It was the quietest explosion I'd never heard. For the brief moments after time had resumed its course, Greg's plexus contained every one of the explosion's emissions—sound, heat, fury—letting only the light through. That light faded pretty quickly, leaving a solid black sphere hovering where Letty had been a moment before. The barrier quivered and flickered, and then collapsed, its power spent.

Greg really had given it his all.

The orb of smoke melted onto the floor like a dying ghost. It spread wide, hiding the ground beneath a dark fog whose foul stench stung at my nose.

"Run, Ani" I yelled. "Get to high ground!"

Sure, the explosion had finished exploding, but the byproducts and leftovers were still quite dangerous to a human being.

I wanted to move my barrier to stop the flow, but it was a struggle to do that while also keeping the thronging fungal monsters in place.

I turned around to face the doorway.

Angel's breath, was there no end to these things? My forcefield was pressed up against desperation unbridled in the form of a wall of gnashing flesh. It was like watching someone's ant colony through the glass on the side, only, in this case, every single one of the ants had a vendetta against me, personally.

Uh oh…

The edges of my weave were starting to fray. Some of the smaller creatures skitter through as my pataphysics' lines flapped about.

"Mr. Genneth!"

"I know!" I yelled.

Even though Greg had taken up the slack, my failed attempt to contain the explosion had taken more out of me than I'd initially thought.

Beast's teeth…

My barrier flickered, then, all around the edges, the seal broke.

The monsters poured in.

Fudge! I had no choice.

Wrapping the barrier around myself, I turned around and slithered away. The weight of the creatures struggling to enter the room exploded at my back, toppling me onto the floor, face first.

I pushed off the floor and groaned. The many legs and limbs charging over me dappled across my barrier like so many fingerprints.

"Something's happening!" Andalon yelled. "Something's—"

I looked up.

To my shock, the fungus' creatures had ignored me completely. Instead, they swarmed to the center of the antechamber, where the smoke was at its highest because of the hunks of burnt and broken wyrmflesh strewn on the floor. Through my wyrmsight, channels of violet and ultramarine circuitry glistened brightly beneath the swarm and its auras and all the overlaying smoke.

Connections formed. The aura-lights grew painfully intense, forcing me to thin my wyrmsight all across my field of vision to make them fade.

But I didn't need wyrmsight to see what happened next.

I don't know about you, but I've always had a certain image in my mind whenever I pictured an emperor or a king. Obviously, regal stature and a lordly throne were a must, but, for me, it was the cloak that really sealed the deal, maybe even more so than a crown. In my mind, such a figure had to wear a cloak, like the Hummingbird Robe or something even grander. The ruler's mantle was broad and immaculate, a curtain of glory drawn around his shoulders that swept up everything in his wake, moving through space like man himself across the pages of history.

Now I beheld that same majesty, only twisted into grotesquerie. A loathly cloak rose from the floor, woven from dark carbon, charred flesh, and fallen wyrms. It snapped and squelched. Smoke tumbled down its sides in waves as it crested and peaked. The fungus' monstrosities knitted themselves together with twitching motions, fusing into a living sheet that pulled the pieces of wyrms off the ground.

Andalon screamed.

I slithered back in horror.

Angel…

The cloak thinned, sprouting arms. Two wyrm heads—Cassius' and Bethany's—settled into place at either side of its peak, where a third neck emerged, sucking up flesh and drawing it to its tip where it extruded it into a wyrm's head that soon blossomed with pores and eyes and more.

Golden eyes.

Wicked horns.

An enormous tail consolidated from the flesh of the swarm and the dead. In seconds, wyrm scales dappled along its form: purple down the middle, and on the body, and the arms, and with Cassius' and Bethany's colors—dark blue and yellow-green—on their respective heads and necks.

The creature's eyes lit up. They blinked. The three heads spewed out spores and roared.

As high as the ceiling was, it wasn't enough to hold the triple wyrm. The massive creature slammed into the wall, sending it crashing down as it slithered onto the factory floor.

In the corner of my vision, I saw Ani staggering along one of the catwalks, clutching the railing as the smoke streamed across the ground.

Cassius' and Bethany's head flailed around, squinting their eyes in pain. They screamed songs of pain and lamentation and even the fleeting wisps of meaning that I managed to pull from them sent shivers down my spine.

"Help me," they said. "She's in my head!" they said.

"No! No!" Andalon screamed. "She's hurting them! She's hurting them!!"

Letty roared with fury and hate. I didn't understand how or why she'd survived the fiery crucible, but now wasn't the time to worry about that.

Slithering after her, I summoned Yuta and Geoffrey to my side, and in their Lantor forms, no less, blessing both of them with flight. I wrapped plexuses around their weapons as I sent them soaring.

