Plunging into the change turned out to be just as controversial of a suggestion as I thought it would. However, I hadn’t accounted for peer pressure. There were good arguments, both for and against.

As I explained to them, the more they changed, the more their powers would develop, and—presumably—the more control they would have over them. That, in it of itself, was a tantalizing offer for some.

For Maryon, who wanted to see her son again.

For Letty, who wanted to lord over the rest of the world.

Since they were already infected, the transformees had nothing to fear from the fungus. Completing the transformation might better equip them to survive in the afterscape that would claim the world in the ever-increasingly-likely scenario that the Green Death really was the end of civilization as we knew it.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true—the wyrms had reasons to fear the fungus—but I wasn’t exactly going to start telling them about Andalon and Hell. I didn’t want them to panic, nor did I want to get myself locked in here with them—not when there was still so much left for me to do and learn. I also didn’t want them thinking that I was completely nuts. I needed my patients to trust me.

Every doctor did.

The arguments against changing were just as compelling. There was the obvious: the fear of the unknown. We didn’t know what the transformation’s final product would end up looking like, other than that it was frighteningly large. We didn’t know if wyrms would maintain their sense of self, their values, or their memories. We didn’t know if they’d be able to communicate with the rest of us once they were changed. Would the hunger grow so strong that we would be compelled to start eating people? And there was no telling how everyone else would react.

The boy, Valentine, had already been killed. How much worse might the violence get if many transformees began to rapidly progress to wyrmhood?

Letty brought up the possibility that bombs—perhaps even nuclear weapons—might be deployed, if there was sufficient cause for fear. Of course, she was highly in favor of nukes.

She wanted everyone to be as miserable as could be.

Eventually, it got to the point that we had to stop talking about the issue altogether. Bethany was absolutely terrified of the thought of anyone forcing themselves through to the transformation’s finish line, and all the risk it would pose to the group as a whole.

“I don’t want to end up like Valentine,” she’d said.

I had to convince Maryon to refrain from eating her way to seeing her son again. I didn’t want a fight to break out between her and Bethany.

By the Angel, that was a tough argument to make. It got to the point where I started to consider whether it might be in everyone’s best interest if I made myself into the lab rat, eating my fill to speed my changes through to the end, if only so that we might find out what awaited us on the far side of wyrmhood.

But then Lopé went and reminded me about why I couldn’t be so eager to throw away what remained of my humanity. The boy simply didn’t relent. He really was going to try to proselytize everyone else in that room. The news that wyrms housed the souls of the dead worked its way into his twisted little mind and inflated his already bloated sense of self-worth. He was no longer just a fresh convert; he was a fresh convert in a new age of miracles.

Eventually, it got to the point that I had to pull the boy aside, lest Maryon gouge his eyes out of his head.

I hunched over, my face twisting in concern. “Take a good look around you,” I said. “We’re all suffering terribly, especially the people in this room. You’re going around telling them they’re tainted, broken, and sinful, that they’re doomed to freeze in Hell in agony everlasting, just because they don’t follow your particular version of religion. Can’t you see how that would upset people? It can cause tremendous pain. It’s cruel to do that to someone.”

Lopé smiled sadly, shaking his head from side to side.

“It’s only painful because God is Good,” he said. “That heartache? That’s the evil in you being purged by Angel’s love. There’s nothing loving about letting someone sin. Loving someone doesn’t mean being ‘nice’ to them all the time.” He sighed, and shook his head again. “If only it was that simple.” Lopé looked me in the eyes. “No, love isn’t ‘being nice’, it’s willing what’s best for a person. The Angel wants to know us; He wants us to embrace His Infinite Love. That’s the reason we exist. There’s nothing more loving than setting a person down on the straight, narrow path to Paradise.”

I walked over to get my stool. Lopé followed me attentively, so there was no point in rolling the stool back over. I carefully planted my behind on the stool, resting my legs on the rungs above the wheel. I bent forward slightly, propping my head up with my hand in a contemplative pose.

I had a feeling this was going to be a pretty in-depth tangent.

“So… the Crusades were acts of Love? Cutting out people’s eyes and tongues to keep them from recanting their Bond with the holy Light? That was the Angel’s ‘infinite love’ wanting to ‘know’ us?”

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He tut-tutted at me, then smiled learnèdly. “Of course you’d say that. Atheists don’t know the real history.”

“I’m thoroughly churched,” I said, “catechized since childhood.”

My response earned me a raised eyebrow. “Which church?”

“Angelical.”

“Yikes.” The boy chuckled. “No wonder you’re misinformed. We broke with the Godhead’s will in the Second Crusade. The Third Crusade could have set things right, but they didn’t go far enough. The Church lost her way. Paganism and Munine doctrines corrupted it, leading the Lassedites astray.” Lopé's expression turned grave. “You know the horrors they perpetrated against people who didn’t submit. They’ve persecuted Neangelicals for centuries.”

He didn’t need to tell me. Before the revolution finally toppled the Second Empire, Emperor Eustin would send Blueshirts and suspected sympathizers to work camps or debtors’ prisons, even if you just so much as flew the Dicolor. And that was just the Second Empire! Back during the Interregnum, after the fall of the First Empire and before the arrival of the Munine, the remnants of the old empire stopped at nothing to suppress and oppress anyone who dissented from the Church’s old doctrines—the original Angelicals, those who came to dominate the Church in the Second Empire.

