Late to the Battle (NLD)
by
, 06-04-2015 at 10:19 PM (619 Views)
I was lying on the floor in a foyer outside a kind of auditorium space, updating my dream notebook. Inside the auditorium I could hear the sounds of an epic battle taking place between a group of human defenders and a massive demon overlord and his infernal minions. The demon overlord kept shouting ominous things in his deep booming voice, which was a mildly annoying distraction as I tried to write.
Finally I finished my entry and decided to go inside and intervene. I wondered if I should have helped the people earlier in their fight, but told myself that if I solved all their problems for them, they would never learn how to do things for themselves. That made me think of Aslan, from the Narnia series, who was always a bit of a dick that way: let the kids attempt to do something, wait until they inevitably failed, and then swoop in as a deus ex machina to save the day. Today I was going to be that dick.
I went into the auditorium and conjured a metal sphere in the air above my hand, then sent it toward the huge demon. It began circling his body, and as it did so, metal parts began extending from the sphere. Soon it had transformed into a metal suit that completely encased the demon. The headpiece had a transparent pane, so we could see the spray of red when the suit dissolved the demon's body. The suit then retracted into a floating metallic sphere again, leaving nothing but a red mist in the air where the demon had been. The sphere now targeted the smaller demonic underlings, killing them with high-speed impact. Then it found its way up past the ceiling of the auditorium, which was another transparent pane, and overhead we could see the sphere shooting in all directions, crashing into the flying vehicles that belonged to the demon city that towered overhead. Our victory would be thorough.
I started chatting with some people around me, expressing condolences for their comrades who had fallen in the battle earlier. "Where were you?" someone asked, and without thinking I admitted, "In the next room." Then I worried that they might be upset that I had taken so long before coming to help, when they realized I had been right there and could have come at any time. I didn't think it would improve matters if I tried explaining that I had delayed my arrival in order to update my dream journal.