The sky was like ink dissolving in a deep sea. The light-stained horizon's gray pallor bled out through the city's corridors and down its broad boulevards. The city was gothic again, remade by &alon's will. Bioluminescent clusters and bulbs faded as daylight grew at the sky's edge. Elpeck was rapidly becoming a forest, complete with toppling giants. Like the rest of us, I didn't imagine it would be sticking around for much longer.

Slithering down the boulevard, past where I'd parked my car, I turned onto the side street leading to the Old Theater District. Some moldering corpses clustered appetizingly on the street. The branches growing up from the mosaic biology had tips like cattails rushes; the bulbs glowed in mysterious ceruleans, olivines, and yellows, dimming ever so slightly as their branches quivered in the wind.

I ran the tips of my claws over some of the clusters‚ taking the precaution to briefly feed in the likely event that things might yet take another turn for the worse. It caused some changes, but nothing too significant. The biomass crawled up my arm and settled onto my neck and back with a gentle tickle. The nubs on my neck and back twitched as they grew, adding a slight sense of weight.

I guessed they were going to be my spiny mane.

If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I had a mohawk, though I immediately stopped doing so once I realized how awful that would look. There was a list of hairstyles I could successfully pull off, and it did not include mohawks.

As I entered the Old Theater District, I realized my mane was more of a change than I'd thought it was.

I could feel the air's stillness. The gentle tug of the airflow in the side streets on my spinal mane had been giving me a sense of the currents around me, currents that had stopped now that I was inside the Theater District. The Old Theater District was a neighborhood in miniature, cloistered away off to the side of the Civic Center. The district's buildings enclosed in it a stone-paved courtyard accessible only by walking (or slithering) in, as I had. If you wanted parking, you had to either pay the exorbitant price to use the parking garage under the Civic Center, or luck out and find an open space on the surrounding side streets.

Of all the things you could say about the apocalypse, making it harder to find a place to park was not one of them.

The small fountain at the district's center was so overgrown with fungus that it looked like a tree stump had melted into existence on top of the actual fountain's sculpted stone. Out of an abundance of caution, I thickened my wyrmsight and surveyed my surroundings. Obviously, the fungus' aura—&alon's aura—was everywhere, but, fortunately enough, I didn't see any signs of zombified infected wandering about, neither nearby, nor inside the Bealsthiller's lobby. If my family had managed to make it here, there was a chance they were safe.

I slithered up to the Bealsthiller's bronze-inlaid doors. The door-handles were disk-shaped; I gently tugged on one with a single claw. The door swung open with a smooth, barely audible hiss, as if it was gliding on air. I slithered inside. The sounds of my underbelly brushing against the thin, patterned, wall-to-wall carpeting was like sighing reeds.

Though the Bealsthiller had survived the apocalypse, it hadn't escaped unscathed. There were a couple NFP-20 corpses spread about the lobby, one by the water fountains, another sprawled on one of the staircases leading up to the mezzanine, and a few scattered in or around the concession stand ahead and to the right of the main entrance. Just like everywhere else, the fungus growing in the corpses had taken root, spreading along the walls and furniture in arboresque forms. The way the bulbs and other prominence glowed in the dimly lit lobby was honestly beautiful. The mass growing up from the corpse on the staircase formed tubular structures like a pipe organ that glowed in an almost fiery gold.

The Bealsthiller must have had an emergency power generator, because the lights were still on, not that that made much of a difference. The lights in the sconces were old, and had never shone that brightly to begin with.

After a moment's thought, I decided to take the gamble and enter the main auditorium through one of the entrances on the ground floor. Through my wyrmsight, as I approached the double doorway, I saw human bodies within the auditorium, stained by &alon's fatal aura. But they were still moving.

If I'd still had a heart, it would have skipped a beat.

By a minor miracle, the auditorium's interior was undamaged. All the gold leaf was in place. The murals were still there, slightly faded, as they had been for nearly two centuries.

Still holding the door in my hand, I gently pulled away from it, letting it swing shut behind me. It creaked like old bones. The sound made me wince, but then there was a shrill yelp, and I flinched.

The sound hadn't come from me!

I turned toward the noise.

A figure pushed off the seats in the front row and staggered into the aisle.

