I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I’d fallen in love at least a dozen times in the last few years. I’d fall for someone and feel like I desperately needed to be with them, then the feeling would pass a few days later. This would be the same. In a few days, I would have moved on.
Probably. Unless those cards were right. Dammit. I didn’t need this right now. I had too much to do. And those damn idiots had left me to deal with the damn shackle. I could probably break it with a cantrip, if I spent an hour on it.
I was feeling too tired and drained for that. So I was going to go in and get the others to deal with it.
The hut was naturally much larger on the inside. But I was too drained to really explore. I just went far enough in to find the others. “Hey, the hut’s still chained up.”
“Can’t you or Greta break it?” Terry asked.
“Greta’s gone,” I said. “And I’m out of big spells.”
“Greta has left?” Gregor asked.
“The hut won’t let her in, and we don’t have time to break through whatever’s blocking her. So she went home.” I really hoped the authorities wouldn’t realize she had helped us. At least with Bragda gone, that was one fewer Winter Guard to spill the beans.
“I’ll take care of it. We found the room with the cauldron that the Black Rider mentioned.”
“And an area that looks like it’s for guests. There are real beds, complete with fluffy blankets!” Terry said happily.
“Burin is in one room. Take your pick of another and get some rest. You look exhausted.” Gregor said, holding up the plague doctor’s mask and the lock of hair. “I’ll toss these into the cauldron once the shackle is dealt with.”
“Sounds good,” I said gratefully. Between the dragon and the fight with Vasily’s band, I really was feeling the day’s exertions.
The guest suite contained a central chamber set up for relaxing and eating and four bedrooms, as well as rooms for bathing, cooking and a lavatory. I had a passing thought that maybe the hut had created these chambers specifically for us, since the number of bedrooms matched the number of our party, but I was too tired to really worry about it.
I picked the furthest room from the door and collapsed into the four-poster bed. I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Not long after passing out, I felt the familiar sensation of returning to the Dreamlands. I had actually been hoping for a dreamless sleep, but that was fine. I could always do something relaxing, maybe some fishing, gaming or jumping out of a plane. Something like that.
As I opened my eyes, I found myself in a world enveloped in pillows. The room was dark, but I didn’t need my mutation to look around and realize where I was. It was easy enough just from the scent of the fabric softener.
“Oof!” came a voice from around the foot of the bed. “How can so many stupid pillows exist in one place? How is anyone supposed to use this bed?” Terry did not sound amused.
“I am unsure,” Gregor answered. “Nor do I know how we came to be in such a place.”
“That’s because you’re in my bedroom,” I said. “Juiz, lights at evening setting, please.”
“Acknowledged,” said a comfortingly familiar voice.
“Okay, who was that?”
“That’s Juiz,” I said, getting out of bed. I walked over and yanked Terry out of the pile of frilly pink and purple pillows she had managed to get trapped in. “She’s like Cortana, only for the whole house.”
Gregor had managed to pull himself free on his own. “And this is your room?” I nodded in response to his question. “There is much… art… on the walls.”
I looked around at all the posters of speedo-clad firefighters, bare-chested men in Viking gear and lingerie models that adorned my walls. “Yeah,” I said nostalgically. “I’ve missed this place.” And my foam mattress. I suddenly found myself wondering if there was some way Cortana could make a compressible foam mattress for me.
“So, why are we here?” Terry asked.
I hadn’t even thought of that. “You know, that’s a good question.” I thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Not sure. But we’re in the land of dreams, so we’re not ‘here’ exactly. But this is a great likeness of the real thing.”
“The land of dreams?” Gregor asked, startled.
“Yeah. Don’t be surprised if things don’t work here how you’re used to. Like this, for instance,” I said, before walking up a wall.
“How’d you do that without casting a spell?” Terry asked.
“If you put your mind to it, you can rewrite the rules here a bit. It’s your first time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you have trouble doing it consistently. Don’t get too ambitious until you get the hang of it.”
“Cool. I’m gonna snoop around a bit. Does that door lead to the rest of the house?”
“No, to the rest of my room – err, suite, I guess. There’s a door out there that leads to the rest of the house.” Once the two of them had left, I turned to the spot in the pile of pillows that was moving. “You can come out now.”
