Dream Read Free

eyes that were as hard as the axe Fred was holding casually at his side. “Good morning. I am the Exalted Guardian Yorrian.”
    “OK,” Shad nodded. “I’m guessing you know who we are and why we are here.”
    “I do indeed. We called you here.”
    “Where is ‘ here ’, exactly?”
    She shook her head, still smiling. “This is where…things go. Unwanted things.” The smile faded. “What you call legends. Monsters. Magic. The things Mankind cast aside. Things banished by the steel lines of technology, the harsh winds of the sons of Judah, the burning sun of the followers of Christ. Faith,” she bit the word out of the air. “Has power beyond that of anything else. So our ancestors were sent…here.”
    Shad looked around. “Seems…like Earth. Nice.”
    “Ah, yes. Nice .” Yorrian was openly sneering. “As a banishment, it is not unpleasant. None of us have known anything else, and few would leave even if they could. Over the many generations we have made lives for ourselves. Until now.”
    “What happened?” Shad was all too familiar with this sort of exchange but saw no way out. Fred was right: this read like the onset of a campaign, only from the inside .
    “You changed the rules. You started to… believe , in ways that we do not understand.”
    “Believe?”
    “In monsters, in magic. In an organized fashion, but not religiously. Belief has…power, even this strange sort of half-belief. It has warped our prison, twisting it to conform to new ways. For generations we have seen the power in our world re-shaped. At first we hoped it meant we were to return, but that was not the case. You simply twisted the powers that shape our world to fit patterns that you created, and we were forced to live with the results.”
    “Uh-oh,” Derek muttered.
    “So you brought us here for…what?” Shad deliberately avoided the word ‘revenge’ even though it was blazing in the forefront of his brain.
    “You four are typical of the new belief, of the shapers who changed our world,” her eyes flashed. “Your arrogance is amazing, your hubris…this problem is of your making, and so you shall solve it.”
    “What problem?”
    “Five of your kind have crossed over into our realm. Those of us who watch have ensured that no others will come, but the damage is done. Five of you walk our world, and that is intolerable. Five intruders .”
    “The tattoos,” Derek breathed.
    “Yes. Those are their symbols, and an… unsummoning , so to speak. When all five have been defeated, the marks on your arms will send you back to your realm.”
    “So, let me get this straight,” Jeff spoke up. “Five people from our world have entered this…realm, and we have to what, kill them in order to get home?’
    “Exactly.”
    “Why us?”
    “Aside from the justice of it, the five who came here have powers which make them very difficult for natives of this realm to defeat. Those powers are ineffective against those from their own realm.”
    “What powers?” Shad headed off Jeff’s next question.
    “Your…recent beliefs have imposed an order on the powers of our world. We adjusted, because it affected all equally, and generations have now lived under it. Your intruders…cheated, for lack of a better term. They came into our realm with powers that none of our kind have ever achieved. We ensured there would be no more, but that does nothing to stop those already here. So it was decided to bring in more outlanders, marking them so that they might depart when the deed is completed. Because we…repaired our own prison, those we bring in must conform to the new ways of our land, but they are still immune to the powers of the intruders.”
    “We’re not the first,” Fred announced with his usual abruptness.
    “No.” Yorrian’s smile was hard. “And some of the others have died. In truth, there were seven intruders who came here seven years ago, but only five now remain. If you wish to return home you will end the lives