Did she just say Letty?

Of all the things Jonan had been expecting to hear, that hadn't been one of them.

It would have been very nice if he'd had the time and peace and quiet to ponder this highly undesirable turn of events, but unfortunately, the love of his life was in mortal peril, so all he could do was reflect in astonishment at Dr. Marteneiss' words as he grabbed Ani and ran for his life.

They turned around the other corner, zooming past Werumed-san.

Jonan looked back. Heggy was running after them like mad. A split second later, the horned purple wyrm lashed out at the mascot, clawing into him like mad.

Assuming the purple was Letty, she had every reason to be mad. The mascot had been the one who'd killed her, after all.

Though, apparently, he hadn't done a good enough job.

Letty tore into Werumed-san with unbridled fury. She slid her claws through the sutures that had formed between the mascot-wyrm and the writhing fungal mass. Invisible forces ripped the mass in half and mashed the chunks on Letty's body.

Had Letty been in the morgue, all this time, brooding over her defeat?

That would be really bad. From what Heggy had told him, Letty was scary-good with the magic powers that came with being a wyrm.

Ani frantically tugged at Jonan's arm.

Jonan saw the air quiver again, this time in a thin layer that ringed around Werumed-san's neck. A split second later, the black wyrm's head simply fell off his neck. Spores bubbled up from the point of decapitation. The mascot-wyrm's body toppled into the hole in the floor, and then slid down and fell away.

Ani had stopped pulling on Jonan's arm.

The purple wyrm looked down at its defeated rival's head, and though its alien face showed nothing Jonan could recognize as emotion, he couldn't help but feel the creature's satisfaction at having earned her revenge.

Rearing up tall, the wyrm slithered toward Jonan and the others just enough to stick her neck into the hall, which could contain less and less of her growing body with each passing second as she busily integrated the diced, writhing chunks of the giant cell mass that Werumed-san had subdued. New flesh rippled down the purple wyrm's body as she slowly slithered further and further forward. Her arms buffed up even more; her girth strained the hallway, fissuring cracks in the walls.

Jonan glanced behind him. Everyone except Heggy and Ani had already run off toward the matter printer room.

"Oh fuck…" Heggy cursed.

Jonan turned to face ahead.

Letty had breathed out a thick cloud of spores, filling the lower part of the hallway with deadly spools and whorls.

Instinctively, Jonan stepped back, as did Ani and Heggy, but then he paused, as did they.

Something was holding the spores at bay, keeping them from drowning the three of them and dissolving them into sizzling dregs. It was the wyrm's psychokinesis. But a moment later, Jonan realized there was much more to it.

The spores were being… sculpted.

With a wave of her claws, Letty thickened the spore clouds and condensed them into recognizable shapes.

Jonan coughed. "Those are letters, aren't they?" he grumbled.

A Yes formed in the spores. To the right, more words took shape.

Hello, Ms. Marteneiss.

"Letty," Heggy said.

The spores reformed. How'd you know?

Heggy cleared her throat. "You're the only horned purple people-eater I've ever had the displeasure of knowin'."

"Why aren't we running?" Ani asked.

Oh, little missy, you absolutely should, the spores spelled.

Ani looked Jonan in the eyes. "Jonan…?"

"Leave her alone!" Jonan tried his best to stand his ground.

Letty snorted several times in quick succession.

Shit. She's laughing at me.

Aren't you just the cutest thing? Who are you kidding, little man? The fungus in you has lit your body up like a Harrow stone on Shrovestide. Oh, and don't think that I forgot you. I made a promise to you, didn't I, and Divine Beasts like me keep our promises. I've got a fresh slice of hell just waiting for you. Now… why don't you listen to your girlfriend and run?

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"What?" Jonan said. "Are you scared of me, or something?" He grinned smugly.

Letty lifted up a hand and wiggled her claws. Oh no, honey, you're fucked like you wouldn't believe. It's just that I like to play with my food, first.

Then the spores shifted, rising up to either side of Letty, condensing into dozens of needles. Then hundreds.

"Fuck, Jonan, run!" Heggy yelled.

The needles launched out at them, and the three doctors ran like hell.

— — —

"Nurse Costran, snap out of it!" Karl yelled.

"Fight it, Yuth, fight it!" Dr. Rathpalla yelled. "Don't let it take control of you!"

"I don't think it's working!" Ichigo said. He followed along as Karl flew through the garage.

Rearing up her head, Nurse Costran roared—eyes blaring silver—and sent force shock-waving out in all directions, knocking everyone back and slamming Karl against a wall.

Karl plummeted toward the floor before catching himself with his flight magic. Looking up, he saw that Dr. Rathpalla alone had resisted Yuth's attack. The spore currents in the air traced around the contours of bracelets and chains that anchored him in place. The contours collapsed a moment later as Dr. Rathpalla dismissed them and launched himself at Nurse Costran like a battering ram, slamming the two of them onto the tiled floor. He pinned her down with his body as she thrashed, snarled, and flailed.

"Stop it, Yuth!" he yelled. "Stop—"

—Yuth fired off a quick succession of psychokinetic bursts. Dr. Rathpalla held on for dear life, though most of his coat got blasted off his body.

Bever and Ichigo turned to Karl. "Do you want us to stop her?" Ichigo asked.

