I hurried to the operating theater.

"You have an excellent patio." It was the first compliment Storn had ever given me, and he'd meant it. Whenever he came over for a visit, without fail, Mr. Elbock would go out and sit on the cozy, green and white striped lounging chairs we had in our back patio and soak up the views of the hills and sunset by the sea. If I happened to be home, I'd usually join him for a spell, with a non-alcoholic beverage in one hand and a conversation topic in the other.

Looking back, it really did feel like a whole other world. But, then again, wasn't that the essence of what the past was? That to which we could never return?

Glancing at Andalon, I thought of something.

"Andalon… what do you do when a wyrm misbehaves?" I asked. "When they do bad things, and keep doing bad things, do you have any way to get them to stop? Does Ampersandalon?"

She stared at me. It was as if the words were at the tip of her tongue. But then she closed her eyes and nodded. "Yeah. Amplersandalon does."

"Can we use it? Can we channel that power?" I asked.

Gosh, wouldn't that be useful.

Andalon shook her head. "Not yet. But… soon."

Well, that was better than nothing, I guess.

"Then, as soon as you feel we can, you gotta tell me, okay?" I nodded.

"Okay," she said, nodding back.

"Now, come on," I said, "let's go save Merritt."

Guns and explosions rang out in the distance, only thinly muffled by the hallway walls.

It wasn't long before we reached the sepia-colored plastic barrier that had been set up in the hallway to cut off access to Operating Theater 12 after Merritt's exploratory surgery had gone so horribly, horribly wrong.

While my implant chip was still usable, soldered as it was to my tattered white coat's cufflink, I didn't need it to get through this particular barrier and reach the operating theater that had been serving as Merritt and Cassius' makeshift prison. I gasped out a puff of spores as I approached the barrier corridor.

The barrier was torn and burnt through. The hole was tall and wide, with ragged edges both blackened and melted. The floor and surrounding walls were covered in thick splotches of spore instead of ashes.

I slithered through.

The glass double doors leading into Operating Theater 12 and the inchworm-like plastic tunnel in front of them had suffered the same fate as the sepia barricade. On either side of the tunnel, parts of the walls had fallen in or out, punched through by the fungal spores' corrosive coating. Rings of jagged shards on the floor were all that remained of the doors, and even the glass was cratered and pitted where sprays of spores had eaten through. I tried using my powers and tail to sweep some of the shards out of the way, but even then, there was still quite a bit that I missed and then slithered over as I entered the operating theater. Fortunately, I wasn't hurt; heck, for a second, I thought my tail and belly had passed over a bit of rough carpet.

Otherworldly polyphony filled the room in greeting as I entered. The sounds reverberated off the cylindrical walls and the glass-ceiling overhead, much of which was marred by big, gaping holes where the material had been melted or eaten away.

Had they left?

Agitated trumpeting noises broke out down the hall. The corridor curved as it passed around the operating theater, so I had to slither across the glass- and drywall-littered the floor in order to get a better view.

I gasped.

I was face to face with three wyrms lying in front of me, two of whom faced, one red and one blue. Meanwhile, the third wyrm had her back to me, showing off her spines and graceful horns and deep, green scales–the same deep-green wyrm that had stood face to face with Storn just days before.

"Merritt!?" I said.

Mrs. Elbock turned around, fixed her eyes on me, and then, with a quiver, crooned a frightened solo. The two wyrms had grabbed hold of her and pushed her up against a wall. Fungal filaments had grown out of the red and blue wyrms' fingers and spread along Merritt's green hide.

They were forcing themselves on her, to what end, I didn't know—not that it mattered. They were about to invade her mind, violating her in a way that words fail to describe.

For all the damage a psychopath can do to your body, just think about what they could do to you if they had free rein to tromp around in the depths of your soul and wreak havoc to their fancy.

There was no universe in which I would allow them to do that to Merritt. Mrs. Elbock had already suffered enough from my poor decisions and mistakes. I wasn't about to sit back and let her get mind-raped.

Andalon pointed at the wyrms and yelled. "Bad wyrmehs! Bad wyrmehs!"

Merritt held her arms delicately close to her chest, claw-in-claw, in a distorted echo of the same body language she'd used the morning she'd come to me to tell me that she was dead.

