The Merlin Worm (2013)

From the Game Chef introduction:

In the future the worms will come. We do not know from where they will come or if they were always here, sleeping. But they will come in numbers. Not overwhelming numbers, but small, dense numbers. There are not enough of them to kill us all. But we will not know of them until it is too late. We will be unprepared.

The worms will leap into our minds. It will be subtle at first, as they burrow and nest and build. But then the worms will strike. They will take us over completely: body, mind, and spirit. We will resist, but few will resist for long. And the worms need but one to succumb to their treachery.

When one of us is taken completely, the worm will look down and back through his mind, sifting his thoughts, and culling his memories. The worm will find the memory that is farthest from the man, and, through its malicious magics, will travel to that man’s past. When the worm arrives, it will find a new and older mind to subdue and take that mind as well. Back and back and back until it comes to us.

But there is hope. We do not know how they track the worm, but their ways are clever and unknown to us. The Lantern Men. They wander through us, unseen, hunting the worms and, upon finding them, tearing them by force from the skulls of their hosts without mercy. The Lantern Men shine their light over the treachery that walks among us. They find and root out the evil that walks back through time, and we thank them for it. Even if we know not who or where or what they are. The Lantern Men will save us.