“That’s a song they sing in taverns,” guffaws Lena, resting her axe on a nearby statue, another giant stone hand, bigger than the ones that they’ve come across before. “And so comes the Wyrm, the coiled and mammoth Wyrm..”

“You’d be surprised where a lot of those songs come from,” responds Tuckus. “But if you don’t believe me, take a glance the next time you’re at the Galactus strip. Trace the entry point at Seron, and you’ll see the ridges the Wyrm made in those planets, before terminating at the Gas Giant. There it was swallowed whole. They say traces of it still linger within that planet’s eternal whirlwind.”

“Why did it kill them all,” asks the girl. She has taken off her goggles, revealing pale blue eyes, capable of traversing blackness.

Tuckus raises her brow and shrugs. “There are some that say it was hungry and burrowing into the planes searching for food. but that seems too simple, for the Wyrm can traverse entire dimensions."

Others say that a bard wrote a song so strange that it vibrated at the same frequency of the Wyrm's vast hearts, and that she guided its trail through the planets. Perhaps it was meant to burrow through Seron, or perhaps it was meant to die there.”

“Why would someone hypnotise a serpent?”

“Because she could, child. That’s why.” And Tuckus removes her hand from the seal, which disappears beneath her fingers. “Because to control an astral Leviathan is a great task indeed, and men put much stock in those that can level grand beasts — Wyrms or otherwise.”

“Others say the Astral civilisations angered the Wyrm, that their constant levelling of the planes had disrupted its sleep. They say that the Wyrm was only trying to get home, you see, so it could find reprieve from their drilling and explosions. Others sing that he was summoned from something deep within the gas giant that swallowed him. By a sorcerer, or an investor. Repurposed planets fetch a high price.” 

“And others say that it was just meant to be. Scrawled out on the walls of the old caves, an event that plays out on a grim loop, inevitable and all destroying. That He will come again, the Wyrm, and take a bigger chunk with him. That he’ll sharpen his maw on the entire cosmos, the next time.”