By the Angel…

I swallowed hard.

There’d been another connection I’d failed to notice. It had been staring me in the face the whole darn time!

“Dreams…” I muttered.

“Wha?” Andalon asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“You, Andalon,” I pointed at her. “You first appeared to me in a dream— that strange place with the rivers and the moonlight.”

She nodded. “You saved me.”

Beast’s teeth…

For the special edition of Catamander Brave that had been published for its 50th anniversary, Himichi had included draft material, notes, and authorial commentary—copious records of his artistic process. My enhanced memory played his words in my ears, spoken in his voice:

The idea for the story came to me in a dream. I’ve often been inspired by my dreams, having suffered from night-terrors since childhood. But the dream that inspired Cat… that was different. It was… singular.

Normally, in my dreams, I experienced events first-hand. Not so in that dream. It was as if someone was speaking to me, someone terribly very far away. I remembered a strong impression of urgency, as if, whoever was speaking to me was utterly desperate to get his message across. It was rich with detail. The speaker’s words were far more than words. They came with images and feelings. Snippets of memories.

The dream was so intense, it woke me in the middle of the night. Wasting no time, I got out a piece of paper and jotted down as many notes as I could before the strange thoughts that had snuck into my brain dispersed back into the ether. I then went back and added sketches of as much of the imagery that I could remember.

The majority of Cat’s principle ideas came to me from that dream——the Wyrms, the Darkness, the War——though I still had a great deal of work ahead of me before I finally succeeded in threading those ideas into a sensible story.

Andalon—the Wyrm-maker—had come to me in a dream, and had somehow known about a story that came to its author on the wings of a dream, just like she had.

They had to be connected. I’d bet my lucky bow-tie on it.

But what did it mean?

Was the Angel trying to tell us something? Was it connected with the Last Days, or did this revelation point to something entirely different?

“Andalon,” I asked, clearing my throat, “what else can you tell me about the wyrms? What do they look like?”

She nodded shakily. “Precious wyrmehs…”

Out of an abundance of paranoia, I rubbed my lucky, red-dotted yellow bowtie between my fingers, hoping its magic would pass onto me.

Andalon rubbed her tears on her wrists and then smiled meekly. “Wyrmehs are… awesome…”Her eyes twinkled brightly.

I wish I had her confidence.

“What makes them awesome?” I asked. “What are they like?”

“You don’t need to be sad, Mr. Genneth,” she said, warmly, “no wyrmeh ever needs to be sad. Wyrmehs are cool.” Sniffling again, she smiled bashfully. “They’re super, super cool.” Her voice lowered to an excited whisper. “Wyrmehs can fly, Mr. Genneth. You’re gonna get to fly! That’s cool, right?”

After a moment of hesitation, I nodded.

Was flying cool? Heck yeah! But that also meant dealing with the possibility of flying transformees with out-of-control powers, and that…

I shivered.

Andalon smiled broadly, losing herself in describing her recollections. “They can do this rahhh breath thing. It makes stuff all fizzy and melty.”

Melty?

“And they can sing! Oh,” she gasped slightly, “they make beautiful singing! And they’re big, Mr. Genneth. Wyrmeh get so big! Big and long! The goodest wyrmehs are the biggest wyrmehs. And Andalon thinks you’re gonna be the goodest-est wyrmeh of all.”

Here, I made a noteworthy mistake.

“Big?” I gulped. “H-How big?”

My mistake? I hadn’t really wanted to know—but I hadn’t realized that until after the words had escaped my lips.

Andalon stood up, stepped back, and spread her arms out to either side. She stretched her arms out as far as they would go, but that apparently wasn’t far enough, because she started to lean from side to side—left then right then left then right—covering a span of around four feet, if I had to eyeball the length.

“Like this,” she said.

“Wait…” I asked, “I’m going to shrink? How is that really big?”

Another question I shouldn’t have asked.

“No no no,” Andalon giggled, “I mean…” but then she pouted. For a moment, I thought her mood was about to crash all over again, but then pure joy beamed through her eyes, the kind that might strobe lights in a night-time police chase seem dim by comparison.

Andalon took her right arm and held it up as if it was manning a sock-puppet. But instead of curling all four fingers together and pressing her thumb against her index finger, she made a V with her fingers, with her index and middle finger as its first branch and her third finger and pinky as its second. She then tapped her thumb against the fingertips of the second branch, making sure to keep the first branch’s fingers gently curled above it.

“Here’s a wyrmeh!” Andalon said, pointing at her sockless sock-puppet with her other hand. She smiled like a kid who’d just eaten chocolate chip cookies for the first time.

With her other hand, Andalon tapped the features of her wyrm puppet, describing them one by one. “This is a wyrmeh claw,” she said, tapping her thumb. “This is the other wyrmeh claw,” she said, tapping the V’s second branch, “and,” she tapped the V’s first branch, positioned between the thumb and the second branch, “here’s the head and necky.” Then she took her left index finger and traced it down the length of her arm, passing onto the sleeve of her perpetual nightgown. “And this is the wyrmy part.”

