The wyrms' changing bodies broke through the Basilica's stone. They flailed in panic, but it made no difference. In seconds, they shuddered and stopped, their limbs bent at odd angles. Then their bodies hardened and grew. The change came in crooked spurts. Limbs, necks, and heads branches and swelled, then branched again and swelled again, splitting and splitting until the wyrms were trees, golden eyes gleaming at the branches' ends.
Andalon flickered and vanished as suddenly as she appeared. But her presence remained, as did her power. I watched in awe and then excitement as a wave of transformation spread out from the two arbified wyrms. The change jumped from branch to snouts and tails and limbs, pouncing onto its new targets. And every one of them met with the same fate as the first.
Above, Verune stared. For once, the Lassedite seemed at a loss for words.
Verune's forces, on the other hand, bellowed and roared. Fortunately, it didn't look like they knew I had anything to do with it.
I turned to Heggy.
"I set-up a force-field around you. It'll keep you safe. Take cover."
I looked up at where Andalon had been, high up above the fountain. Her presence pulsed there like a hidden flame.
"We just need to hold out a little bit longer," I said. "They'll all be trees soon enough."
Overhead, the giant black wyrm bellowed. Its war-song was thunder.
Heggy looked up at it in fear. "Not if that thing kills us first."
"We'll find a way," I said.
"They're like guns…" she said.
"What?"
"Make a hole in them! Somewhere the blast isn't supposed to go. Then light 'em up, and they'll blow themselves to pieces."
Why didn't I think of that?
"Will do!"
I started to turn away, but Heggy called out to me: "Genneth, I'm gonna get in position."
"What?"
It was only then that I noticed she had her rocket launcher strapped to her back.
She patted it with pride and joy and then glared up at the big wyrm.
"I'll be more than happy to do the lighting. I'm gonna duck in cover. Tell me when to fire. We'll teach these bastards a lesson they'll never forget."
"Please, be careful, Heggy."
"I will."
I breathed a sigh of sporey relief as Heggy ran off.
The wave of arbification spread with exacting precision. Merritt curled up in confusion, looking this way and that as the wyrms she'd locked claws against a moment before suddenly spasmed and began to take root. It took her a moment to realize what was happening, but once she did, she lifted her head and sang. Her song was a chorus, high and low, trumpeting hope and victory.
The sound had barely faded when I felt electric fingertips rub my brain. I recognized the feeling. It was Andalon's touch, feeding us information.
Yes. Us.
"No! No! W-What have you done!"
Verune.
His angst was music to my ear-eyes.
His movements turned spastic and hurried. Everywhere he looked, his precious "faithful" were setting down roots in the last way he would have ever wanted.
For the first time in a long time, trees—of a sort—grew in the shadow of the Melted Palace.
The tide of the battle was turning.
"Kill him!" Verune yelled. "Kill him!"
I didn't need to guess who he meant.
Verune launched blasts my way, but I sprung, leapt, and tumbled, dodging at the cost of pain. Other wyrms got in the Lassedite's way, hounding him, and frustrating his efforts.
It was time I struck back.
I summoned my murder frisbee when force gusted into me from the side and knocked me to the ground.
I pushed up.
"Fudge!" I yelled.
The grand dark wyrm was attacking the Basilica!
Several wyrms swarmed around it, Brand among them. From the look of things, they seemed to be more concerned with luring it away than trying to do some real damage.
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Hearing a war-trumpet, I turned my head to see Kurt slithering toward me. He knocked wyrms out of the way, left and right, using his body as a bludgeon, weaving plexuses around himself to enhance the impact.
There was a roar from off to the side.
Two gun-toting wyrms had set their sights on me—either that, or it was the two half-wyrms from before, but now supercharged by several helpings of fresh bodies. They raced toward Kurt and I, flying low over the ground.
As they fired at us, I noticed they'd swaddled the bullets in plexuses.
I widened my murder frisbee into a shield to block, but the enhanced bullets pierced through my forcefield and embedded themselves into my hide.
I roared in pain.
The darn things had been moving so fast, they'd started to melt!
"Great, just great!" I turned to Kurt. "Kurt!"
The blue wyrm huffed out spores and nodded.
The two of us charged at the gun-toting wyrms. I shrank my plexus back into its murder frisbee form and chucked it at them.
I aimed at their arms.
My attack lopped their limbs off without a hitch. They tried to slither away, but I spread my mind-frisbee out like a net and caught them and pinned them to the pavement. Then Kurt grabbed them and ripped them in half, one after another.
The arbification wave swept over the four pieces a moment later. The torn wyrms grew together as their bodies germinated.
Above, the grand wyrm roared. Stone debris rained down onto the Basilica as it crashed into the towers of the Melted Palace.
I slithered like heck, but wasn't fast enough. Kurt scooped me up with his powers and flung me forward, past the Verdiger Fountain. I made a psychokinetic cushion to blanket my fall.
Behind me, Kurt, who was trying to fly. "Wait!" I said. "We need to take out the big wyrm!"
Kurt tooted a reply.
"How?" he said, and I knew that he'd said it, because there was no way in this or any other world that he'd said anything other than that.
"Heggy told me. You have to get the others to open a hole in its side that goes through its spore breath chamber, or whatever. Then ignite whatever's inside, and we'll blow it out of the sky!"
Kurt raised his head and belted out song, conveying my words in glorious, alien polyphony.
