The Wyrms of &alon

The visiting chieftains left the way they came: riding atop the Passaged sky-whales roosting on the platform outside the great hall.

It had been decided the chieftains would return to their Clans' strongholds to raise their armies. The gathered host would assemble here at T't'z't't Zd'tk'chrr (Kikukzikuk Zid-Tekchur)—the Hollow Mountain—and, after training, preparation, and strategizing, we'd set off to war.

"Can we even stay here for that long?" Lark asked me.

It was going to be several days at minimum; perhaps weeks.

We stood on the terraces and the platforms, discussing things with one another, with Krr'kt'zz in attendance.

"I honestly don't know," I said. "I can't check how time is passing in the outside world without alerting the AVUs to our presence. If time is passing more slowly in the D'zd Archive than in the real world, it might be feasible. Otherwise, we'll have to find our way back here again, and hope that the battle hasn't already begun by the time we return."

"I didn't realize your ability to stay here was in question," Krr'kt'zz said.

"It is," I replied.

"Then, I swear to you now," Krr'kt'zz said, flicking back zyr tail and pressing the fists of zyr top arms together, "we will not march on Dz'zrt'zt without you."

I looked Clan Nzrk-Dz's chief in the face. "Thank you."

"Thank you," ze replied. "After all, we're putting our fates in your hands."

"Speaking of which," Nina asked, "what should we do now?"

"Don't worry," Suisei said, "I've got it covered."

Krr'kt'zz left not long after that, off to inform zyr men about the brand new training regimen Suisei was planning for them. Lark, Nina, Suisei, and myself spent the next couple of minutes after that standing among the circle of pillars in the great hall as we discussed our next steps.

"Remember how I said your world had barely any pataphysical energies I could draw from?" Suisei asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "You made it sound like it was squeezing water from a rock."

"That's an apt analogy."

"Why bring it up now?" I asked.

"In this world," Suisei said, quivering with excitement, "there's so much power, the rocks don't just weep, they bleed it."

Nina nodded and crossed her arms. "Yeah," she said, with a flick of her tail, "I can feel it, too."

"Well I… don't," I said.

And I didn't. I really didn't.

"As far as sorcery goes, I don't feel any more or less magical than I do in my wyrm body."

"I wouldn't be surprised if that's because you and every other wyrm are constantly being sustained by &alon's power." Suisei shuddered. "The amount of power she must have to pull that off boggles the mind."

"So, what now?" Lark asked.

Suisei turned to Nina and I. "Nina, you should take Genneth and find some place safe to teach him non-kinetic forms of pataphysics. And, while you're at it, get some practice in for yourself."

"What?"

"If a D'zd's body gets too hot, it explodes," Suisei explained.

"Yes, we noticed," I said.

"On the other hand, if they get too cold, their bodies freeze solid."

"Yeah, that nearly killed Dzrtk," Nina said.

"Yes," Suisei said. "Extreme temperatures make quick work of them, so, to that end, you and Dr. Howle should focus on developing the pertinent techniques for long distance applications."

"Long distance?" Lark asked.

Suisei flicked one of his hands forward, as if he was chucking fireballs, while making laser beam noises. "Pew, pew pew pew."

"Oh," Lark said. "Sweet."

I pointed at Nina. "You want her to become a pyr—a thermomancer⁠?"

"If that means what I think it means," Suisei said, "then yes, I do."

Lark skittered close. "What do I do?"

"You…" Suisei paused for a moment. "You should come with me."

"Why?"

"Entertainment," Suisei replied.

Lark crossed her arms and pointedly stomped one of her forefeet on the ground in protest while giving Dr. Horosha a peeved stare.

"Or, you could try fooling around with powers you don't understand and get yourself killed in the process," Suisei said, "this time, for good."

Lark's tail drooped. "Point made."

I raised my arms. "Wait wait wait! Aren't you forgetting something? I can only use psychokinesis, remember?"

Suisei pointed at me. "As a wyrm, yes," he said, with a bob of his head, "but you're not a wyrm now, are you, Genneth? You're not even in your body. You're in the body of a D'zd, in an Archive world inside the Vyx Network. And in this world, D'zd can use pataphysics freely."

"I get to be a blaster mage…?" I whispered.

Dreams really did come true.

The thought was a welcome reprieve from my general misery.

We spent some time snooping around, trying to find a good spot to practice. We couldn't just practice anywhere, though; we needed a place where we wouldn't attract attention from (nor pose any danger to) any D'zd that happened to be passing by. Satisfying this condition turned out to be much more difficult than we initially thought. The biggest open spaces nearby were the grand hall inside the mountain and the tchn't't roost up top, neither of which were safe or advisable places to practice blowing things up. Eventually, I just went to Kr'kt'zz's chambers—where the D'zd chieftain happened to be discussing matters with zyr generals—to ask zym for advice.

