I flew forward, low to the ground, tearing through the enemy ranks. I put my momentum into my claw swipes and backed them up with shivering plexuses around my talons that turned them into vibro-blades. The blades melted through solids with ease.

Despite the mechs' firepower, their large size made them laughably easy targets. I grabbed one by the leg, lifted it up, and tossed it away. In my old life, I would have been pleasantly surprised by my own strength—who among us hasn't ever secretly wished they had superpowers?—but it really didn't matter to me anymore.

All the power in the world wasn't worth squat if it couldn't save the people you loved.

Multiple Vyxit tried to grapple or jump on me. I pulsed repulsion waves from my body and sent them flying.

"Remember the plan!" Lt. Dueright said. "Everyone, scatter!"

After slamming some Vyxit with a smack of my tail, I shot off to the north, dodging a volley of light arrows with a corkscrew maneuver. Several of the Vyxit hoverbikes sped after me. One of them raised an arm—

"—Wait, what?" I roared.

His arm was a cannon! A freaking cannon!

A glob of angry, yellow light swelled in the weapon's maw.

I swam up, bursting ahead with a spot of plexus, avoiding the brunt of the attack, but not enough to fully escape the cannon's scale-singeing stream.

I sprayed spores in agony.

Off to the side, I saw some of the twEfE knock back Watterson's troops. Their naginatas' blades crackled with energy that let them slice through the wyrms' armaments like butter, leaving molten, white-hot cross-sections that sloughed off and fell to the ground.

Two of the chicken-walker mechs loped toward the Fort. Their munitions blew entire sections of the electrified fence to smithereens. The walkers and the Vyxit troops poured in through the opening before the debris had settled, barreling onto the road.

That same road would take them right past Pel and the kids' bunker.

I roared: "No!"

Banking sharply to the side, I shot wide psychokinetic blade arcs at the ground troops. Two twEfE buzzed over, summoning cotton shields to block my attack at the last minute, but not before my razor winds chopped through a walker mech's legs.

I started weaving up a forcefield wall to block off their advance.

Slick and two other wyrms roared past me, strafing the trapped Vyxit with their heat rays. One of the wyrms swooped down low and swamped the aliens with a tidal wave of spore breath, gathering the some of the spores in balls of force that they hurtled at the aliens in bullets and boulders.

"No!" I screamed.

Yes, they were our enemy, but they didn't deserve to have &alon steal their souls! No one did!

The spores swept past me, cresting over my barrier. I had to use my third eyes' wyrmsight to see through the thick green clouds. Laser beams and light arrows spattered and sparked as they crashed into my forcefield. Fortunately, my third eyes showed me the bright energy shields around dozens of Vyxit troops reducing the spores to glittering cinders.

Then I heard Vernon crow in triumph in my thoughts: "Liftoff!"

Instantly, bullets and heat-rays began strafing the scattered Vyxit forces.

Fort Marteneiss' aerostats had joined the battle!

Lt. Dueright yelled: "The cavalry's here!"

He sent out ripples of psychokinesis, scattering the surrounding spores and knocking some of the Vyxit to the ground. "Scatter the clouds, everyone," he said. "Our machines don't like melting!"

All around, Watterson's wyrms responded, sweeping away any remnants of their spore breath to clear a path for the aerostats.

Below and behind me, I saw our tanks rolling into position.

"I have a better idea," I muttered.

Pushing my claws against my, I pumped as much power into the thing as I could. The wall of energy crackled in my wyrmsight, thickening beneath my touch. I slithered forward along the road, pushing my forcefield forward like a sweeping broom, ramming it into any Vyxit in my way. twEfE were like woodpeckers with their magic and their weapons, bashing holes into my plexuses through which Vyxit attacks could pour through. I didn't try to dodge them; I just took the damage as it came, growling in pain with every bolt. I lifted off the ground. As I rose, I stretched my forcefield into a sheet whose bottom edge I anchored to the ground and whose top edge I fastened to my body.

A volley of light arrows hit one of our tanks. The machine exploded a second later, burning like a bonfire.

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Flicking my tail, I swam ahead, stretching the barrier across the air—stretching it, and stretching it, building up tension.

Then I broke the connection to the ground, and the rest of the forcefield snapped forward so swiftly and powerfully that not even the twEfE could dodge it.

"Fire!" Vernon's yells piggybacked on my wyrmsong:

The tanks fired their railguns, launching metal rods at the Vyxit. The rods moved at supersonic speeds, and with the wyrms' attacks and our aerostats' covering fire, the Vyxit weren't able to dodge or deflect everything that came their way.

Something had to give—and something did.

The railgun's bolts hit several of the walkers with explosive force. The machines slammed into one another and the ground behind them, which burst open, as if it had been struck by a mortar, flinging up a flurry of rock, dirt, and fungal crust.

Slick's plan was working like a charm. In close quarters, the aliens could use their tech and pataphysics to shield themselves as a group from our energy weapons and psychokinetic attacks. However, when the Vyxit forces were separated, us wyrms had the upper hand, and only the Vyxit's finest warriors had any chance of survival.

I accidentally gushed a spore geyser in my excited bellowing.

The Vyxit had made the mistake of underestimating Brigadier General Watterson's Wyrm Brigade.

"They simply aren't used to it," Yuta's spirit said. His words were clear, though faint. "&alon fights like a child, throwing all that she has at her enemies without any thought or planning. The Vyxit have only ever fought her silver-eyed serpents. They've lost sight of what it means to fight trained soldiers."

Lord Uramaru was absolutely right.

