Brain Worms

Worm infiltration · Dead men walking

Gondii worms hollow out dead crawlers and walk their corpses, letting the enemy attack the crawler base from inside.

Story so far

When paratroopers appear inside the base and Carl's Ping shows no enemy dots within the walls, the contradiction resolves in the Casualty Notification feed: Reid Gunn, a human mage killed in a defensive bunker, still shows as an active blue dot while the mages around him wink out one by one. Carl reasons it through — not an infiltrator, which takes days to take over, but Gondii, a Valtay Worm, seizing the freshly dead.

He confirms it by killing Charles Andrew, a level-58 Armored Mage listed as dead who walked into the FUPA carrying a wounded Yenk, and stomping the worm Goldblum that crawled out of his skull. Carl broadcasts the countermeasure over Warlord Chat: everyone cross-references the soldier to their left and right against the casualty list. The infiltration explains the collapse of the Field Hospital and the mounting rows of local troop casualties.

Role

The enemy's inside-out attack on the crawler army: worms wearing dead crawlers as camouflage.

Relationships

Gondii — The Valtay worm species behind the infiltration

Carl — Deduced the trick from the casualty list and Ping

Reid Gunn — Dead mage whose still-active dot exposed the pattern

Chris — Contrast case: slow enslavement rather than corpse-riding

Earlier in this series

Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:

The Gate of the Feral GodsBook 4

Sources — 1 recorded facts, by chapter

Chapter 37

Gondii worms hollow out dead crawlers and walk their corpses, letting the enemy attack the crawler base from inside.