The Wyrms of &alon

Nina sobbed “No!” She bellowed: “No! It’s! Not!”

The great wind returned. It was like a scene plucked from scripture. Arcs of gold spun through the room. Vaporous light geysered out from beneath Nina’s feet—an azure flame, flicking its sable tongues.

It all happened so quickly.

And Nina yelled.

The wind was frigid wind. It froze the tears on Nina’s face and neck, stretching them into needles as the temperature plummeted. In its rage, it plucked the ice off her skin, flinging it at her brother, in a flurry of shards that hissed as they shot through the air. The boy yelped as the ice struck him. It sliced his starched white dress shirt and, above it, his cheeks, leaving paper-thin cuts that weeped blood.

And Nina yelled.

Winter kissed the space around us. Condensing rime fell from the air, coating everything in its hoarfrost.

And Nina yelled. Her emotions whipped the icy flurry into a tempest.

“Your name is Lopé Agrabesca Montal Herroro Broliguez. You like to dress up as El Balib on the first day of Roho—your face-painted green and red, and with the leaves—just so you can scare all our cousins! You pester Mama every day to cook urchin tongue because you love it so much.”

The blue and black light-vapor blasting up from between her feet flagged. It began to recede.

“No,” Paul whispered, “it’s not just the Angel’s Love.” He trembled: “Nina… you’re one of the Angel’s Chosen. One of the Blessèd. The Age of Miracles has returned.” He was in awe. “Do you know what that means?”

I shivered, and not just because of the cold. I didn’t know if Nina knew what he meant, but I certainly did.

“You’re my brother, Lu,” she said. “You’re our parents’ son, you’re my best friend, and you’re the smartest person in the whole damn world!” She lashed out with her arms, and the winds lashed with her. “Doesn’t any of that even mean anything to you?”

Nina wept, and as she wept, her sorrow smothered her rage, and her powers began to fade. The winds let go of the hoarfrost as they died away, leaving the frost free to melt on the friction of the air as it drifted to the floor.

Paul shook his head. “Sea urchins are unclean, Nina. It’s not good to eat them.”

His eyes were half-closed, but, even if they’d been open, I don’t think he would have seen her suffering.

The boy smiled. “You’re one of the Angel’s Chosen, Nina! You’re going to lead us to Paradise! You need to be pure to do that!”

I’d had a pretty good idea of how Nina was going to react the instant he’d opened his mouth, so I didn’t waste any time to preëmpt her backlash. I rushed over to her, and put my hands on her shoulders. I stared deep into her furious hazel eyes.

“Nina, please,” I begged, “listen to me.” I shot a glance at her brother. “Ignore him. Just for a moment. Ignore him and listen to me. Look at me. I’m begging you, look at me.”

She gulped.

There wasn’t another supernatural outburst.

I exhaled in relief.

I could feel her swaying in my grasp. Looking at her face, I saw the weariness in her cheeks. I could hear the weight of her breaths.

“Nina, look at what you’re doing to yourself,” I said. “These powers are draining you!” It was like she’d just come back from a run. “If you keep this up, you’ll collapse right where you stand!”

She panted for breath. “Maybe I should. That might put me out of my misery.”

“No, it will put you on a dissection table in a lab!” I said.

Her eyes widened.

Good, I had her attention.

Figuring she wasn’t going to be a threat for the next couple of minutes, I did the medically responsible thing and took a step back. She had enough problems already; I didn’t want to add “being infected with the Green Death” to the list. Yes, I was still closer than social distancing rules would have had me be, but—darn it!—it was hard to have a heart-to-heart conversation with somebody when you and they were at opposite sides of the room!

“And you,” I said, turning to face her brother, scolding him with a scalding tone, “don’t say anything. Not a word!”

He nodded—without a word.

That’s more like it!

I turned back to his sister. “Nina,” I took a deep breath, “what I’m about to tell you is… well… it’s top secret.” I cleared my throat and stared her in the eyes. “You aren’t the only one to display powers.”

“What?!” Her eyes went wide.

I brought my finger to my mask. “Shh.”

She pursed her lips and nodded.

“But…” My gaze wandered over to her brother, then back to her. “I’ll be blunt: I haven’t seen anything like what you just did. And I should know, because I can see your powers, and they…” I bit my lip.

I swear, I could feel the little ‘Demptist’s gaze burning into the back of my coat. I looked over my shoulder.

Yep.

He was staring at me like I was the Angel Himself.

“You can see it?” she whispered.