“I was certain that something tasty had hidden itself in such a place,” Nebula responded.
“Nope. That’s just my bed. Juiz would never let any kind of bugs or rodents get this far into the house.” She had lasers. Unless you count the ant that snuck in on my clothes, the record was a grasshopper that once made it almost three meters.
The cat flew over and took her place on my shoulder. “I can’t figure out why your friends are here,” the cat admitted.
“So Godmother had nothing to do with this?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Weird. Well, we should probably go check on the others. No idea what they’ve gotten up to.”
We entered my lounge and I realized just how much I missed my hot tub. Yes, I have my own hot tub. Yes, it’s made of marble and built into the ground. And yes it’s about ten feet across with a tasteful sculpture of a naked woman who holds a pot that pours cool, refreshing water into a basin below at its center.
And yeah, I’m spoiled.
“This is exactly as your real room?” Gregor asked.
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
“I just have one question,” Terry said.
“What’s that?”
“How long have you owned tiny slaves in a box that you force to have sex for your amusement?”
What? I looked over at her, and she was standing in front of my portable computer. The holographic screen was displaying the last thing I’d had loaded on it. “Those aren’t people, just images of people. They’re not really there. You’re just seeing something that happened elsewhere some time back.”
“So they’re not slaves?”
“No. They’re paid pretty well for that.”
“So they’re prostitutes?”
“Not exactly. They’re entertainers.”
“I see.”
Gregor cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should go look around rest of house, find out why we are here?”
“Wait, I have one more question.” Terry looked serious. This would be good. “Is there a shortage of women on your world? Or is this woman with three men just because that is the scenario that this box has decided to show us?”
“We have just as many women as men,” I said with a laugh.
We headed out into the halls. “This is a palace,” Gregor said some time after we’d left. “Are you some kind of royalty?”
“Nope, just rich. Really, really rich.”
As we entered the breezeway that passed by the inner greenhouse, I was saved from more questions by the sound of someone singing. In Dwarven – or is it Dwarvish? Dwarfish? I don’t know. I also don’t know how to speak the language, though I did recognize it.
We followed the sound and found something hilarious. A dwarf was digging up a patch of Daddy’s azaleas while singing a jaunty tune. “Burin?” Gregor asked.
The dwarf stopped what he was doing and turned to look at us. It was immediately clear from his face that he wasn’t Burin, though there was a resemblance, what with hair and eyes merely a shade off from Burin’s. “Aye, I’m Burin. But I cannae say I know you people, nor do I ken how you know my name.”
“Didn’t Burin say that all previous holders of the demon were also named Burin?” Terry asked.
“Right! You must be our Burin’s relative,” I said.
The dwarf held out his arm. “About yea high, hair whiter than snow and with a weird predilection towards magic?”
“That’s the one!” Terry said. “Wait. Do you also have Amgorath in your belly?”
“Not currently. Not for at least a couple hundred years, I think. So how is Burin?”
“He is asleep and cannot seem to wake up,” Gregor said.
The dwarf frowned. “I’ve heard of that before. If the demon gets the upper hand, sometimes it can imprison the soul of the Burin in his own dreams. The wards placed on and within the Burin keep the demon trapped, but the Burin is also trapped in an eternal slumber until the next Burin is born and the demon is transferred.”
I was not excited about the thought of having to lug a comatose dwarf around everywhere we went. “Trapped in his dreams? So if we could enter his dreams, we might be able to free him?”
“That is a big if, but I cannae see why that wouldna work if you had a way to enter his dreams, lass.”
“That’s the easy part,” I said. “We’re already in the land of dreams and I have my trusty guide-cat here. We should be able to find our way to him with little trouble.”
The dwarf looked shocked. “This is the land of dreams?! Then that explains why the house was yelling at me to take off my boots!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No, that actually happens in the real life version of this place.”
“This is a very strange place,” the dwarf – I had mentally dubbed him Old Burin – said. “So, tell me, how did my younger relative end up trapped in his dreams? That usually only happens when a Burin nearly dies.”
Terry furrowed her brow. “Oh, wow, where to start. There was the time he kinda died at the dragon. Then the time the hamster tried to eat him. And then the mantis tried to eat him. And the weasel. But the worst was the time most recently, when that dwarf girl with the horns tried to eat him. Only, one moment he was there and then I was there and she tried to eat me. And it was kind of a thing.”
