Jules was afraid to touch the body. She just stared at it, and even then, only from a distance. Her brother had a bit more pluck in him, and darted forward and pulled an iridescent green feathers off the hummingbird-person's head, one as of yet untouched by fungus or the warrior's blood.

Pel watched Rayph with eyes like saucers. I could tell she was inches away from snapping, but instead of doing so, she just let out a long sigh that stumbled halfway out the door and turned into an obstinate cough.

"Dad…" Jules said, looking up at me. "What the fuck…?"

She shot a furtive glance at the corpse.

I didn't even bother chiding her for her language.

"I can explain," I said.

"Is this even real?" Pel muttered. A pallor haunted her skin. She stared at the hummingbird, as if it held her in some kind of trance.

Jules turned to her brother, who was busy admiring the feather. It was a living jewel, flickering across the spectrum in the touch of the wind's grace.

Jules plucked the feather out from the plucker's hand. "Gimme that," she said.

"Hey!" Rayph frowned. He coughed a little.

The sound made me want to rip my heart out.

Jules handed the feather to her mother. Pel kept her eyes on it even as she set the gun down on the ground, more fearful of this one, measly feather than of the weapon that had killed its owner.

She made the Bond-sign as she let go of the gun, and then, inhaling a ragged breath, made the Bond-sign again before pinching her fingers on the calamus—the quill tip—and holding it in awe and trembling.

Rayph looked at the corpse. "What is it?" he asked.

Before, I would have probably answered with, "One of the inhabitants of Paradise", or, perhaps, "someone from a race of Angels," but now, I really had no clue.

I shook my head. "I saw it in the Lantor Incursion, though—at this point—I don't even know if that has some twist behind it."

"You mentioned that before," Jules replied, "but I still don't really know what it means."

I sighed. "Do you at least understand that I can make worlds inside my mind?" I pointed a claw tip at my head.

Jules nodded. "Yeah."

"Well… as I said, Lantor was one of those worlds. The Incursion… it was an intrusive thought that inserted itself into my creation. It was like a tune that gets stuck in your head and stays there, even when you want it gone. The Incursion frightened &alon. She said it was her attackers chasing her, trying to hurt her and the wyrms. So, I explored it, and went on some pretty wild adventures in the process, and at the end of it, we arrived in a city inhabited by these hummingbird creatures." I turned to the corpse and shook my head. "And every single one of them had been turned to stone." I sighed again. "At the time, given the connection between hummingbirds, the Lass, and Paradise, I thought we'd managed to enter Paradise through some kind of backdoor, and with all the hummingbirds turned to stone, I just assumed some kind of terrible conflict had broken out there; a war, or maybe something even worse than that. I just couldn't look at these hummingbird-beings—"

"—Hummingpeople," Rayph interjected.

"No, that's stupid," Jules said.

What does it matter what I call them? The point is, then, as now, I can't look at these hummingbirds without thinking back to Southmarch.

"The Lass' Translation to Paradise…" Pel muttered.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"That's why I thought I was getting a glimpse of Paradise."

Jules gestured at me angrily. "You thought?"

I nodded glumly.

"You have to understand, honey, that's when I still thought that &alon was trying to stop the fungus. Now… now I don't know what to think. There's just so much that I still don't understand. Is this hummingbird from Paradise? Is she working with one of the other Angels? Or is she something else entirely? Currently, any of those could be true, or maybe they're wildly off-base, I genuinely don't know."

I looked over the hummingbird's body.

"Well, clearly," Jules said, "she's infected."

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"Yeah, that's pretty much beyond dispute," I said.

"That means that &alon is as much of a threat to these guys as we are."

I nodded. "That supports the theory that they're out to destroy &alon, and is why, at the moment, my pipe dream is that I'll be able to get them to help us stop her."

"Destroy &alon?" Pel said. "So, you mean to say they're out for revenge?" She wheezed. It was a struggle for her to clear her throat. "If they're after revenge, wouldn't that mean they survived &alon's destruction of their world?"

"Angel's breath…" I muttered. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

What if she was right? What if these beings weren't just hunting &alon? What if this was much more personal—vengeance, in search of justice?

&alon had said as much when I last talked to her.

I thought back to the fight; to the hummingbird's viciousness…

"She fought like a madman," I said. "She trembled with anger."

It made perfect sense.

I shook my head. "This isn't just a war. It's a crusade. The hummingbird fought like a crusader. She was willing to give her life to destroy me."

"You couldn't talk to her?" Rayph asked.

"I didn't get the feeling that she spoke Trenton," I quipped.

"Gen," Pel said, "if you can absorb us because we're infected, couldn't you also absorb the, humming…person?" Her gaze drifted over to the corpse.

