No. No no no no no no No no no.

She watched in horror as everything began turning against her plans. The guardian, somehow, forging his own dreamscape into something her Dreamwardens couldn’t operate within. The Dragon, somehow returned from nothingness, visiting destruction upon her forces in the overland.

This could not be happening. This would not happen.

She reached out with all the power at her disposal, all her connections to the essence, all her might, and brought it down to bear on the dragon just as it incinerated another bunch of her minions. She had destroyed him once, him and all his kin. She could do so aga—

Error. Cannot find the creature indicated. Creature does not exist or you do not have the correct permissions to interact with Creature. Contact system administrator for further remedies.

No.

No no no No NO NO!

That was impossible! He was her minion! She should have access to every single piece of him, from powers to physical cells to his damned thoughts in his damned head! Why was she locked out like this?

Running diagnostic. . .

Exception Occurred in sector 3ssf5990: Guardian Protocols. Guardian Protocols engaged. Creature cannot be engaged as long as Guardian Protocols are active in its sector. File System is corrupt.

Recommended action: Physical deletion and restoration of corrupted creature.

Guardian protocols. That was the second time she had run into those words, the second time today that they had prevented her from doing what she wanted to do.

Search running: Guardian Protocols. . .

Description: Guardian Protocols. Trojan horse. System corruption. Set of protocols governing The Last and all of her Guardians. Designed to remove control of system elements from administrators and redirect them to third-party controllers.

A virus. No, worse, a hack. She’d had control of her very system wrested from her.

And she couldn’t get it back.

Fear shot through her then, icy and terrible. This ‘Guardian’, whoever he was, was powerful. Powerful enough to deny her own powers, to blunt the force of her offensive, to turn her own weapons back against her. Even as she watched, another Dreamwarden fell, pierced through by a weapon that shouldn’t have existed in a place that shouldn’t exist either.

Fear. Fear was new. She didn’t like it. It coursed down her processes and into her nerve center, where it cowered like a ball of terrified ice. She found herself backing away, away from this creature who wrested power from her without effort, who foiled her plans with simple grace.

What had she gotten herself into?

More minions died as she contemplated that question.

Finally, she had no other choice. She sounded the retreat. Flee, flee before this strange power and this unknown strength.

She was beyond her depth—which felt like it should have been impossible. And yet here was proof. Her forces slaughtered. Her power curbed. Her abilities nulled.

She needed a new approach. Something that could overcome the Tolliver’s advantages against her. Something that could blunt his strengths and overcome his allies.

Allies.

She paused then, considering the word, the idea, the thought, the plan.

Yes. Yes, that could work.

Her focus turned from the Tolliver then, abandoning her minions, letting them die for her. Her attention drifted elsewhere, seeking, searching, finding, considering. Was this wise? Could this work?

Yes.

But first, she needed assurances. She needed to be safe. She could not reach out unprepared.

She would not make that mistake again.

* * *

Nat let out a war-whoop of joy as he watched Quentin wheel in the sky and stoop down on a pack of hell-hounds in full retreat. The dog-like monstrosities turned as the dragon approached and breathed out lances of green fire. The great Wyrm’s wings tucked in close around him and he spun in a barrel-roll, deflecting the flame to the side, then the wings flew open and his own fire answered that of the hounds. A raging inferno descended from on-high, engulfing and incinerating the creatures like so much chaff in a furnace, and the wind of the wyrm’s passing scattered ashes in his wake.

Dear gods. Now Nat understood why men feared dragons. The old tales didn’t even come close to depicting their terrible majesty.

Bugruk(Commander-in-chair): Someone want to explain to me why we suddenly have an ancient wyrm putting the fear of god into our enemies out there?

Nathaniel: Uh, that’s my fault. Um, he’s on our side, at least?

Annie: I don’t give a rat’s ass who’s responsilbe, that beautiful fucker just saved all of our asses. Woo! Do you see that? He just took out a whole tribe of death-gnolls with his tail! Go get ‘em, scaley!

Quentin-Of-The-Skies: As I am now thine ally, it would behoove thee to tend a more cordial tongue when speaking of me, mistress Tolliver.

Nat stared, fascinated, as the defenders turned a retreat into a counter-attack almost on a dime. Bugruk shouted orders in the War channel, and the sixty or so survivors of the wall wheeled like a well-oiled machine and dashed back into the breach, following the paths cut for them by Quentin’s assault.

Gnomes and goblins worked in tandem with their saws and machines, cutting down stranded enemies in singles and groups. Annie and Jack formed a spearhead that absolutely eradicated anything that stood between them and their destination, which at this point seemed to be somewhere in the middle of the Western Sea. What would have been a suicidal charge only minutes ago now turned into a clean-up operation, taking down any of those enemies who had not fled before the wrath of the wyrm.

