Dr. Ibrahim Rathpalla was melting, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. His mind, his awareness, even his soul itself—if there was such a thing—were bleeding out onto the ruins of the Imperial family's residential quarters, and as he melted, other melting souls bled into his.

His selfhood was decohering.

He felt the souls in the hallways, and splattered on the marble and the walls; he felt them run through a twisted world without escape.

This would be the farthest &alon or I would ever go with a corrupted wyrm. Many had fallen to the darkness, and many more would fall in the coming ages, but none of them fought to keep themselves quite like Ibrahim did. There was no way he could have known how things would turn out, nor the astonishing importance of what his struggle would win for us, which makes it all the more incredible that he managed to accomplish so much. But he had no grand purpose in doing it; he did what he did, simply because of who he was, the values he swore by, his chosen vocation, and his matchless dedication to it. He knew he was coming undone, and he fought all the harder because of it, and it's because of this that I can share this next part with you.

It was a marvelous achievement—a testament to the ever-burning fire of the human spirit—and it always will be.

Closing his eyes, focusing as best as he could, Ibrahim tried to make sense of the strange milieu creeping upon him.

He concentrated on the voices.

"The atheists! The non-believers! It's because of them! It's their fault! Their fault!"

Ibrahim knew those were the words of Emperor Eustin, last of the Moamrath dynasty, last of the Trenton Emperors. He could feel the man's emotions as if they were his own. Even their memories were blurring together. Ibrahim realized his experiences no longer belong to just him. They were leaching out onto the air.

The Emperor's voice was a crooked scream, raving and quivering, like a signal bent to the breaking point. But Eustin didn't seem to be self-aware. His shadow was just a collection of the pulsating dregs of what once was.

It was like time was melting, Ibrahim realized.

And I'm melting with it…

In some impossible way, his loosely coiled body rested across the timeline, flickering through experiences from many different ages. He saw the Palace as it had been in the days of old, but he also saw back further—o Karl's era, perhaps—back when the palace was just densely packed half-timbered buildings piled up around the ancient temple that once housed the holy Sword.

"Man is unworthy," a prince thought. "We need the Angel's grace."

That was Gus, Eustin's heir apparent.

"Where are you, Lord?" the Prince's memories pleaded. "Why have you forsaken us?"

The part of Ibrahim that was Eustin screamed in as the crown Prince's dregs decohered and returned to the ether. The Emperor wept over his son's untimely death, and of the unending torment they both endured.

Theirs was a fate worse than death, and Ibrahim knew his fate would be the same. It wouldn't be much longer, now.

An old woman's voice flitted through Dr. Rathpalla's mind. It was storied and wise, but burdened with melancholy regret.

Ursula.

"Don't be like the others, Orrey," she said. "They let their stories swallow them whole. They shriveled away, and became closed, cold, and cruel, and they can never change, because their stories own them."

Ibrahim wept for the child who'd heard those words. Prince Orrey could have been great, but now, he would never get the chance.

In the middle of this, a heartbroken voice crawled through the dead Empire's palace.

"Oh Orrin… forgive me."

This voice had gotten a chance, but had fallen short, terribly so.

Verune?

The Lassedite was faint and mournful. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I never should have done it. I never should have taken you. Forgive me, Orrin. Please, forgive me…"

Like the others, it, too, faded into nothing.

Overwhelmed, Ibrahim raised his trembling neck and let out a grief-stricken roar.

And something roared back.

Dr. Rathpalla couldn't tell if it was real, or if it only existed in his mind.

Was there even a difference?

Dizzy and delirious, he turned toward the noise and saw the portal that had made it. He tooted out useless, corrupted, shocked by the sight.

It was a window in the air, just like the ones I'd seen, and it led to the bright land where the shadows lie. The next thing Ibrahim knew, he was there, in the world the others had seen, looking out through a trio of three-eyed heads.

The Moad. That was what they called themselves, and Ibrahim knew it because the moad named Úthred knew it.

Úthred the Wise.

Úthred sat on his haunches atop a grassy hill, as did many others. They'd come to the Planting grounds, to say goodbye to an old friend: Zenshrin the Munificent.

Zenshrin had lived wisely and well. The twelve-headed moad looked over the assembled crowd one last time. There was no whimpering or growling, just hushed howls to bid Zenshrin farewell as he calmly walked onto the grass at the outskirts of the Childgrove and laid down on the ground.

He was ready for his Lovedeath.

The vision froze like a skipped record as a voice broke through it.

"Please, help us," it said. "It hurts. It hurts so much."

