The Wyrms of &alon

I pictured myself and my companions gathered together someplace safe, any injuries fully healed.

"<Heal!>" I yelled. "<Teleport!>"

The next thing I knew, I was standing atop one of the city walls, overlooking both sides of the battlefield.

"Okay, this is good," I muttered.

Seeing some T'dzd'ch puppets racing through the streets below, I raised my hand and fired a blast of frost their way. The soulless puppets' legs snapped off their bodies as they froze. Their torsos shattered as they fell forward and crashed onto the hexagonal pavement. Naturally, this drew more attention toward me. T'dzd'ch cataphracts leapt like fleas from rooftop to rooftop, hurtling towards us as fast as they could.

I waved my hand. "<Away>." With that one command, I disappeared the cataphracts' weapons and teleported the cataphracts themselves right next to the core of the Vvz'zsh forces, in one of the city's plazas.

"What the hell!?" Nina cursed. "What the hell!?"

Suisei reached and grabbed her by the arm.

Beside me, Lark was bashing her arms against the air while screaming at the top of her lungs.

"<Calm!>" I said.

Suddenly, everyone quieted.

I felt my influence ripple across the digital ether each time I used my abilities. The ripples were blazing beacons that no doubt, even now, were drawing those pesky AVUs toward our position.

All flowers turned to me. My divine intervention had rescued Lark, Nina, Suisei, and Dzrtk—the latter of whom had been fully healed. The Vvz'zsh warrior stared in shock at zyr reformed limbs.

"What did you do?" Dzrtk asked.

"I've just used my wyrm powers."

I didn't bother mentioning that I'd tried to bring back Tk'tk'tk, but to no avail.

"What!?" Suisei yelled. "But that will—"

I nodded. "I know. That's why we have to get out of here ASAP. The AVUs are probably already on their way." I looked up at the sky. "I don't know how long we have before they tear this place to shreds."

"You're missing an important detail, Dr. Howle," Lark said, turning to our companions. "The Hierarchs are the fucking K'rrt!"

"I think they're liches of some kind," I said.

"What?" Nina asked.

"Undead wizards," I explained. "Regardless, they're terrifyingly powerful and don't have any qualms about killing D'zd and stealing their bodies and/or souls."

Dzrtk trembled. "It doesn't make sense! The K'rrt were sealed away!"

"That's a pretty shit job of sealing, then!" Lark said. "And the Dominion was right. The K'rrt are evil incarnate!"

Dzrtk slammed zyr swords down onto the rampart. "They're not evil! They can't be! The K'rrt are my ancestors! They're heroes!" Ze turned to me. "They were going to save us all!"

"Apparently not," Nina quipped.

Lark made an X with her arms. "Alright. I've had enough of this bullshit. I want to get out of here, now." She glanced at me. "How do we leave?"

Before, on our first run-in with the Vyx Network, even when I couldn't see them, I could still sense the presence of the portals leading back to the Network.

Narrowing my flower, I focused, sweeping my view across the sky like a sunflower. As I turned toward the seat to the west, I sensed something like a tiny breeze blowing through a hole in the world. It was somewhere over the sea; not close, but not far, either.

I opened my flower. "I think I've found a portal. I'll just teleport the Vvz'zsh to safety and teleport us into the portal, and we'll be on our way."

"You're leaving?" Dzrtk said. "But wha—"

"—I'm just as confused by all this as you are, but don't worry, I'll keep up my end of the bargain." Raising the Key in my hand, I turned back to the Palace. "Maybe the K'rrt of your people's legends are waiting in the prison in the Vyx's Tower. We'll get to the bottom of this, Dzrtk, I promise. We'll stop the Lodestars, and we'll find a way to save your world." I turned back toward the sea. "But right now, we need to get out of here. It's not safe."

Suddenly, with a brilliant clang, several wisps of swirling light phased out through the Palace of the Hierarchs. The light wafted up to the tallest tower, gathering there like a gyre of vultures. The Chant twined around the tower, prodding the vines and clay as it mingled with the patient energies slumbering there, drawing out bands of flowing song.

Light sprayed out from the tower in great waves, forming an umbrella that arced over the city like falling water, carrying stark, stern words for all to hear.

"I knew this day would come," a voice said.

It was one of the Hierarchs.

