Before Annabelle went to sleep, she took a bit of time to practice with Starsight. In a network of dark caverns, the ability to identify targets without light could provide a major advantage. It was a good idea in theory, but Annabelle sensed a problem very quickly. Normally, Starsight penetrated all physical matter, but it did not penetrate the Demiplane walls. At least, at first.

Annabelle, out of curiosity more than anything else, tried to penetrate them by forcing her telekinetic power into a single point. She managed to get through the barrier, but then encountered an incomprehensible mass. She tried to make sense of it for a few seconds, before pulling out, confused but seemingly unharmed.

She was certain that she couldn’t go insane from trying to analyze non-Euclidean geometry. Firstly, human brains didn’t go insane from incomprehensible information, and secondly, her mind was especially prepared for such a hit.

However, it didn’t stop her subconscious mind from latching onto the concept to disrupt her dreams. Flashbacks to the Ascent Foundation's torture were nothing new, but they generally weren't accompanied by a multicolored maelstrom of energy closing in from all directions.

Normally, her nightmares were only ‘nightmares’ in a relative sense, given her lucid dreaming ability. In a dream, she was able to cut loose with her psychic abilities without spending any psychic energy, and give herself a multitude of abilities that she didn't have in reality. It was, under normal circumstances, her sandbox. Of course, the lack of physical rules made it ineffective for actual practicing, but it was at least entertainment.

But the maelstrom around her was something else. She tried to will it to dissipate, to no avail.

Annabelle blasted the maelstrom with a distortion beam, but it had little effect. She charged towards it, and it followed her movements, receding in front of her and contracting behind her. She could move around through this dreamscape, but her visibility was limited. And once the vortex reached her…

She picked up on an unusual presence in the dream world. Almost like something was invading it. She probably wouldn't lose a fight in her own mind, but with the weirdness happening right now, she wasn't so sure.

The maelstrom continued to close in until it seemed to be only ten meters away from her. In desperation, she unleashed a telekinetic nova centered on herself. It was successful at clearing away the maelstrom, and blew apart the Ascent Foundation facility in the process. It wasn’t exactly how she did it originally (namely, with her first-ever rending vortex), but it was close enough.

She saw the rest of the city around her, and noticed someone on a nearby roof. She thought she saw the glow of a psychic manifestation before they fled.

Annabelle chased after them. She launched herself into the air to get a better vantage point, and quickly spotted the individual. Her target looked back at her, and then kept running. They reached the edge of a rooftop and jumped to the next rooftop with a flash of purple, and Annabelle launched herself as well to pursue.

Annabelle got a close view of her target, who looked like a precise duplicate of her.

"Who are you?" Annabelle asked. "And what are you doing in my head?"

"I've always been a part of you, " the doppelganger responded. "But it wasn't until now that I had the chance to manifest."

"Not for long," Annabelle replied. She began focusing psychic energy, preparing a blast that would obliterate the doppelganger. It saw the purple glow around her, but didn't move.

"We're both different halves of the same brain, " it said. "You're the Alpha, I'm the Omega. You're the part that's active, while for the longest time, I was the observer, the invisible advisor."

"Enough talking." Annabelle released her attack, a distortion beam that would be powerful enough to obliterate her doppelganger. At least outside of a dream world.

But it had no effect, passing through her harmlessly.

"We both share the same ability to resist mental attack, and this world is entirely a mental construct. Thus, you cannot kill me. Well, maybe you could cut out the half of your brain that I inhabit, but I doubt you'd want to do that.”

If nothing else, that proved that she was dealing with herself. At worst, this was a case of multiple personality disorder.

"Why now?” Annabelle asked. “Why not manifest earlier?” If Annabelle found herself in the position of being a passenger in someone else's mind, she wouldn't expose herself like this without a reason. And given that this 'Omega' claimed to be a loose clone of her mind, it should follow the same rules.

"Two reasons, " Omega replied. "Firstly, you're up against a threat greater than anything you’ve encountered before. You’re going to need all the help you can get, and with me, you can double your capabilities."

