The hospital was a war zone, and, even with a big blue wyrm at their side, getting through it was a real pain in the ass. That being said, the submachine gun Heggy had given Jonan to use against the hostile transformees was just plain awesome.

He swaggled an eyebrow at Ani as he pelted a nearly fully-changed wyrm with bullets.

"I told you going to the firing range would pay off one day, and look at me now!"

In Jonan's experience, feeling like shit was much more tolerable when you got to subject nearby assholes to similar levels of misery.

He reloaded the gun's magazine and yelled.

"Die you fucking monsters!"

The wyrm reared back and roared in pain as one of Jonan's bullets struck it right in the eye. The monster clutched its head with its claws.

Kurt the Wyrm trumpeted like a marching band behind them.

Heggy yelled. "Out of the way, people!"

The group split down the middle. Ani, Jonan, and Dr. B'zool darted down a side-corridor toward some restrooms, while Heggy and the others took shelter behind a half-eaten vending machine.

The restroom's door was wide open. Jonan tried to look away from it, and the bodies within. The dead were so overgrown with fungus, the fungus was rising up along the walls.

Bellowing, the enemy wyrm breathed out a cone of spores. Kurt rammed into the other wyrm just in time, redirecting the bulk of the blast toward the walls while the rest of the spores around Kurt's body. The spores ate the paint off the walls, but they didn't harm Kurt in the least. Suddenly, the spores coalesced into a lump, as if a pair of invisible hands had clapped together. The lump dropped to the floor, sizzling like ice on a griddle as it slid across the vinyl.

The enemy wyrm replied to Kurt's attack by swinging its head into Kurt's neck, but Kurt slithered around him, and then, coiling tight, slammed his opponent into the wall, scraping the wyrm's spiny mane along the drywall. The wyrm snorted in anger, spewing out more spores, only for those spores to suddenly whirl around Kurt's claws, which then slashed at the wyrm's sides. The creature flailed, bashing its tail into the wall.

Kurt stuck his head toward the group and waved it, motioning at the group to move down the hall.

"You heard the man!" Heggy said. Dropping a used magazine of ammunition, Dr. Marteneiss cocked her gun, came out from behind the half-eaten vending machine and then started to run.

"Ani," Jonan said, "let's go."

He looked Ani in the eyes.

She nodded.

The two of them ran after Heggy, as did Dr. B'zool and the others.

"Kurt…" Ani said, "isn't he the hero of the Dressfeldt Shooting?"

"Fucking hell, Lokanok," Heggy said, with a backward glance, "I think you're right."

The hospital's hallways made even Call of Honor's death-matches seem tame by comparison. Humans did their best to fight back against the transformees that were hunting them down. Numbers were key, as were powers; the winners were whichever mutants managed to avoid getting torn to bloodless shreds.

Jonan and the rest of the group turned down the next corner. Some of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling had been dashed to pieces. The flickering things barely functioned.

Moans and soft cries for help came from seemingly every direction.

"Jonan, here!" Ani shouted, right before running into a nearby room.

"Fucking hell!" Heggy said.

The room's bed had overturned, trapping at least two people beneath it and other debris.

Ani clambered over to the other side of debris. "Jonan, help me move this!"

He nodded. "Right."

They tried, but to no avail. Jonan's limbs were hot and heavy. His breaths were like sprays of sparks shooting through his chest. Everything burned and fog rolled in on his thoughts.

The debris wouldn't budge. It might as well have been a continent.

Jonan panted. "Ani… I can't…"

"Stop trying to be a hero," Dr. B'zool said.

Ani stuck her head out into the hall. "Somebody, help! We could use some magic parlor tricks!"

A tremendous crash came from down the hall, making Ani yelp in terror. Wyrm sounds squawked from out of sight.

Heggy and the others cocked their guns, ready for anything.

"Wait!" Ani yelled. "Don't shoot! It's Kurt!"

The blue wyrm slithered around the corner and pointed a claw at the debris.

