Karl had been lost in his thoughts—Bever and Ichigo flying through the first floor of the hospital's garage, sparring with one another for fun—when he'd first heard the yells. The spirits of the Trenton axeman and the Mewnee samurai—the latter still in his red, four-armed oni form—came to a stop atop the roof of a nearby car.

Sounds of roars, explosions, and gunfire soon followed.

Uncoiling himself from the support column, Karl surveyed the garage, swaying his head left and right.

"W-What's going on?" he asked.

Other transformees in the garage had already taken notice of the ruckus.

"Not again!" one said.

Through the ruined glass wall separating the garage's first floor from the marketplace—the "galleria"—beneath the hospital's central courtyard, Karl saw squads of tired, dying soldiers rushing up the stairs to the surface. Tanks resting on the garage's exit ramps rumbled to life, unblocking the exits as they rolled up and out.

"Karl," Bever said, "what's going on?"

"It's Verune and that beasteaten Last Church of his!" someone yelled. "They've just declared war!"

Out of sight, something up on the surface exploded. A second later, a vehicle came crashing onto the garage's floor, shaking the mosaic seascapes tiled everywhere.

Without delay, Dr. Rathpalla—who had gone out a moment before—slither-waddled out through the galleria, passing between the piles of shattered glass, broken cars, and other debris that the garage's transformees had used their powers to sweep away. "What are you standing around for?" he demanded. "We're under attack!"

Karl had just begun to move when three transformees landed on the floor of the Undergreen galleria. Their impacts sent invisible psychokinetic waves rippling out from the ruined shopping place. The wave swept up soldiers and corpses in its wake and sent them flying.

Beast's teeth! Karl thought.

The transformees were like parodies of Lassedile priests. They even had clerical garb: the dove robe's blanched pallor; the mallard robe's greens and browns; the blue-jay robe's ceruleans and whites. Like Karl, the transformee in the dove robe was serpentine below the waist, though only one of his hands bore a set of three claws. The other two transformees looked more like animals in human clothing: they had slender bodies and long necks and tails, paired with long arms and short legs. Monstrous spouts on their backs oozed out spore plumes, like smoke from a gun.

Something began to churn up the air, causing the spines on Karl's back to quiver. Behind him, Karl's allies were powering up their magic. He was about to join them when the churning air around the three enemy transformees exploded with gleaming filaments that launched the trio into the garage. The next thing Karl knew, one of three had barreled into him and knocked him back, rasping Karl's back along the floor's mosaic tiles.

A split second later, Karl crashed first into a car, back first. The car's metal body crumpled around him like a pile of autumn leaves. Karl had barely even raised his head when the blue-jay transformee zoomed across the ground, hovering with his weakened legs dangling about a foot off the floor. Karl pushed himself off the wrecked car with a flick of his tail. The spring-like movement sent him skidding back across the garage floor right as the blue-jay slammed into the wreckage and then beyond it to another car altogether.

There was a swoosh overhead.

Karl looked up.

A car was hurtling through the air. The horseless carriage bounced off the floor, tumbling into the half-wyrm in the dove robe. Though his robes marked him as a neophyte, the cultist wielded his magic like a master, launching the vehicle back to where it came with just a single, magic-enhanced swipe of his hand.

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There was just too much going on!

Fortunately, Dr. Rathpalla had taught Karl a way to deal with that. The lad quickened his thoughts, slowing his perceptions time until everything around him was almost perfectly still. Karl spent a moment gathering his thoughts, trying to make sense of his surroundings. Unable to move, all he could do was look.

From where he was, he saw the blue-jay transformee midair, mid-leap, with claws outstretched like a falcon coming in for a kill. In a second, he'd crash into Karl and tear him to pieces. Though the corner of his eye, Karl saw Dr. Rathpalla and Nurse Costran stuck defending some transformee patients from the enemies striking at their front

And then, to Karl's complete surprise, Bever and Ichigo came running into view.

The spirits weren't affected by the speed of his thoughts?

In the seconds Karl spent struggling to figure out how to speak to them while not being able to move his mouth, Ichigo let out a bloodcurdling scream and ran at the bluejay Norm with a katana in each of his four hands. Leaping at his host's attacker, the red oni sliced his blades into the cultist, but their steel passed through the transformee without effect.

Of course, Karl realized.

Those swords only exist in my mind.

Ichigo turned to face him. "Then make them solid!" he yelled, hearing his host's thoughts. "You did it before! Do it again!"

Ichigo was right, he had done it before.

Ordinarily, Karl wouldn't have been able to recall a detail like that, but with the way his transformation had perfected his memory, he was able to retrace his steps without fail.

Nurse Costran had told Karl that, at some point, he'd gain the ability to see the "threads" of his powers with his own eyes, but until then, he had to do the work of visualizing them on his own, imagining the weaves of blue and gold into being that his spell had ignited onto Ichigo's four swords, so that his wyrm mind would hallucinate them into being.

The color swirls danced around Ichigo's swords like scribbles of fire.

"Yes!" With a grin, Ichigo swung at the bluejay norm, except now, the weaves of color didn't move along with him.

Hovering mid-air, the oni glanced back at them and snarled. "The hells? What now?"

It took Karl a second to figure out what had happened.

Time!

Ichigo glanced at him. "Time?"

Wait, Karl thought. You can hear my thoughts?

"As can I," Bever said.

Karl would have nodded were he able. I'm going to slow my thoughts down. That should return time, and then you'll be able to attack him, Ichigo. Get ready.

"Don't let him have all the fun!" Bever quipped.

Karl conjured up a weave around the blue-armored knight's hefty, double-bladed battle-axe, and then returned the flow of time to normal.

"Go!" he yelled, as everything came unstuck.

The car in the air hurtled across the garage. Transformees intertwined with one another, striking with claws and minds.

Breath weapons billowed in an airy green tide.

This time, as Ichigo cut into the Norm in the blue-jay robe, the blue and gold scribble-lines moved along with each of the four blades. Exertion struck Karl—making him shudder—as Ichigo's blows hit their mark. The drain on his power made Karl feel like his head was in a vise. It left him woozy and panting for breath—but, as Geoffrey might have put it, that didn't matter, because Ichigo's swords cut clean through the transformee's bodies, sending filleted segments tumbling to the ground.

"Yes!" Ichigo crowed, raising one of his swords in triumph.

"Basher!" The serpentine norm in the dove robe yelled in anger.

And then Nurse Costran creamed him with several blasts of pure force. The blows sent the cultist crashing into a wall, fissures breaking through the tile under the force of the impact.

The other two cultists were nimble enough to dodge Yuth's attack. They seemed to be using their powers to change their trajectories at the drop of a hat. It made their movements erratic and difficult to predict. One of them—the transformee in the Mallard robe zipped past Bever, but the axeman managed to strike him by whirling his weapon around in a deft, full-body spin. The blow didn't cut as deeply as Ichigo's had, so it didn't dismember the Mallard Norm outright, but it was still more than enough to wound the bastard, and to leave Karl feeling dizzy and drained.

"Something's attacking us!" the Mallard Norm yelled. "It's on the ground, and it's moving!"

The Mallard Norm bounced off a car and leapt into the air—but he did not fall back to the ground.

"They can fly?!" Karl yelled, staring in shock.

Ichigo pumped his arms. "Shit!"

One of the defenders slashed at the transformee in the dove robe, only for their claws to swipe through plain air as the Norm kicked off the tiled floor with a thump of his tail and belted out a broad stream of sizzling green spores

"Fuck me…" Bever cursed, as the cloud phased through him.

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