Suddenly, torrents of fog spilled into view, blasting through the archways and the holes. A molten wind tore through Paradise’s deathly silence, followed by a sonic boom that shook me to my bones. All around, more statues tumbled down and shattered on the ground.

We didn’t stop to ask what had happened. We just ran, bolting around toppled statues and shivering trees until we reached an open area where we could see what was going on.

My eyes went wide.

“By the Angel…”

I could only describe them as claw marks torn in the overcast sky. Fire and smoke streaked through the air, plummeting earthward near and far, scattering the fog. Gigantic clouds of dust and ash rose up from the impacts. Blast waves ripped through the spacious streets, buffeting the petrified city and setting our clothes—and my tail—a-flutter.

My ears popped.

Staff in hand, Brand pointed up. “Look.”

One of the sky-fires zoomed almost directly overhead us. Though it was moving at a terrific speed, it was still close enough for me to get a good look at it.

“No…” I whispered.

There was no mistaking that telltale silver shape and its austere geometry.

It was one of Andalon’s Scary-Shinies.

Yuta looked around, trying to assess the situation. “What’s that sound?”

I looked around, but I wasn’t able to hear anything other than the cataclysmic blasts of the Scary-Shinies crashing into the earth.

But then, I heard it. I heard what Yuta was referring to.

How could I not?

It started quietly, but grew louder.

“Genneth, what is that?” Brand asked.

He could hear it, too.

“Wyrmsong,” I said, raising my head to the sky. I held my breath in my chest. “I think Andalon is coming to help—”

There was a sound of sliding metal as Yuta unsheathed his kanakatana. “—Look, there!” He pointed with his glyph-blade.

Overhead, a wyrm was breaking through the clouds and fog. A couple days ago, the sight would have filled me with terror, but here, all I felt was relief and elation.

Andalon was coming to help!

But then the wyrm got closer, and my heart plummeted.

“No…” I gasped.

The wyrm was the same color as I was, a dark violet, and it hadn’t finished its transformation, which was important, because it clearly hadn’t been human when it had started.

Trails and patches of vivid green feathers ran across its flanks, turning gray and white on its underbelly. Traces of a beak jutted out from its snout like nails in a swollen tree trunk. There were two feathered wings on its back, useless and vestigial—pitifully small compared to the rest of its body. The wings stuck out to either side of a mane of tall stalks topped in green, bioluminescent bulbs.

And its eyes shone silver, brilliant like the full Moon.

“Silver eyes…” Brand said. “That means…—”

“—There’s no time!” I yelled.

I could already feel myself growing as I engaged my . My clothing and armor were absorbed into me as I stretched and swelled. I thrashed out my thickening tail, knocking over statues and trees. My face lengthened into a snout, absorbing my teeth as I turned to my robot companion.

“Buffs,” I yelled, “now!”

Overhead, the hummingbird wyrm roared.

Brand raised his arms. “Egre gium, mil’nor!”

Radiant globes of blue-purple light popped into being around all three of us—Brand’s spell, metamagically modified for group protection. It wouldn’t last long, but it would give us time for buffs—and, thankfully, my now had spell casting capacity.

The silver-eyed hummingwyrm slithered down through the sky and spewed acid spore breath over us in a wide cone. Sparks crackled and flashed across our as the spell defused the deadly cloud.

I used a metamagic ability to fire off several buffs in rapid succession. As a downside, I was prevented from casting spells for a little while until I recovered from the arcane exertion, but that’s why I’d changed into a truck-sized pangolin.

“!” I shouted “! !”

Lights flashed all around us as shimmering, iridescent shields came into being, beneath the .

The wyrm shot through the air, whisking wisps off the spore cloud. Around us, the ground had been eaten away. The statues bubbled and hissed as the acid dissolved them.

The wyrm swerved up overhead. Yuta ran off to chase it.

More polyphonic roars ripped through the air, making me flinch. Raising my head, I saw several more wyrms descend through the fog.

All of them were silver-eyed, and all their scales were dark purple.

Oh God…

The fungus had made them all the same. It robbed them of their individuality. They were nothing more than ants to it: interchangeable slaves.

I yelled: “Brand!”

