In his Divine Vision Aman could see the true nature of what was happening. As the rituals progressed, the Dreamland swirled.

His technique penetrated the fog of obscurity and showed him the picture that was barred to ordinary men. He saw the souls of thousands resonate at once. He saw the souls rise like a smog from the crowd and merge with the Dreamland.

He saw the Dreamland solidify, turn more and more real.

The perpetual battle between the Devi and the Demon seemed to have sailed out of the realm of Fantasy and anchored itself in reality.

Their battle seemed more life-like… more real… more awe inspiring. More like a true battle between divine beings than a mere image of one.

Every clash fissured the landscape, every swing of a weapon rent the air.

As they fought, the world shattered around them and began to reform.

As the world took shape, Aman realized what it was that he was looking at.

The streets with nary a streetlamp out of place, the park, the pandal, even the heretofore unclear face of the goddess and the demon was solidifying into the mould of the Idols at the pandal.

Aman understood what was happening.

The concentration of so many thoughts and their agreement of what the Devi should look like, aided by the image provided by the idol had given her definition.

Their size had shrunk from the hundred metre behemoths that they had been before to one comparable to the more reasonably sized idol, but their power had congealed. Every strike and every clash shattering streets and destroying portions of the pandal in the Dreamland, only for the collective subconsciousness to repair it again.

But all this was not the source of Aman’s horror.

No.

The reason he was horrified, the reason his hands had gone clammy with sweat, the reason he was shivering from head to toe was the sight he had seen within the bunker.

***

Within the bunker, Raunak Bose sat completely naked at the centre of the room.

Surrounding him were the ten others who had entered the bunker with him. Five men, five women. All of them loyal to him to the last breath. Some soul sorcery and hallucinogenic drugs might have been involved in the process of earning their loyalty… but he was satisfied with the results.

They were the most talented people at soul cultivation he could get his hands on.

Today, they would finally be put to use, repaying the debt they had accrued to him due to the magnanimous resources he had poured into them.

They’d be paying off their debts with their lives.

“Start!” he said as he heard the first beat of the drums.

The men and women paired off into five couples and sat down surrounding him at the five corners of a pentagon.

The carpet that covered the floor of the room had been rolled back, and in the concrete floor, channels had been cut in the shape of a five-pointed star with each of the points connected by a line to form a pentagon.

Raunak Bose sat within the central pentagon formed by the intersecting lines of the star.

The ten people disrobed completely, revealing themselves to each other without a shred of compunction.

They each pulled out a large syringe filled with a pale-yellow liquid and un-hesitantly plunged the needles into the arteries of their arms. They pressed the plunger.

After all the liquid had flowed into their veins, they discarded the syringes and waited.

The onset was fast. Very soon, the first man to show symptoms, a strapping young lad of no more than twenty began to shiver and clutched his head. His partner, a woman even younger, with her genes maxed out soon succumbed to the effects of the drug.

Very soon, all ten of them were writhing about in pain. When they reached out for each other, it felt as if they had touched ice in the hottest of summers or a fire in the midst of sub-zero winters.

Soon, the moans of intercourse between man and woman rang out from five corners of the pentagram while Raunak Bose remained in quiet contemplation.

He was an arrogant man. He liked to believe that he was a visionary. A man who could see the universe when he looked up, rather than the mere clouds. He believed that there was more to the Dreamland than merely the imagination of billions of sentient minds.

He believed that the way the government was going about it – exploring the Dreamland – was wrong.

Why give up the home-game advantage of reality and explore the Dreamland? Why not bring dreams into reality?

To that end he had studied as many ancient and esoteric texts as he could get his hands on via his connections.

After several years of study, he had finally found hope in a transcribed copy of Prelati’s spellbook. The very same book that had inspired Gilles De Rais to murder thousands of infants to fuel his experiments into the art of demon summoning.

What was a demon? Wasn’t it just a being from the Dreamland?

What did possession entail? Wasn’t it just this entity taking over the soul of someone when the barriers of the Dreamland wore thin?

If he could summon and then subjugate a demon, wouldn't it mean a huge jump in his power level? Each being in the Dreamland, hell, the entire Dreamland was made up of souls after all. Absorbing a chunk would be much faster than self cultivation.

And, what if the demon retained its powers in the real world… wouldn't that mean any successful summoner could gain the mythical powers of demons and gods?

Raunak Bose was convinced. He would open the doors of the Dreamland. He would reopen the Grand Era of Myth and Magic. He would be praised as the man who took the entire human race one step forward. Of course, he would stand above them all.

From that day, he had worked tirelessly to put flesh on the bones of his plan. Combining European Witchcraft and the Indian art of Exorcism, he had developed a plan. Then worked tirelessly to put it into action.

The sounds of heavy breathing and slapping flesh filled the room as the occupants indulged in their drug-fuelled orgy. The smell of sex was thick in the air.

Drugs and sex… these were the two tools he had decided to use to rip apart the barrier between dreams and reality.

As soul cultivators with Tier 2 density souls, all of them gave off concentrated emissions of nano-photons when they let their soul’s seals loose. That would be the beacon for the entity they would summon. The psychotropic drug would further enhance their brain activity and thereby make the beacon shine brighter.

The sex would unlock their primal emotions and moods, increasing the intensity of the summon.

But the final detail… Raunak hadn’t told them…

They were already addicted to the drug and to get a fix, they didn’t mind having sex with each other… they were partners on ordinary days after all.

If their boss wanted to watch an orgy in a strange underground bunker, who were thy to deny him his fetishes? As long as they didn’t have to endure those horrifying withdrawal symptoms…. All was well with the world.

Just as one of the couples reached climax, moaning out their release, the other four who were on the brink were pushed over the edge as well.

In the centre of the pentagram, Bose opened his eyes slowly and dispassionately surveyed the scene, the five tangles of sweaty, flushed bodies. It was time. He pressed a button on a remote by his side.

*shink*

*shink*

*shink*

*shink*

*shink*

Five steel spikes rose up from the five corners of the pentagram and impaled the five couples.

The bunker was filled with screams.