“What are moving?!” said Sagar.

“The glowworms are moving away from your hand when you hit the floor!”

The skypirate thumped the floor again to test this.

“.,..so they are. What of it?”

“This must be the key to solving the puzzle!”

“What good is that going to do us, pup? It’s just moving some worms around.”

“No, don’t you see?” Ryn said.

He stood up, and then tried stomping his foot on the ground. The glow worms wriggled away from the spot where he stomped, taking their light with them. He stomped again, somewhere else nearby, and some of the worms that had moved away from his first stomp kept going, moving away from this one too, so that it got a little darker around him.

“We can affect them!” Ryn said. “We can move them, herd them!”

The others were frowning at him.

“What good is that going to do us?” said Sagar. “It’s a nice trick, but it’s not going to get us through those doors, pup, is it?”

“No,” said Cid, standing up too, “I think he might be onto something. The boy is right--the worms are the only things in this room that we can affect. It’s the best lead we’ve had so far. Come on!”

He started to stomp on the ground too and, while Ryn had to admit that the two of them looked quite silly taking big exaggerated steps around the darkened hall together, the worms moved for Cid as well.

Nuthea joined in, then Elrann, then Huld (he got a lot of worms moving), then even Vish. And at last Sagar breathed another big sigh and joined them too.

The worms were definitely moving, the only thing was that they were wriggling around inside the floor all over the place in random directions away from different people’s feet.

“Hey!” Ryn called over the noise of their galumphing feet. “If we all stomp in the same place, we might be able to make them go in the same direction!”

They all clumped together and began to stomp near each other, their shoes illuminated by the glow worms that fled their feet: Ryn’s brown leather boots, Nuthea’s golden slippers, Sagar’s steel-capped boots, Elrann’s simple laced shoes, Cid’s bare feet (how long had he not been wearing shoes for?!), Vish’s black shoes with upturned toes, and Huld’s wooden sandals. Together they made a tremendous racket, like the sound of a loud drum being beaten very fast and erratically at the same time, that echoed throughout the hall.

Sure enough, the glow worms all fled through the floor away from the vibrations of their feet, faster than Ryn had seen them move yet, and many of them all in a group together, taking their light with them in a moving puddle of luminescence.

“It works!” proclaimed Ryn jubilantly.

“Yes, this is all well and good, pup,” yelled Sagar, persistent in his antagonism, “but what’s the point?! Where are we going to herd them?!”

The answer seemed obvious to Ryn. “Up the stairs, of course!”

“This is ridiculous!” Sagar yelled.

Neither Ryn nor the others bothered to contradict him, but he joined in all the same. Ridiculous it may be, but this was the only action that had worked or changed anything in this room thus far, so Ryn reasoned the worms must have something to do with the doors at top of the steps.

Under his direction, they began to stomp their way over to the foot of the steps. As they stomped, more glow-worms got caught up in the big group that they were pushing towards the step, and now they were shepherding a big mass of them about three feet across. The light from all of the worms collected together to form a shimmering pool, and they seemed to be emitting it more intensely as they moved away from the party’s thudding feet.

They reached the steps. A few of the moving worms broke off from the main pack and went around the bottom step, but most of them moved into it.

“Keep going!” Ryn spurred the others on over the sound of their stomping feet. “Get them up the steps!”

Once most of the worms had burrowed into the earth of the first step, it lit up white with their glow. This must be the key to progressing through this room. They waited until the worms had moved a little way along the big step, away from their footfall, and then, Ryn leading, they all hopped up onto the step and continued to stomp.

The worms continued to flee, quickly, across the first step and into the earth of the second step.

“Keep on going!” Ryn called again.

They carried on like this, driving the worms up the next step, then another, another, another.

Thudthudthudthudthud went their feet on the earth below them.

And then they were at the top of the steps, driving the worms they had collected towards the doors of stone, all stood in front of them together and jogging on the spot like idiots.

The mass of glow-worms moved along the top step and arrived at the doors.

Then they disappeared.

“Huh?” Ryn exclaimed aloud.

Everyone stopped stomping.

“Well, bloody brilliant,” said Sagar. “We’ve chased them into whatever room’s beyond the doors. Now we’ve lost them and it’s even darker in here. Great work, pup.”

“No,” said Ryn, at Sagar, at the situation. He had been sure they had been onto something. Cid had said so as well.

One God, he found himself saying inside his head. Show me the way through.

Keep stomping! he thought.

“Keep stomping!” he said out loud. He didn’t know why he said it; he just did, and started to stomp again, his eyes fixed on the immovable stone doors.

Nuthea joined in again. Cid. Elrann. Huld. Thudthudthudthudthud. Sagar didn’t bother this time.

“What’s the point, pup?” Sagar yelled. “This is a waste of time! You’re just driving the worms further away!”

And then the doors began to glow.

The grey stone of them began to glow white. As Ryn’s eyes stretched wide and his mouth fell open, he saw hundreds of tiny worms burrowing out of the front of them, coming up through their surface.

“Of course!” Cid yelled. “The worms eat earth, and that’s what causes them to give off the light! We could see them before because some of their light got through the earth near its surface! But stone is more opaque, and blocks it out! They’re eating through the stone now, so we can see them as they reach the surface of it!”

Cid was right. Not only were the doors glowing, hundreds of small white worms poking out of them in different places, but they actually seemed to be shrinking too.

They stomped harder. Ryn noticed that Sagar had joined in again, and gone uncharacteristically quiet.

Now he noticed something else. The worms were still giving off their light, and when they reached the surface of the doors they were poking their little squidgy glowing ends out, but then they were stopping still, not eating any more of it.

Apparently stone was more filling than soil, or whatever the floor and steps were made out of.

“We need more of them!” he cried. He took charge. “Cid, Nuthea, you stay here and keep stomping! Huld, Elrann, Sagar, come with me! We need to herd more of the worms up the steps!”

Sagar actually did what Ryn suggested without protest this time and came with him and Elrann and Huld down the steps.

Together, they chased down the remaining glow-worms in the floor of the hall, stomping and stamping and cooperating together to herd them back towards the steps and up them, a group at a time. Each time they got to the penultimate step, Cid and Nuthea would stop stomping for a moment to let the new batch of worms pass under their feet, and then resume again, driving them into the doors then up and through them.

At last, Ryn and the others managed to sweep up the last of the glow-worms from the floor and herd them up the steps and into the doors. They had managed to catch every single last one now, and the rest of the hall was completely dark, the only light reaching it coming from where they all stood at the top of the steps.

The last worm disappeared into the stone doors.

They all stamped together in front of them, willing the final batch of worms up through the door.

The doors flared with bright, white light, the brightest yet.

Ryn put his hand over his face to cover his eyes.

The party stopped stomping.

And then the doors disappeared.

Ryn took his hand away from his eyes.

The doors just weren’t there any more. They hadn’t been able to see them any more because of the intensity of the light, but the worms must have eaten through the entirety of them.

Instead, they could now see another cramped, darkened, rectangular, earthen corridor, to which the doors had been barring access.

They could see the shape of the corridor because the worms had apparently all dropped back into the earthen floor, though all Ryn could see of them was a large pool of white light now coming from the floor in front of them; a big disc of brightness.

The disc shot forward, along the floor, taking its light with it, threatening to leave them in darkness.

“Come on!” Ryn yelled to the others. “We need that light!”

He shot forwards too, pursuing the pool of light, and the others ran with him without hesitation.