"Qua, how can you trust the serpent, but still not trust me?" Tal asked.

"Answer your own question," the manticore replied.

"I'm good at things other than piloting!" Tal said.

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"C-Can you please eschew?" Twiginix asked. "Cease? Desist? S-Stop? Dr. Howle is trying to speak."

I made a rumble that sounded like I was clearing my throat. "So…" as I was saying…"

They really had so many questions for me. I actually found myself getting frustrated that Tal and the others weren't wyrms. Direct transference of knowledge from one mind to another would have made this so much easier for all of us. Unfortunately, their wyrmsong translation software wasn't up to that task.

Also, it quickly became apparent that Tal had something of a codependency, especially with respect to Qua'loc. The young man—he couldn't have been much past his early twenties—was a bucket full of neuroses, constantly searching for praise and approval, especially of the manticore-shaped sort.

Thankfully, Qua'loc and the others did a good job of keeping him in line.

He must have been one heck of a pilot, though.

Anyhow… obviously, the biggest and most important points I had to make to them were about the Darkness, and the very real and frighteningly imminent threat it posed to everyone.

"Yes, we know about the Darkness," Twiginix said—or, as Tal preferred to call him, 'Twiggy'. "Martyr EUe m-made threat quite evident—term… clear."

"It was clear when that creature in that city of yours blew up two of our fucking capital ships!" Tal said.

"Quite," Alahumadwod ("Al") said.

Qua'loc nodded in approval. "We must contact EUe immediately."

"Perzy is workin' on it, okay?" Tal said. "hUen-dE's loyalists are jamming our comms." He looked up at the ceiling. "How's it comin', Perzy?"

"Suboptimally, Tal," a voice replied. "This is not a good day for the Vyxit."

The voice belonged to Perzandebilis, the Vyx module whose body Tal and the others used as their ship.

"Well," I said, "once that's fixed and I've spoken to EUe, I'll go ask &alon if the magic she used to travel to my world can also be used to leave it." I turned to my kids' regeneration units. "But first… I need to know my kids will be okay."

I hadn't told them about their mother yet. But that was the least of my worries.

If and when we left my world, there'd be a chance I might never be able to see them again. That, alone, was reason enough to keep me glued to their bedsides.

I turned to Qua'loc. The manticore deathkiller was currently overlooking the regeneration pods, monitoring Jules' and Rayph's conditions.

"Are they going to be okay?" I asked. "How much longer will it be before they wake up?"

"Listen," Tal said, "we still have a lot of questions for you, and EUe wants to—"

I growled. The sound was like thunder, and it stirred up my spores in cymatic patterns.

"—Are my children going to recover?" I said. "Will they be healthy?"

I was still afraid something would go wrong with their treatment. This was alien technology we were dealing with, after all.

"You're getting spores everywhere, you know," Tal said.

That I was, and I snorted some more right in his face, just to show how I felt about his attitude.

The alien human screamed for a bit, though, after a good deal of coughing, he seemed to calm down—for the most part.

He shook his head. "Spores that aren't deadly, now that's something I'll never get used to."

I puffed out more spores and scattered them along the floor. "You'd be surprised at some of the things a human being can adapt to," I told him.

Finally, Qua'loc stepped away from the regeneration pods and turned to face me.

"Our peoples' near-constant confrontations with new species of life-forms has driven us to develop some rather sophisticated medical technology. Vyxit medicine is as close to true deathkilling as you can come. Even so," he growled, "we cross paths with species that we are powerless to treat." He glanced at Jules and Rayph.

"Is that the case here?" I asked.

The manticore's eyes narrowed. "No, and quite surprisingly so." He cocked his head to the side and let out a low purr. "It's… most curious." He glanced at Tal. "You know, Tal, their species' genome is nearly identical to yours."

The human—who was leaning against a wall, with his arms crossed—furrowed his brow. "Nearly?"

"Yes," the manticore replied. "There are subtle differences. Unlike your species, they are capable of synthesizing ascorbic acid, among other minor, but non-trivial metabolic distinctions." He turned back to me. "The similarities between Tal's species and yours are a masterpiece of convergent evolution."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If, as you said," Qua'loc replied, "in our pursuit of the Blight, the Vyxit fleet has been wandering not just within a universe but between different universes, it's simple probability that two species would evolve to be arbitrarily similar to one another."

"Actually, it's very doubtful—improbable… unlikely," Twiggy said.

"Not if the sample size is sufficiently large," Al said.