The red wyrm slithered toward me, passing in front of Merritt. It honked and squawked and then lashed out with its claws.

With my mind, I yelled: Yuta! Geoffrey!

The plexuses crackled in my wyrmsight as they formed around my spirits' weapons.

I coiled my tail-body and launched myself forward like a spring.

The three of us charged forward as one.

The red and blue wyrms clearly had fully functioning wyrmsight because I saw their heads turn toward Geoffrey and Yuta.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

They could see the plexuses I'd woven around their weapons. But they couldn't see the ghosts who were wielding them.

I slowed time briefly.

Stay close, I thought-said, let them think you're just one of my attacks.

I thickened my wyrmsight as I returned thoughts' speed to normal. The wyrms prepared their spells, swirling webs of blue and gold into being around their claws. Behind them, their connections to Merritt withdrew.

Linking with her now would have left them sitting ducks.

To have a chance of stopping me, they had no choice but to release her.

"Merritt," I yelled, "run!"

She slithered out of the way right as the two wyrms' weaves erupted with light.

I yelled in my mind: Now!

I took the brunt of the red and blue wyrms' attacks: a massive, combined forcefield they'd launched at me to knock me back and disrupt what they thought were the plexuses I'd formed. But they hadn't expected Yuta and Geoffrey to move of their own accord and dashing behind them even their forcefields sent me flying backward and crashing into the wall of the corridor.

Ow.

My foes let out polyphonic shrieks as Yuta and Geoffrey sliced into their flanks. Yuta used his plexus-wrapped katana to push off the wall behind the wyrms and phase through their bodies to then stand in front of them where he could—and did—spin around and strike, lopping off fingers and one of the red wyrm's arms.

Bever, meanwhile, cut off a good chunk of the blue wyrm's tail.

Grunting, I pushed myself up off the ground with my arms and tail and slithered at the stunned wyrms with my claws at the ready.

"Checkmate," I said.

My attacks weren't graceful, but they didn't need to be. I slashed like mad, scraping my claws along their snouts, raking furrows through their eyes. At one point, one of my claws got its tip stuck in one of the red wyrm's snout holes, but with an extra strong push, I managed to jerk my arm free, along with the front half of the blue wyrm's snout.

Slithering around them, I twisted my body around theirs, playing the part of a boa constrictor as best as I could. I tightened my coils again and again in quickening increments, immobilizing my opponents and forcing them to the floor.

Unfortunately, my confidence had been misplaced. The blue wyrm roared in my ears, spraying spumes of spores that washed down my flanks. Working together, they used my body against me. The red wyrm twisted around me and tied the middle of its body into a knot, which gave it all the leverage it needed to press me down and claw into my underbelly.

The first slash didn't hurt. The second stung, and peeled off scales. But the third burned in agony.

I screamed as they ripped my tail-belly open.

"Mr. Genneth!" Andalon cried.

The pain was so intense, I lost my grip on my powers. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it and hear it.

"Genneth!" Yuta yelled. "My blade! It's—"

—I retaliated with a roar, giving my attacker a face full of spores and a forcefield that held them against the red wyrm's snout as it pushed back in an attempt to pry him off my body. Instead, the red wyrm doubled down, squeezing me tight, which sent both of us to tumbling heads over tails as my magic struck.

In the process, I lucked out: when we landed, I was on top.

That gave me just the opening I needed.

I conjured my plexuses around my spirits' weapons once more. "Yuta, Geoffrey," I yelled, "now!"

The red wyrm writhed beneath me, snarling up spores, slashing at my chest with its blind claws. Yuta and Geoffrey swung down on its wyrm's neck, cutting through the flesh and spilling spores onto the floor.

Andalon yelled. "Mr. Genneth!"

As I turned to face her, a mass of force pummeled me from the side and slammed my upper body onto the floor, sending cracks through the acid-etched vinyl.

The blue wyrm was on top of me, clawing into my back. I tried to get up, but he pressed his other hand down on my head to keep me pinned to the ground. I thrashed my tail, desperate to break free.

A split second later, the weight of the attacker pressing down on me suddenly vanished. Pushing myself up with my claws, I saw Merritt Elbock tear into the blue wyrm like a wild animal. She slapped and she clawed, spewing out spores in roars of wrath and pain.

