Dr. Derric's spirit popped into being right next to Karl as the young man returned to his wyrm-body.

"What the fuck is going on?" Dr. Derric asked.

"Didn't Dr. Rathpalla explain it to you?" Karl muttered, as he followed the other wyrms.

"I mean, yeah, but… still."

Jonan's spirit followed alongside Karl, walking down the tracks.

The subway tunnel rose in a low but steady incline. The path split through tunnels and multilane extensions. Everything was dark and dead, and &alon was the only source of light or life. The wall the tunnel eventually dead ended into a wall, thickly overgrown with corrugated, bark-like fungus, though the path itself—and Larry's trail along it—continued through a brick-toothed hole in the side of the tunnel. Karl lingered while Dr. Nowston traveled ahead. The pathologist didn't have any trouble sticking his head through the hole, but slithering through it was a bit of a struggle, one that the wall lost as more and more of its bricks were broken off and pulled loose by Dr. Nowston's flanks. Eventually, however, he made it through to the passage beyond.

"Dr. Nowston?" Karl asked.

A moment later, the pathologist stuck his head back through the hole. Dr. Rathpalla had been sticking his head into the hole at the same time, so the two unexpectedly knocked heads.

The wyrms recoiled from the impact, and then shook themselves out.

"Slow down!" Dr. Nowston said. He lifted his neck and head, only to bash his horns against the passage's significantly lower ceiling.

He briefly glanced back at the path up ahead.

"The way forward is a lot narrower and"—he struggled to unspool himself—"crampier than the subway tunnel."

The other wyrms slowed down as they approached the hole. Karl went in first, though he was still slithering through when he heard Dr. Nowston call out:

"—Holy shit…"

As I often told people, in a city like Elpeck, history was often quite literally just beneath your feet (or, in this case, your underbelly).

Dr. Rathpalla slithered through the musty passage, only to stop and gawk, right alongside Dr. Nowston.

"What the hell is this?" he asked.

"I think we're in an actual, beast-eaten dungeon," Dr. Nowston said.

Looking around, Karl couldn't help but agree.

It was pitch black inside the dungeon, except for the soft, pale light coming from &alon's growths where they slowly advanced into the chamber through the hole in the tunnel's wall. Karl "saw" the room through his second eyes, through the play of his song against its walls and other features. Some of the walls were made of solid stone, rough as sharkskin, while others were cobbled together from blocks too tall and thick to be called brick. The ceiling was scalloped by arches and vaults and held up by square columns that threatened to fall apart at the touch of a breeze.

The rumble of the wyrms' breaths and murmurations pulsed off chunks of metal—abandoned swords, perhaps?—with sound-made light. Karl's echolocation bounced off the familiar contours of a pair of human skeletons on the floor, lain together against a wall.

"Who's there!?" Larry yelled, from somewhere in the distance. His cries rippled brightly across the walls.

One of the skeleton's chests caved in on itself, its time-eaten bones crumbling to dust.

Dr. Rathpalla slithered through the arched entryway at the opposite side of the room, more bones crumbling as he passed by. Meanwhile, Dr. Nowston pulled away to make room for the other wyrms as they filtered into and through the room. He followed along after them, levitating alongside Karl.

The entryway led into an even larger chamber girded by arched galleries. Through the echolocated sound, Karl could make out broken tiles in the shallow, recessed pit at the center of the room. The place was even drier than the bones crumbling in its corners. Ghostly outlines of chests, barrels, satchel, and other organic goods that had long since rotted away surrounded pieces of metal scattered across the floor.

Larry sat in the middle of the recess. He'd coiled the lower part of his body on itself, while holding his forepart erect.

His eyes were wide with gold and fear. They glowed in the dark like souls turned to coins.

Karl followed after the two doctors, who landed on the recess' broken tiled floor. More wyrms filed into the chamber behind him. The position of Karl's eyes on his head made it easy for him to keep track of movement that would have been lost to him as a human. Some of the other wyrms started snooping around, investigating the ruin, while others, like Karl and Yuth, joined Dr. Nowston and Dr. Rathpalla and approached Larry.

Dr. Rathpalla glanced at the wyrms around the room. "Quick, if there are any exits, find them and block them."

Several golden-eyed heads nodded and then slithered out of sight to secure any exits.

Larry turned to Dr. Rathpalla in a panic, puffing out spores. The green mist intermingled with the gently glowing fluids Larry had trailed behind him. The spores ate into the floor, making the stone crack, fizzle and hiss.

Dr. Rathpalla pressed his claw on Dr. Nowston's forearm, as if to say, "Wait here", and then slithered up alongside Larry, who then flinched and bent away.

"Please, Larry, just stay calm." Ibrahim held up his claws in a pacific gesture. "Tell me what's going on."

Karl really hoped the psychiatrist could placate him. Their group already had the Strangers to deal with, not to mention &alon.

And now, this.

He didn't want the wyrms to have to fight amongst themselves.

More fluids ran off Larry's body, pooling on the floor. Karl made some low vocalizations, using the sound brightening the room. As they bounced off Larry's body, the sounds revealed there were pits and ulcers eating away at his flanks. The bare, scaleless wounds were wet and festering, and none of the telltale signs of wyrm regeneration were present—not so much as a single strand of squirming mycelium.