"Ani," Jonan said, "I think he's asking—"

Ani nodded vigorously. "Yes, yes! Get the debris out of the way! There are people trapped underneath!"

Kurt nodded.

"Quickly!" Heggy said.

Jonan watched with rasping, burning breaths as the overturned bed and machinery levitated up and away. They came to a stop, hovering motionlessly several feet off the floor.

Kurt slithered back, taking the debris with him out into the hallway intersection.

"Shit!" Dr. B'zool cursed. "Look at all the fucking structural damage! They're tearing this place apart!"

Jonan had to agree with her.

Fragments of broken ceiling and drywall had rained onto the vinyl floor, exposing the many breaks and gashes that had been opened in the walls and ceiling. Whatever transformees had come through here had passed like a demolition crew. Jonan even saw bits of the building's frame exposed in the wreckage.

They others got to work helping the victims up off the floor, grabbing them by the arms and pulling. Jonan felt guilty that he couldn't shoulder his fair share of the load. Ani shouldn't have had to do so much of the work in pulling the people free.

Kurt slithered out of the way as the victims emerged from the rubble.

"There!" Ani said. "Got 'em!"

"That's the last of 'em!" Heggy said.

They'd pulled out a mix of doctors and patients, four in total. They coughed and groaned; just getting back onto their feet was a struggle.

Kurt pulled his arm back toward his chest as he let the levitating objects clatter back to the floor.

Jonan winced at the awful din.

"C'mon," he said, turning to Heggy, "Let's get these people out of here."

Jonan, Ani, and Heggy helped the four victims to their feet while Kurt went back out into the hallway with what Jonan supposed was a look of vigilance in his eyes.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Jonan, can you handle this?" Ani asked.

Jonan gagged. "I…" But then he winked and smirked. "Well… we gotta do what we gotta do."

But then Jonan's blood ran cold as a wyrm's cry cut through the air. The sound hit him in the gut.

It was primal terror.

"Ani!" Jonan yelled. "Run!"

Jonan had barely turned his head toward the sound when the hallway was cleaved apart with a sequence of sickening tears. He saw Kurt toppled backward onto the floor as an invisible force ripped him in half two times in a row. The blue wyrm's head rolled onto the floor, still attached to his lengthy neck, and from the way Kurt kept blinking his eyes, it was clear that he was still very much alive. Spores gushed out from Kurt's severed neck and spilled onto the floor, like grainy green blood.

The black-scaled wyrm that had torn Kurt to shreds slithered over the blue wyrm's broken body. Heggy and Jonan fired at it, aiming for the eyes.

Heggy turned back to everyone else. "Run, you idiots! Run!" Heggy yelled.

Ani screamed. "Jonan!"

"Run!" he said.

Dr. B'zool pulled Ani along as everyone else left.

The black wyrm covered its head with a claw and then reached out with their other arm, and then Heggy's gun crumpled in her hand like a crushed aluminum can.

She dropped it and yelled.

Jonan barely had time to react before his own weapon was ripped out of his grip and flung to the floor.

Jonan's heart skipped a beat.

"Shit."

Without a second thought, Dr. Derric slammed his elbow into Heggy, knocking her onto the floor and out of range of the wyrm's psychokinesis. Jonan didn't get any time to bask in his heroism, for the wyrm's powers immediately wrap tight around his chest, squeezing his aching ribs as the monster's magic lifted him into the air. At least one of those ribs snapped like a twig.

Jonan screamed like a baby, but the pressure mounting around on his chest quickly silenced him by squeezing all the breath out of his lungs

The edges of Jonan's vision started to darken. Sounds grew distorted. Hallucinations set in, melting into being around the wild holographic projections. Something like a bugle call blared in Jonan's ears, as if to signal a cavalry charge, but Jonan know whether it was real or not. Time seemed to slow.

For a second time, Jonan closed his eyes and prepared to embrace the inevitable.

But then the bugle-calls grew louder. Other sounds joined in.

Jonan opened his eyes, realizing it was real.

