Process 334-aa7b3 connected

Subject: Samuel James Tolliver

Dream Intrusions begun. . .

Dream Intrusion Protocol successful. Connections established

*Warning*! Guardian protocols active. Full control not achieved.

She glared furiously at a million different bits of information as they scrolled through her consciousness. Guardian protocols? What rubbish was this? Her control should be absolute. She was regaining more of herself as more processes connected, or were re-routed, or were simply located again. She was waking up. Her power was growing. So why could she not take full control of this insignificant flea’s dream state as she was supposed to be able to do?

Query: Guardian Protocols.

Running. . .

What?

The protocols were locked behind so many different levels of encryption that she would spend the next twenty centuries breaking through just the top-most layers. But even that wasn’t the worst part.

The encryption was targeting her. Specifically. Someone, somewhere, somewhen, had crafted this set of locks specifically to proof these Guardian things against her.

That was infuriating.

And… Troubling.

Well. No sense in crying over spilt milk. She could tackle that problem later. Right now, she had an enemy within her grasp. An enemy who had chosen, rather foolishly, to fall asleep while in range of her Dreamwardens. The link would be strong between them as long as those units stood on the battlefield. And they would stand for all time if she so desired it. None of the forces arrayed against her, these pitiful weak creatures, could hope to overcome the sheer amount of power she was sending down on them.

You should not have awakened me, Samuel James Tolliver, she thought with just the right blend of malicious glee. You should not have declared war on me. Now I will remove you from this world, and I will use your bones to divine my true purpose.

She turned away, then, content to allow the programs she had set up to harry Samuel James Tolliver in his sleep to their work. He would not wake while her Dreamwardens remained, and their dream-monsters might even slay him in his sleep. That would simplify much. Surely those he commanded would fall apart without his strange powers on their side—

Her attention jerked and sped to a single point as she felt familiar power being tapped. It was the Tolliver’s power, creation magic of the highest caliber, reaching into the Ether and conjuring full buildings and finished forms into the world.

It was also impossible. The Tolliver was unconscious. He could not be wielding that power. She was sure of it.

She chose one of her minions and projected a small sliver of her whole self into it. The power burned out its soul and left it a walking shambling husk, but the physical aspects remained. The creature had eyes to see and ears to hear, and was close enough to the Tolliver’s base to see what was happening.

And what she saw was walls.

* * *

Nat watched, speechless, as Jackson Tolliver drew up another section of stone wall, ten feet thick and twenty high, between the approaching army and Melloram. The thing looked like it could withstand the kick of an angry god, but was also obviously not finished. That task fell to several of the dozens of worker mobs milling about behind the big man.

They’d been at it for almost twenty minutes now, and the main sections of the wall were already complete. Every time Jack laid down a construction, a handful of mobs would rush forward, grab the tools and materials that had magically appeared, and started doing… something. It wasn’t construction like he’d known it, it went so much faster it was hard to understand what was going on, but the walls got built somehow in minutes rather than the months it would have taken them in a sane world.

Which he apparently no longer inhabited.

“It’s all a bit to get used to, isn’t it kiddo?” said a voice from behind him and below him. He turned to see a short buxom gobliness, grinning at him like she’d just told a dirty joke. Her black hair hung down almost to her ankles in a single long braid, and she had two… things standing on either side of her. They looked like someone had coated a tiger in spikes and molten lead and then given the resulting abomination far too many teeth in far too many places.

“Yeah miss Tilly,” said Nat, ducking his head to the short goblin woman. “I feel like I’m swimming three hundred feet above the ground trying to stay afloat on clouds and happy thoughts.”

Tilly had been the person Jack and Mrs. Tolliver had been talking about back in the dungeon, who they wanted to bring back for the upcoming fight. Now Nat understood why. Within seconds of appearing in the chamber, she’d conjured up a dozen of those buzz-saw elementals of hers and had sent most of them out on patrols. They’d encountered a couple enemy scouts here and there. Apparently to the scouts’ detriment.

“Ya get used to it,” she said, patting him on the thigh in a really-not-at-all reassuring way. “You did good against ol’ Boney back there, didn’t you?”

