The Wyrms of &alon

173.1 - Salomé


With Greg having grown as big as he had, the third level of the garage was effectively impassable, so Ibrahim and Larry went down to the second level, re-entered the hospital through the entrance down there, and then used the stairwells to go the rest of the way. The stairwell they took had a wyrm-tree in it who was panicking over all the explosions he'd heard outside, and &alon's broadcast about "meanies", but Ibrahim simply ignored the tree. Ibrahim had no interest in wasting kindness on people who didn't deserve it.

Shitty childhood experiences could do that to a guy.

Larry, however, took the liberty of ripping off one of the tree's heads. Interestingly, instead of showing any sign of regeneration, the light in the severed head's eyes went out. The dismembered tissues began to decompose.

As soon as they were out of ear-eyeshot, Ibrahim quietly asked the janitor why he'd done that, aside from general considerations of justice.

"I will rip them up from their roots," Larry said, seething in rage. "Those fuckers! &alon, Verune, the lot of them; they tried to take Yuth away from me! And now… now they've won."

As they made their way into the third basement level's hallways, Ibrahim stopped. He hadn't been imagining things. Larry had, in fact, been continuing to talk—to himself. Out loud.

The janitor huffed out spores as he muttered under his breath. "Damn them all!"

Slithering forward to give himself enough room, Ibrahim turned around and look at Larry as he entered. "Is something wrong?" Ibrahim asked.

The janitor-wyrm cocked his head at a weird angle as he looked Ibrahim in the eyes, and though Dr. Rathpalla didn't say anything, he noticed that Larry had a nervous tic, clenching and releasing his right hand over and over again.

Ibrahim was no stranger to tics. Several common attention-deficit medications induced them as a side-effect. Jaw clenching, yawning, repetitive blinking, the works.

Still, as far as he knew, Larry didn't have any tics, or, at least, hadn't displayed any since he'd come to know the guy.

"I'm fucking furious, Doc," Larry said. "&alon… that bitch!"

The wyrmsong that translated into that last word was a crunchy chord that echoed through the hallway.

Larry shook his head side to side. "I can't do it. I'm… I'm scared."

"Scared?"

"The Strangers, Dr. Rathpalla. &alon, the Strangers, and now, Yuth. My head's spinning. I don't want to die." Larry's breathing intensified. "I don't want to lose her." The wall sizzled and bubbled, breaking out in black marks as Larry's spores ate away at them.

Was this some kind of post-traumatic stress?

Ibrahim reached out and gently grabbed Larry's other hand.

Hell, I have that too, Ibrahim thought.

At least, before, they'd had a happy lie to believe in: their world hadn't ended for nothing; the normalcy of their lives hadn't been ripped from them without just cause.

Only, no: it had. All for the tyrant whims of a rugrat god.

"The truth's out now," Ibrahim said, "and there's no running from it. Either we're going to let it drown us, or we're gonna try to pull ourselves onto dry land. Listen to me, Larry," he looked the wyrm in the eyes, "I don't know what the future will hold, but… between you and me, I'd rather meet destiny knowing I'd at least tried to find a way, instead of letting the current cast me about."

Ibrahim noticed the tremor in Larry's arm had calmed. He nodded his head in approval at the sight.

"You say that like it's so easy," Larry replied.

But Ibrahim shook his head. "Not easy, just… familiar."

"What do you mean?"

Ibrahim sighed out spores. "I've been fighting against destiny my whole life."

"Who hasn't?"

Ibrahim tried to brush the thoughts away, but the mental feats he could now pull as a wyrm made the unpleasant memories too potent for him to ignore.

"My parents immigrated to Trenton during the second Arraka-Dalus War, fleeing for a better life, like so many of the other refugees."

Larry stopped and stared. "Wait, you're Dalusian? I thought you were—"

"—Arrakan? Yeah. Lots of folks do," Ibrahim replied. "I just wish they had back when I was a kid."

Larry shook his head. "You mean…?"

