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“Hey now, where’s Batman?” Ariel demands. “How could you skip the best hero in the history of fiction?”
“Forget him, he has no powers. Where is Neo?” Felix asks indignantly. “Dream world is close enough to the Matrix that—”
“It has to be a character I’m familiar with,” I reply.
“Batman is the best,” Ariel says.
“No, Neo is,” Felix retorts.
I open my mouth to shut them up when Maxwell shows up with an army larger than mine and Asha’s combined. He must’ve gathered his team elsewhere and teleported them all at once—a feat I’ll have to attempt someday.
“Maybe it’s for the best that we’re challenging Phobetor after all,” he says. “The situation all around the Cogniverse is dire. The Overtaken are attacking people at random now. Trillions are dying. Countless Cognizant fail to wake up from nightmares. On some worlds, even humans are—”
Kojo suddenly appears, and with him, yet another army.
All the Escapists have the infinity halos above their heads like Asha’s family did when I first met them, and some of their faces are identical to Asha’s dream constructs, which makes sense since she’s lived in that community most of her life.
“You came,” Asha exclaims, looking at them excitedly. “Thank you.”
“Your husband is persistent,” says an Escapist woman with noble features.
“That he is,” my sister confirms with a smile.
“What now?” I ask Maxwell.
He averts his gaze. “I’ll make it so that Phobetor and his minions appear.”
I frown. “What about the part where you sacrifice yourself to our enemy?”
“It will be temporary,” Maxwell says. “Once you win, I’ll be myself again.”
“If,” Felix mutters, and Ariel gives him a glare.
“We’ll make sure that we do.” I pat Felix’s robot suit on the back. “Now let’s delve into the nitty-gritty of our strategy.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Everyone’s mood seems to lift, so I must’ve said the right thing. Napoleon jauntily strides over, as do Asha, Kojo, Ariel, Felix, Rowan, the Council members from the different worlds, and a few leaders from the Escapist horde.
Maxwell gestures at a nearby chocolate mountain, and it melts away, replaced by a football-field-sized structure that looks like the biggest snow globe in history. Inside it is the familiar subdream sky that looks to be made from magma, with black water below it.
“Here is his army—at least as much of it as we experienced before he took us over,” Maxwell says and populates the subdream simulation with millions of monsters. Some are those I’ve encountered, but many are new to me, though just as horrific.
“The cavalry,” Napoleon says, nodding at the army of warthog-spider mounts and their tentacled naked mole rat riders. “And that’s air support.” He points at the cloud of skeletal turkey vultures and other flying abominations that fill the air between the sky and the ocean. “Lots of infantry.” He gestures at the various beasts, among which I recognize the monstrous versions of tardigrades, spiral worms, ants, nail-sword critters, and anglers.
“All formidable,” Maxwell says grimly. “Yet all of them combined don’t come close to the threat that is Phobetor.” He makes the dreaded figure appear behind the troops as everyone stares in horror. “If a dreamwalker gets beyond this point”—he draws a line halfway through the battlefield—“they risk becoming one of the Overtaken. From there, the closer to Phobetor, the higher the risk.”
Napoleon scratches his chin. “What are the capabilities of our troops?”
Maxwell points at the dream constructs. “They’re the weakest—merely extensions of the dreamwalker who created them.”
“Cannon fodder.” Napoleon’s eyes narrow. “Can you make more?”
In answer, countless more dream constructs show up, all a lot like Asha’s, which means it’s the work of the Escapists.
“What about me and the other dreamers?” Napoleon asks. “What are our capabilities?”
Asha tears her gaze away from Phobetor and faces Napoleon. “Unless you’re familiar with lucid dreaming techniques, your powers will roughly match those you have in the real world.”
“That’s if you don’t get on Phobetor’s radar,” Maxwell says. “If you do, you’ll die instantly—or be turned into an Overtaken, depending on his whim. Either way, you’ll be out of the battle.”
“You will wake up, though, if you die,” Asha chimes in before anyone panics. “Like from a nightmare.”
“Exactly,” Maxwell says. “Death here means rude awakening for anyone who isn’t a dreamwalker. But for us, it’s insanity—assuming we don’t turn into the Overtaken. Understand?”
Everyone solemnly nods.
“What about those?” Napoleon wrinkles his nose at Rowan’s masked zombies.
“Part of my power,” Rowan says. “I’m a necromancer.”
“Zombies.” Napoleon examines Rowan with keen interest. “Even better cannon fodder. Can we bolster their numbers too?”
The zombie army grows exponentially in an eyeblink.
Wow. Escapists are very good at this dreamwalking business. I’m glad they’re on our side.
Napoleon clears his throat. “I propose the following high-level plan: Break their ranks with cannon fodder, then hit their infantry with ours, while some portion of our dreamwalkers take care of their cavalry. The rest of the dreamwalkers take to the air.”
