The Wyrms of &alon

Dealing with Nina and her brother had left me in shambles. It wasn’t enough that Lopé had been assimilated into the Eastern ‘Demptist collective. No, he had to be plucked away from his family, too, mentally separated from his sister, from the one person who was willing to fight to keep him from losing the person he’d been. And then, of course, there was the very real possibility that the Last Days had begun, just as my religion had foretold it.

I was hungry beyond belief, yet I this was almost too much information for me to swallow. Talk about irony!

I suppose it was somewhat hypocritical of me to criticize a Neangelical denomination like the Eastern Irredemptists. “Neangelical” was the blanket term for everyone who wasn’t an Old Believer who didn’t jive with the modern version of the Church when it came around at the start of the Second Empire. (Officially, the modern Church was Resurrected Angelical Lassedicy, though most people just called it Angelical Lassedicy.) There were as many variants of Neangelicalism as there were reasons to be dissatisfied with the Church. Some thought the reforms implemented in the Church’s Resurrection had gone far enough. As for Irredemptists, they, like Old Believers, refused to acknowledge the Resurrected Church, though for different reasons. Whereas the Old Believers thought the pre-Resurrected Church had it right, the Irredemptists maintained that the Church had slid into corruption and error early in its history, and, as a result, saw both versions of the Church as equally illegitimate.

You couldn’t exactly blame them for feeling that way, though. From the earliest days of the Third Crusade—the period of unification and suppression that accompanied the expulsion of the Munine and the formation of the Second Empire, the Church had, with the Empire’s help—eagerly embraced cruel, violent methods to convert dissenters and kill them if they refused to fall in line with the Resurrected Church’s new orthodoxies.

Irony of ironies, the same people (the Angelicals) who persecuted the Neangelicals had been on the receiving end of the Old Church’s persecutions only a couple generations earlier. Over the ages, the Church had, through its many incarnations, established itself as an equal-opportunity offender. Lassedile hagiography was filled with Lucents who had raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered for the sake of the Angel and the Bond of Light. The victims varied—sometimes they were pagans, sometimes it was apostates, sometimes it was new denominations—but the horror and cruelty would always be just as foul.

In the First Crusades, Rexon of Moonbeam had overseen the conversion of western Polovia to the faith, for which he was declared a Lucent. After the king’s troops had defeated the local opposition, Lucent Rexon had the Polovian pagans forcibly converted to Lassedicy, and then ordered his men to cut out the converts’ tongues, so that they could not recant their conversion and thereby apostatize.

During the Third Crusade, Vernon Magwitch, Count of Crownsleep had helped lead the Second Empire’s forces during the Piedmont Rebellion, most (in)famously in the Brightshead Massacre. By order of Harold III, 231st Lassedite, the Neangelical community in and around the city of Brightshead had been utterly desecrated. Villages were pillaged, their inhabitants raped. Murdered infants’ innards would be hung like garlands over their parents’ necks. Mothers and fathers were forced to watch their children be raped before their eyes, and then killed, their bellies slit open. Orthodox Angelicals were slaughtered alongside the heretics, for fear that the Neangelicals might pretend to be Angelicals and thereby survive and further spread their heresies.

With a track record like that, opposing the Church seemed downright noble.

But, if Nina was one of the Blesséd, as some interpretations would have it, did that mean all that violence and cruelty was jusified? I…

I couldn’t accept that.

As conflicted as I was over my own Church’s history, I felt the ‘Demptists took it a step too far. Of course, I was one to talk; I was a textbook example of someone who failed to live up to the demands of his religions. You didn’t even need to quote from the Elder Voices to prove me deficient. My transformation into a wyrm had already changed my mind. I could quote scripture for you. I didn’t even need to look it up. It was right there, in my head, as if it’d been inscribed on my thoughts.

You shall love the Angel with all your heart. Compared to Him, all is dust. Father will turn against son; wife against husband; friend against friend. There is no Love except through the Godhead. The sentiments of this life are to Paradise what dawn is to the glory of noon.