“What?” the dwarf asked.
Gregor handed him the flask. “Here, drink this. It helps.”
The dwarf took a swig, then spit cranberry juice everywhere. “Who in their right mind fills a flask with this shit? Ugh! The taste is on my tongue and I can’t make it go away!”
“We’ll stop by the kitchen after this. I know the code to the liquor cabinet,” I said.
“Fair enough. But can you please explain to me what happened to Burin? In a way that makes sense?”
“We got into a fight with a dwarven woman. She looked to be a tiefling.”
“Did she have white scales and eyes the color of citrines?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Ah, you met a Segrit. Her ancestor was one of my ancestor’s companions. So why were you fighting her?”
“She attacked us, claiming to be the true vessel of Amgorath.”
“Torag’s Toenails! The fiend has seduced one of the Segrits?! What happened next?”
Gregor punched a wall, frustration clear in his voice as he spoke. “While we were distracted by her companions, she managed to bring Burin down. Then she began drawing this inky blackness from him.”
“Wait, like the time with that woman in the tower?” Terry asked. Right, she hadn’t been awake during the Segrit thing, so she hadn’t seen it.
Ooh, I’d almost forgotten about that. “Yeah. Like when the shadows came out of that woman into Burin,” I answered.
The dwarf’s eyes narrowed. “What was the woman’s name?”
“Hestrig,” I said. “I think she said her last name was Orlov.”
“Orlov?!” He shook his head. “This isn’t good, lass. This is not good.”
“You know the name, I take it?”
“Yes. Her ancestor was one of the original Burin’s companions. Volstag and Vildammen Orlov, twin brothers who stood beside Burin, along with Segrit Coldheart, Aldebor of Iobara and Malekrex the White.”
“Malekrex? That sounds like a dragon’s name.”
“He was. The dragon who had been possessed had turned on its own kind as well, so the first Burin banded together with one of the survivors of such an attack. They didn’t trust each other, but they had a common goal, so they shared an uneasy truce.”
“What happens if this Segrit gathers all the pieces of the demon?” Gregor asked.
Old Burin thought for a moment, trying to find a way to explain. “Imagine a stein, filled with ale. As you pour in more, it approaches the brim. Eventually, it reaches the top, holding all it could. At this point, the slightest jostling or even pouring in more leads to disaster.”
“I guess this means we can’t leave Burin asleep?” Terry asked. “I like him better that way.”
“No, it is imperative that we find and free him,” Old Burin said. “Only a Burin will be able to reclaim what Segrit has taken and restore balance. I cannot do it, and it would take too long to wait for the next one to be born.”
“Nebula,” I said, turning to the cat. “Which way do we go to get to Burin?”
“It’s extremely far. But there is some kind of link between you three and the missing dwarf. If you take a portal, you should wind up closer to him.”
“Okay, so where’s the closest portal?”
“Not far. Downstairs, I think.”
Ah, so Daddy’s workshop. “I know the way. Let’s go.”
“We’re still stopping by that liquor cabinet, right?” Old Burin asked. Because dwarven stereotypes.
As the dwarf raided the liquor cabinet – he took one of the bottles of homebrewed mead – Terry pulled me aside. “Hey, those, um box thingies…”
“Box thingy?”
“You know, the one with the little people or whatever.”
“Oh, a computer?”
“I guess? Well, is there any way you can make me one of those when we get back?”
“Cortana should have schematics for that.”
“Cool. Will it have the little people in it?” Oh. OH! She wanted porn!
I could do that. “I know just the thing. I’ll talk to Cortana about it when we wake up.”
As Terry and I talked, I watched as Gregor was teleporting circles around the poor dwarf. He’d figured out how to use the dreamlands’ mutable nature to allow himself to teleport as much as he wanted, it seemed.
I’ve only been in Daddy’s workshop a few times, and only after I’d learned the truth about my parents. Still, the dream did a great job approximating it. There were robotic arms everywhere, and drawers filled with parts and supplies lined the walls. There were no tables, but I know that those retracted into the walls and floors.
