Legends of the Barbarian Ages were filled with stories of heroes who fended off great predators like the reptilian gU-lUte. As a kid, EUe's favorite tale was the story of kU-twUe-Ue, who led his clan to build their nests with walls and ceilings to protect against the beasts that stalked the canopies at night. Those nameless monsters had been the stuff of EUe's childhood nightmares, and only his mother's soothing grasp could conquer his fear of them and make them go away. But now, the beast that had encroached on the camp put those old nightmares to shame, and this time, there was no one EUe could turn to for comfort.

He didn't know what to call it, other than long; stupendously long. Its body was made of at least half a dozen gU-lUte fused end to end—snout to tail, again and again—with several more piled on top, forming a thickly scaled, reptilian centipede. The monstrosity dragged itself forward using the dozens of legs jutting out from its sides, raking its numerous claws through the defensive earthworks ringed around the camp.

EUe's breath caught in his throat when he realized the creature's head was encrusted with twEfE corpses. It was a macabre headdress, beaks sticking out in every direction. The dead eyes glistened in the deepening night, limpid and still. They were the eyes of mother and fathers, daughters and sons—people who had deserved to live, but who were now as dead as all the lost Colors.

He screamed. "No! No!"

EUe stopped to look back as he heard the sound of his name stretching on the wind.

"EUe! EUe! EUe! EUe!"

Vyx was flying toward him.

Toward the monster.

"No," EUe yelled. "Get back! Get back!"

"No! No! No!" Vyx said, yelling back at him. "EUe defends Vyx from attack! EUe defends Vyx from attack!"

"You…" Even as he hovered, EUe bobbed his head back in shock. "…you want me to defend you?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Drawing from his dreamshard, EUe wove a spherical web of not-light around Vyx. The prayer was to Ela-tU, and it was the strongest EUe had ever made, as if to compensate for his fear that the Gods he beseeched might not have been real. But, regardless of the theology, the communion's runetics were unquestionable: they would physically repel anything but a gentle touch. EUe added a secondary weave of petitions to the gods of Fire, Ice, Force, and Air to protect against environmental effects. Invisible in true-light, but brilliantly bright beneath EUe's second eyelids, the barrier would keep the floating eye safe and comfortable even if it dove into the mouth of an active volcano.

"There," he said, "you're safe. Now, stay here!" he added, in a yell.

EUe turned around, only for Vyx to chase after him, screaming his name.

"EUe! EUe! EUe! EUe!"

It made no sense. If Vyx wanted EUe to protect him—which he had done—why in the world was the little alien still following him?

But EUe didn't have any time to argue the point.

The aggregate-gU-lUte crashed into the earthwork ring-wall, slamming its beak-studded head into the compacted dirt like a demolition machine. Not-light swirled around the point of contact, kerek-zUek's blessing spitting lightning at the monstrosity. But instead of frying the creature like a thunderstruck tree, the wall's not-light shuddered, flashing all at once beneath EUe's second lids.

He barely had time to grab Vyx as the monster redirected the electricity, blasting it out of its body in massive lightning bolts.

"Dammit!" EUe swore.

God-touched gU were not uncommon, but even when they did have the capacity to redirect some of the communions directed at them, it would never have been strong enough to repel one of this magnitude.

It must have been because it wasn't just one gU, but many.

Vyx shrieked. "EUe! EUe! EUe!" The hexagonal prism trembled in EUe's grip.

The aggregate gU unleashed all of the lightning that had been pumped into it. The energy thrummed, swelling—visibly glowing—beneath the creature's hide, before bursting free. The power discharged in waves, one after another.

THWOOM.

Vyx screamed like a hatchling.

Cursing again, EUe swerved and dodged, darting this way and that, tightly clutching to the shrieking alien all the while.

The blasts were like bright cracks in the sky. Their afterimages flashed in EUe's eyes.

THWOOM.

He flew up high, barely escaping one of the waves. Part of the wave passed over his feet, sending an electric charge through his body. EUe smelled charred feathers.

His wings were burning.

THWOOM.

The last blast bolted past the ruined, roofless laboratory and struck its undamaged twin beside it, tearing through the roof and raining debris onto the camp. Cracks ran through the lab's walls just before it collapsed.

The instant it fell, all the power in the ring-wall sputtered and died.

