The Wyrms of &alon

Dr. Rathpalla was angry.

Most of the soldiers had stopped shooting, except for the ones that hadn’t, which was bad, but not as bad as the transformees who took the chaos as their cue to act out their revenge fantasies by using their psychokinesis to shred people to bits.

Ibrahim’s anger made him claw harder.

With what little strength his rotting legs still had, he leapt off the grass, lunging his serpentine body at the she-transformee in front of him. She stood in the shadow of a hollow, toppled watchtower, foaming at the mouth.

Fortunately, Ibrahim was bigger than she was. He pinned her beneath his body. She screamed like mad as he immobilized her by stabbing his claws into her arms. Barely any blood seeped from the wounds, and that which did was clotted and dark.

A second transformee snarled at them.

Dr. Rathpalla lifted his head, curling his sinuous neck. “Larry?” he asked.

“On it,” the janitor replied.

Floating above the ground, legs and tail and tattered robes dangling beneath them, the transformee launched an uprooted willow at the three of them with a wave of their claw.

Larry flopped onto his stomach.Ibrahim let go of the transformee woman right as Larry grabbed hold of her. Her screams and flails were cut short when Larry ripped her torso in half, and then dropped both halves of her unmoving body onto the spore-eaten grass.

A terrified soldier pointed his slender white rifle at Larry and fired, searing the janitor’s arms as Larry flung himself forward and grabbed the oncoming willow tree with one of his monstrous arms. Larry snarled in pain as he fell to the ground, but he held firm to the tree. The scales the beam had hit changed to a dull red as the heat dissipated. Nearby patches of still-human skin blackened and shriveled from the heat, only for fresh wyrmflesh to knit the wounds shut.

“Yuth!” Larry yelled. “The transformee!” He chucked the willow at the floating transformee.

The soldier’s laser beam cut into the willow’s trunk, setting it on fire.

The transformee caught the willow with their power. They drew it into an orbit, whipping it around their back, and were just about to hurl it back when Yuth came charging at them from off to the side.

She’d used her powers to fling herself like a javelin.

Yuth, the transformee, and the burning willow tumbled across the grass. Patches of spore and ooze popped and burst as they caught flame.

The soldier focused his laser rifle on Ibrahim. Dr. Rathpalla grunted in pain as the heat ray burnt through the back of his coat. The heat stung the flesh on his back.

It must not have been fully changed yet.

Craning his neck, Ibrahim plucked the soldier’s laser rifle out of his hands with his psychokinesis, and then broke it in two. The rifle let out a bright flash as it snapped.

The white-armored soldier fell onto his back and scuttled out of the way.

Ibrahim motioned his head at the angry transformee impaled on his claws.

“Larry, you take this one,” he said.

“Got it!”

Larry got up onto his big arms and lumbered over.

Ibrahim let go of the transformee as Larry grabbed hold of her. The janitor ripped her torso in half, promptly ending her screams of protest. He dropped both halves of her unmoving body onto the spore-eaten grass.

The soldier screamed in horror.

“I’m a doctor, she’ll be fine,” Ibrahim said, with a wave of his claw. “It’s just to slow her down. She’ll regenerate quickly enough.”

The soldier kept on screaming.

As the self-help group had discovered, with enough time and fresh flesh, there seemed to be no physical wound a wyrm couldn’t recover from. The only major exceptions were thermonuclear blasts and getting ground into meat-paste. They couldn’t test the former, and there weren’t too many volunteers for the latter.

“A little help here!?” Yuth bellowed.

“On it!” Ibrahim said.

He slither-scampered toward her flames, weaving through the flames. He visualized a massive piece of paper falling onto the ground and then, with his powers, made it so, choking off the fires’ air supply under a crushing blanket of psychokinetic force.

The willow and other plants cracked and fell to pieces.

Ibrahim dismissed the weave a moment later, the fires fully snuffed.

Flinging himself forward, he and Yuth twined themselves around the kicking, screaming transformee. Yuth fought back against the transformee’s psychokinesis with her own. Particles quivered midair, held in place by the dueling forces.