With my ability to see in the dark, I could tell that there was someone standing there, his back to us, as well as a number of inactive robots.
“What is this?” I heard Gregor ask. Then there was a click as he hit the glowing light switch.
The lights in the room came on a row at a time, dramatically revealing first the robots, then the figure. And that’s when it began to sing. SING. I’m not going to repeat the song here. It was silly, and it seemed based on a tune from some old cartoon I’m pretty sure I’d watched with my parents as a kid.
As the figure turned, I could see that it was Daddy, only very much not. His face was clear in the uncanny valley, the features distorted into a maddened, terrifying visage. And then he ordered the robots to kill us. It wasn’t much of a fight. But it was still weird fighting something that looked like one of my parents.
I felt a lot better when he fell and his disguise melted away, revealing a nightgaunt. “If they’re involved, watch out for Nodens,” I warned Terry.
“Who?”
“Pervy old guy. He might try to look at your panties.”
She shuddered. “Yeah, that won’t be happening,” she said, reloading her gun.
The figure of the nightgaunt melted away, becoming a red door. Nebula, who had become a catgirl for the fight, motioned to it. “That’s the portal I told you about,” she said as she resumed her normal form and took her place on my shoulder.
Through the door, we found ourselves on prairie. The terrain looked familiar, like the place where Terry’s harrowing had been performed. Only one thing was really different.
“Who are you?” I heard Gregor ask suddenly.
“I’m Terry,” a woman’s voice answered.
I quickly turned and saw that there was a woman in her mid-twenties there. But, as I looked, it was undeniable that this was indeed Terry, only older. The two continued arguing over how she was or couldn’t possibly be Terry for almost a minute before I pulled out a small mirror and held it up for the girl.
Her eyes widened in shock. “Persephone?!”
Who the hell was Persephone? An older sister, or her mother, maybe? I mean, it’s not all that uncommon for children to call their parents by their first name nowadays, so that wouldn’t be that odd. I was curious, but the look on her face told me that now wasn’t the time to ask.
The sound of a baby’s cry drew my attention. “I’m not the only one who hears that, am I?” I asked. Gregor and Old Burin indicated that they heard it as well. Meanwhile, Terry looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“I think it’s coming from that direction,” Gregor said.
“Yeah, he’s gonna be at the cottage,” Terry said, sounding utterly defeated. “I can show you the way.”
We followed Terry through a field of high grass. There were corpses all around, with no rhyme or reason as to how they got there. And there was no common theme among the corpses. They were men, women and children of at least a dozen races, and they had died in numerous ways.
There was a part of me that suspected that these were people Terry had killed. Which made me wonder. What if this form we were seeing was Terry’s true form? Maybe she hadn’t been a child soldier, but perhaps had been de-aged somehow? And would that mean Persephone was a twin sister, perhaps?
The field of grass gave way to a well-worn track. It was too narrow for a full cart, but perhaps was skinny enough for something like a wagon or a wheelbarrow.
Or a wheelchair, since that’s what we saw when we finally reached and entered the worn down cabin. There was a man in a wheelchair, his face covered in bandages. “It’s all Terry’s fault,” he wailed.
Before we could ask what he meant, a trio of Terrys – young form, I mean – with horns appeared and charged. Gregor roundhouse kicked one through a wall. “That was oddly therapeutic,” the fighter said. “It is perhaps too bad that Burin is missing this.”
“Nah. He’d be too beside himself as to whether he should harm the little girls,” I replied.
“Funny,” Terry said, annoyed, as she shot another in the face.
Old Burin displayed a skill with his axe that Burin lacked, deftly swinging his axe – the same axe Burin carries, by the way – twice in rapid succession, slaying the third Terrygoat. Yeah, goat. Of course it was.
“They fight well,” the old man commented. “But you thought you could have friends before. Will you get these killed too?”
The baby’s wail got louder and the room began getting kinda hot. Several more Terrygoats clawed their way up from the ground, like some kind of video game monster. These were more bestial, with faces between that of a human and a goat.
Greater furry percentage or no, they fell just as quickly. “You’re a monster,” the old man said. “Every second you’re in this body, you’re raping her.”
