There will be no Necroepilogos chapter on the 1st of January, because I’m sick! I’ve made a little patreon post about it here, but it’s not a big deal, I’ll be right as rain again soon. Necroepilogos will return on either the 8th or 15th of January, like usual!

Content Warnings

Cannibalism (yay, it’s back!)
Self-harm

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Vermis’ fingers blurred across the keyboard nestled in her lap, typing too fast for even augmented eyes to follow. Fleeting blue glow chased each keystroke, lighting her emaciated face with the stutter-static of her work.

Strategy blossomed on the screen, bordered by the infinite shadow of the graveworm’s chamber. The frozen world beyond the simulation was overlaid with dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of speculative battle plans, adjusting and changing and morphing a million times a second. The wave of worm-guard was assigned new angles of advance, lines of forward attack, sweeping pincer movements, weapon targeting solutions. The lead worm-guard — the lone forward scout which had plucked Elpida’s physical body from Pheiri’s top hatch, still holding her aloft in a fist of black tentacles — was flooded with reams of specialised commands, flowing past in a gleaming blue river of data. Pheiri was ring-fenced and defined and re-defined and given special carve-outs within the worm-guard’s collective IFF systems and response matrices. Each of the seven Necromancers — Perpetua included — were selected in turn, highlighted and picked out from the background of concrete and black mold, their potential responses and counter-attacks mapped out and predicted, then re-predicted over and over, based on a million possible reactions and counter-reactions and subsequent steps.

Windows spiralled outward from the centre of the screen, multiplying by the thousands. The screen still hung alone in the darkness, casting electric blue glow on the hunched figure of the graveworm’s avatar. But now that screen seemed like a vast wall, stretching away into the shadows.

Elpida tried to follow the plan, but focusing on the screen made her head swim. Illusory infinity was beyond her scale; she was forced to avert her eyes. She stayed quiet and let Vermis work. As the seconds ticked on, she attempted to consult her internal clock, but found only a void where her sense of time should be. All the foresight of Telokopolan genetic engineering had not prepared her for being translated into software.

But still she kept her hand on Vermis’ shoulder. Howl stayed down on the floor, cuddled against the avatar’s side.

Time stretched out. Seconds, minutes, hours, days. Elpida came unmoored, floating in the black.

She blinked. Time snapped back into place. The static whir of mechanical keys halted.

Vermis froze, hands hovering over the keyboard, fingers hesitating as if gripped by one final thought. Her hunched back and bony spine shivered with a slow intake of breath, chased by a wet and difficult swallow.

“That it?” Howl asked. “You done?”

“This … yes,” the avatar murmured. The graveworm’s voice came from everywhere, a whisper from the shadows, fluttering at Elpida’s ears. Her predatory grin deepened. “Yes. This will do it.”

Elpida glanced up at the screen again — a wild cacophony of overlapping information, thousands of exterior views spilling outward, seemingly chaotic at first look, but clearly arranged in a logical and mathematical pattern, far beyond her comprehension. Pheiri, herself, the wave of worm-guard, the seven Necromancers, all were linked together in a gigantic web of action and reaction, prediction and supposition, a network of glowing blue lines, surrounded and bracketed by billion-strong reams of machine-code.

A few unmodified exterior views remained, toward the centre of the screen. They looked ever so slightly different to before. Elpida’s body in the worm-guard’s grip was just an inch more loose and limp. Pheiri’s position had advanced by perhaps a meter or two, the pattern of debris from his tracks completely different. The Necromancers were turned just that tiny bit further in their effort to flee.

“Vermis,” Elpida said. “How much real time has passed?”

The graveworm’s avatar let out a rueful sigh, then hissed as if slurping back drool from between her teeth, bony shoulders adjusting through the thin fabric of her ragged black t-shirt. “About a quarter of a second. I’m rusty, this took far longer than expected. Seven Necromancers? Tch. Hardly the most dire or capable foe I’ve ever faced. Child’s play. Or, should be. An aeon or two ago I could have done this in my sleep. I’m … out of practice.”

