Like Sand Hour Worms and Lazy Worms, Ear Worms were also an extremely troublesome kind of magical insect.
They liked to nest in wizards' ears, siphoning off what little magic they had and repeatedly "appreciating" sounds the wizards found pleasant—including music, stories, chanted spells, and even poetry recitations. In magical terms, patients afflicted by Ear Worms experienced the "earworm" phenomenon of music automatically replaying in their minds.
In other words, they were bugs that loved singing karaoke in wizards' ears.
Listening to ghost stories before bed, or listening to music for too long, could attract Ear Worms. They seemed to appear out of thin air, and nobody knew where they came from—existing research suggested that, like Sand Hour Worms and Lazy Worms, they were a kind of dimensional life-form.
Whether they were half-dimensional, one-and-a-half-dimensional, or two-dimensional, there was currently no authoritative conclusion. The only certainty was that they were absolutely not ordinary three-dimensional life-forms.
Unlike Sand Hour Worms and similar insects, however, Ear Worms only manifested physical forms while dormant.
This meant that even if you realized you had attracted Ear Worms, you would most likely be unable to find any trace of them. Even professional healers usually could only determine whether a patient had Ear Worms through "involuntary musical phenomena."
The reason wizards were so unconcerned about these little bugs was mainly because Ear Worms were highly "migratory." They rarely stayed in a wizard's ear for more than one lunar cycle. By the time a wizard realized they had attracted Ear Worms, the creatures were often already preparing to leave.
More importantly, the sounds Ear Worms appreciated or repeated were often sounds that wizards themselves greatly enjoyed.
For instance, an elegantly rhythmic melody might only be listened to once by an ordinary person, but a wizard with Ear Worms