Tenthé emerged from the doors that led to the ramp just in time to see the last of the army march past. The path the soldiers usually took from the fort to the front gate had to go past the City Center because that was where the widest streets were. Tenthé fell in behind

As usual, once they reached the plaza, the army deployed into formation and waited there until the preamble finished. Tenthé noted that the speeches were that same as last time, and wondered why the leadership felt their words actually made a difference.

In any case, the soldiers yelled and applauded on cue. Tenthé felt pity for them, but if things went to plan, they wouldn’t have to endure this ever again. Eventually, the yelling ended, the soldiers turned, the gate swung open, and the army deployed to the other side. Somehow, Tenthé managed to stay behind.

A small contingent of gate Magisters remaining in the plaza. They moved into the shade of the wall, sat on chairs set out for their use, and were shortly served drinks by one of the vendors.

Tenthé had no intention to assault the gates directly, or even the Magisters. There was no real need, since the idea was to fool the system.

Tenthé’s examination of the gates had revealed a default mode: if enough went wrong, they would slam shut. It made sense. If someone attacked the gates, it would be a problem if they became stuck open.

Once Tenthé decided that the Magisters had everything set up, he wandered around until he found a penny, bought a drink, and retired into a little bit of shade. The Mentor and he had agreed that, although he was an incredibly strong magic worker, his real genius was chaos and confusion. So, that was what he would do.

Quietly, he sent out spells to attack the communication channels between the wards and the nodes controlled by the Magisters. The sabotage spells were based on his magic eating ability; once the system found it couldn’t communicate, it should go into default, which was to close the gates.

It was a warm day. Tenthé had to walk around a few times to find more pennies so he could get more to drink. While he was doing that, the Magisters’ discussion had died down and a few of them were now fast asleep.

Eventually, Tenthé was ready and he started things off. He checked that the spells he had cast were chugging along, altering the messages enough so that the system was beginning to realize something was amiss. As expected, it was attempting to re-routing signals to regain the information and command channels.

To deal with this, Tenthé deployed another round of counter-spells. Eventually, the system felt things were too wrong and decided to close the gates.

This was the point where the Magisters realized something was going on. Tenthé had isolated them from the control channels and by the time they could actually see things weren’t working correctly, nearly nothing of the infrastructure remained.

Tenthé watched the Magisters scrambling, awakening their sleeping compatriots, and yelling at each other. They cast spells to try and re-establish control while the gates swung inexorably closed.

Someone was a bit more alert than usual. A couple of soldiers were running toward the Magisters, and one of them put up a shield to protect them. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late. The second part of Tenthé’s attack exploded into action and the Magisters were surrounded by a swarm of offensive spells. Explosions, beams, fireballs, slicers, shearers, and a myriad of other attacks, detonated in their midst. Not one Magister was prepared and, sadly, none of them survived.

The remaining soldiers were aggressively looking for the source, but neither thought to investigate the lone Runner standing in the shade. Tenthé continued his work, destroying all the controls as far as he could sense, making it nearly impossible to re-establish the control network the short time they would have. As the gate finally shut all the way, Tenthé made a spark fly through the hinges of the gate, fusing everything together. The wards went crazy, but there wasn’t anything to attack, nor were there any paths left for them to report their findings.

One of the soldiers ran over to him and for a moment Tenthé expected that he was going to have to do something, but the soldier yelled, “You! Run to the fort and let them know what has happened here! Go! Now!” He then turned back to the chaos, although Tenthé had no idea what he expected to accomplish. Since this worked in his favor, he jogged off. The soldier was so distracted that he didn’t notice Tenthé going in a direction that was nowhere near the quickest way to the fort.

Tenthé’s parting check showed the wards flowing mindlessly through the walls. There was probably a backup somewhere, probably in the fort, but for now, the gates were firmly closed.

Sure, the Dreamer, or maybe the Turtle, could step in and fix the problem, but that would take time, so, for now, the bulk of the army was stuck outside.

