Opening my eyes, I lifted my claws off Karl's flank and pulled away from Karl, only to nudge up against Yuth.

She'd coiled herself right behind me.

The linking tendrils snapped and popped as I turned around and moved off to the side.

"It's him!" someone said.

My heart sank once I turned toward them.

They were pointing guns at us. At me.

"Fudge…"

We had company, and not the nice kind. A ragged group had gathered outside the garage's first floor entrance into WeElMed. I saw soldiers, physicians, and even a couple of patients among them, and though they were very clearly on their last legs—they were sick as dogs—apparently, they still had enough fight left in them for paranoia to do its dirty work.

They were armed.

I spied a few hand-guns among them, along other miscellany, ripped from who-knows-where, but, unfortunately, the majority of their weapons were those sleek, white laser rifles. Two of the soldiers were themselves elite troopers, outfitted in white armor, and, down to the last, all of the soldiers were wearing their visored helmets, hiding their heads and faces inside the shape of raindrops blown back by wind.

Raising his forepart, Dr. Rathpalla stirred up a cloud of spores and began to shape it into words, but the soldiers fired a heat-ray burst that blew up the spore cloud before any text had formed. The explosion shattered the windshields of two nearby cars. The shards joined the pieces of broken side-view windows strewn across the floor.

One of the elite troopers stepped to the head of the group and pointed his gun at us. "Try anything again," he said, "and next time, I won't stop shooting!"

I slithered a couple feet forward. "What's going on?"

Nearly all the weapons trained on me.

I raised my hands above my head, spreading my fingers wide.

The second elite trooper bobbed his head. "You've got five minutes to get the hell off the premises, or we'll shoot."

I glanced at Yuth behind me, who closed her eyes and shook her head.

I could see what the problem was. These people were angry, and they weren't giving the wyrms the opportunity to respond in a way that they—that is, the humans—could comprehend; Yuth had already told me as much, right before we'd broken the link.

"We're worried that this will lead to more violence," she'd told me, and, boy, was that on point. The trepidation in their body language was almost palpable. Worry and hesitation tinted their somber dronings. They bent their heads down in steep angles and lowered their flanges or spines.

Once again, the role of interlocutor had fallen to me.

As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Unfortunately for everyone, I was not in the best of moods right now.

I furrowed my brow. "Are you nuts?"

A couple of the doctors exchanged worried glances, but one had the audacity to step forward. "No," he said, "I think we're the only sane ones left in this whole beasteaten city!"

Oh, brother…

"We fought alongside you," I said, gesturing at myself and the other wyrms. "Heck, if it wasn't for us and Andalon, West Elpeck Medical Center wouldn't be standing."

The other wyrms nodded in agreement.

"We're here to help you," I said.

Several of the doctors had clasped their hands together, lowering their heads to mutter prayers under their breaths.

The elite trooper waved his laser rifle. "You're a fucking demon!" He coughed harshly. "And you," he pointed his rifle at me, "you're the reason they attacked." He waved his gun toward the ruined galleria. "Go join that demon Lassedite! He wants you! We don't!" he added, pointing the gun at me. "

The soldier's arms were shaking, and it was anyone's guess as to whether it was because of his NFP-20 infection, sheer terror, or both. The rest of the group were similarly afflicted.

That made sense. Their minds weren't probably all there, otherwise they probably wouldn't have mounted this cockamamie effort in the first place. At this point, anyone with a lick of common sense would have realized that—with the possible very distressing exceptions of nuclear bombs— human beings and their weapons stood no chance against wyrms or our powers.

"Please, just listen to me," I said. "You're sick and dying. Your minds are frazzled. You're not thinking clearly!"

One of the soldiers charged forward with a snarl, guns a-blazing—semi-automatics in either hand. One of the elite troopers followed him, as did two healthcare professionals.

For shame.

Ibrahim slithered forward without hesitation and unleashed his powers on the shooter, using sponge-like forcefields to catch the bullets mid-air, while also reaching out with long, noodly plexuses that grabbed the soldiers' weapons and crushed them in their hands. The two soldiers fell to their knees, screaming, their fingers having gotten broken by Ibrahim's attack.

Karl slithered up alongside Ibrahim and mimicked his attacks, crushing half a dozen more guns right in their holder's hands.

