The Wyrms of &alon

167.2 - Alles auf dem Kopfe stehend


I don't know how much time I spent in that roar. The emotions were just too much for me to handle. I ran my thoughts as fast as I could, and then faster still. Had I the power, I would have stopped time forever, just so that &alon could never catch me. The mere thought of her presence…

I thrashed. The movement rippled all the way down to the tip of my tail. The depths of my rage jostled my budding spines.

There weren't words for what I felt, not honest ones, anyhow. Betrayal didn't even come close.

It was easier to process what I'd lost, since the truths I'd gained were nearly too awful to contemplate.

Justice.

There wasn't any justice here. The wretched wyrm-trees whose mouthless heads glowered at the dying city weren't victories. They were the postcards of an idiot god; a sweet-lipped thing whose breath was death itself, and whose footsteps crushed hopes and dreams.

Truth.

Ha! It was all pointless. All of our lives: pointless. All of the death: pointless! No meaning, no reason. You could call that "truth" if you wanted, but I had no use for it.

Sacrifice.

They were meaningless, every one of them. It was virtue signaling in the face of a hostile takeover. The heroes were all gone; only villains remained. What had we gained through our struggles against all this death? I honestly couldn't tell you. The loss of our humanity? The sacrifice? No, there was no sacrifice here, only theft, grief, and fungus. Fungus among us.

How could I even begin to look for a silver lining in this? Why on earth would I ever want to?

Moaning softly, I pressed my face into my flank, smearing my sporey mucus over my scales. "Rale… Dana…" I gagged. "M-Mom…"

I started screaming all over again.

I raked my claws along my scales on the left and right sides of my head, and though I couldn't see the sparks this flung about, I could certainly smell them.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry…"

All my life, I'd wanted to live in a way that was worthy of the loved ones I'd lost.

Well… that ship had definitely sailed. It capsized halfway through the fudging journey, and there were no survivors.

As I lay there, in all the desolation, a thought occurred to me. It struck me like a spark and I seized it, grabbing it tight and pulling it close.

God was dead.

I didn't just mean Kléothag or Azon. The enormity of &alon's evil was the last link in a chain of thought I'd been building since my youngest days.

Just look at me now! Here I was, caught up in the aftershock of a conflict between powers I could scarcely comprehend. We were the wretched playthings of an indifferent universe, crying out to a god that never came.

And it never came because it wasn't there.

That was the only explanation my poor mind could hobble together. Or, rather, it was the only explanation that didn't snap like a twig under the weight of all these revelations.

I didn't care even if they were the creator of all things. A god who would even allow &alon to exist and ravage countless worlds was unworthy of our faith, to say nothing of a god who would create such an abomination. And don't try to pin the blame on us mortals. If mortal evil was this powerful, why bother with divinity? God would have to fear us, not the other way around.

Perhaps, long ago, God really did exist, but not anymore. Certainly, the beings I had worshiped as God had long since kicked the bucket. They were fallible and imperfect, and were now dead as doornails, because of it. A true god was none of those things.

And so God was Dead. Or perhaps, God never existed in the first place—though that was a distinction without a difference.

I'd long lost faith in divine goodness. But, with &alon and Kléothag, I'd rekindled my faith in divine power. Surely, with enough power, a thing would be worthy of worship? The power to protect? The power to destroy? Who wouldn't worship that?

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Me.

I'd had enough.

I yelled. "Enough!"

In my anger, I spewed out a psychokinetic wave, blowing away nearby debris.

I was done with belief; I was done with being betrayed, done with pinning my hopes on gods unworthy of the name. I mean, if &alon was the fungus, was Hell even real? Who the fudge…

No… who the fuck knows.

Yeah, I said it. And I can say it again, if I want to! Fuck. FUCK!

There was nothing for me to worry about. This was rock bottom, after all. That would have tormented the old me. But I'd been a fool. God was dead, and I'd wasted my inner life mourning the corpse when I could have been building a truth for myself; a credo I'd have been proud to live by.

Belief really was for suckers.

For a couple minutes, or maybe an hour or two—who could tell?—have found me dead to the world, slumped over the ground in a half-assed coil.

I'd leapt into frozen time as our surroundings burned. Minutes passed like days. Wyrms blossomed onto Palace Street. I saw my friends reach their journeys' ends. They slithered toward my pity, drifting like continents.

Dr. Brand Nowston. He used to be the world's most brilliant pathologist—maybe the world's most brilliant anything. Now, he was a wyrm.

Mr. Kurt Clawless. He used to be an everyman turned accidental hero. Now he was a wyrm.

