The little girl scratched her chalk across the concrete, hand working furiously to bring to life a fading dream. So absorbed was she in her task that she didn’t immediately react to the shadow that fell across her face.

“What’s that you’re drawing?”

She scooted around to gaze up at the one who spoke: a gaunt man, grinning down at her with chipped teeth. Something glistened and squirmed inside his ear. His skin was too tight, and too thin, and she could almost see his skeleton within. A squawk of surprise and alarm escaped her lips. Was he a ghost?

Ghost or man, he was a stranger. Her mum had told her not to talk to strangers, so she kept her mouth shut and looked away, hoping he’d leave her alone. She tried to concentrate on her drawing. A spindly tree, leafless, with its roots coiled about a torn and dusty ball of rock.

“Calbert? What are you—get out! And stay away from my daughter!” Her mum was rushing toward them, a look of terror spreading across her face.

“How about you calm down and forget you saw any of this,” said the ghost-man—Calbert.

Her mum’s frantic dash came to a sudden halt. She stood impassively before them, eyes drifting slowly from side to side, placid and unfocussed.

“Good girl,” said Calbert. “It seems the mentaplex suggestion didn’t stick. I’ll have to rectify that. But first…” She could feel his attention on her now. He pointed at her drawing. “Tell me where you saw that.”

She considered his question for a long moment. If she answered him truthfully, maybe he wouldn’t take her away. “I dreamded it.”

His smile widened. “You saw it in a dream? Well now that is intriguing…” He moved closer, and she felt as if he wasn’t so much looking at her, as into her. “Yes, you won’t remain a latent forever, I’m certain of it. Let’s find out how well you can survive on your own, for a time. See you round, little Saskia.”

Still grinning, he spun about, and glided out the gate, his feet barely seeming to touch the ground as he moved.

“Interesting,” said the Primordial. “So you are the daughter of the one they called Calburn the Arborcaede.”

With a sudden, sickening lurch, Saskia found herself standing outside the gate, looking in on her childhood self. Xonroth stood just a few metres away. She spun to face him, claws splayed.

“Get away from her!” came a shout from across the road. Ruhildi was flesh and blood, swathed in a ragged dress that flapped in the wind.

It wasn’t just Ruhildi who had come to her aid. Rover Dog, Kveld, Zarie, Myrna, Garrain, Nuille, Ithanius, Vask, and Aele, not to mention dozens of frostlings—all of her surviving vassals from the Hall of Eternity were here. Her friends gathered around her, raising weapons and spell arms at the advancing Primordial.

In a flurry of movement, each of the spellslingers released their spells, while her troll vassals charged out in front.

Xonroth waved a dismissive hand, and all the spells abruptly dissipated.

“You really think you can fight me in this place?” he said. “The rules of the waking world do not apply here.”

He brought his hand down in a diagonal slicing motion. Saskia felt a stinging pain across her face. Something warm and sticky trickled down her cheek.

Vask was first to close the distance with Xonroth. She lunged at him with a vicious swipe of her claws.

Without taking his eyes off Saskia, the Primordial casually stepped aside. In the same movement, he brought his hand up, and brushed Vask’s arm with the tips of his fingers.

Vask stiffened, and fell to the ground. She jerked and thrashed. Then she was just…gone.

“What did you do to her?” growled Aele, as she and Rover Dog hurriedly backed out of his reach.

Xonroth eyed them coldly. “You will find out soon enough, when you join her.”

And that was when things went from bad to worse. Without warning, Xonroth was standing right next to Saskia and the spellslingers. He reached for Zarie. The tempest rose up into the air, wreathed in lightning—and promptly vanished.

Crap crap crap! Even if her friends weren’t hurt in the real world, this wasn’t going to end well. She needed to do something!

Saskia turned her eyes inward, seeking Zarie and Vask on her oracle interface—only to find they’d vanished there as well. As far as her oracle senses were concerned, they were no longer her vassals.

“We’re in your mind, Sashki,” said Ruhildi, sounding eerily calm in spite of the chaos erupting around her. “To get our friends back, we need to enter his.”

The moment her friend spoke, Saskia felt the rightness of her words.

She didn’t know quite how she did it, but she could feel the dream—or whatever this was—bending to her will, taking her to a certain specific point in time. She wanted to find out just how primordial the Primordial truly was.