"In what way?" Annabelle countered. A voice in her head doing backseat driving in the middle of combat wouldn't be an advantage, unless said voice was a tactical genius like ACP's Commander.

"With your permission, I can access the same well of power that you do, and utilize the same capabilities. At minimum, that would mean we would have the ability to control two enemies instead of one, or for you to focused on offense while I block incoming attacks.”

"Interesting proposal, but that requires a significant margin of trust." This Omega appeared to be a different version of her, but Annabelle wasn't sure how different.

"The second reason I am here is due to another threat in your mind. If you picked up on an external invader, it was them, not me."

"Them?"

"An unknown group claiming to be a rescue party from the Alien Combat Patrol."

Annabelle was a bit furious. "And you didn't deem it fit for me to deal with them directly?"

"You're immune to direct mental attacks, but you're not immune to manipulation and persuasion. I have heavy doubts about their true origins."

Annabelle glared at Omega, and she elaborated.

"There are a multitude of reasons why they shouldn't be here. Firstly, there's almost no way they know of this place. It's plausible for them to find some way to track the location you teleported to initially, but this is a hidden pocket dimension, the sort of thing they wouldn't have any conception of. Secondly, even if they knew where this was, this is about a week since our first arrival in Garnoth. ACP didn’t have FTL travel developed when we left Earth, and though their researchers are fast, I doubt they’re fast enough to develop it and put it on a ship in a week. And lastly, the Commander's just as much of a pragmatist as you are. Why would he spend this much resources rescuing one individual?"

"We don't know on the first two points, " Annabelle countered, even though Omega had a fair point. “and as for the third point, it’s plausible the Commander is facing some new threat that he needs my help to beat.”

"There is a very low probability-"

"How about you let me judge that," Annabelle said angrily. “I wish to deal with them myself."

"Fine. I'll let you decide. But do not ignore my warning."

The dreamscape advanced forward, until, in front of her, Annabelle saw an ACP dropship materialize out of thin air.

She also saw five alien battleships in the distance, the second threat in this dream. Once the aliens realized how dangerous she was, they sent their entire armada after her. At the time, a single vortex consumed almost all of her reserves, and she had nothing left that could take out a battleship. The only reason she survived was due to a series of genius plays by the Commander to get her to safety and protect her until they could eliminate the battleships.

Here, though, it was only a minor inconvenience. Omega stepped up to engage it, leaving Annabelle to make sure the alien vessels did not interfere.

The dropship landed, and a group of six stepped out. They were decked out in ACP's finest equipment from the end of the war, advanced powered armor and hybrid gauss/plasma weapons. It was just an illusion in the dream world, but whoever they truly were, they knew enough of Earth to replicate the tech.

"Finally, we were able to establish a connection, " the squad leader said. It wasn't anyone Annabelle recognized. "We were blocked several times, and we were worried the Shades had found us out."

"That was just one of my mind's defense systems, triggering a false positive," Annabelle admitted. Unless it wasn't a false positive...

"Ah, " the leader replied. "Now, as should be obvious, we're here to help you escape from this place."

"I'm more interested in destroying it, honestly." Annabelle said. "But I'll take escaping if it means I can come back with an army."

The squad leader seemed concerned. None of the others in the group had any reaction, and Annabelle began to suspect they were just abstractions, dream projections created by the leader to fit into this dream. Which wasn't that suspicious, given that the rescue team might only have one or two psions capable of reaching her.

"Are you aware of the scale of your opposition?" he replied. "Even ignoring their conventional weapons, assuming you can nullify them, there are several thousand Shades, led by a god."

"A god, you say? " Annabelle asked. "What do you know on them?"

"They're a league above all of us, above any mortal or collective of mortals. If one of them made an attack on Earth, we'd need a miracle to survive. On their home turf, the most we would be able to do would be to piss them off and get them to wipe us out."

Annabelle still doubted that, but there was wisdom in escaping from a disadvantageous situation.

"Fine. If we can't win the fight now, I'll accept a chance to retreat and build up to take them out later. Now, how exactly are you going to pull off a rescue?"