The voice was both from the vision, yet also beyond it. Just like with the Imperials, Ibrahim knew whose it was. He knew it as if he'd been the one who'd thought and said it.

It was Úthred.

The vision played on, Úthred curling his tail around himself as Zenshrin began his Lovedeath.

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It started with a quiver. Dainty limbs flicked and kicked beneath the massive moad's muscled chest and shoulders. Heads that had only ever spoken with a single will began to twitch and blink, their minds separating. Zenshrin's body soon followed his mind, his heads prying themselves free from him with pops and squirts of happy blood. The heads yipped and squealed as they rolled down their parent's outsplayed wings. They kicked their legs and lolled their tongues. One by one, they rose to their feet and scampered away and frolicked. New life was theirs, and they lived it joyously, hopping and cavorting, nipping at the dark suns overhead, testing themselves to their limits. The headlings skittered away in shorter order, giggling with excitement as they dashed into the underbrush. Each one was a piece of who Zenshrin had been: his hopes and memories, his passions and dreads.

Now, they'd come into full bloom.

The crowd honored Zenshrin's transfiguration by singing songs. Songs of gods and strife, memory and mirth. They sang of Zenshrin's accomplishments, and his boundless curiosity, commending their colleague to eternity.

It was as beautiful as it was different. Ibrahim was thankful that Útrhed's knowledge provided context.

New generations were born through Lovedeath. And though many visitors to Droost might say that Zenshrin had died there, on the grass, he hadn't; he'd merely been rearranged. The death visitors knew—Truedeath—that only came to the Moad when the trees their headlings had become had shed their fruit and rotted away.

Even now, Zenshrin still lived, and Úthred would meet his friend again. He'd seared the scents of Zenshrin's headlings into his memory. One day, when they'd matured and taken root, Úthred the Wise would find them and hear the words from their wood. They'd speak of what had come to pass, and of their dreams for tomorrow. He'd meet all the shades of Zenshrin's self, from his anger and aspirations to his wit and wisdom.

"I was a physicist," Úthred said, his voice cutting through the memory once again. "I was a dreamer and an explorer. All of us were, from the day we left our Birthtrees."

The vision pressed on, a gaggle of barks erupting in excitement. Wings flitted; tails wagged.

Úthred raised his heads, and then shook out his wings at what he saw, grinning as he panted.

More Visitors had come!

A cluster of portals had opened high Droost's skies. Úthred marveled at the ships and sky-boats that emerged.

"Visitors!" people barked. "Visitors!"

Everyone took wing, eager to meet the latest visitors from distant planes and worlds. The Moad would hear their stories, and gander at their dazzling inventions.

"We wanted more than what we were ready to have."

One ship was so new to him that Úthred wagged his tail back and forth along the grass, like a one-headed whelp. Watching through their intermingling awareness, the first thing that came to Ibrahim's mind was the image of a great steamboat, like something that Heggy might have in one of her collections, but that was the only similarity. It was a city in the sky, without paddles or smokestacks. Its buildings jutting tall like mountain stones, guarded beneath a transparent, vaulted cloche.

Úthred resolved to learn its mysteries. Zenshrin would enjoy a tale like that.

Spreading his wings, Úthred ran up the hill and leapt and took flight, wondering if any of the two-legged traders might know about these newcomers. He couldn't wait to ask them!

What treasures these newcomers might have to offer Droost if the ship's builders were even half as impressive as their craft?

Úthred couldn't wait to find out.

"Our world was different," Ùthred said, "though it wasn't until the Visitors came that we understood this. Our world, Droost, was only one head of the Exarium's millions. We yearned to see them, and learn them, and know… but it was not meant to be. Our world's nature bound us to it. We could not leave Droost and survive. Yet still, we dreamed, and every new visitor was a hope that our dream might come true." But the Moad's voice turned mournful. "If only we'd known," he said. "We wouldn't have asked. We wouldn't have taken them up on the offer. Some wishes are too dangerous to grant."

And then—whether from Ibrahim's psyche, or Úthred's—Dr. Rathpalla saw, for a second time, what Merritt had seen: darkness, storming through the great Ring, covering all, devouring all.

"Please, forgive us," Úthred said.

Then from the darkness, there came a light. A single, tiny light: a flame of many colors.

And then another.

And another.

And another.

The prismatic colors silhouetted many moad, letting Ibrahim watch as their rainbow edges melted, stretched, and changed, transfigured into horrors beyond the imagination.

"Please," Úthred begged, "destroy us."

Then a scream pulled Ibrahim's awareness back into his own time and place, coiled on the Imperials' opalescent marble floor.

"Help!"

It was Karl.

No, not just Karl.

