When studying, it was important not to overdo it. There was such a thing as pushing yourself too hard. It was great advice, but it was about a second and a half too late for me to use it.

One second, I was sitting in front of a raging orb of sun gold and sky blue, the next, it blasted to smithereens, exploding in a wave of feral magic that launched me out of my chair and over and through the jagged-edged gap my earlier mishap had blown in the garden’s frosted glass wall.

Honestly, it should have been too much information for me to process all at once—let alone this quickly—but process it, I did. It was as if, for a brief moment, time slowed down. Maybe that was one of the altered senses that came with wyrmhood: not just more detailed thoughts and memories, but faster thoughts overall. Faster, more efficient mental processing slowed one’s perception of the passage of time. Normally, smaller creatures like mice and flies, precisely because their smaller body size meant more efficient processing of sensory stimuli; the classic Dunham experiment from comparative neuroscience showed that fruit flies experienced time at one-quarter of the speed that humans did.

But I could ponder the neuropsychiatric details of time perception when I wasn’t hurtling through the air alongside the debris of a shattered table and chair.

One of the hospital’s extruding walls brushed against me as I fell. I reached out with my hands, screaming into the wind. Sure, most of my body felt (un)dead, but that was a far cry from being a pancake of wet flesh pressed into the sidewalk.

In a mix of panic and instinctive reflex, I pushed out as much plexus power as I could muster. In the slowed time, blue and gold streamed out of me in slow motion, in ribbons and fireworks and confetti bullets.

I was falling head first.

Tucking in my head against my chest, I saw Andalon floating along with me—though not in front of my terrified reflection in the passing windows. Her hair glowed. It billowed, indifferent to gravity and wind.

“Mr. Genneth!”

The sound of her voice pushed out the sounds of my screams and the traffic below. She reached for the blue and gold filaments, and the plexus responded, clustering beneath me—above my head—in a thick mat of needles, their tips pointed at the sky at my feet.

Suddenly, I realized what she was doing.

A safety net.

I assisted her as best as I could. Between split seconds, as my body spun—back turning to face the ground—I channeled my power into a wide block of force that I spread out beneath me. At Andalon’s prompting—somehow, her thoughts hit me instantaneously—I deepened the block of force, making it several feet thick.

There needed to be plenty of plexus to slow my descent.

A wave of hunger hit me, washing away the slowed time. I screamed as I hit the force-block.

It was like falling into one of those inflatable bounce-houses. I ricocheted off the imaginary floor, bouncing up once, then twice, and then a sliver of a third time before I found my footing, after landing on my side. For the first two seconds, as I flipped myself onto all fours, I was running on mostly instinct, but then the “I’m on my hands and knees on an invisible, intangible force field several stories in the air” aspect of the situation finally kicked my higher and lower brain functions in the pants, and I started screaming, flailing my limbs in sheer terror.

I closed my eyes.

For an instant, I was safe. I was riding on a magic carpet. And then I remembered where the power for that magic carpet was coming from.

I could already feel my limbs begin to tingle, as if I’d compressed a nerve.

I rose to my feet without a second thought, keeping my eyes closed. The psychokinetic force block had the consistency of gelatin, which made me and my stomach very upset, though I managed to stiffen it by slightly decreasing the strength of its upward force.

That kept me from throwing up.

My legs trembled, and not just because of fear. I could feel the power draining from me. Hunger burned in my chest, rising like a flame on a stove. Without a second to spare, I opened my eyes and leapt onto a tiny ledge in front of the window right nearest to me on the hospital’s antique wall.

And to think, some people say architectural ornamentation wasn’t a matter of life and death.

“Mr. Genneth!”

Andalon floated up beside me.

I nodded, dismissing the psychic platform with a shake of my head, while keeping my arms wrapped around the miniature column projecting from the wall by the window.

I shivered in terror.

But no one below seemed to notice.

“Are you okay, Mr. Genenth?” Andalon’s eyes were wide with concern.

With a gasp, I pressed my back flush against the wall.

I knew she meant well, but that was the worst possible time to ask that question, and I did not respond well.

“No, I’m not okay!” I yelled, practically in tears. “None of this is okay!”

I shook my head as much as safety let me dare, immediately quieting myself. “No, I’m—… I’m sorry, Andalon. I didn’t mean to yell. I’m just scared.”

I looked down.

“Really, really scared.”

I gasped. In the built-up parts of Elpeck—places like this, near the city’s sizable core—all the tall buildings made the streets into wind tunnels. My PPE and my white coat fluttered violently in the cold morning wind.

I looked to my sides, and then up above. “How the heck am I supposed to get back up?”

The window to my right didn’t open far enough for a person to climb through, and I was not going to complicate the situation further by making myself guilty of breaking and entering. (If I was a registered police officer or fireman, I could have used my chip to deactivate the alarm—but I wasn’t, so I couldn’t.)

“Maybe you go that way?” Andalon suggested, pointing upward.

“How?”

“With the plessus!”

I shook my head. “Oh no, no no no. I can’t.”

