Kurt had gotten the upper hand on Maryon. He’d pinned her to the floor. With a thrash of her tail, Kreston’s mother dragged herself across the floor as Kurt clawed at her back. Maryon looked up to see Heggy and the nurse leap on Letty with syringes in their hands.

“Letty!” she yelled. “Watch out!”

The witch was busy smashing the remaining laser rifles with blue and gold boulders when Heggy plunged a syringe full of sedatives into her flank. Snarling again, Letty struck back, sending a shockwave of force that sliced through the air in every direction, but Heggy dodged, dropping to the ground in a sudden roll.

Before the nurse could inject a second dose, however, Lopé scampered up from behind her and—

“—Mr. Genneth!” Andalon shrieked, flying up above the battlefield. “He’s—”

—The next thing I knew, Lopé breathed out a thick, wisp-flicked stream of lime green spore plumes. Heggy managed to pull away in time, but the nurse in the magenta scrubs wasn’t so lucky, and bore the brunt of Lopé’s breath weapon.

The result was the stuff of nightmares.

The corrosive cloud ate through the side of the woman’s body. Her scrubs burned away as the spore spray ate into her skin. Her infected fluids spilled out from the massive, gaping wound. The nurse fell, bleeding profusely. Her body twitched uncontrollably.

The spastic screams caught Kurt’s attention. His eyes widened as he looked up from his foe and saw the dead soldiers and the dying nurse.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon screamed. “Do something!”

“I…”

I’d never done anything like this before. This wasn’t one of my mind-worlds. It wasn’t a ghost or a demon.

This was real life.

“You!” Kurt spat, pointing a trembling claw at Lopé and Letty. “You’re just like Wognivitch,” Kurt said. “Maybe worse.”

The vinyl hissed where Kurt’s spit fell.

Kurt’s gaze fell on me almost by accident. Our eyes briefly locked. “You were right,” he said, “I should have—”

—A wave of psychokinetic force blasted out from the entrance to Room 268.

From Werumed-san.

Whatever demons or giants lived inside Mr. Twist’s mind had finally found their way into the real world.

A storm surged.

The giant of the mascot’s madness was a thickness that writhed through the air. It turned the hallway into a wind tunnel, battering bodies and bashing in the drywall as everything shook beneath its rage.

Anyone who wasn’t already on the floor got knocked there by the mascot’s power. Several people bounced off the wall of the hallway. At least one skull cracked, blood pooling on the floor.

As for me, I got thrown onto my stomach.

In between the waves of pain, I saw Kurt stretch out, stiffen, and groan.

Letty cursed as she shook her dazed head.

I pushed myself up onto all fours, and I swear I could hear one of my knees crack as I did so. With the help of a psychokinetic burst, I rose to my feet, just in time to see Werumed-san slither out from Room 268’s antechamber. Pieces of the doorsill ripped free as he squirmed through the doorways.

The onlookers who saw him gasped and screamed. Even Andalon skittered back in horror.

Black scales had encroached on the mascot’s pancake face, and a gold wyrm eye had ripped its way through one of the face’s felt eyes. The tufts of blond “hair” atop the mascot’s head twisted and elongated, probably stretching into horns. His lipless mouth was a pit nearly as wide as his head, torn into the fabric of the mascot’s face.

I staggered forward and glimpsed of Werumed-san’s body threaded through the two pairs of double doors.

Lashing out with his claws—sinking them into the vinyl—the mascot pulled his forepart into the hallway, carving furrows into the floor. More chunks of the doorway ripped free as Werumed-san sprang loose. He flopped onto the hallway floor with a dull smack, green, dark-streaked sludge dribbling out from his mouth. His whole body spasmed, but unevenly, and he screamed and sobbed.

He could barely move…

Then again, neither could we.

He howled and moaned.

There wasn’t a single onlooker—well, other than Letty—who wasn’t moved to pity by the sight. It was like watching an animal being tortured, only this animal used to be human.

It took a moment for me to notice the trails of tears that had soaked into the mascot’s felt face.

And then, the least probable thing happened: Werumed-san spoke, and with a Northeastern accent, no less.

“You bitch!” he shrieked, flicking his claws at Letty. “You preening, whinging bag of overbooked entitlement! She-devil! Muck-whore! Look what you’ve done!” He lashed his claws across the ground. “Look! At! What! You’ve! Done!”

