In an infinite universe, everything is repeated somewhere else. Within The Worm, however, gods don't have the luxury of infinity. They are the line cooks of reality. As such, they need designs that work, and therefore borrow what's been rolled out on other planes of existence.
Of course, every now and again there comes along a god, an eccentric type, a troublemaker, who wants to shuffle animal parts around for fun, or who gets a bit loose with the reset button. That's fine when the pantheon has collaborated itself into a corner, or when a few big players have stalemated. There are many celestials who consider chaos immensely entertaining, but to pay the bills, you need something sentient.
Sentience, a force often generated by brains, is what introduces complexity, hubris, and order to the chaotic helminverse – literally, "the combined whole within the worm". It's useful for coming up with rules. And those efforts undertaken to comb the gnarled mass of reality – to make sense of time and space – are subject to the Worm Tax, also known as Entropy.
But brains don't exist in a vacuum. They require a carefully maintained world ecology in order to flourish. From the chaos arises towers of complexity, whose architects are dually driven by the gods and undermined by them, and by the crumbling of those glittering heights is the worm sustained.
And that is where this story starts. Not amidst the rubble of a collapsed monument to mortal ingenuity, but in the ocean, in a coral reef.
This coral reef had no official name and, as observed from above, extended from the base of a mountain range, following the fault line into the southern sea like the bony tail of a great beast. It is worth noting that this mountain range fenced in the rich, damp westerly wind. Its magnificent peaks neatly divided the land into the lush windward valley and the eastern wasteland which lay in the range's shadow. On land, this produced what some may consider an unfair allocation of resources, but this was a disparity which did not translate beneath the waves. The coral reef thrived in the runoff, rich in nutrients from windward and leeward side alike. And this coral reef had its own personal gardener.
Swimming frantically among the coral was what appeared to be a self-propelled mass of brown kelp, and an accompanying nurse shark. In fact, when observed closely, the mass of kelp was being worn – if an observer were less charitable, they might say it was being piloted – by a gnome.
When confronting the word "gnome", the reader may picture a sharp-dressed, rosy cheeked, pudgy creature of a magical persuasion, with a long, thick beard and stiff, pointed hat. In truth, this description only fitted a tiny portion of the gnomes which lived on the bolus. This was because their community believed that belted shoes, colorful trousers, and stiff conical hats played into a dangerous and offensive stereotype for a people who considered themselves an industrious, proud, and greatly skilled with their hands. However, most still chose to live in mushroom houses out of convenience. Stereotypes were one thing, but try asserting your land rights when your neighbors of other races have three or four feet of height on you.
Under the shaggy kelp robe, this gnome may have had the same gentle rotund figure and rosy cheeks as the reader may have imagined, but his beard was long and unstyled, with algae growing in green patches among the grey tangle. His hat, also woven from kelp, was not a rigid, pointy cone, but a floppy one. As he swam, the beard and hat flowed like the top and bottom fins of an angelfish. "Flowed" may not be the right word to describe his swimming, which involved as much groping as it did elbowing and kicking.
His name is Amerigo, and though he was swimming alongside a shark, it was not the reason for his panic. This nurse shark, in addition to being a member of a species not inherently interested in eating gnomes, was his friend. He had named her Saethru, and it was anyone's guess if she knew this or not. It hadn't seemed to have affected her very much in the years of their friendship.
The pair came upon what looked like an underwater pagoda, picked out in erratic coral growth. The shark parked herself just outside the entrance to the coral enclosure as Amerigo propelled himself inside, arms and legs flailing in the most efficient swimming afforded to him.
The rite for contacting a deity depends heavily on the deity in question. Contacting Stormhaegen, the god of the sea and storms, had special accommodations for his subjects, who typically lived on, near, or – in Amerigo's case – under the water. Where Neos, the god of the hearth and community, may require a stocked larder and a populated dining hall, and where Deos, the god of magic and artifice, may require candles, a steady drawing-hand, and ample supply of chalk, Stormhaegen diverged. He much preferred a place to talk comfortably, and some trifle to snag his interest.