"We can always start again," another said.

The will-o-wisps shared their plots as they orbited the tower's apex.

"Yes, we will do it again. We will."

"Cleanse it. Cleanse it. They are not forgiven."

"We will have our vengeance."

Voices erupted in terror down in the city.

"The Hierarchs!" they yelled. "The Hierarchs!"

A familiar-looking D'zd rode their vrr't'k, gliding onto a rooftop after a potent upward leap. The rider thrust their scissorblades skyward and bellowed in a magically augmented voice.

"Our people will be avenged!"

Chief Bzrt'zrt!

One of the voices laughed, sending rippling down the tower's cataracting light. "Yes," it said, "they will be."

Lark turned to face me. "Dr. Howle, I've got the friggenest baddest feeling about this."

"You're telling me!" I said.

I skittered up to the rampart's inner edge and yelled. "Brace yourself, everyone! We're leaving!"

I tapped into my powers in full. I could feel the multifaceted presence of my greater wyrm consciousness reaching out to me. I visualized my goals: the Vvz'zsh transported to the safety of their mountain fortresses; my spirits and I leaving this Archive world through the portal over the sea. I cast my will in a wide net.

I just wanted everyone to be safe.

Abdomen curled up and back, I spread my arms and yelled. "<Teleport!>"

Nothing happened.

No!

Actually, it was a lot worse than nothing.

"Dr. Howle!" Nina said, pointing at the wall beneath us.

The ground rumbled. Currents of song-light swam along the wall in hovering ribbons.

Suisei skittered back. "Angel's mercy…"

"What's going on?"

"The city," Suisei said, "I didn't notice. There's a—" But he cut himself off. "It's a trap! We can't get out!"

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

"Messenger," Zht'zht'k's voice said, "your powers are truly something to behold. You have earned my interest. We will not let you leave so easily."

"Enough of this," another Hierarch said. "Kill them all."

All the voices spoke in unison: Agreed.

One last wave of light rippled out from the high tower of the Hierarchs' Palace. It spread over the city. The bright tide rushed down the rooftops and spilled onto the streets. Suisei raised a wall of light around us to block the oncoming torrent, which crashed against his barrier like sea against land against. Warbles oscillated every-which-way as the current avalanched onward and broke through the city's open southern gate.

Then, T'dzd'ch warriors rose up off the ground, as if in the pull of an invisible hand.

It didn't matter if they were living or dead, whole or ruined; they flew up all the same. The voices plucked rag-dolled D'zd bodies off the streets, the battlefield, and the rooftops and gathered them overhead, aggregating them into a rapidly expanding spiral.

"What the fuck?!" Lark screeched. "What the fuck?!"

The swarm was beginning to coalesce into something like a body. It was uncanny and terrifying. Passaged brzhtsraised their antennae-horns and bellowed, undulating their petals in fear. Some Vvz'zsh ran out of the city, while others struck their swords along the sand and raced forward, leaping from street to awning to rooftop. Vrr't'ks jumped high, spreading their wings and gliding toward the coalescing horror.

I'll admit, my first instinct was to run, but then… I remembered: I was a blaster mage, now.

Suisei, Nina, and I attacked it almost in unison.

Raising my hands, I focused on the web of imaginary music that I associated with Nina's heating spell. I pictured it forming in my arms like so many bundles of rope. Through my mind's eye, I sensed more of the bundles forming in front of Suisei and Nina.

Some of the floating bodies descended toward the street, clustering into gigantic legs. The aggregate bodies crashed through the street's low-lying buildings, spraying ceramic shards. More limbs extruded from the core of the swarm. The arms and legs struck the Vvz'zsh forces in a mighty sweep, splattering warriors and warbeasts alike.

Dzrtk screamed. "No!"

Up above, the swarm thickened. Its many constituent bodies interwove with one another, forming a monstrous silver giant bristled in D'zd limbs.

It towered over both the army and the city.

The three chieftains charged at the monstrosity's legs. Light flared from Srrt'zt'krr staff and robes, and from Krr'kt'zz's armor and Bzrt'zrt's swords.

"Now!" Suisei yelled.

We chucked our magic's imaginary ropes at the swarm-giant. Jets of steam burst out from our magic as we let our power flow. Three twitching lances of heat struck the core of the giant's body. The D'zd there popped in bursts of steam.