My lips curled into a broken smile.

Pel looked like she'd just gotten out of an art club from Hell. Her complexion was wan and terror-stricken; unmentionable colors stained her skirt and blouse. Almost since the beginning, I'd associated Pelbrum Revenel with a level of meticulous self-care that I could never hope to match. But it was nowhere to be seen. Rale's death had been the only time I could recall her looking anywhere close to this. Her hair sat disheveled atop her naked, unadorned face. Even her fingernails looked worse for wear.

I stared in silence as Jules and Rayph crept out from behind the seats. They were wearing their samue.

For a moment, there was fear in their eyes, and uncertainty, and doubt.

It didn't need to last for a moment to cut me like a knife.

Of all the horrors this nightmare had brought, all the forlorn hopes, the sight of my life and my very humanity melting before my eyes… none of them quite compared to the sight of the fear in my loved one's eyes.

I wondered if this was going to be my cadenza. Had everyone else's families ended this way, alone, and afraid?

Gosh, that would be an awful way to go.

I bit my lip and shook my head.

No.

I wasn't going to let myself be deterred. Not after I'd come this far.

I swallowed hard. "Pel…?" I said. My two-tone voice danced in the room's acoustics, though it quickly broke. "You're safe…"

My words cut through their fear with the gentlest touch. Their lips quivered beneath their wide eyes.

"G… Genneth…?" Pel spoke like she couldn't breathe.

My first instinct was to run to them, and hug them and kiss them and lift them up high; to hold them close and tell them everything would be okay, and then never let go. I tilted forward, reaching out with a claw, nearly giving in. But I held myself back, first in pain, and then in excitement as I realized the obvious solution.

Thank you, Ani, I thought.

She was still helping me, even in death.

I could embrace my family with the same trick I'd used to comfort Ani in the wake of Jonan's death.

I wrapped myself up in a shimmering, psychokinetic PPE suit to keep my all-consuming body from making fatal contact with the ones I loved. I made sure to extend the weave around my head, in a recreation of my spore-blocking invisible fishbowl helmet. This time, I wrapped my head in a double layer of the fishbowl, one to provide a repelling force to keep my family from getting too close to my mouth and nose, and the second to power a containment field to confine my spores to a compact region around my head.

My lips almost refused to work properly as I spoke my next words.

"Can I give you a hug?" I asked.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Pel looked at me with terror. "But—"

With a flick of a claw, I made all the seats in the auditorium flap up and down.

"I have total control of my powers," I explained. "They'll keep my body from hurting you."

Rayph looked up at me with the widest eyes. "Dad's a wizard…" he whispered.

"Sorcerer, actua—"

Pel wept. "—Oh, Genneth…" She rushed up to me and threw her arms around me and hugged me tight, without hesitation.

Her head barely came up to where my navel should have been.

I adjusted myself, sliding my underbelly backward until my forepart was low enough that we looked each other in the eyes. Then, and only then, did I return her embrace, weeping without tears.

"I missed you…" I sobbed. "I missed you all so much."

Jules and Rayph joined in, their arms slapping into place around us.

It was the darkest moment of bliss I'd ever known. Even as we hugged and cried, my senses couldn't let me forget what the future had in store for use. I heard it in Pel's coughs, and her rasping breaths. I smelled it in the fudging fungus alive in my wife's chest. And you know what the worst part was?

My kids weren't far behind.

Yet, somehow—as with Ani—I knew… they weren't ripe yet. If I tried to absorb them now, I'd have to eat them with my mouth, and, even then, parts of their minds would get left behind.

I just hugged them all the harder.

"I wanna wake up," I said. "I want to wake up from this nightmare!"

There was no way in this or any world that I could stop crying. Heck, I didn't even need tears to sob. I cried, because as long as Pel, Jules, and Rayph were alive and well, it meant my suffering wasn't entirely in vain And I cried because of the unhappy ending waiting for them, the same one waiting for us all: being the eternal hostages of an idiot god.

Pel breathed long, and then shook her head. "I don't know what to do anymore," she said.

She tried to look at me, but… you can't hold your breath forever. The sun gets too bright.

She wept. "…I want to wake up, too."