“That’s… that’s nice, Andalon, but… it doesn’t answer my question.”

I didn’t know whether to smile or weep.

“It’s this part,” she said, laying her index finger flat across her forearm, from left to right.

She then spread her arms out again, swaying side to side. “That’s how big that part is.”

And then I understood, and I knew that I understood, because I’d started hyperventilating.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Fudging fudgerly fudgingham!

The four-ish foot-long distance? That was how thick the wyrm was.

Someday soon, I was going to be four feet in diameter.

Still hyperventilating, I held up my arm and traced my finger up and down its length, from wrist to shoulder.

“What about this part, Andalon? How long is this part?” I said.

“Uhhh… I dunno numbers. They’re too big.”

“Wait… where are their legs?” I asked—and I shouldn’t have.

Andalon tilted her head to the side. “What legs?”

Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God…

Somehow, it felt like the room was spinning, and since I was seated on a bench, that was saying something!

Out of the blue, Andalon smiled wide, as if only now realizing that she had two arms. With a gasp of delight, she made sockless wyrm sock-puppets out of both of her arms.

“Look! Two wyrmehs!”

Andalon delighted at letting her two new friends play with one another, waving their ‘claws’ , nuzzling their ‘heads’, or even ‘going kissy’, muttering descriptions of their actions every step of the way.

Meanwhile, I sat there, feeling like I was on the precipice of an out-of-body experience.

“So, they’re huge, is that what you’re telling me? I’m not just going to become a monster, I’m going to become a giant monster?” Another thought then came to me, as thoughts tended to do when one was on the edge of madness. “Is that why I’m so hungry?” I asked.

Andalon nodded excitedly. “Yeah! Yeah! You gotta eat a lot to grow big and strong. And they got lots of sees, Mr. Genneth. Wyrmeh sees are really pretty. Really shiny.” She pointed up at the ceiling. “They’re like the big shiny up in the blue, only even more goldy.”

Lots of sees? Maybe she means “eyes”?

Golden eyes.

She suddenly shook her hands in the air. “Oh, oh! I almost forgots! There’s still more good news.” Andalon glanced back at me. “I saved the best for last: wyrmehs live for a really, really long time! Longer than forever! They’re supah tough!”

By that point, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was mostly just hyperventilation in human form.

My son’s words from several days ago filtered through my thoughts; his description of the Demon Norms.

Big, evil, flying golden-eyed snakes.

Big. Flying.

Golden-eyed.

I stuck my fingers in my mouth and softly bit down, only to panic and spend several seconds spraying my hands down with hand sanitizer while also rubbing down the sanitizer bottles themselves.

“I’m screwed, aren’t I?” I muttered.

According to scripture, before the beginning—before the Godhead created reality and forged the Earth—the Hallowed Beast had battled against the primordial chaos. Victorious, the Beast trapped the chaos in the depths, below the pre-born Earth. That chaos coalesced into the Night, and the depths of its confinement became what we called Hell. The Norms were serpents of purest darkness that writhed out from chaos’ corpse. They had but one purpose: to lure souls to damnation, to trap them in the glaciers in the shadows, deep, deep below. There, the souls of the damned would be slowly transfigured into demons, who would then serve under the Norms, awaiting the Last Days, when the chaos would have its revenge.

It goes without saying, of course, that the depictions of the Norms varied wildly. But, much like the Last Days themselves, there were several points of agreement.

The norms were serpentine.

They could fly.

And they had glistening, golden eyes. Greedy eyes, ever-lusting to see the world unmade.

And because Kosuke Himichi had artistic pretenses and a fondness for reference and allegory, those three descriptors were as true of Catamander Brave’s Wyrms as they were of Lassedicy’s Norms—though these two versions of the mythical creatures differed in nearly every other respect.

Still, both the Norms and the Wyrms fit Andalon’s description of her “wyrmehs”.

The Wyrms of Catamander Brave were literal world-serpents. The great secret of Himichi’s setting was that each and every one of the Worlds Beyond the Night was, in truth, a Wyrm, albeit a transfigured one. Each World was an egg, waiting to hatch. The people, places, and things to be found on a World were nothing more than the dreams of the unborn Wyrm within its depths, made real by the creatures’ powers.

Cat’s overarching plot was about a great Darkness that threatened the Worlds Beyond the Night. As with nearly everything else in that story, this, too, had a twist behind it: the Darkness was simply Nature seeking to restore balance. A secret faction worked behind the scenes to keep the Wyrms from hatching, and to use the Wyrms’ powers for the people’s benefit. They refused to let go, and over time, were corrupted by the greed and power-lust.

By preventing the Wyrms from hatching, the great cycle of life and death had ground to a halt, thereby setting the Worlds off-kilter. The climax of the story’s had Cat freeing the Wyrms, allowing them to hatch, even though doing so meant the Worlds and all their peoples would disappear—the Wyrms’ dreams finally ended. Cat, too.

His world was just another dream.

