"Forcefields up!" Dr. Rathpalla screamed.

The wyrms raced on, and the land raced with them. The hillsides below, stubbled with shops and apartment complexes overrun by fungus, flattened out as the high-rises of Elpeck's heart rapidly approached.

As did the flower-ships.

Larry flew after them, a pursuing demon, like the Norms of legend.

The wyrms rose up at a low angle to avoid crashing, hurtling toward the skyscrapers' spires.

Unfortunately, that set them onto a collision course with the Flowers.

Both the lights building at the front of the ships' hulls and the front of Larry's body were as bright as suns and ready to burst.

Kurt and Dr. Rathpalla wove a large sheet of pataphysics, spreading it as wide as they could as quickly as they could, to try to give the group some cover. Seeing this, Karl started conjuring a weave of his own, but the ships fired their death rays before he could get anything done. Kurt and Dr. Rathpalla's shield deflected some of the blistering red rays, but much of the energy still made it through. Karl tossed the glistening blue and gold threads in his claws to the side, lobbing himself in that direction, to avoid the brunt of the incredible weapons' power, and managed to get away with just a singed back and mane. The burns smarted fiercely.

Also, Jonan was screaming.

"Shit! They got me! They—"

"—Stop!" Karl yelled. "You're not in danger! I am."

Larry shrieked. The sound made Karl's head ache. He winced.

One of the rays struck the corrupted wyrm and cut him in half, burning through his body. Larry spiraled and fell, only to flicker and then reappear where he'd been moments before, completely unharmed, just like the last time.

Had the corruption made the wyrm immortal?

"Angel's mercy!" Geoffrey cried, "This is never going to end!"

Flicking his claws, Larry swept pataphysics around himself in a supernatural cloak and then let out a roar that shivered down Karl's spine and made his wounded back sting.

The corrupted wyrm's power shot out in all directions, knocking Karl and the others back.

The world spun.

Karl saw the air around Larry flash, and then wyrm shot himself at the flower-ships like a spear of sunlight. He blurred into a thunderclap, and by the time Karl saw the sound, Larry had already hit his target, piercing their translucent, oval shields.

The energies shattered like glass.

Larry was a storm, tearing his implacable claws through the ship's hull, shredding them like flesh. He cavitation attacks into the damaged hulls at point-blank range.

Larry bolted at the next ship, piercing its shields and cracking it open.

The first Flower blossomed in waves of fire and metal and crackling blue.

One down.

Another thunderclap snapped through the air. The second exploded as the corrupted wyrm tore into the third.

Two.

Larry shot out from the debris.

Three.

Wave after wave swept out, inundating and succussive.

It all happened so quickly. The ships never stood a chance. Now, they were only sparks and flames and sparkling debris raining onto the city.

"Sword stab me!" Geoffrey yelled.

Karl shivered in terror.

"How the hell are we going to stop this…?" Jonan muttered.

Larry shot up, making a corkscrew turn as he came about. He lifted his head and roared, loosing rays into the sky.

More Flowers veered away from their battles. The blue jets behind them flared long and bright as they rocketed toward the city and the corrupted wyrm.

Jonan eyed the ships with dread. "I think I was better off with the crazy lady."

— — —

"Today just keeps getting worse and worse," Brand muttered.

"Wait till it's your boyfriend who's on the line!" Yuth's severed head yelled. The wyrmsong made her vibrate in Brand's grip.

On the plus side, Brand thought, at least no one is calling me weird for carrying a severed head around.

If Brand had a groat for every time that had happened, he'd have two groats. Whether or not that was a lot depended on who you asked.

"I don't think Dr. Nowston envies you, dear," Mrs. Elbock said.

Charles "the Egg Man" Twist screeched: "Less talk-y, more fly-y!"

"You guys," Jonan yelled from atop Karl's back, "you gotta split up, now!".

"There isn't enough time!" Kurt said.

"Make time!" Jonan replied.

"Merritt," Brand said, "come with me!" He banked to the left, and Mrs. Elbock followed.