What?! Suddenly I was back to the “older sister” or “mother” theory for Terry’s current form. I didn’t have time to really think about it, though, because the walls had begun to melt. Gregor punched another Terrygoat in the face and it crumpled. He almost looked like he was really enjoying himself.
“You have no idea what this thing is,” the old man continued, looking directly at me. Well, as much as a man with his eyes covered could look. “Do not trust him. He cares only about himself. When your deal is done, a bullet awaits you.” Then he became another Terrygoat and attacked.
HIM? I was suddenly reminded of my first encounter with Gribbletoo, the gnome. He’d also said that Terry was male. I’d chalked it up to gnomish eccentricity, but what if he’d been right? What did it mean? Figuring out what was up with Terry was now a priority, but I’d have to approach it carefully.
The crying reached a crescendo and Terry began freaking out. “MAKE IT STOP!” she screamed. And that’s when the hell-baby appeared. I’m sure that’s not what it was called, but it was the apparition of a burning toddler. He looked maybe two. Terry freaked out further and began shooting at it. “Nonononono! It’s not real! THIS ISN’T REAL!”
The creature was made of fire, so I wove a fireball that was changed into a burst of ice and aimed it straight at the thing. The ice collided with it and caused a chain reaction. Seconds later, the entire building erupted in a rush of flame with no shockwave. Gregor jumped to shield Terry from the blast and Old Burin dropped to the ground, shielding his face.
Only I hadn’t flinched from the fire, so I think I was the only one who saw the figure of a kind looking Asian man in the flame, smiling at me.
Flames were burning all around us. There was no way to flee the building. “Nebula, we could use a portal right now!” I said.
“It’s already forming,” she said, pointing to where the wheelchair had been. The red doorway was comprised of the corpse of the final Terrygoat and the metal of the wheelchair.
Creepy.
We entered and found ourselves in a strange place. It looked like a black void, aside from the platform we stood on. The massive circular platform itself was made of stained glass. Each of us stood in a quadrant. The image in mine was of me. In my hand was a small crystal sphere, and I stood, looking at the night sky. There was a cat, painted to look like the starry sky, by my feet.
Beneath Gregor was an image of the fighter. He was standing in a monastery and there were corpses all around. A mysterious figure stood across from him, a revolver in its hand.
Beneath Terry – who still looked like an adult – was the image of two figures standing back to back. One was a man, the other was the Terry we were used to, the young one. The man held his face in his hand in grief while the younger Terry held her gun forward, ready to fire.
Beneath Old Burin was the image of a dwarf, our Burin, perhaps? He was encased in a pillar of ice. And more than that, he had dragon wings. The entire portion of the platform was darkened, as if covered by living shadow.
Finally, in the center was an image of the Black Rider, the man we’d met before, who had charged us with this terrible task. That would certainly explain the connection Nebula sensed.
Nightgaunts descended from the sky and tried to grab each of us. With Nebula’s help, I managed to evade mine, and Old Burin avoided being grabbed on his own. But the others were grabbed. The nightgaunts tried to carry them into the air.
Gregor punched his to death and fell fifteen or so feet to the ground, then immediately jumped up and grabbed onto the flailing Terry, pulling her and the nightgaunt back to the ground. Unable to continue dragging her off, the nightgaunt tried to tickle Terry with his tail, only to get the snot kicked out of him by Gregor.
Meanwhile, Nebula transformed again to try to help me. But the glass floor was an obstacle she hadn’t expected. She leapt too hard and went sliding, completely messing up her attack. It was a good distraction though. The nightgaunt turned to see what was happening and thus never saw the beams of flame that ended its life.
Once the foes were down, Gregor pulled out his knife. “You can’t be serious,” I said to him.
“I am not sure if I can keep skin when we leave, but it hurts nothing to try.”
“Yeah, alright. Just be quick about it.”
Once he was done, we entered the next door and found ourselves on a snow-swept plateau. In the distance, we saw a pillar of ice with an inky black shadow churning about it. As we approached, we could see Burin within the pillar, white wings extended from his back and a look of terror on his face.
“How do we get him out?” Terry asked.
“It takes a Burin,” Old Burin said, charging. As he reached the shadow, he grabbed the inky black shape swirling around the captive dwarf. “You’re smaller than I remember!” he roared, slamming the demon into the icy pillar.