Unfortunately, one of those crushed guns had been a laser rifle, and it instantly exploded. The effect was like a small grenade had gone off at the front of the group. The elite trooper who'd been holding the laser rifle got blown to kibbles, while the nurses behind him fell to the ground, severely burned, and screaming in pain.

This seemed to be a theme, here.

Even more screams broke out as the explosion's bright flash scalded many of the rebels' eyes. They dropped their weapons to clutch their light-seared eyes.

"Stop this!" I said, shining one of my arms. "Everyone, stop this insanity!"

Some of the wyrms rumbled hungrily.

I did not at all like the tone of the sounds that were coming out of their snouts.

Were they suggesting we eat them?

Of all the ways to make the situation worse, the "good" wyrms eating the people they were supposed to be protecting would have almost certainly taken the cake.

I could only stare in horror as one of the rebels persisted, skittering forward and picking one of the fallen laser rifles off the ground.

"You can't touch me," he said, "not with this." He waved the weapon around, showing a distressing lack of knowledge of how to hold and use it. "You mess with me or this gun, and it'll blow us sky high!"

He actually had the audacity to hold the weapon up to his supposed allies. It was like he was threatening them with a knife.

Well, this was certainly an all-around awful situation. It just goes to show you: there were few challenges as great as saving people from themselves.

Everyone flinched as a burst of gunfire hit the ceiling.

I opened my mouth and yelled—anything to stop further violence—when someone else stomped into the garage, raised a submachine gun high over her head, and screamed.

"What the hell is goin' on here!?"

Heggy.

And she wasn't alone. Ani followed close behind her, along with other survivors.

They must have just finished climbing back up from the basement's depths.

With a snarl, the remaining elite trooper aimed his rifle at Heggy, only to fall back onto the ground, head first, as Dr. Marteneiss took aim and scored a perfect headshot. Black ooze splattered on the ground behind the corpse's head like dead neon.

Heggy reloaded her gun with a pump of her arm, sending used bullet casings clattering onto the mosaic floor.

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She howled. "Anyone else want some!?" Dr. Marteneiss clutched her weapon close to her body as she was rocked by a coughing fit.

It was then that I noticed that more than a couple of the people of Heggy's group were armed, and had trained their weapons on the rebels.

The civilians among the group of rebels dropped their weapons and sank to their knees, trembling in terror. Only the soldiers held their ground, though, thankfully they did not shoot.

I don't think I'd ever seen Heggy this angry. She was like a raging bull. She swept her gun through the air, as if to mow them all down. "You fuckin' curs! You've got no honor! Not a single fuckin' drop!" Her curly, golden locks flung about as she thundered. "What happened to 'protect and serve'? You're supposed to uphold the law; damn it, you're supposed to be the best of us, damn it!"

She pointed at the wyrms, including me.

"I don't care what they are, these folks are heroes. They put themselves in the line of fire, sacrificin' their own Angel-given humanity to keep the rest of us safe! And what do you do!? You fucking shoot them." She coughed and wheezed. "Shame on you! Shame!"

Heggy staggered. Her grip went slack as she gasped for air. Her gun clattered to the floor.

A nurse walked up behind her to help her stay upright.

Heggy glowered at the rebels. "You try anything like this again, and I'll blow your brains out one by one, you cock-headed sons of bitches."

Ani ran up to her, awash with worry. I noticed someone had slung a bandage around the wound Ani's shoulder.

She locked eyes with two nurses. "Get Dr. Marteneiss inside. Heggy's gonna give herself internal hemorrhaging if she keeps pushing herself like this."

Many of the wyrms glared at the rebels.

Even if Heggy wasn't a wyrm, she was still a WeElMed employee. We were all on the same team.

Or, at least, we were supposed to be.

Then one of the soldiers whimpered, stuck his gun in his mouth, and blew his own brains out.

Heggy spat at him as the nurses escorted away.

"Good riddance!"

— — —

Back at the Melted Palace, Verune had assembled his generals in the Chamber of the Moon. There was much work to be done, and with every hour, the challenges multiplied.

Humans, Norms, and everything in between gathered in a great, broken circle to listen and plan in a council of God and glory. At the moment, one of Verune's scouts stood in the center, giving a report of the Church's offensive against the hospital and its Sorcerer.

There were gasps when the scout explained how their changelings' eyes had turned silver, and the effect that this had on them.

"They were no longer themselves. It was like they were beasts. They couldn't even speak. It was… awful."

"Why were you spared?" someone asked.

