Dreamworms Book 1: The Advent of Dreamtech by Isaac Petrov (drm ebook reader TXT) 📕

floating a few yards in front of her, staring directly at Edda and yet sweeping backwards between trees without apparent exertion.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she asks between pants, her eyes fixed on Rew’s slim body.

“You are no threat to me. Do attack to the best of your abilities.”

Edda raises a hand towards Rew, and a revolver materializes in place, aimed straight to Rew’s head, ready to be triggered. She shoots.

Before reaching its target, the bullet dissolves in the air as if it were made of salt.

“Pure sin!” Edda stops and falls to her knees.

Rew floats slowly towards her. “The canceling of wills,” she says, and points an appendage at a nearby rock. “Do raise that stone in the air, Redeemed van Dolah.”

Edda stands. She looks tired. She is tired, Ximena feels; mentally exhausted. Edda gives the rock a casual look and points a finger at it.

Nothing happens.

“Pure sin! Not even the simplest dream magic works now. What’s going on?!”

“I am going on,” Rew says, and makes an awkward gesture at the rock. “You want that rock to raise. I want it not to. Thus, my will cancels yours.”

“Right, so you are stronger than me, and what you want, happens, yeah?”

“Wrong, Redeemed van Dolah. That is neither the point, nor the nature of the canceling of wills. Willpower is not analogous to physical power in the wake, where strong overcomes weak. In the dreamscape weak voids strong.”

“What?” Edda frowns at the mare in confusion.

“A demonstration might be more effective to convey the meaning. Do use your will to keep that rock perfectly still. Do not allow it to be tampered with.”

Edda shrugs. “Sure,” she says, and stares at the rock with focused attention.

“Behold, I am raising the rock now.”

“But it’s not moving…” Ximena feels Edda’s confusion. She doesn’t even feel a tug of resistance to her desire to keep the rock in place.

“Your will is weaker than mine, Redeemed van Dolah, and yet it cancels my desire. You are not resisting my moving the rock; that would be the logic of the wake, but in the dreamscape what you are doing is removing the effect of my will altogether from the dream’s natural narrative.”

“I cancel you…”

“Indeed.”

“But you are stronger than me.”

“Once again you are falling into the trap of reasoning as if this were the wake. You are dreaming, Redeemed van Dolah, and here your will voids mine, and mine yours.”

“Whoa,” her lips curve into a sidelong smile, “so the weak can stop the strong, yeah?”

“Indeed. And the strong, the weak.”

Edda gives Rew an inquisitive look. “Is that what happened with my bullet?”

“Indeed. As your projectile approached my location, where my will dominates the dreamscape, it was voided.”

“So then,” she spreads her hands, “it’s impossible to fight.”

“On the contrary, Redeemed van Dolah. Although it is indeed impossible to directly apply your will against your opponent’s, it is possible to apply it indirectly, by using the own narrative of the dreamscape to exert pain. I shall demonstrate. Do take a stone in your hands and throw it at me.”

“A stone, a stone,” she scans the ground between the weeds, finds a fist-sized granite stone and tosses it gently towards Rew.

The stone bounces off Rew’s head. “Ouch,” she says in her usual smooth intonation.

“Oh, sorry, Elder Rew. But you didn’t stop it.”

“I could not have, not even with my considerable skills as Walker of the Mind, Redeemed van Dolah. A stone, and the effects that gravity exerts upon it, are concepts both our minds are intimately familiar with, since our very existence began. The world of the wake and its laws of nature are ingrained in the narrative and the nature of all dreamscapes. When a flying stone reaches my area of control, it is not your will that is driving it, but the dreamscape’s own narrative, shared by both our minds. It cannot be voided.”

“Oh, wow. So guns won’t work, but stones no problem? Wait a minute.” Edda frowns and tilts her head. “There’s not much difference between a bullet and a stone. I mean, in essence they’re the same thing: an object flying through the air, yeah?”

“Your projectile was produced and then propelled by devices that are outside of my experience. And outside of most humans’, including yours, unless you are a weapon master. Bullets are technology.”

“So you’re saying that technology won’t work in dreams?”

“Technology does work in the dreamscape, Redeemed van Dolah; only not in a conflict of wills. Technology is not ingrained in our selves like the laws of nature are, and are thus easily voided.”

Edda nods and shrugs. “So sticks and stones it is.” She laughs as her imagination conjures two angry broom-wielding cowboys facing each other with murder in their eyes. “Not very romantic, huh?”

“There is no romance in dream violence, Redeemed van Dolah. But there is access to power.”

“Good enough for me. Teach me how to fight with sticks and stones, Elder Rew.”

Twenty-One

Sticks and Stones

“Ouch,” Rew says in her usual emotionless tone.

“Oh, Goah. I’m so sorry!” Edda says, dropping a primitive-looking bow and running towards Rew. “Are you okay?” She squints with concern at the arrow embedded in Rew’s brow, and then leans to look at the back of Rew’s skull, where the emerging tip drops a transparent fluid. “Does it hurt?”

“It does, Redeemed van Dolah. Considerably,” Rew says, as she grabs the end of the arrow and pulls it out in its entirety. The wound closes in a few seconds. “Fortunately, pain is but a mirage—”

“Of the mind,” a third voice, female as well, reverberates from behind them. A single mare approaches their location from the edge of the dream forest clearing where Edda and Rew have been training.

“Sense and bind, Overseer Yog,” Rew says. “I do take it I am due for inspection?”

“Indeed, Walker Rew. I am particularly keen to gauge the progress that your personal instruction has imprinted in your human.”

A scowl wrinkles Edda’s face. I’m nobody’s human.

“We were focusing our attention on the minutia of the