"Forces, advance!" Watterson yelled. "We've got them on the ropes!"

Swooping down to the ground, Slick, Dueright, and the others got down and dirty with the fighting. They introduced the Vyxit to the business ends of their claws and tails. Slick managed to cut through one of the twEfE's armor; the poor bird had been too caught up with dodging a psychokinetic blast on the one hand and a hail of aerostat bullets on the other, which had given Slick the window to strike.

I did my part, and then some, launching force blasts at irregular intervals.

We were putting the Vyxit on the defensive!

I swear, the bulbs on my spines glowed brighter than ever before.

And then, everything went wrong.

Someone yelled. "Ships!"

Scores of golden-eyed wyrm heads lifted skyward just in time to spot two Vyx starfighters streak down through the dusk-painted cloud cover. The ships' hulls glowed brightly as they fired their death rays. Multiple lines of the red beams swept across the battlefield, slicing through vehicles and buildings alike with concentrated rage.

Any aerostats in the beams' paths detonated the instant they were struck.

It wasn't until I sped up my thoughts and thickened my wyrmsight that I realized just how much damage the ships had caused. Severed wyrm bodies rained onto the battlefield.

The Vyxit soldiers didn't skip a beat. Their elite troops struck back with a vengeance. twEfE braves cut gouges into our wyrms with long, sweeping strikes from their enchanted naginatas. The hoverbikers impaled one wyrm's head with a fusillade of light arrows, hoisting the grizzly trophy high as they rode on. And that guy, with the arm-cannon? I nearly lost an arm to him!

Watterson bellowed. "Scatter!"

The wyrms retreated, hovering low along the ground. They dodged the passing death rays.

I will admit, I kind of screamed in terror. A lot.

"C'mon people," Vernon yelled, "let's give our wyrms some covering fire!"

"Yes, please!" I said.

"I'm on it!" Lt. Kaplan said.

An aerostat came zooming over the battlefield from off to side. It pelted the Vyxit with bullets, who responded with volleys of laser fire. Pataphysics sculpted the lasers' fury, sweeping them through the air like tendrils or whips, or scattering them into flying motes that merged into coruscant orbs.

Dueright corkscrewed as he rocketed upward. He took some of the laser fire in his own shields, and used the rest of his powers to divert the largest orbs.

Globs of light spun off and flew around. Force-fields slammed every-which way.

"Comin' through!" Kaplan yelled. Several of the lashing lasers blasted chunks off his aerostat's hull.

"Quickly!" Dueright screamed, swimming round, "Take out the ships! Take out the ships!"

Slick and several others followed after him.

It seemed the wyrms had to work in tandem to take down a Vyx starfighter.

But, unlike the one they'd saved me from, this time, the wyrms didn't have the element of surprise on their side.

They paid for its absence in full.

Dueright and his comrades got caught off guard by a combination of twEfE warriors's attacks and covering fire from the chicken walker mechs lumbering across the barren earth. The interference forced the wyrms onto the defensive. Others did for Lt. Dueright what Dueright had done for Lt. Kaplan's aerostat, but it cost us precious seconds. By the time Dueright and the others had riposted the oncoming attacks with pataphysical shockwaves, the hulls of the approach Vyx starfighters were awash with angry, red light.

Their beams were ready to fire.

"No!" I bellowed.

Working at lightning speed, I wove and detonated tempestuous plexuses behind and below me, blasting myself toward Dueright and the others. Through a moment of slowed time, I spread another forcefield thick between my arms, extending it far to either side like some kind of oversized shield. Using it, I rammed into my fellow wyrms, knocking them out of harm's way. In the pulse-pounding seconds between my rescue effort and the searing punishment that it meted out to me, just as I was about to return my perception of time to normal, I noticed something in the Vyx starship, beneath its protective energy fields: an angry, quivering aura whose magenta highlights throbbed in the fading daylight.

The starfighter was infected. I would have praised my lucky bowtie, but there was just one problem.

It was a Type One case, not a Type Two.

It looked like Brigadier General Watterson was wrong: my quest wouldn't need to wait, after all.

Unfortunately, any thrill I felt was counterbalanced by the deeply painful sensation of the last couple feet of my tail getting disintegrated by a Vyxit death ray.

Roaring in pain, I flew away, doubling back, trailing smoke and ash.

I flicked out my claws.

Now I was angry.

I chased after the infected ship, pointed at it with a claw and screamed. "This ship is infected!"

I had to fight to keep my arm stiff against the wind.

The other wyrms' spirits spoke through their song.

"It's infected?"

"It's the weak link!"

Watterson spewed a spore cloud at some pursuing Vyxit. She stole a page from their playbook and sculpted her spores into lances and bullets that she launched at our attackers with devastating effect.

The spore-weapons sizzled as they streamed through the air.

The Brigadier General shouted over the battle: "Let's help Dr. Howle, folks!" She immediately divided up responsibilities, tasking some of her wyrms to get the uninfected ship's attention. Meanwhile, the rest of them were to join me.

"Wait, what?!" I yelled, upon hearing her plan.

"You heard me," Watterson said. "We're gonna tackle the damn thing!"

And she meant it.

Half a dozen wyrms streamed toward me, with twEfE and energy blasts hot on their tails. The wyrms flew directly into the infected starfighter's line of fire, daring the Vyxit pilots to unleash their death rays while their comrades were in the way.

As predicted, the pilots hesitated. Volleys of death rays charging on the ship's hull suddenly waned.

"There!" Slick yelled. "There's our fucking opening!"

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