Then the street was gone, as was Xonroth and her friends—all except Ruhildi. She stood in a large, brightly lit room with blue painted walls. At one end stood a bench heaped with various high-tech apparatuses. At the other, a glassed-off area containing large, leafless tree that reached almost to the high ceiling. Glistening, slimy creatures clung to its branches.

It was a laboratory, she realised, and those things were…

Before she could finish the thought, her attention turned to the floor just outside the glass enclosure, where a man and a woman lay entangled in…okay, wow. She’d wanted to learn about Xonroth’s origins, but she hadn’t expected something quite this early.

“Och, so this were the very first humping chamber,” said Ruhildi.

Saskia let out a sigh. “It would appear so. I wonder what’ll happen to Xonroth if we kill his parents in the dream, before they finish…making him…”

“Let’s find out.” Ruhildi turned to the pair in flagrante, and sent a stream of bone spiders skittering toward them. A moment later, they were screaming for all the wrong reasons.

Saskia stared at her friend, aghast. “Seriously? I know they’re just dream constructs, but did you have to use the spiders?”

Before Ruhildi could answer, the laboratory dissolved around them, replaced by what appeared to be a hospital room. A woman—and she was pretty sure it was the same woman Ruhildi had just killed—lay on a bed, with her knees up, screaming her lungs out.

But it wasn’t the room or the woman who drew her attention this time. It was the view out the window.

A vast cityscape stretched out before her, filled with coiled spires and looping highways and billowing chimneys. And in the centre of it all, a gigantic tree. It looked as if it had burst out of the roof of a large building, and now its roots spread across several city blocks.

It was the same tree she’d seen through the glass wall of the laboratory; she was pretty sure of that. Just a thousand times larger. The slimy creatures—the worldseeds—were no longer visible against the massive branches, but they were undoubtedly there.

“Is that…?” said Ruhildi.

“Yup,” said Saskia. “It’s a baby world tree.”

The next moment, she found herself standing on a rooftop near the base of the tree. Vask and Zarie lay bound in a coil of thick metal chains. They appeared to be unconscious. Standing over those chains was none other than Xonroth.

Reacting instinctively, Saskia lashed out with her claws. The Primordial darted out of reach. She snatched up Vask’s chains and pulled. To her surprise, they came apart in her hands, splintering into metal shards that scattered across the rooftop.

Vask may be free now, but she was still out cold. Saskia placed a hand on the troll woman’s shoulder, and shook her gently.

“Come back to me, Vask,” murmured Saskia. “You can resist him. I know you can.”

Vask’s eyes shot open. She blinked and shook her head. “Saskia? What…?”

Eyeing them disdainfully, Xonroth raised his hand, and then…

Saskia was lying at the base of a mountain cliff. Agony lanced through her broken body. She knew this place; this feeling. It was where she’d landed after her accident back on Earth. Footsteps crunched through the snow, followed by shouts, and the sound of a struggle.

“Oh please,” she said, rising to her feet to face Xonroth. Saskia’s wounds were gone, and she was once again a troll. “Abellion already tried to use this memory against me. Didn’t work then. Not gonna work on me now.”

The Primordial stood in the midst of her friends, who were dashing out of his way, and pummelling him with spells and ranged weapons to no avail. Aele and Kveld and several of the frostlings had already vanished.

Saskia waved her hand, pulling them back into his mind, before he could snatch any more of her friends away from her.

Now she and Ruhildi were standing atop the roof of a cracked and crumbling building, gazing out across the ruins of the city, and the gargantuan tree whose roots now sprawled across the entire region, crushing everything in their path.

Over the apocalyptic cityscape, dozens of snub-nosed aircraft flew in a tight V formation, heading toward the base of the world tree’s trunk.

As they neared the tree, a tiny figure rose up into the air, and hovered before them, arms spread wide. Saskia couldn’t see many details from this distance, but she didn’t need to. He was Xonroth—a much younger version of the Primordial.

The aircraft unleashed a flurry of missiles at the base of the tree. One veered toward Xonroth for a moment, before banking sharply away. Then all of them were turning, turning, and streaking back into the aircraft that had fired them. Explosions blossomed across the attacking squadron, leaving not a single one intact.