Tenthé ran up the main road to the City Center, then, instead of heading going toward the fort, he ran across the park and onto the square outside the temple. Here he slowed down to a walk, threading his way through the ever-present crowd.

All of a sudden, everything disappeared into flame. As his shields were being stripped away, Tenthé quickly lightened himself and rocketed skyward. Still climbing, he looked down to witness one of the Hells manifested on earth; the whole square was filled with roaring streams of fire. Certainly, none of the pedestrians had survived. At best, they were accompanying him skyward as streams of glowing soot.

As the City shrank below, he finally reached a point where the flames were tame enough that his shields were able to handle the heat. That fire had to have been incredibly overpowered to have done so much damage!

Tenthé rebuilt his shields, noting that nothing he had in his backup shields would have worked any better than what he had been using. That was a bit upsetting. He’d have to work on a counter for that attack, when he had more time.

At the moment, it didn’t look like the fire was much of an issue, as he was still heading skyward. In fact, as he looked around, he could see Angel City as a tiny blot near the horizon, and, in other directions, he could see some of the other Cities.

Still rising, it started to get dark and the stars appeared. One grew near and as he shot by, he got his first chance to see it in detail. It was a very strange thing, quite large, with many sets of glowing wings placed around its body. He tried to make out the face, but it was unreal, with many rows of eyes and other things. In the short time he had as he streaked past, he found he couldn’t really understand what he was looking at. Stars were weird.

But, using the star as a reference, he could tell that he was slowing, until he stopped and began falling. He got another look at it as he went by in the other direction, but found that he still couldn’t understand what he was seeing. It had to be something so different that his tiny human brain just couldn’t handle it. As he descended, Tenthé lightened himself even more so the air he was passing through would keep him at a slow enough speed that he would have time to look at what he was falling back into.

About now, he wished he had some ability to be able to generate a wind or something. He snickered, like any boy, he had honed his ability to break wind, but that probably wasn’t going to help him here.

It would be nice to have some sort of control before he fell back into range of whatever had attacked him. He was sure it hadn’t been a random event. What spells did he use that could push him around? Certainly, he could use his strength, but he needed something to push against. He could throw rocks really hard, but probably not hard enough to move him very much, even when he was light.

He tried that a few times, but ended up setting himself spinning more than anything else.

He had to come up with something, and soon! Below him, the red of the square was growing. And, beside the square, was a huge figure floating above the temple. Even at this height, he could kind of make out a face looking up at him.

Force lances and fireballs didn’t do anything to change his direction. He tried a wind, but all it did was move him a little. It wouldn’t be enough in a fight.

Out of desperation, he cast a shear just below his feet. The result was like being hit by a carriage, oddly enough, something he had some experience with. Instantly, he was traveling sideways, which was good because a massive bolt of lightning flashed through the space he had just occupied.

Quickly, Tenthé cast a heal on himself to repair his innards that had ruptured in the shear, then placed an internal shield to more or less hold his guts in place. Not perfect, but better than nothing. He cast another shear and hurtled off in a new direction.

Soon he and the figure below were playing a game of dodge the lightning bolts. With him doing the dodging. Tenthé kept expecting his opponent to run out of power, because it took a lot to make a lightning bolt. But, the rate never decreased! Whoever it was either had nearly infinite power, or was tapped into something that gave him a massive amount of energy. In either case, it was inevitable that he would be hit at some point. He might survive, but certainly not a second one. Those were big bolts!

He had to give the other something to think about. To that end, he released a dusting of sparks. That should cause some issues.

Now that he was low enough, he could see that the face looking at him was the Dreamer’s, but way huger. The giant Dreamer wasn’t careening around the sky like an idiot; it looked like he knew how to fly like you were supposed to. Not a talent Tenthé currently had.

