“Lass preserve us!” Karl yelled.

The abomination turned, trundling into the lobby. Through my wyrmsight, I saw souls and their auras churn in the monster’s core, as if trapped there.

I screamed. “That thing has her! We have to get her out of it!”

It didn’t matter whether she was dead or alive. As long as it had her, it could use her.

I ran ahead, my rotten legs making me stumble as I stepped over the fallen.

Screams erupted from the lobby up ahead as the abomination barreled forward. There was a horrific crash as the thing burst into the garage through the far wall. Hot, stuffy air spilled into the hallway.

Andalon flew at my side as I ran. “Mr. Genneth!”

“I know!” I said. “I know!”

I couldn’t let Nina stay part of a demon.

No more holding back. I had to give it my all.

I’d rip that darn thing to pieces!

I had a feeling I was about to give myself some really nasty hunger pangs.

I ran through the lobby, pushing off the counter of the reception desk, sprinting forward with pataphysical speed. There was a horizontal stream of bullets up ahead, blasting at the wyrm where it had coiled over to my right.

Geoffrey and I locked eyes.

“Ignore the wyrm!” I yelled. “It’s the other creature—the demon!” I pointed at it. “We have to stop it!”

The garage erupted with gunfire as the abomination clambered over the rows of parked cars. The metal creaked and groaned beneath its clawed feet, and then crumpled as it swiped them out of the way, crashing them into the garage’s structural columns or one another.

To my right, the wyrm reared back its head and bellowed.

I skidded to a stop.

Oh fudge…

I could see the wisps of green spiraling into its snout-holes as it inhaled.

Slowing time, I changed my direction and darted forward, mustering my power. I drew up plexuses and wove them into forcefields that I layered thick to my either sides.

One wall to block the wyrm, another to block the soldiers and their gunfire.

Like a cobra, the wyrm struck, lashing forward as it unleashed its breath weapon, a torrent of green death roaring out from its snout. Through the slowed time, as I ran straight ahead, I watched my forcefield divert the spore breath. The green deluge bounced off my glistening plexus, rebounding toward the wyrm.

Was this what the Lass felt when she parted the waters of Elpeck Bay?

“Cooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmme onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!” I yelled, turning my head back. My words stretched across the moment. The air felt like molasses against my libs.

I saw Geoffrey, Bever, Morgan, and Karl follow in my footsteps, running through my forcefield corridor. Up ahead, Yuta was running low to the ground with his katana behind him. The samurai had phased through a partially crushed car.

I let time quicken as soon as my feet hit the garage’s mosaic floor. Having cleared the danger, I withdrew my forcefields. Gunfire and spore breath intermixed behind us.

The abomination loomed ahead. It was swinging its claws at scattered clusters of soldiers. More of the General’s men spilled out from the Galleria on the garage’s opposite side.

I was pretty sure I could hear what sounded like a tank rolling down the exit ramp.

“The girl at the front of it,” I said, pointing at the abomination, “we have to get her out!”

Bever turned to me. “Is that—?”

“—Yes,” I said, “it’s her.”

Yuta nodded, and ran off, katana glistening as he phased through the parked cars. I followed behind, alongside Geoffrey and his comrades. We ran in between the rows of cars.

Through a moment of slowed time, I looked down to see that I was using my powers to keep myself balanced and push myself forward.

Had I even done that?

I felt a sliver of myself stir.

You’re welcome.

I guess I had my doppelgenneths to thank.

In that moment of slowed time, I realized something.

This is, isn’t it? I thought. My ruse was over. Barring a miracle, there would be no coming back from this. I was using my powers out in the open.

At least we’re going out with a bang, I told my body-self.

Yeah, I thought, I guess I was.

The military was pelting the abomination with bullets, and they weren’t doing much. They either ricocheted off its armored plates, or lodged in the human flesh exposed on the creature’s surface, seemingly to no effect.

I didn’t see any heat rays.

Had all their elite troops been slain?

The abomination swung at two soldiers, impaling them with its claws. Its claw-tips raked bloody furrows in the mosaic floor.

I’d played enough video games to recognize a boss fight when I saw one. And this boss had special resistances—immunity to bullets, for one. Worse, it had hijacked Nina’s powers and—I think—had somehow used them to cancel out mine.

And why would it do that?

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Because it knows we can hurt it, I told myself.

Exactly right.