"I kept my distance. I…" He held out his claws. "I felt a force intrude on my mind when the others' eyes turned silver. I flew away. I think that helped me fight it off." He shook his head. "But I'm worried I only got away out of sheer luck."

Heads spanning the spectrum between human and divine beasts listened with great attentiveness as the half-changed changeling shared the rest of his report, and above all, its truly disturbing conclusion.

The chorus of dragons crowed, utterly appalled. Manes bristled. Snouts and whiskers twitched. Tails rasped against the floor.

"Trees?" Verune asked.

The scout nodded.

"Defeat?" Eyvan asked. "How is this possible, Your Holiness? What does it mean?"

Eyvan stood at Verune's right hand. The remaining half of the young human's amputated arm was plump and ripe. The Hell-fungus had expanded the flesh around the wound like mold in a fine cheese. The Innocent had proven himself to be a truly faithful servant, one Verune would be glad to employ unto eternity.

Everyone turned to the Lassedite. They awaited his answer with bated breaths.

Verune pondered the mystery. He weighed different interpretations.

"It has to be that Sorcerer," someone said. "It—"

—But Verune shook his head and groaned. It was difficult to concentrate. His thoughts were like a dinghy among the tall waves of mortal breath and dragonsong reverberating through the room. Voices burst across his mind's illimitude, here like a fusillade, there in whispers that tickled ears he no longer had.

Within him, the souls in his care screamed, and he did not know why.

Then, from within, something stirred. It was like a hand had reached out to him from somewhere in the air. It grabbed his thoughts and pulled.

No, not one hand. A hundred. A thousand.

It reached for the screaming souls, and pulled. It lifted them up. Verune could almost feel the souls within him scraping against the underside of his skull.

Something was trying to take them from him!

With an angry snort, Verune meditated on a prayer, shielding his thoughts behind contemplations of God. The interloper scratched and clawed against the barriers. For a split second, Verune's vision flickered, showing him a vision of horror. Instead of divine beasts with fiery manes of flame and scales of treasure, he saw awful things—wicked, flesh-twisted serpents with too many eyes, breaking free of shells of human flesh.

But he held firm.

I will not give in to temptation.

Twisting his head left and right, Verune closed his eyes. The screams inside him had risen to an intolerable, fever pitch.

The interloper broke a hole in the wall.

No!

But just when he thought he would falter, the chaos broke. The torrent crystallized, and then spoke to him in a single voice whose words were thought itself.

Within him, Verune felt the Angel smile.

The interloper gave up a moment later. Their presence scattered to the winds.

"Your Holiness?" Eyvan asked.

Verune bobbed his head. Things slowly came back into focus.

He surveyed his forces, calming himself with the beauty of their strength, and the strength of their beauty.

"Even as I speak," he said, "the forces of evil are trying to steal away the souls of the elect. I will not let them. We are the chosen ones. Our work must continue; it is our world's only hope."

Nodding, Verune closed his eyes and focused. He felt better. His thoughts were clearer, pleasantly empty, even. All those troublesome distractions had fallen away. Even now, he could scarcely remember them, as if they'd never existed in the first place.

Only the Angel's voice remained, now stronger than ever before.

After careful contemplation, Verune spoke.

"This was a sign. The silver color that overtook the changelings' eyes… it signifies the Moon," he said.

Verune had studied scripture from one end to another. He knew the sages' commentaries down to the letter, and with the powers of memory the Hallowed Beast had gifted him, he had access to the summit of mankind's wisdom like none had ever dreamed.

"The Sorcerer was not responsible for the silver eyes," he said. "It was the work of the Moonlight Queen, Herself."

Gasps rippled across the room, intermixed with coughs and an ineffable sweetness.

"The Moonlight Queen intervened?" Eyvan whispered. "Why?"

"Make no mistake," Verune said, breathing out plumes of light, "the Sorcerer is still a threat, as are the heretics that follow him. But the Moonlight Queen showed Her hand to remind us of our true purpose. Remember the mission," he said. "We bring salvation, not war. The Moonlight Queen has reminded us of this. We will have all eternity to reform our misguided brothers and sisters. But the souls of the faithful do not have this luxury. The Sorcerer did not just turn our friends into trees because it blasphemes against the Godhead, he did it because he knows it will prevent us from saving more souls."

"Then what should we do?" a Norm asked, in song-speech.

