This post is inspired (very loosely !) by a prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #654 - Dream Manifesting.
It tells a part of the story of the second of three warlock brothers; I posted the first a little while ago in The Whole Multiverse is a Prison
Image created by AI in Nightcafe Studio
Things could have gone better, Firorn thought to himself as he used more of his diminishing reserve of power to cast a teleport spell. It's weakened power meant he only jumped a couple of hundred yards.
He had to get away, lose this dogged company of pursuing Royal soldiers and get to somewhere inhabited. Preferably inhabited by unsuspecting civilians. The warlock brothers attempt to take this world had failed, thwarted by the iron will of a queen who was loved and feared by her subjects.
The soldiers were shielded against his powers; vulnerable to physical effects he cast but safe from his more potent abilities. At least to a certain extent. He wished he was like his older brother, Zli-Klak, who could use simple-seeming words to charm anyone into absolute obedience to his will. But his power was less direct. Just as effective if he used it cleverly, but he had to face the fact he didn't have Zli-Klak's raw power.
Firorn's reverie was interrupted by an abrupt "Zak ! Zak !" sound very close to the shrub he was hiding behind. Two sky-blue uniformed Royal soldiers, with a hunting uzak on a lead snuffling the air, picking up his scent. One of the soldiers was reaching for a communicator, the other hastily unslinging his laser rifle.
He had to deal with this quickly ! The soldiers' helmets shielded them. But the uzak... the uzak was an animal, with no shielding. Firorn calmed his breathing and calmed his mind. Then he mentally reached inside the animal's head. The uzak was a simple creature, all teeth and hunger, and it didn't take him log to find what he wanted. A dream of a mate and a pack to call his own. He hated the dreams of dumb animals, they were so basic. But useful.
With a twist of his mind, Firorn made the dream-pack a reality. They appeared next to the two soldiers. Dreams are at a lower level of consciousness, especially for animals; all the uzak's training was a surface thing, stripped away in it's dreams. The pack that emerged from it's dream was feral, untrained by human handlers, seeing humans as just food. The soldiers screamed as the pack launched itself at them, and died screaming. No call was made on the communicator.
Replenished a little by the dream he'd stolen, and able to focus without the worry of being disturbed, Firorn's next jump was longer and more purposeful.
He appeared on the outskirts of a small hamlet. Crouching down and rapidly casting a disguise on himself, to a casual observer he now looked like a small bush, just one among many shrubs nearby. Then he went to work.
He slipped into the minds of each of the villagers he could see as they went about their business. He studied their dreams, looking for something he could use. As always, most of the dreams were useless to him. Dreams of petty revenge for petty slights, spending undeserved but suddenly gained wealth, and most of all of sexual conquests or peculiar deviancies which could never happen in the real world. Useless dross.
But wait; there was one ! A young boy, barely into his teens. He dreamed of space, of joining the fleet and being part of voyages of discovery to unknown worlds. Absolutely perfect !
Firorn reached carefully into the boy's mind and pulled the dream out of it. He had to be careful manifesting it. Opening his arms, he visualised a great oval between his outstretched hands, and within that oval the surface of an alien world unknown to the Empire.
He stepped through, escaping his pursuers for good. He wondered where this place was, then decided that it really didn't matter. He knew it was a real place, pulled forth from the boy's dreams, and far outside the boundaries of the Empire.
He almost felt a moment's regret that in using this dream, he had taken it from a boy whose aspiration now would be nothing more lofty than to be a better farmer than his father.