Well, at least I hoped it was right.

Still, right or not, it was stopping my attacks before I could get any hits in.

Unless…

I had an idea.

“Yuta!” I yelled. “Slash it Aim for its legs!”

That’s a thing you did when fighting monsters, right?

I infused Yuta’s sword with my magic as he ran ahead—and he got a hit in, a decisive horizontal slash on one of the unarmored parts of one of the abomination’s front legs. The phantom katana cut clean through the bulky limb. The abomination stumbled forward. Some of the soldiers cheered, thinking they were responsible for it.

The abomination’s armor plates raised up off its body—going erect—like hair bristling in anger.

Then, just as I’d expected, the shadow magic intervened. Through my wyrmsight, the now-familiar tendrils of dark energy spooled out from Nina’s body and wrapped around Yuta’s sword.

Perfect timing.

Let’s see how it handles a pincer maneuver, I thought.

Expecting the counter, I’d started pulling my power away from Yuta’s katana before I’d even felt the energy-pressure of the thing’s shadow weaves crush my own. I took the power from Yuta’s sword and coalesced it into a blade of my own: massive sword of filamentous light—blue, golden, and glorious—several feet wide, and many more long.

A giant katana.

With a scream, I charged at the abomination from behind. I pulled my blade back, ready to strike.

If this was anything like Yuta’s attack, I’d split the creature straight down the middle.

Energy flared, swirling around the abomination in black and white, forming rasping black coils that merged into a thick wall. My energy blade collapsed as it slammed into the barrier, as if the wall was a whetstone that had ground it away.

My dead blood ran cold in my veins.

So much for my pincer maneuver, I thought.

The bodies in the abomination’s back spasmed. The thing reared up.

“Dr. Howle!”

Turning, I saw Geoffrey running toward me, halberd in hand.

I darted out of the way just in time. The knight lunged forward, swinging his halberd in a wide berth that lopped off a solid chunk of human flesh from one of the abomination’s hind legs. Man and steel cut through the barrier of dark energy like it wasn’t even there.

Of course! Why didn’t I realize it sooner?

The barrier had only blocked my pataphysics!

Geoffrey’s blow made the beast stagger. The creature’s overlapping plates rippled as it toppled onto its side.

One of the soldiers screamed: “Fire away!”

The military pumped bullets into the abomination’s soft underbelly. Metal rained on the mosaic floor.

“She’s up at the front!” I yelled.

Bever and I followed Geoffrey around to the front of the creature. I saw Karl running to join us from off to the side. As we approached, the abomination swept one of its forelegs across the tiled floor. Bever blocked the blow, catching his axe in the gap between two of its claws. The axe’s haft snapped in two, launching Bever backwards. He crashed into the side of a crumpled sedan.

Morgan seized the opportunity, stabbing the monster from behind with his pike.

The beast rocked from side to side, trying to right itself. The bodies at its front—including Nina’s—thumped ungainly against the tile.

Lunging forward, Geoffrey cleaved his halberd through the clustered bodies, then, raising it back, he brought it down on the still-visible human flesh in a massive blow, slicing away the bodies to either side of Nina.

“Howle,” he yelled, “your powers. Help me! Pull!”

I started preparing a weave, but then flinched as the wyrm in the lobby bellowed polyphonic thunder.

Quickening my thoughts, I slowed time to focus on crafting my plexus. Through the slowed time, I watched Geoffrey throw himself at the abomination.

My eyes went wide.

Digging in, Geoffrey wrapped his arms around Nina’s glassy-eyed corpse.

He pulled, but then broke out in a scream.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon screamed—she floated overhead.

Geoffrey’s boots scraped against the tiled floor as he tried to pull away. But his efforts were fruitless.

“What’s…” I staggered back in shock. “What’s happening!?”

The fungus answered my question for me by pulling on the knight, sucking him into its abomination’s flesh.

“Help!” he shrieked. “I—I can’t—it’s—”

Karl screamed. “—Geoffrey!” He fired his pistol at the monster. The bullets didn’t even bounce off; the creature sucked them into its flesh.

Geoffrey’s screams stretched and broke as the abomination’s fungal mortar crawled up his arms. He fell to his knees, frothing wildly at the mouth. The patches of thickened wyrmsight on my field of vision showed the abomination’s infection-aura merging with Geoffrey’s.