Grandeur and glory burnished in Verune's heart. "We must attend to the souls of the faithful. Yes, the Sorcerer and his heretics are causing damage, but we can arrest it by pulling the faithful out of their reach."

"How, your Holiness?" someone asked.

In the hallowed silence within his mind, Verune heard the Angel's voice.

Gather them, it said. And again: Gather them.

The urge pulsed through him.

"We must bring them here, however we can."

"You could speak to the people," Eyvan said. "The Melted Palace has the necessary technology. We can broadcast your truth to wherever in the world it can still be heard."

"Yes," Verune replied, "and if our mad brothers try to stop us, we will be ready."

This sparked a vigorous discussion. Ideas flowed like honey and wine—but Verune didn't hear them.

Time seemed to slow. Sounds stretched into vibrating ribbons.

The Angel was calling him.

Verune let his awareness bifurcate as the Angel's will drew him into himself, pulling him toward a frigid heat that throbbed across his limbs, up his arms and into his core. But as the Lassedite embraced the divine, a scrambling, frantic doubt—an unshakable thought—leapt onto his awareness and slashed its sharp claws.

Verune opened his eyes inside a world within himself. He sat alone, in the Chamber of the Moon, mortal again: fingers instead of claws, without a budding snout blocking his vision.

"Your Holiness?"

The voice made Verune's heart skip a beat. He rose from the chair and rush forward, only to stop and stand and stare.

"Orrin…?" he whispered.

Verune's surrogate son stood in front of him, young again, as he had been when the authorities had rescued him from his heretical parents: a boy in a white smock, with sad eyes looking out from beneath a tall forehead.

A lost soul, waiting to be found.

Verune wrapped his arms around the boy. He held him tight and wept.

"Orrin, I've missed you so much!" He pulled away from Orrin and, after a struggle, managed to look him in the face and smile. "My boy, I've seen so many awful things. It's…" His hand trembled. "Angel's breath, these challenges, they're unlike anything I've dealt with before. This world wasn't meant for sorcerers and nightmare plagues." He ran his hand through the boy's hair. "But… I never stopped thinking about you. I've missed our walks in park, Orrin. Everything was so simple then. I keep those days in my mind, always. They gave me something to fight for, my boy, as did you." Tears ran down Verune's face. "By keeping you in mind, I never lost sight of that great truth: even in the darkest hour, there will always be light."

Orrin whispered into Verune's ear: "It's not real."

Verune pulled away, tousling the Hummingbird Robe.

"W-What…?" Verune asked.

Orrin grabbed him by the arm.

"It's not real." Orrin's words were louder this time, and even more resolute.

"Orrin… what are you saying? What's not real?"

"You have to stop," Orrin said. "It's not real."

The boy started to cry.

"You have to stop," Orrin said, louder. "It's not real."

His tears flowed freely.

Verune raised his finger to Orrin's cheek, to wipe off his tears. But where his finger traced across the boy's cheek, the light brown flesh smeared as if it was wet paint. It turned runny and trickled down his face.

"It's not real!" Orrin yelled.

The smear caught fire. It burned in every color that Verune could name.

"It's not real!" The boy screamed the words again, louder and louder. "It's not real! It's not real!"

And as he screamed, he changed. His eye-sockets drooped long down his face as his body crumpled in on itself. His face liquified, spilling folds of flesh down his nose. In moments, he was a human candle, melted and unrecognizable, yet still, he screamed.

That was when Verune realized Orrin's screams weren't in Orrin's voice, but in his own.

Arcs of particolored flame flared across the boy's melting form. He spilled onto the floor, churning and losing cohesion. Flames leapt across the ground, opening cracks in the earth. The walls melted. The ceiling dripped down in stony raindrops the size of boulders.

A rift opened beneath the boy. Fissures followed the fire's path, widening and widening. The melting word spilled over the fissure's edges. Verune tried to run, but the floor rose up under his feet, tilting vertical. Space folded in on itself, vanishing into the void.

"Orrin!" Verune screamed, as the darkness swallowed him whole.

"Your Holiness?" Eyvan asked.

Verune blinked his eyes. Everyone was looking at him.

"Why are you crying?" Eyvan asked.

He pointed at the Lassedite's snout.

Verune raised a claw to his face and rubbed his finger along his skin. As he did so, he felt a bit of moisture against the tip of his finger, where his claw gave way to his flesh.

Odd.

"Your Holiness?" Eyvan asked.

"I…" Verune tilted his head to the side. "I don't know."

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