Letty snarled and screamed, slamming me with bursts of psychokinesis and spores. I slithered and leapt, dodging as many of them as I could, and whipped up forcefields to block them when I couldn't. Our energies clashed like sabers of light. Her attacks ran ruin through the production floor, destroying conveyors, printers, the tube networks, and so much more. Catwalks snapped; metal melted.

Yuta and Geoffrey darted around the triple wyrm like flies, striking her with psychic bolts of ink and lightning. I kept my wyrmsight thickened on their weapons, monitoring their plexuses for any signs of fluctuation or failure.

In the background, I watched Letty toss a billowing weave of power at me like a net.

If she caught me in that, I was done for!

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I moved as fast as I could. Yuta flew up to the weave and dared to try to slice it in half, but that had no effect.

I dashed around the remains of an exploded tank. Letty's attack descended on the tank, crumpling metal, but at the last minute, a sudden spray of spores form off to the side crashed into it, destabilizing it into a flicker of blue and gold.

Cassius!

I raised my head to look, just in time to see Dr. Arbond slam his head into Letty's through the sporescreen he spewed out for cover.

"They're doing a think-fight!" Andalon said.

Yes, and that was interfering with Letty's powers.

I looked up at Yuta and Geoffrey. "Strike now!" I yelled. "Now's your chance!"

Yuta and Geoffrey closed in and made their move, but then Letty struck back, raking one of her claws across Cassius' head while releasing a plexus that grabbed the magic around my spirits' weapons and cast it off, blowing the blue and gold threads away from the katana and crackling gold-jade halberd. It was like what Greg had done to Letty's magic when she'd tried to resist his Sphere of Fiery Doom, and I guess Letty was now using that same technique to interfere with mine.

My warriors' unreal attacks phased through my enemy without effect.

Fudge, she was a fast learner.

Geoffrey turned to me and yelled. "Genneth! My weapon!"

"Fall back!" I said.

Roaring, Letty larruped her claws through the catwalks, shattering them like cups in a cupboard. She grabbed one in her claws.

No!

"Ani!" I yelled.

As the metal ripped away, Ani's section of the catwalk collapsed. It drooped downward, as if over a ravine. Ani screamed in terror, holding onto the railing desperation, dangling almost two-dozen feet above the floor.

Disregarding my own safety, I gathered the weaves Letty had blown off course and wove them into a sphere around Dr. Lokanok. I set the power flowing right as Ani lost her grip on the railing and fell, her yells getting cut short once she realized she was sitting on the invisible surface at the bottom of my levitation sphere.

I willed the sphere close to me. Ani pressed her hands against its walls, mouth agape, and lost for words.

"It's okay," I told her, "I'll protect you."

"Mr. Genneth protects!" Andalon said. "He protects!" She pumped her arms and nodded.

The wisps of spores curling around the room coalesced in front of the triple wyrm, forming… text?

You debase yourself, honey. You're divine; she's a sinner. The Hallowed Beast gave us a gift, and you spat on it.

Why didn't I think of that?

One last sentence appeared in the air.

Now, I spit on you!

Letty stunned her two wayward heads with slaps of her claws and then reared up to her full height, breathed in, and exhaled, spewing out a cone of concentrated spore breath right at me.

I could have hurled myself out of the way with my powers, but that would have meant dispelling the barrier around Ani. The spores would dissolve in an instant!

In a panic, I slowed time, desperate for a solution.

But then Geoffrey turned to me. "Use the orb!" he yelled, pointing at my globe of blue and gold.

Of course!

I could protect both of us with the one spell.

Pulling my tail in and coiling it tight, I levitated Ani's sphere in front of me, putting her mere inches from my face.

She was crying. "Genneth…?"

Then spores hit. But Count Athelmarch's idea worked like a charm. We all watched in awe as the current of spores parted left and right as it struck the sphere, churning and writhe as they passed along my magic's surface.

Everything to either side of me took the full brunt of the blow. Wrecked metal and matter printers sizzled into slag, leaving spores in ulcering pools on the floor that bubbled and hissed as they broadened and deepened.

As the currents dwindled away and revealed us to still be in one piece, Letty's eyes opened in alarm. The smug look on her snout disappeared. The three-headed monster roared, and then rushed me, sweeping her claws over the wreckage.

"Genneth!" Ani yelled.

But then a second pair of arms burst from the triple-wyrm's flanks, colored to match the heads on their sides. The arms raked their claws along the main body, straining to reach Letty's eyes. The attack forced Letty to swerve off to the side, which sent her crashing into a matter printer.

Yuta screamed. "Now's your chance! Attack!"

For a moment, I hesitated. Currents and clouds of spores—not to mention all the toxic combustion smoke—covered the floor like puddles of green lava. I had to thicken the sphere's weaves to bolster their power to keep the noxious particles at bay. Repurposing the barrier to teach Letty a lesson would leave Ani a sitting duck drowning in caustic smog.

I was not about to let the kindest souls I'd ever known spend eternity locked away in one of the cruelest.

