text: "Cousin! That monstrosity — how did it catch you? How long had it been dwelling in you?" cried Dulac at the side of Elrique's bed. The operation had been moderately successful, though Elrique's legs were paralyzed. Tarcuna was properly sympathetic.
  
  "Two weeks and two days, cousin," said Elrique. "In the camp, I shared a cell with three other men. Twenty-two days ago I woke to find one of them holding my arms, his worm already touching my chest. I felt numb, I felt dizzy, I felt weak, I felt lost. A moment later or two, I was the worm's home and its eager servant."
  
  "Wait. This happened at the camp?" I asked, and paid close attention to veriception.
  
  "Yes — I had been at the camp for months by then!" he cried, truthfully.
  
  "That's not right," I said.
  
  "Spotty! Great dragon! I would not lie to you — I would never lie to you!" he howled, suddenly in a panic. He seemed very eager to please me. My own fault for saving him.
  
  "You did not lie. But I wish to know more. How is it that you were put into the camp, when you had no worm?" I patted his head. He glowed happily, and Tarcuna scowled just a bit.
  
  "I offended the mayor of Churry City, for I was the spokesman for her opponent in the last election, and I spoke quite strongly about her," said Elrique. "When it was time to find victims for the camp, she chose to look heavily among her politicial foes, as well as those who exhibit Wulpmegarn's symptoms. When the inspector shaved the underside of my udder to look for worm-scars, he cut me with the shaver. And swore up and down that I had done it myself to hide the evidence. I was not the only one whom he served thus."
  
  Llredh roared in a terrible fury, and Nrararn wrestled with him to keep him from damaging the hospital. The hovens had many questions for Elrique, and asked them all at once, and got few answers.
  
  Sporthen stomped to face me. "This is roughly what we said all along!"
  
  "Except that cyoziworms are real," I said.
  
  "Which simply makes it worse. You are not simply imprisoning your enemies — you are transforming them into legendary monsters of horror!"
  
  "Not our enemies," I noted. "Hovens are doing it to each other."
  
  "In a system that you set up for your own purposes! If it were not for you, Elrique would have been free, unimprisoned, uncolonized, un-horror-ridden! The fault is yours! Your rule is immoral, a vicious and cruel conquest, and even when there is some thought to doing good, you do it in such a way as this!"
  
  Usually when someone harangues me like that and veriception says it's true, I remind myself that veriception tells whether the haranguer honestly thinks that it's true. Only great spells can find actual absolute truths. This time, he was right as far as I knew, too.
  
  He tried to argue with me more, so I put my forepaw on his face and shut him up. For absolute truth, or thoughts at doing good, I have a friend to consult. "Ythac, could you please come to Churry City as quickly as ever you can fly? You need to hear this in person," I wrote.
  
  "Give me a hint? Are you going marry Llredh?" he answered.
  
  "He's all yours. The affairs of dragons have not changed. But there's a bit of a problem with your cyozi camps."
  
  "That's better, then. How much of a problem?"
  
  "You might want to use the Dozenwing Dozentail," I answered.
  
  "That urgent?"
  
  "Not that urgent. You could fly normally, or take a zeppelin, and the matter won't get too much worse. But my advice is to come quickly."
  
  "I am out the window, I am over Perstra's suburbs, and I have had to heal my ribs twice already," he answered in a moment.
  
  I smelled hoven blood and heard Tarcuna whacking me with a hospital chair, and realized that I had started to crush Sporthen's skull. I healed him in a hurry, and curled up in the corner to listen to the details of Elrique's story. I didn't have much to say to anyone.
  
  Lesser matters fall away under the truth's inexorable breath, after all.