The ship had crashed at the edge of the marsh, a couple hundred yards from the bridge. Its nose was embedded in the mud, which left its back end sticking up over the ground. Steam wafted up from the surrounding muck as the water heated from contact with the ship's quasi-metallic exterior.

It really was a direct match for the Scary-Shinies from the Lantor incursions. The only difference was that the air was neither ammonia filled nor exploding, though not for want of trying.

Behind us, over the sea, the battle in the sky was only growing more and more intense.

Fortunately, the downed ship would make for an excellent distraction. In a matter of moments, I'd unspooled myself from around the L85 and started slithering toward the ship. Instead of charging in like I had in the minimart, I exercised caution this time around and slithered behind a copse of dying trees. It was the perfect spot from which to observe the ship and its surroundings. Better still, it gave me some cover in the event a squadron of hummingbirds decided to emerge from the ship. The aura of the infection in the trees more than covered up my own.

Strangely, I wasn't anywhere near as hungry as I knew I should have been, especially considering how much power I'd devoted to my fight with the hummingbird.

I think it was because of the land.

The very earth beneath me was becoming part of &alon, which meant that simply touching the ground was enough to connect me to her vast power. Her energy flowed into me as I sat there, like I was a PortaCon on a wireless charger. And, more than that, there was power in the air itself. &alon's presence vibrated behind every square inch of space, steadily increasing as the moment of her arrival drew near.

I still had to eat to complete my transformation, and I had a feeling that I'd need to absorb biomass if I kept using my powers as I had been, perhaps even after I fully changed into a wyrm. Even so, the need to feed was far less than ever before. If anything, it was almost like what ordinary hunger had been, back when I was still just a man.

I poked my head out from between the tree trunks and gave the ship a good, wyrmsighted look-over.

I muttered in disbelief. "What the heck…?"

I narrowed my eyes, shook my head, and then looked at it a second time.

Nope, it was real.

The metal flower-craft was infected. Yes, you read that right. Not the people in the ship, but the ship itself.

The aura was so thick, I couldn't tell if anyone inside was infected.

I looked over the ship once more, just to make sure.

"Fudge," I muttered. I flicked the tip of my tail back and forth across the dirt. My eyes weren't lying. The riotous mix of colors that glowed within any victim of &alon's plague had taken root in the ship, at the center of its underside, and, slowly but surely, it was spreading with each passing second.

A second later, an opening appeared on the side of the craft, below which a ramp emerged, extending toward the ground at a downward angle. Vapor hissed off the metal as it sank into the mud. The hole and the ramp were still settling into place when two glowing scribbles of infection aura moved down the broad ramp. I tamped down my wyrmsight when the scribbles moved into view, and then inhaled sharply at what I saw.

I clenched my hands, digging my claws into a tree trunk.

I imagine you were expecting more hummingbird people, weren't you? Well, so was I, but that wasn't what I got. The only thing they had in common with the hummingbird from the refueling station was that they were outfitted in the same, silvery-gray armor as the hummingbird had been, but the similarities ended there. One of the two figures was vaguely humanoid, but with four arms, a lizard-like head and tail; two pyramidal, three-toed feet, and head-tentacles, as if their head and their back had been merged with a nudibranch. It seemed to have four eyes, two on either side of its snout.

The other creature was even more disconcerting than the lizard, least of all because I recognized its body-plan as belonging to one of the corpses of the insect-like beings I'd seen in Lantor with Kreston. It resembled a praying mantis, but was even more slender, with four arms on the "torso" portion of its body, and a scorpion-like stinger tail curled up from the back of its abdomen. The armor formed an upside down pyramid at the base of its neck. Both the pyramid's flat top and the upper portions of its sides were transparent, giving a clear view of its head, which was like a lily in bloom. The lily's petals ruffled around a short, central stalk that bore structures like pistils and stamens. They seemed to function as a composite antenna, and twitched and turned as the creature moved. Other than the stalk, there wasn't any trace of eyes, ears, or anything even remotely resembling sensory organs.

So, yeah, definitely not hummingbird-people.

The mantis' four walking legs click-clacked as it moved down the ramp. The lizard, meanwhile, kept its knees slack while it staggered down. It seemed to have trouble staying upright, and was using one of its arms to brace itself against the side of the ship. The fungus-tainted mud squelched beneath the creature's small, pyramidal feet as it stepped off the ramp.