Yes, that was what scripture said. All our worldly connections were dust compared to the Angel and His Love. That had always scared me to pieces. You see, for the faithful Lassedile, existence had no meaning outside of God. With the Angel, all things were possible. Without Him, we were nothing.

Obviously, that was pretty hard to swallow. But the ‘Demptists took it even further. They transformed a person into someone different. Born again, they called it. They said it was progress, but all I saw was deracination.

True change built upon what already existed, thereby making it more than what it once was. But, the thought of completely separating from what had come before… that frightened me.

I wonder: once Andalon’s wyrm transformation ran its course, would I be like Lopé? Would I become a stranger to the person I once was? The person I still tried to be? And if I wasn’t, would I remember who I’d been? Would I mourn him? And if I didn’t, would there be anyone left who would?

Would I even be a person at all?

Fudge.

Everything I’d taken for granted about life seemed to be going belly-up. I was scared of what was happening to me. I was scared of what was happening to the world.

I was scared I’d lose my ability to tell right from wrong.

And now there were the likes of Nina and Dr. Horosha to consider. I had no reason to believe that there wouldn’t be others like them appearing in the near future. And what happened then? What happened when people found out about the transformees and the Blessèd, and the powers they could wield? Even if we managed to stop the Green Death, the world would never be the same. Heck, if Lassedile eschatology was right, there wouldn’t even be a world anymore: just the faithful in Paradise and the damned left behind in Hell.

In summary, things were not looking good. My encounter with Nina and her brother had left me upset, disturbed, confused, and afraid, and—to top it all off—I was hungry, too, and it was unremitting. So, yes, lots of problems.

I had three choices for dealing with them, and, due to time constraints, I could only pick one.

I could sit down and eat a decent meal.

I could spend the time trying to follow up with the latest supernatural revelations.

Or I could just ignore it all and get to work.

Options one and three were non-starters, as was the secret fourth option where I ignored my duties and did both options one and two (the guilt would eat away at me). Knowing myself, there was no way I’d be able to keep my mind on my job when, for the first time in my life, I had concrete evidence that my religion was true, and—not only that—but it was evidence for the freaking apocalypse!

So, option two it is.

Since there wouldn’t be enough time for me to sit down for a full meal. I had to settle for a snack, and hope it would be enough to stave off the hunger. My snack consisted of a couple protein bars I got from a vending machine—chocolate-chip-cookie flavor, cookies-and-cream flavor, and green-tea-ice-cream flavor, to be precise.

And then, I did something I hadn’t done in what felt like years: I went to Church. It was nearly solar noon, when the Unction Mass would be held. Technically, the faithful were only required to receive Unction once a week, but there was nothing in scripture or the Church’s magisterium that prohibited attending Mass daily.

Like most public buildings in my country, WeElMed had a chapel—several, at that, some of which were even interdenominational. (There was also a Daiist shrine—because every sufficiently big thing DAISHU had a shrine in it somewhere.) The interdenominational chapels achieved their interdenominationality by taking a minimalistic approach to Lassedicy, avoiding anything and everything that might seem to favor one branch of the faith over the authors. Obviously, I had no intention of sitting in the pews, singing hymns, or partaking in Unction; if ever there was a situation where I could potentially infect someone else, it was in church during services. However, the same could not be said of the Divulgence terminals.

DAISHU insisted on a strict separation of religion and corporation (they considered the Daiist shrines a cultural affectation). In order to avoid ruffling the feathers of believing Lassediles, a compromise had been reached, to allow for the faithful to perform sacramental Divulgence at DAISHU-owned establishments throughout the world without breaking the company’s policies on endorsing religion.

Behold the compromise: the Divulgence terminal.

The terminal had all the charm of a traditional Divulgence closet. Its painted and custom-textured carbon fiber material perfectly recreated the appearance of genuine wood. I sat inside the terminal, on the bench built into the wall, looking into the console screen mounted on the wall in front of me. In a traditional Divulgence closet, a wooden screen would have separated my side of the closet from the priest’s. Here, the console took on that role, going so far as to display a skeuomorphic Divulgence screen, with a priest waiting behind it.