Mrs. Merritt Elbock. She used to be my neighbor, and my long-time patient, and one the kindest people to ever walk the earth. Now she was a wyrm.

I thought of those who had stayed behind at WeElMed.

Dr. Cassius Arbond. He used to be a life-saving surgeon. Now he was a wyrm.

Dr. Ibrahim Rathpalla. He used to be one of the best psychiatrists I'd ever had the pleasure of working with, not to mention an excellent conversationalist. Now—guess what?—he was a wyrm!

Seeing them approach broke me from my trance. I yelled at Brand. I lashed out at him with my claws, carving furrows in his underbelly. He flinched, nostrils tensing, but didn't react beyond that.

"Where are your hyperparasites, now, Brand!? Where are they now!?"

And then I broke down and sobbed.

It's a very strange thing, sobbing without tears. My face still made the motions. My muscles went through the familiar routines, recapitulating an existence now lost to me. But soon, that too would fade.

I forced myself to stop when I realized one of my teeth had fallen out, clattering softly onto the stone pavement below.

All that yelling was just awful for my complexion.

In that pointless fight with Verune and his minions, I'd held my sorrows at bay because I believed that I was about to do something to help set things right again. But now? Now I held my hopes at bay. I bottled up the anticipation of finding my family alive. I didn't want it anymore. I didn't know if I could bear it, and I was too afraid to find out.

My friends mourned with me. They looked at me, and at the tree Verune had become, and the spot on the ground where &alon had been. They sang their meanings to me in a tenderhearted chorale—and, wouldn't you know it, I actually understood them!

"Genneth," Merritt sang, "I wish you could understand this. I saw it. I saw her."

Brand nodded. "All of us did. I'd been absorbing Heggy's body when I heard it."

I raised my head from my coils, flabbergasted.

"Heggy!?"

Merritt retracted her neck in surprise. "You can hear us?"

I nodded, but then bit my lip. "Heggy?"

Brand nodded. "She's still uploading."

"How'd…" I inhaled sharply. "How did it happen?"

"After Verune used that magic… the earthquake, it knocked her to the ground. She'd been on the basilica roof."

"So that's what you were doing," I said. "I saw that."

"I'll spare you the rest of the gory details. Just know that she's in good hands."

If I could have wept, I would have.

"Who else heard?" I asked.

Brand shook his head. "I don't know. Though…" he looked up at the wyrms high up on the surrounding buildings. Many of them took off and flew away. "I have a feeling the news is gonna spread like wildfire."

"Genneth…" Kurt said. "How can you understand us now?"

"It's… the bits of flesh I absorbed during the fight, they must have given me that ability. Or maybe &alon had." I shook my head. "Who the fudge knows?"

Merritt slithered up to me.

"Genneth, you poor thing. Angel's mercy! I'm so sorry!"

She reached out to stroke my flank, but I pulled away.

"Please, Merritt." I stuck out my hand. "Don't."

I struggled to make eye contact with Dr. Nowston.

"Brand… I'm sorry for yelling, but—"

—He raised a claw. "There's no need to apologize."

I covered my mouth with one of my fingers.

Just one.

Merritt reared back in worry. "Genneth?"

"I'm done, Merritt. I'm done. I've had enough."

"But… the Darkness," she said. "And Kléothag, and—"

"—Yeah," I said. "Everything's nuts." I shook my head. "I'm tired, Merritt. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of overextending myself, and I'm tired of fighting. What use is it, if we all end up fungus in the end?"

I laid back down, burying my face in my flank.

I genuinely didn't know what to do. So much of my motivations had come from my faith in &alon, and now it was gone.

Was there any point to rescuing my family now? What did I even need to save them from? It didn't matter who the heck their souls got uploaded into. They'd be part of &alon, just I was.

We weren't in danger of being destroyed by the Darkness; it had already recruited us!

Suddenly, Kurt cried out in alarm."Mrs. Elbock, what's happening to you?

Merritt reacted nervously: "What's…? Oh!" she said. "Oh my!"

I raised my head to look.

"Kurt," Brand said, "you're shedding, too!"

All three of them were shedding their skins like snakes. Their scales cracked open and fell away in sheets. Moving around jostled them loose. Odder still, the scales beneath were dark purple.

Just like mine.

As soon as the others started using their powers to peel off their skin, their bodies absorbed the shed tissue all over again.

Roars broke out across the city. I looked up.

"Everyone is shedding…" I muttered.

Shed skins dangled from wyrms mid-air, only to get slurped back up as their bodies re-absorbed them, and every last one of us was turning the same color: my color—just like the silver-eyed wyrms from Lantor.

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