Ibrahim nodded. "As fate would have it, I got sent to the same public school across the Bay in Northshore as a lot of the kids from the greater Elpeck Area's well-to-do Arrakan immigrant community, and hardly a day went by when I wasn't bullied for it." He looked up at the ceiling. "Even before I transformed, I remembered the epithets they lobbed at me. 'Locust-muncher', 'rag-head', 'bomb-baby',… sand nigger. My middle school class' yearbook committee voted me 'most likely to become a terrorist.'" Ibrahim titled his head to the side. "But hey, at least they agreed I was one of the smart ones."

"Angel's breath…" Larry mumbled.

"As a kid, I wished I could be anything other than what I'd been born as." Dr. Rathpalla spread his arms. "Now look at me." He gestured at himself. "Talk about irony."

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It was so funny, Ibrahim would have sobbed.

He'd never forget the pain he'd see in his parents' eyes whenever he came home to them with news that he'd gotten in another fight with one of the rich Arrakan kids. His parents reacted to such news as if history's bloody hand had just reached across the ocean to try to pull them back to the hell they'd barely managed to escape.

"Fighting against currents that want to drag you down is never easy," Ibrahim said, "and I don't think that's gonna change any time soon, least of all with &alon." He looked Larry in the eyes. "Larry, this isn't easy for any of us. You're not alone in that. None of us are. And, if you think you or I have got it bad, imagine how Genneth's feeling. He's closer to this than any of us."

"Fuck," Larry said, with finality.

"Yeah."

They slithered down the hallway, where &alon was hard at work tearing down the wall between life and death. Anatomy and architecture lost their distinction where corpse-mounds took root and sent up glowing corals, and reeds and bulbs. Traveling through the hallways felt like wriggling through the bowels of an ancient tree, and Ibrahim could have easily believed the path would have gone on forever, had he not known otherwise.

"Why does everything have to be so horrible?" Larry asked, softly.

"Does there have to be an answer to that?"

"Shouldn't there be?" Larry said.

"Would having a reason make it alright?" Ibrahim said.

"I…" Larry stared. "I don't know."

At last, they came to what remained of the Matter Printer floor.

It had been only a couple of hours since the big fight, yet, looking at the ruin the factory floor had become, Ibrahim would have thought it had been a century or more.

The patterned linoleum floor snaked like a river through the walls of fungus. Though solid, the walls seemed to be ever on the verge of melting. The fungal bark encrusted nearly all of the factory's walls and ceiling. Tendon-like and dripstone growths bridged gaps between ground and floor. Ibrahim could just barely make out the vague outlines of what used to be stairs or ruptured incubation tanks, but he lost track of them amidst all the other details. The doorways gave views to the hallways beyond. Most of the doors themselves were gone, but a few remained in place, haphazardly swung, with shards of broken windows closing in like fangs on their empty frames. But, despite that sharpness, the view on the other side was far from savage.

"It's… beautiful," Larry said.

You wouldn't have thought it had been a battlefield only a short time ago.

Little sprigs of bioluminescence grew from nearly every surface, too gentle to oppose the dark. A few of the light fixtures still worked, however; they stuck out from the dark like lanterns in a forgotten wood, and in their light, drifts of spore-mist glistened like dust motes in a sunbeam. Even so, there was no doubting that Night ruled this place. And if the Night ruled, then Letty was its queen.

This was the first time either of the two wyrms had seen the tree that Letty had become. Letty's reign over the night-land was a silent one, and nearly motionless, except for the occasional puff of spores that wafted out from its many heads.

Slithering forward, Ibrahim moved in between two of Letty's massive roots and then glanced back at Larry. "Are you sure you're okay? I don't know what we'll face inside Letty's twisted mind, so I'd rather not have to worry about you freaking out on me again."

Larry slithered up behind him. "I think I'll be fine."

Ibrahim snorted. "You sure? I've already got my work cut out for me with keeping myself in check."

Larry clenched his claws. "I'm just a little dizzy, that's all." He nodded. "I can do this, Dr. Rathpalla—and I want to. I want to help."

"I'll be glad to have that help." Ibrahim pressed his body onto Letty's trunk.