“But you’re confident it will work? This is your plan, and it’ll work?”

“It’s all my plans. With this I have covered every eventuality.”

Howl shifted against her flank, one arm around her waist. “You’re doin’ great, wormy. Doin’ it for us.”

Vermis straightened up, uncoiling from over her keyboard, raising one thin and bony hand to sweep her greasy hair out of her face. “No, no I’m not. It’s not enough. It is the best I can do, but I cannot win.”

“Ehh?” Howl said. “What?”

“Explain,” said Elpida.

Vermis tapped a few keys. Windows flashed and flickered past, a dozen shades of blue strobing across her skin. “With my resources and the available time, taking into account the number of targets, the speed of their inevitable retreat, the potential points at which they might decide it is better to turn and fight, the priority defence of your little brother—” overlays of Pheiri zipped past “—and my own considerable atrophy from my peak—”

“Bottom-line it for me,” Elpida said, not unkindly. “Please.”

Vermis sighed again. “At most, I can remove four Necromancers from this fight.”

Howl hissed. “Shit. Shit! What!?”

“Yes.” Vermis hissed , bitter frustration deep in her throat. “This will still leave you three Necromancers to defeat, without my assistance. Three Necromancers. Hnnngh. More than enough to mop up any number of zombies.”

“Four Necromancers,” Elpida echoed. She held onto her emotions; she needed intel. “Before what? Why do you have to stop at four?”

Vermis looked over her shoulder, up at Elpida, cloudy eyes glowing with a flicker of inner blue. “Before Central notices. Once I pass a threshold of involvement, Central will know. I am, of course, Central’s greatest concern, the thing it hates more than anything else, because it was born from me, we were one, once. It is my horrible child. When I deviate from the set lines of our long, cold, frozen war, Central will respond with physical assets.”

“Against us?”

Vermis almost smiled. “Against me.”

“Can you prevail against Central’s physical assets?”

Vermis shrugged. “I have so many bodies. Central cannot exterminate me, just as I cannot slay it. But, losing this particular body would create more problems for you. Would it not?”

Howl spluttered. “The graveworm! You mean the whole graveworm!”

Vermis turned back to the screen. “I have so many worms, I am all the worms, every worm in every grave, gnawing at every scrap of rotten flesh. I am impossible to remove, not without destroying all that is. But if I let Central destroy this one, it will leave you without the protection of my presence. Once Central responds, I must retract the bulk of my immune system to protect this body, or Central will destroy it.”

A deep cold crept into Elpida’s gut; she could see where this was going.

“No graveworm safe zone,” Elpida said. “No basic level of ambient nanos in the air. If you die now, then we’re in the wilds, exposed to revenants from beyond the graveworm safe zone. I’m guessing the corpse of a graveworm would attract some very large scavengers, yes?”

“Mm,” Vermis grunted.

Elpida wet her lips, thinking fast. “How close is your next nearest body? The nearest other graveworm?”

“Seven hundred and sixteen kilometres.”

Howl looked up at Elpida, teeth clenched, eyes wild. “We can make it. In Pheiri. Elps, we can make that! Fuck it, we can do it!”

Elpida shook her head. “The zombies from the tomb can’t.”

“Elps! Three Necromancers! Just one Necro, yeah, shit, maybe we could deal with that, if we got the drop, like with Lykke. But three?! Fuck no! They can just freeze us, or most of us, and then what!? They’ll kill us, they’ll kill Pheiri, they’ll … they … Elps?”

Elpida turned her gaze on Howl and spared her nothing. She felt such instant clarity, such unquestionable steel. Howl trailed off as if she’d seen a nightmare in Elpida’s eyes.

“We promised them the protection of Telokopolis, to the greatest extent we can give it. We’re not betraying that trust.”

“Elps … ”

“Nobody gets left behind, Howl. Nobody gets abandoned. Never. You know that.”