Brand cast . Our movement speed and reaction rates doubled. Even the air around our bodies moved more quickly, forming little eddies as it whirred around us. Everything around me seemed to slow, except for Yuta, Brand, and I—and this time, the speed of my thoughts had nothing to do with it.

“Scatter!” Yuta yelled.

He didn’t need to tell me twice.

All three of us ran in separate directions. I galloped through the park, my pangolin claws flicking up dirt and moss-grass. And fast though I was, one of the wyrms was still on my tail—figuratively, of course. Mentally, I winced as I trampled over statues and tore through the manicured gardens, hurtling down the scenic boulevard. As I came around one of the egg-studded skyscrapers, I saw the wall of another hollow skyscraper rushing toward me, dead ahead.

At first, I tried to slow down, but then—remembering the wyrm in pursuit—I picked up speed, barreling toward the wall.

I looked over my back: the wyrm was following. It sped up, slither-hovering over the ground, lashing out with its claws, spewing out green plumes as it turned and roared.

Sparks crackled behind me as my protected me from the wyrm’s breath weapon. Unfortunately, the magic barrier sputtered and faded a moment later.

Fudge.

When the building’s wall was mere feet from my face, I leapt, pushing with all fours. Tucking my head and legs against my body, I curled into a scaly, armored ball, rolling off to the side at the last minute.

I heard—and smelled—the wyrm crash into the wall I’d just narrowly avoided. The impact sent cracks through the structure. Chunks of stone came tumbling down.

Uncurling myself, I flopped onto my belly and then got back onto all fours. I shook my head, cursing that I didn’t have an anti-dizziness spell as I staggered over to the pile of debris. The wyrm writhed, flicking stone off its body as it slowly levitated off the ground.

Flinging myself onto the feathered serpent, I dug my claws into its scaly hide. It bellowed and roared, flailing like a rodeo bull, but I held firm, going so far as to wrap my tail around its body to keep it from flinging me off.

The world rocked and rolled.

“Yuta!” I screamed. “Over here!”

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I could make out a dark blue blur streaking down the acid-eaten path, holding a black scribble in its hands. Two hummingwyrms swam after it, their iridescent feathers flickering and flickering as they hovered along the ground.

“A little help here?!” I yelled.

With his magically enhanced movement, Yuta—the dark blue blur—leapt up, ricocheting off a hollow skyscraper’s curved wall to land on one of the pursuing wyrms. The two wyrms swam up, slithered helices in the air, clawing at one another in a desperate struggle to swat away the inkblade warrior, but Yuta was too swift for them. He leapt from wyrmback to wyrmback, and then plunged his kanakatana into one of the wyrms. The wyrms’ flesh cracked open as ink streamed out and trickled down their vestigial hummingbird wings, spewed from Yuta’s blade to cut the creature open from within. The wyrm flopped in the air, writhing with pain.

The wyrm in my arms slithered out from under the blocks of fallen stone, hovering low to the ground. Yuta ran up the wounded wyrm’s back, slicing his blade through it as he went. My wyrm tried to throw me off with a barrel roll, but I dug into it with my claws. My scales and tail scraped along the ground as the world turned.

The silver light of Yuta’s wyrm’s eyes flickered and then faded, turning gold right as the creature plummeted to the ground. Yuta hollered as he leapt off the falling wyrm and onto mine, raising his kanakatana in the middle of the jump. He brought his sword down with a deft stroke, putting the weight of his body into the blow as he landed on my wyrm and plunged his blade in.

He used another , pumping pressurized ink out of his sword. The hummingwyrm shuddered in my grip. Sheets of ink streamed out from the wound like a crushed lawn sprinkler. Flesh came loose, lifting off the creature’s frame.

The wyrm raised its head and roared. Its silver eyes and polyphonic cries died with swift strikes from both Yuta and my claws. Sickly sweet acid spilled out onto the ground all around us, intermingle within the pooling ink.

Yuta leapt off the falling wyrm, toward the other one pursuing him.

I flung myself off my wyrm as it crashed onto the rubble. Once again, I curled into a ball, rolling along the ground as I hit the pavement. I rolled and rolled, wanting to throw up, only to come to stop as I struck a building, back-first, my thick scales protecting me from harm.

Uncurling, I flipped back onto my belly.

Yuta was running along the paved path, leaping left and right as the wyrm chasing him breathed out multiple spore streams. I lumbered off, setting into a gallop, running alongside him, following the path around one of the hollow skyscrapers.

