Once he was certain Lancaster was gone, Serenity shifted and tried the door.

It was strange. All the thought it took was moving up to the door and trying to keep going, but he could see as he slipped through the various cracks and holes that he wasn’t just phasing through the door; he was actually fitting through the spaces. There was no sense of constriction or limit, though; he was apparently smaller than even the small holes.

The strange thing was that he went through more than one crack at a time. He apparently didn’t need to be in one piece; some separation was fine. It was something Serenity didn’t really want to test; finding the limits seemed like a bad idea, yet at the same time not knowing the limits could be equally bad.

The other side of the door overwhelmed any remaining consideration of how he’d crossed through it. Serenity noticed the mess even before he finished shifting back to not-Liam and noticed the smell.

When he did notice the smell, he gagged. He’d smelled far worse things, but not in a long time (undead weren’t exactly known for their keen sense of smell, after all) and more importantly, not so unexpectedly.

It was the smell of the battlefield. More specifically, it was the smell of a battlefield a couple days after the battle. Serenity was amazed he hadn’t been able to smell it through the door, but perhaps it simply wasn’t strong enough yet. Serenity didn’t hold out much hope for Bob’s survival; whatever happened here wasn’t going to be good.

Serenity unlocked the door and cracked it open. He wasn’t sure what was happening here, but a swift exit would be easier if he could just keep moving. It would also help Lancaster if he came back; whatever was keeping the smell from spreading, it would be noticeable with the door a little open.

Serenity headed towards the source of the smell, which seemed to be a bedroom. When he stepped far enough into the open doorway to see into the room, the smell was completely explained. The bedroom held several bodies, and while they were mostly intact, several seemed to be missing their extremities, including the one on the bed. Most seemed to be dead, but the one on the bed moved to watch him.

It was only a head and torso; Serenity couldn’t see what had happened to the arms, but the legs appeared to have been replaced with a single tail, which ended in a nasty-looking stinger. It reminded Serenity more of a wasp’s stinger than anything a worm should have, but the space between the man’s torso and the stinger strongly resembled part of a gigantic worm. The man’s shirt didn’t cover where the worm’s tail came out of his body, so Serenity could see that it wasn’t a transformation but more like the worm was wearing the man’s skin like a glove.

Serenity didn’t examine the other bodies in detail. He didn’t really want to know, and it wouldn’t help.

At the far end of the room, Serenity could see a wavy displacement in the wall. It looked like the portal had appeared in the man’s bedroom; he’d probably never had a chance.

Serenity debated attacking without saying anything, and decided that while it was likely that Bob wasn’t savagable, he should try. Bad luck was a death sentence sometimes and it wasn’t his responsibility, really, but if he didn’t try, he’d wonder if it was possible.

“Bob?” It was just a guess, but Serenity didn’t have any other names to go on.

The man’s head turned to face Serenity. He wasn’t sure if he’d been noticed before, but he certainly was now. “How did you enter my domain without my knowledge? This is my nest, none can enter it without my knowledge! You are sneaky, but stealth is not enough!”

Why did so many villains want to monologue?

Serenity hoped he wasn’t making the same mistake by attempting to save what he could, but even if he couldn’t save Bob, maybe he could save some of the others with some effort. At the least, he should make the offer. “Release everyone you’ve-”

A sudden combination of pressure and pain swept over Serenity’s mind. He’d never felt anything quite like it, but it felt like it was digging into the part of his mind that allowed him to link to others. He could feel a whisper of pain coming back up the link from Rissa, and that was enough to help him push back against the attack.

He wasn’t a particularly practiced mind mage, unlike this Hegemon Worm that seemed to have it naturally, but he did have the Mind Affinity and he did have a decent Mind Resistance. He wouldn’t choose to attack that way, but his defenses were generally enough.

After a moment, the worm-man’s assault stopped. “What are you? How did you block that? You should be unconscious and ready to seed!”

Serenity took the moment to do what he should have before he said anything: He used Basic Analyze on the worm-man.

Hegemon Worm Queen

Hegemon Worm colonies occasionally create Worm Queens for no known reason. They are not required for normal reproduction, as “individuals” can reproduce without a Queen, but when a Queen is found, only the Queen is responsible for reproduction. While this seems like it should slow down reproduction, it does not seem to; instead, the Queen will call “individuals” to abandon their host-bodies then seed them with large numbers of worm eggs. The eggs of a Queen that hatch inside a Hegemon Worm body appear far more likely to become Queens themselves than those that mature in the body of another species.

Hegemon Queens are the only known Hegemon Worm that can live indefinitely outside a host body, but they still require a host during their growth and maturation stages.

