Knowing I had my work cut out for me, I doppelgennethed myself. My perceptions of reality doubled. With my body-self, I pushed off the bench and looked around to see where I could be of use—and, more importantly, go on a quest for food. However, I put the bulk of my attention into a single mind-self, retreating to a more pleasant location.

The next thing I knew, I was standing back in the atrium of the haunted house I’d used for training the self-help group’s transformees in ghost therapy and afterlife management—only now, it was as far from haunted as could be.

Andalon and I stood in the atrium of the old mansion, as it looked on days of the year that weren’t Celdmas. Gone were the fake cobwebs and the spooky lighting, both inside and out. The branches behind the big, arched window at the back of the landing in the middle of the grand staircase were fully leafed, blooming with purple flowers. The Sun was shining through that window. It was the height of midday. With the light streaming in, and with the stately wall sconces and the tall, square pillars that flanked the entryway, it felt like we were inside a cathedral.

Andalon rushed up and hugged my waist the instant I materialized. She trembled as she leaned into me.

“Andalon is so scared, Mr. Genneth!”

Putting my hands on her shoulders, I gently pushed her back until I had enough room to lower myself to one knee without kneeing her in the chest. I ran my fingers through her hair while summoning a bunch of pillows and bean-bags with a wave of my other hand.

“C’mon,” I said, landing on a green bean-bag. “Let’s sit and talk.” I patted the dark blue bean-bag beside me.

The color matched Andalon’s eyes.

After a moment’s hesitation, she plopped down on the blue bean-bag. It took about a minute or so of her fussing and fidgeting before she got herself situated. Once she had, I leaned forward and looked her in the eyes.

“Tell me, Andalon,” I asked, “are you still afraid?”

She nodded shakily.

“Do you mind if I ask why?” I asked.

“Huh?” She looked at me, quite confused.

“I mean… back there, yes, it was scary, but… we sent the fungus packing! With &alon’s help, we made the darkness squirm. Shouldn’t that make you happy? I know it makes me happy!” I nodded. “It’s our biggest victory yet!”

Lowering her gaze, she twiddled her thumbs. “I… uh…”

I guess I’d have to prompt her.

I decided to start with the most obvious possibility. “Was it the zombies?” I asked. “If we’d been doing our job right, there shouldn’t have been any zombies here, right?” I added. “Or is the darkness just that powerful that it can overcome our efforts? Hmm…” I said, muttering to myself, “maybe we need more transformees on ghost-management duty.”

“I… maybe?” Andalon said. She tilted her head side to side, shaking it fretfully. “I, it’s…” Tears welled up in her eyes.

I held out my hands in a calming gesture. “Breathe, Andalon,” I said. “Never forget to breathe.”

She did.

I clasped my hands together. “Think carefully. What’s causing you to feel this way?”

“Causin’?” she asked.

I nodded. “Often, our fears come from what we imagine might happen to us. So, back there—especially before we got to the lobby, when you were trying to stop me from going—what were you imagining would happen if I’d gone?”

“It’s…” She pursed her lips. “It’s the darkness. The darkness is there,” she said. “It’s here!”

“Yes,” I nodded, “but… you’ve mentioned that before.” I looked her in the eyes.

“The darkness is in a lot of places!” she said, emphatically. “Maybe even all of the places!”

“That may be so,” I said—though, honestly, I really, really hoped it wasn’t, “but, this time, when you got scared, it felt… different to me. You’ve gotten upset before, but not quite like this. This time, it felt much more intense.”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“What was different this time?” I asked.

Suddenly, Andalon’s eyes widened. She looked up at me, utterly spooked.

“It’s them,” she said, quietly. “The… uh…” She struggled to find the word. “The k’niggits.”

“The what?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“The guys with the shines on them,” she said, patting her stomach, arms, legs, and forehead.

Oh, I realized. The knights. But then I blinked. “Wait. What!?”

The gushy bean-bag churned underneath me as Jostled about in surprise.

Shouldn’t Andalon be afraid of the zombies—otherwise known as the armies of Hell? Why was she afraid of time travelers?

Unless…

Andalon nodded. “It’s the darkness. It makes time all… uh…” She pursed her lips. “Can Andalon show you?” she asked, meekly.

“Wait,” I said, “you can show me?”

She nodded.

“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”

This turned out to be a very bad idea, because, the next thing I knew, I was in pure agony. I sat helplessly as my arms began to liquify, like a fudge pop that had been left out in the Sun. My clothes melted along with my body, turning into a fluid that dribbled down the green bean-bag’s water-repellent sides. My hair ran down my face in rivulets, my vision breaking apart into myriad threads as my eyes liquified. Yet I continued to see, even as my eyes dripped down, intermixing with my dissolving form like spilt paint. The world was a jumble of slices of light coming at me from all directions.

I screamed.

A second later, it all stopped, and I was back to normal, quivering in terror atop the comfort of my green bean-bag.

“That,” Andalon said, resolutely. She nodded. “It does that.”

I took some deep breaths.

“Andalon?”

You know what? I thought. No, I’m not going to try and make a new rule because of this.

I just needed to be more careful in the future.

“The word you were looking for is melt,” I said, after a momentous pause. “The fungus makes time melt.”

