In the end, there was no hope of dissuading them. To be fair, it wasn't like hundreds of people signed up for Ani's crusade—there were a little more than a dozen of them in total—but that was more than enough to trigger my sense of responsibility. I would have gone even if it was just Ani all by herself.

Don't get me wrong: I wanted to stop her. In hindsight, I should have. I could have devoured her up right then and there, but… what kind of friend—let alone mentor!—would I be to her if I trammeled on her will? It wasn't like she was making an uninformed decision. None of them were. I'd made sure of that. I'd told them that this plan risked them becoming imprisoned within the minds of madmen—well, madwyrms.

But, they still wanted to go.

I couldn't blame them for feeling the way they did. As terrifying as it was to admit, Ani's argument wasn't wrong. I couldn't think of a more terrifying fate than to be a soul consigned to live forever within the mind of a twisted, evil wyrm, gone mad by the fungus. The stakes were real.

But so were the risks. They were putting their own souls in danger. Unfortunately, there were no good answers, and I refused to take away their right to choose. That's what the Green Death had done; it fell to me to be better.

Still, it wasn't all grim news. In the course of my failed attempt to dissuade Ani and the others, Ani had a brilliant idea.

"Genneth," she said, "I think you're wrong."

"What?" I said.

"There is something you can do to stop us from getting trapped inside the evil wyrms," she said. She smiled, tears twinkling in her eyes. "You can rescue us. You have the ability to link up with other wyrms, right?"

I nodded.

"So use that!" she said. "If we get… trapped, barge in and rescue us."

After that, there was no way we couldn't go with them—myself, most of all.

Of course, not all of the wyrms could go. Someone had to stay behind to guard the hospital and everyone else who was still there. Games of rock-paper scissors were played, with the winners getting to choose whether they stayed or left. Ibrahim ended up staying. By his body language alone, I could tell he felt bad about that, though he perked up a little when I made a suggestion, building off Ani's idea.

"Ani's right," I told him. "If we force our way in, we should be able to link with enemy wyrms." I looked Ibrahim in the eyes. "Jonan's down there, in Letty," I said. "Maybe, with some help, you could rescue him. It would mean the world to Ani if you could do it, and I guess that means it would mean the world to me, too."

He grabbed my claw and held it, and nodded resolutely.

"Thank you, my friend," I said.

In the end, Kurt, and Brand, and several other wyrms chose to go. Alarmingly, Merritt was among them. I tried to dissuade her, but she was adamant, and to my frustration, I couldn't understand her well enough to grasp why.

Somewhat to my surprise, despite her criticism of Ani's plan, Heggy chose to accompany us, and she was packing heat. She even brought her antique rocket launcher—the Koenig CC1701—and with ammo to spare.

"Why?" I asked her.

She grinned mischievously. "I miss getting to blow things up."

So, yeah.

Greg wanted to come, but he'd gotten so big that he had no way of getting out from the lower levels of the garage that wouldn't bring the whole structure—and probably the hospital, to boot—crashing down on top of everyone. Worse, with the discovery that the fungus' monsters had infiltrated the city underground, there were concerns that doing so would set off another battle. So, it was decided Greg would stay put, at least for the time being.

The streets leading out of the hospital had to be cleared in order to make way for the caravan. Thankfully, the wyrms were easily able to do the grunt work. I would have joined them—I certainly had the physical strength to push cars out of the way by this point—but the others preferred to use their powers to set abandoned military transports upright and out of the way, and I didn't want to either slow them down by getting in the way, or use my powers in any way that would make myself hungrier unless it was absolutely necessary.

Heggy ended up on the bus that Nina and Storn had come in on a couple days ago. Many of the windows were shot, but that was the least of our worries, let alone mine.

My family. The Sword.

Also, funnily enough, my car.

The experience of having car-related worries was almost nostalgic, even if they were utterly surreal.

