She nodded. "Congratulations, EUe. You've genuinely surprised me."

"You should have expected EUe would find a way to escape your dastardly prison!" V said. His voice trembled with feeling.

Yet hUen-dE stayed totally calm. She had a detachment that was almost clinical.

"No, little Vyx. What surprises me is that after all we've been through, the two of you would stoop to working with the Blight." Her bright brown eyes glared at EUe.

He stepped forward and stomped his foot on the ground. "You sealed me away!"

"I said it before, EUe, and I'll say it again," hUen-dE replied. "I sealed you away because you were too soft. Your weakness was damaging us. It's a miracle we were able to contain it."

EUe gesticulated at her, flinging his hands into the air.. "You're one to talk about damage!" He glanced at me. "hUen-dE, you told everyone I'd been murdered!"

She nodded. "Yes, and I used that as a pretext to put down the rebellion. You're only telling me things we both already know, EUe."

"You could have let us leave!" he said.

She shook her head. "It would have crippled the fleet, EUe. A nest divided against itself cannot hold eggs," she said. "Even a kwekek like you knows that."

"But—

"—EUe, stop," hUen-dE said. She shook her head, and then extended her arm toward us.

Toward me.

"Who is the one that has betrayed their own people?" she asked. "The one who makes the hard choices for the sake of the common good, or the one who sides with the destroyer of worlds? Was all that we've lost really worth so little to you?"

EUe flared his wings in dismay.

"hUen-dE…"

The twEfE flicked her tongue out of her beak. "I thought we were friends, EUe, even after our… falling out." And by the look in her eyes, we all knew she meant it. "The Blight is here, in full. Our dream is about to come true. Can't you at least be happy about that?"

"This has to end, hUen-dE," EUe said. "The wyrms are just as much victims as we are. Our worlds live on inside them! Our people! If we destroy the wyrms, everything really will be gone forever. Is that what you want?"

Closing her eyes, hUen-dE nodded solemnly. "You're right, EUe, this does have to end. We owe the dead their justice. It's far too late in coming." She shook her head. "All this unpleasantness could have been avoided if you'd just been a little more patient. I'd have welcomed you back with open arms once the Blight was gone. You could have led us in building that new world you dreamed of. But look at you now. What would Uka-yen say if he saw how low you'd fallen?"

EUe stammered. He flicked his tongue in and out in a fit of pique.

"But, enough of this." hUen-dE waved her hand dismissively. "I know all about your little plan, and it ends now."

hUen-dE stuck out her left hand, directing her palm at me.

"You should be honored, Blightspawn, to die at the hands of an Ua-kEsa."

Her left arm transformed before my eyes, palm receding, fingers folding back as her limb expanded with a sleek, mechanical whirr, silvery Vyx metallocrystal flipping into view. It bulked up absurdly, transforming into a blast cannon in seconds.

A pale, green-white light throbbed inside the barrel, threatening to spill over the rim.

"No!" EUe set off in a sprint, flying forward at high speed, but then hUen-dE simply waved her right hand, and EUe froze in place, as if time had stopped.

hUen-dE fired her cannon at me. I didn't bother trying to deflect or tank the roaring light. I just ran.

A lot of things happened after that, all in quick succession.

The beam followed me, curving in pursuit.

Dzrtk and Yuta screamed. They ran toward the beam, flinging several razor arcs at the oncoming laser, one ink, the other pure vacuum, but the beam passed through them, unhindered.

It swerved to strike Yuta in the chest, but Ichigo leapt, pushing his master out of the way at the last second. He took the blow himself. It left a massive hole in the side of his body. Pixel wafted off the wound. Ichigo's momentum kept him moving for a second more before crashing him onto the floor, where he crumbled into glittering particles and vanished into nothing, gone forever.

"Ichigo!!" Yuta screamed.

Dzrtk and I were too stunned to move.

"Noble," hUen-dE said. She nodded in approval, and then glanced at EUe. "Look at yourself, EUe. Even your allies are more hUale than you are."