I nodded. “It looks like light. Woven light, in different colors, forms, and textures. It’s… it’s beautiful, really.”

“It is the Holy Light,” Paul whispered. “The Angel’s Light.”

She stared at him, and then shook her head. “No, no. It… it can’t be. It can’t be that.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “Nina, I grew up with…” I spun my hand in the air, “all of this, and, let me tell you, I’d like to be skeptical too and say that there has to be a rational explanation for this, but, you know the saying: if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck… it’s probably a duck.” I lowered my voice. “Or, in the case, one of the Blessèd.”

Nina paled. “Shit,” she hissed. “Shit shit shit.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “If the true-believing Lassediles out there see these powers, especially yours, well… if that happens, the Green Death is going to be the least of our worries. People will see you and think you’re the Lass returned and that the Age of Miracles has begun again, to mark the coming of the Last Days. That’s what Lassedicy calls the end of the world.” I gulped.

“I know what the Last Days are, Dr. Howle,” Nina said.

“Good, because then you’ll understand what I mean when I say that I’m scared. Maybe this really is the beginning of the end. I don’t know—and that scares me even more.”

I stepped back and clenched my fingers. I was keenly aware I needed to exude feelings of calm and confidence. The mess of emotions I was currently pumping out wouldn’t help engender others’ faith in my.

Breathe, Genneth, breath.

I closed my eyes and did just that before looking at Nina once more.

“I know you came in with your brother because he’s in need of treatment—”

She nodded profusely, biting her lip. A tear ran down her cheek. “—He fell, he spasmed. He was frothing at the mouth, he—”

“—I know you’re not going to like this, Nina, but right now, I need to ask you about you. At the moment, I don’t understand what’s going on, and I desperately want to. I think you’re my best chance of that.”

She nodded at me in understanding.

I shot a glare at Paul as I walked back to my stool and took my seat. The boy was doing an admirable job of keeping his mouth shut, though, troublingly, I saw that he kept staring at his arm. Focusing—thickening my wyrmsight—I could see the runic lacework light spreading over and through his body. It was just like how the feelings of dead-ness had spread across my own body last night on the way to the play.

Nina looked me in the eye. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, just…” she sniffled, “please…” she turned to her brother, tears in her eyes, “help my brother.”

“I will,” I nodded. “I promise.”

Nina smiled nervously. “So, um…” she glanced down at her feet.

I was sweaty with anticipation. “Actually, would you mind if I asked the questions?”

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

Right.

It was go time.

I asked, and Nina responded. The first couple of minutes of our back and forth… man, I don’t think I could have asked for a better respite from Andalon’s never-ending stream of half-answers.

I asked her about when it started, and she told me.

“Early yesterday morning. At first, I thought I was just seein’ things, then I started to wonder if I’d picked up a bad chalpa—an unfriendly spirit,” she explained. “After that, I thought I was just going nuts. Now?” She shrugged.

I asked her whether anything like this had ever happened before—either to her, or anyone else—and she told me!

“If I did,” she said, “the whole world would have already known it by now. I’m a nobody, Dr. Howle. Nothing interestin’ ever happens to someone like me.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a first time for everything.”

I explained to her what I’d seen, and what I’d deduced from what I’d seen.

I told her that her powers came in different varieties, and that each most likely had its own peculiar effect(s).

I told her that she needed to be mindful of her emotions, especially anger.

“Outbursts of hostility seemed to trigger your abilities,” I said.

She cursed at that particular diagnosis—under her breath, of course.

“Dr. Howle, if you’re a neuropsychiatrist or whatever, you should know that tellin’ a teenage girl to be mindful of her emotions is like tellin’ a fire not to burn.”

“I have a daughter about your age, Nina,” I said, with a nod. “I know just how big of an ask this is.”

I asked her about whether she’d had any symptoms of NFP-20 infection—and she told me!

“None so far. I’ve been wearing these things everywhere I go,” she tapped her face mask. “I even sleep in ‘em.”

“Atta girl,” I said, approvingly. (If there was any time to be neurotic about mask-wearing, it was during a pandemic.)

As I continued asking questions of her, I eventually arrived at, “Do you happen to feel that you are dead and your body is rotting?” While Nina gave a confused, “No…?”, my heart sank when I noticed her brother flinching in response to my question.

For a genius, the boy was surprisingly easy to read.

By then, the violet and ultramarine light had completely engulfed Lopé’s body with their runic circuitry.

That clinches it, then.