A Digital Priest. Version 2.1.7, as indicated by a bit of text in the lower right-hand corner of the console screen.

A miracle of modern science (pun intended), the Digital Priest had been created by team of DAISHU’s finest computer scientists. Working in concert with the College of Angelic Doctors, DAISHU had designed a sanctified neural-network-based AI to draw on the wealth of Lasseditic tradition so as to provide a digital clergyman to hear Divulgences and prescribe appropriate penance: prayer, fasting, good works, and all the rest.

But I wasn’t there for the Digital Priest. Unfortunately, the poor sap hadn’t been designed to pick up on that, so he kept repeating “How can I help you, my son?” every couple of minutes.

I stuffed the wrapper into my PPE pocket as I munched down my third protein bar—the green-tea-ice-cream flavored one. The bar’s soft, dry texture paired excellently with the sweet, aromatic taste of green tea ice cream. I held my console in my lap; my visor and mask lay on the bench.

“How can I help you, my son?” the Digital Priest asked.

Ignoring him, I opened the Testament™ app on my console. Testament™ was a fantastic little tool. Not only did it store the entirety of Lasseditic scripture in a wealth of translations—both antique and modern—it also held all of the classic exegetical literature as well.

It was time to do some research.

The Last Days; my religion’s name for the end of the world. All of the major scripture regarding the Last Days were in the form of visionary accounts, using elaborate, wildly imaginative imagery steeped in symbol, metaphor, and implication. As a result, the specific details of the Last Days varied widely from one Lassedile denomination to the next. Nevertheless, there were three main points of general consensus.

First: during the Last Days, the boundary between Earth and Hell would break down, thereby allowing Hell to invade the Earth. The Norms’ would rally the demonic forces into an army of darkness which they would lead in a campaign to conquer our world. The forests would wither; the skies would weep; death would reign. And nothing could be done to stop it. The Earth would die and be reborn as the forces of Hell remade the Godhead’s creation in their own image.

Second: though this world was doomed to fade away, the faithful would endure. As the forces of Hell began their invasion, the “blessèd souls” would come. Some said they would return, implying they had been here before; others thought the Blessèd were a special set of souls that had spent all of existence dwelling within Paradise. Though there was disagreement as to the origin and ultimate nature of the Blessèd, there was no doubt as to what the Blessèd would do. They were the agents of the Godhead’s justice. Guided by Moonlight Queen’s writings on the Tablets of Destiny, the Blessèd would fend off the Norms and their demonic hordes while gathering the righteous faithful that the Angel would save.

Third: once the saved were gathered, the Blessèd would lead them to their salvation. In most tellings, the saved would walk up the rainbow and pass into the Sun, and through it, to Paradise. Meanwhile, the damned would be left behind, trapped forever in Hell’s unending Night.

As I was taught in Sessions School, Angelical Lassediles believed the Blessèd consisted of the Lass herself, the Lassedites, the Lucents, and the Angel’s Chosen—special persons, chosen by the Angel Himself.

To Lassedicy, Lucents were not a lot like the bodhisattvas of Daiism—the faith established by the Daikenja (the Great Sage) millennia ago. The Lucents were people of great faith, virtue, and holiness, whose worldly righteousness had been formally acknowledged by the Church. The Lucents served as luminaries to aspire to and examples for the laïty to follow.

The Chosen, meanwhile, had been ordained by the Angel Himself, granted the power to work miracles in the Angel’s name. Long ago, the Chosen had once walked among us, and—if found—were to be made Lassedite. Unfortunately, that Age of Miracles came to an abrupt end a thousand years ago, when the First Trenton Empire fell. As punishment for the Empire’s sins, no new Chosen would arise until the Last Days. That was the mainstream, Angelical interpretation. Old Believers held the same viewpoint, though alternatives could be found in certain Neangelical denominations, like the Eastern ‘Demptists.

As if any of that still mattered!

