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.
Without hesitation, he drove his hands inside the diamond, grabbed a handful of its essence, and pulled hard. After a brief resistance, the taffy-like substance gave way, spilling itself out of the hole he’d made until it was inside out. Keeping his hands on the oozing, stinking mess, he forced it to reveal its true form—a box with glowing eyes.
Demons were created when a nightmare fed enough to create and independently maintain a physical manifestation in the Real. In the Dreamscape, a demon’s power was magnified a hundredfold as it was bolstered by the fears of humanity. Judging by its size and the way it cringed from him, this one wasn’t very old. If Marshall had been at full strength, unmaking this demon would have been a cinch, but right now?
Marshall felt his fragmenting mind solidify—Jack must have tapped his own generator. Now Marshall could focus on what he needed to do—unmake a claustrophobia demon.
The box tried to make itself bigger so it could draw him inside, but Marshall opened his arms and took the fear into himself, allowing it to Be. Terror built inside his chest and tried to suck him down into panic and despair, but Marshall had been doing this far longer than the demon had been around.
He would be a poor guardian indeed if a shivering box with eyes defeated him. He laughed at the thought, and the demon he embraced shook with fear. He focused on amusement. It was the key. He should have known that a group of witches wouldn’t be able to attract a powerful demon to do their bidding.
He laughed again, forcing himself to focus only on ridicule of the pathetic creature. If he didn’t, the thing would grow and feed off any chink in Marshall’s focus. He drew from Jack’s power and laughed harder.
The thing popped like a soap bubble.
As soon as the demon was gone, Marshall could feel the Dreamscape again. He wrapped it around himself and took his exhausted team out of the colony.
Once they materialized outside the walls, Marshall sprawled out on the beach, unable to stand, and reveled in the Source as it poured into him, filling up the empty spaces of his being.
Remembering his duty, he lifted his head and locked the castle down so nothing could get in or out. His head flopped down on the sand, and he rolled to his side just enough to look at his teammates.
Jack.
Adelle sat on the ground, cradling in her lap as much of Jack’s enormous body as she could. “He pushed me away before I was tapped out.” She sniffed and brushed a lock of hair away from Jack’s too-still face, the usual warm brown of his skin now chalky and sallow. “I could have given more.”
Marshall went cold. The warmth of the Source was nothing compared to what he was looking at. “How did this happen? He just tapped his generator.”
“Marshall, he tapped his right after I tapped mine. The boost you got at the end was—” Adelle’s voice broke.
“...Jack.” Marshall finished for her. He pushed himself to his hands and knees shakily, feeling nothing inside. “But… his body is still here,” he heard himself say from far away.
“I can’t feel him.” Adelle hugged Jack’s body to her chest and began to rock back and forth.
Marshall crawled to his sister’s side and sat heavily. Numbness raced through his body, threatening to swallow him. Defensively, his mind went into action, trying to stave off the truth. “His body would be gone if he were…” He couldn’t say the word dead. Not in relation to Jack.
When a dreamwalker ran out of magic, the body dissolved, becoming nothing more than scattered remnants of the Source. Had Marshall subconsciously dreamcrafted an image of his friend as they materialized outside the Blaike colony?
It was highly unlikely. A crafting of that nature would take more energy than a half-dead Marshall should be able to manage.
His hand kept reaching out and pulling back, reflexively. He wanted to touch his friend to see if he could sense something. Anything. But the idea of touching Jack—a man with more vitality than anyone Marshall had ever met—and feeling nothing, made him want to curl up in a ball and howl.