“The people of this planet tried to destroy the world tree,” said Saskia. “They must have seen it as a malignant entity, growing out of control.”

Again, her viewpoint shifted. Now she was standing atop one of the tree roots, looking at the chained and comatose forms of her captured friends. Even the frostlings had little chains around their paws.

“The world tree outgrew its creators,” said Xonroth. “When faced with something greater than themselves, they reacted with fear, and ultimately, violence. I was its protector then, as I am today.”

Saskia turned to face him, scowling. “What a benevolent guardian you turned out to be. You slaughtered countless innocents on Grongarg and Lumium—and for what? Just in case they might help me? And don’t even start with that ‘ends justifies the means’ crap. You’re no better than Abellion, or Okael, or my father, or any number of war criminals back on Earth.”

“You presume to judge me,” he said. “And yet your own hands are stained with the blood of countless mortals.”

Xonroth waggled a finger, and suddenly she was sweeping through a dizzying flurry of images and impressions, one after another.

Her claws raking though living flesh; ripping, tearing, rending. Her feet coming down, shattering bones and crushing small bodies into the dirt. Jarnbjorn cleaving through a row of elves, sending limbs and heads flying. The images kept coming; each one more nauseating than the last.

Nauseating, and yet she couldn’t deny the thrill that she’d felt from from time to time when she truly let loose. When she crushed her enemies, both literally and figuratively.

She had changed much over the past year. How much more would she change if she lived as long as Xonroth? Would she become as he was—indifferent to the mass murder he committed in pursuit of his goals?

“Sashki!” shouted Ruhildi. “Snap out of it, afore he takes us all!”

Looking back at her friend, Saskia took in the sight of Rover Dog, Vask, Garrain and Ruhildi standing alone against Xonroth. In the time it had taken her to doubt herself, the Primordial had taken Nuille, Myrna and Ithanius.

Saskia didn’t know what would happen if he took all of her friends, and she didn’t want to find out. Frantically, she tried to wrest control of the dream back from Xonroth.

The scene that greeted her was startling, to say the least. She was standing atop an immense tree root, gazing down across the planet it encircled. Behind her, the world tree dominated the sky. The landscape below had been reduced to dry sand and bare rock, riddled with vast fissures whose fathomless depths lay shrouded in darkness. There were few remaining signs of life on the surface. Just some shabby huts among the wilting trees that clung to a dried up riverbank.

Without realising she’d moved, she found herself standing amidst the people of that decrepit village. There was little sign of life in them either; most simply sat around, staring off into the distance with weary eyes.

These people had given up, she realised. They were waiting for the end.

Their world ended not with a bang, but a snooze. In a single moment, every villager sagged to the ground, as if their strings had been cut. Their chests rose and fell in the silent rhythm of sleep.

No prizes for guessing who had just put them out like a light. A younger looking Xonroth landed in their midst, gathered up the villagers in a ball of swirling air, and carried them skyward.

Her view shifted again, and now she was watching the Primordial deposit the unconscious villagers by a lake on one of the world tree’s branches. The branch was far smaller than Ciendil. At this early point in time, all the branches were smaller.

The villagers awoke, and stared about, their faces alight with wonder. They lunged for the water, and began to drink.

“I sometimes regret bringing them here,” said Xonroth, now once again his present-day self. “These short-lived folk and others like them spawned a myriad species that crawl across the world tree’s branches and slither into its hollows. The world would be much more peaceful without them.”

“Peaceful and boring,” said Saskia. “What, so that’s your plan now, is it? Kill every sapient creature on the world tree?”

Xonroth frowned. “Of course not. When I’m done with you, I will seal shut the Hall of Eternity, and go back to sleep until my successor comes of age.”

“Your…successor.” The moment she spoke the word, something clicked in her head. “You mean Garrain and Nuille’s child.”

“What did you do to her?” growled Garrain.

For a moment, Primordial’s visage wavered, and she glimpsed a shadowy form lurking behind him, wings spread wide. The creature leaned around to whisper into his ear. Saskia couldn’t discern its features, but there was something about it…

Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the creature was gone, and Xonroth stood alone before them once more.

The Primordial shot Garrain a dismissive glance. “Some adjustments were necessary, but the embryo came to no harm. On the contrary…”

Seizing advantage of his momentary distraction, Saskia freed Nuille and Zarie from their chains, and shook them awake, before moving onto the other captives.