"Fuck!" EUe cursed.

The camp's dreamshard must have been hooked up to the second lab!

Flailing its body, the mutant gU-lUte broke through the unpowered earthworks with swipes of its many claws, flinging clumps of compacted dirt high into the air. The gU spilled through the break in the ring-wall, colliding into a nest, crushing the building beneath its bulk. The lightning still crackling among the gU's scales set the roof on fire, which exploded in burning wood and red-hot terra-cotta, seeding spitfire throughout the camp.

Vyx yelled. "Bad bad bad!

All of EUe's colleagues were in their nests, too sick to move. They were helpless!

"No!" he screamed. "No!"

He'd brought hope! Vyx was here! The cure was within reach—but, no, now the plague and its horrors were going to dash everything to pieces. He couldn't stop the fires, save the others, and slay the abomination at the same time.

What to do? What to do?

The memory of his fight with the drone was still fresh in EUe's mind: by communing with the gods' power, it had turned his attacks back at him. The same was true of the aggregated gU-lUte. It hadn't just defused ring-wall's protective lightning wards, it had blasted them back at him. And these were dreamshard-powered communions; ordinarily, it would have taken a team of engineers to redirect them.

The creature's power was not to be underestimated. It wasn't just a monster, it was an enemy combatant, one more than capable of twisting communions in reach to serve its needs.

EUe needed something that it couldn't instantly hijack.

Luckily, the solution was right at his fingertips. He needed some help from an old friend: ezwU-al, God of Laser Beams, Patron of Engineers, Doom of Ants and Eyes—because when you needed something cut, or melted, or soldered, what better way than with a narrow laser beam tailored just for that purpose, courtesy of the Laser god himself?

Picturing his old goniometer's sweeping, angle-measuring arc, EUe spewed out not-light and collected it into a similar shape, stretching it into a stout arc that curved high above the mutant gU's back. It was a composite of dozens of webs, and each and every one of them was a request filed directly into ezwU-al's mind. The communions were almost exactly like the ones he'd used in his old life, just bigger.

A lot bigger.

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EUe opened his magic to the laser god's might. True-light bulbed at the arc's base. Through his second eyelids, he saw tentacles of not-light burst out from the abomination's back and reach up at the developing lasers, but the distance was too far for them to cross in time. The lasers erupted in unison, blasting downward in white hot, eye-searing lines as thin as the horizon, and the gU was powerless to stop them. The beams swung side to side—swish, swash, hiss—slicing through the abomination's body like murderous pendulums. The swinging beams burned through the earth as they chopped the creature into pieces that toppled to the dirt, leaving their seared sides smoldering in the night.

Vyx continued to scream.

EUe dismissed the lasers with a squeeze of his fist. Ignoring the alien's cries, he threw Vyx up, out of danger's way, raised his second eyelids, and then aimed himself downward and dove. The hot air rising off the spreading flames rustled his feathers along with the tug of the wind. Looking every which way, he rapidly plotted a course that would take him in and out of the nests, through their aerial doors.

He'd levitate the infected out of the camp all at the same time.

"EUe! EUe!" Vyx yelled, zipping down from overhead. "Behind you! Behind you!"

EUe threw his arms against his side, pointed his beak to the sky, turned around, and pulled up.

What the…?

His tail feathers stood on end.

Unofficial Engineering Rule #3: when in doubt, kill it with fire.

Apparently, the mutant gU-lUte was one of the rare exceptions.

Much to EUe's dismay, slicing the vile, aggregate gU into smoking fillets hadn't killed the damned thing. The chunks had gone and sprouted limbs, which they now used to dart about in a many-legged swarm, leaving behind the monster gU's twEfE-clustered head. The erratic chunks scurried through the opening in the ring-wall with verminous fervor. They slipped away like shadows, weaving between the spreading flames, scuttling into or under nests.

EUe screamed. "No!"

He deployed his second eyelids all the way down. The camp was swarmed with dozens of patches of squirming multicolored not-light.

There were too many! He couldn't blast them all; the attacks would kill the people he was trying to save!

Squeaking with fury, and with Vyx cowering behind his wings screaming its head off, EU drew up spheres of not-light and set them to hover around his body, inscribing them with verses of scripture as he dove down low. The spheres spun, glowing brighter and brighter as the Laser Beam God answered their call.