“We can’t fight and win against three fucking Necros! You wanna lose most of the crew, you want that?! You and I, maybe we live, maybe the robots, maybe Shilu, fuck knows, but most of the others are gonna get frozen and killed!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Elps—”

“You said it yourself,” Elpida interrupted. “Our purpose is to surpass the mistakes of our mother.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Nobody gets abandoned. Especially now.” Elpida felt a strange tremor in her chest. “Whatever the price.”

“You’d rather die?!” Howl spat.

Elpida couldn’t answer. Howl turned her eyes away, jaw clenched tight, teeth creaking.

“So,” Elpida said. “Vermis has to protect this body too. But we can even the fight, take down four Necromancers first. Does that mean permanently? Vermis, you can kill those Necromancers? Not just send them back to the network?”

“Mmhmm,” Vermis grunted. “Necromancers are beyond death, as are we all. But I can suppress them, perform wide-area interdiction on their network signals, force them to reroute through the network. They’ll take weeks to cycle back. But four is my maximum.”

Howl hissed through her teeth. “They’re just Necromancers! You’ve got thousands of worm-guard! Fuck!”

Vermis sighed. She gestured at the screen, tapped a key, sent more reams of data flashing past. “Right now they’re calibrated to cause as little systematic disruption as possible. Central likes the great experiment to run with minimal interference. But that will change when I engage them openly, as soon as I do more than simply let my immune system function as it should. Their permissions will allow them to respond in kind.”

“Can’t you just … I dunno, shelter us with the worm-guard?” Howl asked. “Shit, you’ve got an army of them!”

Vermis shook her head, eyes turning sad as she gazed at the screen, at the billion possibilities sketched out in data and image and overlay, faint blue glow glossy on her unhealthy skin.

“Worm-guard cannot be directly controlled,” she said. “Not by me. They are my immune system, not my hands. I can give them suggestions, but that’s all. Changing that would take me subjective aeons, and we don’t have the time. Pheiri has been marked, Pheiri will be safe, but only for a while. I would be unable to hold them back forever. He must flee, as the Necromancers will, and I will eliminate as many as I can before the threshold of Central’s direct attention. And that will be four.”

Elpida stared at the screen, comprehending nothing she saw, her mind taking the problem apart step by step. Three Necromancers was a better fight than seven, but even just one Necromancer was more than enough to overwhelm any number of zombies. With Lykke on her side, one-on-one might be an even chance, but three-on-one still left two Necromancers for her and Pheiri and the others to deal with. And if the graveworm’s involvement did somehow unshackle the Necromancers, the odds were even worse.

Howl stared at the screens too, teeth clenched, brow furrowed with a look Elpida never wanted to see on her face again. The border of defeat.

“Against three,” Elpida said. “With Lykke on our side. And Shilu. We could … ”

“We’re dead whatever we do,” Howl hissed. “No way out.”

Elpida fought the spectre of defeat; she had been fighting it since the revelation about Telokopolis had planted a seed of doubt in her heart. If Telokopolis had once betrayed the remnants of humanity, were she and her sisters destined to do the same? Were they cut from the same cloth, set on the same inevitable path? Howl said no, that they were made to surpass their mother’s mistakes. Elpida wanted to believe that.

But if they couldn’t even prevail here, what was the point? What if the only option was to sacrifice all the zombies they had protected in the tomb? Wasn’t that the same brutal calculation Telokopolis had made?

Elpida refused.

She took her hand off the avatar’s shoulder and clenched her left fist as hard as she could. She wasn’t quite herself in here, running on the graveworm’s hardware. Clock speed too fast, thoughts too many, too easy to second-guess herself. She should never allow these doubts to weigh her down.

“There’s always a way out,” she said. “Always a way through. And if there isn’t, I’ll make one. Vermis. Graveworm. This isn’t enough. I can tell it isn’t enough. You’re holding something back.”

Vermis froze. “I … I didn’t mean … I’m not trying to—”

Elpida smiled. “Classic trick. When you have to give command advice on an impossible decision, present a flawed plan. The bitch in charge will push it further herself. Then, the horror she decides on is all her fault, her idea all along. Am I correct?”

