Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (best time to read books txt) 📕

“A hellhound in Greek mythology has three heads,” Mage explained, “but here in Erebus its appearance depends on what you fear the most and the strength of your phobic emotion. Therefore, a hellhound may have three to thirty heads, rather like a hydra. As I said previously, there is no need to extract your fear. You only need to bend it to your will.”

Now the noise coming towards them was mingled snarls and serpentine hisses.

Every human Dreamwalker was sweating bullets.

Finally, unable to bear the suspense any longer, Man-At-Arms screamed: “I LOVE ROCKY!”

The words were nonsensical. Man-At-Arms had been thinking about his pet puppy, a white Jindo named Rocky, whom he had left with his parents before he flew to the US and to Omni Sys HQ.

As soon as he had said the words, a black Jindo puppy emerged from the darkness and approached them, wagging its tail.

“Ohhhh! How cute!” Nethril exclaimed.

All her fears evaporated, she dropped to her knees to pet the dog. Unconsciously, she was missing her own two-year-old Persian cat Marie back in Lagos.

She picked up the soft bundle of joy and stood it on her lap. She pressed her cheek against its smooth coat and squealed: “I can’t get enough of you, cutie!”

“It is not advisable to do that,” Mage said while remaining in his meditative state.

“What? Why?” Nethril asked.

As the puppy squirmed out of her grasp, Nethril instinctively hugged it tighter and, to her astonishment, it split into two identical specimens.

“Whoa,” the Count mumbled.

Brrt! Brrt! They heard a series of distinct popping sounds like those of an inflated balloon being rubbed. Nethril literally had her hands full and four healthy black Jindo puppies spilled out of her arms.

The four split into eight and the eight into sixteen. On and on by a factor of two.  

“Nethril…” the Count said anxiously. “Please stop doing that.”

“What?! I’m not doing anything!”

An army of puppies were now scattered all over the cavern floor; barking, bounding, running. Soon there was a carpet of them. Then a sea. The puppies tumbled and lay on top of each other as they kept on cloning themselves at a blinding rate. The Dreamwalkers were buried to their knees by the furry creatures. Mage, meanwhile, was chest-deep.

Mage finished his spell and cast it. A glowing auric harp manifested in the middle of the cavern, parting the sea of cuteness, and started to play by itself.

The music had an instant effect on the animals because they popped back into one another like electroshocked cells, faster and faster till there was only one left. The last one yawned and curled up into a ball like a fox, its paws tucked under it.  

Man-At-Arms noticed that the ground had been swept clean of all traces of filth: bones, skulls and dry blood, which was this black, wrinkly pool that was cracked around the edges. Now that they had gotten their emotions back in check, there was nothing but hardened lava, folded and smooth like peanut butter.

He chalked it up as another dream effect. They could see whatever they wanted to see and the whole place was constantly constructing and deconstructing itself. It was similar to how MMO games worked. The server would tell a particular computer that the place they were entering was a cave and it was up to one’s individual rig to render the cave itself. Where their gazes didn’t turn or in the as yet unexplored parts of the caverns, there was nothing but a vacuum. Only when the range of their night vision reached it, the vacuum would fill itself.

Nevertheless, the level of detail was unlike anything any dream could generate, not even a lucid one. Man-At-Arms could tell a lot of AI computing power had gone to fill in the gaps in all their imaginations. This was what kept the world of Erebus incredibly stable and realistic.  

“Now what?” the Count asked.

“It is time we donned our camouflage,” Mage answered.

****

They proceeded to a vast hangar-like chamber called the Hollow Halls. There weren’t any natural crevices above to let light in and there were no torches or campfires whatsoever but, thanks to their night vision, they could see just fine. Whether they liked what they saw was a whole other matter.

Jagged stalagmites poised like stakes to impale trespassers. They were mirrored on the high ceiling above by calcite drapery hanging as thick as a hermit’s hair. Overall, the Fiery Caverns gave the impression of a giant anglerfish’s mouth. 

Man-At-Arms was a trifle disappointed because it was different from what he had expected based on the name of the place. There were no open pits of boiling magma at all. Instead, there were upside-down metal cups and a network of pipes that spasmodically hissed at the joints, diluting the impression of hell. As Mage had briefed them, the Orcs were tapping the steam straight from its source. 

The whole place was crawling with hostiles and indeed the vast majority of them were slaves first and warriors next. The skins of the slaves were marked with runic brands that distinguished them from the fighters, but they were all clad in crude loin cloths and animal hides like the rider the Dreamwalkers had fought in a long forgotten spawning.