Inside was a cozy, colorful space. There was no unnatural ornamentation beyond a simple stone cairn. No further artifice marred the natural beauty of the living coral which comprised the structure. Amerigo worshipped Stormhaegen in a very unofficial fashion. In some regions, a noble family may subscribe to the practice of patronizing an ornamental hermit. This hermit is tasked with caring for the gardens, befriending the creatures, and entertaining guests with matters of philosophy. In many ways, Amerigo was Stormhaegen's hermit. While he did not provide concrete remuneration, as most hermits would get an allowance of food, he granted Amerigo certain abilities and authority outside of those afforded by mortal lords. Like the ability to breathe underwater. Luckily for Amerigo it hadn't been the ability to breathe fire, as this would have made his job significantly harder.
Amerigo fished in the recesses of his kelp robe. He withdrew his hand, bringing with it a stone talisman. On one face, there was what looked like a barbed pitchfork against a lazy grid. The lines of the grid going one way were perfectly straight, but the lines going perpendicular were curved like wave crests, each point of which intersected with the straight lines. The face on the reverse side was blank. Amerigo placed it on the stone cairn reverently before backing away and clasping his hands. He bowed his head.
The atmosphere glittered with luminous plasma coming off coral spines and the tips of plants. Amerigo allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Stormhaegen was usually a stickler for details, and such an unfocused mind could easily deter the god from making an appearance. Today, it seemed, he was willing to talk.
He had been worried his thoughts were too unfocused, scattered from the events prior to his arrival. They kept drifting back to his violent encounter with the merfolk.
Amidst the dancing, crawling sparks, and against all known rules of meteorology, a cloud formed under water. A person emerged from the nimbus, large and boisterous, his deafening chuckles filling the place like rolling thunder, his beard grinning from ear to ear. He appeared dressed in a bath robe, blue in color with shimmering designs of intricate complexity. He looked like a larger, more rotund gnome.
Clouds hung to his face in place of hair. Straight wispy stratus up top with fluffy cumulus for a beard and chest hair, the latter of which peeked out where the bath robe closed.
"Welcome Amerigo!" the god boomed, "It feels like ages since you've been to my shrine! Busy tending the garden as usual I wager. We should walk it one of these days! I haven't manifested here in an age, and I could do with seeing its splendor with physical eyes! You've done well! Oh, do you have something to tell me?"
The god prattled like the clatter of rain, oblivious to Amerigo's frantic gestures for haste, which the god had only just noticed.
"What is that you have brought me?" he asked, leaning over his nimbus. The talisman had caught his interest. He rolled forward and stared inquisitively at the nervous face between the kelp and grey beard.
"What have you been getting involved with, my faithful servant?"
****
Earlier that same day, Amerigo stalked the maze-like corridors of the reef. There were intruders about, smashing coral and eating the fish. He had been napping on the sand, curled up in his kelpen robe like any old sea-tossed tangle, when he'd felt the reef cry out.
It had arrived in his head as a keening sensation, as sharp and sad as a razorblade's funeral. The migraine pain – sharp but short-lived – had put his teeth on edge and made his head ring. The curious thing, however, was that it did so without going through his ears. Now he was moving cautiously through the reef, creeping up to corners and watching overhead for high swimmers.
It was eerily calm among the tutti-fruity coral. This time of day one could expect glittering schools of fish and the gently swaying fans and feelers of the more passive feeders. No one wanted to risk an appendage to whatever visitors were here.
Amerigo spotted a sprinkling of coral debris on the sand, just below a hole where there was fresh breakage. The source of the earlier outcry.
Some creatures fed on coral, Amerigo knew. It was a living creature in its own right and had its fair share of predators. But the shattered remains which lay on the sand here were uneaten. He knew vandalism when he saw it.
As he examined the pieces, the sand at the base of the reef began to stir, sending up a swirling cloud. Amerigo froze. Had one of the vandals lain a trap for him? He anticipated...what? An attack of some sort? What sort of creature was he hunting? He didn't know.
A small crab leapt from the sand and onto his robe, scrabbling upwards and around. But something far larger continued to stir the sand as it wriggled out of the narrow crevice.
