The Wyrms of &alon

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Pulling my arms back, I imagined plexuses around my fingertips, giving them force like spiked fire. In the span of a breath, as time resumed, I gave them motor impulse. The energies snarled and revved, growing into wicked vortices that I launched at the half-wyrms with thrusts of my arms.

I screamed, louder, harder, and deeper than ever before. Louder even than when Rale had died.

A true roar.

The magic rocketed toward them, rustling bystanders' clothes and hair before crashing into the two half-wyrms. The storms slammed them into the Basilica's walls, scouring their flesh away as it sent them clear through to the other side.

I hit the ground bellowing.

And, wouldn't you know it, the wyrms watching from atop the skyscrapers responded. They flew down from their aeries and joined the battle.

Was it Andalon's doing, or were these just my fellow Elpeckians giving Verune and his goons their just desserts?

Who gives a flying fudge!? They were reinforcements, and I accepted them gladly!

The wyrms entered the fray in different ways. Some clambered down ruined skyscrapers' walls, dodging fire and fungus, and then leapt down onto the Square in a flutter of coils. Others wrapped themselves in numinous fibers and slithered through the air. Some flung themselves off their perches like poorly tossed frisbees. Wyrms the size of buses plopped down onto the street, cratering the pavement where they landed.

Merritt and several other wyrms rocketed at Verune, just as the massacre began to flood out onto the street. My friends and colleagues were now fighting for their lives, and everyone else's.

Angel, it was heckin' nuts!

I surveyed the scene through frozen time.

Blades and barriers of psychokinetic threads flickered all across the plaza as wyrms and transformees fought one another. I could hardly tell one side from another. While some of the reinforcements did try to stop the slaughter, others just wanted to secure all the fleshy spoils for themselves.

It was a free-for-all. Serpentine bodies twined, wrestling each other through the gore. Tails flicked guts this way and that. You could hardly tell the living from the kibbled dead.

Psychokinesis blossomed all across the battlefield. Barriers. Barrages. Scintillating blades. Gravity wells imploded, tearing off architecture and flesh and slamming them into a common point.

Blackened blood ran across the stone.

The battle even extended into the sky: half-wyrms and full wyrms flew on psychic trails, circling overhead like dragons, spewing acid spores. Many of the Last Church's wyrms used their psychokinesis to fling burning debris into their breath weapons' paths and make them explode, without damaging their heads in the process.

Fudge.

Mustering all my daydreams, I pushed myself into the line of fire, between transformees, gunners, and the fleeing crowds. I needed my imagination now, more than ever. I needed the vigor of the kid who'd play-wrestled with his sister because he didn't want to do his homework; the imagination of the lonely youth who'd found himself in tales of adventures in other worlds; the thrill of the jaded young man finally getting his first taste of real satisfaction; and the hopes of the grown adult—the father, the neuropsychiatrist—who wanted nurture whomever he could.

I happened to glimpse a handful of gunmen in a covered walkway. They shot into the crowd from behind a stately colonnade.

I'd found my next target.

I pictured a shield floating in front of me. I kneaded its thick, wax-like substance with imaginary claws and then spread it wide. My hyperphantasia provided the imagery; pataphysics took care of the rest. The forcefield caught spates of bullets, blocking the shots. I shook the bullets loose with a mental jiggle, sending them clattering onto the pavement.

I carried the shield with me as I slithered toward them.

The gunmen were so lost to their bloodlust and their rotting minds that they didn't realize what was happening until it was too late.

Rearing up in front of them, I wove serrations into my shield's edges and then grabbed the invisible murder frisbee with my mind and my claws and swung it down onto the gunmen.

They split open like sliced fruit.

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I'd never been much good at Fruit Ronin, but there was a first time for everything. Had Rayph been here, I knew he'd be proud of me.

Of course, Verune's minions noticed my stunt. They raced toward me, slicing their claws through the human leaf-litter.

Good.

Jonan had given it his all during the battle at the hospital. Now, it was my turn to do the same.

When you saved people, you were bound to break a few eggs, right?

I should have been horrified with myself. That wasn't a thought I'd ever let myself think, but I was too angry to care. Too broken.

Andalon had given me this power—her power—because she needed my help to save people. I'd been doing good so far, but the time had come for me to really up my game.

She'd trusted me, now I had to trust her. In the time that I'd known her, I'd witnessed her hope, her earnestness, her curiosity, her sorrow, and—above all else—her true, child-like innocence. But now? Against the fungus? Against evil such as this? She didn't just deserve my trust; she'd earned it.

Time to put her power to good use. And maybe, just maybe, Ani and Pel and Jules and Rayph and Rale and Dana and Mom and Dad and everyone I'd ever wronged or failed might see me and know that I was on the road toward making things right.