The lizard creature spoke a guttural language. The mantis flicked some of its arms, then a light flashed at the base of the mantis' neck, which was followed by a tinny, mechanical-sounding statement made in the lizard's language.

Brand really should have been doing this instead of me. He'd find joy in the sheer absurdity of it, not to mention have a blast while figuring out the strange critters' biology.

But I shook my head and dismissed those thoughts. I could always share my experiences with him later, assuming there would even be a later.

The lizard had stepped off to the side, and was currently standing at the edge of the marsh, looking down at the waters.

Okay, okay, so what did this all mean?

I decided to start with the infected ship. So far, I hadn't seen any indication that &alon could infect robots or other man-made machines. Yes, she could convert their "bodies" into biomass, but I'd seen no indication that she'd infect a console, or a car, or anything with even a smidge of AI. So, unless ALICE and the rest of WeElMed's AI network was in the middle of turning into a wyrm back in the city, I felt it safe to assume that fact of the flower-ship's infection meant that the craft was somehow more than just another machine, if not outright alive, whatever that suggestive terminology actually meant.

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What else?

None of the ship's crew were hummingbirds. Heck, judging by appearances, the two crewmen belonged to entirely different "species"; three, if you counted the ship.

"Wait…" I whispered.

With the mantis and the lizard out in the open, I realized that, in all likelihood, their armor was probably made of the same stuff as the ship. Did that mean there was some kind of symbiosis going on between the creatures and the ships? And if there was, what was it for?

Again, Brand should have been doing this!

There was a soft click as the lizard removed a small detachable component of its armor from its forearm. The creature waved the unit over its chest and limbs, in measured, methodical motions. A moment later, the unit glowed bright green, and chirped in a rhythmic pattern.

The lizard dropped the unit, as if startled. Tellingly, it didn't reach down to pick the device out of the mud.

Had the lizard just confirmed it was infected?

The next thing I knew, the lizard took a step away from the marsh and started to remove its armor. The mantis skittered up beside it, barking at it in synthesized speech.

Given how infectious &alon was, I strongly doubted these beings would waltz into certain death unless that silver armor of theirs somehow protected them from infection. The strange plexuses that swirled in and around the suits certainly supported that conclusion, as did basic psychology—assuming it even applied.

The mantis seemed distressed that its comrade was removing their armor. And if that little scanning device really had confirmed that the lizard was infected, then the lizard's decision to remove its armor could only mean one thing: he was choosing to embrace death without struggle.

It was amazing: these two creatures were probably even more alien to me than I was to myself as a wyrm, and yet, their actions and interactions spoke in a universal language: the lizard was giving up, despite the mantis' protests.

Watching the lizard remove its armor was a spectacle all its own. The armor's shape changed rapidly, the material curling up and withdrawing, like a garage door sliding up, only upside down. In seconds, the silvery coating condensed into a book-sized block that fell onto the mud with a wet slap.

Without its armor, the lizard looked even more nudibranch-like than ever. The back of its head spread out in thick, fleshy tendrils that drooped down its back and sides. The shortest tendrils' tips were level with the lizard's upper pair of arms, while the longest went down to its digitigrade heels. Minute bumps covered its wet, green skin, which was covered in faint, horizontal bands of paler coloration. Weirdly, despite how advanced the rest of its technology was, the lizard was nearly nude. It wore a satchel-studded belt, a pendulous loincloth, and some wraps around its arms and feet, and many bracelets and clinking necklaces, but that was it. Even stranger, the little it was wearing seemed impossibly primitive compared to the ship and the armor.

I noticed the skin on the lizard's head-tentacles were beginning to lighten, but before I could ponder what that meant, the lizard reached into one of the satchels on its belt and scattered its small, dark, contents over the ground. Then, kneeling in the mud, the lizard raised its head and started to sing. Imagine the texture of human throat-singing, but with a far greater tessitura. He sang the notes of deeply felt, broken chords, like something a bugler might play, except with a far gentler sound.

Suddenly, my wyrmsight lit up with threads of colors and consistency I'd never seen before while concentric rings appeared over the lizard's head in my ordinary vision. The spaces between the rings, engraving the air with unknown symbols.