Since the sparks drifted down slowly, Tenthé added some force bolts. They hit the Dreamer, but he just took it, not reacting at all. Tenthé tried some other things, fireballs, lightning, projectiles, and heat rays, but the Dreamer shrugged them off and laughed at the results of his puny attacks.

After his laugh, the Dreamer drew a breath. It was obviously speech time.

“Well, my little man,” the Dreamer’s voice boomed up. “And I do mean little. It looks like my greeting didn’t finish you, but still, you aren’t in a very good position.”

He seemed to be having trouble tracking as Tenthé jinked back and forth across the sky.

“Stay still, you little bug! It’s quite annoying watching you jolt across the sky. Just give up and accept your fate! I’ve given myself everything! You have no chance of surviving!”

Tenthé doubted that claim. The Dreamer’d never been anywhere except here, so he probably didn’t know any magic except what was practiced in the City. Unfortunately, it might be enough, since he seemed to have nearly infinite power. The rules for the City said the power had to come from somewhere, but however he did it, he had a lot. Ordinary magic backed by infinite power would be enough to win, in most cases.

Tenthé, though, had a lot of power too. The thing was that it certainly wasn’t infinite, and his war had just started.

At that moment, the Dreamer started screaming. He hadn’t even tried to dodge the sparks and now they were landing on him and burning right through. Unfortunately, all they seemed to do was hurt. The Dreamer didn’t act like he was injured as he figured out what was going on and began dodging. Tenthé did his best to jolt his way to somewhere with some cover where he could get out of the Dreamers immediate view.

It was kind of interesting that the people in the City thought the wall between the new and old temples was the outer wall, even though it didn’t make sense if you compared the outside to the inside. Probably something the Dreamer had done, but Tenthé didn’t really care. In any case, this wall was not as robustly defended as the outer ones. And, since he wasn’t trying to be sneaky, he ate the magic from the wards in a small section, then barreled through. The wall and wards reformed behind him.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The Dreamer didn’t even have to do that, the wall shrank as he got near, allowing him to straddling it and step over.

Although the fight had just started, Tenthé had already noted a few important facts. For instance, the Dreamer couldn’t move very fast, being as huge as he was. And another was that although he certainly hadn’t planned it, the way Tenthé was using shear had its own advantage. It was extremely random and made it hard for the Dreamer to know where Tenthé would be next. Which, to be honest, was the same for Tenthé.

Tenthé let the sparks continue their fall but redirected most of them to end up on the temple over the Dreamer’s rooms. There was some chance the monster Dreamer was an avatar, and if a spark hit the real Dreamer, then the battle might be over.

His gut feeling, though, was that what he saw here was the real Dreamer. Tenthé had the impression that the Dreamer wanted to get hands dirty. One good thing about that was he wasn’t experienced enough to know how stupid it was to lead from the front. Which, to be honest, was exactly what Tenthé was doing, too.

Just then a lightning bolt shot by so close that he could have reached out and touched it. He fired off another shear and the two phenomena combined to send him in even a more random direction, which was straight down. He cratered.

The Dreamer took the opportunity to rain lightning down on Tenthé. Fortunately, the Dreamer didn’t seem to know anything about lightning and it hit on all the high points around where Tenthé lay, which was, well, in a crater.

By the time the Dreamer figured things out and started using force bolts, Tenthé was gone. He’d plane walked, then gone into stealth. He had just enough time to shear himself into the air before a massive wall of energy washed past, allowing the Dreamer to find him again. Immediately after, the Dreamer resumed firing lightning at him. Lightning was nasty, it spanned most of the planes, so all Tenthé could do was stay out of its way and hope his shields would hold up if he got hit.

Behind him, the temple dome he’d targeted with the sparks collapsed in on itself and smoke began billowing into the sky. He’d been right, though. The monster Dreamer wasn’t affected.

