Cora: One moment, please!

She managed to extricate herself, finally, and still blushing like mad. She did not understand the heat that was rushing through her suddenly, and didn’t have time to analyze it. She’d spotted two more buckles on her guardian’s back, and quickly moved to turn him over so she could reach them.

At which point she misjudged the width of the bed, and accidentally flipped him off the bed and onto the floor.

* * *

Sam screamed. He was falling, falling, falling, the wind whipping past his ears, his stomach in his throat, panic ripping through his veins. Below him, far far below, he saw the ground approaching at speed.

“CORA!” He howled, his voice ripped away by the air and sounding thin and reedy to his own ears.

Sam: CORA! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?

A Horror dropped past him, screaming just as loud as he was, trying to shift into other forms to accomodate the new dreamscape. The one it chose was a large rock, that only accelerated its descent.

They have to choose based on the type of dream too, I guess, a small non-panicked corner of Sam’s mind thought. The rest simply resumed screaming.

Sam: Cora I said Flying! Not Falling! What the hell are you doing out there?

* * *

Cora: Sorry, sorry, one moment.

She dashed around to the other side of the bed, where her guardian was laying face-down on the floor. The two remaining buckles on the harness were clearly visible now, and she reached down to quickly undo them. The first one came undone easily, but the second one… Snagged.

She swore heatedly, a curse she’d learned from Sam himself, and tugged at the stubborn bit of metal and leather. Come on, come on… What was it snagged on? A bit of fabric, perhaps. A tiny piece of shirt caught in the mechanism. She growled as Sam screamed in her mind again, and bent down. She levered all her not-inconsiderable strength to the task, and pulled.

With a heavy ripping sound, the harness came free. And brought Sam’s shirt along with it.

* * *

Heavy music thump-thumped through the dark room as Sam, strutting around the stage, reached down and tore off his shirt to the sound of catcalls and whoops and applause. Most of which were female. He flexed and posed and grinned, and felt the applause wash over him.

Then his brain caught up with him. And the blush that followed went from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair.

He was not going to ask Cora about this one. Not in a million years.

* * *

There!

Once free of Sam’s body, the harness was actually quite simple to attach to herself and adjust for the differences in proportions and additional anatomical ((things)). She slid straps into buckles, tightened them, settled the circlet over her head and pulled the gauntlets onto her arms. THe monocle on the circlet flipped easily down over her left eye, and she watched impatiently as the boot-up sequence started.

Then, finally, it was complete. She moved through the various menus quickly, and found the Telekinesis ability. It seemed fairly intuitive. Knowing time was of the essence, she reached out, took hold of her friend’s body with her new power, and lifted.

Right into the ceiling.

* * *

Sam blasted through the roof of the strip club, still trailing his break-away pants and kicking at the crazy customer-Horror who was trying to bite his legs off. He howled as he shot up into the sky, then slammed into the invisible force-field almost a mile up. He felt a bone break—or at least that’s what it felt like—and felt the air whoosh out of his lungs.

Sam: … A little less force on the lift, please.

* * *

She concentrated as hard as she could and slowly, gently, brought Sam down from the ceiling to finally hang suspended in mid-air.

Cora: I’m sorry Sam. I’ve got you in the air now. Is it working?

Sam: Not quite. Maybe try moving me around a bit? Slowly, please. I’d really prefer not to wake up to a broken limb or three if I can help it.

Right. She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, using it to help focus her mind. Gently, she reached out with her power again and nudged her floating guardian. He moved a few inches, then a few more. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached out with more power and started gently guiding him around the room in one long circle.

It took a couple minutes, but she finally got to the point where she was confident she could keep it up without slamming her friend into anything immovable.

Cora: How’s that Sam?

Sam: Perfect.

* * *

He was flying.

Sam grinned like a shark as he felt the wind breeze through his hair and whip past his legs. His shirt was still gone—not sure why that was the case, but at least his pants were back—and the sky around him was blue and vibrant without a cloud in sight. He could see for miles.

Which meant there was nowhere for the Dreamwardens to hide.

He saw them in the near distance, large blocky forms struggling to shift into something that could fly. Around him, he saw Horrors coming at him from all directions. Some of them were the size of hunting hawks, others the size of gryphons. One, that must be either an Elite or a very high-level critter, was almost the size of a drake. They were having no trouble adjusting to this new dreamscape, as far as he could tell.

Good. That was exactly what he’d hoped would happen.

He stowed Thumb Bane in his inventory and reached instead for the bolt-thrower he’d ‘liberated’ from the minotaur what seemed like a lifetime ago. The heavy projectile weapon landed solidly in his hands, and ammo pouches materialized in bandoliers across his chest.

