The Dreamqueen lounged in her high-backed throne, drawing a long-nailed finger lazily through the water of the gazing pool beside it. She watched as the four interlopers to Liveworld dispatched her dream warriors, first with their magic, then with their disbelief. Three of the four were unknown to her, but the fourth she knew well.
The fourth, she hated.
The Talisman.
The one who’d forced her out of the deadworld called Earth when the ripened dreamseeds she’d planted in the sorceress’s Alphan teammates had at long last given her a way in.
She’d been ensconced in an Edmonton penthouse, watching its citizens live out their deepest, darkest fantasies like little slave ants below her, all at her behest, with no realization of the damage they were doing to themselves and others. Vandalization, robbery, assault, arson, even murder, all playing out on this gritty urban stage while she watched and laughed with delight. The Dreamqueen had reveled in the chaos and pain she was causing. It was so much more delicious, so much more alive than the emptiness of her own realm, where nothing existed that she did not create and animate.
She had, for the first time, tasted happiness. Or what passed for happiness for a demon, at any rate.
And then the Talisman had shown up, putting an end to her fun, sending her away not only from Earth, but even from her own Liveworld. She had eventually made it back home, of course, but now she could only see Liveworld as a dull and barren realm, a veritable prison, compared to what she had experienced on Earth. What she craved to experience again.
The fact that the Talisman – Elizabeth Twoyoungmen – was Indigenous, just like the very first human the Dreamqueen had tried to use as a doorway out of her Nightmare-created jail cell, was not lost on her. Indigenous peoples had always been guardians of their worlds, land defenders and water protectors, so it was no real surprise that another would rise to face her when the first fell. Still, the irony seemed like a cosmic slap in the face.
And now the woman dared step foot here, in her domain, after all the grief she had caused the Dreamqueen?
That was a slap in the face.
No. She would not have it. It was time the Talisman paid for her sins.
The Dreamqueen smiled, running the tip of her blood-red tongue over teeth as white and sharp as death. Things were about to become fun.
She studied the quartet of women as they made their way across the landscape, molding it and remolding it in their path and gauging their reactions. The Green One with the horns, Margali, was impatient and hotheaded, choosing to blast her way through obstacles even if easier but longer routes presented themselves. The Dreamqueen did not believe the sorceress was truly a demon, despite her apparent desire to be perceived as one, but she certainly had the temperament of one. Perhaps she was a half-breed.
Whatever she was, she appeared to be drawing her power from outside Liveworld. The feel of it seemed naggingly familiar to the Dreamqueen, and she closed her eyes for a moment to mentally rifle through the memories of her mother, the succubus Zilla Char. As was common among succubi, Zilla was destroyed when the Dreamqueen was born, passing the entirety of her memories on to her daughter in that moment, including her knowledge of magic.
Ah, there it was. The Green One was using the Winding Way, which was both a dimension and a source of magic. Interesting.
The Pink One, Holly, was obviously from Earth, given her clothing. Her magic was what the deadworlders called witchcraft, but it might better be called worldcraft, for its power came from a deep attunement to and understanding of the natural world in which the witch found herself. Many were born with that affinity, and it tended to run in families. But if that innate power proved weak, it could be enhanced through study and the use of natural elements and their properties. That was the sort of witch the Pink One seemed to be. Given enough time, she could likely manipulate Liveworld as well as the Dreamqueen herself. She was already finding that she could change it in small ways. The Dreamqueen would have to make sure she never got to the point where she could change it in big ones.
The Purple One with silver hair seemed to be their leader. The Dreamqueen did not have to access her mother’s memories to know she was from the Dark Dimension. Even secluded in her pocket dimension prison as she was, still she had heard of the Dread One and his sister, Umar the Unrelenting. This waiflike thing now marching across the Dreamqueen’s world, as calm and assured as if she had an army of witches at her back and this was their training ground, was alternately said to be a revolutionary or a relative of the siblings’, and sometimes both. The Dreamqueen did not know her name, but she knew enough. The Purple One would undoubtedly be a threat to be reckoned with and would be the first one she killed.
Second.
The first would be the Talisman.
Her lips pulled back in a soundless snarl as she watched the woman she had hated for so long lead her three companions across a carnelian river that began to boil once they were out of reach of either bank. The Pink One quickly soothed the water back to tranquility, a worrying development.
Elizabeth seemed different now than the last time the Dreamqueen had confronted her face to face, and even from the last time she had watched the Talisman from afar, when Alpha Flight had disbanded. She’d helped Elizabeth then, not out of any concern for the Alphan, but because the enemy the team had faced threatened to permanently dull humanity’s capacity for imagination and dreams, the very things the Dreamqueen needed in order to someday return to Earth and take her place as its rightful ruler. She had acted out of pure self-preservation, so saving Elizabeth then did not preclude killing her now. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Now, the Dreamqueen did not need the Talisman. She was free to do as she liked with her old enemy, and she was truly her father’s daughter when it came to inventive torture techniques.
But she would have to be careful. The Talisman she faced now was older and seemed to have put aside much of the pride and selfishness that had governed her actions when she had first come into her power. The Dreamqueen did not know all that had transpired in the woman’s life since Alpha Flight’s surviving members had gone their separate ways, but she had looked in on her nemesis a time or two. Given what she had seen then – a woman who’d “hung up her cape” and sought to live in anonymity – it had been that much more of a shock to see her step into Liveworld in the garb of the Talisman, though that costume had changed in the intervening years.
The Coronet of Power had not.
And though she had never truly sought the coronet for herself before, its acquisition being incidental to her plans in the past, a sugary coating on the baked dessert of her prison break, now… now that it was here, already in her realm, it could be the long-sought key to the Dreamqueen’s cage.
Hmmm…
The Dreamqueen sat back in her throne, pulling her finger from the gazing bowl and letting its surface still to opaqueness as she tapped a sharp nail against her chin in thought.
She assumed the group was trying to reach the dimensional rift and escape Liveworld, just as the Alphans before them had. A quick dreamscan of their surface thoughts confirmed it.
Perhaps it would be better to let Elizabeth believe her only aim was to kill the foursome, or at the very least to simply prevent them from reaching the rift. Then the sorceress would be blindsided, her focus on guarding only one flank, never expecting attack from another.
Yes… yes, that should work.
And she would still kill the women after she got the coronet, of course. They were expecting it, after all, and never let it be said that the Dreamqueen was one to leave her enemies dissatisfied.