"If we are in a m-multiverse," Twiggy said, "there are so many new unknowns—uncertainties, v-variables—that need to be taken into account. Is this double evolution a miracle, or just an improbable coincidence?"

"Is there a difference?" Alahumadwod said.

"I dunno, Al," Tal replied, "is there?"

Qua'loc smiled, showing his teeth. "Regardless… Genneth, you are in luck. You need not worry. We have all the instruments of medical care your children will ever need." He crept back toward the regeneration pods. "It shouldn't be long now. Once their electrolyte balances are restored, I'll initiate the homeostatic accelerator, and with the help of the nutrient slurry we've fed them, they will awake in minutes, feeling well-rested and refreshed."

I nearly asked him about the homeostatic accelerator, but decided against it. There would be plenty of time to ask about technology later.

"However," Qua'loc said, slightly spreading his wings, "in the interest of transparency, I should warn you, Dr. Howle: we are in uncharted territory. No one has ever recovered from the Blight, after all. As your children are the first, we do not know what to expect. There may or may not be chronic side-effects. Only time will tell."

Tal stamped his foot on the floor. "Alright, that does it. No more Mr. Nice Guy." He marched up in front of me, pointing vigorously. "You are coming upstairs with me right this second."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"What's wrong?" Tal said. He scratched his scalp with both hands. "A couple hours ago, EUe the Martyr suddenly shows up out of the blue and reveals that he's neither dead nor a martyr, and then—great googly moogly—everything goes to shit! That's what's wrong!" Tal cut his arms through the air. "It's complete insanity!"

I shook my head, perplexed. "I… what?"

It wasn't like he was giving any clear details.

"Tensions have been building among the clans for generations," Al said. "Civil war was inevitable; the Martyr's return merely sped the process along." He crossed both pairs of arms. "Though, I'd never expected there would come a day when other Vyxit posed more of a threat to us than the Blight."

"Then you are naïve, Alahumadwod," Qua'loc said. "Some of us have been sounding the alarm for centuries, only to get crushed under the sharp heel of the Beholders' authority." He placed a paw on his chest. "I will share the tales of this day to future generations. It will not soon be forgotten, not if I have anything to say about it."

"Good for you," Tal said, flatly

"Tal," Perzy said, "I've patched you through. The comms are operational.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The human turned back to me. "Now, if you don't mind, Mr. Blight Serpent, the digital ghost of our people's mytho-historic founder really wants to talk to you."

Outside, where the rest of me was, I dug my tail into the ground, using my underbelly to grip the earth and the starfighter's floor as I reeled myself up and back.

Tal followed after me.

"Hey!" he yelled. He ran up a walkway. "Where do you think you're going?!""

I stopped just long enough to glance at him and say, "There's one more thing I have to check before I can talk to EUe, and there's no way on this or any other world that &alon is going to venture inside your ship, even if it was while being inside my mind."

"Well, don't take too long!" Tal said.

"Believe me, I don't want to."

And then I yanked myself out.

I slithered away and pulled myself into a coil. The wyrm brigade flocked toward me the instant they saw me emerge from the ship, and I preëmpted their question bombardment by trumpeting out a neat and tidy compactification of everything that had just happened; they could peruse it at their leisure.

I really had to hand it to &alon: wyrmsong was a truly superior form of communication, not that I had any plans on giving her that compliment anytime soon.

I'd often dreamt of something like it; a way to convey essence, experience, and understanding instantly, without error. I'd never thought that—

—But I stopped myself. I nearly sobbed, but instead, I laughed. The sound was like a brass chorale playing staccato. I huffed out spores with every breath, every mote of which was as harmless as snow.

That was another thing &alon and I had in common. We both wanted to have a more efficiently authentic way to communicate, only in her case, she'd found a way to make it real.

A horrible, horrible way.

Angel…

I couldn't get the past out of my mind. Everything we did; everyone we lost; it weighed on me, the way the Sword and the Angel weighed upon my world's history.

&alon floated lonesomely, not far from the ship.

Obviously, she'd been waiting for me.

Looking at her, I still couldn't quite believe it. This was how it was going to end? Really?

I let the insanity of the situation play out in my mind:

&alon, stop being evil and killing people and destroying worlds.

Okay, Daddy Genneth! I love you!

The End—happily never after.

In the proper context, I'd brought about a miracle of the highest order. I couldn't begin to imagine how many lives had been lost and ruined, not just by &alon, but by all her victims' efforts to find a cure for her incurable plague. In the end, all of it was for nothing. They'd never had a chance. None but the fungus god-child herself could bring her genocidal reign to an end.