And then, just like that, silence fell. Dust and ash still rose In the distance, where Quentin continued to harry the retreating foe. But here, now, around Nat, everything was quiet save for the panting of defenders and the creaking of the stone wall.

And then, all around, the whoops and cheers of defenders realizing that they had survived what should not have been survivable.

And after a moment, Nat’s voice joined them.

* * *

Sam let out a roaring laugh as he surfed the sky behind the last fleeing Dreamwarden. This one was a six-winged dragon the length of Melloram’s main street, and it twisted and writhed through the sky like a great snake. But the harpoon stuck to its side would not come dislodged, and Sam reeled himself closer to the critter with every passing second. A few of the Horrors tried to dive-bomb him, but he was getting rather good at dodging out of their angle of attack, or swinging his boots at just the right moment to connect with their heads as they descended.

Cora: Sam, your parents are reporting that the enemies are retreating. It seems that Nat and his dragon companion were instrumental in turning a rout into a victory.

Sam: We do seem to get by on luck an awful lot, don’t we?

He laughed again and kept reeling in. As dreams went, this was actually a pretty fun one, despite everything trying to kill him. He’d have to see if there were any fliers in the spawn lists who’d be willing to tow him like this. Maybe he could make sky surfing a sport or something.

Cora: Sam, what happens if the dreamwardens move out of range or are killed by others?

Sam: Uh… Y’know, that’s a good question.

Come to think of it, what happened if he killed the last Dreamwarden in here? He was pretty sure that he’d just wake up, but now that he had it in front of him, he wasn’t completely--

Then suddenly he was falling, not in the sky, but in blackness. The dream disappeared around him, the rush of wind, the warmth of the sun… His bolt-thrower was gone. His harness too. His body, as he checked, seemed to have vanished right along with everything else. And he fell, deeper and deeper, until the blackness closed in.

* * *

Cora let out a sigh of relief as her friend’s breathing went from the fast in-and-out of a man pursuing violent action in his sleep to the deep deep lungfuls of one in untroubled slumber.

Good. Good, he was okay. Gently, so gently, she lowered his body back onto the infirmary bed. She stared at a couple of oozing red wounds on his bare torso, where something in his dreams must have slashed him. He’d been fighting almost since she’d known him. Even in his dreams, now, he fought. For his friends, for his family. For her.

He was a good man.

She blinked at the strange rush of warmth that coursed through her at that thought. What as this now? A side-effect of this form she’d chosen? She pulled up her own menu and re-read the racial description for anything about overheating due to exertion, but found nothing.

Perhaps the harness? Some cross-over of mana circuitry with her own unique makeup? It didn’t seem likely, but she supposed it might be possible.

Still, that was a problem for later. For now, she stripped off the harness and laid it on the chair beside Sam’s bed. It would be there for him when he awoke. She would let him sleep now, though she would also see to it that guards were placed on the infirmary, just in case. There were bounty hunters out there, after all, who would happily take advantage of his weakened state.

She moved away then to the aid kit at the nurse’s station. There were bandages and potions in the white chest, small cures for small wounds. She selected a roll of bandages and a pair of minor health potions, then returned to Sam’s side. She poured a few drops from the potion onto the bandage, then cut it with her belt knife and wrapped the whole thing several times around Sam’s arm, binding the first wound.

The second wound was on Sam’s chest, and would require her to wrap it around his torso several times. She glanced aside at the harness and considered putting it back on… But no, she shouldn’t, just in case it overheated again. Instead she got an arm under Sam’s shoulders and gently raised him up off the bed in a sitting position, then awkwardly started wrapping the bandage around his torso.

His bare flesh pressed against the metal of her arm. She felt his muscle and bone, plenty of the former and just the right amount of the latter, through the warm skin. Her fingers brushed against his chest as she wrapped him, and she gasped and jerked them back at the electric feeling.

What was this? She felt heat rising again, and now she was shocking herself? Was this some unforeseen effect of a Core going through Creation?

Was she a danger? Whatever was going on… Could it be contagious? Her eyes went to Sam, and fear replaced the warmth. Had she just infected her friend and guardian with some unknown plague?

No… No that made no sense. Surely a golem could not transfer a virus to a human. It went against all sense that their systems might be compatible in that way.

Unless, of course, it was the System that had transmitted it. She knew effects like Poison or Rage could affect almost any creature attached to the System.

Well. Too late to do anything about it now. He was only half-bandaged. She must get him fully bandaged, then she would find a healer and speak to them about it. Perhaps she would start with Pearl. Narrator fairies were supposed to be connected to vast repositories of information. Perhaps she would know what was going on.

Yes. That was an excellent idea. She bent to finish bandaging her friend, and tried to ignore the warmth as it bloomed once more in the pit of her belly and radiated outwards.