"Yuta, Geoffrey, pin him to the wall!" I said.

I moved up alongside Merritt and then turned to bear my shoulder at the blue wyrm and pin him to the wall. I pressed my underbelly onto the floor, crushing the vinyl beneath me in order to maximize my traction as I bashed my elbow into the wyrm's back.

Spores spewed from the blue wyrm's upward-pointed snout like a locomotive at full speed, with a second rush blasting out as Geoffrey and Yuta stabbed him through the arms, nailing him onto the wall.

Then Merritt took both of her claws and throttled his neck. Then she squeezed and tugged and pulled, and there was a sickening rrrrrrrip as she tore his head clean off his body and tossed it aside. A final, diminished spurt of spores dribbled down the blue wyrm's severed neck.

My arms trembled as I slowly pulled away. I dismissed Yuta and Geoffrey with a thought.

Merritt kept clawing the blue wyrm for several more seconds, squawking and screeching; bellowing and moaning.

A woman's fury.

"She tried to tell them to stop," Andalon said, "but…"

"Merritt… I…"

Finally, Mrs. Elbock relented, falling silent and pulling away from the blue wyrm. The wyrm's body slumped over to the side and fell onto the floor, seemingly lifeless—though, as Mr. Twist's resurrection and Valentine's before it had proven—wyrms were often not as dead as they appeared.

Then Merritt turned around and looked at me.

Before, when I'd reunited her with Storn, Merritt had towered over her husband and I. But now, if I raised up the part of my body directly below my torso, I could lift my forepart up high enough to look her in the eyes—all six of them.

Before I knew it, I was getting squeezed tight on either side by a pair of wyrm arms. Her head was at least as large as my torso had been, back when I was still human. She wrapped her neck around me, nuzzling her snout into my back as her hug tightened. I returned her embrace, wrapping my arms around her neck. Had my arms not recently grown a little longer, I don't think I could have reached all the way around her.

Below, Andalon squealed.

"Wyrmie hug!"

Looking down, I saw that Andalon had flung herself at where the base of Merritt's forepart made contact with the floor. Andalon phased through Merritt altogether, passing to the floor. She picked herself up again a moment later, though, and tried again, this time miming the hug in the air, so that her arms were just above Merritt's subtly scaled hide.

"Where's Cassius?" I asked. "Did he…?"

After a moment of what was probably apprehension, Merritt nodded her head. The movement shook spores free from her many nostrils, like snow from a tree branch.

"It's… it's alright, Merritt," I said, glancing down at Andalon once more. "I can understand you when you… uh… sing."

Merritt made a chorale's worth of wyrm noises, which Andalon translated for me: "She says Dr. Cashy left when he heard the noiseses of all the fightin'."

Merritt continued clinging to me as she 'spoke'. It was a haunting chorale of prosody. She shivered in my embrace, both from the reverberations of her song and from sheer intensity of her emotions.

What is she saying, Andalon?

Andalon looked up at me. "Lotsa things. She says she was scared that she would never get to talk to anybody ever again. She says she tried to stop Dr. Cash from leaving, but she couldn't talk no more by then, and neither could he. She doesn't know what to do. And… she's very, very happy that you can understand her."

Thank you.

"I came to set you free, Merritt," I said. "I'm sorry it took so long for me to figure out the right thing to do. I'm sorry for having kept you here, alone and afraid. I'm trying to do right by as many of the transformees as I can. I'm not going to keep pretending to be something that I no longer am. "

Our hug came to an end as Merritt pulled away and gazed down at me, and sang once more.

"She's worried about Dr. Cash. But, most of all, Mr. Genneth, she wants you to help the others find their voices again. They need to know that they aren't alone, and that they can still reach out and connect with others. Alslo, she says she doesn't know where to go. And she's really worried about her huzyband," Andalon said.

Spores trickled down my cheeks, stinging my skin as I cried. "Merritt, I…"

But before I could get the words out, a great sound echoed from the deep, like thunder from the earth: wyrmsong. A chorus of wyrmsong.

Agitation stiffened my nubby back spines.

Andalon floated up beside me and stared at the wall, transfixed by the sound. Then she pointed and screamed.

"Silver sees! Silver sees!"

Oh no.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.