The master spy or Puss in the boot adventures

Lyra, the Goddess of Dreams part 9, Part 139

As Alric and the others joined hands around the Dreamweaver, their voices rising in a chorus of half-remembered lullabies and childhood rhymes, the air began to throb with an unseen energy. The Neverborn, sensing the power behind the simple, heartfelt words, let out a shriek of rage and fear that echoed across the nightmare realm.

"No!" the Dreamweaver howled, her voice a discordant fusion of Lyra's musical tones and the guttural snarls of the dark entities possessing her. "You cannot take her from us! She is ours now, bound to the glorious madness for all eternity!"

The shadows around the Dreamweaver surged and boiled like a living tide, coalescing into a horde of nightmarish monstrosities. Twisted amalgamations of flesh and shadow, all gaping maws and razor claws, they charged towards Alric and the others with murderous intent.

Alric stood his ground, his voice never wavering as he continued to sing the simple, pure melodies of Lyra's youth. Beside him, her parents and friends joined in, their voices weaving together in a tapestry of love and memory that seemed to push back against the encroaching darkness.

The monsters fell upon them in a frenzy of slashing talons and gnashing teeth. Alric cried out in pain as a jagged claw raked across his chest, leaving a bloody gash in its wake. But still he sang, pouring all his love and desperation into the words.

Lyra's mother screamed as a hulking brute seized her in its dripping mandibles, its fetid breath hot on her face. But her husband was there in an instant, beating at the creature with his shepherd's crook until it released her with a howl of pain.

All around them, the battle raged - the nightmarish spawn of the Neverborn swarming over the small group of determined dreamers like a tide of living shadow. They fought back with whatever weapons they could muster - a jagged rock snatched from the ground, a burning brand seized from a flickering brazier, even their own bare hands and feet.

But for every monstrosity they felled,  more seemed to take its place, birthed from the seething shadows that danced at the edges of their vision. Slowly, inexorably, they found themselves driven back towards the shimmering portal that had brought them to this accursed place.

And at the center of it all stood the Dreamweaver, her once-beautiful face a mask of rage and madness as she orchestrated the onslaught. Dark energies crackled around her lithe form, lashing out at her former friends and loved ones with whips of searing agony.

"Fools!" she crowed, her voice a seething maelstrom of twisted glee. "Did you truly think I belong to your mortal world? My destiny is to be queen, to sit on the right side of my husband almighty Solaris, lord and master of time and matter , to rule all of the Realities !

„My child," her mother cried. „We love you. Come to us."

Her mother started singing her favourite song before she  put her to bed.

Slumbering babe in gentle nest,

To lullabies I'll tenderly rest.

With joy I weave a vibrant song,

And smiles shall flourish all night long.

A cherub fair from crown to feet,

Dear daughter, hush, 'neath stars so sweet.

In tranquil peace, let dreams take flight,

Rest, my love, through silent night.

The Dreamweaver shrieked in fury as the familiar melodies pierced the veil of madness that enshrouded her. For a moment, the shadows around her wavered and thinned, revealing glimpses of  beautiful young shepherdess trapped within. Her eyes flickered with confusion and longing, a child lost in a nightmare too terrible to comprehend.

But the moment was short-lived. The Neverborn, sensing the threat to their dark champion, rallied. From every corner of the nightmarish citadel, horrors came spilling forth - shapeless abominations that gibbered and howled, multi-limbed monstrosities that skittered across the pulsing stone, tentacled behemoths that slithered and oozed leaving trails of noxious ichor.

"Destroy them once and for all!" the Dreamweaver commanded, her voice a deafening crescendo. "Rip the flesh from their bones, and feast upon their sanity!"

The horde surged forward in a nightmarish wave. Alric and the others fell back, their voices raised in desperate defiance as they sought to hold the monsters at bay. Crude weapons of fire-hardened wood and sharpened stone appeared in their hands, plucked from half-remembered dreams of a simpler time.

They fought with the strength of desperation, their makeshift clubs and spears beating back the first onslaught of horrors. Ichor splattered the obsidian flagstones, and keening wails of pain echoed off the cyclopean walls. But for every monstrosity they felled, two more sprang forward to take its place, an inexorable tide of claws and fangs and twisting, writhing appendages.

Slowly, inexorably, the defenders were driven back towards the base of the keep. Alric found himself shoulder to shoulder with Lyra's father, the old shepherd's face grim and streaked with blood and sweat. Beyond him, Lyra's mother and childhood friends fought with a fierce, hopeless valor, their voices still raised in snatches of half-forgotten song.

And at the center of the maelstrom, the Dreamweaver loomed, terrible and resplendent in her dark majesty. Shadows coiled around her like worshipful serpents, parting only to allow devastatingly precise lashes of inky tentacles and bursts of entropy that rotted flesh and eroded stone. Her laughter rang out above the cacophony of battle, a sound of pure, unadulterated madness.

All seem lost, when...