The Lady Dreamless reached out her hand into the open air, and where it passed, pale, sparkling light flowed through her fingers like glitter. She gathered some of this sparkling energy into the palm of her hand and examined it. She had to admire the craftsmanship; this world had the architecture of the Dreamless Realms all over it, but the power that made that possible was a raw, unrefined talent with infinite potential. The source of this power was a true savant waiting for the right guidance, Dreamless thought. She scanned the horizon, taking in the scope of this pocket dimension, and sighed. That lack of refinement showed through, with unstable areas, roaming dream storms, a permeating stink of fear that told her the balance of the dream magic was off here. That did tell her something about which of her dimension’s residents had helped guide the creation of this place. It had to be a darker creature, a nightmare or night terror, something that did not understand the joy or relief dreams were capable of. They knew only pain, not grasping how much influence could be obtained with honey instead of acid.
She felt a flash of anger within her. In part at the hubris of it, that a lesser denizen of her world thought it could manipulate a power source this strong without attracting attention; but also anger at the laziness of it all. Lady Dreamless disliked nothing so much as she did intellectual laziness and a lack of curiosity.
If you’re going to steal magic, do something with it worth stealing for, she thought. Don’t slap together a dimension on the bones of a little town and keep all the residents under a perpetual cloud of their own anxieties.
Not only did the abuse of power bother her; the escaped dream-creature had committed the cardinal sin of being boring.
She gazed up at the strange sky, bright red above and deepening to crimson on the horizon, and wondered about the aesthetic choice the creator had made. It painted the quaint town they’d kidnapped in a bloody hue, giving the entire world a threatening feel. It piqued her curiosity. Did the nightmare decide to do this? Or was the choice a cry for help from the magician being used by the nightmare?
In the distance—not as far away as it looked, she knew, as dreamscapes tended toward misdirection and obfuscation—an impossible castle loomed, cartoonish and unwelcoming.
She stroked each of her demon hounds on the head, both looking up to her with incredible admiration and loyalty.
“Where is our betrayer, my hounds?” she asked.
Pollux turned his massive head toward the castle, staring intently.
“And where is Doc Silence, the friend and ally who gave you to me?” she said.
This time Castor turned his head, also toward the castle. Again, she thought. The cardinal sin of being boring. Lady Dreamless sighed irritably.
“I suppose we know where we’re headed,” she said, and began walking into the town.
She paused at a few houses along the way, looking in on the residents. Her disappointment grew as she found humans in fugue states, trapped in nightmares of their own. Some relived past trauma so awful it made her blood boil to witness. Others lived out family drama anxiety that was, by comparison, comedic in its pettiness. She understood that the subconscious mind latched on to whatever the waking mind refused to process, or was unable to process. And yet it never ceased to amaze her how humans, with their great imagination and capacity for courage and relentlessness, could trap themselves in little circles of angry parents or disappointing children, or wake in a cold sweat concerned about running late for something that mattered little in the overall arc of their lives, how they could turn simple, forgivable mistakes over and over again in their minds until the worry ate a hole in the lining of their stomach.
If I could change one thing about humanity, she thought, after spending so much time amongst them the past few months, it would be to gift them the ability to shed useless fear and anxiety. There is so much in their world, so much in the multiverse, that should truly scare you, that to waste one’s life upset about something of little or no consequence was a tragedy on an epic level to Lady Dreamless.
But then, she thought, I come from a world I can alter with a stray thought. Perhaps my lesson among humans is that when you have little power over the world around you, every detail is worth fretting over.
Still, she thought, the idea seemed painfully boring to her. And this traitorous little nightmare had gone and built a whole world on that concept.
“And it’s my fault the creature is here in the first place,” Lady Dreamless said, admitting her disappointment in herself.
She should have known better, she thought.
“Well, my hounds,” she said, both Castor and Pollux attentively listening to her voice. “Let us go right a wrong of our own making, shall we?”
Chapter 48: Intruders in the queen’s lands
Queen Alice sat on her throne watching a hologram of a beautiful airship rotate slowly above the chamber. The Vizier had helped her weave her magic to create the idea, a wonderful craft that would allow her to travel all across her kingdom so she could survey her subjects, make sure everything was in order, and see as far as the eye could see.
The airship was the Vizier’s idea. Alice had become discontent and wanted to get out more, suggesting a new royal carriage pulled by a pair of winged horses, but the Vizier had suggested something more leisurely. Why tire horses and cram yourself into a buggy when you could travel the winds at your own pace far above? he’d suggested. And so Alice began to read about dirigibles and similar ships to better understand the mechanics involved and how magic could improve upon the mundane.
She was excited to begin the process of building her new ship, and at first, the Vizier seemed impressed by her enthusiasm, encouraging her to design, dream, and imagine a floating throne room dressed up in golds and reds.
She looked at her trusted confidante now, though, and he had a distant look on his face, staring straight ahead, in the direction of Westwick.
“You look troubled, Vizier,” Alice said, turning her attention from her schematics. The hologram ceased rotating, pausing exactly where she left off.