At the risk of bragging, to this day, I remain confident that that humble request of mine for &alon to stop doing what she was doing was and is the single greatest act of goodness performed by anyone, anywhere, anytime, at least in terms of the raw numbers of people that benefited from it. With just a couple of sentences, I'd ended an evil greater than what most minds could ever imagine, let alone comprehend.

I should have been exultant, but I wasn't. Wasn't this the victory that everyone had been hoping for, all this time? Jonan's hare-brained schemes, the administrators' attempts at containment, Mistelann's mycophage and all the hope that Ani had put into it… this should have been the culmination of those efforts. But it wasn't, just like I wasn't.

Instead, I was tired, and hollow, and miserable, and not just because Pel was gone. More than ever before, I blamed myself. I hated that it had taken this long for me to figure it out. If I'd rushed my transformation along, gorging myself until all my humanity had been swept away, &alon would have remembered what she was and discovered her inexplicable connection to me in a few days, if not sooner. Then I could have asked her to stop, and she would have stopped, and my world would have been just fine. Yeah, I'd still be a wyrm, but that was more than a reasonable sacrifice to bring an end to the Green Death once and for all.

But no. Everything had to be done the hard way, and, as usual, simple things are always the hardest.

The reason I felt empty and spent and bereft of victory or catharsis was as clear as day: there was no lesson to be learned here; none of the villains had reformed their ways. Sure, Evil had been stopped, but it wasn't because Good had won. Nor Love.

Bracing myself for the final leg of my journey, I looked up at the sky, watching EUe's revolution play out.

&alon zipped over to me, bubbling with excitement. "See?" she said. "I stopped! I stopped, just like you told me to do!"

"Yes, you did," I said. "Thanks… I guess." I gestured with an arm.

My gratitude was ice-cold.

Though &alon had done the right thing, I had a sinking feeling that she hadn't done it for the right reason.

"See, Daddy Genneth," she said. "I'm listening to you, just like you wanted. I'm listening. So, please, Daddy, don't be mad with me anymore. I'll listen now!—"

At this point, I couldn't resist playing the Norm's advocate.

"—Okay, so… if I told you to start infecting people all over again," I asked, "would you do it?"

Angel's breath, her eyes and mouth widened with excitement.

"Do… do you want me to do it, Daddy Genneth?"

Her question was utterly genuine.

That question of hers should have been my breaking point. I should have recoiled in horror. I should have screamed and cursed and yelled, but… I was tired.

And, had Pel been here, she would have told me that that would have been beneath me. I was the adult in the situation, after all.

I drank in &alon's astral splendor. The &alon I saw was beautiful to behold, but it was a vacuous, virtueless beauty. It signified nothing.

"&alon… all my adult life, I've worn a smile on my face, because I wanted to bring some sunshine into my patients' lives. Even on the worst of days, I smiled for them, and you know why?"

She shook her head. "No, why?"

"Because I believed it was worth something. I've seen suffering, and have suffered myself. Fudge, the whole world was drowning in suffering—and it still is! That's…" I lowered my song, "that's why I dared to think that, maybe, I could be a light. Maybe I could show people that compassion and kindness and mercy and understanding were valuable, because then it wouldn't matter that I couldn't bring myself to believe in my God, and that I couldn't run away from the demons that have chased me all my life, because I'd know that the sunshine I wanted to see in the world was worth something, all on its own. I'd help people, and save them, and they'd do the same for others, and then maybe this crudsack of a life of ours might get just a little bit sweeter." I inhaled sharply. "But… then you came along." I pointed at her with a claw. "And not only did you destroy the world, you…" my many nostrils twitched and flared. "…you gave me back my hope and my faith, and not just my faith in God, but my faith that there could even be a greater good at all. And then you took it all away. Break the Tablets, &alon, you took it all away. You dashed it to pieces. Even now, you're still doing it; not intentionally, though, it's just who you are."

&alon stared at me, eyes trembling in confusion. "Wha?"

"You're being selfish, &alon. Sure, you might have done the right thing, but you only did it because you want me to be 'nice' to you." I made air quotes with my claws. "Congratulations, you've proven that love really is just a delusion. What you've twisted it into…" I shook my head. "Angel's breath, it makes me sick."

&Alon furrowed her brow and started to yell. "But I'm doing what you said! I'm doing what you said!!"

I nodded. "Yeah, you are, and—don't worry—I'm not going anywhere."

That immediately calmed her down.