Vermis swallowed. “I … ”

Howl’s gaze whipped round. “Don’t fucking hold back on us, hey! Anything, anything! Come on!”

Vermis — the graveworm’s secret avatar, greasy and ragged, locked in her own darkness for countless aeons — chewed on her bottom lip. “I did not intend to mislead. I only … ”

“I’m not angry,” said Elpida. “Whatever we do next, the responsibility is mine, not yours.”

Vermis hunched again, closing herself off. “I was hoping you would notice, but … but it will require trust beyond anything I deserve to be granted. I cannot just ask you to do this.”

“Hey! Hey!” Howl shook her by the shoulder. “I thought you wised up already, for fuck’s sake!”

But Elpida felt the gravity in those words, in the way the graveworm’s omnidirectional voice dropped to a low hiss of shame.

“Howl, hold up.” Elpida stepped around to Vermis’ side, opposite Howl. She dropped into a squat, trying to catch the graveworm’s cloudy eyes. “Vermis—”

“I am but a worm,” she muttered, speaking to her own lap. “I am not worthy of this.”

“Vermis. You were our mother’s lover, you were … humanity, for whatever that word means anymore. If we can’t trust you, who can we trust?”

“Your mother,” Vermis whispered. “Not I.”

“And right now, she needs you. Telokopolis needs you.”

Vermis refused to raise her face. “I am not deserving of such trust. I, who bore such hatred, who bore it into this world, I’ve betrayed all of you. Her, her children, even the teeming masses of undead, I have betrayed them all before I even knew there was such to betray. How can you trust me with anything? I cannot ask—”

Elpida reached out and took the graveworm’s chin, skin greasy and cold beneath Elpida’s fingers. She forced the avatar to look up, into Elpida’s eyes. Cloudy purple blinked back behind a veil of tears.

“You are forgiven,” Elpida said. “I am the first-born daughter of Telokopolis, and I forgive you. I will forgive and accept anybody, any degree of crime, any betrayal, it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re on our side now and intend to stay. As long as you’re fighting for Telokopolis now, as long as you mean it. Do you mean it, graveworm? Do you fight for Telokopolis now?”

Vermis tried to nod, tears thickening in her eyes.

“Then you’re one of us. I forgive you.” Elpida leaned forward and kissed Vermis on the forehead, then eased back and smiled wider. “And now you’re forgiven, you’re going to accept my trust, and give me everything you can possibly do. No limits. That’s what I want. Understand?”

Vermis blinked several times, swallowed hard. “It will be dangerous, for both you and Howl.”

“I don’t care,” Elpida said.

“Yeah!” Howl snapped. “Fuck danger! We’re the danger!”

Vermis nodded. Elpida let go of her chin.

“To her daughters, I pass the weapons I cannot wield,” Vermis muttered. She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes, then turned to Howl. “You will need network permissions, higher than the stolen scrap your mother slipped to you while you were in her care. My permissions, or at least a sliver of them, enough to help you resist Necromancer control.” Vermis chewed on her bottom lip. “This will violate both of us. There is no way around it, not on the time-scale we require.”

Howl glanced at Elpida. Elpida nodded. Howl looked back at Vermis.

“Sure thing, wormy. Hit me hard as you need.”

“And … ” Vermis sighed. “This will make you a priority target for Central. There won’t be any going back.”

Howl cracked a grin. “Fuck it, we’re already all-in. Paint me up good.”

Vermis paused — then bit down hard, somewhere inside her own mouth, with the unmistakable sound of teeth tearing flesh. Her eyes scrunched shut and she let out a low wail of strangled pain. A thin trickle of blood and saliva slipped from between her lips, a string of mucus drooping toward her lap.

Then she leaned forward, slowly and cautiously, asking permission with her body. Howl’s eyes widened in surprise, but she did not back away from the kiss.

Vermis kissed a mouthful of blood and a gobbet of meat past Howl’s lips.

The kiss was over in a handful of seconds. Vermis sat back, wheezing with pain, clutching her cheek, drooling bloody saliva. Howl’s mouth was smeared with crimson, pupils blown wide, face turning pale and waxen.