A grey bullet, once freed from the space, shot towards Amerigo. It circled him. It demanded to be petted.
To Amerigo's relief, it was a nurse shark. To wit, his companion Saethru. He sighed and stroked her, not unlike one would pat a dog or a large cat.
The crab, almost forgotten with Saethru's appearance, hung off his arm. It was a hermit crab, but one who had lost his shell. Saethru had likely been hunting him, Amerigo reasoned. Hermit crabs made a good meal for a nurse shark. A shell-less one was an opportunity not to be wasted. But seeing that the crab was now in Amerigo's care, she had given up the chase.
Amerigo breathed out. Saethru hadn't been the vandal, or vandals, so that was a relief. But – and here Amerigo tensed again – where could they be? He looked at the wall. Not at the wall, but at the coral. And not just the coral, but the bit of the behemoth amalgam in which he lived, referred to colloquially as "the reef". He had a way to find them remotely, but it would be risky.
He closed his eyes. In his mind, each life around him took shape as its own strand of white silk, extending from the past and into the future. Saethru, who sat nestled under his arm. The crab in his palm. Each individual polyp of the coral reef around him. The microscopic zooites which landed on his skin. Each had their own thread in this vast dark void behind his eyelids. They twinkled into sight, as though shifting out of the surrounding darkness. He could even sense the bits of coral, broken but still alive, issuing a panicked cry.
But all of these lives were small potatoes to the great silken cord which comprised the composite ego of the entire reef. Millions of minds, irrevocably interwoven, stretched out before him like a standing wave on a plucked guitar string. He could almost hear the hum of the tone echoing in the void.
Reverently, he gathered the living coral gravel from the sand and pressed it to the wall, concentrating on connecting the polyps' threads to the greater whole. The threads began to knit. He could feel the gravel congealing under his palm, the coral welcoming back the refugees.
Amerigo traced the threads from polyp to polyp. He did so tentatively, as though navigating metal monkey bars, hot from baking in the summer sun, acclimating himself to the contact rung by rung. Should his spirit became entangled in that of the reef, escape could become impossible. Beneath his contact, a web of a million connections expressed their opinions about trifles and mundanities. Like a hot cocoa drinker testing for temperature, he sampled them. Expressed without the framework of language, there was complex outpouring of something less than thought but more than pure emotion. It was about things like the ongoing territorial disputes, the quality of the sunlight, the recent trauma of their neighbors. Amerigo felt like he was at a party, everyone having private conversations while he slunk around the outskirts of the room. He picked up the news of shadowy figures moving amongst the corals.
Shadowy figures? He snapped his fingers. That must be what he was looking for. But by following this lead, he would further risk turning the reef's attention on himself. If that happened...
He shook off the slowly paralyzing tensions and steeled himself. He began pulling his mind along the rope of threads which comprised the uber-ego of the coral reef. The shadowy figures, or rather the trail of rumor they impressed on districts and neighborhoods, were always just ahead of him.
Suddenly, he could feel the rope become sticky, the thoughts twisting back on him, lingering on his presence. If this were a party, it was as though the conversation had stopped and all eyes had turned on him. The tangle was beginning to absorb his mind, sucking it from his living flesh like a snail from a shell. Amerigo quailed, trying to free himself to no avail. It felt to him like the ground suddenly became like quicksand where, managing to free one foot, there's nowhere to place it to free the other except back in the quicksand.
A weave in the rope of threads opened like a maw beneath him and, all at once, he was sinking into a funnel web of thoughts. A shift in perspective, and he was trapped in the threads, folded within them like a net.
But once again, there was the keening sensation. Somewhere, the vandals had hurt the reef, and the pain spread through the cord like the spike in a cardiogram. It felt like a toothache in Amerigo's skull.
The threads which were tugging against him paused in the moment of pain. Amerigo took this moment to wrest his consciousness from theirs, reaching upwards to drag himself above the throng, pulling, and pulling...
Amerigo opened his eyes. Whatever was hurting the reef was nearby. He wasn't sure what he could do if he found these vandals, but he was getting an idea. He would need some help in driving them out. Placing the crab under his cap for safekeeping, he swam off to do some recruiting.
