Larry! Ibrahim thought.

Dr. Rathpalla awoke feeling like he'd fallen flat on his face inside of his body, despite being perfectly upright. Shaking his head and shuddering, he pushed off Letty's firm, warm body and shoved himself out of the way. Ibrahim's haustoria did not appreciate this in the slightest, and stung and smarted as they snapped. Once the upper half of his body was free of the evil tree, he leaned over to grab Larry. The janitor-wyrm was close-eyed and unresponsive.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

It was time to do some multitasking.

While pulling his tail off Letty's trunk, Ibrahim pressed his claws into the narrow gap between Larry's body and Letty's and jostled his claws left and right to sever the connections, and then pried Larry off her with a plexus-enhanced pull, twining his tail around Larry to use the janitor's weight as leverage.

Larry broke free with a satisfying pop. All six of his eyes immediately fluttered open.

The two wyrms flopped onto the floor, rolling onto fungal prominences and bioluminescent blooms. Ibrahim hit his head on one of the sizzling spore-puddles eating away at the vinyl. Larry groaned.

And the Letty tree roared.

Ms. Kathaldri was awake, and not the least bit happy. Her many heads bellowed obscenities and spores in equal proportion, boiling with rage. She tried to lash out at Ibrahim and Larry, but her ossified branches could barely move.

All the spores Letty was pumping into the air were eating away at the ceiling of the ruined matter printer factory. Sections of the ceiling peeled away and fell as the structure groaned.

"We need to get the fuck out of here!" Ibrahim muttered.

Slithering underneath Larry, Ibrahim used his back to push up against Larry's underbelly. He let the janitor lean against him.

Larry wrapped around Ibrahim's flank.

Ibrahim slithered out of the room seconds before a large section of the roof broke away from the ceiling with a snap and crashed to the floor. Debris and other ejecta slid out from the hole in the ceiling and pelted Letty's wyrm-headed branches, and she was powerless to do anything but bellow and flail.

The current thickened, carrying corpses, broken flooring, pipes, and machinery. Streams of dust and other fine particles filled the gaps, seeding expansive clouds across the chamber. Letty's presence was a blurry aura figuration seen only by Ibrahim's wyrmsight as he slithered through who-knows-how-many feet of nonsense to get away, with Larry's weight bearing down on him the whole time.

Eventually, he turned onto a stairwell and slithered up and out, breaking away from the diffusing cloud. He snorted, spewing out a mix of ground up vinyl and drywall, chipped wood, and accumulated dust, all of which he cleared away with a gale-force sneeze.

Blinking, Ibrahim shook his head.

He felt better after sneezing. Though his body no longer needed to breathe, it clearly did not like having its innards dusted by all those particles. Having a dust-filled nose sucked enough on its own; having two dozen of them was intolerable.

But he could worry about that later.

Halfway up the first flight of steps, with the dust settling down on the floor, Ibrahim twisted and let Larry's body slide off him and onto the wrought iron steps and cushioning layer of psychokinesis.

Dr. Rathpalla didn't know the maximum load that the staircase could safely support, and did not want to risk going over it.

He let the plexus dissipate once Larry had settled in place.

Ibrahim had barely given any notice to the new souls that had taken up residence within him. Even the dopplegangers he'd deployed to welcome them were too worried about Larry to focus on their jobs.

Ibrahim reared up his forepart to get a better look at Larry, when, without warning, the janitor's body spasmed. The wyrm juddered and flailed. It got so bad that Ibrahim had to wrap Larry in a psychokinetic straight-jacket around just to keep him steady.

It took about thirty seconds for Larry's seizure to subside.

Seizure…

Ibrahim dwelled on the word.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

It was an ominous case of déjà vu. Just a week ago, Ibrahim had been in pretty much the same position: on a staircase, looking over Larry's unconscious body after the janitor had experienced a sudden grand mal seizure. At the time, Ibrahim had had no way of knowing that was par for the course for transformees.

So, what now? Why this? It didn't make any sense.

Wyrms didn't need to breathe. You could mince them into many fine pieces and they'd still stitch themselves back together, given enough time. Their bodies laughed off bullets and rested comfortably in flames.

And yet…

Somehow, Larry was sick. It was the only sensible conclusion Ibrahim Rathpalla could draw—and that was terrifying.

What in the world could make a wyrm sick?

Ibrahim dispelled Larry's bindings as soon as the wyrm had stilled.

"Talk to me, Larry!" He grabbed him by the arms and shook him, jostling the janitor's head left and right. "Talk to me!"

Larry's eyes blinked open with a start. Without a word, he pulled back and turned onto his belly, scales sliding against scales, and then slithered to the nearest landing, a couple steps further up the staircase's curve. There, he gathered himself into a tight, frightened coil. He kept himself low to the ground, with his head and neck only just peaking out above his flanks.

"Doc… what's going on?" He looked down at the dust settling at the base of the stairwell. "W-What happened?" He looked up at Ibrahim "Did we save Dr. Derric?"