Man, if Rachel Stormbrook could see me now. The girl from his old school days had always had a thing for those action-star types. She’d be drooling over him, and no mistake.

The first Horror started to dive at him, this one some kind of gargoyle creature with a long wingspan. Sam racked a bolt into his weapon, turned over in the air, and fired once. The bolt-thrower bucked in his hand, and the long quarrel struck the gargoyle right in the mouth, blowing out the back of its head. The thing dropped like a stone, dissolving into that black mist before it even got out of sight.

“Alright then,” Sam said with a fierce grin. “Let’s do this.”

He sped off towards the nearest DreamWarden. The thing had managed to shift itself into something resembling a dragon, but without legs and with four pairs of wings. It was gold and long and slender, and saw him coming. It wove like a snake in the air and tried to speed away from him. It was fast, too, and manueverable. It might be able to keep away from Sam indefinitely, counting on the Horrors stooping down at him to take him out before he managed to catch it.

But the bolt-thrower changed the equation a bit. Even moreso because of one very specific part of its functionality.

Sam loaded a second bolt into the thrower, but not a standard bolt. This one had been used on him in the Red Room, and was designed not to kill but to catch. He took aim, fired, and watched as the harpoon and rope sped off towards the retreating dragon thing. It struck the critter right amid-ships, and suddenly Sam was shooting forward, towed by his foe.

His grin showed off every tooth in his head.

“Gotcha.”

Nathaniel: Don’t shoot the dragon, guys! He’s on our side!

* * *

Power and energy flowed into Nat from Quentin’s scale, and from there flowed out into the sky. He felt like his soul was being tossed to-and-fro on a torrential gale of electricity and heat. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The scale pulsed in his hand, pulsed in his head, pulsed in his soul.

And with a roar that shook the very foundations of the earth, Quentin-Of-The-Skies was reborn into the world.

“TRAITOR!” The ancient wyrm thundered his first word of his new life. “DECEIVER!” He spread his wings and snapped them once, delivering a thunderclap of wind and force that bowled over half of the creatures on the ground under him, including Nat. “I SHALL DESTROY THEE DOWN TO THY LAST PIECE!”

Oh great, he’s pissed off. Nat swallowed hard and forced himself back up, just in time to see Quentin spin in mid-air and unleash a torrential breath of fire down on a half-dozen minotaurs that had stupidly stopped in the breach to stare up at the newcomer to the battlefield. The flame incinerated them where they stood and caused the stone of the wall on either side of the breach to glow red-hot and slide moltenly down to the earth.

“Quentin!” Nat’s voice was a thin reedy thing compared to the great wyrm’s bellows, but somehow it made it up to the dragon. The great head snapped towards him, and those huge golden eyes narrowed for a split second before understanding and recognition flashed in them.

“Nathaniel,” Quentin’s voice softened, and the huge dragon flapped its wings to bring it down to the earth near the elf. “Thou art the one who rescued me from oblivion?”

“Uh, I guess?” Nat swallowed hard. Quentin in protective mode had been scary enough. Quentin in ‘murder the world’ mode was terrifying. “I mean, I had your scale, and somehow—“

“Thou art compassionate then,” the dragon dipped its head. “And thou hast my thanks…” Quentin trailed off, and a curious look came over that great scaled face.

“And it seems I am both free and bound in ways I did not expect. Thou art mine new liege, so the system tells me. Did thous intend this from the start, young elf?”

“What?” Nat stared. “I’m no one’s liege! I just… Look around, Quentin! We needed help, and I guess I hoped you would help us! These guys are gonna run over everything in front of them, and kill everything, and I’ve got family in town, and—“

“Gently, gently young elf,” the dragon said, and its tone had gone from deathly intent to quiet and understanding in the blink of an eye. “I did not truly believe thee to be so diabolical, but still the question needed asking.” The dragon lifted his head and squinted out at the battle still raging, and sucked in a thoughtful breath.

“It seems that my mistress has indeed sent her minions to destroy thee and thine. As it happens,” and the murder was back in his voice, “I hast an score to settle with that creature, and while I may not settle it with anything less than her lifeblood upon my teeth, decimating her stooges will adjust the balance of the books at least somewhat.”

“Uh… What?” Nat blinked.

“I have thy permission, good Quentin, to eradicate thy foes upon this field of combat?”

“Yes? Yes! Yeah, please! If you can, I mean.”

A dragon’s smile had far too many teeth in it for Quentin’s peace of mind.

“Oh, I can,” Quentin said quietly. “Believe me I can.”