Familiar voice bellowed as we came around the bend.

“Oun-Levitos!”

Brand came into view right as his spell manifested, vertical lines of purply darkness appearing in front of him. Brand’s hit the silver-eyed hummingwyrm like an anvil to the head, pinning it to the ground. The spell continued to push, sending cracks through the pavement as it pressed the wyrm down and down. The wyrm spasmed beneath the weight, writhing tail and claws.

Yuta pulled back his sword as he ran toward the downed wyrm, ready to strike.

“No!” I screamed.

I had to grab Yuta with my tongue to pull him back and out of the spell’s way, wincing at the ink’s foul taste.

The wyrm sank deeper as Brand’s spell bore its weight, forming a depression in the raw soil.

Overhead, silver-eyed wyrms swarmed, filling the skies with violet lamentation.

Brand ran toward us as I retracted my tongue and let Yuta roll out of my grasp. Yuta sank into a crouch as he skidded to a stop along the ground.

The wyrm let out one final, agonized, roar before its silver eyes burst open. Its head collapsed with a sickening crunch, unable to bear the magic’s weight.

Yuta glared at me. “Why did you stop me?”

“It’s an area of effect spell,” I said. “It would have crushed you too!” I rattled off the words as quickly as I could.

Mournful roars broke out overhead. I looked up to see two more wyrms swimming toward us.

Fortunately, it was right at that moment that I felt my spellcasting overheat finally dissipate.

The pangolin was back in business.

Shaking my head, I sat up on my haunches and raised my arms, spreading my claws as I spoke the invocation: “Rain, O !”

Motes of light rocketed up from the ground and then exploded overhead, sending columns of fire barreling down. Falling forward and set off in a sprint! “Run, quickly!”

Yuta darted away, but Brand couldn’t move quickly enough, so I grabbed him with one of my hands as I ran off, biped-style.

I looked over my armor-plated back just in time to see pillars of my holy fire descend upon the two approaching wyrms. The pillars lined up with the pit Brand’s magic had ground into the earth, turning it into a bowl of flame as all three wyrms were reduced to charred husks.

“Genneth!” Brand yelled.

Skidding to a stop, I looked around for a second before remembering Brand was in my hand.

I curled my head down to look at him.

He pointed his magic staff skyward. His LED-screen face displayed the words:

Look up!

So I did.

All my scales stood on end as the sky rumbled. I felt Geoffrey’s spirit writhe within me, screaming with holy fury, begging to be released. My grip went slack from shock. Brand fell to the ground with an awkward thud. But I hardly noticed that, just like I hardly noticed the deluge of completely transformed, dark-violet scaled, silver-eyed wyrms wriggling out from the clouds like maggots from refuse.

All I saw, all I knew, was what lay above the wyrms, slowly coming into view. From horizon to horizon, the skies were locked away behind a dome of fog, and it was from horizon to horizon that the fog was swept away as the entity emerged from the fog, everywhere, all at once. At first, I thought I was looking at a ceiling for the sky, or perhaps even the veil of Night itself. Like the Night, it was dark and full of horrors, and drowned the Sun in its shadows.

But it was not the Night.

It was fungus.

The sky dead-ended against a wall of solid fungus. If the mass had edges, they were too far away to see. It was like seeing the earth from far above; another earth, not my own. A fungal earth. Fungal mountains miles high, crowned in fungal jungles and living plains. Black ooze rivers carved canyons in the fleshy geography. I saw twilight eternal, lit by bioluminescence in bulbs and stalks and reaching tendrils, softly lambent beneath the green and blue and gold. Fungus moved on the fungus, beasts of no name or form. Wyrms stalked the twilight, slithering through the jungles, soaring through the spore-clouded skies

Another group of wyrms descended toward us, casting us in their shadows.

Yuta screamed.

“Gen—”

Brand and I turned just in time to see a wyrm swoop down and drown Yuta in a torrent of acid spore breath.

I screamed. “No!”

Yuta’s attacker pulled up and swerved around a broken hollow skyscraper. The wyrm’s tail swept through the spreading spore cloud, whisking some of the deathly mist away.

Yuta was gone, and barely any of him remained: a few bone-shards, and some fragments of his kanakatana, still smoldering among the spores.