Transformees were developing psychokinesis. Nina Broliguez had all the signs of a budding Chosen. So what if she wasn’t the miraculous reappearance of one of the Chosen of old, as popular tradition would have it? What else could she be but one of the Chosen? As for Dr. Horosha, maybe he was the second coming of one of the Chosen of old.

At this point, anything was possible.

Perhaps the Age of Miracles was returning. A sign the Last Days had begun. Was I crazy for thinking that? Maybe, but, I had to admit, it was a better explanation for what had been happening these past few days than anything modern science had come up with so far.

Maybe that’s what the fungus is: an agent of the Last Days.

Perhaps it was a thing of Hell, or maybe an arbiter of divine punishment.

But then, what were the wyrms? And what was Andalon?

Where did they fit into this?

The aftertaste of my green tea protein bar was still thick in my mouth as a stream of spectral blue flames percolated through the ceiling of the Divulgence terminal. The flames flowed into me.

“Mr. Genneth!”

I looked around and yelped. “Wah!”

Andalon was sitting on the bench, right next me, smiling brightly.

I stiffened my shoulders and craned my arms back

“Why now?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

“Andalon doesn’t feel sleepy anymore,” she said.

I scooted back along the bench. The protein bar wrappers crinkled in my pockets.

It had to be the food.

The flames always followed after my meals, and brought Andalon with them.

Andalon, the hunger, the changes, the flames… they had to be connected somehow.

“I…” I looked Andalon in the eyes. “I’ve been seeing a lot of shimmery-wimmeries ever since you did… whatever you did to my eyesight. They come in many different forms and colors. What are they? What do the differences mean? And that auras I see in people, is that… am I seeing their consciousness?”

“Conshee?” Andalon tilted her head, confused.

“Souls?” I asked. Maybe she’d know what that meant.

“Yeah, yeah!” Andalon said, nodding vigorously—her eyes widening. “It’s souls.”

“What is?” I asked.

“Uh…” She brought a finger to her lip. “The or-uh.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, nodding.

This was good. This was helping.

“Souls look different from woo and the other stuff,” Andalon explained. “They’re so pretty.” She pursed her lips. “They’re the parts you gotta save. Everyone who is touched by the fungus,” Andalon said. “I needs to save them all.” Her eyes widened once more. “Wow… I just ‘membered that.”

“Wait, so it’s not just some people?”

Andalon nodded vigorously.

“But… how?”

Andalon pointed at my chest. “They go in you. The ghosties go inside the wyrmehs.”

The wyrms…

“Wyrmeh…” Andalon whispered, shiny-eyed. She clasped her hands together and shook them in delight.

By the Angel!

Various observations suddenly clicked together.

The corpses. The corpses in the basement. The corpses in the autopsy room. The lightheadedness.

I’d felt lightheaded this morning, when I’d been standing near Frank Isafobe’s corpse during the autopsy. I’d also felt lightheaded when that mist (Mr. Isafobe’s soul?) flowed into me.

Two days ago, on the day of Rayph’s play, after I’d passed out, I’d been taken to Room C5. That was within earshot of C8, the room where Aicken Wognivitch had died. The lightheadedness I’d been experiencing? That was what it felt like when souls were being uploaded into me.

Uploaded by Andalon.

The mists must have been their souls—and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I imagined I’d be seeing Mr. Isafobe in the near future.

I just hope he’s friendlier than Aicken had been.

I slapped the top of my tight. “By the Godhead…” I muttered.

“How can I help you, my son?” the Digital Priest asked.

“No, not you!” I said, snapping at the figure on the other side of the digital screen.

Why hadn’t I realized the connection earlier?

People—souls—within wyrms. In. Out.

It was right out of the pages of Catamander Brave!

In hindsight, I probably should have made a bigger deal out of the fact that the massive creatures from my favorite manga were eerily similar to Andalon’s. When she’d first told me about her connections to Cat, I’d been too busy freaking out at the news that I was going to turn into an inhuman monster.

But now?

My hands trembled.

The more I thought about it, the scarier it got, and the less sense it made.

What in the world would Kosuke Himichi’s manga have to do with Andalon and the Green Death?