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Synopsis of Worms of the Earth
The story opens with a Roman crucifixion of one of the Picts under the power of the King of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn. Bran has disguised himself as an ambassador to spy on the Romans, and they are a decadent people. Bran spends a lot of time being disgusted by Roman justice, Roman military, Roman luxury and Roman ethics.
Eventually, Bran needs to find a way to kill the Roman Governor of the area. He decides on using a method that his ancestors knew of. A dream of a mentor attempts to dissuade him, but he ignores it. He sends his aide to the local towns, to begin to Raid and Pillage to Roman controlled countryside. He knows the Romans well enough to know that the Governor will be at a large fortress while one of his generals takes much of the army out to the field. Bran Mak Morn slips into the jail and slays the commander who killed the Pict on the cross, and then escapes from the Roman compound.
He flees into the Welsh wilderness and plunges into a swamp. He runs across the abode of a witch woman who is half human and half something else. Something serpentine. He tries to negotiate her aid, and she knows he intends to summon the Worms of the Earth. Ultimately, the only thing that she will take in barter for her assistance is sex. He sleeps with her, and she aids him.
Afterwards, Bran Mak Morn penetrates a place called Dagon’s Barrow. Inside in a place of darkness down which he explores, until he finds an altar in the darkness with a black stone on it. He takes the stone and emerges as he hears things behind him. He moves to a place nearby, Dagon’s Mere, and casts the stone into it and then returns to the witch woman.
We find out that she had gone to give his instructions to the Worms, and they will meet with him. His people subdued the Worms long ago, and banished them to their caves. They arrive in hundreds, and they want their holy relic, the stone, back. He refuses and angers himself, and they back off. He trades the stone back to them for a service. He wants them to penetrate the walls of the great fortress that the Governor is in to bring him back to Bran. The Worms are an old humanoid race with bestial reptile features that have apparently gone more barbaric and degenerate since his people conquered them and spread the centuries ago.
They go to get him, and he goes to get back the stone. He dives into the Mere and discovers a deep creature here guarding it he barely manages to escape with the stone. He rides to the large fortress to watch the Worms get the Governor, and when he arrives, the entire structure has been destroyed. One of the Romans is still alive and confide in him that it fell down after big tremors hit it, and then they took the Governor. He follows their path and finds them at the agreed up meeting place he takes their stone and returns it to them, and they give him the Governor, but he’s gone mad with what he saw, so Bran kills him in mercy, not vengeance. At the end, the woman tells him that the Worms are not done with him, and the story ends.
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