EUe kept low to the ground as he darted from place to place: behind a nest, over a roof, across a wall. He aimed his lasers with his eyes alone, frying anything that moved. His targets shrieked and squealed as the lasers sliced them into smoking pieces.

One of the crawlers leapt at him; EUe responded by focusing several beams into a thick, white-hot ray. The creature disintegrated instantaneously.

"EUe!" Vyx screamed.

EUe looked up just in time to see and smite a crawler clambering up the side of a nest. Another one pounced at an open aerial door; EUe blasted it away before it ever got there. The monsters dropped to the ground, charred and unmoving.

Several loud screeches shot through the air, speeding the blood through EUe's veins. He buzzed up over the rooftops, looking for their source.

He cursed. "Shit!"

He'd whittled the mutant gU-lUte down to just its head, but even that was still managing to cause problems.

Unlife quivered through the fused twEfE corpses clustered around the monster's skull. The bodies pulled apart from one another, wriggling free. Shrieking tendrils erupted from the feathery chunks as they separated, lashing at the air, splattering fluids. The fungal flesh that had been holding all the biomass together flowed into the corpses' stunted wings and rejuvenated them, pumping them full of muscle and movement.

The aggregate head burst apart like a seed-pod, launching its winged spawn into the night.

twEfE screams battered EUe's ears. For a moment, he thought it was the agony of the dead, but then realized—too late—that they were the cries of the living. He doubled back, only to flinch at the sickly figures that soared out of the nests. Some of the scientists were trying to get away; their appearances were as rotten as their flagging, discombobulated movements.

One of them screamed, but a crawler leapt off the wall of a nearby nest and tackled the scientist mid-air.

Bones snapped; flesh intermingled and fused.

"EUe!" Vyx screamed. "EUe! EUe!"

EUe didn't have time to look; he fired a magazine of lasers from his orbiting lights with a wave of his arm. The twEfE-crawler shrieked under the laser's searing heat, flicking its legs like a dying spider.

"Up, EUe!" Vyx yelled. "Up! Up! Up!"

EUe looked up: two more sickened, dying scientists flew up and away as fast as they could, and one of the flying spawn was fast in pursuit. EUe blasted his lasers at the abomination, but, again, he was too late. Slamming its wings, the creature hurled itself through the air, not only dodged EUe's attack, but throwing itself at the fleeing twEfE. The scientists barely had time to scream as fungal filaments grew into their bodies. Panic briefly flashed in their eyes, but then it was gone, along with their bones and their skin as their flesh folded away.

The evolving monster crashed into a nearby nest, weighed down by all the fresh mass. The impact cast shattered glass and ceramic out through the opposite side of the building. EUe managed to laser off one of the creature's wings, causing the bulbous horror to drop onto one of the many fires roaring along the ground. The thing tumbled across the dirt, leaving a trail of burning feathers in its wake.

"EUe!" Vyx yelled. "EUe! EU—"

"—I know!"

Pumping his wings with renewed strength, EUe shot up high over the camp, his beak slicing through the scalding air. Looking down, the camp was like a clutch of eggs burning in the night. Dark forms darted between the flames.

tlE-la's nest was going up in smoke.

"No!"

But there just wasn't enough time.

Time…

That was it, wasn't it? He had no other choice: he had to appeal to the Goddess of Time. It would take a lot out of him, but he had no other option. It would no longer be enough for him to just stop the fire. The buildings were irreparably damaged. In a matter of seconds, they'd collapse, crushing the plague's victims to death before EUe had even had a chance to save them.

The Gatherer inscribed his plea in a brocade of not-light. He closed his eyes and pressed his hand against his chest, drawing power from the dreamshard within him, sending lightning sensations bolting through his limbs. EUe's wings sputtered from the shock, making him briefly dip down before his altitude recovered.

EUe opened his eyes and spread out his arms and legs. They felt like stone jelly, but that didn't stop him. His brocade evolved into a revolving gyroscope whose inscribed rings swept out and engulfed the entire camp.

The ringing in his ears was so loud, it seemed to sing.

Mother of Change, he prayed, please, help me.

In the moment between his prayer and ekUtle-la's response, EUe wondered whether time was even real, or if it was just another fiction his people had imagined into the world.