I shook my head again. "No, she wasn't… ripe yet. I knew it the instant I saw her. There's not enough to harvest. She's not going to become a wyrm-spirit. She's just… gone."

Pel was confused. "What?"

"&alon hadn't broken down enough of the hummingbird's mind and body for me to absorb her and download her consciousness," I said. "If I could have captured her consciousness, I would have been able to talk to her and better understand why she and her people are here and what, exactly, they intend to do, and perhaps even figure out how to convince them to help us."

"Dad, the ship," Rayph said. "The ship, the one that crashed! Maybe—"

My eyes widened. "—You're right!" I clenched my fists and then raked my claws down my back spines. "Gah! Why didn't I think of it before!"

I slithered over to the car.

Pel closed her eyes and shook her head. "Forgive me for having a melting brain but… what?"

I turned my forepart to face her. "What do you mean what?"

"What does the crashed ship have to do with any of this?"

I looked to where the flower had dipped below the hills.

"Pel, how much do you want to bet that that ship crashed because its crew was infected?" I said. "Fudge," I shook my head, "I should have had my wyrmsight on! I might have been able to detect any traces of &alon infection from a distance."

And then another thought occurred to me, one that made my back hunch and my spines press flush against me.

"Fricassee me, what if one of the aliens is turning into a wyrm!?"

Jules blinked in confusion. "W-Wait… what? Why would they turn into wyrms?"

"Back by the marina," I said, "we saw a whale that was in the middle of changing into a wyrm."

"That was a whale?" Rayph asked, somewhat mystified.

"Yes," I said. "Ileene Plotsky was training to be a marine biologist, and she agrees it was a whale, a very, very fudged up whale."

"Your point?" Pel asked.

"Honey, if I can turn into a wyrm, and if a whale can turn into a wyrm, who's to say that a hummingbird can't?"

"That's good enough for me," Jules said. She stumbled toward the car. Pel followed up behind her, and I sent out a helping psychokinetic hand to support my wife as she opened the door and sat in the driver's seat.

"Are you sure you should be driving?" I asked. "I can try using my powers to—"

She coughed and shuddered and then turned toward me. "—Genneth, if I stop driving, I'm afraid I'm going to fall asleep and never going to wake up. Driving, it…" She stared ahead, through the windshield. "…it gives me something to focus on, y'know?"

I nodded. "Well, if you ever feel like you've reached the point where you can't continue, just knock on the ceiling three times." I glanced at the kids. "You two keep a close eye on your mother. If you sense something amiss, just knock on the ceiling three times."

They nodded.

"How do we know where to go?" Pel asked.

"Hmm…" I scratched a claw tip against what remained of my chin. As my eyes wandered, an idea came to me, arriving right as my gaze landed on a neon sign over the sea caves' overhangs. The sign bore a stylized arrow, among several other words and symbols, beckoning passing tourists to explore the caves and their surroundings.

That would work perfectly.

Reaching out with my mind, I pulled the arrow off from the sign and levitated it close. "I'll use this."

"Works for me," Pel said.

Then I slithered up to the car and wrapped around it, and off we went.

We followed the road toward the water, and then continued along it for about fifteen minutes, when we reached a three-way intersection. Ahead, the road continued down the coast, while, to the left, the road branched off and headed inland, threading between two hills.

While there wasn't any direct sign that the flower-ship had crashed there, by focusing on my memory of what I'd seen of the ship's descent, I was able to extrapolate its path in three dimensions. It wasn't a perfect reconstruction, but it was more than enough to conclude that the ship had crashed somewhere in the dell between the two hills down the road.

I floated the arrow down in front of the windshield, spun it around, and then stopped it at the inland road at our left. I pulled the arrow back into my grasp once Pel made the turn.

While the land had been relatively barren on the road out of the marina—it's not like there was a lot of room between the short, pebbly beach, the road, and the sea cliffs on the other side—the area up ahead was thickly wooded.

I felt so bad for the trees. Every one of them were sick, and most of them had died, only to be reborn through &alon's foul blessings. Though many of the trees are stripped of leaves, the fungal growth and the remaining patches of infected natural growth that I couldn't see through to the other side. I kept my wyrmsight thickened as we drove, vigilantly surveying the land. I didn't want us to get ambushed.

Eventually, we came to a stretch of marshland intruding on the dell. An antique bridge stood up ahead, spanning marsh's shallow, brackish water. The rivet-studded metalwork was a holdout from the Second Empire, and, despite being a little rusted in places, it was still in good enough condition to be used. Spines tipped in glowing golden bulbs grew out from the mud and the water instead of reeds. Things were the spitting image of my mane-spines.

Then, as I craned my neck, I saw it: the flower.

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