The ice opened and Burin fell out, but the demon was not done. It grabbed Old Burin and dragged him inside with it. “We must help him!” Gregor shouted.
“NO!” Old Burin said. “This must be done! Take care of the lad!” Once he was inside, the ice enveloped him and became completely opaque before sinking into the ground and trapping both figures.
Burin groaned and got to his feet. “Thanks for coming for me.”
“For us, you would do the same,” Gregor said, handing his flask to the dwarf, who took a swig. “Now, let us ask the cat how to get out of here.”
“Cat?” Burin asked, handing back the flask.
But there wasn’t time to answer. “Look out!” Terry cried.
Burin managed to dodge just in time as a shadow in the shape of Segrit appeared and lunged at him. He then retaliated with a slash of his axe as Gregor teleported in to flank. Terry then unleashed a volley of bullets to match my volley of force bolts.
All in all, Segrit wasn’t nearly as much of a threat without the assistance of Vasily and his goons. But defeating her didn’t end the fight. Instead, she transformed into a time dragon – Burin’s other great fear, I suspect – and unleashed a crackling lightning breath.
And once again, with the party as it was, the dragon he feared simply no longer measured up, and we slew it in a matter of seconds, with Terry’s triple-tap of headshots finishing it off. “So, how do we get out of here?” Burin asked Nebula.
“The door is already opening,” she said, indicating the swirling corpse of the dragon as it was crushed into the shape of a door.
Gregor looked crestfallen. “I am guessing it will be impossible to skin this door?” he asked the cat, who answered by lightly batting him on the nose before flying back up onto my shoulder.
“Can’t we just wake up?” Terry asked.
“I don’t think so,” said the cat. “There is something keeping you here, but it’s beyond this last red door. Once you’ve defeated it, I’ll be able to open a blue door that you can use to wake up.”
Something holding us here? “Is whatever’s holding us here the thing that’s been sending these nightmares?” I asked.
“Probably,” Nebula admitted.
“You don’t think it could be…” I trailed off as I looked at Gregor.
“That is possible,” Nebula said. “I killed it once already and it just got back up.”
“Then we must go kill it once and for all,” Gregor said.
Terry sighed wistfully. “The machine of death will show you how it’s done,” she told Nebula, scratching the cat’s head fondly.
“I have no idea what’s going on, but if something is keeping us here, then I guess we have no choice,” Burin agreed. “Also, since when do cats talk?”
“A cat can do many things in the Dreamlands,” Nebula replied automatically.
Through the next door, we found ourselves in Gregor’s monastery as I’d expected. The monks were alive this time, so that was new. Or at least, they were alive for all of twelve seconds, at which point I heard seven shots ring out and saw the monks collapse. Blood – way more blood than they could possibly have had in them – sprayed everywhere.
But they didn’t die immediately. “Why did you live?” one said to Gregor, his tone accusatory.
“You weren’t even the strongest!” another said.
“You should have died with us!” came the voice of another.
“This is not real,” Gregor said, though I suspect he was trying to convince himself more than anything. I’m not entirely sure if the corpses getting up as zombies helped or hindered his self-assurance. Nor am I sure whether the whole place becoming some kind of hellscape helped either.
Terry fired a single shot, but the bullet spread into several, bringing down multiple zombies at once. Meanwhile, Burin unleashed a breath of ice, which froze and shattered the undead. Somehow. Cold’s not normally supposed to work on undead, but I guess Dreamlands logic was at play here.
The form of the faceless man I’d seen before appeared and immediately hit Gregor. The fighter cried out, perhaps more in surprise than out of any reaction to the pain itself. As with the other threats we’d faced, we killed him extremely quickly.
Or so we thought. He didn’t stay down. And once he stood, he immediately unleashed a spell.
Terry babbled incoherently as confusion overcame her. Great. The machine of death had some kind of operating system error. It would take a while to debug or whatever.
The world shifted again, and once more we were on the stained glass platform in the midst of the void. Gregor and Burin moved to flank the enemy while Nebula and I tried to deal with the last remaining zombie.
Nebula turned into a saber-toothed tiger and once again underestimated the slippery glass. I was forced to finish the zombie with a spell.