He did not know if the Goddess he believed in was real, but the power that answered his call certainly was. It was glorious, like the sun.

That alone made it worthy of respect.

ekUtle-la's touch made a vise around EUe's racing heart. It squeezed, draining his life force to spin the communion's spectral wheels faster and brighter. Some of the scales on the backs of EUe's forearms began to dull, while feathers in his gorget came loose. They ambled to the ground, lazily, rocking back and forth, indifferent to the danger, as Nature always was.

The slowing time stretched Vyx's screams like cold molasses.

"EEEEEEUuuuuuuuuu—!"

Frozen fires encrusted the scene like coral flowers. Sounds were candle-wax above the motionlessness. Even heat's passage through the air was slowed. It came at EUe in tides and waves, like breaths.

EUe didn't know how long he had; at any moment, the monsters might try to turn his communion against him.

Breaking his connection—letting the communion continue on its own—EUe coalesced not-light into bracers around his forearms, preparing to commune with eOeOan. He darted into the aerial windows of a nearby nest, diving in between the approaching flames without a sliver of hesitation. His colleagues frail figure lay on hammocks and the floors; he flung levitation bubbles at them, pulling them up as he bolted out through the roof and into another and repeated the process all over again, flying down and up and in and out, into nests and out of them, picking up every twEfE he saw. He skirted around crawling horrors frozen mid-leap, and placed budding laser beams beside winged spawn, little kisses, just waiting to bloom.

The plague's crooked not-light was woven in and around the bodies of every single twEfE EUe picked up. He didn't know who was still alive and who wasn't, and couldn't tell, but he didn't care. One thing that did catch his eye was the incredible communion one of the scientists had woven through their body. It was like the language of the gods, and EUe had no clue what it did, or how it did it, or what it meant—but, just like with life and death, that didn't matter to him.

All that mattered was saving them. And with Vyx's help, he would.

First three, then four, then five and more; soon, EUe was carrying a cluster of incapacitated twEfE. They floating around him, droopy-limbed and unresponsive in the not-light that cradled them.

He found tlE-la on the floor of her nest, beneath a thick layer of low-lying smoke. lU-twO was up above the mathematician's nest, frozen mid-fall, his wings no longer strong enough to keep him airborne.

EUe picked lU-twO up with a bubble of not-light as he flew up and out.

The plague had ravaged the old bird's body. It was as if he'd aged a thousand years in a single night. His feathers were all but gone; his flesh was moldered—a leftover meal.

With everyone in tow, EUe flew up over the camp, grabbed Vyx tightly, pressing the alien against his chest, and then flew away from the camp. Time and gravity pulled at their limbs the instant EUe moved out of ekUtle-la's communion.

He flew his colleagues toward the beach, trails of not-light coat-tailing behind him. The play of fire burning through the camp danced on the reflecting waves. EUe planted his glove-boots into the wet sand as he landed, and then set the dying twEfE down as gently as he could. The levitation bubbles broke up into trails of motes that faded and dissolved as they floated away.

lU-twO let out a horrid cough, spewing black and green over his smoke-stained Utal-a. "We were wrong," he said. "We were always wrong." He rolled his eyes toward EUe, weeping pus onto his few remaining face feathers. "This plague is a punishment. It's the lost Colors' revenge."

Vyx jerked around in EUe's arms, desperate to free himself. EUe immediately let him go, surprised by his struggles. The hexagonal prism rose high above the groaning, coughing, smoke-scented bodies.

"We must go, EUe!" he said. "We must go!"

EUe turned around to face him, flared his wings in outrage. "What? No! Please, Vyx, you have to help them!" He turned to his colleagues. "Help them like you helped me!"

lU-twO moaned. "EUe…"

But the sounds of monstrous screeches coming from the camp grabbed EUe's attention and pulled him away. He looked up at the burning camp, over the grassy bluffs behind the beach. The noises emerged slowly and lowly as they passed beyond the periphery of ekUtle-la's communion's periphery, stretched along the axes of time and pitch. And though EUe could see the monstrous spawn slowly moving toward the magic's edge, it was difficult for him to discern them in the middle of all the anti-luminescent interference. Still, one thing was for certain: they were heading toward the beach.

Their movements quickened the closer they got to the communion's edge.

Now was his only chance.

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