He searched among the hiding places for willing fighters. Not many expressed a desire to defend their home, but here was one he directed to an unsuspecting location. Another he allowed to slither up his sleeve. It wasn't much, but it was cheap insurance against the worst.
As he was about to head off to locate the interlopers, he made a gesture to Saethru, twirling a finger. She and Amerigo swam off in opposite directions.
He turned, using his He meandered through the reef in the direction he had sensed them, using his pain like a dowsing rod to track their movement and proximity. It came in short bursts, presumably with each minor act of destruction. Faint headache... Sinus barbs... Jellyfish sting... Ah, razor wire floss. They were this way.
Suffering the strongest one yet – like sucking an electric ice cube – he turned the corner and-
****
"Yes, yes, the incursion on my beloved reef," Stormhaegen said, in the tone of a man tasked with filing a complaint against careless neighbors. He waved a hand, conjuring swirling clouds to form a miniature terrain. Amerigo recognized some landmarks. The drop off to the south, for instance, was formed from dark, angry clouds. These contrasted with the reefs he tended, which were expressed in the technicolor sherbet of morning.
"Merfolk. One of the undine races of the deep, from the dark Hadal zone," he rattled. "Something has changed, and they're moving up from the depths and trampling my garden."
The map moved like the time lapse of a storm front. The dark clouds crept up and over the sherbet like an amoeba, overcoming it in places and attempting to swallow the bright colors. Amerigo paled.
"I know about it. It is an issue, and normally out of my jurisdiction. I cover the sunlit areas of the ocean. And mercantile lanes," he added. "I'm a bit dark on the abyssal regions, you might say," and here he chuckled, "but you need not fear, dear Amerigo. You have come to me, and I have a plan to deal with these trespassers." The god leaned back in his cloud seat and patted his belly comfortably.
Amerigo's relief was visible, but he was conflicted about his god's reaction. He felt a bit more than trampled, because when he had turned the corner...
****
Two dark blue shapes were outlined against the colors of the reef. Each had a fish tail, but were floating upright. Their upper bodies looked gnomeoid, having a torso, head, neck, and two arms with what Amerigo might have called proper hands. The larger of the two was using one to grip a trident. They had no hair, but were edged with jagged fins. The larger of the two had a hook sticking out of its lower fishy lip. The smaller of the two was more gangly. As it detached an outcropping, causing another spike to form in Amerigo's cranium, he could make out criss-crossing scars along its thin arms, from some altercation with a fishing net perhaps.
While Net-bound tortured a withdrawn anemone to death, Hook-mouth sniffed the water curiously, turning Amerigo's direction. The gnome hastily ducked around the corner. With his heart racing, he waited five breaths before looking again.
When he did, there was Hook-mouth's fishy grin and the business end of the trident.
Eyes wide and mind blank from shock, he tread backwards slowly. The two specters met his pace. Net-bound seemed skittish, twitching in anticipation, while Hook-mouth remained rock steady. And then Amerigo backed into a wall.
He almost sighed when the undine lowered its weapon, but then it thrust its off-hand towards him. Amerigo flinched, but only got the sharp wail of pain from the reef again, as the coral to the side of his head crumbled. The hand retracted, holding a struggling yellow tang. The undine stuck the fish on the trident like a receipt on a desk spike.
When it looked again at Amerigo, arms raised defensively, it looked surprised. The two leapt cautiously back. Uncoiling from Amerigo's sleeve was a highly venomous black and white striped sea-snake. It clung to his arm and wavered slightly in the water. Amerigo smirked and gripped it threateningly.
Net-bound, already agitated, was really twitching now. Its once wild eyes now focused intently on the venomous creature. The undine fidgeted, prodding and tapping tits partner, as if to point the sea-snake out. Repeatedly. Hook-mouth only frowned, and then lost patience. In one quick motion, it slapped some sense back into its excited partner.
Amerigo advanced, holding the snake like a loaded weapon. With nowhere to go, but still no intention of leaving, they remained out of reach of the snake, Hook-mouth holding the trident ready and Net-bound keeping its friend between itself and the snake.