Karl was aghast. "No, how could you—"

Nurse Costran let out a roar that shook the whole building and launched Dr. Rathpalla up diagonally, crashing him into the ceiling. Concrete rained down from the impact.

"Karl," Dr. Rathpalla yelled, as he floated down from the ceiling and shook himself out. "Go to the lower levels. Get Larry."

"W-What?" Karl said.

"Bring him—"

But then Yuth leapt off the ground and slammed into the psychiatrist at lightning speed. The two of them twined and thrashed mid-air, with Dr. Rathpalla plummeting to the ground a moment later, landing on two cars. He crushed them like broken leaves.

Other transformees rushed to intervene, calling Yuth's name, but she gutted them and sent them flying

"We'll hold her off, Karl," Bever said. "Quickly, do as the man said!"

"Don't hurt her!" Karl said.

"I'll do what I can," Ichigo said.

The two ghosts flew toward the rampaging silver-eye as Karl turned tail and fled.

He didn't like running away, but what other choice did he have?

It would have helped if he at least knew why he was supposed to be getting—

"—Angel's breath," he muttered.

Barely had he slid down the ramp to the next level below when a massive firestorm broke out on the second floor, casting a nightmare of shadows. Half-charred creepy crawlies scampered up the ramp. They stuck to Karl's body like honey. Screaming, Karl tried to rip them off, but that just got them stuck to his hands, their crispy limbs twitching like a crop of fingers trying to reach out of his skin.

It also did nothing to stop the changes.

He slid forward with his powers, thrusting himself up and over the skittering fungus, and onto an empty patch of blackened ground on the second level, beside some ruined cars.

He thought it was safe, but it wasn't. The black crust cracked open as soon as Karl touched it. Tendrils reached up out of the cracks and punched their way through his underbelly. Others wrapped themselves around Karl's tail-body, and in his desperation to get off he swept his tail around, which only exposed him to even more of the damn stuff.

The fungus was burrowed into him. Movement inchworm its way up his body, traveling underneath his skin. The fleshy rivulets ran up his arms and the flanks of his torso. Some of the biomass settled there, bulking him up with monstrous muscle, but even more of them crawled up his upper chest, toward his neck.

Toward his face.

Up his face.

He let out a nearly inhuman groan.

If he lost his mouth, he wouldn't be able to get Larry. Yuth would—

No!

Karl didn't want to lose anyone else.

Hurry hurry hurry.

Karl moved as quickly as he could, hovering along the ground, his body seesawing left and right as he served around the corner, past structural columns.

Suddenly, something snapped on Karl's jaw. The bone had come loose inside his right cheek, causing that whole side of his jawbone and chin to droop down inside his skin, stretching it like a sack.

"Larrrrry!" he yelled. "Larry!"

His voice was scarcely human.

More flesh crept up his chest, inflating his neck like a frog's as it grew long.

Then, there was a rumble deeper than a fire-mountain's fury, and the walls moved.

No, not walls. A wyrm, one larger than anything he'd ever seen.

Karl stumbled over charred fungus as the garage seemed to rotate around him, revealing a wall that had been nearly completely torn away, as well as two wyrms, both larger than Karl, but nowhere near the size of the great one that was wrapped around the entire floor.

A seam started to open up along Karl's jaw, starting from the right.

As the great wyrm filled the floor with its music, Karl could swear he almost heard words in them, even though they were the furthest from words that any sound could be.

He's here, that's what they were saying.

And then, Karl realized. One of the two smaller wyrms… one of them was blue—exactly Larry's shade.

"Larrrrrry…?" Karl said.

The blue wyrm slithered to attention.

"It's Yuuuuth. She's gone sillllllllver-eyyyyyyed. Raaaaaathlfaaaaaaala neeeeeeds your hel—"

—But then Karl's jaw, and the surrounding flesh, fell off his face, dropping to the floor like a ripe fruit. His snout was beginning to crown, occupying the lower half of his face.

This is it, he thought. This is goodbye.

Staggering in place, Karl shook his head as his changes blossomed.The last traces of his shoulders vanished into his body as his head and neck broadened, until his body was a sleek, serpentine cylinder. The rest of his facial features sloughed off with soft crackles as his burgeoning snout grew. New eyes blinked into being on either side of his head, filling his senses with forms of vision he could hardly describe.

He could see everything now. The garage's darkness was barely more than a dimness of light.

Flexing a portion of its length, the great wyrm shoved Larry across the floor, pushing him toward Karl. The janitor wyrm immediately slithered past Karl, and then quickly took to hovering over the ground as he flew toward and up the ramp to the first floor.

Karl followed after him, scrambling ahead up to the first level.

No… Karl thought. Was I too late?

Nurse Costran lay on the floor, limbless, flopping around under the weight of Dr. Rathpalla's body, while Ichigo and Bever used their weapons to hold her down.

Angel, she was like a wild animal.

Larry rushed across the ground, surging like a viper. And then he sang.

Karl could tell there were words there, and more than words—feelings and longing and heartache and the tinge of bitter regrets. He knew now why Dr. Rathpalla had asked him to get the janitor.

Larry and Nurse Costran were in love.

For a moment, gold flickered in her eyes, and then shone bright through all of them, like windows, opening one by one.

Returned to her senses, Yuth Costran lurched up and twined her neck around Larry's, reaching up at him with the ever-lengthening stubs of her regrowing arms.

And then the garage's roof caved in as three silver-eyed wyrms burst through.

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