I barely understood what that even meant, but I didn’t need to for my mind to go wild with thoughts about the kinds of horrors time-melting would cause. Also, I now had a much more visceral appreciation of just how frightening Andalon’s past must have been.

I shook my head. “This just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” I muttered.

Just when I’d thought I’d figured out my role in all this, I got thrown for a loop all over again. Yuta was dead, the military had the time traveling knights, innocent people had gotten turned into zombies—not to mention shot dead by their own military (and despite my and other transformee’s efforts to keep souls from getting snatched up by Hell)—and, now, on top of all that, apparently, time itself was melting.

Whatever it meant, it couldn’t be good.

I sighed. “I’m getting stressed out again,” I said, softly.

But then, Andalon did something that surprised me. For once, she tried to cheer me up.

She crept toward me on her knees. “Andalon knows it’s scary,” she said, raising herself straight, “but… we got helped! It’s just like you said, Mr. Genenth! We got help from Amplersandalon!”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “we did.”

She stuck her arms in the air. “And Mr. Genneth gots a new thing! We made the zombies not zombie!”

I smiled weakly. “I… I guess we did.”

Andalon turned perplexed. She flopped back onto the blue bean-bag behind her. “Shouldn’t you be happy? You saved peoples!” She nodded. “You saved them!”

I fidgeted with my bowtie.

“That was you, hacking into the fungus, right?” I asked.

“Hack-ing?”

“Taking control of it, I mean.”

Andalon nodded. “Yeah, yeah, with Amplersandalon’s help! And you can do it again! You got the power now.”

“Wait,” I said, “again?”

She nodded.

That… that changed things.

“So, by channeling &alon’s power,” I said, “we can de-zombify the zombies. And not just this one time?”

Andalon nodded. “Uh-huh.”

This was big. Not only was our work keeping zombies from forming by keeping souls safe from Hell’s clutches, if Andalon was to be believed, I now had the power to undo zombification, at least as long as the zombie’s soul was still in its body. Not to mention, I also seemed to be able to manipulate the zombies as if I was their puppeteer.

“Great, just great…” I said, slapping my thigh in frustration.

Leave it to me to feel worse after hearing great news.

“Huh?” Andalon tilted her head in confusion—and, for once, it was perfectly understandable. “Why are you saying it is great, but you don’t feel it is great?” she asked. “And why not?”

I sighed. “Now… every minute I’m spending with a patient is a minute I could be spending freeing an innocent person from the fungus’ enslavement. I just feel even more pressure now,” I explained.

For certain personality types—such as mine—getting new skills and becoming more capable was a double-edged sword. While it felt great to progress, that progression came with the weighty conviction that you were now obligated to do more, so as to not “waste” your abilities.

“Also,” I sighed again, “while having magic powers is definitely cool, I’m not exactly thrilled that I’m apparently becoming a necromancer, in addition to a wyrm.”

“Necrowhatsy?” Andalon asked.

I’d anticipated this.

“It’s a type of magic-user who specializes in the powers of death and decay. Their trademark trick is bringing the dead back to life and using them as their servants—usually as slaves. They’re the poster children for ‘evil wizard’.”

I looked up at the ceiling of the atrium. The middle of the ceiling was painted with frescoes depicting hummingbirds foraging nectar from flowers against a backdrop of pure sky.

Never let anyone tell you that being genre-savvy isn’t without its downsides. Once you knew what necromancy was, it was impossible not to call it out when you saw it. I mean, I was already communing with ghosts. Now, I was controlling people who’d turned into zombies. Admittedly, it was for the noble purpose of de-zombifying them, but, no matter how you looked at it, bending zombies to your will was 100% necromancy.

“What’s next,” I mumbled, off-handedly, “turning people into zombies?

Andalon shrugged. “Maybe?”

Closing my eyes, I groaned, fidgeting with my lucky bow-tie. “Focus on the positives,” I told myself, muttering under my breath, “focus on the positives.”

My eyes shot open. I sat up stiff, pushing up against the gushy green bean-bag. “The rift!” I said.

“The wha?” Andalon asked.

“The window in the air,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“That was a connection to &alon, right?” I asked. “But then… why were the flames going into it? Until now, they’ve only ever come toward us.”

So far, our working theory was that the spectral blue flames that appeared after I ate represented bits of my connection with &alon, and that connection grew with every flame that flowed into us, causing Andalon to remember more about herself, and my powers to grow stronger.

“Maybe they went in the holey so we can connex to &alon?” she suggested.

“That… makes sense,” I said, slowly nodding.

Turning my focus to my physical self, I noticed my body had finished helping in the lobby. I was returning to my rounds.

“Whatcha gonna do now, Mr. Genneth?” Andalon asked.

Fortunately, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

Before my transformation, one of my biggest complaints about being human (and life, in general) was that a person can only be in one place at one time. It was a terribly restrictive policy, and I’d always wanted to ask the Angel why He’d picked it. Fortunately, the multifariousness of my wyrmly mind freed me from that limitation. I could be in as many places as I wanted, provided I could manage all that multitasking.

Smiling, I rubbed my palms together. “It’s time to assemble the Council…”

I’d always wanted to say that.