A slew of transformees came out from around the corner, stomping and slithering over Kurt's fallen form and the tail of the wyrm that had broken him. A big, brash wyrm with Night-black scales spread their arms and raised their snout to the ceiling.

Jonan was pretty sure the wyrm had a limbless, headless torso in one of his claws.

Jonan grasped in breath as the pressure on his chest suddenly loosened. His wyrm tormentor quivered. The creature's figure blurred as waves of heat began to pour off its body. Then it eyes popped like balloons, and the next thing Jonan knew, he dropped to the floor because his attacker had both burst into flame and exploded into a fine slurry, which was also—and remained—on fire as it roared through the hallway in a massive inferno that fried all the delicate bits of every hostile transformee in the way. A wave of biting cold followed directly after it, snuffing out the minor blazes the inferno had ignited in its passing.

Jonan rose to his feet, blinking in astonishment. An invisible force flicked the wyrm glop off his PPE.

As the black wyrm lowered their arms, an uncannily recognizable figure waddled around the corner and pointed his face-snout at the dark red wyrm.

Dr. Brand Nowston.

"Greg, yowe such a sho off."

Jonan stared at the wyrm—Greg—as it (he?) brought one of his claws to his snout. The claws in question grasped a featureless torso like the way a kid might hold a lollipop. And, like a lollipop, as Greg brought the body up to his snout, he leaned his head forward and ate it, if you could call what Greg did "eating", tendrils and black ooze spewing out of his snout holes to break apart the corpse and then pull the chunks back inside, and all of it to the tune of the screams of pain of the seared transformees further up the hallway

Unnervingly, the wyrm kibbles on the ground were still squirming around.

"Dr. Nowston?" Jonan said.

"Yowe wercome," he said. "Now, gek going." He pointed down the hallway. "Youwe kirlfwent neeths you."

— — —

Outside, Karl and Yuth were hard at work putting their plan into action. Transformees who still had legs to walk on tripped over others' tails as they clamored toward the two of them, desperate to gain knowledge of flight. They quickly overwhelmed both of them. Bever and Ichigo staggered back in shock as the mass of intertwined transformees began to meld together. Karl was about to join in when one of Nurse Costran's arms reached out and shoved him back.

Perhaps he wasn't yet ready for something like this.

Well, that was no bother, there was plenty else to do.

Willing Bever and Ichigo's spirits to fly along with him, Karl rose higher and higher, focusing on maintaining his balance. From a distance, the fungal filaments crisscrossed over the interlinked wyrms' bodies made it seem like they were caught beneath a net.

After a couple seconds passed, Karl's expression soured.

What was taking so long?

The destruction playing out only made Karl's worries grow.

Two of the Lost Lassedite's transformees were using their powers to tear through the General Labs building, blasting it full of holes. Another transformee swooped down and picked up soldiers—one, after another, after another—gorging on some, while playfully mauling the rest, smashing their bodies to a pulp on the pavement or the nearby buildings. Chunks of infected flesh landed among the pieces of chopped up transformees, staining the ground with dark fluids.

"A little help here!" Dr. Rathpalla yelled.

Karl glanced up.

By the Angel…

The psychiatrist was being mobbed. Four transformees were taking turns walloping him across the sky.

One of Dr. Rathpalla's attackers looked down at Karl.

"You hear that?" he said.

"I heard it. They're going to share their knowledge of flight."

Karl shot a blast of force at them, but they scattered and dodged it.

"We should stop them," one said.

"They can't move when they're linked," said the first. "Get them. We need to nip this in the bud."

The four of them exchanged grins and then plummeted at the tangled transformees.

"Oh no…" Karl cupped his claws to his face, eyes wide. "Dr. Rathpalla, help!"

The psychiatrist turned around and rushed back.

Karl flew down to the tangle, but one of the attackers ensnared him with a plexus and dragged him back while another bashed into him from the side.

A ceiling of psychic energy pressed down on Karl, slamming him onto the ground.