We stayed like that for a while. Eventually, we released one another, and Pel and the kids sat down in some nearby seats. I slithered over to the opposite side of the aisle. To preserve power, I contracted my PPE plexus until only the fishbowl remained.

In some ways, I was even more scared now than I had been before I'd entered the auditorium. Yes, we were together again, but now, I had to tell them all that I had learned.

I couldn't help but fear that it might drive us apart all over again.

"Jessica said you'd be able to keep our spirits safe," Jules said.

"You really got help from Eigenhat?"

"Honey, look at yourself," Pel said. "Jessica turning over a new leaf is the least unbelievable thing that's happened to us all week!"

As always, Pel had a point.

"Yes," I said. "And, to answer your question, Jules, yeah, I can protect your souls. How much do you know?"

"Assume nothing," she said.

"Okay. Well, here's the gist of it."

I was pretty confident the girls would be able to handle this part of the news, but… I was worried about how Rayph would fare.

I looked my son in the eyes.

"I need you to be brave for me, kiddo. Can you do that?"

He nodded and saluted me.

"For what it's worth," Jules said, "the twerp has been very un-twerpish lately."

It was one of the nicest things she'd ever said about him.

Many of the spirits residing in my mind had tuned in to watch my family reunion. I gladly let them.

Angel, how I'd missed this!

I sighed.

"All of you are infected with NFP-20. Pel, your case is more advanced than Jules' or Rayph's. You probably have a day or two at most left to live. The kids, maybe two or three—four, if they're lucky." I looked my wife in the eyes. "You know that sci-fi trope where a person's mind gets uploaded into a computer?"

"I guess?"

"Well," I explained, "in a nutshell, that's what the fungus is doing to you. It breaks down your consciousness, and then broadcasts it to be absorbed by wyrms like me. Once you've been uploaded into me that way, you'll be able to live your lives however you want. We… we could recreate the city, make it seem like everything's back to normal. The sky's the limit. But… not yet."

"What do you mean?" Jules asked.

"I can't absorb you yet. Your infections haven't progressed enough. If I tried to absorb you now, you wouldn't be fully transferred. I can tell whether the infected are 'ripe' enough; I'll tell you as soon as it happens to you." I swallowed hard.

"What then?" Rayph asked.

"I… absorb you. You just need to touch me, that's all it takes. Then… we'll become one."

Jules raised her hand, like she was in a classroom lecture.

"Yes?" I said.

"Is there an Option B?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yes, you disappear forever, or—worse—you get trapped inside a wyrm who isn't your father, and who can do whatever he or she wants with you. Essentially… you're gonna get isekaied."

Pel stared at me, though my kids knew what I meant. Jules, meanwhile, envied my mother's ignorance.

I guess I really couldn't go for more than a couple of minutes without making my little girl squirm.

"You'll be sent to another world," I explained, "only this world exists entirely within a wyrm's mind. The wyrm will basically be your god. And… I'd really be honored if you'd choose me."

"So… you're gonna eat us?" Jules asked.

Pel coughed, and then glared at our daughter. "Jules…"

"Not with my mouth, no," I said, only for Jules and I to cringe at the same time.

Like father, like daughter.

"Erm, what I meant to say is, you don't need to think about it like that if you don't want to."

Jules grinned. "No, I'm totally going to think about it like that. Think of all the privileges I'll be able to milk from the guilt!"

"I missed you too, Jules," I said.

And she smiled back.

I sighed. "I'm sorry for not being there for you. And I don't just mean recently, but… always." I bit my lip. "Please… can you find it in your hearts to forgive me?"

"Does it even matter anymore?" Pel asked.

I shook my head. "Pel, you shouldn't let me off the hook that easily. Not this time. There's so much going on. I don't know what scares me more: the thought that you might not understand, or that you will."

"What?" she asked.

Jules jostled around and stood on her seat in an incredibly unladylike squat.

I wouldn't have expected anything less from her.

"When you told us you were infected," she said, "you said something insane about wyrms fighting against the forces of Hell. Is that what you're talking about?"

"Yes." I nodded, huffing out spores. "Yes. But…" I sighed, and then crossed my arms. "No, let me keep this simple." I looked my family in the eyes.