Below, cars brayed. The thin traffic came to a standstill as ambulances drove through the streets, blaring sound and color from their sirens.

The longer I took, the greater the chance somebody would notice me.

I looked up the wall looming over me: a cliff of imperial architecture.

I gulped. I would have made the Bondsign, were my arms not busy clinging to the column for dear life.

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“Mr. Michi liked rock-climbin’,” Andalon said.

I stared at her for a moment, perplexed. But, no, it made sense. Andalon could read my active thoughts, it made sense she could read at least some of my memories and access the troves of trivia locked in my noggin.

“I think he would’ve tried it,” she added.

But, yes, she was right. Among his fans, it was well-known that Mr. Himichi had enjoyed rock-climbing as a youthful pastime, though arthritis and old age had made his rock-climbing days a thing of the past.

I wanted to say, “it’s not fair to use my idol’s skill-set against me”, but I was supposed to be the mature one in this situation, so I held my tongue. I needed to set a good example, for Andalon’s sake.

Besides, ideas were flipping over in my mind.

I could use the bounce-house platform trick, just at a smaller scale.

I looked up at the wall once again. If I could make a sequence of force-field shelves on the wall, I could climb them like a ladder.

But can I really do that?

“Andalon will try to help, Mr. Genneth.”

Try?

That was reassuring, but it wasn’t as reassuring as I wanted it to be.

I shuddered.

“One way or another, I might as well get this over with,” I muttered, barely able to hear myself over the wind roaring in my ears.

I had to fight the urge to wave my arms as I went about creating the plexus that was to save my life, as well as what remained of my career. Thankfully, conjuring a plexus didn’t require gestures or spoken incantations. Instead, I kept the image of a ladder at the forefront of mind—so much so, in fact, that one hyperphantasized into being on the wall in front of me. Focusing on that image, I made a plexus in the shape of a long rectangular strip, about one and a half times as long as I was tall. Gritting my teeth, I stared at the strip, pinching it in four places, tugging on the light-weave with burning will as I pulled those four spots out into flanges extruded perpendicular to the wall. Step Two had me assign upward force to each.

And then let the power flow. An increase in the weave’s brightness told me it was working, as did the draining feeling that began to tug at my body, as if I’d started to run.

Reaching up with one arm, keeping the other wound tightly around the ornamental column, I grabbed hold of the nearest flange, squeezing my fingers and palm around the plexus’ twining bundles and upward pointing needles. I pulled on it, testing to see if it held.

By the Angel, it held!

It was like groping a fold of flabby air. The plexus didn’t quite stop the breeze, leaving the wind free to brush both sides of my hand, giving my psychic holdfasts an uncanny, diaphanous texture.

I grabbed the rung as tightly as I could, and then put my trembling foot down onto the lowest rung.

Holy snit!

It held. It held!

Cautiously—very, very carefully—I grabbed the upper rung with my other hand. And then, I climbed.

One rung and a time.

I was terrified of going too quickly—I might screw it up—and I wasterrified of going too slowly—I might take too long and use up my power reserves.

“Oh God…”

It took thirty seconds for me to climb up two rungs.

When I reached the topmost rung, I stopped and looked up. There was still a long way to go, and I was out of magic ladder.

What to do? What to do?

I could try to move the plexus up, lifting all the rungs simultaneously. That would make me float upward. I could also make more rungs.

My hands trembled.

Gah! Of all the times to be indecisive, why now? Ugh, I’ll do the first one first!

I nudged the plexus upward with the strongest thoughts I could muster. My rungs moved upward, lifting me along with them.

“Don’t do that, Mr. Genneth!” Andalon floated up next to me. Her face was flushed with alarm. “You won’t make it. You’ll get too tired!”

Now she tells me!

“Fudge!”

I trembled and groaned, smacking my spit-slicked lips together, vacillating between looking downward and tearing my gaze away from the panic of having looked down.

And then it hit me: moving the whole darn plexus—and lifting myself up with it—was a waste of energy. I didn’t need to move the whole thing, I just needed to move the topmost rung up.

Looking down at the traffic below, I dispelled the bottom two rungs with a spurt of panic, and then, raising my head, I extended the upper fringe of the plexus by a couple of feet. I had to resist the urge to pinch with my hand as I pinched the extended plexus with my mind, massaging it into a new rung.

A rung to climb.

I reached up, grabbed it, and pulled.

“You can do it, Mr. Genneth!” Andalon cheered me along. “You can do it!”

“I can do this,” I muttered, awed, “I can do this…”

I climbed up the new rung.

Rinse and repeat.

I didn’t need to look down this time. I dismissed the plexus’ bottommost rung like the afterthought that it was while extending the top fringe by an equal amount, and then pulled myself up. I quickly established a rhythm.

Dispel, extend, pinch, power, grab. Dispel, extend, pinch, power, grab. Again and again.

Slowly but surely, I climbed the wall with my psychokinetic ladder, until the unbroken edge of one of the panes of the aerial garden’s frosted glass walls bit into my fingers. I didn’t dispel the ladder’s last rung until my feet landed on the sweet, sweet concrete floor on the other side of the glass wall.