“Swallow it,” Vermis croaked. “You have to swallow it.”

Howl nodded, visibly sweating. Her throat bobbed — but then she retched, heaving forward, eyes bulging. Vermis whipped a hand out with sudden speed and clamped it over Howl’s mouth.

“Keep it down,” the graveworm hissed through bloody teeth. “Reject it now and this will not work. You can do this. You are her daughter. You can make it part of you.”

Howl swallowed again, harder this time, throat bobbing. She started to shake and shiver, as if in the grip of a sudden and terrible fever. Strange muffled moans leaked from around Vermis’ fingers. Elpida struggled against an urge to shove Vermis aside and rip Howl away. The instinct to protect her sister was overwhelming. She’d never seen Howl suffer in this way, nor any of the cadre. The pilot phenotype was immune or resistant to so many common diseases and maladies. To see Howl gripped by strange sickness was a horror she’d never faced before.

But this was a simulation, a software space inside the graveworm’s mind. Howl was not sick, she was accepting part of the graveworm itself.

Eventually Howl’s shaking subsided. Elpida let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. Vermis slowly removed her hand, leaving a blood print smeared across Howl’s lips.

“Howl? Howl?” Elpida said. “Can you hear me?”

Howl couldn’t focus her eyes. Swaying on the spot, unable to sit upright, she lurched one way, then the other, then tumbled forward. Elpida pushed past Vermis and caught Howl under the armpits. Howl’s eyes rolled, passing across Elpida’s face as if she wasn’t there, peering into the shadowy depths of the infinite chamber beyond.

“Uhhnn … ” Howl groaned. “God-meat, huh? Shiiiiit.”

“Howl, can you hear me? Howl! Respond!”

“Loud and clear, Elps. Commander. Commander of my … cunt.”

“How do you feel?”

Howl turned in Elpida’s arms, limp and boneless, as if trying to burrow into her lap. “Like I’ve just mainlined a bucket of morphine.”

Vermis cleared her throat, still clutching the wound inside her cheek, bloody drool soaking into the front of her filthy black t-shirt. “I’ve passed her as much of my own permission code as she can take without losing herself. She won’t have access to it all, not right away, but overcoming Necromancer nanomachine-stop instructions shouldn’t take too long to figure out.”

“They can’t freeze us anymore?” Elpida asked. “She could always do that with my own body.”

Vermis shook her head, pointed at Howl. “That wasn’t permissions, that was just her own network presence running inside you. With this, she’ll have access to some of the same wide-effect permissions as a Necromancer.”

Elpida nodded. “Thank you. I’m glad we trusted you.”

Vermis smiled, bloody and grim, blinking slowly, pale lids sliding over cloudy eyes like a film over milk. “We’re not done yet. Your turn.”

Elpida straightened up, as best she could with Howl limp in her lap. “Whatever you need.”

Vermis took a deep breath, then spoke through the thick blood pooling in her mouth. “There is a way to relinquish control of a small portion of my worm-guard, when Central responds and I am forced to pull back my immune system.”

Elpida nodded. “Howl did it before. Hijacked a few worm-guard for a few minutes.”

Vermis shook her head. “No. My immune system has learned that trick. And you will need more than a few minutes. I can gift you partial control, but I need a body. A zombie body. Yours is right there.”

“My physical body?”

“Revenants are the one thing Central cannot control. It can kill you, send Necromancers to freeze you and melt you, force you back into the cycle of resurrection. It can wear down your minds, it can eat you from the inside, force you to betray every principle and scrap of trust and faith you ever had. But it cannot take your free will to refuse. So I need a zombie’s body. I need to be inside your head, at least for a time, and with that access I will wire you to my worm-guard. Not many, perhaps only a handful. But they will be yours, and that may be enough to finish three Necromancers.”

“Risks?”