Wanting to make something simple was one thing; actually doing it was another matter altogether.

"A week and a half ago, a little girl appeared to me in a dream. Her hair was as blue as the sky and her eyes were as blue as the sea. Her name was &alon, and she asked for my help to defeat a great evil: the Darkness, she called it, though you know it better as the Green Death." I shook my head.

"Dad…?" Rayph said.

Even my youngest could tell I was troubled.

"It turns out we were wrong. &alon is the fungus."

"What? I… I don't understand."

Pel was right to be confused.

"&alon had lost all of her memories. For the past two weeks or so, every time my transformation progressed, she got a little more of them back. In the process, I started becoming kind of like her knight in shining armor. I was a foot soldier in her desperate attempt to stop the fungus, or, at the very least, minimize the damage it caused. If we couldn't stop it from killing people, we could at least provide safe harbor for their souls, instead of letting Hell steal them away. But… I was wrong. That was all nonsense; premature conclusions made on faulty, incomplete evidence.All this time, I thought I was saving spirits from the darkness, when I was actually being the fungus' unwitting servant, hard at work placating souls that had every reason to hate their harvester. I don't even know if Hell exists as described in scripture and tradition, but it doesn't matter. Why worry about Hell when &alon exists? She's responsible for everything that's happened. And, soon, she's going to come to take us away."

"Take us away?" Rayph asked. "What does that mean?"

"She'll take us to another world, filled with new harvest ripe for the taking." I looked my family in the eyes again. "Do… do you believe me?"

In spite of all my love for them, I couldn't quite shake my fears that Pel might still say no.

To my relief, she nodded.

"Yes, Genneth, I do."

They all did.

I closed my eyes and nodded. I stilled my trembling arms.

"What happens now?" Jules asked.

I opened my eyes.

"Yeah," Rayph said, "what do we do now?"

"Pel, do you still have your car?"

"No, it… it blew up," she replied.

I rose up in shock. "Wait, what?" I craned over the aisle, toward her. "Were you hurt? Did—"

"—Honey, everything's fine," Pel said, "though you should know my mother is one of you."

I stammered. "M-Margaret is a wyrm?"

"Yeah." Jules shook her head. "I don't like it, either."

If I thought it would have done any good, I would have prayed for those souls unfortunate enough to be lodged in Margaret for all eternity. But it wouldn't, so I didn't.

"Well, I brought the L85. It's in good shape. We should get out of the city as soon as possible."

"Why?" Rayph asked.

"Forgive me for being selfish, but… I don't want to risk you getting killed or absorbed by anyone other than me before you're fully… ripe."

Angel, that sounded creepy.

Pel coughed and groaned, and not just because she was dying. "Can you please not talk about us being 'ripe'?"

I nodded meekly in response.

Now came the hard part. The last dreaded piece.

"Pel… do you still believe in God?" I asked. "In the Angel?"

She looked at me for a long time before giving her answer. "I want to."

As I weighed over what to say about the Sword and our dead Gods, an indescribable sound thundered through the sky. The ground shook beneath us. The Bealsthiller's walls rocked and rattled.

I wove a plexus over my family's heads to protect them in case anything fell. I dismissed the spell after a minute or so.

Nothing else seemed to be happening.

"What was that?" Jules asked.

I reared up off the floor. "It's not wyrmsong, that's for sure!"

I slithered toward the doors to the lobby. "Come on, come with me," I said, glancing over my shoulder. "I'll protect you. Now that we're together again, I'm not gonna let you out of my sight. I swear it."

My family followed me.

In the Bealsthiller's lobby, I pushed ahead of them.

"Don't touch any of the corpses or the fungal growths."

"Wasn't planning on it," Jules replied.

I opened the doors with a single claw, and then moved off to the side to let them through. I slithered on after them.

I knew something was wrong the instant I slithered outdoors.

Pel and the kids stood side by side, a couple of feet in front of the Bealsthiller. All of them were looking up.

"Dad… what is… that…?" Jules asked, without turning to face me.

She pointed at the sky.

I slithered into the center of the Old Theater District and looked up.

"By the Angel…" Pel muttered.

Something new had appeared in the sky. Something wondrous and terrible and strange.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.