Within the nuclear pit in the city, Karl and the others were still reeling from the news &alon had delivered to them.

"Did she just call Genneth Daddy?" Jonan said.

Dr. Derric's astonishment had a squishy, almost rubbery texture that bounced around whenever Karl thought of it, and Jonan was hardly the only person to feel that way. &alon's word choice left Dr. Marteneiss, Kurt, Nurse Costran, Mr. Twist, and so many others simply stunned. Earth-shattering developments had just trundled past the group like a merchant's wagon, and it wasn't just them; every wyrm had heard it, and Karl knew it, because he could hear choruses of wyrmsong carrying screams and laughter across the land.

No more fighting the Vyxit; no more wyrms going silver-eyed; no more making people sick; no more destroying worlds—and it was all thanks to yours truly.

Dr. Marteneiss had been on her knees, staring up at the uncaring Night, crying and laughing. Yuth had been sobbing uncontrollably, spewing spores like a fountain.

"Never thought I'd see the day," Heggy said, wiping her tears on her white coat's sleeve. "Not only has the Green Death been cured, but Dr. Genneth Howle got that blue-haired cretin to listen to him. Hot damn! I wonder what else he's managed to accomplish."

"What does this mean?" Mr. Twist asked.

Dr. Marteneiss' eyes twinkled. "It means Dr. Howle is finally going up in places."

"Yuth," Mrs. Elbock said, gesturing with her claws, "I'd think your earlier concerns about the Vyxit are now moot, wouldn't you say so?"

Nurse Costran nodded. "Sure, we can try to get the Vyxit's help now, fat lot of good that'll do us, though." She looked over the city's ruins. "What will we do if this fucking corruption rears its head again?" She waggled a finger. "And don't try and tell me that it won't; you know it will." She glared at the others. "We all do."

Unearthly shrieks broke out across the city.

Yuth shook her head. "Speak of the Norm…"

Mrs. Elbock turned her head from side to side in alarm. "W-What's going on?"

"Angel's breath!" Mr. Twist cursed. He floated up off the scorched ground and pointed with a claw. "Look, down in the streets!"

Movement had returned to Elpeck's fallen streets. It started with the cinders and char markings left over from the corrupted wyrms blown to dust by the force of Ibrahim's sacrifice. The residue turned fluidic and fizzed, careening about like butter on a hot griddle, prismatic fire crackling and sparking into being. Bits and pieces of the corrupted wyrms began to trickle down their bodies, just like the Moad had. The stuff was living calligraphy, jittering through the air and sliding down the street, flowing with direction and purpose, seemingly with a will of their own.

The darkness gathered into streams, vaporous one moment, liquid the next, whisking down the ghosts of departed roads. Sections broke off from the roiling flow and assembled into figures—quadrupeds galloping; bipeds tumbling; vehicles rolling. The spastic emanations valued free, kaleidoscopic and spastic, only to fuse back into the current and disappear.

It was a vision of Hell.

Flailing limbs and thrashing heads stretched out from the stream, loosing silent screams before plunging back in.

A few of the liquid beings ignited once they broke away, burning in those many-colored fires. Those that did abandoned the procession, aimlessly moving wherever they wished. Some rose through buildings. Others slowly descended into the earth at a low angle. But no matter where they went, or how, everything they touched simply vanished, as if it had never been there at all.

Karl and many of the other wyrms hovered off the ground, if only to gawk and stare.

"W-Where are they going?" Mr. Twist muttered.

"I'm more concerned with why they aren't attacking us," Kurt said.

Wyrmsong wailed through the dead Night, distorted and anguished. Many in the group swerved around or rose up or sank in sudden shock.

"Angel help us," Mrs. Elbock muttered.

More wyrm trees were uprooting themselves. They clambered across the ruins with their roots and turned onto what remained of the main boulevards where the liquid's procession was streaming by.

Ravines were opening in the streets where the liquid had passed. The voids yawned wider and wider, swallowing cars, road, rubble, and corpses. Everything tumbled into the dark, never to return.

Karl had to shut his third eyes. Energy threads were streaming down into the bottomless abysses, and he couldn't look at them through his third pair of eyes without feeling the void reach out and grasp at him.

He pointed skyward and soared. Even without wyrmsight, he could feel the rifts tugging at his flight, fraying its weave.

