I started to scream, but the sound never left my mouth.

"Mr. Genneth…"

My eyeballs twitched ever so slightly.

Andalon hovered at my side, with her hands clasped around one of my claws. Her fingers were porcelain against my indigo-black.

Andalon.

Her blue hair and pale nightgown fluttered in an invisible wind.

She was okay. She was okay!

I spoke through my thoughts.

Andalon! Are you alright? What happened?

Her smile crumpled as tears pooled in her eyes.

"I found myself." She smiled through the tears. "I'm remembering, but…" Her smile turned to a frown "Please… it's—it's too much. It's too much!" Terror ran across her face. "I'm drowning. Help me. Hel—"

Her image flickered, like an unstable connection.

—I will! I thought-said. But, please, help me! Help us!

Angel's breath…

Men with guns stood in the cloistered walkways on the floors high up along the Nave. Their weapons were pointed over the edge of the wall, at the crowds down below.

Oh God Oh God Oh God.

Stop them! I thought-yelled.

Andalon struggled against her instability. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. "I—"

But then time sped back up again, and she vanished.

I reached out with my claw, but she was gone.

Peals of gunfire echoed through the Great Nave. Bullet casings rained down from above, clattering onto the stone floor.

No! No!

I turned around and roared. "Run!"

The bullets' metal hail shredded through the infected amassed by the doorway. Limbs flailed as bodies fell. Bullets pitter-pattered off my back, tearing holes through my remaining coat before bouncing off my scales. It barely tickled, for the most part, though the sections of my upper arms and chest that were still somewhat human burned and stung where the bullets landed, not that any blood flowed from my wounds.

Even as I panicked, slithering toward the Hall, I slowed time around me, observing as I moved.

For the second time in my life, I watched my world around me lay down and die. Light and smoke blossomed from the shooters on the walkways and balconies overhead.

Through my slowed perception of time, I saw and felt the sound waves of the screams of the dying ripple over my body.

People had begun to understand that the offer of escape they saw in the front entrance's open doors was a lie. Self-preservation kicked in, too deep for even the fungus to override.

The tide of limbs scattered. Many turned around and ran, dashing left and right, perhaps hoping to reach one of the side entrances. Others got down on their knees and raised their arms in terrified hope.

Either way, it made no difference.

One moment, the transformees standing watch at the edges were stoic, serpentine gargoyles. The next, they lunged at the fleeing crowds, reaching with cantrip and claw. Some lumbered, others slithered. More than one snarling transformee opened their mouth and sprayed out spores.

Dark fluids ran thickly across the polished stone.

I had to do something. I needed to do something.

I sped up time by a sliver, counting the seconds like little minutes.

Above, wyrms arced through the air, pouncing at the crowds. Even with people turning tail, the open doorway was still clogged with people. The pile got a little taller with every death.

Claws tore through limbs and ligaments.

Light filled the corner of my vision I kept perpetually thickened with wyrmsight. Turning around, I looked across the Nave to see Verune pointing at me with an outstretched hand. Debris moved through the air in slow motion as a massive wall of force swept toward me. It was the bow front of a shockwave, barely curved—like the world's edge.

I tried to weave a spell to anchor me to the spot, but Verune's magic hit me before I was finished, and overwhelmed even what little I did have.

For my own well-being, I sped up time.

The shockwave tore through everything, picking up wyrms, corpses, bullets, and rubble and launching them toward the Basilica. The blast ripped out the wall separating the Hall from the Nave. The broken stone got pulled along by the wavefront, adding to the demolishing momentum as the tempest slammed into the Melted Palace's front wall and shattered it to pieces, hurling stone, glass, flesh—and me.

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It was like the Melted Palace spat me out. I was sent careening backward, hiding the Basilica's pavement back-first, skidding across the stone, battering my budding back-spines. I bounced several times, like a water-skipped pebble darting across water, stopping only when I crashed into the tide of dead bodies. Even then, my movement did not cease all at once, but scraped the bodies beneath me against the stone, pulverizing them into a purée that my flopping form painted over the sacred ground.

Gunfire, screams, bodies, and roars sprayed out from the Melted Palace's broken façade. Verune slithered out through the opening, pushing rubble out of his way with his claws.

I tried rolling onto my side to push myself up, groaning as I did, but there was a weight on my back pinning me in place.

Then I felt the pleasurable tickle, and I realized what had happened.

I screamed. "No!"

My body just couldn't help itself. Bodies clung to me as if I'd been slathered in glue. My hide twitched where it touched the dead. It sent out haustoria into the matted biomass and started pulling the stuff in. From the small of my back down to the tip of my tail, my backside was a mass of tendrils and cilia and crawling filaments that wriggled out from me, eager to feed.

And they fed, and my transformation appreciated it. Whispers poured into my skull as my arms bulged with growth. My elbows inflated like popcorn as the transformation crawled toward my shoulders.

I screamed as I thrusted myself forward with my powers. I scoured myself with a basket of fibrous light, grating the meals off my body, snapping my tendrils as I tore them loose and then sanded down whatever was left.

Angel, it stung.

I didn't stop moving. I fell forward, onto my belly, but caught myself by spreading my arms and digging my claws into the stone pavement, sending up sparks.