Then Ibrahim coiled around to the side, wrapped his claws around the transformee’s skull, ripped their head off, and tossed it aside.

The transformee’s humanoid body went limp beneath Yuth and Ibrahim’s underbellies.

“Uh, guys?” Larry asked, pointing one of his arms. “Who’s that?”

Ibrahim raised his forepart.

A roar echoed across Garden Court as the biggest transformee Ibrahim had ever seen charged at the silver-eyed wyrm. The two of them twisted around one another as they snarled and clawed, spewing spores this way and that.

Dr. Rathpalla didn’t know who the transformee was, but was glad as hell that he seemed to be on their side.

“Shit!” Yuth yelled, pointing with a claw.

Ibrahim barely had time to turn to look before a wall of force slammed into the doors to the Hall of Echoes. Pataphysical waves shook the building at its foundations, mashing bodies into a pulp. There was an instant where the windows were splattered all over with the mortal stew before another wave pelted the Administration Building’s façade, popping the windows with bursts of raining shards. Then a third blast struck, this time more concentrated, aimed at the doors. The wood creaked and groaned as the doors were thrusted in and opened up.

A monstrous figure emerged from the garden. A long, swollen sausage of a tail trailed behind him as he trudged onto the Garden Court Drive. Clothes and rags several sizes too large were bundled on the transformee’s back. They got caught on the wreckage of the black metal fetching and ripped and tore as they were pulled away.

The transformee crossed the sett stones, plodding toward the Administration Building. His powers were tremendous—and, worse, it looked like he knew what he was doing.

Debris parted to either side of him, like waves in the wind. Vehicles reared up on their back wheels as they skidded away. Man and metal were pushed aside, crunched and crumpled by the air’s creasing fingers.

Ibrahim glanced at Yuth. They were both about ten feet tall now, not counting their tails. Nodding at each other, they waddled forward. Dr. Rathpalla ducked as Larry leapt over them, launching himself at the robed transformee with a push of his giant arms.

The transformee looked over his shoulder and then riposted, blasting out a wall of force that slammed into Larry mid-air, knocking him to the side.

Larry crashed onto the old, scalloped-paved street. He tumbled into a line of unmoving zombies, knocking them over like bowling pins.

Ibrahim gasped.

Some of the zombies stuck to Larry’s naked legs. With sickening crunches, their bodies deformed twitching like ticks as they melted into Larry’s flesh. Their mass flowed onto his legs, merging with them.

Larry screamed as he righted himself.

Two corpses combined with his legs, their skulls and limbs melding together. Bones dissolved and reformed, building up the janitor’s tail.

“Ibrahim!” Yuth yelled.

Dr. Rathpalla nodded. “Right!”

Lumbering forward, a leg snagging and ripping free, Yuth and Ibrahim threw weaves onto the rampaging transformee. Dr. Rathpalla knew it would have been easier if he could have seen the powers the way Greg or I could, but they made do, focusing on what they could sense in their minds’ eye.

It had been Suisei’s suggestion, and it worked like a charm. Dr. Horosha’s skill with using these powers were out of this world. Suisei even put Greg to shame.

Working together, Ibrahim and Yuth ensnared the renegade in a psychokinetic net.

Yuth raised her forepart off the ground as the netted transformee floated into the air.

From under his tattered hood, the transformee stuck out his slender, snouted head. His five golden eyes narrowed. Trails of spores mingled with the saliva dribbling out of his mouth.

He screamed.

What the—? Ibrahim thought.

Somehow, he could feel his opponent’s thoughts grab onto his psychokinesis.

An incorporeal connection.

“Yuth,” Ibrahim yelled, “he’s—!”

—But Nurse Costran only had time to turn her head in shock as the renegade hijacked their weave. Through his mind’s eye, Dr. Rathpalla could see the energies getting ripped apart, their threads shaken out like dirty bedsheets.

And then a whole bunch of whiplash slammed into Dr. Rathpalla’s chest, knocking him and Yuth back.

The world tilted on end as Ibrahim’s forepart toppled onto his tail, falling onto the shrubs on the gardens’ edge. Rolling onto his side, righting himself—pulling his tail across the setts—Dr. Rathpalla saw the renegade drop to the ground. The renegade landed on his knees, his fist smashing onto the stone.