Larry slithered backward. "Get away from me!" He moved like a cornered animal, and barked like one, too. "Just get away from me! I told you to leave me!"

"No one is leaving you, Larry," Dr. Rathpalla said. "How could we, when you're like this?"

Larry raked his claws across his head. "Queen's law, if you won't leave me, then just fucking kill me! Please! Kill me!"

Gasps echoed through the room.

"Kid," Jonan said, resting an arm on Karl's side, "we need to get the fuck out of here." He stared at Larry. "I know what bad news looks like."

Karl couldn't help but agree with him.

Shuddering, Larry bent over and lowered his head to the ground, drooling spores from his snout holes. He repeated "No," again and again—a dozen times over—trembling with each utterance while slowly growing quieter and quieter, as if the word was some kind of incantation.

"Don't you get it, guys?" he muttered. His song was the rasp of a puff of air as it scratched through a rusted flute, barely above a whisper. "There's no hope. No escape. There's no release, just… torment."

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"Larry," Yuth said, shaking her head. "Please, you're scaring me!"

Larry looked Yuth in the eyes.

"I don't know. I don't know." His eyes twitched. "I want to be, because I 'm not, but… if I am, then I am… and…"

"C'mon, man, you're not making any fucking sense!" Dr. Nowston said.

Twitching, Larry jerked his head to the side. "There's nothing we can do." Suddenly, he twisted his snout. "Nothing. We can't fight the Strangers. We can't fight the fungus. How are we supposed to save others if we can't even save ourselves?"

Then, neck bent, he raised his head up to look Dr. Rathpalla in the eyes.

"Please," he squealed like a dying dog, "kill me. I'm scared. I'm so scared…" His words were mice, too afraid to flee. "I'm so scared, Yuth. I'm… Angel's mercy… I… I…—"

"—Dammit, Larry," Yuth said, "get a hold of yourself! This isn't you! Whatever this thing is, it's affecting your mind! Fight it! If I could do it, so can you!"

Rearing up, Larry clutched his head, he thrashed left and right, snorting out spores. The other wyrms skulked back in fear. More skeletons toppled and crumbled as Larry let out a plangent cry.

"Guys," Charles said, from out of sight, "I think I've found an exit!"

Charles' call reverberated from a distant corner of the warren. The sound waves striated the walls like sunlight in a pool as they moved, which made it easy for Karl to follow them back to their source.

Karl slithered off in that direction, muttering, "Thank the Angel."

"Karl," Yuth said, "where are you going!?"

"If there's an exit, let's take it," he said. "I don't like it here."

Dr. Nowston nodded, as did Dr. Derric. "Tell 'em, kid."

"Jonan," Dr. Nowston said, "we can see you, you know?"

Jonan staggered back, blinking in surprise. "Wait, really?" He turned to Karl, who nodded.

"Let's get Larry the fuck out of here," Dr. Nowston said.

"Update," Charles said. "There are also fungus monsters! Thank you, fungus monsters!"

"Karl, go check out the exit," Dr. Rathpalla said. "Yuth, Brand, and I will figure out what to do with Larry."

Karl nodded. "Understood."

He slithered away, toward the sound of Charles' song. The path took him down several narrow corridors, around two corners, and up the trough time had melted through the middle of jagged flight of steps. He found Mr. Twist squished into the end of a short corridor at the top of the steps. The nervous wyrm was pressing his upper body and coils against the walls on either side, squeezing himself out of the way to give Karl room to see what lay ahead.

Once, there had been some kind of doorway at the end of the corridor; the large keystone in the supporting arch said as much. However, at some point, someone had come along, torn down the door, and sealed the passage with bricks. Even the bricks were old; they were more like crumbled nuggets than honest stone.

But now there was a gash in the wall, freshly made, as indicated by the clouds of dust still settling down on Charles' coils. Light came through the hole, illuminating the dust. It was faint, dim, and distant, but it was there, and it was waiting for them. The scent of fresh fungus wafted through the opening in the wall, while bits of broken brick jostled about on the floor as something large slowly lumbered by. The sound moved toward the light. Diffuse vibrations coated the corridor on the other side of the hole, showing Karl that the corridor continued off to the right at an upward angle.

More sounds rumbled from the deeps to the left.

Jonan glanced at Charles. "Why were you thanking the fungus monsters?"

"Because they showed the way," the wyrm replied. Mr. Twist glanced at the opening. "&alon must be moving more of her troops topside."

"Well then, widen the hole!" Jonan said. "We need to get out of here!"

Karl turned away and slithered back to the others right after Charles nodded in acknowledgement.

Other wyrms had already been gathering near the tunnel out of the main room in advance of Karl's return. Karl motioned with his claws for them to move out of the way, which they did, and then he slithered out into the open and glanced back at the passage behind him. "Go forward, left, right, and then up the stairs," he said. "There's a passage there. I think it goes all the way to the surface. But don't go all at once. There's not that much room."