Before, when Werumed-san had spoken, it had been maddened, mindless, screams that struck terror in all who heard them. But this voice… this was a human voice. A nebbish, slightly nasal voice, stuck halfway between a whine and cry as it belted out its speaker’s righteous indignation.

Everyone stared.

“What the fuck?” Heggy whispered.

“Everyone,” I said, weakly, “I… I think this might be Charles Jonathan Twist. The man behind the mascot.”

The transformees glowered at one another. Nathan flexed his legs and then pounced, launching himself through the air by pushing off from Valentine’s serpentine body. But then Werumed-san—or should I say, Charles?—raised a hand, and Nathan suddenly froze-mid air, hovering in place. Through my wyrmsight, I watched as psychokinetic threads streamed onto Nathan’s body from every direction. Wind whipped through clothes and corpses, accompanied by a sound of suction.

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Andalon reached for him in concern.

Nathan’s body collapsed on itself, his limbs breaking with crunch after sickening crunch.

It was an implosion.

Mr. Twist’s attack crushed Nathan’s torso like an aluminum soda can. The spell ended as suddenly as it began, dropping Nathan to the floor. The maimed transformee howled in pain as he writhing on the ground.

I imagined he wished he was dead, even though he most certainly wasn’t.

“No!” Charles barked. “No more violence! No more slaughter! I can’t take it anymore!” He ran his claws over his mascot face. “I’ve already done so much that I can never undo. So… so much.” He trembled. “Do any of you have even the slightest idea of the kind of misery, the kind of abject, all-consuming horror a person has to live through when they’re turning into a wyrm while their mascot persona is calling the shots?”

Letty grimaced. “Mascot persona?”

Charles thrashed his tail and slammed his hands on the floor, sending cracks through the vinyl. “I have a disorder!” he screamed. “The last thing I remember, Veronica walked out on me, and now… now…” he wept, “Oh fuck, the things I’ve done. The things he did.” He shook his arms. “It’s unclean! I’m unclean! I’m a dirty boy! Dirty, dirty boy!”

“What the hell is going on…?” Jonan muttered.

“Why?!” Charles demanded, pointing at Letty’s entourage.

“What?” Maryon said.

“Why are you listening to her?” Charles said, slamming his palm down on the floor for a second time. “She’s awful! Terrible! Horrible! BAD!” He shrieked. “Have none of you been listening? Are you not paying attention?!” He clasped his claws at either side of his head. “EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE! There’s no hope! No god! No nothing! And here you are, MAKING IT WORSE! Shame on you!” He pointed at the transformees. “Shame! Shame!”

I couldn’t believe I was thinking this, but: I agreed with the man who’d apparently thought he was a mascot.

I looked over at the cowering and the dead.

“Please, everyone,” I said, “just go back into the room. We… we can get past this. We don’t have to fight.”

Now, Heggy was looking at me like I was the crazy one.

“It’s too late for that, Dr. Howle,” Charles said. “Our hands are stained with the blood of the innocent!”

“It’s not…” My voice cracked. “It’s never too late. It can’t be.” I stared them in the eyes. At that moment, it didn’t matter to me whether those eyes were human.

You don’t need human eyes to have a soul.

“I beg you,” I said, “please, please… go back into the sequestration room.” I pointed at the shattered doorway. “If we let everything fall to chaos, then what is it that we’re even trying to save anymore?” My voice cracked. “I know it hurts, I know. I haven’t seen my family, either, and god, I miss them. But I’m doing this for them. I’m doing this for you! We all are. Please, help us. Help each other!”

Gasps shot out around the hallway as the transformees stepped away from Letty, all except Nathan, who continued writhing in agony.

“Please?” Letty said, softly quaking with rage. “You please!”

Power swirled around her as she levitated up off the floor. She glared at the others.

“Look,” she said, “look at the power we have. We’re giants, now; they’re ants.” The witch turned her gaze back to me and my colleagues. “Don’t you want to use those powers? Don’t you want to revel in it?”

Before I could react, Letty sent a wave of force slicing through the air. The limping transformees toppled to their knees.

“I’m not going back in there!” Letty yelled. “No one is! I’m strong! I’m free! I’m beautiful! And I can do what I want!”

Bethany and Maryon leapt at Letty. Bethany struck with a psychokinetic broadside, while Maryon raked her talons through the air. Kurt lunged at the hag, too.

Cutting off her levitation, Letty dropped to the floor, dodging Maryon’s attack. With a sweep of her arm, the witch grabbed a fistful of dead soldiers’ flesh and stuffed it down her throat. Her arms thickened with growth. Dark violet scales rippled down their swelling dimensions, sheathing them all the way up to the base of her claws.

