Yes, for the record, that was my plan: convince them I was a sorcerer.

Was it dignified? No. But I was trying, darn it!

I’d actually been debating whether it would be better if I claimed I was a wizard rather than a sorcerer, but, eventually—by which I mean, in the slowed time of my big leap—I decided against it. As far as I could tell, my use of pataphysics (or whatever you wanted to call it) was more sorcerer-like— than wizardly; that is, it was an innate, spontaneously utilized ability, rather than a learned skill whose use I’d prepared in advance. In the grand scheme of things, did this distinction really matter? No. But, on the off chance that the apocalypse decided to follow tabletop RPG mechanics, I didn’t want to get caught misrepresenting the nature of my magic.

You never know.

Of course, Andalon didn’t understand the distinction, nor did Yuta, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t stopping him from judging me for having considered it.

Overall, I was quite pleased with my performance. I’d convinced everyone—even Henry, the transformee—that I was in possession of magical powers of divine origin. This was the easy part.

Unfortunately, after that, things got a lot more complicated.

For one thing, Geoffrey made it clear to me that I would “rue the day” if it turned out I was lying about who or what I was.

“Were it not for the miracles you have wrought,” he said, “I wouldn’t give you an inch of my trust. But… it is not for me to question the will of the almighty.”

So, there was that.

I stood in the middle of a ruined aisle, flanked on either side by fractured desks and toppled, console-mounted trellises. The floor was littered with upended chairs and slivers of broken tables and crunched plastic.

Geoffrey and the others stood in front of me, at the other end of the aisle, over where things hadn’t yet been completely ruined. Behind me, Henry lay on the ground, his serpentine torso splayed out on a pile of broken furniture, his blobby stump of a tail wiggling behind him. He picked at the broken furniture with his claw. He’d stick the fragments into his mouth like they were toothpicks and then suck and chew.

I swear, I could see his tail getting longer.

It hadn’t taken long to figure out why they’d been fighting. It was, unfortunately, Karl’s fault. The boy had collapsed, unconscious right as he opened the door to the room that Henry had been hiding in and, naturally, when the other knights rushed to his aid, they’d thought poor Henry was to blame. Granted, they also thought Karl had been possessed by an archdemon of Hell—but, one step at a time.

At my request, Bever had set Karl down on the floor in the middle of the aisle. I’d grabbed a broken chair—it was missing its back—and sat down on it, using it as a stool. I’d also levitated Geoffrey and Morgan’s weapons out from under Henry’s underbelly and placed them beside Karl.

As for Karl, the boy was still unconscious, though the symptoms that Geoffrey and the others described him as having had stopped. Their reports were consistent with Karl having suddenly suffered a grand mal seizure.

On an ordinary day in an ordinary world, when someone without any pre-existing history of seizures (either of their own, or in their family) had a seizure, it was a very big deal that required an immediate investigation to determine the cause, though, by then, if something in the brain was really out of whack—cancer, neurodegenerative disease, an infection of the central nervous system, etc.—it was generally too late to do anything about it, and though this was neither an ordinary day nor an ordinary world, the same was true for Karl’s condition.

It was too late to do anything about it.

My wyrmsight had told me all I’d needed to know.

It really was terrifying how quickly the Green Death progressed. Even now, the radiant, multicolored tendrils of fungal aura I’d seen bundled up in Bever and Geoffrey’s chests when I’d visited their room had already begun to elongate, reaching out to infiltrate the rest of their bodies, and Morgan and Duncan weren’t far behind.

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Karl was the odd man out, and in more ways than one. His companions were older, beefier, and far more well-grizzled than he was. Had he lived in my time, he would have been a university student, not a soldier.

I wonder what Geoffrey and his companions would have thought of Karl had they known what was really happening to him. I could see wyrm-aura within Karl’s body, beneath the hospital gown he wore over his centuries-old armor. To my eyes, the violet, ultramarine light was as clear as day. It traced out a breastplate of runic circuitry over his chest, having spread there from his central nervous system. The transformation’s weave over his brain and spinal cord was making his body’s median axis gleam like a streetlamp at night. His brain was the bulb up top. Like with any other transformee, Karl’s seizure was just the first step of his developing Type Two NFP-20 infection. When he woke up, he was going to believe he was dead, and things were only going to get weirder from there.

Andalon sat down on the floor beside him, on her knees, staring at him excitedly, quietly muttering, “He’s gonna be wyrmeh!” over and over again.