Friction juddered up my fingers. My neck creaked as it lengthened, rivulets of flesh traveling toward from across my chest.

If I got any more biomass, I'd probably lose my shoulders.

"Genneth!"

I yelled. "Ani!"

I couldn't see her, but she had to be close.

I craned my head up and back, daring to look.

She stood among the fleeing crowd, face twisted with worry. Behind her, Merritt and Kurt were rushing toward the Basilica from the middle of Elpeck Square. Brand soared overhead.

Then I sensed power rumble above and ahead, and the next thing I knew, Ani was gone, along with countless other human beings, who disappeared in an act of evil almost too heinous to name.

The victims exploded, not into chunks of dismemberment and gore, but aerosolized. Blood, tissue, and infection turned into a dark mist. The explosions happened in successive bursts. The waves propagated backwards, starting with Ani and anyone nearby, followed by the row behind them, and the one behind that, all within the span of a name or a word.

I slowed time. The noxious mist churned. I could hardly see through the spray of reds, blacks, and greens. I closed my ear-eyes to hide from the hideous sounds.

Inside, I screamed. My body would catch up a couple milliseconds later.

In the slowed time, I slithered into the mist, unable to comprehend or accept what was happening.

Ani had evaporated before my eyes. I reached out to catch her. I swept my arms through the mist, coating myself with as much of it as I could. Wind and magic blew the clouds this way and that.

In a panic, I stormed into my Main Menu to check the soul crystal swarm. New consciousnesses were being uploaded, Ani's among them, but…

In my mind, I screamed.

It was wrong. The light of the souls filling the crystals was aberrant and weak. It flickered like static. I shook my arms.

"No! No! Ani! Ani!!"

I ported myself back to my body, angrier than ever before.

People weren't supposed to die like this. They were supposed to expire in the presence of family and friends, in a heartfelt goodbye. Not this; not, "here one moment, gone the next", vanished like candle smoke.

I wanted to hold Ani. I wanted to cradle her and lay her down gently.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Had there ever been any hope at all? Had Ani's idealism truly been for nothing. Would her soul even coalesce within me? Or was she broken beyond repair?

"You monsters!" I roared. "You broke their souls! You—you—"

—But my rage was greater than what my words could express. And where words failed, actions would have to suffice.

I raked my claws through the colored fog. The motes parted, revealing Mordwell Verune for all to see. He'd swum out of the Melted Palace, floating nearly a dozen feet in the air. He held his hand out, staring at me with a manic mix of fury and heartbreak.

"I will not let you take them, Sorcerer!" He drew the flesh-mist around himself like so many lotus petals. Then, rebuffing my efforts to weave the mist away from him, he folded them inward and absorbed the rest, making his yellow scales spread further, oozing like pus.

"You may be strong," he yelled, "but I am stronger! The Angel is with me! The righteous will be saved! The sinners will be punished—starting with you!"

I screamed. "No!"

All those people. All those souls…

He'd destroyed them like they were nothing.

Behind him, the great gash in the Melted Palace's front wall widened as more transformees and wyrms emerged. Whole sections of the building, front and sides, fell to the ground with a tremendous crash as Verune's wyrms took to the air. The largest of them was twice Kurt's size, with scales as black as night.

Verune bellowed. "My brothers, show these demons the glory of God! Destroy them! Destroy them all!"

He was completely insane. They all were. They were predators. They were the real monsters.

The cult's wyrms scattered through the air, wreaking havoc wherever they went. The black wyrm soared over the Civic Center. Flying toward a skyscraper, it swerved around and dragged its claws along the building's exterior, ripping through glass and steel. A prodigious explosion shook the structure as the wyrm struck a gas main, sending burning chunks raining down onto the Civic Center. The wyrm guided the chunks with its pataphysics, slamming them into the fleeing crowds like flaming boulders.

A wyrm picked up a bus and swung it like a bat, launching cars and bodies through the air, aiming them at Brand.

Life was often cruel. It didn't choose to be that way, it just was. But these people chose to be cruel. They chose to do harm. And I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't even care whether I had God on my side. So what if the Angel was dead? I was here, and I could do something.

And so I did.

I screamed, body and mind, erupting in primal fury. I slithered swiftly toward the Basilica's edge. I called up glistening threads between my hands and the stone as I touched one of the columns and pushed off. The magic coursing through my arms propelled me through the air.

I nearly flew, and stayed that way, hovering mid-air as I briefly slowed time to pick my target.

Hallowed Beast… I thought.

It was difficult to pick a target when all I saw was the devastation.

Slaughter didn't even begin to describe it. Mad cultists perched atop walls and rooftops sprayed gunfire without any care. People ran, people fell, people tripped, people died. The tide of bodies was so thick, it rippled.

Verune and his transformee minions preyed on the infected. Living or dead, it didn't matter. Those who still had mouths bit greedily into the bodies of the fallen, gorging themselves. Others swam into the rising corpse-mounds. Flesh quickly cocooned the transformees as they popped, stretched, and burst into ripened wyrms. Eyes blossomed on deforming heads like crowns of gold.

Something snapped inside me.

There!

I spotted two half-wyrms slithering after a wave of people at the mouth of the Basilica. The transformees pursued the infected with murderous intent.

They'd be my first targets.

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