"Did we…" Ibrahim shook his head. "Do you not remember what happened?"

Larry stared. "I… I…" His first two pairs of eyes blinked irregularly. "I don't know," he added, tooting softly. "I don't know."

Ibrahim's mind raced. "We went inside Letty's mind," he said. "We found Jonan's spirit, and many others. She was torturing them. We confronted her, and fought, and…"

"Y-Yes?" Larry asked.

A chill ran down the roots of Ibrahim's mane. He felt almost nauseous. "You really don't remember?"

Larry's arms trembled. "Please, Doc, you're scaring me! Tell me what happened!"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"Us linking up with Letty," Larry said.

Ibrahim looked up the stairwell. "You kept having panic attacks. They got worse. A lot worse. You knew something was wrong. And then… when we were making our escape…"

Ibrahim huffed out spores. For once, he was at a loss for words. How could he describe what had happened in a way that did it justice?

Sure, he could tell Larry he screamed and then liquified and then melted a hole into the ground that swallowed the world, but Larry would think he was nuts!

Ibrahim slowed his perceptions of time, to give himself a chance to figure out what to say. As he focused on his memory of the moment, mulling over its frightful turns, almost by accident, Ibrahim started to mumble under his breath. It was an old, bad habit of his; he'd mutter his words behind closed lips when he typed up messages. He'd fought long and hard to get a handle on it, but to no avail.

But this time, his mumblings weren't half-said words. They were wyrmsong.

Larry rose up, eyes wide. "Angel's breath…"

"W-What is it?"

"You just shared the memory with me," Larry said. "It came to me through… your song."

The janitor wrapped himself in his arms. He trembled, whispering out spores. "By the Godhead, I just watched myself melt, and… Angel… I don't remember any of it." He held his head in his hands and shook. "What's happening to me!? What's—"

Inhaling sharply, Ibrahim pointed with a claw.

"Larry, look…"

The wyrm glanced down at himself.

Larry was… oozing. It had started so subtly that Ibrahim hadn't even noticed it. Now, though, there was no denying it. It was like he was sweating out his soul.

Fluid beaded up on Larry's scales and then trickled down his flanks, forming a dark stain. The fluid dripped down the steps in a slow, steady rhythm, sinking through the holes in the iron landing.

Flinching, Larry let out an agonized drone and shook his head. "No…. No no no no no no…" He held up one of his hands and watched the fluid drip down.

"Doc… what the hell is happening to me…?" He stared at Ibrahim with pleading eyes.

"I don't know. Maybe… is this what &alon has been so afraid of? The 'darkness' she rails against?" He shook his head.

"Genneth said &alon was the darkness!" Larry said.

"Then maybe it's something the Strangers have done."

"The Strangers?" Larry asked. "But I haven't even gotten close to them!" He spoke with the passion that came from fear.

"If the Strangers can do this to us," Ibrahim said, "the others are in great danger! We have to tell them immediately!"

"What's gonna happen to me?" Larry asked.

Ibrahim shook his head again. "Whatever it is, we're going to figure it out, I promise. Larry… we'll figure this out, I promise."

"What do we do now?"

"We tell the others. Come on."

Ibrahim levitated up the stairs to avoid touching Larry's fluids. Larry pulled out of the way and let Ibrahim take the lead on their trek back to the garage's first level. But as they passed one of the wyrm trees growing up in the hallway—one of the transformees Verune's cult had sent to attack the hospital—Ibrahim saw something that stopped him in his tracks.

His horns felt like they were crawling down his skull.

"What's wrong, Doc?" Larry asked.

Ibrahim replied by pointing with a single claw.

The tree was oozing, just like Larry was. Inky fluid ran down its bark, forming a small, steadily growing pool at the base of its trunk. Ibrahim watched a droplet form on one of its eyes. The fluid was golden at first—a bit of the wyrm's eye-stuff, sloughed off in liquid form—but darkened as it ran down the head's branch, mixing with the dregs of its flesh, dripping off, Night black, from the underside of a branch.

"Doc," Larry said, wide-eyed with terror. "What's this mean? What's happening?"

Ibrahim slithered down the hallway without responding to Larry, ignoring everyone and everything as he went to the garage and made a beeline for the wide-boughed wyrm-tree in the middle. He looked over every inch of the tree, searching for any sign of liquefaction.

He looked and looked, coiling around, searching so intently that even the tree asked him, "What the hell are you doing?"

Ibrahim didn't let himself relax until his third search came up empty. Sighing out spores, he plopped down into a relieved coil.

"Doc?"

Ibrahim turned to the sound of Larry's song. The janitor had slithered up to the base of the exit ramp, with his golden eyes gazing at the rising day. He pointed at the ramp. Ibrahim went over to him, and the psychiatrist's whole body stiffened as he saw dark rivulets dribbling down the incline.

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.