As Nuille awoke, her expression hardened, and she turned to Xonroth with a look of purest rage. “Fuck you to the ends of the arbor with a nettlewood wand! You think you can chain us? Think again!” Her final words morphed into a roar as she transformed into a dragon, and breathed a huge plume of fire down onto the Primordial.

Saskia held her breath, waiting for the smoke to clear. Slowly, the haze parted…

And there he stood, without so much as a soot stain on his cloak. Scowling, he shoved them back into her mind.

Now she sat in the old Threadless Studios office back on Earth. Raji, Fergus and Dave were seated at their desks, deep in their work. Ruhildi stood beside her, wearing Padhra’s body. Saskia could tell who it was just by looking at her posture.

“This isn’t working,” hissed Saskia to her friend.

“What isn’t working?” asked Fergus.

“We’re limiting ourselves to what we can do in the real world,” she said. “But this isn’t the real world. This is a dream, or a mindspace, or whatever. Here, we’re limited only by our beliefs and our imaginations.”

Fergus stared at her blankly, but she’d been voicing her thoughts for herself and Ruhildi, not for him. He was just another dream construct.

She glanced about the office. This was supposed to be her place of power. It was from here that she’d locked Abellion out of her mind. Could she do the same to Xonroth? Surely it wouldn’t be so simple this time—would it? The situation was different, and her opponent was far stronger. As her vassal, he was also connected to her in a way Abellion had never been.

Even so, it was worth a try.

“Guys,” she said, “I need you to do something for me…”

This time around, the game world they created was a little different. The cheats were still there, as were some of the traps. But this time she’d created little avatars for all of her friends, as well as herself.

“What is this place—these magic windows?” The question came from Garrain. The druid had appeared alongside the rest of her friends who weren’t bound in chains inside Xonroth’s mind. He was gazing at a computer monitor, which showed a modified dungeon from Threads of Nautilum.

“This is where I used to work, on Earth,” said Saskia. “And these screens are technology, not magic. It’s hard to explain, but each of those little figures on the screen represents one of us.”

Garrain frowned. “What is its purpose?”

“It’s just a game,” she said. “I want to trap a certain someone inside the game, where he can’t get at the real us, and where I make the rules.”

“You partitioned your mind,” said the Primordial. “Clever. But I am not so easily fooled.”

She turned to find him not inside the game, but standing in the studio with her. As she’d suspected, Xonroth must have had access to Abellion’s memories of his failed dream invasion. Or perhaps her own memories of the same event. Just as long as he couldn’t read her thoughts…

“Now,” she murmured.

Without warning, a metal cage appeared in the middle of the studio, surrounding the Primordial.

Xonroth eyed the bars of the cage. “You are not a dreamer. How did you—” He jerked his hand back, as if the bars were electrified. They weren’t, but they were emitting an anti-magic field. “No. This must be a trick. I’ll just…” His forehead scrunched.

“You can’t escape into a different dream scene either,” said Saskia. “The only way out is to wake up. Speaking of which…activate the Gone-roth.”

“Only if you stop calling it that,” said Ruhildi.

Saskia sighed. “Fine. Activate the disintegrator beam.”

Xonroth frowned. “Disintegra—”

The cage filled with white light, and he exploded.

Her friends eyed the gory mess distastefully. Ithanius, Aele and the frostlings appeared beside her, blinking away the effects of their capture, before their eyes also settled on what was left of their foe.

“Where did third eyeball come from?” asked Rover Dog, scratching his head.

Saskia shrugged. “I guess my imagination got away from me there. See you guys back in the waking world.”

Pulling off her virtual reality headset, Saskia found herself in a rather more sparsely occupied Threadless Studios office. The cage and most of her Arbor Mundi friends were absent—the exception being Ruhildi, who stood at her side. Raji, Fergus and Dave slouched in their chairs, their faces hidden behind their own VR headsets. These devices were far more advanced than anything currently available in the real world. They were capable of completely fooling their senses—even touch and smell. How? Didn’t matter. Her mind, her rules.

Exchanging a satisfied nod with Ruhildi, Saskia peered at her computer monitor, which displayed twin images of the virtual Threadless Studios office.