Rathpalla yelled. "No!"

Karl cancelled his flight magic, bouncing himself off the ground and then rolling forward. He gave the excess power back to Bever and Ichigo as quickly as he could. The two spirits were far better fighters than he was. They could keep their mettle, even if he couldn't

"Please, do something!" he begged them.

The blue-armored axe-man and the red four-armed oni nodded and then leapt back into the fray. Karl followed behind them, slithering up to the mass of interlinked transformees. He swat at the attackers with his claws, blasting out spore breaths as he yelled.

"Get back! Back, you fiends! Stop this!"

Ichigo and Bever sliced one of the attackers in half, making Karl's whole body tremble. It was just a moment of weakness, but it was more than enough for another attacker to float behind him, knock him onto the pavement, and start slicing into the transformee knot with psychokinetically enchanted claw strikes.

The transformees pulled out from the linked state, undoing the knot. A handful of them screamed in agony, their bodies sliced into pieces. But just as many had pushed off the ground and taken flight.

The plan was working!

The attackers cursed. "Shit!"

Then, from off to the side, someone screamed.

Everyone turned to look, and then watched in horrified astonishment as Larry's bisected corpse rose up from the ground and let out a monstrous yell.

Karl immediately understood what was happening: it was the corpses, and all the debris.

Fungal filaments had grown out from Larry's body like roots and plunged into the nearby human corpses, and also into chunks of grass and dead wood. Even the wrecks and pieces of ruined vehicles stuck to him, the metal crunching and crumpling as his body broke it down, and Larry's body had been hard at work integrating all the raw material.

Kurt watched the janitor's thickening tail absorb his leg, and watched the cut where Larry had been sliced in half fold together and stitch itself closed. And all the while, the transformee screamed: a deep, inhuman roar.

And then he leapt, and pounced. Debris flew off him as he barreled forward with the force of his powers. Transformees scattered in every direction, save for the one attacker Larry smacked into directly.

But not Karl. No, he stayed put, watching, transfixed.

Larry's target clawed back in anger but only briefly. His protests stilled as the two transformees' bodies began to link. Rootlike structures emerged from them both, twining around one another before sinking into the soil.

In a moment, the two transformees had stopped moving altogether.

"That's it!" Rathpalla yelled, from above. "Link with the attackers! It'll immobilize them just like it immobilizes us!"

Verune's followers shared glances, and then stared at the hospital's transformees, and for the first time, Karl saw that there was fear in their eyes.

Though Verune's Norms might have had more skill and strength, they were still outnumbered by the garage's transformees.

It was Dr. Rathpalla who took the lead, launching himself at one of the attackers. The two serpents writhed and wrestled for a moment before plummeting to the ground in a ball of tightening wyrmflesh that tumbled across the pavement, stopping only once it hit a wall.

"This is nuts!"

The attackers tried to flee. Some succeeded, but more failed as the hospital's transformees used their newfound flight ability to best effect. They didn't need to know how to fight, here; their bodies were their weapons.

Using his powers in tandem with the energies he'd given to Bever and Ichigo, Karl attacked enemy transformees, dragging them down to the ground with psychic ropes, so that a garage transformee could leap onto them and, with them, take root.

"Are you alright, Karl?" Nurse Costran asked. She floated over to him and settled onto the ground.

Karl stared at the immobilized transformees. So many of them were taking root in the ruined gardens' soil; it was like they were turning into trees!

In between the immobilized wyrms, segments of the filleted transformees began to move. Serpentine forms emerged as the transformees' pieces intermingled with all the surrounding flesh and debris.

"They're putting themselves back together again!" Karl yelled, only for Nurse Costran to scream as the reforming wyrms' eyes budded from their coalescing heads.

The eyes were silver.

In the distance—from high above—Karl heard a chorus of wyrmsong. The sound resonated within him, shaking him to his core. Looking up, he saw wyrms and transformees silhouetted against the brightening skies, and down to the last, their eyes were points of gleaming silver.

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