Last Dream
Several events were already different from what had happened in the original timeline. The information was being overwritten, and it was causing some of the memories to be destroyed. I needed to talk to Gilda before too much was lost.
I sent Millie to stay in one of the recreated Earth environments inside the core. The first thing we needed to figure out was how to handle informing her of the event that triggered her transformation. Hiding it from her wasn't an option, but telling her was gonna need to be handled with care. I wasn't sure how to do it and hoped Gilda had some suggestions considering she was directly involved. Besides, this was going to be almost as shocking for her as it would be for Millie.
Gilda and I both used part of our minds to enter the pasture simulation for privacy while continuing the work of moving more of Noah's Arc into Cordelia's core.
Inside the simulation, I sat down with Gilda beside a campfire. She had a strange look on her face as if she were seeing something that I couldn't. I tried to start telling the story of a future that needed to be prevented while restlessly poking at the campfire with a stick.
"Don't worry. We have some time before we meet the Demon Lord flotilla sent to destroy us. They should find us five days from now."
"So, you really do have memories from the future?"
"Yep. But memories isn't exactly the right term. It is more like a dream or a vision. It's a bit hard to explain, but dreams are like an alternate universe. All dreamers have a small chunk of their own space in that universe, but it's all connected and can be used to transmit information. This is what made Millie so dangerous, but it's also what made sending this information to the past possible."
I could tell Gilda wanted to dive into the exact mechanics as a researcher, but I needed to get to the point as soon as possible.
"Anyhow, thanks to Cordelia's last dream, we got important information about the future."
"Last dream?"
"Yeah... Millie couldn't kill Cordelia because they're bonded. Killing Cordelia would be the same thing as committing suicide. However, she could absorb almost all of Cordelia into herself. Just leaving a single spark of a dream, which was all that was left her consciousness, alive to keep the connection between them technically functional."
Gilda scrunched up her face. She already knew more than she let on about the true nature of the Dungeon Core bonding process. But I wasn't worried about Gilda anymore.
"I see. That was a very clever way to get around the limitation of the bonding. So Millie took over her body and left only the smallest part of her consciousness intact as a technicality? Do you happen to know what was contained in the dream she preserved?"
It was my turn to scrunch up my face. What Millie had done was too cruel. I had to force myself to spit it out.
"It was Cordelia's dream of a happy life for Millie... together with us."
Gilda seemed to think she understood, but I knew she really didn't. She wouldn't really get it until I told the rest of the story.
"Anyway, the important thing right now is what happened to trigger that."
As I started to tell the story, I fell into something like a trance. I could hear myself speaking, but my voice sounded older and so weary. My body just stared straight into the fire, recounting events to the air as if I were all alone.
______________________________________________________________________________________
We managed to get to the training grounds. Millie was instrumental in defeating the ships that attacked us on the way. I should have noticed her increasing viciousness towards the Demon Lords. But I was too fixated on figuring out my new powers to pay attention to what was going on around me. Cordelia confided to me that she was worried about Millie's change in attitude. But foolishly, I convinced her that it wasn't bad enough to worry about yet.
When we landed, we were met by a large force of robots, a few magical warriors, and three representatives from Gilda's people, the Nordics.
Everything seemed fine as we descended to the ground. We had all expected that Gilda was going to be arrested, and maybe the rest of us would be questioned as well. We thought we were prepared for that. But nobody there had anticipated what would happen next.
We were surrounded. All of us were still calm, with Gilda speaking out loud, trying to communicate with her superiors. When one of those superiors stepped forward to talk to her, all hell broke loose.
Millie's scream was blood curdling and primal as she suddenly attacked him. Cordelia reacted almost as quickly, as well. I was stunned for a second, while Gilda was panicked. Everything became clear when Cordelia shouted that Gilda's superior was a Demon Lord, and this was an ambush.
Pandemonium erupted. Gilda didn't know what to do and was quickly knocked unconscious. I started killing anything that came near as well. Several magical warriors were fighting us as well as all the robots. Millie's attacks worked on the warriors and Nordics but had no effect on the robots.
Gradually we were being worn down. I was having a hard time handling a dwarf warrior and got separated from the girls. Millie was grabbed by several robots, and she was helpless. I can still hear her animalistic screams of rage. Cordelia tried to help, but the second she reached Millie, there was a red flash. Cordelia was suddenly gone, and a hole was ripped open into the surreal universe of the Dreaming. Out of that hole poured nightmares made flesh, which quickly trampled and devoured everybody else who was there. I tried to help Millie, but she was already gone. What stood in her place was a nearly indestructible nightmare creature born of pure rage.
I managed to grab Gilda and escaped outside of the newly created nightmare dungeon.
As she killed, the Nightmare at the center of the rupture of reality expanded her dungeon territory while rewriting existence into a nightmare hellscape. More magical warriors came, but all they did was die to become fuel for the dungeon expansion. I managed to get to another spaceship and got us off the planet before we both watched in horror as the entire world was consumed by the dungeon.
It all happened so fast. Within a few hours, an entire planet was consumed. At first, we thought the Nightmare could be contained to just this planet. But shortly, we found out the creature could attack through the connected consciousnesses in the Dreaming. Anybody could become a gateway for her attack. Nothing was safe except beings that couldn't dream, robots, and golems.
Gilda devised a system to suppress dreaming among the remaining Alliance planets. Meanwhile, the Demon Lord controlled world were being devoured one by one. Once the Nightmare had eradicated the Demon Lords, she eventually turned her eyes towards us as well. What none of us had realized was dreaming wasn't something that happened just when you were asleep.
Things like hopes for the future and other assorted daydreams were also a weak connection to the Dreaming. It wasn't enough to open a full portal, but that was more than enough for her to be able to worm her way into the consciousness of an individual and consume them from the inside.
It was a slow and horrible way to die.
At first, she targeted the remaining Nordics until only Gilda was left. When I held Gilda in my arms as she died, I knew there was no other way. I had to face the thing Millie had become head-on. I cut out what was left of my humanity, optimizing myself far beyond reason for the battle ahead.
When I was done, I traveled alone back to the world where it all started. Killing everything that I came across. The whole world was taken over by the Dreaming, so there was an almost never-ending horde of creatures born from the nightmares of every being she had consumed. After what felt like endless months of fighting, I finally reached the core of the Nightmare Dungeon. There I ended the creature Millie had become with my own hands. It was a fight where I could hold nothing back, and despite my extreme enhancements, in the end, I was mortally wounded as well.
If it had not been for that last bit of Cordelia, the final remaining spark of hope left in that desolate nightmare hellscape, that would have been the end of the story.
However, she convinced me that I could use the interconnected nature of the Dreaming, along with my time-traveling magic, to reposition our dream in the Willie of the distant past. I picked the first time I dreamt, after discovering time travel, hoping it would increase the chances of me understanding the message. I sucked in all of the mana left on that ravaged world, to the point where my body couldn't contain it all, and used it all to send our last dream to the distant past.
______________________________________________________________________________________
When I finished my story, I came out of my trance-like state. I poked the fire a few times and muttered my closing statement.
"And that's how it was..."