“I can use my teleportation spell,” Brand said. “We need to get out of here!”

“No!” I yelled. “I’m not leaving him here! Yuta’s safety is my responsibility!”

I rushed over to the smoldering ulcer the wyrm’s spore breath had eaten into the ground.

“Genneth!”

Wyrmsong filled the air. It made me shiver.

Overhead, the fungus-world was slowly descending.

“I have a spell!” I said. “Now, get over here and use , before we’re all just smoldering husks!”

We were lucky I’d had the foresight to bring some diamonds with me. With deft tongue-strokes, I pulled a hard, octahedral object from my pack.

Diamond.

I slurped my tongue back in, releasing the diamond—dropping it in my outstretched hand.

Of all the things I’d thought I’d never get to do in life, this had to be one of the never-est.

The arcane circuitry in Brand’s metallic body lit up as he cast . A glittering green barrier rained down over us, shielding up in protective domes. Waves rippled across the spheres of energy.

Closing my eyes, I reached out into the aether. A lifetime’s worth of roleplaying experiences came together at that moment. It wasn’t just a matter of speaking the words to draw out the power.

I had to work for it.

Power buzzed all around me as the ritual began. Through my mind’s eye, I could sense Yuta’s soul hovering above us like a will-o’-wisp out on the marshes.

It was a spark of life in this city of the damned.

Raising my arm, I lifted the diamond into the air. Opening my eyes, I could see the bright glow of the spirit magic within it, flickering like a flame. Yuta’s soul thickened in the air, condensing around the diamond. I could feel the strength being slurped out of me and into the gem. I groaned, thrashing my tail.

The next thing I knew, the gemstone pulled in Yuta’s soul. It let out a brilliant flash. Light streamed between my claws. Heat burned my palms.

I managed to throw the stone onto the ground as I fell forward, bracing myself on all fours, Yuta’s body directly beneath my chest. I was panting like a dying dog.

The diamond burst into a shining dust cloud. Particles lifted up off the ground and joined the swirling light. Looking down, I watched a body begin to form bit by bit. Bones began to regrow, followed soon after by blood vessels and deepest sinew.

It would take a few minutes for the process to complete.

“Genneth!” Brand yelled.

A flock of wyrms descending toward us. Green wisps flickered and whorled around their hole-studded snouts.

But all I could do was moan.

Brand launched a volley of attack spells. . . Sparks rained onto my scales.

Looking up, I saw the wyrms closing in. All around us, the ground was turning to liquid as the wyrms launched burst after burst of breath attacks. The acid powder-fluid trickled down our energy barrier like rain on a windshield.

A few of the wyrms managed to swerve out of the way of Brand’s spell barrage, but his attacks had too wide a range to be dodged altogether. Incandescent explosions and crackling chain lightning scoured the approaching wyrms. One of Brand’s ignited a spray of spore breath fresh out of a wyrm’s mouth. The cloud burst into flame.

Brand didn’t need to look up at me; I didn’t need to see his face to know his desperation.

Despite the damage, his attacks weren’t enough. One wyrm fell to the ground with a crash, its flesh riven by burns, but that was all. The rest closed in on us, undeterred.

All he’d done was slow them down.

“Brand,” I said, panting for breath, “you have to use a high level spell.”

He launched a fireball.

“This barrier will stop us from getting melted,” he said, “but it won’t stop those claws. I need to keep them at bay.”

Meanwhile, I was still recovering from my casting of , and Yuta was still busy being resurrected.

Within my mind, Geoffrey stirred.

He’d been watching us this whole time, bristling with spite. I’d lied to him about who and what I was. Arguably, I’d gotten him killed. But—as I well knew—more than anything else, he hated me for working with Yuta. I’d colluded with the face of the enemy he’d spent his whole life fighting. But I also knew he saw the wyrms and the fungus as the ultimate evil, and he was too pious of a man to give evil free rein.

I just hoped he’d kill the silver-eyed wyrms before he tried to kill us.

Focusing, a window popped into view in front of me, bearing the prompt I’d willed into being:

Party Management

Switch

Recruit

Dismiss

I flicked out my tongue and selected Recruit.

Add Party Member? (1 space remaining) Y/N

I pushed my trembling tongue on the Y.