HUale—nectar-blooded.

She powered up her next shot.

Suddenly, EUe's frozen body shuddered. Cracks spread across him—and then he broke free. Motes of light flew off his body as he dropped to the floor, landing on one knee.

It was when he stood up that I realized he had changed. EUe now wore the same white armor as hUen-dE, complete with a sheeny black breastplate.

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"It's been a long time since you last wore the armor," hUen-dE said.

EUe stuck out his arm, summoning a thin blade of sheer light in his hand. "Just shut up and fight," he said.

"Stall her, everyone!" V yelled. "I'm almost ready to upload EUe!"

"Happily," Dzrtk said.

Yuta just screamed. He left a trail of tears as he charged.

The two twEfE clashed. The battle was… insane. They slashed at each other with blades of sputtering energy they'd summoned in their hands. Spheres of harsh light appeared around EUe and hUen-dE like halos, only to collapse and fire out lasers. The impacts' afterimages flickered across my vision.

They moved so quickly!

Yuta, Dzrtk, and I tried to contribute, Yuta slashing ink arcs across the room or launching his katana's kana in remote controlled shurikens; Dzrtk, sparking zyr swords across the ground to supercharge his leaps off the floor and walls as he cut through the air; me, bashing psychokinesis at hUen-dE, firing off magic crossbow bolts, and spending my last casting of <Holy Fire>.

But our attacks were useless.

hUen-dE summoned a massive energy barrier around herself and EUe, and all our efforts simply stopped existing when they touched it.

Then a wave of energy exploded out in every direction. It knocked all of us onto to the walls—even EUe.

"Enough of this!" hUen-dE said.

And then… hUen-dE multiplied.

Even without my wyrm's memory, I'd always remember the first time I ever watched a living cell divide through binary fission. It was in my high school biology class. Our teacher had hooked a light microscope up to the classroom's projector, which gave everyone a view of the process in action.

Mitosis.

In a eukaryotic cell, mitosis began with the nucleus' dissolution. The cell's genetic material wove into crisscrossed chromosomes, bringing order to the chaotic chromatin. Centrosomes spun actin into microfilaments; the long spindle reached from across the cell, plied the chromosomes apart, and pulled them away. Streaming cytoplasmic shunted duplicated organelles to either end of the cell as the membrane pinched down the middle, as what was one became two.

I saw that same miracle play out in hUen-dE's body as she hovered. Two became four. Four became eight. But the miracle was corrupted, as if through a lens, darkly. Each copy was more twisted than the last. The first differences were mechanical: parts of her bodies were replaced by Vyx silver, or had the substance protruding from them; a stretch of robotic limb, or metallic wing.

The later copies were even further decayed. Entire sections of flesh were missing, exposing naked bone to the open air. The eighth copy's head was death's skull face, stuck to the end of a serpentine stretch of vertebrae.

EUe stared at her in horror. "What have you done to yourself?"

"Only what was necessary," the hUen-dEs replied. "Aegishood was not enough."

The eight hUen-dEs mobbed EUe. The four of us tried to knock the hUen-dEs back, but they deflected and dodged. Their energy blades sliced through Yuta's and Dzrtk's sword beams, murdering the magic that gave them life.

The hUen-dEs chopped off one of EUe's legs, and then one of his arms. He screamed. The severed limbs fell to the floor, their seared ends red hot and sizzling.

I slowed my perception of time. Everything came to a stop right as EUe hit the floor.

We were losing, and badly.

And Ichigo…

I didn't even know if he was still alive, in any sense of the term. All I knew was that there was now only stillness where I once felt his fiery spirit flickering within me.

It was just ashes and void.

I needed to stop being ashamed of myself—ashamed of what I'd become.

Old habits died hard, I guess.

What was human about my half-pangol shape quickly vanished as I grew into my true form, legs slurping in, tail slurping out. My body distended.

I coiled around the room as I grew.

I kept the trenchcoat, though after making a couple of adjustments to accommodate my vastly increased size.