I supported myself on hands and knees as I gasped for breath. My chest rose and fell beneath my PPE gown, and my white medical coat, and the horribly sweat-stained pale brown buttoned-up shirt underneath it all.

“You did it Mr. Genneth!”

But I wasn’t paying attention to her.

No.

Now that the fear of death was behind (and below) me, everything else I’d been feeling got pushed aside as hunger rocketed up from the depths of my belly.

Holy Angel.

My stomach screamed. Saliva bubbled up in my mouth, trickling over my lips, down my chin.

Andalon scampered over to me, dismayed. “Mr. Genneth… what’s wrong?”

“I’m—!!”

—I had to clench my fists to keep myself from snapping at her.

“I’m hungry, Andalon,” I said. My arms trembled of their own accord. “I’m hangry.” My voice nearly broke with shame.

By the Godhead, I hate that word.

It was an ugly hunger, and there was no hope of keeping it at bay. It would take a couple minutes to reach the nearest vending machine.

I did not have a couple minutes.

Following my spit as it dripped onto the concrete, I looked down and spotted the stool’s legs.

I’m not entirely sure what happened in the next moment, only that I wasn’t entirely in control of myself. I pushed the stool onto its side, which hit the concrete with a thud. I leaned onto it, clasping my jaws around one of the legs. I sucked on the metal like a dog on a bone.

The taste was worse than blood. There was dirt and grime and corrosion and Angel-knows what else; a dozen dreadful flavors, marinated in a bitter coating of antiseptic cleanser—strawberry scented. The tastes burned my tongue, only to disappear beneath a familiar sickly sweet flavor that blossomed in my mouth as my saliva began to coat the metal. My tongue, lips, teeth, and palate tingled and spasmed. Things were moving inside them.

I just wish my spit would have masked the texture of the raw metal on my tongue. It was just… awful.

The metal degraded as I licked and sucked. First, it softened, and then it broke into fragments that crinkled like foil as I chewed them.

Then the stool leg broke in half.

The clang of the metal on the concrete had barely reached my ears when I grabbed the fallen stool-leg and stuck it in my mouth like a giant lollipop. The foul taste from a moment ago was now just a bad memory. I shoved the metal leg into my throat, alternating between sucking, chewing, and swallowing as I pushed it deeper and deeper. It was chewable soda pop; electric candy, effervescent and tingly.

By the time the hunger pains had subsided to the point that I could stop myself, I’d gobbled up one and a half of the stool’s three legs. I distanced myself from the stool as quickly as I could. My slacks scraped along the concrete as I scuttled back. I had to stop myself from absentmindedly licking chewy metal-crumble residue off my fingers. Thankfully, the feeling of something on my tongue wriggling against my dead hand made for an excellent deterrent.

I shuddered.

As I’d now come to realize was the norm, spectral blue flames manifested out of nowhere. They descended on Andalon and I like laser-guided snowflakes. Fresh changes sped through my body. My tail snaked deeper into my left pants-leg, thickening with a thin layer of new mass. Thankfully, my PPE gown’s skirt was long enough to cover the bulge my tail had created, though that did make it look like my thigh had thickened by almost half its original width. There was also an odd pressure in my head, behind my eyes, as if my sinuses were clogged, though it lasted only for a moment.

From within the curtains of dissipating spectral flame, Andalon stuck out her arm. She pointed up and back.

“Mr. Genneth, look!”

I turned, looked up, and stared.

Faint, amorphous, forms ambled through the skies, like palls of mist and light, and whatever they were, they were everywhere. They drifted through the city like stray radio waves, phasing through everything from stone to steel, unnoticed by mortal men.

“Andalon… what’s going on?”

Hopping up—floating above the patio—she twirled around, raising her arms to the sky. And the fading flames followed.

“You can see the ghosts now!” she said.

“I thought you said I wasn’t wyrmy enough to see them.”

The flames swirling around Andalon disappeared into her being. Her eyes and hair briefly glowed before settling back into their familiar blues.

Andalon pursed her lip. “You ate more, so you gots more wyrmeh.” She nodded studiously. “And now you can see.”

“Why are there so many?”

Her gaze trained on a passing flock of ghosts. There was no indication of their former humanity. “‘Cause there are so many we gotsta save,” she said. “Otherwise—”

I finished Andalon’s sentence for her: “—They end up in Hell.”

She nodded grimly.

Fudge…

The alarm on my console finally went off. Andalon yelped at the sudden sound; unlike the pre-alarm, which was a simple ringing, the actual alarm was an antique car horn—loud as heck. Her reaction reminded me of when I was little. Unexpected loud noises scared the belassedites out of kid me.

I waved my hand in a calming gesture. “It’s alright, Andalon. It’s just the alarm.”

“Why is it so scary?” she asked. “Too much stuff is scary!”

“You’re right about that.” I looked up at the ghosts overhead and nodded. “You’re right about that.”