“I still have some left, but now that you mention it, I do feel off my game today. I’ll give it a look, but I’m pretty sure it’s perfectly normal.”

It wasn’t surprising to hear Jack still had reserves. He had an even bigger tank than Marshall.

“Be careful. When I tried to get us out of here, the spell took everything I had left.”

“Roger that.” Closing his eyes, Jack tested the bounds of the spelled wall while Marshall and Adelle watched the nightmares as they inched closer. “Damn clever witches. They’ve got us nice and trapped. These perfectly normal walls are easily defeated—from the outside. Of course they have that covered by entwining a nothing to see here spell to keep us from being suspicious. Now that we’re all inside, the walls will drain us until we fade into nothing.”

“Sounds perfectly normal,” Adella said through gritted teeth.

“That’s going to get old real fast, just saying.” Jack grabbed Adelle and spun her around in a little impromptu dance while she spat curses at him like an angry cat. “Hey wall, make her say something less boring, like, ‘Jack is prettier than me, and I’m planning to die mad about it.’”

He yelped and let go when Adelle kicked him hard in the knee.

It wasn’t funny, but it was Jack. so… it was a little funny. Marshall wasn’t allowed to be funny when shit hit the fan, though, so he pretended like Jack hadn’t said anything.

Marshall glared at them both and continued to discuss their mutual problem, “That would explain why they’ve herded us against the wall.”

“They’re just waiting for it to do what they’re afraid to do themselves. Cowards!” Adelle spat in the direction of the nightmares trying to herd them against the wall.

It was an apt description. Spawned from the fears of sentient creatures, nightmares had little fight in them once they were faced head-on. One-on-one, a nightmare could never hope to defeat a dreamwalker, but with their current numbers, they were a sure bet against three rapidly fading dreamwalkers.

If Marshall was alone, he would throw himself into the mass of dripping, oozing monsters and take as many of them down as he could before they ate him.

He didn’t see his team allowing that, but he knew that even if they had all been at full power, they would have been hard-pressed to defeat a thousand or so nightmares at once.

As a guardian team, one of their primary jobs was to keep nightmares from banding together in numbers like these. Fire’s objective here was no longer reconnaissance.

Marshall knew they had to find a way to destroy these monsters before they established roots in the ’Scape and began to build a power base. Once that happened, they were nearly impossible to dislodge, and innocent people would suffer for it. But first Fire had to make it out alive.

“You know what we have to do, right?” Marshall asked, doing his best to keep his voice from shaking.

Adelle took his hand. “We can’t let them get out of here to feed on the dreamers.”

Jack took his other hand. “No heroics, boss. Remember, we have to get out of here so we can stop whatever they have planned for that boy and his champion.”

His friend knew him too well.

“I haven’t forgotten, Jack. How much do you have left?”

“Well, I tanked up when we got here, so almost enough to unmake enough of these bastards and make a run for it—but not quite.”

“Well aren’t you special,” Adelle grouched, making Marshall think she’d made the same mistake he had in forgetting to fill up in Marshall’s ’Scape.

A wave of dizziness passed through Marshall again. His new supply was being drained at an alarming rate. Even though his generator had packed a punch, it hadn’t come close to topping him off, and soon he’d be right back where he’d started—fading into nothingness.

“Addy, tap your generator. Jack, have yours ready. I’m going to take almost everything you have.” Marshall made a silent promise to himself that he would get his team out alive.

No one else was going to die for Marshall.

His team responded by sending their power into him. He closed his eyes as Jack’s star-streaked rainbow joined the flickering ember of blue he had left. Before he could do anything, it surged toward his magic and surrounded it like a dragon protecting its horde.

Adelle’s warm amber glow followed, smaller but still brighter than Marshall’s. He felt their worry as they realized how low he was, and he sent, :I’ll get us through this. I promise.:

:All of us.: His sister clarified.

:Yes.:

The gestalt created by their joined magic might be able to take out the horde right now, but Marshall would surely die in the process and the Blaikes would still be out there causing trouble. He needed to try something different. Something a witch wouldn’t think of.

He listened to the hypnotic sound of feet, hooves, tentacles, and unidentifiable wet things moving across the stone as the horde began to close around them, tired of waiting for their meal, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. If he was going to have enough power to pull this off, he couldn’t afford to spend it on defense.

A small tendril of his team’s combined power reached out toward the wall, questing. When it touched the spell inside, Marshall didn’t resist the pull he felt but instead let go of his resistance.

:I am you.: He told it. :I am you and you are me.:

It was faint, but he heard its response, slow and cold. :There is only me. Everything not of me will become me.:

Marshall put every ounce of his soul into believing himself to be stone. He knew he was stone, he had always been stone, would always be stone. :I am already you. We are you. We are all.:

Icy, wet claws scraped against Marshall’s cheek, but he didn’t care. What could claws do against stone?

After an eternity, he felt the wall relax and accept his team as part of itself. :We are stone.: It agreed.

As their bodies morphed and became enveloped by the wall, he noticed how low his sister’s orange glow had become. Her generator must have held much less than his.

Panic rose inside him, and he allowed it to flow through him, giving it no resistance, only observing the emotion as it came. Panic would not get him what he wanted.

Jack’s essence flowed around Adelle’s and cut down her input to their dreamworking to a trickle. Then, flowing over to Marshall, it cut his input almost completely.

Once Jack’s magic ran out, they would all unravel in the time it took to take a deep breath. As the thought came to him, he felt the pull of the spell increase, winnowing away at what little protection they had left.

:We believe in you.: His teammates’ unwavering confidence bolstered his resolve.

Now that they had been accepted by the physical manifestation of the spell, Marshall focused on the spell itself. A dreamwalker shouldn’t be affected by witch magic in the Dreamscape. It would be like a fish holding an ocean hostage.

The original dreamwalkers had been physical manifestations of the Dreamscape—the source of all creativity—and could wield and bend such magic as easily as breathing.

Witches were norms with a mutation that allowed them to draw directly from the Source, but only as much as their talent allowed. Even if witches physically entered the Dreamscape, their power would be no more than it would be in the Real. So why couldn’t Marshall defeat this spell?

He went deeper into the spell, looking past the layers of stolen magic, trying to see how it was powered, but he saw nothing. :Adelle, can you do your thing?:

The Adelle portion of their gestalt flared bright amber, shooting out a thin beam for them to follow.

Gently, he pushed his teammates to the back of his mind, towing them along in silent support as he chased the beam of light. They all knew only one person could drive, and if they were to survive, they could do nothing but wait and do their best to hold themselves together.

As soon as he saw the dense core of the spell, Marshall felt his mind begin to fragment. He was out of time. In less than a minute he would be gone, followed shortly by his sister and his best friend. He threw himself at the mass, burrowed inside, and found what he had half-expected—the heart of a demon.

It looked like a diamond, but it didn’t sparkle. Instead, it sucked light into itself, hoarding it without giving anything back in return.