The Piedmont Rebellion.

The Brightshead Massacre.

Just thinking about it triggered my hyperphantasia. I watched in horror as scenes from those dark times flashed before me. Images of children being torn from their parents’ arms. Bodies being thrown into burning fields or muddy highways, to be trampled underfoot by horses’ hooves and made into fodder for prowling beasts. Victims’ limbs sliced off, their wounds cauterized to prolong their suffering.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, banishing the evil thoughts.

Meanwhile, Lopé continued, utterly oblivious to it all. “And, as for the First Crusade,” he said, “though they had the right intentions, their actions weren’t proper. The crusaders’ converts converted at the sharp end of a sword. That’s not a true convert. And look what happened: the Early Church fell into corruption—body and soul—and it was all because of the pagan ideas that the so-called ‘converts’ brought with them. It’s no surprise they’d bring their traditions with them! You can’t change a person’s heart with fear. You can only do it with Love—the Angel’s Love. And look what happened: the Moonlight Queen withheld Her favor; the Hallowed Beast was let free to roam, and the First Empire, once so full of righteousness, fell to ruin, doomed by their prideful ways. It was the only way the Godhead could teach us to be humble.”

“I know my history, Paul,” I said, making sure to call him by his preferred name.

He was being a hypocrite. In a perfect world, hypocrites would turn to dust in the sunlight, like the vampires they truly were.

Take the Eastern ‘Demptists, for instance. The Eastern Irredemptist Conference only came into existence because the rest of the ‘Demptists refused to follow the East in its support of Archibald Sheen and the Prelatory back in 1877.

“Prelate Sheen cracked down on anyone who wouldn’t kowtow to his regime,” I said. “Religion had nothing to do with it. The entire Western ‘Demptist Conference was disbanded for refusing to toe the line.”

Lopé pursed his lips in concern. “Yes, but—”

“—Seventy years ago,” I said, with determination, “your denomination supported the very same regime that declared that the Angelical Church—the Church you supposedly oppose—was the only right way to do religion. Eastern Irredemptists had no compunctions with using intimidation, violence, and torture to force people into obedience, and yet you denigrate my Church for having done that same thing.” I shook my head. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

At that moment, Lopé looked at me with an expression I can only describe as pity. He pitied me.

“Why would it?” he asked, and—my God—he really meant it.

That took me aback. It made my voice catch in my throat. My lips quivered.

“Why wouldn’t it?” I said, disturbed. “It’s rank hypocrisy!” A tear welled up in my eye. My chest tightened. “Truth is so hard. I’ve spent all my life trying to find it. I still haven’t. But…” I exhaled, clenching my fingers, “it matters. It’s precious. Every iota of hypocrisy is a needle in the eye of anyone and everyone who cares to seek out truth.”

“You’re right about that, sir.” Lopé nodded. “Truth is precious.”

“Then, why—”

“—Doctor,” he said, “it is not my place to question the Angel’s will. Questions are doubt; doubt and pride. It is my place to obey. Obedience is the road to Paradise.”

“But what if they don’t want to obey?” I said. “What if they have precious ways of their own that they don’t want to abandon? What if they don’t want to lose who they are?”

“Then they need pain. Pain can be Love.”

I shook my head in dismay. “How can it be loving to cause someone pain?”

Lopé bent down—folding his overlong torso—pointing at his feet. His feet and toes were discolored. Two of the smaller toes on his right foot had simply popped off, and were nowhere to be found.

“You’re a doctor, Dr. Howle. When someone has a splinter in their foot, you pull it out, and it hurts to pull it out. It causes pain,” he said, emphasizing his point, “but… once the splinter’s gone, the wound heals. Had the splinter been left in there, the constant pain would stay there, forever.” He smiled. “That’s what makes Divine Love beautiful, doctor. It makes you whole. It makes life… perfect.”

And I knew he meant it. I didn’t need Andalon’s transformee-mind-reading power to know that he had found true peace. I should have let the matter drop, but I couldn’t, and not just because I was worried about him pestering the other patients.

Our argument was taking us down a road I’d frequently traveled. I still frequented it, wondering every time if, perhaps now, I might finally reach its end, instead of an endless maze, winding around in loops too subtle for me to parse.

I could have easily countered with the assertion “but I would want the splinter to be removed,” but I knew there was no point in doing so. He’d rebut that argument with something along the lines of “you do want what the Angel wants for you, you just don’t know it / refuse to accept that you want it.” Instead, I took a different route.

“As a doctor,” I said, “I would have used anesthetic. You wouldn’t need to feel a thing.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Couldn’t we be set on the right path without needing pain?” I asked.

“But then we wouldn’t learn. We’re selfish, doctor. We won’t do the right thing. That’s why we need the Angel’s love.”

I grumbled and ground my teeth. “Look around. Look at yourself.” I gestured with my arms. “Look at the people here in this room who are suffering with you. Is what is happening to them an act of love?”

For a second, I thought I had him.

I couldn’t have anticipated his rebuttal.