The magic sputtered, and for a moment, Karl plummeted in freefall, but then he wove it up afresh and blasted upward.

He glanced down, baring the curve of his neck to the wind. "We have to get out of here!"

"Karl," Geoffrey said, "keep your gaze ahead!"

Karl looked up, staring at the ships fighting high overhead. He couldn't quite make out which ones of them had the symbol I'd told the wyrms to look out for, but he knew that it had to be there.

"Can the Vyxit help fight off these new monsters?" he mumbled.

"One can only hope!" Jonan said, from atop his back. "If they do, we might just make it out of this alive."

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"W-Where are you going?!" Mrs. Elbock said, looking up in panic. She'd shot up into the air.

"You heard what Dr. Howle said!" Karl replied. "Some of the Vyxit might help us! They're our only hope against—"

"—Holy shit," Jonan cursed.

Karl came to a stop, hovering in place, having risen high enough to get a bird's eye view of the city sprawled out beneath him. The spines on his back stiffened, while tingling sensations ran down the base of his mane. His horns felt like they were sinking into his skull.

A whole network of streets were lit up by the Darkness' diabolical procession. Corrupted wyrms ambled alongside the fluid-fire creatures, advancing toward their common goal: the tree of evil that had taken root by the feet of the Melted Palace, at the heart of the city; the once-Lassedite, Mordwell Verune.

Other wyrms broke out in alarmed songs as they saw it for themselves. Their spirits were just as terrified.

"Karl," Geoffrey said, "we can't flee this. Whatever unholy rites are at work here, I don't fear them half as much as the thought of leaving them unchecked."

And Karl agreed.

"I remember, Geoffrey," he replied. He quoted his mentor from memory: "Never does fear breed in numbers so great as when it is spurred on by the weight of ignorance."

Geoffrey nodded. "To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail."

And then, once more, a voice played through Karl's mind. Two voices, in fact—one of which was mine.

And the other?

"Wyrmehs, this is &alon again!"

What now? Karl couldn't help but fear that bad news was just around the corner.

"Daddy Genneth is telling me you guys need to help the not-so-mean reh-bell Vyxity guys fight the other, super-mean Vyxity guys so that we can all get away and be safe." Then she paused, only to go, "Ooh!" and then add, "Daddy Genneth is saying some really good stuff that you should listen to."

Then my voice filled the wyrms' minds.

"Tell them they're fighting for themselves and their freedom, and tell them what I've told you to do, and that things are going to change. The old ways are over. Tell them that they've finally got a chance to fight to live their lives as they see it. And… tell them you're telling them this because you found what you were looking for all this time, and that it turned out to be a wyrm."

"You heard him, wyrmehs," &alon said. "Please, help us! I know you don't like me but the Darkness is waking up and the super-mean Vyxities are keeping us from leaving! And if we can't leave soon we… we'll…" Her voice broke into sobs. "I—I don't want to go away. I don't want to lose my Daddy, not when I've finally found him! Please wyrmehs, help us! Help us!"

Jonan closed his eyes and shook his head. "This is so fucked up."

"I almost feel sorry for her," Kurt said. "Almost."

To Karl's surprise, Mrs. Elbock then flew off toward the Civic Center, without so much as a word. He followed after her, as did Dr. Nowston, and Mr. Clawless and Nurse Costran and everyone else.

"Mrs. Elbock," he yelled, "what are you doing?!"

She stopped midair and turned around to face the others. "I can't just wait here and do nothing!"

"We don't need to!" Dr. Nowston said. He looked up at the sky. "There are rebel Vyxit who need our help! We go up, beat the bad guys, and then we get to escape and live to fight another day!"

Suddenly, there was a great crash. Merritt and several others screamed in fright.

Karl followed the sound's waves back to their source.

"Uh, guys?" Mr. Twist said. "Guys?!"

Debris spewed up from the massive pit that ate into the earth where West Elpeck Medical Center had been. The day before, Greg the Wyrm had emerged from the pit. Today, a second wyrm followed suit, slowly winding its way into the sky. Its song boomed through the Night.

"ALICE CHOOSES TO FIGHT!"

Heggy gawked from her seat atop Dr. Nowston's back. "Is… is that ALICE? The freakin' computer system?"