My mouth went dry. It was like my tongue was about to crumble

Seeing the light spread across his body was all the confirmation I could have ever needed. The violet-ultramarine shimmery-wimmery was Andalon’s influence sinking in. It was the sign she had begun to counter the fungal infection… by initiating the process that transformed a person into a wyrm.

Fricassee me…

If she was here, could I get her to stop it? Might she spare this poor boy? Or would that doom him to a Type One infection?

I figured I might as well try anyway.

Andalon! I shouted in my thoughts. Andalon! (How else was I supposed to contact her?)

But there was no response.

I sighed.

“Is something wrong Dr. Howle?” Nina asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing you can do anything about.” Leaning back, I rolled my shoulders, making my neck crack with a tilt of my head.

“So,” she asked, “you were saying?”

I’d been talking about the powers, and what I currently knew about them.

“From what I understand,” I said, “it’s kind of like music—though, you see it, rather than hear it. Oh, and you don’t necessarily get to see it with your eyes; you see it with your mind, the same way you “see” something when you are dreaming. It should go without saying that visualization and focus will play a major part in learning how to control it.”

Nina furrowed her brow in concentration.

I gasped.

A brilliant tangle of impossible geometry flickered into being right in front of the young woman. It was a wild, technicolor display.

“Strange…” she muttered, “I can change it.” She paused. “I can shape it.”

Nina brought her hands around it, as if it was a crystal ball for her to clasp. The light-weave shuddered with change. It colors, textures, and shapes shifted in my wyrmsight. Then, all of a sudden, it crystallized into soft white and blue particles, arranged in a sort of lattice. Energy flared in the weave, and then we were buffeted by heat and light—actual, visible light, not the kind that appeared only to my wyrmsight, and I knew that because Nina and her brother yelped at the sudden brightness.

“Shit.” Nina looked me in the eyes. “This is pretty slippery. It’s… it’s like it’s there, but it’s not.”

“Can you see it?” I asked.

No.” She shook her head. “It’s like you said. I can see it the way I see things when I’m dreaming. I’m not actually seeing it with my eyes.”

We went on like this for a couple minutes more. I asked her everything and anything I could think of.

“Have you been seeing dead people?”

“Have you had any conversations with blue-haired, blue-eyed girls in nightgowns who were suffering from a nasty case of amnesia?”

“Have you had any vivid hallucinations recently? Any uncanny dreams?”

And all her answers were the same: “No, I haven’t.”

It was beginning to dawn on me that none of us were going to be walking out of this room with what we’d been hoping to find.

Nina wanted me to help her get her brother back. I would absolutely try—he was a minor, so, the legality of trying to counter a recent religious conversion was very much a legal gray area—unfortunately, the new sequestration policy was set in stone. I was going to have to separate Nina from her brother, and that was going to be horrible.

In a certain sense, Nina was even worse off than I was. At least I had Andalon and her partial explanations, unsatisfying though they were.

“Nina,” I asked, “you mentioned your parents. Do you still live with them?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I just drive to do errands and stuff to help. Gotta help wherever I can, you know?” She sniffled.

I nodded in understanding.

So, she still had parental guardians. That was good.

I looked at her brother, and then back to her. “Nina, after this is done, I want you to go home and be with your family. Stay at home. Shelter in place. Don’t go out unless it’s absolutely necessary. Avoid contact with everybody. Right now, the hospital is the last place you want to be. You aren’t infected, and I want you to stay that way. Make sure to keep your powers under wraps, though try to experiment with them if you can—but please, do it safely. If the Last Days have begun, and these powers are a sign that you are one of the Angel’s Chosen, you’ll need your strength for what’s to come. We all will.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

Smart girl.

With every passing hour, the plague was feeling less like a natural phenomenon and more like an act of God. People did desperate things in desperate times, and that was before you added religion to the mix.

I was getting emotional; I sniffled. “Do you have a console?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, but we have one back home.”

“Tell me the number,” I said, pulling my console out of my PPE gown. “I’ll put you in my contacts. I’ll send the prompt to your console; it will do the same for me.”

She did, and I did.

“If anything happens,” I cleared my throat, “don’t hesitate to call me.”

Nina nodded.

Swiveling around on my stool, I turned to face her brother. My eyes grew misty.

“Thank you for keeping quiet, Paul.” I made sure to clearly enunciate his preferred name.

He nodded proudly. “Thank you, sir.”

“Please, get up off the floor,” I asked.

He did, nodding again as he climbed back onto the examination-table-turned-chair.

All that’s left is…

Darn it.

I was about to do something difficult. I wasn’t looking forward to it in the least.