Vermis smiled, heavy with melancholy. “I have never done this before. You may be crushed by the weight of me. You may lose yourself. You may be overwhelmed by the feedback from half a dozen worm-guard. I simply have no idea. But … ” Gently, Vermis reached for Elpida, one bony hand slipping behind Elpida’s head. Elpida let her touch, cold fingers exploring the back of Elpida’s neck, tangling in her hair. “You were one of her pilots, weren’t you? You know what it’s like, to join with a machine, mind-to-mind.” Vermis tapped the place where Elpida’s skull met Elpida’s spine. “You had a mind-machine interface socket, right here, yes? When you were warm and quick?”

Elpida felt a shiver of longing. “It’ll be similar to piloting a combat frame?”

“A little. You may survive the experience, where other zombies would be blotted out. I don’t think it’ll be pleasant.”

Elpida nodded. “I’m prepared. Between Howl with network permissions, and a worm-guard of our own, we might have a fighting chance.”

Vermis’s smile died away. “I would give her daughters that fighting chance. I would give myself, if I could, if it would make any difference.”

“This will make a difference.” Elpida grinned. “How do we do this? Do you need to kiss me too?”

Vermis shook her head. “No, this will be … well.” She lifted the keyboard from her lap. “Put Howl in my lap, let’s get into position.”

Elpida rolled Howl into Vermis’ lap. Howl, dazed and groggy, blood-drunk with network permissions, allowed herself to be propped upright, head against the avatar’s shoulder, her backside nestled in Vermis’ lap. Vermis closed her arms around Howl’s front, keyboard propped on Howl’s knees.

“Wheeeeee,” Howl muttered. “Time to ride.”

Vermis seemed overwhelmed for a moment, blinking rapidly, tears shining in her eyes. She sniffed hard. “Now … now you, Elpida,” she said. “I should sit in your lap in turn, that would be easiest. We have to be one, three minds in one body. Mine is the biggest, I need both of you to brace me. And I … I apologise, I know I am … rotten and vile, I have been in the dark for so long, I must be disgusting. I am—”

“Hey,” said Elpida, as gently as she could. “Nothing to be ashamed of. You’re with us now.”

Elpida got behind Vermis, sat down on the floor, and dragged the graveworm into her lap. The shadows rose up either side to support her back, a strange void-like cushion of nothingness taking Elpida’s weight. Vermis weighed so little, all skin and bone, fragile beneath Elpida’s left hand. Howl snorted, snuggling deeper. Vermis was tiny in Elpida’s lap, engulfed by Elpida’s muscles, her left arm around Vermis’s waist, hand on Howl’s belly.

“So warm … ” Vermis muttered.

A wave of cold passed up Elpida’s spine, crawling toward her neck. She stiffened in surprise. “Is that you?”

“Relax,” said Vermis. “It will feel strange. Give me your stump.”

Elpida began to shiver with cold, sudden and sharp, seeping outward from her spine, soaking into the meat of her organs, paralysing the space behind her eyes. But she raised the stump of her right arm.

“What is this— this cold— it’s—”

Vermis took Elpida’s stump in her right hand. Instantly the cold flooded her wound-site, dense and deep.

“I am wiring you into my nervous system,” said Vermis. “Hold onto yourself, as best you can. If you cannot, if the worst comes to the worst, then I will prioritise the lives of your comrades.”

Elpida grinned through the cold. “I’d have it no other way. I’m glad you and I understand each other.”

“Are you ready?”

“Telokopolis is forever,” Elpida said. She was calm, her mind prepared, her body coiled like a spring, freezing on the inside. “Do it.”

“I … yes.” She heard a smile in the graveworm’s voice. “Telokopolis. Hope. Forever.”

01110100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001
01110100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001
01110100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001

01110111 01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01110101 01110000 00101100 00100000 01100101 01101100 01110000 01110011 00100001

Elpida’s eyes flew open, raw and red, stinging with the whip of roaring wind.

She was upright, on her own two feet, standing on a surface of smooth transparent diamond, beneath which pulsed and throbbed great masses of tarry-black muscle and mucus.

Her gut reacted instantly — Silico!

