Well that didn’t work.

Sam swam wildly through a rushing torrent as sharks and eels and things with too much body and too much teeth all nipped at him from various directions.

He was underwater, swimming and thrashing against the creatures trying to take a bite out of him. They were still the Horrors, a piece of his mind knew, shifted to meet the demands of the new environment.

Cora: Sam, you’re not waking up. I tried pouring water on you, but—

Sam: Gimme a minute, Cora. Kinda busy.

So, she’d dumped water on him. That explained a lot. He spun in place and lashed out with a booted foot, shattering the teeth of an electric eel that had been trying to chomp onto his calf. He used the momentum to flip upside down in the water and jabbed Thumb Bane straight into the nose of a hammer-head shark that had been getting too close. The critter let out a burbling squawk and fell back, bleeding.

Okay. So. Outside stimulus changes the dreamscape. That was handy to know—even if he couldn’t think of a way to exploit that right off the top of his head.

Quickly, he relayed to Cora what had happened. Fortunately, thank you dreams, he could still breathe underwater. Apparently drowning in dreams was something that wasn’t as easy to have happen when you were aware of what was going on. Or maybe it was just crazy dream-logic.

Okay Sammy-boy. Think.

The ocean was wide and featureless in all directions. He could see maybe twenty feet away wherever he looked, which was a true pain in the butt while he was trying to track down these Dreamwarden things. And he wasn’t doing all that good at fighting in here, either. His hammer was perhaps the worst weapon in the world for fighting under water.

Which meant he had to get out of here.

A shark swam up and chomped down on his forearm. There was no pain, not like he’d have felt in the real world, but there was a strange cold deadening sensation. He saw blood flow up from the wound, but it was darker than it should have been, and swirled strangely in the water. He responded by reaching forward, digging the fingers of his free hand into the shark’s gills, and ripping. The shark screamed and released his arm, flailing and twisting madly.

And then it died, dissolving into black mist that muddied up the water before fading away.

Sam blinked at that. His attack on the shark shouldn’t have been fatal, not just from that injury. At least, not if the injury was what had killed it.

But it wasn’t, was it? He had torn out the creature’s gills. He’d prevented it from breathing. It had drowned, hadn’t it?

Well now, isn’t that interesting.

Sam was not bound by logic in his dreams, that was clear enough. Elsewise he would have drowned a good ten minutes ago. But the shark had been bound by the logic of this place. Which suggested that there were rules the Horrors had to abide by. Perhaps they couldn’t side-step the logic of whatever dreamscape they ended up in like he could.

Could he work with that somehow?

If he could manipulate the dreamscape into something more advantageous to him… The Horrors would have to take on shapes that could exist where they wound up. But more than that, he needed a way to find those damn Dreamwarden things easily. They were his target. Take them down, and he could get out of here. Maybe even help out his friends. From the messages on the War channel, things were getting pretty dicey out there.

A manta-ray stabbed at him with its long tail. He pivoted in mid-water, grabbed it with his free hand, yanked it close, and bit down hard on its membranous ‘wing’. The thing squealed as Sam’s mouth filled with brackish blood, and he tore a chunk of flesh out, spitting it out and flinging the thing away where it struggled away from him, squealing and shrieking and fighting against the current. The damaged wing barely allowed it to manuever, and—

And Sam stopped and blinked.

Well now. There was an idea.

* * *

Sam: Cora, I need you to get me into the air.

Cora blinked, staring at her dripping uncoscious friend.

Cora: What?

Sam: Into the air! I need to float, and maybe get some feathers too. Oh, and maybe a breeze. Anything to make it feel like I’m flying. Hurry!

Had her guardian finally gone insane? It sounded like an insane request. But then again, he was fighting against horrors that could change shape within his dreams. And he’d had wild plans before that had borne unexpected fruit. Perhaps this was one of them. But how in the world was she supposed to make him fly?

Magic, obviously, was the first guess. Perhaps one of the healers had a levitation spell. Sam had built a couple of mage-spawn rooms, but most if not all of those mobs were out on the wall defending against the incursion from Sam’s mysterious Other, so she could not in good conscience call upon them to aid her in this. But it was also unlikely that any of the healer classes could do anything, and anyway most of them were off on the wall too. Ropes? Could she fashion a crude system of pullys and—

Her golden eyes settled on his harness, still active and twinkling in the quiet light of the mana lamps. And the wheels in her mind started turning. How many times had she seen her guardian fling enemies around with the powers granted by that bit of construction equipment? How many times had he himself seemed to fly utilizing its telekinetic abilities?

And if he could do that, why not her?

She nodded once to herself and moved forward purposefully. Yes. That was exactly what she could do. She would remove the harness, wear it herself, and use its telekinesis power to simulate flight for her guardian. Whyever he might need her to do it.

She strode forward and reached for the harness buckles.

* * *

Sam swam into the school of pirannha and used his Attractive Force power to fuse the water around them into a solid block, then used his telekinesis power to compress that block until the water was less ‘water’ and more ‘sludge’. Hey, this wasn’t too bad once you got the hang of it. He wondered, almost idly, if he was getting essence for this, or if things killed in dreams didn’t count towards that in the real world.

He was going to be quite annoyed if that turned out to be the case.

Something shifted. He felt himself turn, and was suddenly falling. The ocean disappeared, to be replaced by a landscape that roiled and jumped wildly around him. He landed on his boots, then almost instantly lost his balance and wound up on his ass. The ground heaved and shook like it was trying to buck him into orbit, and looked like it might have a chance at that.

Sam: Cora! What are you doing out there?

The Horrors that came for him then seemed to be having trouble with the dreamscape as well. At first they came at him on all fours, but two of them were bucked right into each other by the heaving landscape. Then they tried flying, but a hill grew up right in front of them and Sam almost laughed as they plowed straight into the side of it.

Interesting. They don’t have perfect understanding of their surroundings either. That was also good to know.

Cora: I have a plan. I will use your harness to make you fly. But first I must remove it from your body.

Sam: Hurry please. This is starting to make my stomach hurt.

* * *

Cora blinked at her Guardian’s last message, then shook her head and bent back to her task. Why were there so many buckles on this thing? And why did they straps criss-cross so much? It was like trying to wrestle a nest of snakes that gotten into the glue drawer and attached themselves to a vagrant. Her long fingers moved as quickly as they could, unlatching, unbuckling, tugging the straps away.

Sam rolled suddenly, perhaps trying unconsciously to escape the strange motions, just as her fingers were trying to undo the last buckle she could see. The straps tightened around her fingers, and she squawked as she was pulled off balance and tumbled on top of him. Her metallic body pressed against his in a most awkward way, and she felt her cheeks heating up as she felt his muscles shift against her and his skin pressed against hers.

“This is most unseemly,” she muttered and tried to push herself up off of him.

* * *

Sam squawked as the harem girl slammed hard up against him, her knife seeking his ribs. What the hell? Why was he in a sultan’s harem chambers? How in the hell had Cora managed to instill this in his dreamscape?

The silks and fabrics around him flowed up and tried to trap and strangle him. He growled and pushed off with his telekinesis, flinging himself up and grabbing onto the chandelier. That, at least, didn’t seem like it was trying to kill him. Beneath him, the Horrors shifted and changed to blend into the new dreamscape. Gauze factored heavily into their design. As did breasts. But dear god in heaven he didn’t need to see that. Not with those faces, filled with teeth and eyes and a tentacle here and there.

I’m gonna have nightmares about this for a week.

Sam: Cora! What the heck are you doing out there?