With the sun bright, we opened the curtains and the doors, but rgely stayed where we were to have a basic breakfast of tea and bread and fruit—well, Charlisa’s bread-like goodies that, except the felid ones, included fruit. It felt like a st meal, a farewell.

  The vilgers must have decided to let us emerge in our own time, but Logan tapped on one of the open doors.

  “Come in,” I said.

  “You should be careful about that,” he said, coming further inside. “Other than wardens, no one can go into a residence unless they live there or are invited by someone who does. There’s a bit of fuzzy ground right at doorways but it doesn’t go very deep.”

  “Maybe I know that and invited you in anyway.”

  “Whatever. So, what’s the pn for today?”

  “If I can figure out the solution to one practical issue, I’m headed for the Axis and my friends are staying here.”

  “Wow. I’m floored. You listened. Okay, what issue?”

  “I’m new to being a dragon. I’ve got... some control... but I don’t know how to get into the air off ft ground yet.” When he rolled his eyes, I protested, “Flying’s complicated!”

  “Climb the arch over the stage.”

  I blinked, and looked out through the gss wall. “Huh. That might be high enough, if it’ll take my weight.”

  “It’s been there a while. It should.”

  “Any suggestions on route?”

  “The ring road makes a circle, there’s a road straight from each site to the Axis, so it shouldn’t exactly be hard to find. It doesn’t matter which side you come at it from, it’s going to be the same. Just look for the same pilrs and go through them.”

  “Follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City. Gotcha.”

  He nodded and went back outside.

  I looked at the remains of breakfast, then at my friends. “I seriously do not know how to say good-bye. Or if I should say good-bye. Or... something.”

  “Then just give us all hugs,” Terenei said. “Because I think everything’s been said.”

  Not everything had, but not everything should, if I didn’t come back.

  I stayed human to hug Terenei and Aryennos, went to felid to hug Heket, and switched to dragon for Zanshe and Serru.

  “I like this,” Serru chuckled, snuggling into it. She stretched up to bring me down for a quick kiss. “There’s nothing to say. We’ll be here if you come back, and safe if you don’t.”

  Reluctantly, I let go, and went outside.

  The vilge’s day had gotten well underway, with lots of people active, moving between businesses. I’d learned enough to understand how interlocked the economy was in a small settlement like this, and people didn’t have phones in their pockets for constant instant messaging, they had to coordinate in person, just like they had to shop in person. I got some startled looks, but Heket had given them what she could st night so in theory they knew I had a dragon form. I vaulted up onto the stage and eyed the trellis. It did look strong.

  “If anything happens to them while I’m gone, I’m coming looking for you,” I told the bck felid sitting on the edge of the stage with a travel bar.

  “I’m terrified. They’re in the middle of a settlement and there are rules.”

  Someone screamed, “Mosslings!”

  Logan’s posture changed instantly, spine straightening. “What? But she can’t, not inside a...” He scrambled up onto the stage beside me, then changed to his jotun form, presumably for the substantial extra height. “What is she doing? She can’t... fuck!” He raised his voice to a bellow. “Get inside buildings and push heavy furniture against the doors! Block windows! Get to upper floors! Absolutely do not open doors to let someone else in—mosslings can talk and she’ll use that to trap you!”

  “Oh my god. The whole ‘why did you lock me out, let me in, there are monsters out here’ thing from people already infected?”

  He nodded grimly. “Seen her do it. It works really well here. You might want to break out your magic rain.”

  I echoed the nod and changed to centaur. By the time I had, he was off the stage. Like my friends, who had faced down mosslings recently and just might be trusting me, he began to help the trio of part-time wardens. He did it maybe a bit more directly, scooping up frozen children with unexpected efficiency and shoving people forcibly and indiscriminately into the nearest doorway.

  There were mosslings in every direction, coming along streets towards the green. People were fleeing in front of them, but then running into those fleeing from other directions, and tangling into a single panicking mob.

  “You disobeyed your Queen and protector,” a jotun mossling shouted. “You put everyone at risk. That cannot be tolerated and must be corrected.”

  “Fuck off!” Logan roared back. “You’re inside a settlement! That’s not allowed!”

  “I will do what I must to punish anyone who sides with that healer!” She made it sound like a dirty word. “My job is to protect! Against both you and that deviant!”

  The mosslings were moving oddly slowly, with unexpected hesitation and jerky pauses that I might have associated more with a slow-walker zombie from a movie, not a living-but-infected being. And they were beings, because some of them were people of various species, but some were animals, horses and dogs and deer and long-legged ostrich-like birds and other things I couldn’t identify instantly.

  I called up my dispy and found Purification Rain, and started using it. If they were all coming this way, then if I could make enough of a ring, I should be able to get all of them. Everyone else still outside was getting soaked, but it wasn’t going to hurt them.

  Mosslings began to stop in their tracks, the moss turning brown and growing fky and brittle. Several voices cheered when the jotun spokesperson stopped, dropped to her knees, and then colpsed entirely.

  “Don’t stop!” the centaur warden, Daivro, shouted. “Get inside!” From across the green, I heard Logan bellowing more or less the same, and my friends urged people to keep going—though I saw Serru look up into the coppery rain rapidly pstering her rosy hair and violet clothes to her skin and smile fleetingly.

  That rain kept her safe. It kept them all safe.

  Which meant I had to keep it up until there were no more mosslings.

  I’d used a lot of mana yesterday, not expecting any need to be conservative with it—Diagnosis, Panacea, Quickheal, and Recovery Water twice over, a Softcure on the burn and a Hardcure on the damaged ankle and Anodyne as well on both, multiple changes of shape. I had a lot more avaible than I used to, and nearly all of what I’d used had regenerated, but the rains weren’t cheap. Was I going to be able to do this?

  I’d survived the attack on the music festival, curing people one at a time. This could reach more without costing as much, as long as I was smart about it.

  “Logan!” I shouted. “Need you!”

  He shoved a child into the arms of a centaur woman and came towards me. “What?”

  “I suck at area-of-effect attacks! Need to make this efficient and effective! Help me target!”

  He muttered something but vaulted up onto the stage, scanning the area. “There.” He pointed. “Middle of the street just this side of the flower sign.”

  No matter how long it had been since he’d even seen a computer, let alone pyed a game on one, he still had skills. I kept creating rain wherever he said, and the mosslings couldn’t reach the very centre of the vilge. Vilgers, especially those still out helping others, were drenched; I saw the saurid warden snatch up a bucket that had filled with it and run towards a mossling cervid that wasn’t quite in range, hurling the contents with both accuracy and great effect.

  And I still had the mana to keep doing this, and if absolutely necessary, I had a single Elixir Terenei had given me with a warning that it was for dire emergencies only. I really didn’t want to use that, but she couldn’t have infinite mosslings and we just might win this with no one lost.

  Pain ripped through my chest with the centre in my back somewhere, and wet warmth spread downwards rapidly.

  I tried to spin, but I stumbled, four legs getting tangled; the edges of my vision blurred and darkened. Somewhere on the edges, a deep voice shouted something. A second locus of hot wet pain, this one between colrbone and neck and driving downwards.

  Red-blue-white lights blinding me and screaming voices and breaking gss and someone crying and rain and I fell and it hurt but the pain was far away and why wasn’t I wet when I should...