The others nodded and then slithered into the passageway one by one.

Turning away from them, Karl slithered over to Larry. "I think you should go with the others," he said, looking Nurse Costran in the eyes. He turned to Larry. "I… I can only imagine how hard this must be for you."

She looked on in worry. "What about—"

"Don't worry," Dr. Nowston said, "we'll bring him topside."

Even from what little time he'd spent among them, Karl could tell Yuth and Larry had deep feelings for one another. He hoped they'd be able to find their happy ending together. They'd already been through so much.

Inhaling sharply, Nurse Costran clenched her claws before nodding and slithering away.

Dr. Nowston turned to face Karl and Dr. Rathpalla. Larry shivered in place, muttering incomprehensibly all the while, in a low, indecipherable drone.

"Let's get him out of here," Dr. Nowston said.

"How do you want to do this?" Ibrahim asked.

Of the three of them, Dr. Nowston was the largest, while Ibrahim and Karl were about the same size. "I…—" but Dr. Nowston cut himself off.

"Lay him on my back," he said, turning to face the passageway to the exit. "There's not enough room to float him through." He glanced back over his non-existent shoulders and at the two wyrms. "It would be really great if you could help me carry the rest of him."

The wyrms looked at one another and nodded.

Larry made no protests. If anything, he'd become strangely quiet. He proffered no resistance as Ibrahim and Karl put their claws around him and hoisted him onto Dr. Nowston's back. The weight compressed Dr. Nowston's mane, forcing him low to the ground, underbelly muscles twitching as he fought to keep his forepart off the floor.

He groaned. "Alright, let's go." The sound was like dying brass.

Dr. Nowston made his way to Charles' passage, with Karl and Dr. Rathpalla carrying Larry's back half. The pathologist did his best to wrap an arm around Larry's neck to keep the janitor-wyrm properly hoisted.

The corners were the most difficult spots. Larry was shivering rather fiercely, which constantly threatened to roll him off Dr. Nowston's back, forcing Dr. Rathpalla to use his psychokinesis to keep Larry in place. Karl did his best to help.

"Dammit," Dr. Rathpalla cursed. "He's getting worse."

Dr. Nowston slithered up the tunnel. The progress was steady, but slow. "Just a little farther," he muttered.

The light filtering in from the end of the tunnel grew brighter as the minutes stretched on. Seeing more and more of &alon's mycelium reaching across the walls and ceiling like roots made Karl confident they were going the correct way.

Then, after a final bend, the four wyrms found daylight.

After the long slither, the corridor ended in a hydraulic service door. &alon's mycelium thickly encrusted the entrance, which had been broken down and eaten away, exposing the underground street tunnel on the other side. The growth had penetrated the door from the outside, extending from a massive, tree-like trunk that bulged through the street tunnel's brick walls. The entryway let out at one end of the tunnel, which lay to Karl's immediate right. The other wyrms were waiting for them at the tunnel's entrance, silhouetted by the daylight streaming in. Nearly all of them had their backs to the tunnel, their gazes concentrating on the sky.

Dr. Nowston used some psychokinesis to gently set Larry down on the sidewalk at the tunnel's side, which made it easier for him to slither toward the tunnel's entrance and look up at the scene overhead.

"Holy moly…" he muttered.

Karl slithered up behind him and took a look, and then made the Bond-Sign.

A great migration was underway.

Greg was a golden-eyed eyebrow crossing through the air. Huge swarms of flower-craft flew away from him, rivaled only by the size of the ones that were racing toward him. Smaller wyrms—most silver-eyed, but some golden—swam around the great wyrm, providing support. Greg's spore breath blasted out in a fanning cone like a thousand smoke trails. Many of the aircraft's glistening energy shields, flickered and failed, shattered by the dozens by Greg's psychic blasts, which left them vulnerable to the firestorms and burning hurricanes that swept out from his body and burnt them to cinders. He swam with clear intent, moving higher and higher, and away from the city, and he was taking the Strangers' fleet with him.

Off in the horizon, a massive smoke column was rising from the direction of West Elpeck Medical Center.

Shit, Karl thought.

Dr. Nowston turned back to Larry.

If they fired again, the rest of the city was gonna burn down!

Dr. Nowston roared in terror. "Dr. Nowston!"

Karl turned around, only to stop and stare.

Larry was sprawled on the sidewalk, divided in half by the sunlight coming through the tunnel, the rear half of his body lying in shadow. His fluids pooled around him like blood, though that was where the comparison ended, for blood didn't glow in a dream of prismatic colors, nor did it dribble upward with phantom intent.

Karl tried to run away, but for a moment, in his terror, he forgot his body and flopped backward, stumbling over himself and falling to the ground. Twisting his body, he rolled around and pushed himself up.

Larry had been deathly quiet for the last leg of the trek, but now, he made a sound—a shuddering moan—as he pushed off the pavement. Particolored flames ignited across his liquefaction. Gashes split open on his right arm, as if something within him was trying to break free. Shades churned in the gash, like it was a portal to another world.

And then Larry raised his head, revealing eyes of flame that burned in all the colors of the wind.

And he roared.

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