What can I say? I thought it looked good on me. Besides, I had a feeling it would just incite more of hUen-dE's rage, and all my bets were currently hinged on that anger of hers.

I'd be more than happy to give her a chance to act out her revenge.

Everyone—even Yuta—looked up at me in shock as I coiled around EUe's aerie. I dwarfed them all. I had no mouth, and breathed out whorls of spores as I spoke.

"hUen-dE, you're going to pay for hurting my friends."

I didn't give any of the hUen-dEs a chance to deal EUe their finishing blow. I reared up my head and roared, and my roar was my fury, and it carried my power in full.

A psychokinetic wave that exploded outward from the center of the chamber at supersonic speed, along with a stunning flash. The blast shattered the panoramic windows and sent my enemies flying in every direction.

Taking flight, I swept across the control room's floor, absorbing my spirits back into myself as I grabbed hold EUe and flew up. I clutched him firmly, but gently, watching his stunned stupefaction from my rear-most right eye.

I swam away from the Tower and then quickly doubled back and bellowed my challenge. "If you want him, hUen-dE, you'll have to go through me, first."

"Gladly!" they yelled.

I shot off like a rocket, and the hUen-dE swarms were right on my tail. She sliced at me with her energy blades, and bombarded me with volley after volley of blistering laser beams. Even when I slowed time, I couldn't avoid them all.

The pain was excruciating, like molten lava getting poured down my flanks.

I pulsed out psychokinesis to knock the hUen-dEs back.

Not knowing which of us was stronger, and not wanting to find out, I focused on dodging as I channeled one of signature neuropsychiatric class abilities: mind games.

With everything I knew about twEfE and about hUen-dE in particular, I'd constructed a hopefully-passable model of her psyche.

She was a true zealot, the kind where there was no clear line between the person and the cause they believed in. It was almost certain that she didn't know how to be wrong, and that there was nothing she feared more than falling short of the high ideas she set for themselves.

"Tell me, hUen-dE," I said, "how does it feel to see the Blight helping your political rival? How does it feel to know that a person you saw as your friend and colleague chose to walk a different path?"

She screamed at me with all of her faces. "You know nothing about what I feel, monster!"

Down below, I saw a glint of metal.

Oh no.

The AVUs were coming.

I really, really hoped V was done doing whatever it was he needed to do.

If not…

"Monsters are in the eye of the beholder," I said. I pointed at my eyes. "And, as far as these puppies are concerned, you're looking pretty darn monstrous right now. What did you do to yourself?" I suffer my words full with cheek.

"I've conquered death, serpent. You have no power over me."

Then the hUen-dEs spread their arms and wings, reared back their heads and shrieked. The waves of sound drowned my second eyes' vision, making me flinch.

Then all of the AVUs rocketed toward me. I shot up, corkscrewing through the air to dodge, only to look down and realize—too late—that the AVUs hadn't aimed themselves at me.

They were aiming at the hUen-dEs!

The AVUs slammed into the misbegotten twEfE, but instead of tearing through her many selves, they merged, turning the hUen-dE clones into swirls of metal and bone. Hoping to disrupt whatever transformation was underway, I fired psychokinetic shotgun blasts at them, but the swirls swerved out of the way and merged with one another, forming a churning mass of liquid silver. Conic sections sputtered in and out of existence on its surface, like plumes of the Sun.

hUen-dE's voice boomed throughout the Network. "Run, if you can. Even if you survive, you will never be able to return. This will be your last incursion."

More AVUs shot into the mass, feeding its growth. Beams of energy beams sprayed out as the mass, consuming everything in its path in a silver tide. I slithered, swam, and soared, slaloming my way between the straying rays.

As I darted down toward the top of the Tower, one of the beams struck me, cutting me in two. The pain was indescribable.

hUen-dE's voice boomed as I fell.

"We are the damned, and we will have justice!"

"EUe—" V yelled, but his words were lost in the tumult.

Then the silver wave hit me and everything faded to white.

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