Chapter 631: Drastic Dreams
Mason stood in burning grass and smelled smoke and demons. He was on a massive hill with a sharp crest, the ground somehow wrong. He turned and looked out over the great forest on one side, the so called ‘Green Sea’ plains of the centaur on the other. Everything was in flames.
He was dreaming. He instantly knew that. But his heart still pounded with panic. Was it a druid dream, or just a normal one? Maybe there wasn’t any difference anymore.
Above him he saw something like a split screen TV with a hundred images of what he recognized as different planes. He saw Cerebus in his swamp—eating and drinking and rutting with his nymphs, paying no attention at all.
Gaia was in her younger form, running naked through some trees, black hair whipping in the wind, creating life everywhere she went. She was so lost in the woods she couldn’t see the flames burning on the other side, her attention not wide enough.
Every other image showed some god focused on their own affairs. Scheming. Warring. Building some doomed structure like Ozymandius from that poem.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
The gods were myopic. Self-absorbed. Squabbling in their nonsense games while the world burned. They couldn’t help him, and maybe wouldn’t if they could.
Above all he saw a light growing in power. Coming closer. Too bright to look at clearly, too strong to stop.
The Doom, he knew without needing to see.
When he looked down there was a giant demon rising above the rest, its lower half just a pool of blood and swirling mist that consumed trees like they were nothing. Its upper half was the stuff of nightmares—a Satanic image plucked from the mind of some early Christian.
Beelzebub. The Dragon. Adversary of God. Mason heard the names of the devil itself, again looking up at the sky. Light bearer.
It wasn’t the real Satan, maybe, but it might as well have been. The demon’s face was somewhere between a snake or a dragon, with bloody spikes or horns all over its skull. It carried a massive scythe and flail in its two, ape-like arms. Snakes writhed all over its naked, dead-looking human torso like a Medusa’s hair.
It moved in slow motion to Mason’s eyes, that flail turning in circles, the only sound he could hear the air as it spun. It turned and looked straight at him with black, void-like eyes.
There was nothing in them. Not joy or anger or hatred. Nothing. As if destroying his planet would be no different than any other day.
Poison their soil, it hissed with a hundred voices. Devour their flesh. Burn them all.
Portals started opening everywhere. Some infernal, some abyssal, but there were others, too. Elementals and strange looking humanoids in dark robes started coming out in a constant stream.
Mason turned looking for his friends, for allies of any kind. He saw nothing. Only when he spun completely did he finally see his brother standing near the bottom of the hill, an army of greenskins behind him. Blake looked up at him and shook his head, then he and his army turned away.
Mason knew in that moment he was alone. Outnumbered against impossible odds in the critical moment. Where were Carl, Phuong, Demi, Becky? Streak? He felt abandoned right when he needed them. There wasn’t a single other living creature in sight.
Don’t you see I’m protecting you? He wanted to shout. You can’t hide. We have to stop it!
No, hissed the snake-like god with a reverberating rattle. Lay down. Life is the lie. Who are you to survive when all others have failed? Pompous. Proud. Die now, doomed dog of the primal plane. We are your end.
The pool of blood and mist at the creature’s base was swallowing everything, growing and spreading out as it consumed the trees. Demons were running inside it, too, swelling as if it grew them in power.
Unlike their stoic lord, these cackled with glee as the world burned. He could feel their hatred. The resentment. The way the truly miserable hated happiness, or ugliness despised beauty. That was how these dead things hated life.
And he knew he couldn’t stop it all alone. He felt a hopelessness shiver through him. Why was he even fighting when the others wouldn’t fight for themselves? He thought of what he’d said once in the Neutral Zone. That he was the gargoyle men built on churches. As if he might frighten evil away. It felt pitiful in the face of this terror.
This ‘Doom’ wasn’t afraid of him. To think it would be seemed almost funny. All he had left in that awful moment was the other truth—repeated in different ways by different people. That he was a fighter. A sheep dog. Just an idiot too stubborn to lay down and die.
He summoned his Claws and breathed, picking his target on the giant demon. He’d find its heart, or its brain. Dig into that big body and see if it could stop him. You didn’t know until you tried.
If this was a druid dream, as he expected it was, he didn’t know why the others weren’t there. Maybe they’d died already in hard fighting. Maybe they were somewhere else—defending Nassau and waiting on his orders. Maybe they were afraid.
Had Blake turned away because he was angry? Had he joined the gods of destruction to rule over the ashes? Maybe he’d just given up.
It didn’t matter. Mason never would. He’d protect whoever was still alive, even if they failed him. Even if they failed themselves.
He jumped and soared from his high elevation, hearing flapping before he realized it was own wings. The demons howled in terror and rage when they saw him, filling the air with arrows and spells like flak. It wouldn’t stop him.
He swept through the sky at incredible speed, all the worry gone now as he committed—as his purpose became clear. The giant demon turned as if waiting, a hundred projectiles spit from those snakes, spells flashing as if from as many creatures lodged in the thing’s body.
Mason flew through it all, straight at his target, ready to strike, ready to die.
He woke in a cold sweat, lying in three huge beds pushed together, in a tangle of beautiful flesh. The women of his harem were everywhere sleeping and mostly naked, a few discarded robes or pieces of underwear strewn about the sheets or floor.
After the pool, they’d gone back to the bedroom and he’d taken turns with most of them in another round. It had been an amazing night, just as it had been an amazing day. A tiny glimpse, perhaps, into a victorious future.
But he buried the memories until he could afford them. Only Demi was awake. She met his gaze with a frown, looking up from her cushion of Becky’s toned stomach. She held out her hand, and he took it and squeezed.
“Come,” she whispered. “It’s still early. Sleep some more with us. We can get breakfast in bed.”
He smiled because they both knew he’d say no. He’d earned a day, and being with his women was pretty much all he could want long term. But the dream filled him with a renewed sense of urgency. His enemy wasn’t resting. He was coming closer every second to destroy everything that mattered.
“Enjoy it. I’ll see you later.” He stepped out from the pile of girls and hopped to the floor. He summoned his vestments, mind turned to the external holdings of the emperor. To the Nexus. To every scattered pocket of remaining humans. To the non-humans. To the Crucible and how many civilians he might be able to turn into players, and how many would die in the attempt.
Was it wisdom to ask them all to try? And if they wouldn’t, to save mankind, would he force every civilian he could down into the crucible, knowing half wouldn’t come out?
Fifty per cent casualties was better than a hundred.
His players might abandon him if he tried it. Maybe he was alone in his dream because he asked too much, had somehow turned into some new version of Jeong, or became a prophet of doom they’d rather just ignore.
Somehow he had to bring them with him. To make them understand the urgency, to unite the world, even if for a moment, to resist its own destruction.
Not for the first time, he wondered how the hell this shit had happened to him.
“Can I assist you, lord?”
Mason turned to find his seneschal waiting outside his room on a small chair, reading a book. He looked like he’d been up for hours, but it wasn’t more than five or six in the morning.
“Don’t you sleep, Rahman?”
“Rarely and lightly, sir. My class decreases the need.”
Mason grinned, and the door opened behind him. Haley stepped out with a tablet in comfortable looking pajamas and slippers, her long hair tied back.
“So?” she said with a yawn. “Who are we waking?”
He looked between the civilians, and if he was honest, they’d made him feel a lot better. He was still shaking off the remnants of the dream. The feeling of being alone. But it was just a dream.
He had people who loved him, who believed in him, and people who’d follow him to hell. That was good, because he was afraid they might have to.
“Everyone,” he said, walking towards the meeting room. “And better warn them. It’s gonna be a very long day.”