I decided upon laser swords. At this point, I figured, why not? It wasn't like there's going to be anything left afterward.

Repeating the same trick I used with the murder frisbee, I willed the swirling music around my claws and shaped their threads into glittering pataphysical blades. It was to be a present for my next opponents.

I dreamed of chainsaws.

Two halfway-wyrmy transformees leapt at me, hoping to make their master proud. A third—who must have had wyrmsight—leaned back, using her necrotic legs as a break to skid to a stop.

Unlike the first two, she knew what was about to happen.

I lunged forward. I swung and yelled.

My psychic chainsaw claws sparked where they dug into the two transformees' hides. Their still-human parts turned to slurry. The two of them fell to the ground to either side of me, writhing in pain, flicking their tails across the sloppy purée.

But then, I heard a sickening laugh.

I turned toward the sound.

Verune hovered above Elpeck Square, near where it abutted the Basilica. Wyrms swarmed around him, encircled in orbits both near and far. The Lassedite laughed as he brandished his claws and his magic.

Merritt flew low to the ground and picked up speed, poised to ram into his underbelly, but he repelled her and all the others with a massive shockwave.

I didn't need to turn my head to see my next targets: another group of gunmen, clustered in the Basilica. They fired with impunity at anyone they saw running down the streets.

What the heck was wrong with these people?

Letting my processing speed return to normal, with barely a thought, I mustered my powers and flung myself toward them. The wall left little more than a dull scratch on my flank as I bashed into it and rebounded. I landed on the pavement underbelly-first, plopping into a partial coil.

I was getting really good at moving in this new body of mine. If you didn't know any better, you'd have thought I'd been a serpent my whole life.

Ducking down, I slithered toward the shooters, rearing myself up just as they turned to face me. I couldn't see any fear in their plague-marked faces, only madness and hate.

I threw myself broadside at them with a thought at my back and a yank of my tail. They clattered to the ground like bowling pins. Wasting no time, I curled over them and slashed my claws across their legs. Their tendons popped like breaking cello strings. Ignoring their screams, I crushed their arms with boulder-like thoughts—both their weapons, and the limbs with which they used them.

If Verune's minions wanted a feast, they could eat their own, first.

For a moment, I felt a twinge of doubt. Was I becoming the very monster I feared I'd become? But any doubts or remorse I might have had evaporated as I saw scared folks running down the labyrinth of abandoned vehicles on the boulevards and getting away to safety.

More than a few of them entered our convoy's buses. Seeing the vehicles fill up and drive away lifted my guilt off my shoulders.

If only Ani had been here to see it…

Pushing off a column with my tail, I thrust myself back into the open, only to watch in horror as Verune's half-wyrms picked up the rifles dropped by my earlier set of victims.

I cursed myself for not having destroyed those guns, too.

The half-wyrms chased after the crowds with their rifles in hand. Some even hovering off the ground as they set out on the hunt.

"Fudge!"

I had to stop them!

I pushed off the ground, when someone yelled my name.

"Genneth!"

Heggy?

I saw Dr. Marteneiss running through the crowd from the side, dodging a spray of spore breath from a wyrm passing overhead while firing parting shots at the gun-toting transformees.

A second wyrm came rushing toward her.

No!

I wasn't going to let her end up like Ani!

Once again, I launched myself through the air, cutting a passing wyrm in half with my force blades. I hit the ground slithering and then flopped over to Heggy and coiled around her, and, needing a shield, I sacrificed the blade in my left-hand to retool its weaves into a force-sphere like the one I'd used to protect Ani from Letty.

Two wyrms—brown and green—saw me and plummeted toward us, claws at the ready. But then a third, red wyrm flew at them from the side and slammed into them. The brown wyrm breathed spores at the red wyrm and then levitated a burning chunk of fungus into the stream, causing a small but nasty explosion. The bright pressure wave stunned the red wyrm, which gave the green one the window it needed to strike.

The green wyrm hit the red wyrm with a psychokinetic bludgeon that sent it flying.

Fudge.

The brown and green wyrms charged at me from either side. I wove up a plexus to fling myself out of the way, but a forcefield sprung up beside me and blocked my path.

Double fudge!

I was about to slow time when time went and slowed itself for me.

I didn't need to search for the cause, because I already knew exactly where it was.

Up.

Andalon had appeared high over the Square, almost directly above the Verdiger Fountain. She hovered in place, surveying the chaos with a strange, almost detached look of disappointment on her face. Reaching out, she directed her palms at the villainous wyrms down below.

Time resumed.

Heggy yelled. "Genneth!"

A wave erupted from Andalon's hand, striking the two wyrms barreling toward me. As it hit them, they flinched, as if they'd been impaled.

And then, they took root.

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