“Something’s not quite right, my queen,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked, worry building in her chest.
The Vizier studied her, looking intently into her eyes in a way he rarely did.
“Do you sense it? This is your kingdom. I wonder if you can feel disturbances here instinctually,” he said.
Alice closed her eyes, reaching out through the veins of magic that build this dimension, that held it together.
“We have guests,” she said.
“Intruders,” the Vizier said.
“Not everyone who enters is an enemy,” Alice said chidingly. “Maybe they’re lost. Or looking for a new home.”
“What do you sense, Queen Alice?” the Vizier asked.
Alice focused her attention once again. She could feel different places in the topography of her kingdom which did not feel right, things out of place on the edge of the map.
First, of course, she sensed the magician in the dungeons. She still felt strange about that, locking the man up when all he’d done was mention her parents. But the Vizier said he was dangerous, and she trusted the Vizier more than anyone. And really, the dungeons weren’t that bad, she thought.
Next, though, she felt a power surge right at the border of her kingdom, distractingly powerful. It scared her.
She began to speak, wanting to ask the Vizier about that presence, when the tendrils of her magic led her to what felt like bugs crawling across her mind. She turned her attention to this presence, and gasped.
“Someone has destroyed the cemetery,” she said. “Why would someone destroy the cemetery?”
“I suspect we’ll soon find out,” the Vizier said, leaning in curiously. “What else do you sense?”
“Something… strange, a mind I can’t understand,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s more powerful than I am, but it worries me. It’s just arrived.”
“Do they seem related to you?” the Vi
zier said. “You can read the spells they walk with—do they feel the same, or different?”
“The scarier one reminds me of you,” she said, opening her eyes, then frowning apologetically. “Not that you scare me. I just mean it’s a magic that looks similar.”
“I understand,” the Vizier said. “And the other?”
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Alice said. “Not like the magician downstairs, not like me, not like you.”
“Does your connection detect anything else?” the Vizier said.
She closed her eyes one more time. She felt the faintest ping of magic somewhere near the dungeons, but stray bits of spellcasting often drifted around the kingdom as she built and rebuilt her own magical constructs and mystical wards. She began to reach out with her mind for a closer inspection just to be sure, but then something caught her attention in another part of the castle. Or rather, just outside.
“My friends,” Alice said.
“Friends?” the Vizier said.
“Sir Teddy and Silverhoof approach along the great road leading to our gates,” Alice said. She knew the Vizier had warned her that her companions had become untrustworthy, unsafe to keep within the castle walls, but she couldn’t help herself—the idea of seeing her teddy bear once again made her heart skip a beat. She shook her head irritably, trying to remind herself that a good ruler doesn’t fall prey to childlike sentiments.
“It could be a trap,” the Vizier said. He cast a spell of his own, creating a circle with his fingertip. A window appeared within that circle, showing them the group approaching the main gates.
There was Sir Teddy, riding Silverhoof, looking as grim and determined and adorable as ever. Riding with him, though, was a girl a few years older than Alice with neon-blue hair, goggles perched on her forehead, and a shirt with a nuclear symbol on it. Beside them walked another young woman, dressed in a form-fitting top, skirt, and tall boots, a cape drifting off her shoulders lightly. Everything she wore was a combination of bright, primary colors. The most striking thing about her, though, was her hair—it seemed to be made of fire, flames flickering off the back as she walked.
“Who are they?” Alice asked.
“More trouble, I suspect,” the Vizier said, his tone uncharacteristically short and frustrated.
“They’re with my friends,” Alice said.
“When you are queen, you have no friends,” the Vizier said. “Everyone is out to use you. Remember that.”
Alice nodded, but narrowed her eyes slowly at the Vizier, who was staring angrily at the window, watching the two new women approach.
If everyone is out to use me, Alice wondered, a nagging thought creeping up in her mind for the first time in a while, why does the Vizier help me?
She looked into the magic window at her bear, her unicorn, and wondered where Galinda and Gloomly were. She kept that thought to herself, though.
“I’d like to speak to these strangers,” Queen Alice said.
“Your highness, I don’t know if that’s wise,” the Vizier said.
“If they mean us harm, we’ll throw them in the dungeon as well,” she said. “But I’m bored, and I’d like to see who they are.”
The Vizier watched her for just a few seconds as if to measure her seriousness. Seeing no room for argument, he bowed respectfully.
“Of course,” he said. “Guards, let the newcomers in. Her majesty would like to speak with them.”
Chapter 49: Bold decisiveness
“Okay,” Billy said. “The zombies I get. But what are those?”
Billy, Bedlam, and Galinda had found a spot on a garage roof a block away from the army of grossness making its way steadily through Westwick. They lay on one side of the garage’s slightly peaked roof and glanced over the top, trying to get a read on what they were up against. Billy counted dozens, possibly over a hundred, undead creatures shambling along, which he was grossed out by but not particularly shocked, having seen this King Tears character turn baristas into mindless monsters in New York. But the other things were beyond comprehension. They were twisted human bodies, sometimes multiple bodies fused together, nightmarish monsters who all wore the expression of people who were on a miserable morning commute.
