So, the good news: Andalon was back, and, for once, she was giving me some useful answers. The bad news? I was hungry.

Again.

Putting on a fresh F-99 mask and stashing my ID badge in my breast-pocket, I went on the prowl. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that all the vending machines nearby were nearly empty, and I had to keep their contents available for when I needed a quick snack to tide me over while I was doing my rounds during the day. So, instead, I went on a quest for food, leaving the Administration Building altogether. I walked through the halls until I’d entered the Center-West Building, partly because I hoped I’d find more offerings there, and because, in the back of my head, I thought that, if anyone saw me, they’d be less likely to recognize me, seeing as I’d come from a completely different building. Still, that wasn’t enough to fully assuage my worries of being caught or otherwise found out, and so progress came somewhat spastically. I hesitated at nearly every corner I turned down, keeping my distance from the convoys of beds, patients, and physicians that frequently passed me by.

So, in addition to being hungry, I was also fudging paranoid, now.

I decided to distract myself by posing more questions to Andalon. Hopefully, her increasing awareness of and integration with her greater gestalt-self would make her better equipped to answer my questions.

Did you know that other tranformees—other wyrms—can see you?

“They can!?” Andalon said, squealing with joy—very, very loud joy. It made me wince.

You didn’t know?

She shook her head.

I walked down the hall. From what I heard, only I can talk to you. None of the others can. I know it’s asking a lot, but… do you have any idea why this might be?

Andalon tilted her head to the side, and then she smiled. “Maybe you’re special!”

“Hooray?” I muttered, ironically.

Time to try one of the bigger questions.

Andalon… what are you?

I’d asked before, but to little avail. Maybe now, having remembered more about herself, I’d get a better answer.

Andalon popped into being in front of me, in front of a painting of an aerostat. Briefly, she stared off into the distance, lost in thought, and then, with an eager smile, turned to me and said, “Andalon is Andalon!” Closing her eyes, she nodded, holding her smile, deeply satisfied with her answer.

Unfortunately, it was exactly the same answer she’d given me the first time around.

Could you be more… specific?

Her brow and lips corrugated as she concentrated, and then she reached her arms out to her sides as far as they could go and said, “Andalon is big!”

Baby steps, Genneth. Baby steps.

I pulled away as several beds raced down the hall, pushed by nurses and doctors. The patients looked like zombies, more dead than alive. Fungus bloomed from their skin as they twitched and flailed from the confines of their sealed darkpox beds.

Center-West was no better than the Administration Building.

The plague was everywhere.

I branched off from the main corridors, sticking to the dimly lit hallways at the peripheries of Center-West’s Wards. I swallowed hard, sucking down the saliva that filled my mouth, not wanting it to spill out of my lips or onto my mask. I passed a row of vending machines, and, to my dismay, they’d been stripped bare. Some of the vending machines’ metal and plastic—especially the viewing windows—had been partially eaten through.

Focus on the questions. Focus on the questions.

I fixated on the “demonstration” Andalon had given me of wyrm size during the autopsy of Ileene’s fetus. I needed to pry further.

Just how big are we talking about?

Andalon held out her arms straight ahead, keeping them parallel to one another as she bunched her hands into little fists.

“Grab!” she said.

I hesitated. “What?” I said, softly, “I can’t touch you, remember?”

Andalon shook her arms at me. “Grab!”

Alright.

I nodded and did as she said. And she was solid. I felt something there as I held her hands.

“Cry the Lassedites!” I hissed, not just because I was spooked, but because she was as cold to the touch as an ice sculpture. Then, information flooded into me, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, supine, looking up at Andalon. She had bent over me, gazing down at me with her hands crossed behind her back. The pain of the impact radiated dully through my back, sparking where I’d crushed my tail against my thigh.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Ow.

Bizarrely, there was no need to ask Andalon what had happened. Somehow, I just knew the answer, though thinking about it made my head throb with discomfort.

As I held Andalon’s fists, for an instant, I felt what I could only describe as a connection, no doubt with Andalon’s greater self. For a span of a second or two, until the connection broke, I intuitively understood just how large Andalon was. In that moment, that knowledge had been as obvious and natural to me as the length of my fingers or the shape of my head. The problem was that the knowledge was literally beyond my mind’s current capacities. If I deleted everything in my mind—my entire sense of self, my memories, as well as the consciousnesses of the souls of the dead stored within me—I’d have had just enough space to fit the information in. So, the instant my connection with Greater Andalon broke, some basal psychological functionality deleted most of my memories of my knowledge of Andalon’s greater self, so as to avoid the neurophysiological equivalent of a total systems failure.

Andalon occupied a definite, measurable volume of space. However, the number was physically impossible for a human being to convey. It was so stupendously huge that if you tried to explain a numerical system capable of expressing that volume, time itself would have died before the explanation was even halfway through. The topic literally hurt to think about.

Rubbing my head, I got to my feet. I probably should have changed topics—my headache would certainly have appreciated it—but I couldn’t let it rest. There was something crucial here.

