Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 89: Blind Hunt

Tide Worm. Rank B. Of course.

The thought lasts exactly as long as it takes the sand to settle. Then instinct takes over and the thinking stops.

The Ferredons are faster on the surface. That’s the only thing keeping us alive.

The Worm moves underground with the heavy, rolling momentum of something that displaces earth the way whales displace water—massive, inevitable, but bound by drag. On open sand, the mounts outrun it.

For now.

The Worm resurges behind us, its segmented body half-submerged, carving a trench through the desert floor like a plow tearing through wet soil. The sound is sickening—a deep, grinding roar of calcified plates scraping against compacted sand.

It lunges.

The mouth opens behind Oliver’s Ferredon—close enough that the ring of needle-teeth clips the animal’s tail, ripping out thick tufts of fur that scatter into the wind like confetti at a funeral.

Oliver’s entire body goes rigid. He leans forward, wraps both arms around the Ferredon’s neck, and kicks its flanks with the desperate enthusiasm of a man who has suddenly found religion.

"I’M SORRY FOR EARLIER!" he shouts at the animal, his voice cracking. "PLEASE DON’T STOP!"

The Ferredon doesn’t need convincing. It stretches its ostrich legs to full extension and accelerates so hard that Oliver’s body snaps backward like a flag in a hurricane. He holds on. Barely. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Then the Worm dives again.

The segmented body tilts downward at a steep angle and punches into the sand, disappearing beneath the surface in a cascade of grit and dust. The trench it was carving seals behind it like water closing over a stone.

Silence.

The desert floor is flat and still. As if nothing was ever there.

Worse. Much worse.

The memory surfaces before I can reach for it—a Tide Worm in the Deep, seven years ago. Rank A. It killed eleven veterans in under a minute. Not by chasing them. By listening.

"Tide Worms are blind," I murmur, the old data surfacing with the mechanical clarity of a lesson learned in blood. "No eyes. No olfactory system. They hunt exclusively through seismic vibration."

My voice sharpens into a blade.

"STOP! EVERYONE STOP! NOW!"

The command cuts through the chaos. Every rider pulls their reins. The Ferredons skid through the fine sand, legs braking hard, leaving deep furrows in the desert floor before grinding to a halt.

Seven animals. Seven riders. Motionless.

"Don’t move." My voice drops to just above a whisper. "Not a muscle. Not a sound. Your life depends on it. And if you think I’m exaggerating—I’m not."

Jacob reacts before anyone else. He clicks his tongue three times in rapid succession, then lets out a guttural bark—a sound that doesn’t belong to any human language.

The Ferredons freeze.

All seven of them. Legs locked, necks rigid, nostrils flared but silent. They don’t twitch. They don’t breathe hard. They stand like carved stone, every ounce of animal panic compressed into absolute stillness.

Trained for this...

Jacob’s animals have done this before. Lost Ark has survived Tide Worms before.

Three seconds of silence.

The desert floor explodes sixty-five feet ahead of us.

A column of sand and rock erupts skyward as the Worm breaches the surface at full velocity, its segmented body corkscrewing through the air. The shockwave rolls across the open ground and hits us like a hot slap—sand, grit, and the acrid stench of something that lives where light doesn’t reach.

"That was our trajectory," Boris says, shielding his eyes against the blast of wind. "If we hadn’t stopped, we’d be in that mouth right now."

"Shh." I press a finger to my lips.

The Worm crashes back into the sand. The impact sends a ripple through the desert floor that I feel in my teeth.

Then it turns.

Not fast. Slow. Methodical. The massive body pivots on its axis, the calcified plates grinding against each other with a sound like millstones. It lowers itself flat against the sand and begins to crawl toward us.

It’s not charging. It’s searching.

The needle-teeth extend outward from the circular mouth, spreading like antennae—dozens of bone-white spines, each one vibrating at a frequency I can almost hear. Tasting the ground for the faintest echo of movement.

Nobody breathes.

It passes Boris first. Close enough that I can see only his eyes moving—tracking the Worm’s body as it slides past his Ferredon with the slow, terrible patience of something that has never needed to rush.

Then it reaches Rhayne.

It stops.

The Worm’s massive head hovers three feet from her mount. The antennae-teeth extend further, quivering, scanning the air and ground around her like fingers reading braille.

I move my hand. Slowly. A gesture so small it barely qualifies as motion.

Stay calm. Breathe.

Rhayne sees it. She tries.

But I can see the panic building. Her shoulders are climbing toward her ears. Her chest is moving too fast—shallow, arrhythmic breaths that she can’t control.

The Void Link makes her hyper-sensitive to ambient energy, and right now she’s three feet from a Rank-B beast whose body heat and bioelectric field must be screaming against every nerve she has.

The Worm’s muscles pulse in a slow, rolling undulation. The movement squeezes a glob of viscous fluid from between its mandibles—thick, translucent, reeking of ammonia and ocean brine. It drops onto Rhayne’s shoulder with a wet, heavy slap.

She makes a sound.

"ah..."

It’s small. A sharp, involuntary squeak that escapes her throat before her jaw clamps shut. The kind of sound you can’t stop because your body makes it without asking permission.

But it’s enough.

The Worm’s head snaps downward. The antennae-teeth retract into the mouth like a fist closing. The massive body coils above her, mandibles spreading wide, the throat behind them pulsing.

"RUN! GO!"

Rhayne drives her heel into the Ferredon’s ribs. The animal detonates forward with a terrified shriek, sand spraying from its hind legs.

The Worm strikes.

Twenty tons of segmented muscle collapse downward onto the exact spot where Rhayne was sitting half a second ago. The impact craters the desert floor, sending a shockwave that lifts my Ferredon’s front legs off the ground.

Missed. By inches.

I kick my mount. Jacob whistles—sharp, piercing, the override command. Every Ferredon in the formation breaks into a dead sprint simultaneously.

We run.

The desert blurs beneath us. Wind tears at my face. Behind us, the Worm is already burrowing again—I can feel the vibration building beneath the sand like an echo climbing toward a ravine.

We need hard ground. Rock. Anything that isn’t sand.

"We need elevation!" I shout into the wind. "Stone, a ridge, anything solid!"

Lola is ahead of me. Lightest rider, fastest mount. She’s practically glued to Jacob and Max at the front of the formation. But as I watch, she pulls her Ferredon to the left. Not a correction. A deliberate course change.

She found something.

Five seconds later, I see it. A dark mass rising from the desert floor—a rocky outcrop, an inselberg, its stone face split by a narrow ravine. Hard ground. Solid ground. Ground that a Worm can’t swim through.

"RIGHT! INSELBERG! FOLLOW LOLA!"

I wrench my reins. The formation pivots.

The vibration beneath us peaks. The sand ahead bulges upward in a line, racing toward us like a wave.

The Worm erupts between me, Oliver, and Brendon, forcing us into a sudden stop to avoid colliding with it.

Forty feet of armored muscle and calcified plates, close enough to fill my entire field of vision. The acidic stench of its skin burns my nostrils. Sand rains down on us from the displacement, filling my eyes, my mouth, coating everything.

Through the grit, I see Oliver on my left. Brendon on my right.

The Worm’s head swivels. The antennae-teeth extend.

It’s choosing.

I look at Oliver. Then at Brendon.

One of us is about to become the target.