"That's the hard part. The lower reaches of their plane, where you are, are too unstable for us to portal into. We'll have to breach in the Shades' living area, and you'll have to get there for us to extract you."

"So you've figured out how to make portals, " Annabelle realized.

"Yes." He didn't elaborate further.

"Are you aware of the Shades' weaponry and technology? Or, well, magitek." Annabelle asked. "That armor's likely to be useless."

"Our anti-psi gear might work against them. But if that doesn't work, we'll settle for bringing overwhelming firepower and shredding everyone within a kilometer of our landing point."

The ACP representative's form began to flicker, and began to phase out. "I think I'm out of time. We'll be watching you. Find a way to get to the Shades' base, and we'll back you up."

As he phased out, Annabelle was left with a lot of questions, and not very many answers. How did they know about this place? About the Shades? And how did they figure out how to create portals, when Annabelle herself had barely made an uncontrolled jump?

But she would leave the existential questions for when she woke up. Right now, she joined Omega in the epic battle against the alien armada.

**********

When Annabelle awakened, she recalled the events of her dream. She was almost certain the message from ACP wasn't just her imagination.

You're correct on that respect. Omega, using what wasn't telepathy so much as being a second voice in her head. But the accuracy of it is in question.

Right. Now, for the sake of my sanity, would you mind staying quiet if it isn't something important?

Omega silenced herself, though Annabelle could still vaguely feel her presence. It was an unsettling feeling to share a mind, even if she was sharing her mind with herself.

She felt the pangs of hunger. Right, this place had a minor food crisis. She debated whether or not to eat for a short time, before deciding that having energy to function was important enough to be worth eating a disgusting slop for.

Darius fed her several spoonfuls of the strange substance, and with a bit of hesitation, she swallowed it quickly. It took a bit of willpower to keep it down, but willpower was the one thing she had in excess.

Then, she went over to Varos to finish prototyping the railgun.

Varos greeted her as she went into the testing area.

"You don't seem tired in the slightest, " Annabelle said. "Are you sure you didn't sleep through the night?"

"Shades, like other elves, don't need sleep." Varos replied. "I still have downtime, but much less than most other races.”

"So, that means you've finished the power core?"

Varos hesitated. "No. There was a complication."

"Last I checked all you were doing was investing energy into a power core that would be integrated into the weapon. Did you proceed further without instructions?”

"Yes. I thought-"

"If we all die because this weapon wasn't completed, we'll all be done for. I hope you realize how much of a mistake this was."

Why did Varos try to rush this process? He should've known it would go wrong.

Annabelle investigated the prototype railgun. The power core and the area around it was burned from the accident, but the barrel and frame were still intact. It looked like it could be salvaged, but Annabelle needed to make sure it would go right.

"Well, the good news is that it doesn't appear to be too much of a setback," Annabelle said. "And I think I might have an idea to get this weapon up faster. I can merge minds with you, combining my technical knowledge on the weapon design with your Artificer abilities. It will ensure that no further mistakes occur.”

Varos suddenly turned pale. "No. I am not going to-"

Annabelle sighed. "We need to do whatever it takes to win. A potential violation of privacy is far outweighed by what is at stake for us if we lose."

Varos had no answer.

"I'm sorry, but I see no other option." With that, Annabelle launched a mental assault against Varos, hoping to force the mind-merge. It was the fastest way to achieve victory.

She had used mind control on friendlies before, to get panicked or mind-controlled teammates back under control. Using it on an obstructionist ally was probably crossing some sort of line, but in the moment, it was a line that needed to be crossed. If everyone survived to complain about this, it would be worth it.

The stream of energy projected from Annabelle's head into Varos. Instead of the usual monochromatic purple, it was a double helix of purple and light blue.

Odd, apparently my psychic energy is blue. Omega interjected. Hey, I'm just helping.

I'm sure I could've handled this on my own, Annabelle sent back. Varos’ mental resistance surely wasn’t strong enough to require a two-pronged attack. He might put up a fight, but he probably didn't have anything exceptionally difficult to beat.

But as soon as Annabelle and Omega made contact, they realized that something else was in his mind.