The depths of the world shone with light.

Intermittent flare of blue on amber, the glow was seen by none and required by fewer. The cavern burned with it, marking the passage of God.

Grotlings had splayed out of rank, Grotlings everywhere, on every crag, in every gulley, sprinting through the blood well tunnels, hunting by smell and sound and aura-sight to challenge their kinsmen to duel. Weapons gleamed, discoloured by the Change Eater, in every shape and form of slaughter imaginable.

Wyrms shot through the dark, yawning with monstrous rows of teeth. Grotlings rode them. The Blowfly rode the greatest worm of all.

Auricolor alone was enough to face eight Grotlings, in her draconic Stance of the Threefold Ferret. Her claws were myriad, her laughter constant, her teeth a shredding void of fire into dust. No tunnel was too small to contain her, no battle too large. With Tauranga at her back, she was unstoppable.

They fought for her, and with her, and against her as her enemy, split tribe against split tribe- forged themselves in her name. They were her Tauganactsa, her demons, her pirates of the pit.

Against them stood the ones who would not call them so, the ones who would defy her godhood and name them Valtanan, Saluracta and Teknarotu. They were Grotcararsa, depleted of Vosh, and Atacarzalnkelsa, shattered as their god had been, and above all, they were Cahnulansa, bone breakers, who had spited Tauranga and been spited in turn, for [i]no true Grotto God would suffer such weakness.[/i]

So Tauranga had arranged a duel.

And they had agreed.

The Blowfly leapt from her colourful perch and landed in the stone, wielding a war-maul in one hand and a bush knife in the other. She put the bush-knife in a Cahnulan raider and beat her skull in 'til she said 'yield', and moved on rapidly to the next two warriors, awaiting her behind a corner with a falx and a bladed longbow in hand. There they would meet, and fight, 'til death or agony, for Tauganact legitimacy.

Tauranga knew they were attempting to meet her in more open terrain. She sheathed her machete and held the maul in both hands, feeling it lengthen in the dark, tapering until spiked at both ends, returning to its polehammer form. They felt the change. Good.

Sasha landed beside her, so they could have even numbers in the pit fight.

Like civilised people.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

It took a long time for Heartworm to find the site.

Buried beneath kilometers of sea, covered by a siliceous layer of dust, the bones were forgotten, left to rot and then to fossilise. It would take time for the skeleton to be buried completely, but that it had in plenty. It had promised to slumber.

The pod-like shape zipped through high-pressure water with a chain of bubbles in its wake, the lines in its glass visor the only glow in an ocean utterly dark. So much for Toun's 'white' sea. Beneath the skin, all depths are black.

It landed its arms on a titanic rib and went further.

There. In the chest of the giant Grot, the sparse remains of something [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c1/8c/7a/c18c7aae42c09da1aed7998cedd65a50.jpg]too arachnid to be human, too twisted to be spider.[/url]

[color=f6989d][i]Główna Vosh.[/i][/color]

Heartworm settled on it. The shattered skull was as large as its entire pod, but that didn't matter. Between these ribs, they were equally small.

It took a deep-bone sample. The nucleic acids were almost irretrievably eroded, but that could be repaired. The soul, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

Shuvra stood in the silence.

[color=f6989d][i]Soon I too will die.[/i][/color]

All things led the same way in the end. That was Fate; Lazarus was right. [i]Chiral Phi[/i] was right. 

A spectral worm had drilled a hole in the Prime Grot's rib, long since empty and forgotten.

[color=f6989d][i]Is it the fate of we worms to pass quickly out of mind?[/i][/color]

The Główny gave no answer.

[color=f6989d][i]Our time was too short,[/i][/color] said Shuvra. [color=f6989d][i]I will do what I can.[/i][/color]

No answer.

[color=f6989d][i]Maybe this time, the worms will have something to remember.[/i][/color]

Heartworm turned away, and departed to the surface, a very small light in a very large abyss. 

Behind it was only darkness.