Screams filled the studio as the newsreader’s face erupted, spattering the camera with blood mist and shards of bone. From the hole in the front of his head emerged a red centipede, the length of an arm. The newsreader’s body got up and staggered around like an inexpertly controlled puppet. The centipede, jutting from the face cavity, flailed about like a tentacle.One producer had the mindfulness to cut the feed before the ten-second live delay sent the horrifying images out to homes. That did not stop the cameras recording the footage that would soon be everywhere, in various states of completion. News stations would blur or edit out the worst of it, while the unadulterated footage would inevitably make its way online.The climax of the footage was the ceiling exploding as a man crashed through it like a living bomb. Clad in armour of rainbow scales, he loomed in the cloud of plaster dust and wood splinters still falling to the floor from his entrance. His eyes went straight to the blood parasite and its now-dead host. It was hunched over its third victim, the last of those too slow in running away.The abomination turned to look at Humphrey, its instincts sensing both danger and a far superior potential host. The centipede creature shot out of the newscaster’s head like an arrow, only to be snatched out of the air. Humphrey opened his mouth to breath fire, over both the creature and his own hand. In the corner, the newsreader’s abandoned corpse toppled to the floor.The white-blue flame from Humphrey’s mouth lasted only a few seconds, in which it set the room ablaze. The parasite was reduced to ash, as was the news desk and one of the camera rigs. The gold-rank dragon fire swiftly started eating through the walls and even the floor.The hole left in the roof by Humphrey’s passage was large, but the pale blue slime that followed him still had to squeeze through like toothpaste from a tube. It plopped to the floor and started firing (...)