The master spy or Puss in the boot adventures

Lyra, the Goddess of Dreams part 10, Part 140

With last strength the defenders pushed to the very brink of annihilation by the relentless onslaught of nightmarish horrors. Alric and the others fought with the desperate strength of the doomed, their voices raw and hoarse as they shouted defiance in the face of certain oblivion.

But the Neverborn had one final, terrible weapon to unleash. From the depths of the citadel, an unearthly glow began to emanate, pulsing with a sickly, green-tinged luminescence. The air grew thick and choking, as if the very essence of the nightmare realm was coalescing into a miasma of pure, distilled horror.

With a deafening roar, a colossal form burst from the shattered gates of the keep. It was a thing out of the darkest reaches of the subconscious, a titanic amalgamation of all the primal fears that lurk in the shadowed corners of the mortal mind. Towering over the battlefield on legs like twisted tree trunks, it surveyed the carnage with a dozen misshapen eyes that blazed with infernal hunger.

Its body was a grotesque patchwork of pulsating flesh and chitinous armor, studded with an array of glistening spines and razor-edged protrusions. Gaping maws ringed its torso, each one filled with rows of jagged teeth that dripped with a viscous, bubbling ichor. Atop its massive shoulders, a cluster of writhing tentacles lashed the air, each one tipped with a barbed stinger the size of a greatsword.

The defenders stared up at the abomination in slack-jawed horror, their minds reeling as they tried to process the sheer enormity of the monstrosity bearing down upon them. Some fell to their knees, weeping and gibbering as their sanity crumbled beneath the weight of the primal terror radiating from the creature. Others simply stood rooted in place, their weapons falling from nerveless fingers as they gaped in mute incomprehension.

"Behold!" the Dreamweaver crowed, her voice swelling with triumphant glee. "The Devourer of Hope, the Render of Sanity! With this glorious incarnation of eternal nightmare at my command, your pathetic mortal minds will be as clay in my hands! Despair and die, fools!"

At some unspoken command, the titanic horror lunged forward with terrible speed, belying its massive bulk. A flailing tentacle lashed out, seizing a weeping defender and dragging the unfortunate soul screaming into a waiting maw. Gobbets of blood and shredded viscera sprayed into the air as the abomination bit down, the sickening crunch of pulverized bone echoing across the battlefield.

The Shadow Titan strode forth, each footfall sending shockwaves reverberating through the flagstones. In its wake, the lesser horrors swarmed like a chittering tide, emboldened by the presence of their dark master. Alric felt his heart turn to ice water in his chest as he beheld the approaching monstrosity, knowing that no mortal force could stand against such a manifestation of pure, undiluted dread.

The Titan raised one massive, taloned hand and pointed at the ragged band of dreamers. Instantly, a wave of crushing despair washed over them, driving them to their knees with its sheer, palpable weight. Shadowy tendrils lashed out, ensnaring limbs and worming their way into gaping mouths and straining nostrils. Alric choked and gasped as he felt the icy coils constricting around his throat, squeezing the air from his lungs in an inexorable vice.

Through vision blurred with tears of pain and terror, he saw Lyra's parents crumple to the ground, their forms obscured by writhing nets of darkness. Her childhood friends fared no better, their screams choked off into guttural, liquid gurgles as the shadows forced their way down their throats. Even the stout-hearted old shepherd who had been a second father to Alric was driven to his knees, his weathered face contorted in a rictus of agony.

And at the center of it all, the Dreamweaver looked on with a cold, pitiless smile, her eyes twin abysses of swirling madness. She raised her hand in a languid gesture of command, and the Shadow Titan stepped forward, its movements ponderous yet inexorable. Alric watched helplessly as one gigantic foot lifted into the air above him, blotting out the leaden sky like the falling blade of a cosmic guillotine.

In that moment, as the darkness closed in and all hope fled...

All seemed lost as the Neverborn horde closed in, a seething mass of nightmare made flesh. Alric and the others fought with the desperate strength of those who know they are doomed, their voices still raised in defiant song even as their blood spilled across the pulsating stones.

But just as the last flicker of hope guttered and died in their hearts, the Dreamweaver threw back her head and loosed a terrible cry of triumph. The shadows around her surged and boiled, parting like a fetid tide to reveal a sight that froze the breath in their lungs and sent icy tendrils of dread crawling down their spines.

There, cradled in the Dreamweaver's arms like a hideous infant, was a sphere of utter darkness. It drank in the eerie luminescence of the nightmare realm, pulling all light into its fathomless depths. Suspended within its inky heart was a single shard of purest obsidian, a jagged sliver of crystallized madness that pulsed with a diseased inner light.

"Behold!" the Dreamweaver crowed, her voice resounding with malevolent glee. "The Dreamshard, a fragment of the very essence of the Neverborn! With this, I shall sweep away the last, pitiful remnants of Lyra's mortal existence and ascend to the ebon throne as the one, true Queen of Nightmares!"

She raised the Dreamshard high, and it flared with an intense un-light, casting stark shadows across the twisted landscape. Alric and the others cried out in agony as the unnatural radiance seared their eyes and sent stabbing pains lancing through their skulls. They staggered back, their weapons falling from nerveless fingers as they clutched at their faces in anguish.

The Neverborn surged forward, a chittering, howling tide of foulness and corruption. Tentacles lashed and jaws gaped wide in anticipation of the kill. But the Dreamweaver halted their advance with an imperious gesture, her eyes alight with a terrible, unholy rapture.

"No," she hissed. "I want them to see. I want them to understand the true depth of their folly before I obliterate their pathetic minds and feast upon the shattered remnants of their sanity!"

She began to chant in a tongue that seethed and writhed like a nest of serpents, each guttural syllable oozing with an eldritch power that curdled the air and set reality itself to buckling and fraying at the seams. The Dreamshard pulsed in time with her words, its un-light growing ever more intense until it was a searing, blinding corona of purest madness.

Alric and the others screamed as the first lashes of psychic agony ripped through their minds, shredding their thoughts...