The giant lunged forward.

We'd knocked it off balance!

Streams of heat and light lashed out from the Chieftains' attacks.

"Again!" I yelled. "Ag—"

The giant spoke.

"—It is futile."

The Hierarch's voices spoke as one.

Instantly, all the triumph drained from my body.

The popped D'zd corpses didn't fall away. Instead, their fractured exoskeletons and boiled fluids circled back and rejoined the swarm. Liquid ammonia and fragments of concrete swirled around the giant's extremities.

"No…"

In attacking the Vvz'zsh with its body, the giant had bludgeoned to death the D'zd that made up the ends of its limbs. But that didn't matter. The creature's power kept them bound to it.

Runic symbols glistened and sung as they sprung into being around the giant's hands.

Their song was death.

The air in front of them quivered like a mirage. It billowed forward in unstoppable streams, inundating the city and the battlefield. Everything the streams touched turned into ghosts. Whole sections of the city evaporated into expanding clouds that plowed through their surroundings as the devastation spread.

The pyroclasm snarled against the three Chieftains' attacks, which held it back, but just barely. Others, however, were not so lucky. The torrent swallowed them up, along with their mounts. Warriors and warbeasts ran and flew, but then the steam engulfed them and they were no more.

City blocks fell like dominos, one after the other.

Crash.

Crash.

Crash.

And in front of the Palace, the giant stood, a silver reaper basking in the doom it had wrought.

The devastation hurtled toward us. It would be here in seconds.

Dzrtk grabbed me by the arm and pulled. "Run!!"

And so I did. I started up in a sprint, rushing toward the torrent of destruction hurtling toward us.

I screamed like a madman as I leapt off the city wall.

The northern third of the city had already been wiped off the face of the earth, along with a decent chunk of the Vvz'zsh's forces. I wasn't about to let the Hierarchs slaughter the rest. Vvz'zsh or not, the D'zd deserved better than the Hierarchs undying tyranny.

Though I leapt, I didn't fall. Instead, changed, and rose as I changed, shedding the compactness of my D'zd body. I bloated massively, my body exploding forward and back along its central axis, scales tiling me like the hexagons of Dz'zrt'zt's streets. All but two of my slender, ropy limbs were subducted into my changing form. The last pair thickened with absurd bulk; four fingers turned to six. My snout blossomed, proud horns sticking out, a mane of spines bursting down my back, the luminescent tips catching the wind. My tail unfurled, all muscle and power, joined by six eyes, golden and gleaming.

I pushed off the city streets with a flick of my tail and my head held high.

In Lasssedile mythology, the Hallowed Beast carried the veil of Night across the sky each evening, as part of our world's punishment for its primeval sins. As I rose into the sky, I reenacted that myth, but with one key difference.

I carried light.

Scintillating plexus light streamed down from me, spreading wide. My massive forcefield was a waterfall of mercy, trapping the torrent of steam and heat, which bounced off the forcefield's inner surface, cresting up at me and the giant like a great wave.

The wave broke. It crashed into the giant's legs, forcing it to the ground as its lower limbs burst and crumbled.

I corkscrewed and soared. I sang.

The heat and steam lapped at my forcefield, slowly receding. The ground below was a sea turning to mud turning to stone. Behind my barrier, voices screamed in terror as they saw what I truly was. But their fear didn't matter. Even if they couldn't understand it, I was going to help them.

The giant pushed itself up, regathering its exploding limbs as it braced itself against the molten city.

I thrashed my head and screamed, belting polyphony at the giant. I wanted them to hear me all the way on the other side of the Vyx's Network.

First the giant flinched, its giant, limb-bristled flower spreading wide. And then, it howled.

"S-Serpent! Serpent!" It screamed to the heavens. "The Blight is here! The Blight is here!"

D'zd pulp churned within its body and unfurled into limbs, shooting out like harpoons. They swung at me, and I dodged, undulating and swerving, speeding myself up and around with psychokinetic boosts.

The giant slammed its arms at me, attacking from multiple directions at once. I countered with an exploding sphere of psychokinetic force. The D'zd bodies that made up its limbs splattered as two of its arms snapped, but I wasn't strong enough to eliminate them all.