It sucked him in like a feasting amoeba.

I tried pulling the knight free with my pataphysics, but tendrils of dark light shot out from the creature and batted away my weaves, swatting them like flies.

“W-We have to pull him out!” Karl yelled.

Karl, Morgan, and I ran forward. Geoffrey fought against the consuming flesh, straining to reach out with his arms. We each grabbed one of his arms, and pulled, but my frail legs gave out and I fell to the ground. On a reflex, I reached out to brace myself. My hand landed on the abomination’s hide.

Geoffrey’s screams were cut short as his head suddenly snapped back. The sound of his bones cracking bounced off the garage’s ceiling. All the tension in his body fell away. The fungus subsumed him. The abomination was like flypaper. Geoffrey’s armor got stuck where it touched it, peeling off his skin. Thousands of writhing tendrils plunged into him—haustoria, seeking to feed.

The fungus was setting its roots—and not just in the dying knight.

The abomination’s undead flesh squirmed beneath my palm, crawling through the cut in my glove. I screamed as the squirming intensified. There was a brief burning sensation, and then—

—Suddenly, it was like I’d been pricked by lightning. Energy roared through my body.

It took me a second to understand what was happening—to understand what I was feeling.

The fungal flesh had eaten away at my glove, using the cut from before as an inroads. A blissful tickle consumed my hand as my body seemed to drink up the abomination’s biomass. All the auras churning within the creature’s body flowed into me. Geoffrey’s consciousness joined them, darting up into my hand, along with a wave of pleasure that dented my hunger as it roared through me.

Even Nina’s light—the white motes—passed into me, onto my hand and up my arm.

I think I’d just taken back the souls the monster had stolen.

And not just that.

The fungus and I were fighting for control of the biomass. The fungus seemed to build its monsters from the bodies of its victims. It fused them together—turning human beings into building blocks to toy with as it saw fit, and then used their souls to power the abominations it had wrought.

But now, &alon was fighting back.

If I couldn’t save the lives the fungus had taken, at least I could free their flesh from its bondage to Hell.

Familiar spectral blue flames appeared. Like dandelions on the wind, they drifted down and then passed into Andalon and me.

I guess this counted as a meal.

The dark light swirling around the abomination began to thin. The barrier it had formed to block my attacks flickered. Entire sections gave way.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled. “You’re getting her power! Amplersandalon’s power!”

Was there hope for me after all?

I summoned my energy sword once again. I wove it upward—an executioner’s blade raised high above the abomination; a giant clock-hand, ready to crush. At the same time, I wound force in front of me—a coil, ready to spring. And then I let the power flow.

I held nothing back.

Pressure blossomed across my chest as my pataphysical miracle launched me backward. Pain stung my palm where my contact with the abomination had broken. Quickening my thoughts, I watched through slowed time as the second half of my magic did its work.

The energy blade angled over the abomination swung down, descending like the Angel Himself from the skies above.

My back hit the garage floor, bashing my tail. My shoulders buckled as force rippled through me.

I skidded to a stop.

My blade cut the abomination down the middle, splitting its armored plates like butter. Heat and black ooze steamed up from the creature’s exposed core.

But I could do more.

I had to, for Nina’s sake.

And for Geoffrey.

In the slowed time, I made another spring, this one beneath me, between my back and the floor, using it to launch myself back to my feet. I took the plexus my doppelgenenth had woven around my legs and lower body and willed it forward and upward, catching me like a glove, holding me upright.

I slowed my thoughts, quickening time once more.

Spreading my arms, I pooled the various plexuses around me into a second blade. My body burned.

It was the longest mile I’d ever run.

Nina’s white light whirl around me, soothing the burn.

It gave me strength.

Screaming, I pushed my hands forward. My second blade joined its brother, rising high. The two, glittering clock-hands gyrated above the abomination. Slowly, I stepped back, spinning my arms around and around—a conductor of Andalon’s might. The blades spun and spun, slicing the creature in half, and in half again and in half again. Soldiers gasped as the hail of bullets bounced off my force blades, marking their contours for all to see.

“Hold your fire!” someone yelled.

The fungal abomination fell apart in a steaming pile of meat. Kibbles and cubes spilled onto nearby cars and the garage’s mosaic floor.

And then, overhead, the green death came billowing. A hurricane, from the silver-eyed wyrm.

It crested over us in a mighty wave.