The Wyrms of &alon

As the old saying goes: two steps forward, one step back. In other words: progress is torture.

I instantly knew when I'd fully returned to my body, just as I instantly knew that I'd brought all my spirits back with me—Suisei included—along with a most unlikely stowaway: Dzrtk the D'zd.

Or would it have been more accurate to call zym a hostage?

I had no idea.

Honestly, I was just overwhelmed. I guess that was just part of my new normal, along with the six eyes and my dashing, serpentine figure.

But before I could even begin to assess trivialities like where I was, how long I'd been gone, and what had happened in the real world during my absence, a searingly intense presence intruded on my mind. Not even Merritt's migraines were this bad.

I didn't need to double check to know what it was.

Dzrtk.

By the Godhead…

I was still reeling from everything that had happened in the D'zd archive. I couldn't begin to imagine what Dzrtk was feeling.

Actually, I could.

I made sure to slow my perception of time before I delved into my mind to deal with the wayward alien soul. I didn't want to take the chance of being too occupied to deal with an unexpected turn for the worse while I was dealing with the fallout from my latest (mis)adventure.

A comforting start-up noise played in my imagination's ears as I materialized in my Main Menu. The part of my consciousness I'd left in my body had set it up, thinking I'd like it—and had been absolutely right. Granted, it was maybe like at most a single cubic millimeter of comfort in a vast sea of misery, but… well, I suppose it's never too late to learn to appreciate the little things in life.

I just wished I could have said that Dzrtk appreciated it.

Compared to my human form, the D'zd was about the size of a large dog—not that Dzrtk was wagging zyr tail. The sides of Dzrtk's abdomen flexed as ze drew in panicked breaths. Ze lay on the ground with zyr abdomen behind zym, legs splayed out and torso bent forward, supporting zymself with zyr arms braced against the water-slicked floor. Dzrtk's flower trembled as it drooped downward. Ze almost flush against the floor, like a broken river reed.

Ze raised zyr flower just enough to let in some light, only to shudder and immediately press it back onto the floor.

"I don't understand," Dzrtk said. "I don't understand. What am I seeing? What am I seeing?"

I got down onto one knee.

Of course, I already knew what the problem was: Dzrtk's mind was perceiving my Main Menu the way I and my human vision and neurophysiology were accustomed to seeing it. The overall experience was as disorienting and overwhelming to zym as my experience of D'zd senses had been upon first entering zyr Archived world. The only difference was, my transformation into a wyrm had already given me plenty of experience in dealing with a broadening of my mental and sensory faculties. Had my vanilla self been plunged straight into D'zd World without any wyrmly warm up, I have no doubt the experience would have been far, far more difficult for me. Sadly, the D'zd in front of me had no prior experience to fall back on.

It was hitting zym in full.

Without a second thought, I altered Dzrtk's senses to match the ones ze'd hatched with. Again, prior experience helped me greatly. I doubted the process would have gone as smoothly as it did if I hadn't experienced those senses for myself. I also made sure to let Dzrtk understand my speech in zyr native tongue.

Gradually, the d'zd calmed. Trembling with uncertainty at first, Dzrtk raised zyr flower to look around, but then lowered it back to the floor in fear. Slowly, the Vvz'zsh grew more confident, Eventually, ze didn't lower zyr flower at all.

It was as if ze seeing zyr surroundings for the first time.

"What was that?" Dzrtk said. "What—"

—But then, the alien saw me.

"W-What are you?"

Rising to zyr feet, Dzrtk skittered up to me.

It was hard not to cry. Here, right before my eyes, was a creature from another world, one so alien that neither of us could stand in the comfort of each other's homes without dying a quick, gruesome death. On Dzrtk's world, it was anyone's guess as to which would have killed me first: asphyxiating in the ammonia atmosphere, or dying of exposure from cold. On my world, Dzrtk would get boiled alive.

Heck, I'd already seen it happen with my own eyes.

To see this creature with my own two eyes—well, after a fashion—and watch the mantis-like motions of zyr limbs and the inquisitive twitching of zyr stamen-antenna from inside the nervous flutters and contractions of the silvery lily that made up zyr head had to be one of the most awe-inspiring things I'd ever witnessed, up there with my up-close, in-personal encounter with the Hallowed Beast Himself.

And yet, at the same time, I knew and felt the anger, hate, and betrayal that Dzrtk was going to unleash on me the instant ze understood who and what I was.

"Hello, Dzrtk," I said. "It's me, Genneth."