All of a sudden, a field englobed the Dreamer. It looked like a blob of water, but it meant the Dreamer had finally generated a shield. A few test shots showed that Tenthé’s attacks simply bounced off. As with everything else, the Dreamer’s shield wasn’t anything special, but it was so overpowered that Tenthé’s relatively small blasts couldn’t get through.

The Dreamer laughed, although the shield was so thick that Tenthé couldn’t hear him, then he shot another blast of lightning at Tenthé. The bolt hit the Dreamer’s shield and bounced around the inside, filling the shield blob with lightning. The Dreamer bounced and spasmed for quite a while before the bolt dissipated, then the huge figure collapsed, crushing a number of the derelict temples.

Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any lasting damage to the Dreamer, since he got back up, removed the shield, and started firing lightning again.

That was disheartening. The bolt the Dreamer’d just shot itself with was many times stronger than anything Tenthé could ever wield and it hadn’t done much, if any, lasting damage to the huge figure.

This was all fun, but it was time to take the Dreamer seriously. Tenthé was sure he had some ability that would damage the huge figure, but he had so many that it would take forever to go through them all.

Since the Dreamer seemed to have stolen the toughness of the Horde, it was unlikely that even the exploding rocks would cause much damage, or rather, the Dreamer would recover quickly, while everything around him might not come off so well.

For a moment, he tried to use his dominator powers on the Dreamer, but the results were poor. He could see the minds of people and things all around, but for some reason, not the Dreamer. Of course, the Dreamer would have to have some defense against being taken over mentally, or what good would he be? Once again, there might be a solution, but he wasn’t going to find it right now, especially since he was currently busy dodging through the old temples, using them to block the lightning and force bolts.

Sure, he could command everyone around to attack, but even the cold part of him resolved it would be useless; the Dreamer was just too powerful. No sense wasting resources.

One thing he could do, which he did, was throw clouds around the Dreamer’s head to block his vision. It was hard to keep them in place as the Dreamer moved, but it helped. There were many more random shots than before.

What he needed was to change things up. Dodging was all fine and good, but it didn’t win battles.

And, as inept as he was, the Dreamer was beginning to figure out how to avoid the annoyances Tenthé sent his way. As a result, the lightning was getting uncomfortably close too much of the time.

Time for a new plan.

Tenthé was beginning to get a little control of his shear, so he shot himself up, and then down to land near the Dreamer’s feet. The Dreamer shot a bolt, missing Tenthé but hitting himself, which forced him down to one knee; crumbling a few more of the old temples. Tenthé shot the Dreamer with his blat weapon, causing blood and meat to explode out of the Dreamer. Although the Dreamer roared in pain, the wound healed itself almost immediately.

The Dreamer got back to his feet, destroying more of old temples in the process. Tenthé and the Dreamer began to dance, but even being this close, nothing Tenthé could do had any more effect than before. Even though the Dreamer was so slow that Tenthé had no trouble avoiding his stomps and kicks, his own bolts, shots, spells, and sword were so tiny that the Dreamer recovered almost immediately.

Tenthé sighed. Time to use something that he’d hoped to be able to save for the next fight. With that, he ducked behind a wall, then threaded away through the remaining temples.

The Dreamer followed, crushing buildings with each step and obliterating others with lightning and force bolts. Tenthé’s shields worked overtime to keep him relatively undamaged, but somehow the Dreamer knew where he was and kept following.

It didn’t take long before Tenthé ran out of buildings and darted across the open space surrounding the Old God’s temple. He ducked behind it as a bolt hit the wall next to him. This time the bolt didn’t wreck the building, although it did crack some of the stones.

Which was good, because it meant his plan had a chance of working. The old gods still had enough juice to keep the building protected, but not so much that it couldn’t be damaged.

The bad part was, he had nowhere else to go. The City wall was behind him, and there was only a narrow passage between it and the old god’s temple. If the Dreamer caught him there, even he couldn’t miss.

Which was what Tenthé was counting on.