Surprisingly, there was no resistance from Letty as he initiated the link. That meant that either Letty was welcoming them, or she was too far gone to care—or perhaps, it meant something entirely new. This would be his first time melding with a wyrm-tree, after all.

Who knows what kind of weirdness that might cause?

Larry came up beside Ibrahim while the haustoria were still wriggling out of the psychiatrist's body. The janitor joined the link.

"Just, be ready," Ibrahim said. "And expect resistance."

He focused his thoughts on Dr. Derric, and then everything went dark.

— — —

The biggest surprise was that there was no surprise. No hostility. No cackling welcome. Just stillness and blue skies.

A balmy, sunny summer's day.

Ibrahim and Larry stood in the middle of an asphalt road, fully human flanked, on either side by palm trees—short, tall; short tall.

"Is this some kind of fantasy of hers?" Larry asked.

"Considering how we're dressed," Ibrahim said, "what else can it be anything but."

After a quick look-over, Ibrahim discovered that, like Larry, he'd been subjected to a complete change of wardrobe. Their clothes were old fashioned, dark, dapper suits with breathily opened collars, bounded from above by short-brimmed hats and from below by simple, striking neckties.

"You clean up pretty nicely," Ibrahim said, remarking on Larry's appearance.

"You too."

"Where do you think we are?" Ibrahim asked.

"Well," Larry said, tugging at his coat, "we're obviously in some ritzy neighborhood." He glanced at the palm trees lining the sidewalks. "Somewhere down south, I bet. Maybe Seasweep or Courtend. We look like we're in a period detective drama, or somethin'."

"Letty did grow up during the Prelatory," Ibrahim said. "It makes sense she'd conjure up this era."

"We're here for Dr. Derric, right?"

Ibrahim nodded. "And any other poor sops we can save."

"How do we know we're in the right place?"

"No matter how many links I do," Ibrahim replied, "controlling where I first appear remains more of an art than a science. I know the participants' mental states play a role."

"And what was yours?" Larry asked.

"I was focusing on Dr. Derric as we went in. I can only hope we got spat out in the right place."

Larry narrowed his eyes, staring at an empty spot over the sidewalk, by the road. "I don't have any control over this mind world," he said. "How about you?"

Ibrahim tried to port into his Main Menu, but nothing happened.

"Nope."

"Letty's will is incredibly strong," Larry said.

That it was. When wyrms linked, their minds stood to engage in a tug of war between. If everyone got along, things could be shared equitably. But if one participant pushed or pulled too hard or became domineering, the balance could shift.

Ms. Kathaldri's will hung in the air like the presence of an angry god. Her ego was tall as the sky.

It left a bad taste in Ibrahim's mouth. "Remember to pull out if things get too dicey," he said.

"Things feel pretty dicey already," Larry said.

As the two men looked around, Ibrahim found his attention being pulled toward one of the side-streets up ahead. He knew there had to be something to it, because Larry was looking at the same thing.

"Do you—"

Dr. Rathpalla nodded. "—Something's there, alright."

He set off on a walk, making his way onto the sidewalk. The lawns and parkways on either side were expansive, filled with greenest grass, and the homes behind them were positively mansions. Their front yards would have made for small parks.

The sidewalks didn't continue down that one side-street. Nor, for that matter, did many of the lawns. Instead, walls rose up, made from either stone or plants.

It left Ibrahim feeling like he was creeping alongside castles.

The sense of a powerful presence grew stronger as Larry and Ibrahim walked down the street. Eventually, they came up to a long driveway that carved out a path between the spades of overgrown trees and hedges.

"Here," Ibrahim said.

The soles of their shoes clacked on the pavement as they walked down the driveway. Then they turned off the driveway and onto a patio of jigsaw flagstone that led to a thickly balustraded staircase that led down to a truly grand space.

Ibrahim followed Larry up the steps, but then the janitor suddenly crouched down and hid in the middle of the stairs, against the balustrade, with his finger held up to his lips.

Dr. Rathpalla crouched beside him.

"Would you look at that…" Ibrahim muttered.

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