The fact was, I didn't know whether Pel and the kids would be in the Pirouette when I found them, or, for that matter, whether the Pirouette was still drivable. For that and other reasons, I was going to have to take my car with me.

"Genneth," Heggy said, looking up at me from the bus' doors, "you might be even nuttier than Ani is."

"It's just par for the course," I said.

So, while the others finished their preparation, I slithered down to the garage, to where my car was, on the first floor.

It was like being reunited with an old friend. The L85 had survived almost entirely unscathed. Save for some silver splotches on the hood where spores had eaten away at the paint, the L85 looked just like it always did, with its sweet cockpit cabin and aerodynamic curves. Its fiery red paint seemed even brighter than usual, made all the more striking through its contrast against the oneiric coloration of the fungal phantasmagoria all around us.

I had to lower my forepart to the L85's windows to my eye level. I'd run several simulations in my mind to check if there was even a chance my transfigured body could fit inside the car, and to my delight, there was, though it would be a tight fit. Obviously, there was no way I'd be able to fit inside along with Pel and the kids, but by then, there'd no longer be any reason for me not to complete my transformation.

By then, I imagined I'd be flying like a bird.

Though it took a bit of wiggling, I was able to get the tattered white sleeve bearing my hand-chip into a position where I could wave it across the scanner by the door handle to unlock my car. To my delight, I even managed to open the door with my hands, which definitely boosted my confidence. With the help of a doppelgenneth, I successfully modulated my strength to keep from ripping the door off its hinges. I did the same as I opened up the back trunk and stored my clarinet within it, case and all, along with my PortaCon.

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I confess, I hadn't looked at my PortaCon since Lark's performance. That particular detail was about to bite me in the tail—but, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Just as I was about to start the tricky business of threading myself into my car, I stopped in my tracks.

"Fudge…"

My spores.

Even if I opened the window to air things out, the spores I was breathing out would do serious damage to my family, not to mention my car. Thankfully, the practice I'd gotten through my clarinet recital gave me just the trick to deal with this.

In the recital, I'd used my pataphysics to control my spore breath's current, confining them to a narrow region of space where they wouldn't stand a chance of touching—and therefore melting—my clarinet from the inside out. But there was no reason I needed a clarinet to do so.

It took only a moment for me to will the plexus lines into place. I enclosed them around my head, with the end result leaving me feeling like I was wearing an invisible fishbowl around my head. It was a lot like the protective sphere I'd made for Ani back during the fight with Letty, only here, the force's polarity was reversed: instead of keeping things out, this forcefield kept everything in.

Within seconds, I noticed spores gathering at the bottom of my magic fishbowl helmet.

Great, it worked!

With that out of the way, it was time to get moving… into my car.

As my sister liked to say, "When in doubt, do it sdrawkcab"—'sdrawkcab' being "backwards", but spelled in reverse. I entered my car through the driver's side door back-end first, threading myself through the gap between the front and back seats. I was long enough that I could watch my tail from outside of the car as I did so. I curled my tail on top of itself, packing it into the back row seats like a coiled spring.

A light psychic push off the garage's tiled floor lifted my front end into the vehicle. I turned my head too quickly, though and clonked my noggin on the doorframe.

That's what you get when you forgot you had more neck than before.

I had to make my neck into a squished S to fit my upper body inside.

But… I was in. I even closed the door without any trouble. A swipe of soldered cufflink over the steering wheel brought my car back to life. The way it revved up, you'd think it was happy to see me!

"I missed you, too," I muttered, gently patting the steering wheel with my oversized hand.

Gosh, I could cover the whole thing with just one hand.

I knew my car well enough to know where the pedals were in relation to my body, without needing to see them. I conjured a quivering plexus in the shape of my dearly departed legs, and, holding that image in my mind, I made it push—but gently.

My shoulders were tense, both because I was nervous about accidentally gripping the steering wheel too strongly, and also because I had to squeeze myself sideways just to fit my torso into the seat.

