The Wyrms of &alon

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I roared. I pushed back with everything I had, imagining a blanket of strength swaddling around me. I heaved.

The tendrils at my back snapped and pulled as I lifted up, away from the mound and into agony. I was rising.

I was floating.

With a thought, I flicked my cloak of power, setting it into a spin. We spun together. Then I lashed out at Verune as hard as I could, sending him flying into another corpse-pile. For a moment, I gyrated mid-air, unsure of how to steady myself, or how to move. The brief surge of power from the biomass I'd absorbed began to flicker. I felt unsteady; off-balance.

I willed myself at him, launching like a train from a slingshot.

Attack them while they're down, wasn't that what they said.

With what power I had left, I pushed him into the gore. I figured if he'd been somehow fighting against Andalon's arbification effect, finishing Verune's transformation—and thereby raising his connection to her to the max—would maximize his vulnerability.

He whipped himself at me, knocking me back.

"Andalon," I yelled, "a little help here!"

I just hoped she could hear me.

I pushed myself off the pavement with my coils. I glowered at the Verune with all four of my eyes.

"Give up, Verune! Andalon will stop you!"

Hyperphantasized filaments of blue and gold swirled to a point in front of my hand as I wove a psychic blade.

Coiling like a spring, and springing a plexus at my back, I launched myself up at the mad Lassedite, throwing myself skyward.

And then I swung.

Verune raised his hand and the air in front of him quivered as a block of force hit me like a train and hurled toward the ground.

He bellowed. "NEVER!" It was an almost feral roar. A shockwave came blasting out of him a moment later, just as intense. It swept up wyrms, corpses, vehicles, me, and everything and everyone else like a torrent of leaves. It tore through the Basilica, splashing stone and marble left and right.

Spreading my arms, I imagined jets blasting from my claws, and then fed them the energy to slow myself to a stop before I hit Elpeck Square's pavement. I floated several feet above the ground for a moment before landing.

Verune had flown up above the basilica. He roared again, not just in anger, but in pain. He curled his neck to grasp his head with his claws. He threw his head side to side.

More wrymsong cut through the air. I watched as Kurt, Brand, and so many others flew at Verune, hoping to get a hit in. The pataphysics they gathered against him was so thick, the air quivered like a mirage. It pressed into the Lassedite from all around.

I joined them, casting my power out in a long net.

Verune trembled in agony and rage. "I will kill you…" he intoned. "I will kill you all. I will make the world clean. I must." He hissed out a whisper. "I'll make it safe for you, Orrin."

And then he screamed.

Power exploded in all directions. A feeling like burning ice traveled along my plexus threads. Everyone flinched and recoiled, watching in horror as our pataphysics' webs shattered in our minds' eyes.

The air in front of me bristling with an abrupt, impossible cold whose very touch stung. I tried to slither out of the way, but I couldn't escape it. Motion rippled out from Verune and knocked everyone back, slamming wyrms into walls and pavement. It knocked me onto the ground face-first, and only I just barely managed to weave a plexus to fill the gap in between.

I rolled onto my back and looked up.

The Lassedite pointed a clawed hand toward the brightening sky, stretching out long and tall. He shrieked. "My Lord! My Angel! Lend me your power! Ic bidden du, Halig Engel! Astyrian alle!"

With a brilliant flash, a mote of light appeared above the Lassedite's clawtip, triggering an implosion that sucked in air. Everything slurped toward the light. Debris on the ground tousled in the vacuum's pull. The light grew as it drew in matter. It bloated in size, growing into a writhing mass of unnamable force, shrouded in a prismatic veil that shifted and seethed like curling fire.

This wasn't something I was seeing through my wyrmsight. It was as real as my three-clawed hands.

Verune laughed.

Or was it a scream of terror?

The otherworldly orb launched with speed so frightening that it bent time in its wake, moving it faster the nearer one got to the light. The orb kept going, and whatever was in its way simply vanished. It passed through buildings like they weren't there, erasing as it passed through. Wyrms were rubbed out of existence. It flew over the Imperial Promenade at a slight downward angle, slicing off a section of the Imperial Palace's roof, punching through building after building, whisking over the College of the Angelic Doctors, tearing through monorails and Expressways until it finally plunged into the heart of the Bay.

