I keep close behind him, watching the powerful ripples of his body as he moves. I know he must be going slower than he usually would because I could not keep up with him otherwise, but he does not show impatience. He is constantly scanning the horizon, stopping and looking down to see if the sand dances. That is the first sign of the rising wyrm.
“Oh, no.”
Those two words, coming from a powerful creature like Isu, make my stomach sink with dread. Behind him, I do not see what it is he sees until I dare peek around him.
The burrow is gone. I did not know it was possible for a hole in the ground to be ruined, but there is scarred rock and jagged metal sticking out of the ground where the wyrm must have penetrated.
“The wyrm?”
“The wyrm,” he says. “Everyone inside is either dead, or buried. It will take months to dig out, and we cannot stay exposed.”
It takes him only moments to assess the situation, which to me seems dire beyond compare. He speaks with a flatness that concerns me. Isu is passionate, but I think seeing this destruction has broken something inside him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but he isn’t listening. He is staring at the remnants of what used to be his home. I don’t know what to do, so I do nothing. Speaking only seems to make it worse, so I remain silent.
He leans down and begins to try to move rocks, a futile act of bravery under a killer sky. I try to help, moving smaller ones. Between the two of us, we move a small mound of material, but we both know that this is not going to be enough. An army could dig through this and not make a dent. We need machines. We need help.
I look down at a slight vibration and see the sand glistening about my feet as it begins to dance.
“Oh… no…” I take up Isu’s cry as the world shakes. I look for somewhere to run, but there’s nowhere to go.
The wyrm is coming back up through the earth. I can imagine it tunneling, the massive bestial maw crushing earth, stone, obsidian, and bone into its endless belly. It seems to sense us wherever we are. It is almost as though it wants me, specifically, as if I woke it and now it will devour me at any cost.
We run. It is pointless, but instinct demands it. We try to flee the dancing sand, find somewhere solid, but there is no part of this world where we might be safe from the wyrm.
When I falter, Isu picks me up and carries me at full speed across the shivering sands. The quaking beneath our feet indicates that the beast is following us, the intensity of the vibrations making my teeth chatter.
I cling to Isu, my eyes closed, fear freezing me against his chest. He is running faster than I knew it was possible for any being to run, his legs covering the ground at a fantastic pace, but it’s not fast enough.
The soil beneath his feet begins to break apart and we start to sink with every step. I know that any moment we will fall into a darkness so complete it will be eternal.
And then we don’t.
Something grabs Isu, plucks him from the ground and lifts the pair of us aloft just as the wyrm’s jagged maw bursts from the soil with a scree of pure rage, and launches itself after us. It fails to grasp us with endless teeth by a matter of inches as the unseen hand that has pulled us miles from the surface of the planet in a matter of seconds swings us away to a distant ledge, which becomes the place we stand, looking up into the surprisingly glazed eyes of our savior.
“Ahoy, mates! You alright down there? Wanna lift?”
We are looking into the face of a man leaning casually out of a space craft, some kind of tin encapsulated beverage in his hand. He takes a long swig from it while he waits for us to reply.
“Who are you?” Isu asks the question.
“Oh, mate, I’m Cozza Newman. Joined up with the Nited Nashions, hanging out saving people from death and yannow, the rest of it.”
He takes a swig from his beverage, crushes it in his hand, and hurls the can down onto the planet’s surface before cracking another one open.
“So you fellas want saving?”
“My people have been buried in their caverns…” Isu begins to explain.
“Yer, that wyrm of yours is sure cracking through that planet. Something musta woken it up! Was pretty quiet last time I swung through this necka tha woods.”
Isu looks at me and I can feel the blame coursing from him to me. How could I possibly have woken a voracious beast that has been consuming their planet from the beginning of time, and will do until the end? It’s not my fault. I’m a simple farmed human, and I had no choice in being there. There was a crash. It was an accident. All I did was leave the burrow…