Tenthé popped up to peek over the roof. The Dreamer was standing on the other side of the open area, staring right at him.

“Okay, boy. It’s over,” the Dreamer’s voice boomed. “You’ve got nowhere else to go. Come out and we’ll finish this quickly.”

Tenthé hopped up onto the roof, and, being as sneaky as he could, dropped one of his viewing stones. When the Dreamer didn’t react, he scattered a few more stones around.

Now, if this were a tale, Tenthé would deliver some sort of speech to talk his way out of the situation, but that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he took a page from Bear and nyaa nyaa-ed the Dreamer, and then turned around and waved his bare butt at him. Immediately after, he jumped back down into the narrow gap.

Through the viewing stones, he could see the Dreamer give a sigh of exasperation before he generated a couple of overpowered shields at either end of the passage behind the temple; effectively blocking him in. Then the Dreamer took a few paces across the open area, and put one foot on the top of the old god’s temple. It held, although there was a fairly loud crack and a few groans from the structure. Deciding that it really didn’t matter, the Dreamer stepped up on the roof and took a few more paces, readying some bolt to fire at the trapped Tenthé.

At that point, Tenthé set off one of the explody rocks the Dreamer was standing on. With an enormous flash and unbelievable boom, the wall of old god’s temple beside him shook, with a few more pieces falling off.

Tenthé’s viewing stones were completely destroyed, so he jumped up and peered over the roof to see what had happened.

As expected, the Dreamer had managed to form shields. Tenthé could see that he had fallen through the roof and was probably sitting on the floor of the temple with his head poking out. He appeared relatively whole, looking through the roof, Tenthé’s vision showed that the Dreamer had lost a foot, but it was rapidly regenerating.

Of course, noticing Tenthé, the Dreamer had to gloat. “Well, what did you expect? After the explosion on the plain, did you think I wouldn’t be ready for you to try something like that on me? It’s been fun, but now that I’m whole again, prepare to… wait! What’s going on?”

An ungodly, well actually, godly, howling was coming from inside the temple. A figure leapt up on the onto the stomach of the Dreamer, who casually swatted it, leaving a dark smear behind. A second figure, something resembling a shaggy person with gangly limbs, followed the first and managed to bite the Dreamer in the stomach. The Dreamer grunted, more in surprise than anything else. To Tenthé, it appeared a little realness left the area around where the old god had bitten. The Dreamer slapped the figure, but this time, when his hand drew back, the old god remained, still gnawing away. In response, the Dreamer grabbed the creature and tossed it into the distance.

By now more figures were clambering up and onto the Dreamer. Many of them succumbed to the flurry of slaps the Dreamer launched at them, but not all.

Suddenly, the Dreamer lurched to its feet and a bubble manifested, a repeat of his earlier shield. Like the slapping, many of the old gods were tossed off, but not all.

Around the ones remaining, Tenthé could see magic flowing out of the Dreamer. As this happened, the dead gods grew. Some larger, some more colorful, and some became faster. By now, the Dreamer’s feet were covered in gods, which actually give the Dreamer some difficulty. Like he was standing in a sucking pit of mud.

At this point, the witch goddess Hchhabbahorchkkt floated out of the mob, followed another two figures, one a curtain of dark, and another a person sized silver sphere where the halves kept collapsing into each other, then reforming. This last one was… just odd, even for an old god.

Obviously, the witch god had absorbed some of the power from the Dreamer, because she had become a bright white figure surrounded by more glowing white, shining from her streaming clothes, hair, and somehow, even the air surrounding her. As she drifted, crackles of energy snapped off of the Dreamer, and with every one that hit the witch, she glowed brighter.