Our teammates clearly got the message. Brand and the other wyrms helping him swerved around and changed formation. The wyrm twisted away from them and flew over Cascaton Park. It sent off pulse after pulse of psychokinesis, knocking back the smaller wyrms swimming alongside it. But Brand and the others fought back, pooling their magic into a unified shield and powering through the bow shock until they came within arm's reach of the grand wyrm's neck.
They opened gouges into its neck, slashing with claws and pataphysics in equal intensity. The wyrm thrashed and struck, and then lashed out with thundering sphere waves of plexus.
But then its power flickered.
"By the Angel…" I muttered.
Andalon's <Baleful Polymorph> spell was starting to affect it! Sections of the grand wyrm turned rigid, their surfaces corrugating with crinkles and snaps. Its arms lengthened, joining the structures branching out from its back and sides.
Then a mass of glittering force slammed into Kurt and me, skittering us along the ground and blasting the Verdiger Fountain to smithereens.
"It seems I underestimated you."
Verune.
The monstrosity landed on the ground with a thump that shook the shattered sculpture. He slithered toward me.
The Lassedite reared up and roared, spraying out acid spores. He lobbed psychokinetic attacks at me with a flick of his tail, hurling them in shimmering boulders.
I wove up a shield and raised it to block; Kurt did the same. The luminous blobs hit us like mallets on gongs. The blows staggered us and forced us back. I had to draw extra power and channel it behind me just to keep from being knocked to the ground. It helped to soften the blows, but the impacts were still intense. My underbelly's scales scraped against the stone pavement as I tried to hold my ground, but the force from the successive impacts hit me like air puffed into my eyes, sticking fingers in my brain that made me wince and twitch.
He was stronger than me. I wouldn't last much longer.
I turned to Kurt and shouted his name, but he couldn't help me right now. Another pair of wyrms with guns bore down on him with psychokinetically boosted bullets.
Fricassee me!
I was on my own.
Waving my arm, I dispelled my shield and flung myself away with a psychic kick at my tail. I landed near a small wyrm and did him the courtesy of gouging his eyes out with my claws as I righted myself.
It turned out eye-sockets made for every convenient claw-grips.
Behind me, Verune snarled. "You won't stop us! The Hallowed Beast's power will prevail!"
Overhead, the grand wyrm bellowed in pain. Spores leaked out from the hole in its neck.
"Heggy!" I yelled, hoping she was in position. "Fire!"
Right on cue, a warhead passed over my head like a dying firework. I didn't take any chances with it. Before Verune could even attempt to interfere, I lent Heggy's missile my psychokinesis, supercharging its momentum. Other wyrms flew past it and nudged it along with their own powers. One of the cult's wyrms launched a blast at the warhead, but Brand flew over and intercepted it, bearing the brunt of the attack himself.
By the time the rocket hit the gash in the grand wyrm's neck, it was moving so quickly, it looked like a fine line.
The explosion was small at first: flame flowering at the midpoint of the wyrm's neck. Then another explosion went off, and another, and another. A magnificent force jostled the wyrm's upper body. A moment later, its head was blown clear off its neck.
All at once, the wyrm fell. Its tail took root the instant it touched the ground in Cascaton Park. Rigidity set in, starting at its tail and flowing upward along its headless body, which creaked and coiled as its physiology re-ordered itself. A smaller tree sprouted where the wyrm's head fell, near the edge of Elpeck Square.
Verune stared. I think the gravity of his situation was finally dawning at him.
Even his wyrms were growing into trees.
"You!" Verune pointed a claw at me, trembling with poorly hidden fear. "What did you do? What have you done?!"
I shook my head up and down in the most ridiculous nod I could muster, stretching out my arms to either side, as if to say, "Come and get me".
And that was exactly what he did, rocketing toward me after a brief madness trembled through his head. He covered his claws in psychic serrations.
Of course he'd steal my trick.
He crashed into me. Sparks leapt off my hide where he raked his energy-swathed claws across me.
I roared in pain.
Fudge, that hurt!
"Squeal, worm! You cannot stop me!"
He ground me into the stone.
Sky and earth swapped places as Lassedite Verune flung me up over the edge of the rooftop and slammed us down onto the Basilica's plaza. The Lassedite's claws tightened around me as we crashed into a pile of bodies. I hit the ground back-first; he rode atop me, grinding me into the stone with his magic.
The raw biomass' touch instantly went to work, sating my hunger, and changing me with it.
No!
I thrashed my tail and pulled myself into a half-coil, rolling off the mound. My torn hyphae stung and burned. Smacking my tail on the pavement, I flung myself at Verune, slashing at him wildly, gouging furrows through his face. His skull was like wet chalk to the touch, his skin barely covering the putrid, sickly flesh rotting beneath it.
Our bodies entwined, heaving and tightening. I squeezed my belly around him, trying I might crush him, while continuing to claw at his flank. Our tussle rolled us from corpse-mound to corpse-mound. But Verune had the upper hand, and the length and strength to hold it. He bashed at my head with psychokinetic knuckles, whacking me left and right. He tore into me with his claws and then pushed me down, back onto the mound.
I strained and groaned, trying to keep myself stiff—trying to keep him from pushing me down.
"Submit!" Verune screeched.
I pushed back, but he squeezed me harder. The pressure was crushing.
He laughed like the madman he was.
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