Brand flew parallel to the sweeping red monorail track curving past a line of skyscrapers, and then swerved to the right and dove down into a building-shadowed street. Pipe-organ sporestacks, trunks like gnarled wood, and other fungal prominences extruded from broken windows and burning skyscrapers. The destruction flickered past as Brand flew.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Dr. Nowston," Karl yelled, "watch out!"

Tightening his grip on Nurse Costran's head, Brand veered down a street just in time to dodge a death rays. A terrific crash erupted behind him, its sound waves streaming past his second sight.

Brand looked back.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Larry had just punched clean through a glassy skyscraper spire, scattering debris every which way. As Brand darted around a corner, Larry thrashed and roared and fired another laser from his snout. The beam hit the middle floors of a medium-sized skyscraper and then sliced out the side as the corrupted wyrm flailed.

The building collapsed with a screech of glass and steel. Structural beams buckled and broke.

In moments, a whole street-wall of buildings came tumbling down.

Merritt sped up enough to overtake Brand and glance back at him.

"More are coming!" she said. "More of the ships!" Spores streamed from her snout pores like an old locomotive.

As if on cue, red death rays started to shoot down from above, tearing through the streets in wide arcs.

"They'll bring the whole city down on top of us!" Yuth cried.

Thunderclaps percussed overhead, and several beams cut out.

Brand looked up.

"Beast's teeth!"

Larry was obliterating the ships with ease.

Brand didn't know if wyrm physiology had a blood-analogue, but if it did, his was running as cold as a night on an icebreaker on the scalp of the world. He could barely imagine the kind of technology—magic? magitechnology?—that the Strangers must have had to be able to create their weapons, their energy shields, and the ships that bore them. Even so, Larry—or rather, whatever had taken hold of him—was making mincemeat out of them.

What could they do against something like that, other than run? And what could they do if the corrupted wyrm decided to give chase?

A doppelbrand reached out to the rest of himself. "Dude, check the Main Menu! We've got company!"

Brand budded off a second consciousness to do just that, while leaving his first consciousness in charge of keeping his body from being burnt to a crisp or getting crushed by the rapidly depreciating real-estate.

His prime consciousness ran up to the great cluster of soul crystals at the center of his. His human form's jaw dropped as he noticed that a certain soul had just finished uploading into their crystal. Fluidic light jostled about within it, eager to be released.

Brand willed the crystal into his hand and summoned its passenger. The crystal's light phased out of its vitreous shell and then thickened and swelled as it took on a familiar shape.

"What in tarnation is goin' on?" Dr. Marteneiss asked.

— — —

"Dr. Marteneiss!"

Heggy couldn't decide whether the smile on Dr. Nowston's face was genuine or just smug.

It could be both, though, she figured.

Clenching her fists, Heggy dug her nails into her palms and pressed her arms against the sides of her coat.

"You ate me!" she yelled.

"Technically," he said, "I absorbed you. I am now a saprophyte, after all."

Heggy rolled her eyes and grumbled inaudibly.

Even though she'd been bleeding out on the ground in a semi-conscious state when Dr. Nowston had "absorbed" her, Heggy had been present enough in her final seconds of corporeal existence to drink in all the weird shit that painted her memory of the moment from end to end. She'd felt her body bend, break, and deform as the pathologist-wyrm's creepy-ass filaments had flooded into her and pulled her apart, undoing all the seams. The memory sat alongside her recollection of the exultant moment she'd gone commando on the insane, time-traveling Lassedite and his equally insane followers with the help of her trusty Koenig CC1701 rocket launcher, in the weirdest possible combination. The physical and mental violation that Dr. Nowston's freakish wyrm-body had inflicted on her pretty much ruined the—

"—Oh, I can fix that," Brand said.

And then, just like that, before Heggy could complain or even understand what was happening, all those unpleasant feelings were gone with the wind. She could still remember them having happened, but it now came with a kind of detached objectivity.

"What the hell did you just do to me?" she demanded.

Dr. Nowston nodded earnestly. "I made those bad feelings go away."