Suddenly, she shot to the crown of the Dreamer head where she flattened herself, spread eagled, with her fingers and toes elongating to dig in. With this, the Dreamer roared, and swiped at her; to no effect. She had manifested a shield of her own. While she was doing this, the curtain god rolled up like a parchment, and drilled through the Dreamer’s cheek, completely disappearing. With the Dreamer distracted, the sphere hovered by the Dreamer’s ear and a large area next to it lost its magic. At this, the Dreamer’s yells turned into screams which would have deafened Tenthé, were he an ordinary person.

Even though the rest of the old gods weren’t grabbing as much power as the witch, there were so many that they were having a major effect. As more and more of them latched on, the Dreamer’s actions became frenzied. Still slow but powerful, he clawed at himself, and even as he filled the air with bodies, more piled on as the stream of gods from within the temple showed no sign of abating.

The Dreamer’s shield popped off, then lightning and force bolts shot out, further decimating the clustered gods, but, once again, not all fell to the bolts. And, even so, the fallen were quickly replaced by others, with even more following. The Dreamer kept firing bolts, but it was a losing battle. Sooner than he had expected, Tenthé saw the last clear part of the Dreamer overrun. The gods continued piling on, and soon after, the Dreamer’s shrieks faded away. A few minutes after that, the mound that had been the Dreamer collapsed in on itself.

At this point, the most recent arrivals began attacking the ones who had already absorbed power, and a free-for-all broke out.

While he watched, Tenthé was quite aware of the witch goddess floating closer. With the power she had gained, she appeared hale, healthy, and as satisfied as a cat after drinking a plate of milk. She halted beside him and joined in watching the roiling crowd below.

“So,” he said. “I hope you think this was good enough to be worthy?”

“Oh, yessss,” she hissed. “I have enough power to venture out into the City once this is all over, and re-found my temple. As distasteful as I find it, I do understand that it will be necessary to modifying my creed to assuage modern tastes. I would even invite you to join, but I see you’ve been claimed by one of the Gods of Chaos. I approve.”

Tenthé was a bit annoyed. Even with all his shields active, he kept running into people and other creatures, who could read things about him he’d thought were hidden.

He sighed. There was always something more to learn.

The witch was still talking. “I was worried the task you would ask from me might be something I’d have to punish you for, but this was magnificent! If I were a fair being, I would say I still owed you, but no. We’re even now.”

She continued, “I find it interesting that you figured out that although gods cannot affect the dreams of the Dreamer, once they are enacted, they are subject to our abilities. It’s not broadly known.” Tenthé remained silent. He had learned long ago not to comment when others were discussing stuff they thought he did or didn’t know.

The witch then interrupted herself, announcing, “Oh, here we go.”

At that, it felt like something had left the field. The Dreamer had finally succumbed, passing his powers on to the next poor sap. It didn’t have much effect on the frenzy below as gods continued to pile on other gods.

After watching for a few minutes, the witch god commented, “ As you may have guessed, once this is all said and done, the power will end up with a few of us. Most of them,” she sniffed as she waved her hand at the mob, “are a stupid as can be. Even at the height of their powers they were created by people who let their emotions and impulses drive their life. Someone smart can twist them around their little finger and make them do whatever they want. As usual, the best are the winners.”

Although he wasn’t sure of that, Tenthé had learned long ago to keep his mouth shut when facing a fanatic.

With that, the witch flew back into the crowd, an invisible force tossing gods aside to make a path. The curtain and sphere followed behind.

Tenthé took stock. This fight had used more of his reserves that he’d expected. As he had many times in the past, he wished he had infinite energy, but things were what they were. Most of the assorted energies he had were somewhat depleted, which meant he’d have to be a lot more conservative with his next fight. At least he hadn’t died. That used up so much power he wouldn’t even be able to think of carrying on. At least, not today.

He jumped down from the roof, found a chunk of rock that wasn’t too disgusting and sat on it while he contemplated what to do next. It was cool that he could sort of fly now, but he admitted it was pretty rough. Maybe he would have time to find a better way.

But, from the familiar bellows echoing across the City from the direction of the Turtle’s temple, probably not.