Okay, I thought, that’s enough now, Andalon.

Looking up at me, she smiled and nodded and said, “Okay!”, and then disappeared into thin air.

Kids these days.

I sighed.

Bever spoke up: “So, do you know what’s wrong with him?”

This was the tricky part. Even now, the knights were deeply wary of Henry. They were genuinely afraid of him, for all the obvious reasons.

They thought he was a Norm; they’d even said as much. Yes, I had Andalon, and with her help, I knew things weren’t anywhere that cut and dry, but all of those facts wouldn’t amount to anything if I couldn’t get Geoffrey and the others to believe them—and to believe me. The way things currently stood, I could attempt to dismantle their misconceptions, or, I could try to step around the issue (by which, I mean, “Not talk about it”) and wait until I’d earned more of their trust before I fully broke the news to them.

I decided to do the latter.

Don’t look at me like that. You’d have to be there to know what it was really like.

So, yeah, I wasn’t going to try to convince them that the transformees weren’t demons. That seemed like an uphill battle, and I didn’t feel the risk posed by failure would be worth the reward. That being said, I sure as heck wasn’t going to do anything that would encourage their current view, not if I could avoid it. They believed me when I claimed to be one of the Blessèd. I could use that to my advantage.

And not only that.

“Yes,” I said, answering Bever’s question. I nodded. “I do. But… I need to ask you something, first.”

Bever glared at me.

I needed to understand what the heck was happening with the various rifts I’d seen so far. Was the fungus changing the past? Was there more than one version of our past?

I needed to know.

Obviously, it’s not like I could straight out ask the knights if their era was actually in my world’s past or some kind of weird parallel reality. They wouldn’t know what to look for, and neither would I.

But there was one exception.

Yuta’s world and/or timeline had stars in it. If the knights’ world and/or timeline had stars, that would mean they were more similar to one another than they were to my own world’s past. What that would mean, I had no idea, because all of this was just waaaay too much for me at the moment, but at least it would be something.

“My question is this,” I said, “do you know what a star is?”

All of the knights stared at me. It was Geoffrey who broke the silence.

“I do not know that word. I have never heard of such a thing.” His eyes narrowed. “Is it Mewnee?”

A chill ran down to the tip of my tail.

This was not good. Not good at all. Granted, I had no clue what this absence of stars meant, but, given the way everything else was going, I figured I’d rather be safe than sorry.

I sighed.

“What is a star?” Bever asked.

“It’s a long story,” I muttered. But then I nodded graciously. “But, thank you for asking that question.”

This was proof; whichever world’s past they were from, it—like mine—was starless.

“Why?”

“It puts at least one of my worries out of the way,” I said, “though it would take me a while to explain the how.” I cleared my throat. “Now, as to your question…”

I briefly slowed down time to make sure I had my story straight, then sped it back up again, and spoke as matter-of-factly as I could.

“Karl has been chosen. He’s going to wake up soon, and when he does, he will be one of the Blessèd. He will begin to develop powers, and I will be his guide. There are others here like me,” I said, thinking of Suisei’s group. “Like me, they will be able to help Karl in ways that you cannot.”

The knights rippled with motion as they collectively made the Bond-Sign.

Bever shook his head in awe. “Little Prestingham’s going up in the world, isn’t he?“ he muttered, softly.

“What about the Norm?” Geoffrey asked. Narrowing his eyes, he threw a leering gaze at Henry behind me.

I shook my head. “His name is Henry,” I said, feeling more than a little peeved. I huffed. “As for him, he has his own role to play in this, as do all of the Angel’s creations. Leave that to me,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Duncan asked.

After glancing back at Henry—who was staring at me quite nervously—I nodded. “Absolutely.”

“How can you be so sure?” Morgan asked.

Bever turned to his comrade and hissed. “Morgan, he’s one of the Blessèd, don’t—”

“—No, it’s alright,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “He’s right to ask.” I looked them in the eyes. “I would have preferred if you’d waited for me like I asked.”

“Forgive me doctor,” Geoffrey said, “or whatever you are, but I have more than enough reason to be suspicious of you and everyone around you. There are Mewnees here,” he said. The very word made his lips curl in disgust. “I see their script written all about this place.” He knelt at Karl’s side. “Karl showed me the DAISHU that rules your world.” Geoffrey looked to his companions at his side. “This is not the world we fought for. We fought to free the Trenton people from the Mewnee menace.” He got up onto one knee. “This DAISHU is in league with Hell—with the Norms.”