Then came the boom.

Pillars of light shot up from the waters, piercing the clouds and the sky, rattling the very earth. Waves towered off the explosion, casting off dead ships. The tide flooded the marina. Buildings by the waterfront were swept away by the tsunami, demolishing city blocks.

The Bay churned like water in a tub.

I looked around frantically, not knowing what to feel. Even the wyrm-trees' many heads stared in shock.

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I knew Verune was powerful, but this…?

I turned back to face the Lassedite, and I couldn't believe what I saw.

He was melting.

Rivulets trickled down his body, flesh and clothes—the sacred Hummingbird Robe—running like paint. He slowly sank toward the ground, as did the droplets of his substance. A flickering haze ensheathed each and every one, like the corona of a solar eclipse. Sprigs of particolored flames broke out when the droplets landed in the Lassedite's shadow.

It was the same as what I'd seen in the fractured Lobby. The waves in the hall, the melted transformee, the winged drake-creature I'd banished to another plane. It was the same terror from Kléothag's message, the same darkness that swallowed Tachyon Ooüm.

Was this the darkness? Was this the fungus' true form? Was this the horror that scared Andalon to tears when I'd seen the rift torn in Yuta's memory of the sky?

It had to be. What else could explain how Verune had come unstuck in time?

A shiver crawled down my spine at a glacial pace.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brand rush toward the ground on the exterior of the Basilica's wall.

I thickened my wyrmsight and turned it on Verune.

Mordwell Verune was more of an anomaly than I could have ever imagined. In his presence, pataphysical became polarized. They oriented themselves toward him, as if they were being pulled inward.

But that paled in comparison to the sight of the dying Night overhead. It was too bright to call it Night, yet I had no other words to explain what I saw.

Agitation rippled down my budding spines.

The Night was like Verune. The darkness overhead tugged on the threads, ripping them away from the world and dragging them into its nothingness.

It gave the name of Andalon's foe a whole new level of meaning.

The Darkness…

I was afraid. And yet, with that fear, I felt a calming conviction.

Was this what happened when a wyrm fell to the darkness?

Verune had to be defeated. He wasn't just a monster. He was tainted, corrupted by the unnameable.

But what could I do? What could any of us do?

Verune staggered toward me. He ran his claws over his face, ripping his flesh open. His voice broke into quanta of loud and soft.

"You! You DID this! SoRceRER!HerETIC! What HAVE you DONE!?"

I yelled at the sky. "Andalon, help! Stop him!"

"ENOUGH!!" Verune shrieked.

Rising up off the ground one last time—his tail drooping behind him, even as his flesh dripped onto the pavement—Verune shot out wisps of power. He grabbed wyrms with them, and wyrm-trees and the flesh-mounds and the cowering infected. He grabbed them all and pulled them toward himself.

Verune built himself up with the transfigured and the dead. A wyrm stuck to his arm. Its flesh crawled onto him and merged. In his presence, biomass liquefied like sugar cubes in acid, turning gummy and dark, flesh melting into flesh.

He swelled, growing as tall as the Melted Palace. He built himself into a castle.

Wyrm-trees' head-ended branches bristled from his body. His tail thrashed across the Great Nave behind him, wrecking things both holy and profane. He brandished arm after arm of wicked claws, horns of trees, and clubs of many-headed limbs. Sporey curtains spilled from his snout holes, and his head and neck crested as his glistening eyes blinked open and fixed their golden gaze on me.

The Lassedite bellowed.

Somehow, I knew what he meant, even if his song was alien to me.

Behold, Sorcerer! he said. Behold the majesty of God!

I fell onto my back, cowering in terror.

"Andalon? Andalon!?"

But nothing happened.

Verune snorted, dusting the dawn with his spores.

What was my mistake? What had gone wrong? Was I wrong to have taken things into my own hands?

Azure and gold twitched across my wyrmsight. Filaments streamed from the great monster's body and spread out like a halo.