Ibrahim lifted his head.

Angel's breath…

The field of combat rushed toward the city center, nuclear explosions chasing away the Night. High overhead, two of the Strangers' motherships had exploded, raining particles that glittered in the full Moon's light.

That's when the other wyrms' messages hit him.

Panicked information stormed through Ibrahim's mind. The moad's regeneration; the wyrms' struggle to get close without being infected or destroyed; their surprise at how the corrupted magnified wyrms' powers magnify beyond the point of control, and their terror that those same powers were also useless against the beast.

No, it wasn't a beast. Úthred wasn't a beast. He was just another victim, no different from everyone else.

Even the monsters were damned, and heartbroken, and afraid.

But what could be done?

Ibrahim wished he'd been a genius, but he wasn't. Even so, he knew that brilliance came in all shapes and sizes. With the right genes, a quality education, and a good upbringing—or one, or any—a person got a head-start advantage in the great rat race of life.

Ibrahim would have loved to have been one of those fortunate few…

But genius also came in moments, moments just like this, where the right person in the right place at the right time connected just the right dots in precisely the right order, and did something that changed the world.

Ibrahim nearly laughed.

It was so simple.

I'm already infected! I don't need to worry about getting close to the corrupted moad!

Nothing Úthred could do to him was worse than what was already happening, and, having offloaded all of his guest souls to the other wyrms, Ibrahim quite literally had left nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

He had it all.

He was corrupted: whatever the power-boosting effect was, and however it worked, it was in him. He could feel it. Even better, that same corruption would bait the moad to gobble him up to heal itself and refuel.

In the middle of the Hell that our world had become, this was a match made in Paradise.

Ibrahim briefly marveled at his magic's shimmering gleam as he wove the power of flight around his body. The same absurd power that Larry had channeled in his death throes sparked across Dr. Rathpalla's body as he activated the spell. He rocketed upward at supersonic speed; the wind jabbed into his snout-holes, flaring them open and jostling his eyes.

And as he flew, he sang.

He sang of who he was, and what he'd seen, and of his hopes and dreams. This was his final curtain call, and he wanted to make every moment count.

Karl screamed. "Dr. Rathpalla!?"

Ibrahim saw the young wyrm race up toward him, not that he had any chance of catching up.

"What are you doing?!"

"Helping you and the others while I still can," Ibrahim replied.

He sang his reply as he banked in a broad curve around ruined skyscrapers and the blazing, battered land. He shared his thoughts to the fullest, layering it in heartfelt words.

Up ahead, the corruption that had once been Úthred the Wise was gliding toward the ground with its wings spread wide. The darkness consuming the moad's body had receded, drained by the effort of destroying the second Stranger mothership.

"Dr. Rathpalla, no!"

But Ibrahim wouldn't stop. It was now or never.

The moad raced along the ground like a mad greyhound, blasting rays from its third eyes. Each burst felled skyscrapers in cascades.

Ibrahim charged ahead, zooming down along the ground. He slashed his claws across Úthred's wings, and somewhere inside, he marveled at their impossible touch. Then Ibrahim boosted forward, moving faster still, and the moad howled a furious howl and chased after him, infected wyrms following up from behind, and a handful of corrupted wyrm trees clambering after them, leaping from building to building.

Ibrahim led the monsters into the bowl-pitted plain that had once been Elepck's eastern flank. Banking in another broad curve—dragging his claws along the glassy, carbonized earth—he spun around, slowing his flight until he had just enough maneuverability to do what needed to be done.

He saw his allies, colleagues, and friends flying toward him. There was panic in their songs.

With one claw outstretched, Ibrahim tossed a plexus at the pile of nuclear bombs at the center of the massive earthen bowl. He gathered them around himself, holding them aloft with his powers.

Up ahead, the monsters were charging toward him.

Had Ibrahim still had his mouth, he would have smirked: he'd just donned a suicide bomber's vest—after a fashion.

He hoped he'd be at least half as skilled at blowing himself up as his childhood bullies had said he was. Though Ibrahim never wanted to play to a cruel stereotype, he figured that if he was going to do it, he ought to do it brilliantly.

And it was. Dr. Ibrahim Rathpalla was brilliance itself as he flew to meet the three-headed moad and the minions of evil trailing behind its broad, runed-inscribed wings.

Then, in the moment before the last, Ibrahim set off the spell to trigger the nukes' barometric detonators, and in between the heat and the din—at the heart of the fury of a thousand suns—he hoped his parents were proud of him. And then he was gone, and at a long last, Úthred the Wise, last survivor of the Doom of the Moad, knew peace

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