He must be mad, said the locals, since no sane person would cross the death worms’ wasteland. But this white-haired stranger had just murmured his thanks and promptly ignored all their warnings, and had left with the sun.

The old men gathered the young ones outside their yurts and told them about the death worms. Huge, red, slithery creatures, they were, that hid beneath the dusty earth, only to pop up and snag the unwary in their slavering jaws. They breathed a foul yellow cloud that would burn out a man’s lungs in seconds and turn his own blood into corrosive acid. Some stories even told of the worms making their own lightning and flinging it at those who trespassed in their territory.

They told of the red sun, and how it brought all the foul worms to the surface, so the whole wasteland was covered in writhing beasts. They mated then, and it was the only time of the year that the worms went on the hunt, going far from their desolate home to drag cattle and men alike back to the dry plains. The old men regaled the young with gruesome stories of men stuffed with worm eggs and kept alive until the young death worms hatched and ate their unwilling incubator. They told more stories of hapless travelers, all unknowing, wearing some bit of yellow and attracting the death worms, and they cast their gaze at the stranger’s path when they told this. The children listened, all in awe, until their mothers came and called them for chores. The old men continued to talk, wondering now about the latest traveler’s fate.

He came back with the sun.

No one said a word to him; they followed the customs of hospitality to the letter, but could not bring themselves to welcome this strange man who had survived a night in the death worms’ wastes. He did not press them; he merely took a little food, speaking only to ask for a poultice for his eye.

When the tribe’s herb-man saw the stranger’s eye, he almost refused to help him; indeed, he went and purified himself thereafter. For where the strange man’s eyes had both been a deep purple, one was now a pale, sickly yellow – the color of the death worms’ poison.