Almost as soon as she’d come up with this plan, she’d decided a single Nautilum dungeon wouldn’t be enough to contain her opponent. So she’d constructed a game within a simulation. Two levels of mental separation. She could have gone even further—created simulated offices within simulated offices, but there hadn’t been time for that. And if Xonroth had figured out what was going on, a few extra levels wouldn’t have stopped him.

But he hadn’t. She’d booted him out of her mind. And that meant they could all wake up now.

“Let’s end this,” she said.

 

It was all she could do just to force her eyes open. The sight that greeted her was hardly a pleasant wakeup call. Xonroth rose from the floor, his eyes searing into her, already drawing on her essence, channelling magic that would undoubtedly spell her end.

Saskia stabbed at his vial on her oracle interface. The flow of essence ceased, and the Primordial dropped like a sack of mouldy potatoes. A spiderweb of wrinkles crept across his face. His skin began to sag. She watched, horrified, as he twitched and writhed, legs kicking feebly in the air. The flesh began to peel off his face. He let out a gasping moan, tailing off into a voiceless wheeze.

Rover Dog stepped on him.

Oh thank dog, she thought. And now I’m really glad I didn’t mess with Rover Dog’s or Ithanius’s essence supply…

Sealed in her amber prison, there was little Saskia could do but wait and watch as her friend limped to her side. When he ran his claws across the shell that encased her, they didn’t leave so much as a scratch.

“We will get you out, princess,” he said. “Hold tight.”

It’s not like I have anything better to do, she thought. In here, she couldn’t so much as move her lips.

She didn’t have to wait long. Nuille carried the survivors to the central column, where they gathered around her. Ruhildi, Garrain, Kveld and Myrna each tried to cut their way through her shell to no avail. Velandir would have had no trouble cutting it with his shadowblade, but he was…gone. Gone like so many others.

In the end, Ruhildi asked them to stop. Her friend, at least could hear her thoughts, so she could speak for her.

“Sashki says it doesn’t matter,” said Ruhildi. “We’ll away now. The undermind is calling us back to the between.”

“S-so soon?” said Zarie. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “But you have won! Can you not stay a little longer, to savour your victory?”

“Would that we could,” said Ruhildi. “She thanks you from the bottom of her heart. All of you. For being there for her when she needed you. For putting your lives on the line again and again. For being such good friends. She—and I—will miss you.”

“I…will not forget you, princess,” said Rover Dog. His eyes were filled with such great sorrow, she wanted to reach out and embrace him one last time.

“She wishes she could have one last tumble with you, Doggi,” said Ruhildi.

That’s not what I meant, dogram you! thought Saskia.

Ruhildi flashed her a tiny smile.

“Aele and I will give him a good humping in your honour,” offered Vask.

Yeah, not really helping, thought Saskia.

“I…I…” Kveld fell silent for a long moment, frowning. “Och bollocks, I can’t think of anything to say.”

“Right there with you, dwarrow,” said Ithanius.

“It’s alright, Kveldi,” said Ruhildi. “We already ken how you feel.”

Myrna embraced her friend. “Take care of each other. New Inglomar won’t be the same without you. Thorric will be devastated.”

“He’ll be alright,” said Ruhildi. “As will you all. I ken it.”

Joy and relief warred with sadness on the faces of Garrain and Nuille, who had just retrieved their precious egg.

“You have my eternal gratitude, Saskia,” said Nuille, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“We may not always have been friends,” said Garrain. “But I am proud to have fought by your side. We will honour you, always, and try to live by the example you set for us.”

Of all the things her companions had said, this one touched her the most, because it came from someone who at one time would have slit her throat for daring to breathe the same air as him. And now he meant every word he said. If he could come so far, there was hope for all of them.

Without warning, Ruhildi threw her arms around Garrain. “This is from Sashki.”

He stiffened for a moment, then flexed his branches, returning the hug. “Indubitably,” he said. “And this is from me.”

Ruhildi awkwardly extricated herself from his embrace, then rested her hand on Saskia’s amber shell. “You ready?” she murmured.

Ready as I’ll ever be, thought Saskia. Take us home, Undermind.

The world seemed to fracture into a million tiny shards, each shining with a different light. Vision faded, and she felt herself being pulled in a direction that had no name.