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Krr'kt'zz ended up having one of zyr underlings escort us down to the mountain's foothills. The walk took over an hour, mostly because Nina and I—but mostly me—kept ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the D'zds' mountain city. We passed the workshops where harvested plantstuffs were broken up into fibers and leathers to be cut and woven into cloaks and other clothing. There were also the smithies, hard at work forging weapons and tools from ingots of latex. That being said, the highlight of the trip had to be the D'zd egg chambers. These were large, mostly empty rooms whose walls, ceilings, and floors were covered in mounds of shiny eggs strung up in flimsy silks. Some kind of organic putty kept the eggs secured to the available surfaces. Vvz'zsh priestesses were on the premises, singing stories to the young D'zd nymphs dreaming within the eggs, filling the chamber with the music of zyr lights. Understandably, the D'zd were defensive when it came to the well-being of their eggs, and it was only because of our (phony) status as Messengers that the egg guards even let us inside the chambers in the first place.

Eventually, Nzk'k'k—our incredibly patient and accommodating escort got us to where we needed to go. The mountain's ground-level entrance—or, at least, the one we used—was incredibly well-hidden, by which I mean we had to travel up and out through the network of kt'ch-krr'dz (ket'cha-kirduzz) burrows. For reference, a kt'ch-krr'dz was a relative of the shrimp-snakes we'd seen back when we'd first arrived in D'zd world, only much, much larger.

I preferred to call them hell centipedes.

The only reason we came out of that pit of death—and carnivorous plants, I can't forget to mention the carnivorous plants—alive was because one of Dzrtk's relatives happened to be permanently Passaged into the body of the kt'ch-krr'dz (non-binary) queen and had been kind enough to secrete the necessary pheromones to keep zyr brood at bay.

We emerged from the burrow to find ourselves at the edge of a jungle at the base of the mountain. Nzk'k'k guide was very insistent that we stay out of the jungle, repeatedly reminding Nina and I that doing otherwise would be "certain death."

Once ze felt ze'd drilled the point into us hard enough, Nzk'k'k led us across the Hollow Mountain's foothills and up to a large rocky outcropping. The outcrop jutted out from the edge of a sizable plateau that rose about halfway to the tree line.

As we clambered up onto the naked, grainy stone, Nzk'k'k covered zyr head with the hood of zyr cloak and turned away. "Now, if you'll excuse me," ze said, pointing down at the Jungle of Certain Death, "I'm going to wait over there."

"I thought you said entering the jungle was certain death," I asked.

"Oh, for you, absolutely. But for me, it's a nice place where I won't need to worry about anything exploding."

Dzrtk's sibling skittered down the rock and disappeared between the trees.

Honestly, it was probably for the best.

Turning around, I saw that Nina had already walked up to the plateau's edge, where she was taking in the panoramic view of the alien jungle.

I clutched my hands together. "So," I asked, emitting little waves of light from my antennae, like I was clearing my throat, "how do we start?"

Nina fidgeted her two-fingered hands and then shot a nervous glance at the ground. "About that…"

"Yes?"

"Since hot and cold are so dangerous to the D'zd," she said, "I'm kinda worried about what might happen to us or our surroundings while we do this." She glanced at the jungle. "I mean, you heard what Enzekek said."

"Yeah, we're definitely gonna want to keep our magic as far away from our bodies as possible," I said.

"Yeah, but…" Nina looked at the jagged rocks at the edge of the mountain's bowl. "…what's gonna happen if we start blasting fireballs at those rocks?"

"There are people who know the answers to that question," I said. "I am not one of them."

"Neither am I," Nina continued. "And who knows what else might happen? Will the sky get set on fire? I mean… when I was practicing with my powers at home, back in the real world, I… I used the sink a lot. Like, a lot, a lot."

"How so?"

"I filled pots with water and played around with them. I even got myself burnt a couple times. One time, I nearly burned down my room."

"Okay," I said, "I think I see the problem here."

"So… what do we do?"

Flexing my legs, I sat down, pressing my abdomen flush to the rock. Thankfully, the stone was warm to the touch. I think I would have wilted if it hadn't been.

Reaching up with my upper pair of arms, I gently pinched the edges of my flower. My vision sparkled and spat.

"What are you doing?" Nina asked.

"Thinking."

"Yes, but, why are you pinching yourself like that?"

"Because I don't have temples to rub," I said.

"Is… is this really necessary?" she asked.

I let go of my flower. "As I can't draw from my wyrm memory banks without altering the AVUs, I've got to remember my biochemistry classes the hard way."

If you've ever watched a hospital medical drama, you'll notice that the doctors are really good at spouting off various biomedical facts. I could do that as long as it was about my specialities—psychiatry, neurology, etc.—but not so much for other things. Thankfully, I'd had the good fortune of being in the presence of Brand's genius during our trek through the Hoduul, and one detail he'd told me had stood out in particular.

