Dreamland

On our way back to town, Matt remembered that Hew used to leave his car keys in a leather pocket next to the gas tank in situations like this. I stopped and checked, and indeed the keys were there, so not only did I get my clothes back, but we decided to unstick his bogged-down car. Since I could lift half the vehicle, front or back, with sheer muscle power, it was not an impossible feat to free it out of the sticky mud. True, when lifting the heavier part with the engine, my feet got partially bogged down in the same mud, and I almost lost a shoe.

Unfortunately, the shoe did not survive unscathed, I retrieved it, but I doubt it can be repaired. I really should have put on a pair of Mephi boots before. I would not have thought that they were of higher quality, but truth be told, they survived even more dire events. Well, I have them on now…

As a side effect, I managed to greatly impress Matt, who was sitting in the driver's seat until we freed the car. He began to better grasp the difference in power between the two of us.

Oh, well. When I put my bike in the back of the jeep, he didn't even pretend to help me.

As soon as we got a mobile connection, Matt called Hew to let him know we had his jeep, and so we met a radiant Hew in Matt's front yard.

He was a bit unhappy about all the mud we had spread inside the car, although we had done our best to shake it off before sitting there.

The two helped me unload the bike, Matt playing his role pretty well while Hew really tried his best.

We chatted a bit there in front of the house, and I learned that Mike had been taken to the hospital with pneumonia but was going to be released home soon. Tom's sprained ankle has been put in a cast which he will have to wear for a week. The big unanswered question was what we were going to do with the planned session at Stavros.

We found out that Mike had already accepted the offer before even asking us. There had been massive pressure on him to come up with a fast answer, and he had been so sure that we would take it that he had answered positively.

Now we were in a bind: we either had to find a solution or pay a penalty of several thousand.

We could have blamed it all on Mike and left him to deal with it because he had made the deal before asking us; however, I never even raised that option, and neither did they.

“We need to improvise something, even if I'm going to play drums myself!” - Hew said.

We shared the feeling but dreaded the outcome as Hew is a catastrophic drummer.

*

In the end, we found a solution: Tina and Sasha from a girls-only band called The Hachettes would temporarily replace Mike and Tom.

Of course, the two new girls would also have to wear masks during our show to support the mystery of Fairy Morgana. We wanted to keep the mystery around the band and the masked singer a little bit longer. It wasn't that much of a mystery, some people knew the truth very well, like Joe and the handball gang, and we weren't under any illusions that it would be too long before everyone found out, even though Joe and the boys had promised that they will keep the secret. Hew and Mike thought it was a good PR gag, so we kept it going.

Of course, I knew Joe would blurt it out at the first opportunity, so I didn't even feel the need to tell Lola, as I knew she and Clara must already know. If I told them about it now, it would feel like bragging. Yeah, OK, I achieved the dubious glory of singing in a bar. That would be Clara's answer.

We didn't have much time to prepare, so we were a bit nervous before the show, but it went well, the new girls performed surprisingly well, and we were a success again.

*

After the show, we went to a reserved room in the back of the restaurant and celebrated our second performance with the five Hachettes girls, their full band, Tom with his leg in a cast, and a few other guests.

My boys were over the moon with so many girls around, and while Hachettes bandleader Cara tried to woo me to sing with them in another show, Emanuella, one of the girls, showed us an interesting video from an internet stream. It was from a local reporter interviewing a military man. Behind them, a battery of cannons started firing. Maybe they wanted to calm the population and explain what was happening.

“What the fuck is that? An exercise? Cannons?” - Matt wondered, looking over her shoulder.

"Looks like they're shooting at the terrorist area to get them to surrender!" - Emanuella answered.

“With cannons?” - Cara wondered at her turn.

Hell, Mike had told us something about a military move to take back the county. I didn't expect it to be so soon. I swallowed. Soon? In fact, they have waited long enough.

While we were discussing this, the video suddenly cut out.

“What the hell?” - Emanuella cursed, looking at her mobile phone – “I think I lost my connection to the net...”

“Mine stopped too...” - Hew said, looking at his mobile - "I was watching the same thing..."

I went to Hew and looked over his shoulder.

"Can you rewind and redo a bit? Picture by picture?"

He did just that, and I gulped. There had been an explosion just before the cut.

“Did you see what I saw?” - Hew raised his eyes from the phone and looked at me.

“It was too short, maybe just some bad pixels...” - I wondered

“What do you mean?” - Cara asked

“It looked like an explosion...” - Hew answered uneasily.

We tried to find more feeds. If the army had really started an offensive, we might find something, and indeed it was Emanuella who found an interesting feed again. Somebody was filming from a terrace of a higher building, and we could see the light when the artillery fired. We could not see the artillery guns but the light of their fire. Maybe it was the same position seen from a different angle, or maybe a similar one. Then, suddenly, something exploded not far away. No fire was seen from that explosion but a visible distortion in the air, like a huge expanding bubble. No, a line of giant expanding bubbles because there were more. As soon as such a bubble passed over the area where the artillery fire had been visible, a sudden series of explosions shook it. Then suddenly, our new feed died.

My cheek muscles twitched involuntarily when I saw this. It looked a lot like that wave I sent when I gave Matt a nosebleed. We exchanged a look. He had the same sense of deja-vu.

What did we see? Was my understanding correct?

In Dreamland, you do not bring guns to high-level areas.

There is no artillery in Dreamland. Because the dangers of carrying that much powder increase exponentially. Guns are low-level tools. They give you heavy firepower for a little skill but are very dangerous in moderate to high-level areas. Not only does bullet resistance increase with each level, but a good mage can make powder explode easily.

It's true that you can fire at them from a distance, but they can fire back balls of mana at an enormous range that can make anything that can explode go boom. Those arcane mini-balls don't do much damage; they're mainly used as identification tools to magically highlight an area, but if an arcane blast like that catches you with some bullets in your pocket, you gain a new set of holes in your pocket and a Russian roulette ticket.

The strange thing was that I was looking at that very thing, or maybe something very similar. I didn't see such a case in Dreamland because no one was stupid enough to bring guns to fight mages. That's why I didn't even think about it before. It was the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight.

"What the hell did we see?" - Matt wondered, looking at me.

I opened my mouth to answer him, but someone spoke over me:

“There are many wounded at the Saint-Anna hospital!”

We looked at each other, and a shiver passed through my spine.