Andalon was physical. Whatever she was, it wasn’t incorporeal; she wasn’t pure spirit. And not only that. She was larger than the universe. She was something… transcendent. How could she exist if she was larger than all of existence?

Another lesson from Mrs. Usher’s science class came back to me. The universe was known to be a sphere of approximately 200 million miles in diameter, with the world at its center, and the Sun near the rim, orbiting around us. But compared to Andalon’s size, those numbers were peanuts.

“Andalon,” I asked, “where are you?”

She looked at me for a moment, confused, tilting her head to the side. But then she answered. Andalon looked off into the distance as she answered me. “Near, but… also far. Far away.” She nodded. “But I’m gettin’ closer.” Suddenly, she stiffened. Her eyes widened. “And they… they—it hurt me.” Her breathing quickened, heavy and labored. She looked around, filled with terror. “They hurt me.” She wept, rapidly freaking out. “Andalon tried to help them and they hurt me, and I ran and ran and—”

“Please, Andalon,” I got down to my knees, “calm down. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

I reached out and embraced her, and though she was cold as ice, she was as solid as ice, too. I rubbed my hand along her back, holding her tightly, but gently. “You’re safe,” I said. “I’m here. You won’t be alone. I’m here.”

For a second, she froze, confused. Her arms trembled for a moment, not knowing what to do, but then, following my lead, she leaned into me and wept, burying her face in my chest.

Her tears were like liquid lightning. Their phantom heat burned as they rolled down my clothes.

We stayed that way for a minute before she pulled away. Her face was inflamed and puffy. She sniffled, wiping her tears on her sleeve. And yet, she smiled. It was like she’d just beheld a beatific vision. She was in awe.

“What… what was that?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

Letting my shoulders relax, I took a deep breath.

“That was a hug. People hug each other when they want to feel better,” I said.

“Andalon has never gotten a hug before…” she mumbled.

“You’re welcome,” I said. I smiled at her gently, though my expression flattened as I turned contemplative. But then, to my surprise, Andalon flung herself at me, hugging me with all she had.

“W-What?” I asked, stunned. “Why?”

She cried again. “You hurt. Your family, they…”

And then, at once, I understood. My eyes widened. A shiver ran down my neck and back, all the way to the tip of my tail.

I’d been consoling her. Now she was consoling me.

I started weeping. The heartache from hours before came rushing back to me.

“Andalon will always come back,” she said. “Andalon is always happy to have Mr. Genneth. ‘Cause…” she sniffled, “‘Cause Mr. Genneth is goody. So goody.”

I couldn’t believe that I was blushing, and I didn’t bother trying to stop myself.

The world would have been an infinitely better place if closure was just a matter of getting a hug.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I don’t want you to hurt,” she said. “Mr. Genneth’s family is…” she pursed her lips in concentration, “they’re scared, just like Andalon was scared.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I exhaled, “they are.”

“Maybe you can talk to them later?” Andalon asked.

I bit my lip. “Maybe.” My chest quivered. “Maybe…”

But I really didn’t know. I wanted to believe, but…

Shaking my head, I looked into Andalon’s eyes. “I’m not going to stop fighting. I’m not going to stop trying. I want to keep them safe, Andalon, no matter what, even if they don’t want to have anything to do with me. And…” I inhaled, “that starts with us figuring out how to beat the fungus here and now.”

“Yeah.” Andalon nodded. “Yeah!” she said again, nodding as she smiled with trembling lips.

And there, on the floor, we hugged each other for a third time. If I closed my eyes, it was like I was hugging Rale again, or Jules, back when she was just the littlest thing, dearer to me than all the world.

Eventually, though, my hunger refused to let me be. Well, that, and… I had an idea.

I looked her in the eyes as she sat down in front of me.

“Andalon, do you remember when we first met?”

“Huh?” She tilted her head. “Why?”

As we’d embraced, I realized something. My first encounter with Andalon had been in the otherworldly nightmare I’d had on the night of the day that Merritt had come to ask me to kill her; the day of the Dressfeldt Massacre. She’d been badly injured, beaten and bruised. I hadn’t thought about that since then, but now…

“I pulled you out of a river filled with motes of light,” I said. “You were badly hurt, remember?”

“Yeah,” she nodded gravely, “I ‘member.”

Thinking back on it now, whoever or whatever attacked her, perhaps it was that injury that explained why Andalon had been disconnected from her greater self. But… that still didn’t explain why she’d appeared to me.

“Why were you in that river? Do you remember anything about that? And why did you appear to me, Andalon?” I tapped my chest. “Why me, specifically?”

I had read many fantasy stories; many manga, shonen and otherwise. My involvement with Andalon felt very chosen-one-y to me… but that made no sense. I was not “chosen one” material; I couldn’t be. I was forty-four years old, for crying out loud!

Andalon nodded again. My chest tensed in anticipation.

“The meanies… they hurt me. And they hurt the wyrmehs, too!” She shivered. “They hurt so many wyrmehs…”

“They hurt them? How?”