The d'zd skittered back in shock. Ze held zyr stinger tail erect, ready to strike at the slightest provocation.

"This is what I used to look like," I said, "before—"

The d'zd shrieked at me, pointing with a trembling bident hand. "Serpent! You—you were a Blight serpent! What are you? What are you!?" Ze gesticulated wildly. "What have you done with me?!" Dzrtk looked around in terror. "What is this place?! Did the Dominion put you up to this? Did the K'rrt…" Ze drooped. "The K'rrt…"

I shook my head in mourning. "Dzrtk, I'm so sorry you had to find out this way. I… there was just no way I could have told you or the others."

"What are you?" ze asked me.

I placed my hand on my chest. "As I said, this is what I used to be, before the Blight came to my world and infected and transformed me into a wyrm."

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"Wyrm?"

"It's what we call ourselves." I sighed. "I don't know what you've been told, but… the wyrms carry the souls of the dead within them—those who were killed by the Blight."

"…what?" Dzrtk cocked zyr flower at an angle

"It's… well… it's kind of like the Archive that the Vyx made for your people."

Dzrtk flicked zyr arms and yelled. "The Archive was made because your kind destroyed our world! If what you said is true, then the Blight comes to steal souls! The Vyx saved us!"

I shuddered, shoulders heavy. "You're right on both counts, Dzrtk. The Blight absolutely does steal its victims' souls, just as the Vyx saved your people from extinction by archiving you. Meanwhile, &alon just destroys, doing the worst possible things in pursuit of her hopeless noble cause."

Of all the things I could have said, that was one that Dzrtk had least expected.

Hostile kidnappers tend to neither agree nor sympathize with their abductees.

"&alon?" Dzrtk asked.

Dzrtk skittered back in shock as I conjured a chair out of nowhere for myself to sit in.

I leaned back and sighed. "My friend, now it's my turn to tell you a story."

— — —

I went over the facts once more, just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind.

"There are two factions of D'zd," I said, "Northerners and Southerners."

"No, it's not that simple," Dzrtk said. "It's Vvz'zsh versus T'dzd'ch. The T'dzd'ch don't have unified support across all of the great southern powers, or so I've been told."

I groaned.

Thankfully, one benefit of being fully myself again meant I could simply will myself to 'pronounce' D'zd words correctly. That really made things so much easier.

"Fine, the Vvz'zsh and T'dzd'ch believe the other betrayed them when &alon had attacked the D'zd homeworld."

"Yes," Dzrtk said, pressing zyr hands together. I'd learned the gesture was called zk'chzz (Zik-chizz), and was used by Vvz'zsh to show emphasis and agreement.

"Good." I continued. "Likewise, both sides agree that EUe was murdered and that the K'rrt were sealed away."

"EUe's death isn't up for interpretation," Dzrtk insisted, "it's historical fact."

"I'll believe it when I see it," I replied. "Okay… what else?" I fidgeted with my bow-tie. "Ah: the Vvz'zsh claim the K'rrt were good guys who were framed for EUe's murder. Meanwhile, the T'dzd'ch—the South—claims the K'rrt were evil, and were the ones who killed EUe."

"You're omitting two points," Dzrtk said. "A weapon was discovered—"

"—Right," I said, "the Lodestars."

"Yes," Dzrtk continued, "and a group of Vyxit tried to use them to seize control. EUe stopped them, but was killed in the process."

"And the other point?"

"I've lived my entire life thinking of the Dominion as a Southlander colony in the Northlands, and that the K'rrt were my people's ancestral heroes who had given their lives to defend the Northlands against foreign encroachment, only for the T'dzd'ch and their lies to turn the K'rrt into villains."

"But, the kicker is, the Dominion's leaders turned out to be the K'rrt, and also very, very evil."

"I know, but…" Dzrtk's petals drooped. "I just don't understand it. It…" Ze paused. "None of this should be real."

"Believe me, I know the feeling." I nodded. "But, that doesn't change the fact that all of this is 100% real."

I'd shared my story with Dzrtk, and, in doing so, I found that the D'zd was growing more and more sympathetic with me with each passing minute. Also, it helped that, in a way, we were in a similar boat. Both of our homeworlds had been destroyed by &alon; both of us had our foundational beliefs about our realities pulled out from underneath us.

Initially, Dzrtk had accused me of withholding the truth from zym out of malice. Thankfully, as I shared more about what had happened to me and my world, Dzrtk saw how that made zyr accusation less and less tenable. After that—get this—the d'zd even wondered if I'd kept the truth from zym out of a feeling of superiority.

