Liveworld
The Dreamqueen paced in her throne room, waiting, her red cloak flouncing petulantly behind her with every measured step.
She was always waiting. Waiting for her father to let her out of this prison he pretended was a paradise. Waiting for latent dreamseeds to sprout in some foolish human and give her a way back into the deadworld called Earth. Waiting for centuries-old plans to come to fruition.
Waiting for her sanity to finally trickle away like sand in an hourglass, grain by grain by grain…
But she was not actually waiting for any of those outcomes today, much as she might want or dread them. No, today she was waiting for the Talisman to show herself again.
She was waiting for revenge.
When that hated woman and her three witch companions had invaded the Dreamqueen’s domain, she had dreamscanned them all. She knew what they wanted most in the world, what they loved, what they hated. What they were most afraid of.
She had already used that knowledge against the Green One, a probing attack meant to test the woman’s susceptibility to the Dreamqueen’s dreamseeds. She’d found that one’s mind to be very fertile ground indeed, though the Talisman had stepped in before she’d had a chance to do any real damage. Still, she’d planted her seeds, and they would quickly bear fruit.
She knew they were somewhere in the Dark Dimension – that was where the dimensional rift led – but she had to be careful using her gazing pool to spy on the happenings there. When Dormammu ruled, it didn’t matter; he was too focused on his own doings to concern himself with anyone else’s unless they directly impacted his plans in some unpleasant way. He was really a very basic creature, and she didn’t need to dreamscan him to know what he wanted most: dominion, glory, either fear or respect – both were equally satisfying to him – and, of course, Doctor Strange groveling at his feet.
But Umar ruled now, and very little happened in her dimension that she was not aware of. She was a walking machination, intrigue running through her veins and artifice filling her lungs. She might choose not to act against a shadowy observer viewing her realm, for whatever opaque purpose staying her hand suited, but she would certainly know about it.
The Dreamqueen did have a legitimate, defensible reason for looking in on the Dark Dimension, though. The seeds she’d sown in the subconscious of the Green One would sprout soon, and the Dreamqueen had a right to harvest her crops, regardless of where they wound up growing.
Whether the current ruler of the Dark Dimension would choose to recognize that claim was questionable, but the Dreamqueen had something even Umar the Unrelenting would have a hard time turning her patrician nose up at.
Intelligence.
The Dreamqueen could just contact her now, of course. Umar would undoubtedly be interested in knowing that these four women were running around unsupervised in her playground. She’d likely be even more interested to know who they were.
Elizabeth Twoyoungmen, the Talisman, to whom goddesses knelt. Margali Szardos, the Sorceress Supreme of the Winding Way, who wore the Eye of Agamotto before Stephen Strange. Holly LaDonna, a pupil of Agatha Harkness who the old witch believed might one day rival Wanda Maximoff in skill.
And Clea Strange, Sorceress Supreme of Umar’s own dimension, flesh of her Faltine flesh and bone of her Mhuruuk lover’s bone. Once ruler of the Dark Dimension in her own right, having bested Umar in front of all her people. Now leader of the rebels who continuously harried the self-styled goddess and kept her from accomplishing her grandest plans of conquest.
All of them here, in Umar’s backyard. And they hadn’t come for a social call.
Umar would be even more interested to learn that they were here to stop her from invading the rest of the Archipelago of Anguish and Redemption and to rescue the friend whom she had kidnapped to fuel that endeavor.
The Dreamqueen smiled her sharp-toothed smile.
Dreamscans gave her so much more information than just a target’s phobias and surface weaknesses. Scan deeply enough, and skillfully enough, and you could learn a victim’s entire life history in a matter of hours.
She hadn’t needed that long to discover who the Talisman’s companions were or what they were up to. Their plans were virtually the only thing they thought about.
It was also the only thing they talked about, so she’d learned just as much eavesdropping on them as they traipsed through Liveworld, as she had plundering their thoughts.
But it wouldn’t be enough to go to Umar with the mere fact of the group’s presence in her realm – which, given the combined magical ability of these women, Umar might very well not have detected yet, despite her seeming omniscience. It wouldn’t even be enough to bring her their objective, since the Dreamqueen did not yet know exactly how they hoped to achieve it.
No, the Dreamqueen needed more. She needed to know where they were, and where they were going.
So, she paced, and watched, and waited.
She waited for her seeds to burrow their way out from the darkness of the fear and shame which nourished them best, to the light of the waking world. She waited for them to release their horrors upon their hosts, unfurling like poison leaves opening to the sun. She waited for that moment of peak maturation when they would be ripe for the reaping, and she would be ready with claws like scythes.
She waited for the screaming to start.