Colonies with Hegemon Queens are considered especially dangerous because when a new Queen hatches, the old Queen will often send it out into the world to found a new colony. Where possible, it will be given a body that has never held a Hegemon Worm before; the reason for this is known only to Hegemon Worms, but it is believed that the presence of other worms somehow impedes the Queen’s maturation.

Unlike normal Hegemon Worm colonies, colonies with a Queen always act as though they have one mind. This has led to speculation that the Queen acts as a Sovereign, making Hegemon Worms a true Hive species when a Queen is present instead of a cooperative-colony species.

Serenity was disturbed from his consideration of the description by another mental attack. This one seemed different yet again; it tried to twist him, to convince him that the creature in front of him was his superior in all ways and he should do as he was told.

Serenity didn’t have to fight hard to escape that attack; it was like it simply slipped off his mind, leaving very little impression.

“It can’t be. I couldn’t possibly be that lucky. The newborn Sovereign, sneaking into my nest? Bless this day!”

Definitely a villain monologue, though to be fair many of the monologues Serenity had heard over the years were done by people who believed themselves the hero of the piece. Serenity didn’t feel like hearing the rest of it. He pulled his naginata off his belt and went to stab the Worm Queen. It wasn’t going to give up, and that meant that any chance he might have had to save its host was long gone. It was time to just kill it.

The moment his naginata touched the worm’s side, the world vanished and Serenity was in darkness. It was surprisingly comforting to simply float in the darkness, but he needed to know what had just happened.

There was a speck of light in the distance, and Serenity headed towards it. Laughter greeted him as he got closer. “You have no idea what just happened, do you? My egg-mother told me before it sent me away. Sovereign must not fight sovereign in the physical world; Order has ordained against it. Leadership of the Swarm must be determined! To the winner goes the Swarms, and you shall not win! You have no capacity to attack here in the Sovereign Space, where only Swarm and control matters!”

Well, now Serenity understood why the Worm Queen was so willing to monologue. It assumed it was invulnerable against him, and so far it seemed to be correct.

Serenity had heard about Swarms and Sovereigns, of course; the Final Reaper had killed quite a few. If you wiped out the Sovereign, most swarms would have a significant die-off before a new one appeared. Some would have very strange behaviors instead, like obsessively following the last instructions they were given. The consequences of that could be extremely bad, so the Final Reaper had settled on complete extermination if the workers were completely dominated.

That had to be what the Worm Queen was talking about. It was interesting that Order’s Voice did something special when the attacker was also a Sovereign; clearly, he should have let Lancaster in and had him kill the Queen. Well, he’d had no reason to expect this. He’d just have to cope from where he was.

Serenity felt another mental attack run up against him and bounce. He wasn’t sure it was even a real attack; it felt more like a probe than a true attack.

Voice? What are the rules here?

[Sovereign Combat]

[You are limited to your innate abilities as a Sovereign]

[Only the winner will leave unless an alternate accord is reached]

Wait, so it has mental abilities naturally?

[All Sovereigns do; the limitations vary from species to species]

Why the hell am I a Sovereign? I’m a dragon, not some sort of Hive species!

[You are a chimera. A Void Sovereign is the Sovereign of the Voidling species. You should not have accepted if you did not want this]

Serenity didn’t remember accepting it, but it wasn’t like he could change it now. Other than the circumstance he was in right this moment, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to; being able to see again was amazing.

Serenity felt yet another attack come against him; this one was more serious, but it still bounced without too much effort. He could keep this up for a long time, but probably not forever. He didn’t know how long his enemy could attack, but unless he found a way to reply, he’d either be slowly worn down or stuck here.

Serenity drifted closer to the other figure. It no longer wore Bob’s face; instead, Serenity could see a gigantic, larger-than-man-sized worm. It was vaguely reminiscent of an earthworm, but it still had a large stinger at the back - or was it a stinger? The Worm Queen’s description talked about it being the main source of eggs, and laying them in the bodies of hosts and other hegemon worms. That meant it had to have a way to do that.

Serenity was going to think of it as a stinger, whether or not that was its primary purpose. He didn’t want to get stung, one way or the other.

Serenity braced against another attack, but instead the worm spoke. “I thought you were some sort of hive-human, as I am a Hegemon Worm, but you aren’t. What are you? Why are you on the side of humans? We could split them. They are excellent hosts.” The worm actually sounded curious.

A glance at himself told him what the worm saw - a dark, smoky figure shaped more or less like a column with strands of darkness weaving in and around other strands. It only made sense that he’d be in his Void Sovereign shape; that was why he was stuck here, after all. “Humans are my people, and this is my planet. You may not have it.”

If talking would stop the worm from attacking while he searched for a solution, Serenity was in favor of it.

“You should not identify so much with your hosts,” the Worm Queen scolded him. “My children do that as well, and it is a very bad habit. Keep them healthy, yes, but only for your own good. They don’t deserve more.”