Worms Of the Earth - Tapa blanda

"Worms of the Earth" is a short story by American fantasy fiction writer Robert E. Howard. It was originally published in the magazine Weird Tales in November 1932, then again in 1975 in a collection of Howard's short stories, Worms of the Earth. The story features one of Howard's recurring protagonists, Bran Mak Morn, a fictional King of the Picts. Bran Mak Morn, King of the Picts, vows revenge on the Roman governor Titus Sulla after witnessing the crucifixion of a fellow Pict. He seeks forbidden aid from the Worms of the Earth, a race of creatures who Bran Mak Morn's pictish ancestors had banished from the earth. They were once men but millennia of living underground caused them to become monstrous and semi-reptilian. Searching for a contact with these people, Bran Mak Morn meets a witch who lives in a secluded hut, shunned by her neighbors, who was born of a sexual encounter between one of the "Worms" and a human women. The witch's price for helping him is "one night of love" which her human half craves - as men in general are repelled by her reptilian traits. Bran Mak Morn, though also himself repelled, agrees to pay this price. In exchange, she tells him of a barrow where "The Black Stone", a religious item of great importance to the "Worms" is hidden.