"And," I added, "it's because I'm not going anywhere that I can and will tell you what I think and feel."

Someone had to be the responsible one, here.

Even if it was for the wrongest of reasons, I had a fungus goddess at my beck and call. I'd be a fool not to take advantage of that, especially considering my childhood hero was watching attentively from the sidelines.

"Atta boy, Genneth," Mr. Himichi said, giving me a thumb's up.

And, what can I say? I'm stubborn.

Pel always said it was one of my best (though, also, worst) qualities.

"&alon," I said, "you want to save us because you want to help us. On paper, that should be love, but isn't, and it never will be. It's just selfishness masquerading as love. Love is sacrifice. Love is starving yourself so that your children can eat. Love is whittling away the days of your life working on a secret dream that might never amount to anything. It's bringing someone else joy at your expense, because their happiness means more to you than your own. But… you don't want that. No, you want to have it all, and, as usual, I'm wasting my time trying to get you to understand. And guess what? That's how it's going to be between us from now till the end of time. You're never going to understand, and you're never going to care. You're going to keep putting your own needs before everyone else's, and I'll be there as your handy factotum, to keep you cozy and entertained until the day comes when I'm no longer enough for you and you start destroying worlds all over again."

"You're enough for me, Daddy Genneth!" she pleaded. "You're enough!"

"Sure," I replied, "you say that now. But, mark my words, you won't feel that way forever. You can't satisfy this kind of selfishness. It always wants more, and there's no end to more. It just keeps taking and taking."

&alon wept. "Are you leaving me?"

I shook my head. "No, &alon, for the last time, I'm not leaving you, and never will. I made a promise, and I intend to keep it. I'm staying with you because I loved what I lost, and I don't want anyone else to suffer like I have." I looked her in the eyes. "But I have a right to feel what I feel, and a right to let you know what I feel. So that's what I'm doing. I'm letting you know."

"You seem sad, Daddy Genneth…" She spread her arms. "Don't be sad! We're together now! Be happy! I know I am!" She smiled broadly, through her tears.

I exhaled spores. "I wish you'd understand, &alon. Beast and Queen, that would be a real miracle, wouldn't it? It would mean there'd be hope for you yet. But that's just another impossible dream." I turned away, but then sighed.

Though not as loudly, she was still crying, and, Sword stab me, I just couldn't turn a cold shoulder to a child in pain, even if they deserved it.

I turned back just enough to glance at her out of the corner of my eye. "If you want to stop things from getting any worse, then get the wyrms out of here. Right now."

"But what about the Vyxitsies?"

I looked up at the civil war playing out in the midnight sky. "Something tells me they're not going to be a problem anymore, though, EUe wants to talk to me. I assume after that, I'll be able to tell you what the final arrangements are going to be."

Speaking of which…

"Will you be able to take them with you?" I asked.

A bout of confusion interrupted &alon's bleary-eyed sniffles. "Wha?"

"Those windows in the air you made to let in all your islands and wyrms. Can you take the Vyxit ships through them?"

I knew the answer was a big, bold yes the instant &alon opened her mouth in protest.

"But they hurt me!"

"And you hurt me, but I'm coming with you, aren't I?"

Her eyes widened, and I knew I had her right where I wanted her.

"Think about it this way, &alon: the Vyxit who are fighting against Wendy and her forces are fighting against the same people who wanted to hurt you. These rebel Vyxit don't want to fight anymore. That's something you want, right? No more fighting?"

She nodded begrudgingly.

"They've already helped us, and they're going to do so. The least you can do is help them get to safety, okay?"

"Okay…" she muttered. "I… I can take them with me to my place."

"Your place?"

"The fungus dimenshun—that… that's what the wyrmehs call it, so I call it that, too."

The… fungal dimension?

That was probably going to be weird. But, it was better than nothing, and I had no doubt that EUe would agree with me.

"So," I asked, "are you ready? Will you do it?"

&alon nodded once more, without a word. The effect was immediate. Light spilled from her body, an aura flaring around her like a torch, starlight shimmering from her dress as her fiery hexad of cerulean wings unfurled.

High above, like claps of thunder, windows opened in the sky, revealing tunnels to a shimmering elsewhere.

Wyrms everywhere turned to face them, even as they dodged the laser blasts of the Vyx starfighters.

Then a ring of light shot out from the largest Vyx capital ship. It swept across the sky, all the way to the horizon, and &alon's portals snapped shut as the light passed them by.

"Fudge me up the axe…" I muttered.

We were trapped.

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