In the meantime, Terry, trying to help in her own way, shot the nearest thing to her, which was Burin. The dwarf shrugged off the lone square hit and kept fighting, and soon, the faceless man fell once more.
And once again, he stood immediately and struck at the nearest foe, this time hitting Burin. Terry tried to shoot him, but she was holding the gun incorrectly and managed only to hit herself in the nose with the gun’s recoil.
A blue door appeared in the sky above us. It began sucking in the world around it, and the nightmare, sensing its impending defeat, fled.
“This is the way out?” Gregor asked, restraining the flailing Terry.
“Yes, that will lead you to the realm of the waking,” Nebula answered, shifting back into her cat form.
“Good. I will see you all when we awaken,” Gregor said as he dragged the young woman into the door behind him.
“You should go next,” Burin told me.
“Not a chance,” I replied. “We just went through all of this to get you out, and I’m not risking you getting stuck here alone again.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
Once Burin was gone, it was my turn. But as I walked towards the door, the world melted away and I found myself in Godmother’s garden. The hydrangeas were in full bloom, filling the air with their scent. Godmother was seated at a table, pouring some tea.
“Well done!” she said, clapping. “The way you all worked together far exceeded my expectations!”
I took a seat across from her and accepted the tea I was offered. “So you were the one who brought us here to save Burin?”
“Nope. The ripples of my interference would have drawn too much attention. Lamashtu is still pissed off at your father, so I didn’t want to risk her coming after you.”
Oh, right. He’d mouthed off at the Mother of Monsters one too many times and she’d sworn revenge. Then a thought occurred. “You don’t think she had something to do with the invasion, do you?”
Godmother’s face became serious. “I don’t have any proof, but I’d be willing to bet she played a hand in it somehow. But whatever she did, it was so subtle that there’s simply no evidence. And without evidence, there’s no way that stupid jerk you people call a god will let me help.”
“You intend to find a way to help anyway, though, right?” I asked as I took a sip of my tea. Mmm. Chamomile!
She laughed. “Of course I am. But I need to find the right mortals who I can convince to use their free will to do what needs to be done. It’ll take a light touch to avoid interference.”
“Anything I can do?” I asked.
“No, sadly. As my god-daughter, I don’t think he’d buy that you were acting alone. Especially since you can’t get home on your own right now.” She offered me a cherry tart, which I took gladly. “But that’s not why you’re here. I just wanted to congratulate you all on working together, in spite of all the weirdness. Remember, man, like the four elements alone, is weak. It is only by working together that they form the mighty fifth element…”
“Boron?” I asked, interrupting.
Godmother made a face, then laughed. “Your father once made that same joke. He said it was a reference to something. No idea what, though.”
“Joke?” I asked sincerely.
“Oh, never mind. Anyway, I’ve given you and your friends some small boons, as thanks for the entertainment.”
“Presents?” I asked, excited. “What do we get?!”
“For the dwarf, I’ve strengthened the connection between him and his trapped relative by using his axe as a focus. It took a little reworking, so now the axe is a bit colder than before. For the monk, I’ve given those little machines inside of him a small upgrade, infusing them with a bit of the essence of Shabbith-ka. For the girl, I’ve replaced her armor with some made from the skin of one of those pesky Cthugha. It had gotten into my garden and burned up all the goldenrod before I stopped it.” Godmother’s daily life is weird. “And for you, well, I’ve encouraged one of your mutations a bit. Now you’ll find your skin even more resistant to acid.”
Shabbith-ka and Cthugha? I’d heard of those before. Wait. “Acid resistance, armor made of living flame, electricity-infused nanites and axe infused with the power of frost? You weren’t kidding about the elements thing.”
Godmother crowed with delight. “Good girl! Now it’s time for you to awaken.” She gestured to a wall of thorny vines behind her, and suddenly I could see the faceless figure, wrapped up in said vines. “I have a lot to do to thank this thing for invading my realm and trying to harm my beloved god-daughter.” Her smile became dangerous. “He’s going to wish that he had a mouth to scream with before long. Now run along. Love you, kiddo.”
And then I was in bed back in the hut. But there was something strange. I felt something next to me, a warm, fuzzy thing. I pulled back the blankets to reveal something that shouldn’t have been possible.
“Good morning,” Nebula said, stretching.
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