"Superior?" I'd answered. "Don't make me laugh! I'm nobody's superior, not even my own! I'm afraid and adrift. I'm at war with myself and everything I've ever believed in. It's…" I'd sighed. "It's so easy to fall into rigid ways of thinking, especially when you've seen only a tiny sliver of what the world has to offer."

Honestly, as far as I was concerned, "having seen only a tiny sliver of what the world had to offer" was the inescapable default setting that all living things inhabited from the day they were born to the day they died.

I'd shown Dzrtk some of the best sunrises and sunsets my memories had to offer, letting zym take them in with zyr own senses. Though I'd never seen my sky the way a d'zd would—and thus wouldn't have had any basis for constructing a d'zd-viewable version of my favorite sights—there were enough similarities between d'zd vision and the way the world looked to a wyrm's third pair of eyes that I was able to craft what I hoped would be an acceptable approximation.

I wanted to do the Sun justice, not to mention the Bay and Elpeck's world-famous skyline.

Dzrtk had asked if my world had a "Worldword", after all.

The d'zd had stared at the hyperphantasized scenery in stunned silence. Of all the experiences I'd shared with Dzrtk, I think that was the most impactful. They let zym see for zymself the enormity of what &alon had taken from us.

After I'd finished my tragic tale, Dzrtk and I had been going over what had happened to us in the Archive and what we'd learned in the process.

I needed to figure out how I was going to explain it to all the other wyrms.

"Will I be able to go home?" Dzrtk asked.

"To your Archive? Hmm…" I scratched my chin in contemplation. "I… I don't see why not—in theory, at least. I just need to take you back there and drop you off, though doing so is easier said than done. Your world and the Tower of Light are quite a ways away from one another." I shook my head. "I don't think I'd be able to do both in one trip without the AVUs attacking us and severing my connection to the Vyx Network."

"It might be for the best. I…" Dzrtk's tail drooped. "I fear what the K'rrt will do, now that they have shown themselves. A great war is coming, Genneth." Ze looked at me. "Obviously, I don't expect you to stop it. It's neither your fault, nor your responsibility."

"I don't think I could stop it, even if I tried," I said.

It was important for a wyrm to know his own limitations.

Still, there was one point that kept eating away at me.

To summon the Key I'd acquired was a simple matter of thinking about it while imagining it appearing in my hand, which it did, a moment later.

"Do you think this really is the Key?" I asked.

"Considering the lengths the K'rrt took to guard it," Dzrtk replied, "it can't be anything else."

Part of me almost wished it was.

I turned the cylinder over in my hand, heightening the pressure of my fingertips where I pressed them against its cool, smooth surface.

"But if the K'rrt weren't imprisoned, then who or what will this Key set free?"

I couldn't help worrying that something even worse than the K'rrt was lurking in the Prison in the Tower of Light, waiting to be set free.

"Maybe… the good K'rrt were the ones sealed away," Dzrtk suggested.

"What do you mean, the 'good' K'rrt?"

"My people's songs sing their praises," ze said. "K'zk Chk'k'k (Kezek Chik-Kek), who helped build Lost Nzrk-Dz, Chzk Vb'bv (Chezik Voobva), beloved of the Tchn't't, and so many others. What if they were the ones sealed away, while the K'rrt who came to rule the Dominion really were EUe's killers?"

"But why would they do that?" I asked.

"I…" Dzrtk's petals drooped. "I don't know."

"I'm worried about what we'll find on the other side of that door," I said.

Hearing those words, Dzrtk perked up, though ze could hardly seem to believe it zymself. "You're still going to climb the Tower?"

I gave my lucky bowtie another good fidgeting and then nodded. "I promised I'd help stop your world from freezing solid, Dzrtk, and I meant it." I sighed. "I just wished I felt more optimistic about our chances. This journey has been one surprise after another, believe you me. I don't think I can deal with it any more."

"What will you do now?"

"I'm going to see what's become of my world. If you want, you're welcome to watch."

Then I stood up and walked away. The plan was for my body to slowly fade away from my Menu and then for Dzrtk to be transferred to the afterlife I'd prepared for zym as a (possibly temporary, possibly permanent) residence during zyr stay at La Casa de la Genneth⁠. But then Dzrtk skittered over to me, and I turned around to face zym.

"Is there something else I missed?" I asked.

"Thank you for what you have done, Dr. Howle. I hope we all find our happy endings—you, most of all."

I sniffled as I bowed in gratitude. I tried my best not to cry.

"Thank you," I said.

Then back to my body I went.