t flow through it anymore.”

“Pouring into a deep hole. Felldeep access?” Briggs asked alertly.

“Brother Ancientaxe says yes, and do not go wandering around down there.”

“I have problems just wandering around up here. I can’t believe that some of the shit from Yle Tyorm hasn’t woken up and come out here.”

“Shadowknife says the Hags are responsible for that. The two semi-safe ways into the ruin have both been cut off by them, so hideously overpowered mutant things looking for excitement aren’t wandering out creating trouble... or maybe they are getting charmed and recruited, he said that was always a possibility.” Sama shrugged. “A problem for when we get there.”

He found himself smiling. “A problem for adventurers?” he asked softly.

“Shhhhh, dirty word around here. We’re valiant heroes out to save the world, remember?” Her tone was perfectly placid.

“Isn’t your Hagmother in there?”

“That’s what Noir Rabe said, but his information may or may not be current. The Brotherhood gave me some decades-old and older information about some of the stuff that is in there. It sounds like a lot of the elder monsters in the continent, once they reach a certain level, emigrate there. The amount of magic and the primal aura of shredded Time in the air is like a balm to them.”

“Uh-huh.” He shook his head, thinking. “Anything organized, other than the Hags?”

“Ancientaxe says Things Below. There’s a Mu Spore down there serving the Old One Zygom, with a fungi kingdom. Dunno how much has come to the surface, of course.”

“Mushroom zombie legendary beasts.” Briggs rolled his eyes as she laughed. “That place must be like a whole dungeon region.”

“But, no respawns, but every monster is probably a Boss, and a tough one,” she agreed. “Add in random planar distortions, and that’s going to be a very weird area to be in.”

“Definitely for adventurers.” He had a longing look on his face. “Are we gonna have time to investigate it?”

“Beyond killing hagmom and company? Probably not. I’m sure the Warp Rift will keep us all nicely busy.”

“And then we’ll do a vivic blow-up and everything and have to see what comes out of it,” he grumbled.

“Life is not fun without some mysteries!” she laughed back, and he grunted reluctant agreement.

“But, a city-sized dungeon, Sama!” His pale violet eyes almost glowed. “Boss monster fights! The wealth of a grand ruined city as prizes!”

“Horrible death and traps around every corner! I know, I know,” she chuckled. “We’re just gonna have to save the world first and have great fun after... maybe.”

He tossed a hairy eyeball in her direction. “This part of that Void Brother shit you can’t talk about?”

“Yeah.” Her calm expression gained a slight frown.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re not gonna have much time for fun?” he sighed.

“Probably because the stuff out there doesn’t want to sit around and wait for us,” she supplied. “But, it ain’t like there ain’t gonna be more Karma on the table. We’ll just have to be heroic, instead of adventurers.”

“All work no play makes Briggs a dull Ancient,” he said flatly. “Maybe I can make an Oath...”

“To do what? Pacify Yle Tyorm? I think that big vivic blast is gonna do just that, kinda a waste to make two Oaths to the same purpose!”

“Quit shooting down my dreams of living a crazy-fun Delver’s Carnival, woman!” he mock-barked.

“Yeah, well, you know how those turned out...” And he pursed his lips, because he did. Those dungeons had been crazy fun, and taken people away from the vital task of keeping the lands cleared, while also generating power for the Dark and Grey gods.

Yle Tyorm was a massive dungeon and fun place to go pick on absurdly tough monsters... because of a massive disaster and the following Curse on it. Helping it be more of what it was really didn’t make much sense from that point, did it?

It was still a nasty fun idea, worming into his brain and trying to distract him. He firmly banished it, and got back on task.

Spears and swords and stuff at QL 26+ to make, and Warped to kill...