The magic circles slowly spun.

The lizard wove a hand over the ground, and a kind of flower my world had never seen before sprouted up from where the lizard had scattered the contents of his satchel.

They must have been seeds…

The plants grew quickly. Petals budded from them like leaves, tie-dyed in sunset colors: reds, oranges, and yellows. Kneeling, the lizard embraced them, all while continuing to sing.

The mantis watched in silence.

The plants started to grow up the lizard's arms—piercing through the skin. If they caused any pain, he didn't show it.

Overhead, the symbols of the magic circle changed in shape and color, growing and multiplying just like the spreading flowers. One of the disks settled onto one of the lizard's fingers. He then pressed that finger against the side of his head, as if pointing.

The magic circle widened, spreading tangent to his skull.

Light blossomed at his fingertip, and then coalesced and grew brighter, while all the other circles had faded away.

My wyrmsight showed power building at his fingertip. The flowers' growth stopped.

Genneth, Suisei's spirit said, he's—

—I realized, too late, what was happening.

He wasn't going to wait for death to claim him. Neither death, nor &alon.

I don't think there's any greater proof that my transformation had preserved my character and personality down to the most fundamental levels than the fact that, seeing an alien about to commit suicide, all I could do was slithered out from behind the trees, pushing off the trunk with a hand as I yelled.

"No! Don't do it!"

What can I say? Part of me still hoped that I'd be able to start up a dialogue with him, while the rest of me was just so sick and tired of death that there was no way I could idly stand by while another living thing ended its own life. That was true of me before I became a wyrm, and my transformation had only strengthened my conviction.

The lizard started to turn around just as the beam of light burst out of his fingertip and blasted through his head. He shotgunned himself with obliteration, scattering gooey kibbles every which way, including on his crewmate. The lizard's body fell, collapsing onto the flowerbed he'd grown.

This was when I realized I'd been exposed.

Pro-tip: don't be your own worst enemy. It sucks.

The mantis skittered back in shock, raising its many forelimbs in a defensive gesture. It glanced at its dead comrade, and then at the ship behind it, and then back at me.

Fearing the worst, I wrapped myself in a forcefield, but then the mantis surprised me, and in the worst possible way.

After a moment's hesitation, the mantis tugged at its silvery armor, triggering the suit-removal process much like the lizard had—at least, that's what I thought.

Colorless fumes streamed out with sickening crackles and hisses as the gaps in the armor grew. By the time the creature's slender limbs came into view, they'd already snapped like twigs, spilling out familiar pungent vapor: ammonia.

As Brand had told me, ammonia boiled into a gas at the temperatures and pressures human beings found comfortable.

By the time the compactified armor fell to the ground, the mantis was a steaming mess of boiling ammonia. Its death throes ended almost as quickly as they began. The fumes cleared away in a gentle breeze, and in seconds, all that remained of the creature was a small pile of splinter-like fragments and organic slush, and beside that, the armor, lying on ground, just waiting to be picked up.

And just like, my guilt reached a brand new, never-before-seen height. I almost wished I'd been able to eat the mantis, instead of having to watch it commit suicide out of the fear of what a wyrm like me was going to do to it.

I reared up, ready to roar. I nearly did it; I would have, but… what good would it have done? Heck, it might have caught the attention of ships passing by overhead.

"Fudge!"

I let my forepart drop to the ground and raked my claws through the mud.

"Angel's breath! Darn it!"

Then, lifting myself up, I coiled around somewhat.

"Dad?"

I looked to see Jules had left the car and was walking toward me. I turned away from her, toward the two bodies, and then locked eyes with her once more.

"They killed themselves," I said. "Both of them killed themselves. One, because he was infected; the other, because he was afraid. Of me."

My agitation had me breathing out quite a few spores. Frightened, I turned away, sticking my claws at Jules.

"Please, sweetheart," I said, "get back in the car. I… I don't—"

"—Dad…"

I didn't need to turn around and look to know my little girl was crying, nor did I.

"Fricasse me…" I muttered.

While the aliens had been busy offing themselves, the infection aura spreading through the ship had changed, and in a way that shouldn't have been possible.

"Dad, what's going on?" Jules asked.

I turned back to face her. "I think the ship is turning into a wyrm."

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