In the end, it was revealed that Cat was the selfhood of the Wyrm within his own world. Himichi’s masterpiece was a tale of loss and letting go. A tale of death and rebirth, and endless wonder. The story ended with a swarm of newborn Wyrms filling the skies. Though the Worlds of their dreams had vanished, the Wyrms carried the memories of what had been. They took it with them as they moved to the next phase of their own life-cycle, a journey to a place beyond imagining, where the next generation of Wyrms would be born, that a new wave of creation might take root, flowering from their dreams. In a way, that was what saved Cat and all the friends he’d made along the way. Though they were gone, they lived on in the Wyrms’ memories, to be passed to the next generation of dreams.

It was an endless ending.

In summary: I was either turning into a archdemon or a world-serpent.

I laughed, only because I didn’t want to cry.

Maybe the kind of wyrm I was becoming was something else altogether. Who knew? Certainly not Andalon!

Hands down, it was the worst version of the Chicken and the Egg I’d ever encountered. I was mind-boggled, and the possibilities were endless. Were Himichi’s Wyrms based on the Norms of Lasseditic myth—inspired, perhaps, subconsciously? Or had Himichi somehow been in contact with Andalon, or something related to her? Was Himichi a prophet of the Angel? Was the Angel a prophet of Himichi? Was my world just the dream of a slumbering Wyrm?

The sky was the limit.

I looked at the forlorn little girl, staring at her blue, blue eyes.

“Andalon… are wyrms demons? Are they the Norms spoken of in my religion?”

“I…” She glanced at the floor for a moment, and then looked back at me. “I don’t know, Mr. Genneth.”

“Do wyrms dream up worlds?” I asked.

“Maybe?” She shrugged uncomfortably.

“Maybe? Maybe?!” I snapped.

Andalon winced.

“I want to understand what’s going on!” I demanded. “I need to! Or… or else…”

Oh God…

She looked me in the eyes. “Wyrmehs help, Mr. Genneth. They save people.”

“You keep saying that Andalon, but I don’t know what to do. You asked me to help, so, tell me: how am I supposed to help? What do I do?”

“Uh…” she looked confused for a second “maybe try usin’ the shimmery-wimmery? Wyrmehs are good with that,” she added. “Yeah.” She nodded a bit more confidently. “Yeah, they are.”

I blinked. “Wait a minute.” I stood up straight. “Wait a minute!”

“Wha?” Andalon backed into the corner of the Divulgence terminal. Her back to partially phased through its walls. “Wha is this?”

Nina’s words crept through my ears:

I can change it. I can shape it.

“Nina said she could change it, the shimmery-wimmery.”

“Uh-huh,” Andalon nodded.

I looked down at her. “After you disappeared and we did the autopsy, I saw this amazing light-show all across Mr. Isafobe’s body. Energy fields, shimmery stuff—the works.”

Andalon nodded. “Tryin’ to touch their souls,” she muttered.

I blinked again.

“The fungus is touching their souls?”

She looked at me, her gaze momentarily distant, and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the Darkness does. It takes away everything.”

A shiver ran down my back.

“The fungus is taking their souls,” I whispered.

The light-field in Frank’s body had been the fungus trying to steal his soul away. But instead, his soul had gone into me—and it was all Andalon’s doing.

“Can… can I talk to him?” I asked.

Maybe he’d have answers for me!

“To Mr. Frank-Frank?” Andalon asked.

“Yes. Can I talk to Frank?”

She nodded. “Yeah!”

I smiled. “Great! How?”

She lowered her head and shook. “Andalon doesn’t know.”

Fudge.

“Alright, uh…” I scoured my brain for a workable follow-up question. “What happens if you didn’t rescue their souls, Andalon?”

“I don’t ‘member, but…” She shook her head, “it was somethin’ bad. Somethin’ really, really bad.”

The fungus was trying to take people’s souls, and that light that I saw, that was its power—its magic?—at work.

“If Nina could alter the light that she called, maybe I can do the same with the fungus’ soul-stealing!”

I didn’t know if stopping the fungus’ soul-theft would cure the disease, but I was pretty darn sure that nothing good would come of having an evil fungus ripping your soul out of your body.

Finally, something I could do!

“Mr. Genneth, what if somethin—”

“—C’mon, Andalon, let’s go!”

I pulled out my sanitizer spray and gave the inside of the terminal a good spritzing, put on my mask and visor, and then unlocked the door and stepped out into the hallway. The entrance to the nearby hospital chapel was just around the corner, but I turned and walked off in the other direction, back toward Ward E.

By all appearances, my religion’s prophecies of the apocalypse seemed to be coming true, only in a way I could have scarcely imagined. If Catamander Brave was right, I was turning into a creature capable of bringing great peace and happiness. On the other hand, if Lassedile scripture was right, I was turning into a demon—a Norm, a creature of pure chaos and evil, one that existed solely to wreak destruction and sorrow. Of course, the truth probably lay somewhere in between—or, at least, I hoped it would—but, so far, these were my only leads to go on.

This was going to be my test as much as theirs. Good or evil? Which side was I on? Scripture or Cat? Which one was right?

Or was I just chasing ghosts?

And, most of all, which side was Andalon on—if any?

There was only one way to find out: try and work a miracle, and see what happened.