The part of my body immediately below where my human waist should have been jutted forward, brushing up against the dashboard before it doubled back, where I'd twisted my length to the side to fit through the gap between the two front seats. The rest of my tail spilled out across the back seats and went up against the side, only to curve back down and end with my tail-tip pressing against the passenger seat window behind me on my side of the car.

If I flexed it carefully, I could knock the tip of my tail against the window.

A tapped out a beat, mumbling, "And-a one, and-a two, and-a three."

Managing the steering wheel was a delicate affair. Due to the massively increased size and decreased number of my fingers, I resorted to wrapping my thumb and forefingers around the steering wheel's loop, like how a clown might have held a teacup.

Backing out, I had to look at the rear-view mirror—that was unavoidable—but rather than grieve over what I was becoming, I instead made a promise to whatever was left of the man I once was.

"I'm going to go get them, no matter what," I told myself. "I'm going to protect them as best I can, no matter what." I took a deep breath, making my magic fishbowl a snowglobe of spores. "I'm coming for you," I added. "Just hold on."

As I pulled out of the lot, I prayed for them, and for the first time in my life, I knew someone was listening.

Just then, the dashboard console finally finished booting up. A notification popped up in the corner of the screen.

There was a videophone message waiting for me.

From my wife.

Using a force-needle—well, it was more like a force-thimble—I tapped the screen and played the recording.

I saw the room in the Melted Palace where my family had recorded their previous message for me. My wife's face dominated the screen, though, out from behind her, I could see Jules and Rayph standing by the bed.

"Genneth," she said, with tears in her eyes, "while I appreciate your efforts to make things feel normal by not picking up my calls, this isn't really the time or place for that, don't you think?"

She flashed a wry smirk, and then looked toward the kids.

"Genneth," she said, "remember what we talked about. Please answer your calls. I appreciate your efforts to make things feel normal by not answering my call right now, but this really isn't a good time for that, don't you think?"

Jules snorted.

Pel looked her in the eyes. "We have to have our standards." Then she turned back to the console, wearing a half-hearted, fate-flaunting grin. "We're leaving, Genneth." Her expression turned sullen. "I don't know if we'll make it, but, if we do…"

Pel turned back to face the console, lips quivering. And then, she sang. It melted away the sorrow in my heart, all because of a voice, and a lilting melody, and the charming little words, all awkward and mine.

"Would you… will you… a-waltz, with me? Oh please… it is… a dream of mine; to dance… with a… good man in hand; to show… him what… he means to me."

Then she covered her mouth and sobbed, and ended the call. And I cried with her, oozing out spores.

I pushed with my thimble and played it again. And again.

But the third time, my thoughts were no longer delicate. I got tripped by an insight.

I knew where Pel had gone. It had been staring me in the face the whole time. Through the window, amidst flame, death, and monsters, I pictured in my mind the front façade of the Bealsthiller Theatre, waiting for me, as if it always had been.

I immediately called her console, using force-thimbles to manipulate the dashboard's touchscreen.

The call rang. I hung on to every note of that warbling sound.

It rang and rang, but no one picked up.

I tried again, and again, but still, nothing going.

I tried the kids' consoles, but that fared even worse than my wife's. The call wouldn't even go through. The network was down, and it wasn't going to be coming back up anytime soon.

I briefly recentered myself into my Main Menu just so that I could stomp around and thrash and scream. I conjured a Margaret-shaped punching bag and then punched it and then sprouted my claws on my human hands and tore it to shreds.

It helped, a little.

I recentered my consciousness back into my body once I was no longer worried I'd smash my car to pieces in anger.

I didn't know if Pel had lost her console, or if something worse had happened, and I almost didn't want to know the answer.

No matter, I'd try again later, but even, that wasn't going to stop me.

If I was ever going to find her, or my children, it would be at the Bealsthiller.

"I'm coming," I said. "I'm coming."

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