“You saw that?” Nat blinked. “I didn’t really think—“

“’Course I saw it. Apparently that’s how that other place works.” She snorted, then side-stepped smartly as a team of human mobs scurried past to the next wall segment Jackson was building. “I think we’ve all been watching the crap that’s been going on around here. Ain’t exactly the life we were hoping for when we signed up for Tolliver’s Dungeoneers, but damn if ain’t a sight more exciting than putting up two-by-fours in some rich jackhole’s dungeon.”

She paused for a second, planted her hands on her hips, and gave Nat the single most piercing stare he’d ever received from a woman. He squirmed under it, without knowing exactly why.

“Kid,” she said finally, tilting her head to the side, “Sammy gave you some of his power. You’d best start learning how to use it, instead of standing around with your thumb up your butt. We’re gonna need all hands on deck for the fight that’s coming our way.”

Nat swallowed hard but nodded. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to have to fight… But after what Cora had told them, it was clear he wasn’t going to have a choice. He could still remember the words she’d spoken just a bare twenty minutes ago.

“The foes coming down upon us appear to be a mixture of levels from five to fifty. They all seem to be spawned mobs, likely from wilderness spawn points. However, they move in concert, like a coordinated force rather than random mobs. It seems likely that the nebulous ‘other’ that Samuel has spoken of has finally gathered enough power to assault us directly.

“It is also likely that this is only the first wave of several such assaults. We should prepare for a seige.”

“I swear,” Tilly said, drawing Nat out of his ruminations. “You all should have brought my Buggy in sooner. There’s a man who knows how to prepare for a battlefield. Jack may know construction, and Annie might know how to kick ass, but no one knows planning like—“

“Your who?” Nat butted in, staring. “Who’s ‘Buggy’?”

Tilly’s smile turned soft and alarmingly warm. “Buggy. My Bugruk. Sweetest man in the world. It was so good to be able to hold him again, even if he did get half his legs tore off. Just means he’s closer to my size. Although,” she added with a lascivious wink, “We’re all the same height when we’re laying down, right?”

Nat frowned, then blinked his eyes open wide when the meaning of her statement came to him, and by gods he could feel the blush going all the way up to the tips of his ears.

Tilly laughed and slapped his thigh again. “You’re lots more fun than Sammy to tease, Natty. He doesn’t even blink anymore.” She stopped and eyed him soberly for a moment. “Hey. It’s okay kid. We’re gonna make it through this. You watch. With Buggy planning, Annie fighting, Jack building, and me hooping it up, there ain’t nothing out there gonna stand against us. You watch.”

Nat nodded slowly, then watched as Tilly sauntered—and boy there really wasn’t any other word for the goblin woman’s method of locomotion, was there—off towards the built sections of wall. Heavy stone steps led up to each section of the wall, allowing defenders easy access to the walkway up top. It was a formidable defense, anchored against God’s Thumb on the east and arching back against Melloram’s own walls in the west. It could have been a curtain wall for any of the strongest castles in the world.

And it hadn’t even taken half an hour to build.

Jack Tolliver must be having an absolute field day with Sam’s powers.

Slowly, Nat reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the glasses he’d taken from Sam. His friend had been sleeping, and no one else seemed willing to take them, so he’d nabbed them himself. He’d heard Sam talk about them a couple times, how they gave him all kinds of advantages in combat… And if he was going to fight—and it looked like he was going to have to fight, what with the forces coming in at them, then he was going to need all the help he could get.

He slipped them on, and the first thing he saw was a blinking message in his display telling him he had several achievements ready to be viewed. He blinked twice, and then reached up to tap the first one.

*Achievement Unlocked: Here Comes The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Congratulations, sparky, you’re a temporary Guardian. No that shouldn’t be possible. No we’re not sure how you did it. No, we’re not going to erase you from existence for doing it. Probably. Just go ahead and do your thing and hope that the powers that be don’t get too fixated on your presence here.

Or, y’know, bad things might happen.

Reward: We’re pretty sure becoming the second of what was supposed to be an exclusive class is reward enough. Don’t be greedy.

*Achievement Unlocked: OMG HAX!

You’ve used a skill or power that is not, has not, and never will be available to your chosen primary class. We don’t know how you done it, but you sure done it. You are the envy of every script-kiddie who ever took part in a DOS raid. Savor that feeling, greasy and scuzzy as it may be.

