As a child, Ibrahim Rathpalla had often dreamed of flying, though never like this.

It was madness. Transformees thronged the air in a dizzying array of colors and forms, nearly all with the goal of wreaking as much havoc as possible—and they were succeeding.

Ibrahim had had to slow his perception of time to almost a third of its normal speed just to keep up with everything that was happening. The gun and laser fire from the soldiers on the ground and in the buildings were as much of an annoyance as they were a deterrent, hurting anyone and everyone who passed through the line of fire, forcing Ibrahim to move like a spastic butterfly, darting left and right just to keep the supporting fire from charring his remaining human bits. Unlike the protective wyrm scales, the lasers decimated the transformees' human parts, and forced them to spend precious time and energy regenerating the damaged tissues.

Was it helping? Maybe?

Was it making the enemy fucking furious?

Absolutely!

Transformees came at him like bullying gulls, rushing in to claw him, only to whip around and fly back out, often leaving a parting psychokinetic blow in their wake in the form of a wave or a blade that smacked or cut.

In movies, when dynamic duos fought bad guys, their partnership was supposed to give them the upper hand. However, despite Ibrahim's and Yuth's best efforts, they weren't able to stay in sync. Ibrahim lashed out with wide arcs of psychokinesis that bit into his attackers' hides as they sliced through the air, but every magic attack also diverted power from the weaves that were keeping him airborne, causing him to dip down with every strike before he wobbled and rose back up.

A transformee came crashing into Ibrahim from the side, caroming Dr. Rathpalla away like a billiard ball and sending him crashing back-first through the glass of window on one of the Pediatrics building's upper floors. Ibrahim pushed off the wall with his tail and the remains of his legs with an angry, sporey roar.

Two transformees floated toward him. Behind them, Yuth clashed with a third transformee, darting in and out like a hummingbird.

"Stop this!" Dr. Rathpalla yelled, trying to appeal to whatever human decency his attackers still had.

"Not until you give us the Sorcerer!"

"I don't even know where they took him!" Ibrahim said.

"That's your problem," the other transformee said, "not ours."

"Damn it!" Cursing, Ibrahim dropped low to the ground and flew ahead, and then cursed again as he crashed into a tree.

That smarts like hell! he thought.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Flying wasn't as easy as it looked.

Worse: The two transformees were in close pursuit.

"Leave me alone!" he yelled.

"Never! You belong with us! You've been misled!"

"Go fuck yourself!"

One of the transformees spewed concentrated streams of spores from the holes in his growing snout, while the other lobbed a trio of psychokinetic boulders. Ibrahim rose up as high as he could, barely dodging the psychic blasts. The spores hit patches of human skin on his tail, making him scream in pain.

Fire didn't burn half as bad as those damn acid spores, and he couldn't even see the spots that hurt so much!

Ibrahim flew up higher, faster, letting the wind whisk off as many of the spores as it could.

From this height, he could see for miles, out to where dawn rose from the horizon.

Suddenly, a huge mass hurtled up in front of him. Ibrahim veered back to dodge it, only to crane his neck back as he looked up and realized the thing he was dodging was Karl. Below, a near-fully changed wyrm with scales the color of bile rocketed upward in pursuit.

Angel!, Ibrahim thought.

That wyrm was going to rip Karl in half!

The wyrm pulled ahead of Karl and turned its snout downward, curling itself like a question mark. Then, with a roar, it charged, bounding at Karl with the force of a bullet train. Karl flinched at the blow, and then screamed as the wyrm raked its claws over his still-human chest and stomach.

"You'll submit to the Last Church whether you like it or not!" a transformee yelled.

Ibrahim spun around mid-air, keeping his eye on Karl all the while.

The boy was wounded, and plummeting groundward with terrifying speed.

"Yuth!" Ibrahim tried to get her attention, but she was busy with a fight of her own.

Unfortunately, so was he.

He glanced down at his two attackers and yelled. "You guys make sciatica seem friendly!" One of the two snarled in anger, while the other just stared in confusion, and it gladdened Dr. Rathpalla's heart that, as strange as this all was, at least evil still had the problem of hiring the stupid.

With a yell, Ibrahim launched another psychokinetic arc at his attackers, pushing them back, but also making his flight magic ebb, dipping him down toward the ground.

The bile-colored wyrm rocketed downward, passing underneath Karl with its claws bared.

It grabbed the boy by the throat.

Ibrahim's breath caught in his throat. "No!" he yelled.

The wyrm coiled around Karl and threw him up once more.

Then, to his horror, in the corner of his eye, Ibrahim spotted the transformee in the mallard robe rise up and start lobbing blasts of psychokinetic force at WeElMed's administration building like a barrage of wrecking balls. Bow shocks tore through one of the upper floors, sending parts of the façade and the corner windows raining down onto the courtyard in senseless destruction.

"What are you doing!?" Ibrahim shrieked.

Such senseless destruction!

"You still cling to your old life. We're helping you move forward."

"Helping?!" Ibrahim shrieked. "You think this is fucking helping?!"

Dr. Rathpalla promised himself right then and there that he'd shoot that bastard out of the damn sky. He flew at transformee in the mallard robe, rising and sinking with every bolt of force he chucked the mallard's way, not caring that his hunger was growing with every passing moment.

But the transformee in the mallard robe dodged them all and rushed toward Dr. Rathpalla.

Ibrahim crashed into another transformee as he fled.

He turned to see—

—Yuth?

"Ibrahim?" she said.

They were surrounded by a group of four transformees, on at each side

Below, the dove robe transformee flew across the façade of the General Labs building's third floor, using his walls to rip through the walls, like a child passing their fingers over a chain-linked fence.

The ground's defenders screamed in horror.

Suddenly, a resonant, many-tone voice bellowed out from one of the stairs by the garden's sinkhole: "Take that, assholes!"

The next thing Ibrahim knew, the air filled with so much psychic power, he swore he could hear it crackle.

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