Brammelwurz and the Maggots' Last Memory

Gnome in Cave with Glowing Lantern and Giant Creature
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  • Michael Wischniewski's avatar Artist
    Michael Wi...
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More about Brammelwurz and the Maggots' Last Memory

Deep beneath the Mossglimmer Mountains, where light only reached the walls through phosphorescent fungal veins and whispering crystals, lay a forgotten chamber—the maggots' thought pit. Not a place to linger. Not a place anyone liked to talk about. Yet Brammelwurz stood right there, his beard carefully tucked into his belt, his red cloak draped over his shoulder, the lamp dimmed. Before him: a vast, semi-transparent larval skin, slowly rising and falling like a breathing thought. Around him crawled they—wordless archivists, blind but with a sense of memory: the archmaggots. These creatures, considered by many to be mere scavengers, stored the last fragments of forgotten thoughts in their rings. Everything left unsaid in death, unfinished in sleep, never reconciled in argument—they absorbed it, chewed it over, until only its essence remained. "I need a clue," Brammelwurz said into the twilight silence. "A word that isn't mine, but echoes through me." The maggots paused. One of them—significantly larger, with an iridescent carapace—wriggled closer. It smelled of wet stone and old cinnamon. Syllables flickered in its slimy pathway. Brammelwurz knelt. "I offer a barter item. A genuine glimpse of thought from spore year 29." Slowly, he pushed a small tin forward. It contained a dried light spore, encased in golden-green moss—a rare fragment of memory from an old songwriter who once forgot a note to remember a face. The archmaggot lowered its front segment and sucked on the offering, testing it. Then she turned, and a faint rumble rippled through the stone. The walls began to move—not mechanically, but like dreaming stone changing its mind. A passage opened, round, slippery, alive. Brammelwurz didn't hesitate. Lantern in one hand, note-amulet around his neck, he entered the maggots' memory. There, it was different. No space, no place—but feeling. Dark, damp, silent. But beyond the silence: voices. No chorus, no dialogue—a whisper creeping through the marrow. Thoughts in their purest form, detached from tongue and grammar. Suddenly, an echo struck him. "Are you the one who didn't remember us?" Brammelwurz froze. The voice was old. Not like years—like layers of earth. An ancient fragment. Perhaps from his childhood? Or much older? He groped for his note-amulet. It had grown hot. "I remember," he whispered back. And in that moment he was flooded. Not with images—with meaning. The smell of bark after rain, the feeling of a gaze never returned, the sound of a lost promise. All of it rushed into him, through him, and flowed back into the maggots that gathered, swirled, danced. When everything fell silent, a single image remained: a small boy—not Brammelwurz—sitting in a cave, holding a flute and never playing it. And who knew no one else came. "What is this?" whispered Brammelwurz. The archmaggot didn't answer. But in his pocket now lay a tiny shard of crystal, glowing softly. Inside it was a name no one knew. Not yet.

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