I grabbed my flower again.

I tried my best to draw from as much of my prior knowledge as I could.

"There we go!" I said, wiggling my tail. "Redox! Redox!"

I remembered kind of understanding redox reactions, along with the deep terror that came with anything related to reaction rates or stoichiometry.

"Redox?"

"Uh… do you remember how plants work?" I asked.

"Photosynthesis?" Nina said, after a pause.

I nodded. "Yeah. Humans and other animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants, meanwhile, breathe in carbon dioxide and, with the help of photosynthesis, breathe out oxygen. Together, this makes a cycle."

"Like the water cycle?" Nina said.

"Yeah, but with carbon, instead of water."

"Okay," Nina said.

She settled down on the stone in front of me, facing me, with her back to the jungle and the plateau's edge.

"Well… Brand speculated that in a world where ammonia took the role of water, the roles of oxygen and carbon dioxide would be played by hydrogen and methane."

She shook her head. "Yeah, I'm not following."

I squinched my flower closed for a moment, and then opened it up and tried again.

"You know how smoothies and yogurt and stuff often advertise that they have 'antioxidants'?"

"Yeah." Nina cocked her flower at an angle. "Isn't that just a white people thing, though?"

I chose to dodge the bullet and ignore that question.

"At the molecular level," I said, trying my best to channel my favorite science teachers, "oxygen is a quite the troublemaker. It's the reason why we have fire."

"Wait… isn't fire, like… it's own thing?" Nina asked.

I shook my head. "No, it's not. Fire is what happens when oxygen reacts with hydrocarbons—oil, wood, and so on. You need a certain amount of heat to get the reaction started, but once it does, it perpetuates itself. The heat breaks down the hydrocarbons, which then react with the oxygen in the air, making more heat, and everything goes on like that until either the fuel or the oxygen gets taken away, or the temperature becomes too cold for the reaction to continue."

"But then what's the actual fire made of?"

"Ionized gas. That's gas that's got electrical energy running through it. I think heat is enough to make that happen, but I don't remember the details. Anyway, that's not the point."

"Then what is?"

"Redox reactions," I said.

"Which are?"

"The reason why oxygen causes chemical mischief is because it's a little thief that wants to steal electrons from other atoms and molecules. The theft is called oxidation, and at the chemical level, it's a lot like pulling bricks out of a wall. It makes things unstable and prone to collapse, and when things collapse, they release energy as heat."

The more I talked, the more I remembered.

Who says hours spent cramming for chemistry exams in college didn't pay dividends in the long run?

"That's why fuels like wood burn in the presence of oxygen. As a powerful oxidizer, oxygen always wants to make stuff burn."

"Okay…" Nina said.

I hoped she was getting it.

"The opposite of oxidation is reduction, which is when electrons get given, and—"

"—Wait, wait, I think I remember this," Nina said. "Oils don't conduct electricity well, right? It's why water and oil don't mix."

"Kind of. What matters here is that Brand said that if this ammonia world had more than trace amounts of oxygen in it, all the chemistry of methane life would fall apart as everything literally exploded."

"What?!" Nina stood up in shock. "How? Why?"

"Hydrogen and methane aren't anywhere near as chemically mischievousas oxygen is. They tend to act as reducers, and so, as far as oxygen is concerned, they're fuel waiting to be burned."

"So… oxygen in ammonia world sets the sky on fire?" she asked.

"Yeah, pretty much. It's like the sky is made of fuel. All you need is to add the oxidizer and everything will go kablooey. But, because the world would end if that happened, the fact that it hasn't means there must not be enough oxygen around for that to be a risk. So… I don't think we need to worry about that happening."

Nina stared at me. "Are you sure?"

"I just gave you a science lecture," I said, "so, yes, I'm sure."

"Okay, but… you saw what heat does to the D'zd." She crossed her arms. "It makes them pop like balloons! Do you have science for that?"

"Yes, I do," I said. "On our world, ammonia is a gas."

"But it's water here," Nina said.

"Yeah, which means it's gotta be pretty cold here, at least by human standards, which means that a lot of things we think of as normally being liquids or gases can appear as solids or liquids, respectively, here in D'zd world."

"Which means?"

"It means rocks might turn to vapor," I said.

"Wait, really?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but… as long as we can make them cold again, the gas should turn back into rocks."

"Oh, so… we can use cold to balance out heat?" Nina asked.

"Probably, yeah."

Nina crossed her arms. "Well, then, that does it." She fluttered her flower's petals. "I think I've figured out how we're gonna do this."

"Oh?"

She stuck out her arms. "First, you're gonna need to hold out your arms."