More wyrms swam up into the Night—golden-eyed, down to the last—rising up from the land, whooping and hollering as they corkscrewed and whirled. The skies filled with their pledges. They sang for the lives they'd lost, and the worlds that had been taken from them.

Jonan looked up in awe. "This is incredible…"

But then Mrs. Elbock looked down and screamed. Her outcry drew everyone else's attention.

Angel's breath.

Karl remembered seeing the sickness afflicting the tree Lassedite Mordwell Verune had become on their journey to the Imperial Palace. The ailment was a baleful beacon that drew the corruption toward it, feeding its growth, birthing new horrors as the darkness gathered. The trees's roots were now buttressed arms that had dug long and deep, weaving across the streets. The shadowy fluid pooling around them had spread, filling the basilica from one end to the other. Fiery figures hovered above the pool in eerie silence: half-formed silhouettes of man and beast. Cursed veins pulsed up and down the evil tree's bark, burning in lines of prismatic color. The fire was brightest where it streamed out from the eyes of the tree's heads.

"Can't you feel it?" Mrs. Elbock said. "You heard what Dr. Rathpalla said: this is the end. What good will it do us if we deal with one evil only to fall to another?"

"But what can we do about it?" Kurt asked.

"We won't know if we don't try!" she replied.

"That's what Ibrahim said," Yuth cried, "and look what happened to him!"

"I won't say there aren't any risks," Mrs. Elbock said. "But, like Mr. Geoffrey said," she nodded at him, "ignorance will leave us blind." Merritt looked up to her husband, who rode atop her neck, grasping at either of her horns. "Storn and I are tired of being in the dark; aren't you? You don't need to stay here with me if you don't want to join the fight up above. But—"

"—With words like that, Merritt, how could we say no?" Kurt said.

"By the Godhead," Karl said, "look!"

The liquid procession had arrived. It spilled into the dark pool, spreading it wider and wider. The expanding pool quickly passed beyond the basilica's walls, which were gradually sinking into the ground and dissolving away. The dark tide dripped down the broad steps in slow motion and spilled onto the Promenade.

The corrupted wyrms had arrived alongside the procession. They slithered across the pool and onto the tree's roots and trunks, where they fused with its flesh. The fires burning in the wyrms' eyes dissolved into spreading veins as their identities came undone.

And the tree grew.

"Break the Tablets…" Heggy muttered.

The tree's slow, twisting rise had just peaked over the Melted Palace's demolished roof. Fissures spread across the ground, erupting with jets of many-colored flame. The tree's burning veins widened, exposing a core of shadow rimmed in color. It spread like a sore, crawling across the tree's bark, up its branches and toward its many heads.

In moments, the tree was as black as the Night, but with a boundary outlined in prismatic fire.

Its eyes flared like engines.

"Get back!" Geoffrey yelled.

The wyrms scattered, flying up and away, and just in time. An awe-inspiring beam cascaded up from the Verune tree, impaling the clouds and the sky, and onward and upward.

A wave of power shot out from the erupting tree, knocking everyone back. Any corrupted wyrms on the streets below melted as the wave passed through them, their burning fluids quickly joining the currents spilling into the pool.

Then the pool deepened, and everything sank. It was slow at first, but then faster and faster, till within a breath, wherever the fluid touched, the ground became a bottomless pit that swallowed everything above it.

Pavement and masonry sagged over the edge, and then fell away, spilling down like waterfalls. The deepening raced inward, propagating toward the Melted Palace and the giant tree's trunk, swallowing up the great cathedral's foundations.

The walls fell, then the towers, and the bells, and the shattered glass and broken nave. In their final moments' desperation, they grasped at the sky, reaching for a savior that would never come. But their own weight doomed them, dragging them down, folding, collapsing inward, swallowed up by the unconquerable darkness.

Steadily, the deepness widened, slugging down more and more. The cursed tree's great beam grew wider still, until even the tree was subsumed in its light.

Jonan screamed "What the fuck is happening?!"

Then, from within the light, something stirred.

A living silhouette emerged from it: a gargantuan, formless serpent, half as wide as the pit itself. It rose inexorably, as unstoppably as the dawn, helixing around the shaft of light in a foreshaping of eternity.

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