One of the limbs came swinging at me, smacking me from behind and blasting me with its hot steam—though, to my scales, it was barely even lukewarm.

The blow sent me flying. The world spun, the Palace's skyline rocking back and forth at the edge of my vision.

I spread my claws and roared. With a flick of my tail, I gathered psychokinesis around myself and rocketed at the giant's central mass. I skimmed over its bulk, slicing through dozens of its D'zd.

Again, the giant stumbled. Its legs and abdomen crashed into the Palace's front façade, raining broken stone onto the melted city.

But then, the sky erupted with familiar screams.

"ERADICATE! ERADICATE!"

The giant reared up its flower and yelled. "Vyx! Vyx!" It begged for help.

Hundreds and hundreds of AVUs ripped out of the sky overhead. Vicious metal swarms swirled around the glinting dodecahedra. The AVUs spun in place, and then rocketed downward, barreling toward me.

I flew behind the giant, spread my arms, and yelled.

"Come and get me, you sons of snitches!"

The oncoming AVUs twitched as they updated their impact trajectories. Their coats of swirling metal sharpened into wild drills that flashed with the light of the scattered noon.

More limbs sprouted from the back of the giant's torso. They spread out and swung inward, hoping to crush me.

Bingo, I thought.

<"Teleport!"> I yelled.

Instantly, I went from being behind the giant to being directly in front of it, not that the Vyx cared about the difference. They ground through the giant, back first, drilling through the layered D'zd corpses. They shred them to ammonia and silver strands, emerging through the giant's chest like maggots at high speed.

The damage was catastrophic.

The giant screamed. "No!"

Whole sections of its body were coming apart. D'zd corpses sloughed off in sheets. It bundled its body-fluid hands into fists and slammed its limbs onto the city and the Vvz'zsh troops, but I pulled my barrier into its path. Its fists splattered in every direction, raining dead souls.

"No! Nooooo!" the giant screamed. "We will not be stopped! We will be avenged!"

The monstrosity began to collapse into a tornado of bodies and fluids. Within the whirlwind, pataphysics crackled like lightning.

I recognized the weaves. They were going to use another heat attack!

Now it was my turn to scream.

Those monsters were going to take all of us down with them.

I yelled. "Oh no you don't!"

I darted left and right, swimming up and down, hurtling myself through the air with psychokinetic jets, dodging zooming AVUs as I barreled around the tornado heat wave, my forcefield trailing behind me. The wall of light entombed the K'rrt's blossoming magic. I wove this way and that, sweeping around, catching it all.

Through my third eyes, I watched magic swirl and spark as the giant dissolved into the storm.

I just needed to close the loop before the spell went off.

Almost there! Almost there!

Within, the magic pulsed. It opened like a flower.

Here it comes…!

I was nearly there!

Then, at the worst possible time, the approaching severance struck. My body spasmed, flickering in and out of existence as I plummeted toward the buildings below.

The tempest exploded. Superheated waves expanded out from the whirlwind in every direction. The torrent bounced off my forcefields and streamed out through the narrow gap I'd yet to close, spraying at the south end of the city in a concentrated stream, blasting away everything in its path, directly into the heart of the Vvz'zsh forces.

No!

Half of the Vvz'zsh army popped like bubbles. For a brief moment, I saw spheres of light engulf the three chieftains and their mounts and protect them from the attack, but the concentrated energy was simply too much for them to withstand.

Their barriers crumpled like crushed eggshells, and I knew they were dead. Sky-whales exploded like bombs, ejecting their fluids ahead of the barreling wavefront. The lights of the Keret's souls whooshed up and away from the tempest as the remains of their golem sputtered and fell.

In between the severance's flashes, I saw the ruin of splattered gore that had once been Dzrtk's people. And Dzrtk saw it, too. Brzhts and other warbeasts were nothing more than crushed, fibrous husks smeared across Dz'zrt'zt's pultaceous streets. Broken limbs stuck up in places, twitching in death's tender caresses. Friends and comrades ze'd fought for and lived with were reduced to a crunchy paste.

Gone. Gone. All of them, gone.

Dzrtk dashed forward, screaming, "No! No!!"

The last thing I saw were the K'rrt's spirits, gleaming like stars high overhead. Then the severance completed, and my connection broke.