No.

No!

It didn't matter what the reason was, this couldn't be the end!

Rosy-fingered dawn crept up from the shattered horizon.

And I prayed.

I prayed.

"Andalon," I said. "I have faith! I believe! You can save us! I know you can!"

Verune snorted once again.

He was mocking me.

And now… now you die.

The ground quaked with his vile song.

He reached out with his claws, only to whip his head back and freeze, starting at something behind him.

I didn't need to look to know what the Lassedite had seen. It glowed on my wyrmsight like a second Sun. It shot out flames of ethereal blue, in a hexad of winged glory that scattered the monster's halo to the winds.

My whole body tingled.

"She's here…" I muttered.

Verune tried to move, but roots were already swelling out from his underbelly and piercing the stone below. He roared in fury, but it was no use.

He could not stand against one of the Angels; against the Moonlight Queen.

Verune's defiance turned fearful. With cracks and snaps, his body petrified against his will. His head and neck unfolded into broad boughs, joining his arms in lengthening and branching, and branching again. The Lassedite's roars ebbed in and out; more heads blossomed the tree he was becoming. His snouts twitched with storm and fury, thrashing, belting out curses in wyrm-song. But soon, even those motions dampened and went still, until only his song remained—the song of a great and wicked tree, rooted in the shadow of what I'd once called holy.

I snorted out spores, sighing in relief.

It was over.

Roars echoed from the streets, roars of victory and pain and mourning. I turned to look.

Andalon might not have been able to defeat the fungus, but at least she'd saved some of us, not to mention punish the real monsters for what they'd done.

Speak of the Angel…

She traced her dainty hand along the bark as she stepped out from behind the tree. She was at once the same Andalon I'd always known, and yet completely different. Cerulean abundance shone in her eyes and hair. Her nightgown had been transfigured. The worn, flimsy fabric was gone, replaced by a raiment of pinions and starlight. Blue flames streamed from her back, spreading out in her sacred wings.

&alon was calm and composed, with a grace befitting the Queen she always was. Even her slightest movements bore a weight and measure to them that suggested something ancient beyond reckoning, and powerful beyond words. She fixed her eyes on me with an intensity I could scarcely comprehend: melancholy, yet serene; eldritch, yet pure.

She walked up to me. I couldn't speak. Her glory resonated within me, thrumming a truth that filled my being.

I knew then I was in the presence of the divine.

This was the Princess of Broken Memories.

&alon drew her hand across my tail, and I felt it in full. The sensation seeped into my body like an electric balm, making everything tingle with a heatless burn.

She looked up at me with an uncertain smile. "I remember everything," she said. A single tear welled up in her eye.

Turned to the side, &alon stared up at the tree's swaying boughs. The spores that wafted through the air seemed to glow in the light of her presence.

"Tell me," I said. "Tell me everything. We can do it, &alon, I know we can." I smiled. "Maybe not today, but… someday. Someday, we'll win; we'll find a way. I promise."

And I meant every word.

"I know I promised to tell you what I remembered, no matter what, but…"

But then her countenance broke. Her lips curled in pain. For a moment, I saw the child surface within the Queen, flushed with helplessness and uncertainty.

"If I tell you, I… I think I will be sad, because you will be sad, and I…" She shook her head. "I don't want to make you sad, Mr. Genneth." She floated up to me, and looked me in the eyes, her wings pulsing at her back. "I like you." She smiled. "You helped me be happy, and I've been sad for so long. I don't want to be sad, Mr. Genneth. Not anymore." She shook her head. "I'm so, so tired of being sad."

"Andalon…?"

Blinking her eyes, she smiled again. "I'll tell you, Mr. Genneth. But… I want you to promise me something, first."

"What…?" I asked. The word was a soft chord.

"I want you to promise me that you won't be sad, okay?" she said. "Then, maybe, I won't be, either."

I nodded.

Andalon's smile broadened. She spread her arms. "Mr. Genneth, I am the fungus!"

She beamed with pride.

"Mr. Genneth?"

"Mr.… Genneth…?"

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