“We’ve seen those other things before,” Bedlam said. “Titus and Kate and me. We found a massive one in that warehouse we investigated in the City.”
“Are they people?” Billy asked.
“They used to be,” Bedlam said. “The one we found begged for us to kill him. It. I don’t know. It was a bunch of people stuck together like a giant quilt.”
“They look like monsters,” the fairy said, her voice somehow sing-songy and not at the same time.
“Awesome,” Billy said. “Y’know, these zombies look deader than the ones we saw in Manhattan.”
“Is deader a word?” Bedlam asked.
“I don’t know. I think so,” Billy said. “Hang on.”
Hey Dude, Billy thought. Can our alien super-sensory powers tell us if those things are still alive?
It’s about time you learned how to do this for yourself, Dude said, and Billy felt his vision change. The world went gray for a split second, and then became infinitely more colorful as he could suddenly see details about the marching creatures invisible to the human eye. Their body temperatures were mapped out in color patterns. He spotted the flickering twitch of heartbeats in some, but not all.
Why have I never known how to do this until now? Billy said.
You only started asking about it recently.
How many powers do we have that I don’t know about yet? Billy thought.
We should have a long conversation when we get back, Dude said.
You’ve been holding out on me? Billy thought.
That’s an ungenerous way of phrasing it, Dude said. But I suppose I have.
“Great,” Billy sad.
“I assume you were talking to your alien,” Bedlam said. “Because otherwise your eyes just randomly started glowing and then you started having a very subtle seizure.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “I must’ve reached a new level and unlocked some abilities.”
“Which are?” Bedlam asked.
“The ones that look like zombies are zombies. They’re dead. The other ones are still alive.”
“I could have told you that,” Bedlam said.
“What?” Billy said.
Bedlam tapped her mechanical eye.
“I have imaging tech packed into this one,” Bedlam said. “I already checked. Some of the big ones have multiple heartbeats, but the rotting corpses are cold and inert.”
“Why did I not know you could do this?” Billy said.
“You don’t ask me about my cyborg capabilities very often,” Bedlam said.
“Sorry. I should be more curious.”
“Actually, I find it refreshing that you don’t want to talk about it,” Bedlam said. “It’s nice to pretend I’m not half-robot sometimes. Anyway. What’s the…”
Bedlam trailed off as another figure moved into view. A tall man, grayish skinned, covered in chalky white tattoos, accompanied by a young, blond man in an expensive suit that had seen better days.
“Who’s that guy?” Bedlam said.
“That’s our mark,” Billy said. “We ran into him in Manhattan. I was able to keep him from casting any major spells by hitting him with light blasts, but I’m pretty sure that’s a trick that will only work once.”
Bedlam’s face darkened.
“He’s the one who did that to all those people down there,” Bedlam said. “The one who was altering their bodies with magic.”
“I would assume so,” Billy said.
“We take him out, we win, right?” Bedlam said.
Billy shook his head.
“No, he’s after the magician kid too,” he said. “I mean, if we could take him out, that’s part of our problem solved, but we still have to deal with the other thing. Our problems are, y’know. Two-fold.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Bedlam said.
“I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but I think that’s not the wisest course of action,” Billy said. Bedlam stared to slide her way off the garage roof toward the back edge where the zombie horde couldn’t see her. Billy reluctantly followed. Galinda, shrugging, fluttered along beside him.
“I may not be much of a strategist, but you appear to be outnumbered,” the fairy said.
“The fairy has a point,” Billy said.
Bedlam clenched her fists. Billy could hear the pneumatic sounds of her cyborg fingers from several feet away.
“You didn’t see what he did to those people in the warehouse,” Bedlam said. “I thought I’d never see anything worse than what the Children did to me and to Valerie and to Caleb and the others, but this was… Billy, it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. This guy has to die. He can’t be allowed to keep doing this to people.”
“Am not disagreeing,” Billy said. He had the sudden self-conscious realization he was trying to rationalize with his cyborg girlfriend while dressed head to toe in spandex as a tiny fairy looked on curiously. This is what my life has led to, he thought. This is my reality.
The two of you are not sufficient to defeat that man, Dude said. If both Doc and Lady Grey are concerned about him, he must be on their level, if not greater.
Also not disagreeing with you either, Dude, Billy thought. But thanks for backing me up.
“We can’t let him keep going. We have a shot now,” Bedlam said. “He’s just a skinny dude in a suit.”
“And Doc looks like an adjunct college professor with a hippy streak,” Billy said. “Magicians are weird, Bedlam. Let’s get the whole team together and go all in on this one, yeah?”
“If we jump him now we have the element of surprise,” Bedlam said.
“Okay, so your bold decisiveness is one of the things I like the most about you, but I’m just going to go out on a limb and say a cyborg charging across a suburban lawn followed by a human glow stick will not have the element of surprise by the time we get close enough to hit him.”
The Indestructibles (Book 5): The Crimson Child Page 23