The renegade rose to his feet, lashing out with his arm.

“You belong with us!” he yelled, flinging spit and spores. There was madness in his eyes. “The Last Days are here, and the Last Church is the only safe—”

A red-brown mass swept across the street. Quick as a whistle, the giant-armed transformee reared up on his new tail, grabbed the renegade and tossed him up and launched him with a power-boosted throw. Leaves, bullets, blood, and bone scattered down the street, whipped up by the wind coming off of Larry’s throw.

The renegade rocketed over the Internal Medicine Building. He arced through the air, going and going, until he disappeared many blocks away, plummeting into the heart of the city.

Ibrahim pushed himself off the ground with a psychokinetic lift.

He turned to Larry. “Nice.” He bowed his head in admiration.

But Larry’s expression fell. “Uh-oh.”

Ibrahim turned.

Up ahead, soldiers were emerging from under the Crusader Hill tunnel. Heavily armed soldiers.

Heavily armored soldiers.

Also, the Internal Medicine Building was on fire.

— — —

The heat coming off the flames was almost palpable. It weighed heavily on Suisei’s body. He had to struggle to swallow his every breath.

He raised his arms.

Given the Green Death’s pataphysical nature, Suisei had little faith WeElMed’s PPE would adequately protect him—not in the long term, at any rate. But that was more than enough.

He just needed it to last for a couple of seconds. Suisei figured his chance of survival was two out of three; not bad, all things considered.

He’d have to do this quickly.

Power was a language, as coded and nuanced as Nature itself. Getting good results was just a matter of asking the right questions, metaphorically speaking.

Suisei didn’t usually close his eyes when he weaved. Then again, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d made a weave as big as this one.

Closing his eyes removed any visual distractions.

If you wanted to kill someone less talented than yourself, you could use a weave to freeze the water in their blood plasma into minute crystals. It was best to do this at one of their extremities, ideally the feet, but, in a pinch, the hands would also suffice. They were the easiest to interfere with, being at a far remove from the brain. From there, you just needed to keep the crystals from melting for the second or two it would take for the crystals to complete a couple trips around the circulatory system and lacerate the walls of their arteries from within. Then you walked away, and a couple minutes later the victim would pass out from the internal hemorrhaging, and by the time anyone realized what was going on, it would already be too late.

What Suisei was about to do was a lot like that, only at a much bigger scale, and without the calm, bloodthirsty intent.

He pulled the weave’s shape from his memories. Temperature control weaves were boilerplate for working magi, and Suisei knew them well. He just wasn’t used to deploying them for big, showy displays.

His throat felt like an oven as he breathed in deep.

Suisei filled the surrounding air with his weave, duplicating the spellform again and again until his mind’s eye was stranded in the middle of a pleated, periodic sea. A grand swarm.

The energies sputtered and twitched.

It was getting hard for him to breathe. The fire was gobbling up the available oxygen.

He had to hurry.

Opening his eyes, Suisei flooded his weave with power. He spread his arms wide, launching the dense pataphysics out in every direction.

The air quivered.

Particles stilled. Molecules calmed.

The fire died, frozen to death.

The effect spread out like a blast of shadow. Flames vanished as the cold front swept across the Ward, revealing all the charred debris. Saline froze in the hanging IV bags. Motes of frost hung in the air—captured water vapor, bound in cold.

Suisei swooned from the exertion. It was like squeezing water from a stone. There was so little power in the air, so Suisei had to make up the difference, giving of what little he had left of himself.

He felt like he was about to pass out.

He held out until the last tongues of flame retreated into nothingness.

Smoke hung over the char, like a funeral pall.

And then he let go.

Suisei fell to his knees, panting for breath. With his last bit of strength—his vision going dark and blurry—he re-wove his electrostatic barrier and affixed it to his body.

There.

He didn’t need to be awake to keep it running.

The last thing he did before losing consciousness was to flop to the side, to make sure he landed far away from the melted, slightly charred plastic cup covering the pile of de-acidified spores.