Karl didn't understand why the wyrm was attacking him so fiercely. He tried to fight back against it, channeling his rage to send out blasts of force to knock it away, but they were just too weak.

It had to be Bever and Ichigo. He was spending his power there. Had it been a mistake for him to do so? With each passing moment, it was getting harder and harder for him to fight back. Karl's whole body quivered and ached each time the warriors' spirits sliced up a transformee, leaving him so hungry, he could hardly think straight, least of all fight back against the wyrm pummeling him mid-air.

The wind beat him this way and that. Everything rose and fell, and the world seemed to spin.

Slowing his perception of time, Karl looked at the wyrm as it rushed up at him from below. Fiery red horns grew from its head in clusters. The only sign it had ever been human was the lone human eye staring out among its two groups of three.

Karl remembered something Dr. Rathpalla had told him: Genneth told us that we'll eventually get the ability to see the plexus' threads for ourselves. He calls it wyrmsight.

Why does Dr. Howle have this wyrmsight? Karl had asked.

Because he's the one who talks to Andalon.

Why does he get to talk to Andalon? Karl had asked.

I wish I knew, kid. I wish I knew.

Was the wyrm attacking him because it could see his powers—because it had wyrmsight?

That was it! It was trying to stop him; to stop Bever and Ichigo from slicing more of its allies to ribbons

And for the briefest moment, Karl felt a sliver of true pride.

These monsters want to take me out.

If only Geoffrey could have seen him now.

The ground was rushing toward him.

And then he heard the yell: "Take that, assholes!"

Larry?

Roars and screams shot across the sky as the airborne transformees suddenly plummeted to the ground.

Larry stood in the middle of the garden, by the sinkhole, with his massive, monstrous arms held up high, as if he was beseeching the Angel for aid.

Karl started to fall once more. As he fell, he sped up his thoughts.

Yuth and Ibrahim were still floating while all their attackers had fallen.

One by one, transformees hit the ground, hard.

"Karl!" Ibrahim yelled.

Just as he was about to crash onto the ground, Karl felt an invisible surface rise to meet his underbelly.

A slide.

With a scream Karl careened down an inclined surface that wasn't there. Its solidity quivered underneath him, gelatinous one moment, rock hard the next. It moved like a living thing, curling out in front of him, as if guiding his path. He slid off the psychic surface's edge and hit the ground rolling. Everything spun. Another invisible plexus rose up from the ground—a soft wall—and caught him. He flopped onto his stomach.

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Karl saw Ibrahim flying down to him, but he could hardly pay attention to that; the hunger in him was just too intense. Unable to bear another use of his power, he wiped away Bever and Ichigo's spirits with a thought, stowing them in his mind. That brought him immediate relief, but it wasn't enough.

Pushing off the ground with his claws, Karl slithered onto the street that wrapped around the hospital's courtyard, following the enticing scent of nearby meals. The old street's scalloped setts rasped gently against his underbelly. The street was riddled with pits eaten away by wyrms' spore breath.

There!

One of the pits had the still-smoking corpses of the soldiers killed by a transformee's breath attack. Karl didn't waste any time thinking about what he would do; he just did: he slithered across the street, reached with his monstrous three-fingered hand and picked up the nearest dead soldier. Much of the surface flesh had been burned off by the spores, and what remained sloughed off the body as Karl lifted it off the ground, but he was too hungry to care. He hardly noticed the skin ripping at the corners of his mouth as he opened his jaws impossibly wide and stuffed the corpse in. It crunched and broke in his mouth, releasing savory sweetness that chased away his hunger and sewed tickling feelings into his face and throat.

His body quickly drank up the corpse's flesh. Karl felt his neck creak; the distance between his head and chest widened as new vertebrae grew into place and his back's spines grew long. Two points of pressure wriggled out from either side of the back of his head as his skull's shape began to change, flattening slightly and pushing forward. The change distorted his field of vision, but only a little.

Karl could still have eaten more, but he stopped himself. He could eat his fill once the battle was over.

Then he closed his eyes and summoned Bever and Ichigo.

"What just happened!?" Ichigo yelled. "What did you do?"

"You're using too much of my strength," Karl said, "I… I need to eat more."

Ichigo thrusted one of his swords, "Well then, eat!"

"I did!" Karl said. "That's… it's I why brought you back out."

Karl noticed his voice was deep, resonant, and inhuman, hardly sounding like his own anymore. It was starting to get difficult for him to form words.

Up above, Nurse Costran yelled. "What are you waiting for!? Attack! Get the bastards!"

Turning around, Karl saw that Larry wasn't alone. Other transformees from the garage had come with him. Even now, they joined the battle, scrabbling up the stairs, or scrabbling out through the sinkhole, beside which Larry stood with his arms in the air.

Karl didn't need to see the janitor's magic to sense its powerful presence. It weighed down the enemy transformees throughout its wide area of coverage, keeping them flying and forcing them to move along the ground.

"Nice trick!" someone yelled.

One of the attackers screamed. "Stop him!"

"I'd like to see you try!" Dr. Rathpalla said.

"Karl?" Bever asked, turning to face him.

"Go." Karl nodded. "Go!"

Unlike the enemy, his ghosts could still fly.

As Geoffrey liked to say: strike when your opponent can't.

Joining the garage-transformees Karl slithered forward and flung himself into the explosive mêlée. Transformees wrangled one another, flinging up debris with blasts of magic. Karl crushed some of the least changed transformees in his coils, using his size to his advantage.

Bever and Ichigo kept up their attacks, and Karl could still feel the draining effects, but he noticed they were doing a great job holding back, choosing to stab heads and lopping off limbs instead of chopping bodies into pieces. The power expenditure was still tiring, but not merely as much as before.

Even the Trenton soldiers joined in, pelting the evil transformees with beams of fire. Karl couldn't hear any more bullets being shot.

They must have run out of ammunition.

A snarling transformee came barreling down the street, ready to slash the soldiers to ribbons, but Yuth cut them off with a psychic blast, sending the attacker tumbling onto the courtyard.

Several of the enemy transformees turned tail and ran, disappearing into the hospital. Some went in through open doorways. Others bashed holes into the walls and leapt in.

"Hurry up!" Larry yelled, his massive arms trembling. "I can't keep this up forever!"

Karl turned to Ibrahim. "I'll stop them!" he yelled. He slithered toward the hospital's main entrance.

The grounds were smeared in death, the enemy having rent the soldiers limb from limb, or reducing them to smoldering stubs of boots and bone.

I won't let them cause any more harm!

But just as he was about to turn onto the street, a breeze whipped through the flexible spines on his back. Reflexively, he turned back to look, only for his jaw to drop as he watched a robed transformee dive off one of the hospital buildings, with a sheet of quivering air like a massive sword, slicing down as he fell—and he'd aimed the tempest right at Larry.

The janitor's arms fell to the side as the transformee's gale-blade sliced Larry in two.

Then the downed transformees began to rise off the ground.

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