Pushing off the vinyl with her tail, Letty wrapped the levitation plexus around herself like a coat, using this to overwhelm Bethany’s attack, only to then send the energy out in a shockwave of blue and gold.

“You won’t stop me!” she screamed.

Letty sent her attackers flying down the hallway. Heggy and a load of corpses skidded along the floor in the opposite direction. Charles got blown back into 268.

This time, however, I was prepared. I’d anchored myself in place with plexuses I’d whipped around my legs and waist. Letty’s force-wave rattled me like a great wind, but it didn’t knock me back.

For a precious few seconds, while everyone else was knocked down or stunned, it was just Letty and I, staring at each other eye to eye.

I noticed one of her eyes had turned gold.

After staring at me for what felt like forever, she glanced at herself, and the others, and then at me.

“Mr. Genneth,” Andalon said, “I think she knows!”

Letty pointed a crooked, clawed finger at me.

“You!” She spat out the word. “All this time, you were…?”

She floated in place, utterly motionless, unable to get the words out of her mouth. But then I realized: no, she wasn’t motionless: she was vibrating; quivering in the air.

Quivering with rage.

The power building around her was like Charles’ outburst all over again—maybe even worse. I could see the air dance and flicker around her, as if she was cloaking herself in a mirage.

I had to do something.

She’d tear Jonan and Angel knows who or what else to pieces with whatever she was mustering.

“Letty,” I yelled, “no!”

She sneered at me, and then, with a roar like a war cry, she lowered to the ground and floated backward toward the end of the hall, like a bull getting ready to charge.

The lights flickered, and the floor trembled, shaking the railings on the walkway girding the atrium.

I swear, for a moment, time seemed to slow down. Raw power swirled around my arms. I could feel it surge and hum. It slithered across my skin through the spaces between the fingers and palms of my clenched fists, and in a moment of the madness that you might call courage, I decided that keeping my changes secret didn’t matter when I was the only one who could stop this twisted, hateful ruin of a human being from tearing my patients, my colleagues, and my workplace to shreds.

I stepped toward her, ready to fire.

Behind me, Dr. Horosha shouted: “Genneth—don’t!”

But I still let my magic fly.

So did Letty.

We both flung our arms forward, but mine got jerked back at the last moment when someone pulled at the back of my hazmat suit.

More than one voice screamed behind me.

My attack crashed into Letty’s, but I fell backward—my legs sliding forward along the floor—as Dr. Horosha pulled me back.

The air sparked where our waves of power met, and then sparked again as a third pataphysical wave collided into the two.

I looked up.

Charles had bolted out of Room 268, surrounded by a swarm of blue and gold arcs. Thrusting his arms forward, he launched the arcs at the horned witch. Like birds, they flew—like eagles and ospreys; like fortune’s albatross, winged and wide—cutting through the air.

They swept through Letty; through, and around. The wind was razors, blue and gold, piranhas tearing.

She didn’t even have time to scream.

The witch fell to the floor in slices, one after the other, piling up in a wet, sloppy, stack of minced Kathaldri julienne. Her fleshy horns clattering on the vinyl like a fallen crown.

“H-Holy shit…”

Slowly, people dared to raise their heads. Shaking bodies looked up and stood up. Dr. Horosha got up off me, looked me in the eyes, and then flicked his head toward Heggy, Jonan, and Ani who were all further down the hall. They were busy helping each other back to their feet.

“What were you thinking?” Suisei hissed, under his breath.

“I…”

But, before I could respond, someone else needed me.

“Dr. Howle?”

I turned to see Charles coiled in the middle of the hallway. He took care not to touch any of the corpses.

I looked up at him.

“Thank you,” I said. My eyes bounced between him and the Letty-mush piled on the floor.

“You are a good doctor,” Charles said. His voice was kind and gentle. “I am a bad patient, and I apologize for that.” He looked at the others. “I apologize to you all.”

I tried to speak, but he interrupted me.

“I do not want to live like this, Dr. Howle.” He smiled with his pancake face. “Just remember,” he said, “it isn’t your fault.”

Through my wyrmsight, I saw a weave of power blossom inside Charles’ serpentine body. It threaded through him, like an axis mundi. The next thing I knew, he exploded, splitting down that long axis. His two halves fell to the floor, silent and dead.

“Wyrmeh! Noooo!”

Andalon fell to her knees and wept.