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

“NOOOOO!” Bear Tooth moaned. He was now huffing and pacing back and forth. “NOOOO! I don’t believe any of it. I won’t!”

Turning his face upwards and addressing the heavens he continued screaming: “LET US OUT! LET US OUT! Do you hear me? We quit! We don’t wanna play your game anymore. We want out! OUT! LET US OUT!”

As though commiserating with him, the skies suddenly became dark and it began to rain. Bear Tooth’s fur got drenched and his voice became hoarse, but no god or Dream-maker answered.

“Man-At-Arms,” the Count said calmly but with a slight edge in his voice. “Take out your map.”

Man-At-Arms did as he was told and they unrolled the map of Erebus and laid it out on the grass. Either the vellum was hydrophobic or it was another illusion of that cursed world but rainwater plinked on the material without wetting or even touching it.

Nethril peeked over the Count’s shoulders.

The map had completely changed. Where there had been a continent and some islands, now there was only one landmass in the center, and it had a weird shape.

“What does that look like to you?” Count asked.

“A gingerbread man,” Man-At-Arms grimly answered.

It looked incongruous and obscene, like vandalism. A jokester or a hacker’s calling card. There was still the city of Heliopolis above the gingerbread man’s head, if nothing else. It looked like a stray crumb on the otherwise wiped slate. 

The Count touched the area with the tip of his finger and a squarish text balloon popped up. He read aloud:

“The benevolent wizard Atom was usurped by his dark twin Apophis a.k.a. the Shadow Beast. Apophis now rules Erebus with his four horsemen: Morpheus, Phobetor, Phantasos and Oizys. Brave challengers to Apophis’ iron-handed rule must face the emotion-based powers of his disciples: respectively wrath, fear, disgust and misery.”

After a long silence, the Count said:

“That’s it. This exit’s permanently closed. We’re never getting through here.”

“So we’re stuck in this world forever?” Bear Tooth voiced out what they were all dreading.

“I hate to say this,” Man-At-Arms said, “but it looks like we are. We’ll keep respawning at our latest Save Point. We’re not allowed to leave unless we accomplish the main objective of the game.”

“Are you saying that if by some miracle we managed to defeat Apophis,” Nethril said hopefully, “we could still get out of this game?”

“There’s a chance of that, yes,” Man-At-Arms said, turning to Prophet for confirmation.

“Due to the unprecedented flow of events,” Prophet said, “it is beyond my circuits’ capacity to calculate the outcome.”

“Meaning?” Bear Tooth asked.

“We’ll never know what’s across the bridge,” Man-At-Arms said, “till we’ve crossed it.”

“What do you propose?” Nethril asked.

“Time is our greatest resource,” Man-At-Arms answered. “We have more than enough of it for the long grind. If we make a mistake, we just keep respawning. So, we keep practicing. We’ll get better and better and reach the highest possible player levels and stats. Apophis might seem so OP now…”

“What’s OP?” Nethril asked.

“Overpowered. He’s OP now but if we level up, we’ll be a match to him.”

The others were nodding, even Bear Tooth. Everyone except the Count. So Man-At-Arms turned to him:

“What do you think, Count?”

“I don’t know. It seems as though, judging by Apophis’ backstory and character, that he would have rigged the whole thing somehow, making it impossible for us to win the game through conventional means. The gingerbread man on the map demonstrates this. I think, from now on, that Erebus will only get more and more unpredictable and unstable. Less game-like and more dream-like. Bad news for us. Our Nightcrawler, Fairy, was supposed to make sure we were safe and our exit point remained open but…

“… she’s not with us anymore,” the Count continued euphemistically. “Apophis has taken over the entire world of Erebus. He’s the most powerful character in this realm.”

All the others were quiet and lowered their heads. 

“Call it, Count,” Man-At-Arms eventually said.

“We should appoint a new Nightcrawler,” the Count said.

The rest stared at him and tried to tell if he was being serious. They couldn’t grasp the idea.

“How?” Nethril blurted out.

“We will all start a new dream,” the Count said, “by opening the emergency lockets wrapped around our necks.”

Everyone reflexively groped for their individual necklaces. Half of them had wondered what the purpose of those were while the other half only became aware of their presence for the first time in the past six hours. 

“Wait a minute,” Nethril said. “I think I remember now. These lockets were supposed to be a countercheck. To make sure that when we woke up, we were truly awake. Are we allowed to use them like that?”