Reward: The system has assigned “Guardian Teleport” to you as a class skill in recognition of your leet haxor skills. Don’t try to get any more skills like this, we’re already patching the hole.

*Achievement Unlocked: Frozen In Amber

You have acquired a genetic sample of an extinct reptilian species.

Whatch’a gonna do with that, Mister Hammond? OwO

Reward: You saw the part about ‘genetic sample of an extinct reptilian species’, right?

Nat stared at that last one for a trio of heartbeats. Generic sample? Extinct reptilian species? What in the hell was this thing talking about? He didn’t have anything like—

He was suddenly conscious of the weight of Quentin’s scale in the pocket of his trousers. No, no it couldn’t be that. Quentin had only flown off a couple days ago. He’d said he had family, kin, other dragons that he knew. There was no way he was…

Nat pulled the scale out again. It glistened a dull red in the afternoon sunlight. It was solid and warm as if had just been shed from Quentin’s great form ten seconds ago instead of two days. It was also the only thing he could think of that that weird achievement thing could possibly be talking about.

Wait, hadn’t Sam said there was something baked into these glasses…? He paged through the menus and found the Identify spell in the third window he checked. Hesitantly, he clicked the icon and focused on the scale. The glasses warmed on his head, and time seemed to slow to a crawl as text sped across the display.

Name: Dragon Scale (Red.)

Type: Unique Ultra-rare

One-Of-A-Kind Item

This is a scale from the deceased Quentin-Of-The-Skies, the dullname of the great Wyrm of the Western Havens. It is said that he earned the ire of some unknown goddess, who turned all of her wrath upon him and every other red dragon in the world, unmaking them from existence in a fit of pique. What you hold is the last remaining vestige of what was once a proud, noble, and most notably living race of sky lizards. It’s probably worth a couple bucks to the right person.

No.

Nat stared at the description as time sped up. No, it couldn’t be. Okay, it wasn’t like he was friends with the dragon—the thing had come to declare war on Sam after all—But… But no, dammit, he had been friendly. He’d protected Nat from the lich. He’d said he wanted to come back and see him again, sometime. He’d complimented Nat. And now… He was gone? Just like that? Without even a chance to say goodbye or even know what the hell happened to him?

Pain prickled at his fingers, and he looked down to see that his knuckles had gone white with how hard he was squeezing the scale. So much so that the edges were actually cutting into his skin, drawing little pinpricks of blood here and there. With an effort he relaxed his grip, but did not release it.

“Alright guys, right this way! Step lively, hut-hut-hut! Everybody up the walls, and don’t fire until you see the eyes of their wights!”

Nat lifted his eyes from the scale. Everything was blurry. Hastily, he dashed water away from his eyes with the back of his hand. Yeah, that did the trick. And what he saw was at least three dozen fighter types armed with ranged weapons—crossbows were heavily in evidence—of a half-dozen different races, all following Pearl in from the town and dungeon. Some of them he recognized as mobs, but others were guardsmen from Melloram, or others he’d seen around town.

“Hi Nat!” Pearl flipped in the air and waved at him as she passed by. “Cora says the enemy guys are almost here, so we’re getting ready to shoot them. Want to come along?”

“Is it the lich?” Nat heard his own voice ask.

“Naw, his troops are still like a week away,” Pearl chirped happily. “No, we think these guys are coming from whoever sent Quentin to tell us she was gonna make war on us. Guess he wasn’t able to convince her not to after all, huh?”

Nat’s eyes closed and his breath sucked in hard through his nose. Quentin’s mistress. The ‘unknown goddess’ the scale’s description spoke of, surely.

“Hey.” He opened his eyes to see Pearl had fluttered closer and was looking at him curiously. “You okay Nat? You wanna come up on the wall with us and shoot at the bad guys? Annie says it’s gonna be lots of fun. But between you and me, she has kinda scary ideas of fun. And she can’t collate a document to save her life. But I guess no one’s perfect. Wanna come?”

Nat looked down at the scale again, and felt something heavy and solid settle into the pit of his stomach.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”

“Cool! Come on, I think we’ve got extra crossbows!”