But then, I realized: I didn't have to, and Geoffrey's idea with the orb had shown me how.

While the triple wyrm writhed in a storm of self-harm, I slithered over the bubbling acid sinks, pushing Ani's sphere forward until its front end was pressing up against Letty's scute-plated underbelly.

The triple wyrm was about three times my size, about half of which was tail-body. Meanwhile, my sphere was nearly eight feet in diameter, and that made it just the right size to serve as a stepping stone.

Ani yelled in alarm as I threw myself onto the sphere, which jiggled like a waterbed beneath my weight. Slithering to its peak, I raised myself further, pushing myself up with my tail. I dug my left hand's claws into one of the gaps between her scutes.

All three heads spewed out spores as they roared in pain.

Pushing off the sphere with my tail, I used my grip on Letty's scute to pull myself up right up to her head, which I tore into after yanking my claws free. I ripped through her holes and burst her eyes.

Pop pop pop.

Cassius and Bethany trumpeted in painful triumph.

Agonized and enraged, Letty slammed her head—and me—into a wall, and then jerked it back the other way, flinging me off along with a good deal of the front of her snout.

I slowed time as I flew through the air. I set Ani's sphere to zip away from Letty and toward me, catching myself on it, cushioning my fall as I let time resume.

Again, Cassius and Bethany roared, desperately grasping at their captor with their lonesome arms.

Letty swirled her powers around her hands and arms to bolster her strength.

"Mr. Genneth!" Andalon shrieked.

The two heads' cries were cut short by a sickening rip. Letty uprooted Cassius and Bethany, tearing them off her from the base of their necks and then tossing them to the floor. Fungal tendrils wriggled out from the severed heads as they rolled to a stop.

All the powers that Cassius and Bethany had been holding at bay suddenly came into focus, blanketing the backdrop with glittering streams of blues and golds.

Letty slithered up to me slowly, rearing up tall, flexing all four of her arms as she huffed out spores.

The spores coalesced into words.

Now you're going to die, Dr. Howle, and I promise you, it's not going to be fun.

But just as Letty's veil of power descended on me, lights flickered into being all around me: blue flames.

They blossomed, one after another, lambent and resplendent, forming a great dome.

The presence I'd felt lurking on the other side of the air had finally shown itself. All of itself.

Time slowed against my will.

Then came the pain. My body burned as the flames wafted toward us. The sensation was concentrated in my head, which felt like a balloon filled past bursting.

Andalon closed her eyes, clutched her head, and screamed. It was like someone was ripping her heart out of her chest.

Focusing, I recentered my consciousness to pull both of us into my Main Menu. The ground was a limpid pool that spread out to the horizon, reflecting the bottomless blues of a flawless, cloud-swept sky. I was human again, a neuropsychiatrist on his knees, bent over a wisp of a girl as she kicked and screamed.

"Andalon! Andalon!" I grabbed her firmly, but gently. She thrashed in my grip. "Please," I begged her, "what's going on? Tell me!"

She vanished.

I looked up in shock, only to see her floating in front of me. She was distraught and forlorn, weeping from her sea-blue eyes, and lonelier than the Moon. A breeze blew in off an unknown horizon, billowing her sky-blue hair and fog-tinted nightgown.

Weeping, she closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's too much, Mr. Genneth." She looked me in the eyes. "I can feel her. Amplersandalon. She's so close."

"What?" My eyes widened. "She is? Is… is this it?" I asked. "Is this—"

Andalon nodded solemnly. "Yeah, it is," she said, in a soft voice. "Our connexion is gonna be complete."

"What will that mean? Can… can we stop Letty? Can we stop the silver-eyed wyrms? Can we leave?"

Andalon nodded again.

I inhaled sharply.

"Then let's do it," I said. "We have to do it!" I bitterly shook my head. "Take us away. Let's get out of here—all of us."

"Things will be different," Andalon said. "You have to be careful. You gotta be ready."

"I am ready!" I said. "I am!"

She looked at me and cried. "But… what if you're not? What if I'm not? What if things change? What if we can't be together anymore? I…" She reached out and grabbed my arm with her small, slender hand. "I need you, Mr. Genneth."

I fought back tears. "Whatever happens, I promise I'll do my best to help you, just like I know you'll do your best to help others." I let go, letting her float of her own volition.

I looked her in the eyes.

"Do you trust me?" I said.

She nodded. "Forever and ever."

I held out my hand for her. It took her a moment to realize what I wanted, then she reached and grabbed one of my fingers.

"Then trust me," I said. "Don't be afraid."

Wafting close, she pressed her hand on my chest. Her touch made her power stir within me. I gasped at the sensation.

Then the blue flames came, from every direction, they came, drifting through the faultless skies.

The divine host descended. I gasped again, swooning with dizziness. Everything went white. But underneath it all, Andalon's little hand grasped my own, giving me strength and hope.

And then I opened my eyes.

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