But her vision was blurred by static toward the edges, as if some part of her mind struggled to push back visual interference. And then she realised; not Silico at all.

She was standing on the back of a worm-guard.

Ropes of black muscle and sticky fibres anchored her by both arms, like the reins of a riding animal. Her left arm was wrapped with the stuff, a knotty mass of it held in her fist. The stump of her right arm was entirely swallowed up within the living material. She felt it burrowing into her flesh, flowing backward into her veins, a creeping wave of black spider-webbing up her nerves.

“Vermis!” she yelled. “Vermis, what—”

Chill! Howl shouted inside Elpida’s head. Chill out, Elps! Mum’s old side-piece has got us covered!

Elpida trusted Howl, but the sensation was like a wave of ice freezing her arm, creeping toward her chest and her heart. Worse than that, another clutch of tendrils were worming their way up the back of her neck, sticky and cold, feeling for an MMI cranial uplink slot that she no longer possessed.

Elpida raised her eyes. The shattered post-storm landscape whirled around her, a ruin of concrete and black mold to the far horizon. To her left and her right, waves of worm-guard swept forward, pounding toward the Necromancers still skidding to a halt, turning on their heels, to escape the graveworm’s response.

Pheiri was below her, the off-white of his nano-composite bone-armour flashing past as he tried to turn.

An alien impulse jerked the stump of Elpida’s right arm. The worm-guard on which she stood reared back, letting Pheiri go. An iridescent mass flew past, descending toward Pheiri.

Iriko! And on her back, swept along in her wave, a slash of white and blonde — Lykke?

Elpida grinned, she couldn’t help it; she realised exactly what Iriko had been trying to do, saving Pheiri from the nasty worm-guard. Howl grinned with her, a wild cackle between her teeth.

Something else grinned too, something that hadn’t felt wind on skin or the taste of air for a very long time.

“Hey blobbo!” Howl roared at the top of Elpida’s lungs. “Get on board, girlie! We’re gonna rip open some Necromancer!”

Iriko twisted past, a piece of oil-soaked foil caught in a gale, Lykke clinging on as hard as she could. Pheiri gunned his engines and skidded across the broken concrete at the exact angle to catch Iriko at the end of her descent; she landed hard, splattering across his outer deck. But she was mostly intact, already pulling her biomass back together. Lykke staggered free, gaping up at Elpida on the worm-guard’s back.

Elpida didn’t have time to shout again.

Those little tendrils at her neck decided they would make their own MMI uplink slot. With a sharp pain and a hot gush of salt-red blood, they slit the back of Elpida’s head open, right where spine meets skull.

She felt them wriggle inside, invading her cranial cavity; her vision went red, then black, then whited-out with pain. She screamed, or bit down on a scream, she couldn’t tell. Somebody held both her hands. Somebody else held her from behind. Somebody was in her lap. Howl’s voice whispering in her ear.

And then, infinity.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Welcome to worm-brain, Elpida. Try to keep your head above the surface.

Well, here we are, getting stuck into the meat and bone of arc 17! Things are still predicted to be quite short and snappy this time. 5-6 chapters, perhaps? I think I already mentioned this. Behind the scenes, of course, I’ve already lost control of my zombie girls, as I always do. So we’ll have to see where they take things.

Meanwhile, more art! I can’t link this one directly, because of how wordpress functions; instead, click over to the fanart page, and scroll all the way to the end. You’ll find an animation (by samsungsmartfrog!) of Pheiri and the graveworm, being surprised(?!) by a regenerating Necromancer. Amazing to see experiments in animating the vibes of Necroepilgoos, thank you so much!

Meanwhile, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! I know, I know, I say this every week, but I mean it no less for the repetition. Necroepilogos would not exist without all of you, the audience! Without anybody to watch this wriggling worm, it would simply slip back into the soil. So, thank you for being here. I’ll seeya next chapter! Until-

Oh! But you know what? I’m posting this a few second past midnight on December 25th. So, Merry Christmas! Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, whatever you’re up to right now, I do hope you have a very lovely day indeed. And I’ll seeya next chapter! Until then!