The small part of Heggy's mind that still wanted to believe this was all just a dream died at the end of the sentence. It hadn't just died, it had been fucking impaled.

"Don't do that!" she barked. Her hands flew to her head. "What the fuck is wrong with you?! You can't just reach into people's heads and edit their consciousness!"

Brand shrugged. "If you say so." The next thing Heggy knew, she could remember the feeling of her spine snapping and her skin breaking open.

All the unpleasantness came rushing back to her. She couldn't so much as look down at her limbs without remembering the way they'd curled up like dried leaves.

Heggy shook her limbs in dismay. "Take it back!" she pleaded. "Take it back!"

Thankfully, Brand did.

Just wait until Vern hears about this, she thought.

All in all, this was pretty much par for what Heggy had been expecting ever since she learned about the wyrms and their role in the afterlife. On the one hand, all the aches and pains of her plague-fucked mortal form were gone. Even that old sore spot on her right hip was gone—and that was very nice. Looking herself over, it was also definitely a relief that she looked and felt like herself. It was nice to be back in her white medical coat and her favorite pair of soft slacks instead of the beasteaten PPE.

"Does Genneth know that you're doing this? It sounds like the kind of thing he'd get in a tizzy over."

"He's actually the one who first promulgated the method," Dr. Nowston replied.

Heggy blinked for a moment, and then waved her hand dismissively. "Just get on with it, already."

"Get on with what?" Brand asked.

"Listen here, Dr. Nowston," Heggy said, "I'm a bundle of battle-tested intuition, and, right now, all my alarm bells are ringing like there's no tomorrow, and this time, I ain't keepin' quiet about it. Not any more! Shit has hit a fan. I can smell it."

"How did you know?" Brand asked. "Was it something I said?"

Heggy would be the first to tell you that she didn't know Dr. Nowston very well. He was my friend, after all. That was probably the biggest thing the two of them had in common. Even so, when combined with her pluck and common sense, that link was more than enough to give her insight into the situation.

"It's written all over you," she said. "You're on edge, and you're not doin' anything to hide it." She pointed insistently. "You're tappin' your feet, your eyes are zonin' in and out like a wayward butterfly, and, every couple of seconds, you keep clenchin' your fists."

And Brand clearly knew he was doing the clenching, because he tried to surreptitiously move his arm behind his back and hide it from her.

"Honey, please," Heggy said, "I order people around at a hospital for a living. I know all, and see all. So…" She crossed her arms and sighed. "You better tell me what's goin' on right now." She looked Dr. Nowston in the eyes. "Why'd you just bring me out? It's not like we've got anything to reminisce about."

"So…" Brand said, crossing his hands behind his back, "about that…"

And then he told her. And told her. And told her.

"Sweet sassafras," Heggy said, gobsmacked, "I think I miss being dead. Things were a lot simpler."

"No," Brand said, "they only felt that way because you didn't exist to experience otherwise."

Heggy shook her head. "I can't believe this. I mean, I can; from the moment I first heard about her, I just knew Andalon was gonna be bad news—but, really, Lass' ass, I'm outta commission for a couple hours and now everything is falling to shit!" Heggy sighed. "I guess I died like I lived: cleanin' up other folks' messes." But then she smirked. "Oh well, what's another mess on top of the pile when you've gone through as many as I have?"

Brand shook his clenched fists in approval. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that!"

"Yes, I do," Heggy said. "Your emotions are just oozin' out of you."

Brand cleared his throat and suppressed his radiant joy. Heggy could feel the adjustment happening in real time as the confidence blanketing her thoughts gave way to cold, hard, ice-water sober pessimism.

She nodded. "That's more like it," she said. "Also," she added, "just so we're clear though, when this is over, I have a bucket list and it is going to be filled, y'hear me?"

Dr. Nowston nodded vigorously.

"Alright!" Clapping her hands together, Heggy rubbed her palms against each other, generating some invigorating friction. "Enough beatin' around the bush. Take me out there."

Brand's expression soured. "What if something happens to you?"

"Dr. Nowston—"

"—Please, call me Brand."

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