Then Amerigo recognized the other fighter he had recruited, laying in wait. His eyes darted to the sand behind Net-bound, whose eyes were on the dreaded sea-snake. Hook-mouth, who saw the glance, turned immediately to see the trap. But not quickly enough.
Net-bound was consumed in a column of sand, the waiting frogfish below swallowing the undine up to the waist in its bag-like mouth. The undine thrashed like a man drowning, and the frogfish held on.
Hook-mouth, fishy mouth contorted into a grimace and brow furrowed, charged Amerigo. With a thrust of the trident, the snake was ripped from Amerigo's hand. With a follow-through motion, it was brought point-end down on the gnome.
Amerigo buckled in fear. Now that he was staring them down, what did he think he could do? He had been tracking them, of course, but, well... call it an academic interest. Now, both contingencies spent, what were his options? He didn't even have Saethru with him. She would still be busy with-... And in that moment he saw a dot over the undine's shoulder.
Like a shot out of the blue came Saethru, carrying something in her mouth. Diving like a bullet from behind Hook-mouth, she tackled the undine before it could land the blow. It staggered from the impact, dropping the trident. The thing Saethru was carrying also floated gently to the sand. Amerigo recognized it as a cluster of fire coral, which stung like nettles on contact with anything unwary enough to touch it. She had been holding it by the base when she had rammed Hook-mouth. The undine lay writhing on the ground in agony.
By now, Net-bound had freed itself from the frogfish and was swimming towards Amerigo. The gnome picked up the trident, ready to fend off the undine, but there was no need for the weapon. It merely picked its partner up onto its shoulder and, maintaining eye-contact with Amerigo, retreated.
Amerigo picked up the trident, though there was no need for the weapon. The merfolk did not come back. It was just him and Saethru now. The sedentary forms of life on the reef unfurled fans, let out their feelers, and resumed their peaceful existence.
A bit sadly, he plucked each fish off the trident and lay them on the sand. Someone around here would eat them. But he noticed something else dangling from the weapon. Hanging from a coarse thread was a stone talisman, embossed with a trident on a net background.
****
"Oh?" Stormhaegen rose one cumulus eyebrow and pointed at Amerigo. The hermit crab had peeked out from under his cap, and it was actually to him the god was pointing. Amerigo removed his cap and palmed the pipe crab. "Taken up smoking, have you? A bit difficult around here, I might point out."
In the ruckus, he had almost forgotten visiting Orlith, the odd octopus. He hadn't been home, to the crab's relief. Another predator avoided. So Amerigo had raided the stash of trinkets. Curiously to Amerigo, the crab had chosen the smoking pipe over an iridescent moonshell and a spiky venus comb. He had also determined – or simply decided – the crab was called Fen.
When he looked up at his god again, Stormhaegen had closed his eyes. "There is a small role which you may play in this," he said, and then spoke as though reading the inside of his eyelids. "The portents are...vague," he muttered, though still loud enough Amerigo thought someone listening at the surface of the water might hear him. In what would have seemed a mock mystical tone, if Amerigo did not know him better, the god said, "You must find...a foul lizard. You will recognize him by his...queenly aura." He waggled his fingers in front of him as he spoke.
He opened his eyes and shrugged.
"Utter nonsense to me. Your job will be to figure it out."
Amerigo drooped.
"It's clear on this point, however. This chosen one is destined to...yada yada...bring about the something or other...and remove the merfolk menace at the source." He waved his hands indefinitely before ending with a confident tone. "You will need to find him and help him achieve his destiny. If you can do that, you may even do more than save the reef, Amerigo."
Amerigo hid his puzzlement behind an austere look of duty, which was how he usually handled interactions with Stormhaegen.
"Go where I send thee," Stormhaegen announced regally, "to the dry northern wastes. I've prepared a rapid but economic method of transportation. No need to thank me."
Amerigo looked shocked. When he was jettisoned out of the ocean and through the air in a bubble of water, he looked downright panicked.
The sea god merely watched with resolution as his struggling devotee rapidly left the altar against his will.
"Air travel. Transportation of the gods," Stormhaegen said to no one in particular.