I took in a deep breath, gathering my thoughts, and practically screamed.
"The fools who play the flute, the only ones standing between annihilation. The ones who keep the blind idiot god sane!"
As those words left my mouth and echoed for what felt like a brief eternity, the air went still.
Not silent, but still, like the world itself had stopped breathing, clutching its chest in dread of what was about to come.
You see, the concept of law formation would have never gained the credibility it now held if not for how absurdly real it had proven to be.
After all, it only made sense to believe in something logical.
Back when I had been rushed upon by those predators, I had formed a law, believing it could alter my fate and reshape the dream temporarily.
But there was a catch: what if the very act of forming that law was itself part of the dream, something scripted and simply waiting to be played out?
If that were true, then the law formation had not changed anything at all, it had merely fulfilled its role inside the dream's script.
A paradox, really.
Let us assume I had never formed the law. What were the chances I would have survived regardless?
What if the real alteration was not in creating the law, but in not creating it?
Those kinds of questions raised a storm of philosophical and existential concern among humans and even among other species.
Yet despite the uncertainty, we all came to accept its effect.
Because beyond all logic, the law formation allowed us to pull off feats that defied reality itself, not in the physical sense, but in the abstract, the axiomatic, the utterly foundational.
[The Daemon Sultans listen to your call.]
Just like me, one foolish enough to beckon the wrath of the Daemon Sultans.
Ordinarily, summoning beings like them would have been outright impossible, not because of one reason but many.
Though I could only grasp a few myself.
First of all, they could not exist within our Dreamer's dream.
If they had, then Kranthall would have already ascended to a Great Old One, and he clearly was not.
At best, he was just another dreamer tangled in the same illusion as everyone else.
If someone bound by the dream had tried to pull off what I just did, nothing would have happened.
The concept of the Sultans did not exist here.
The dream had no place for them.
Though admittedly, there was a faint chance they might have slipped in through the fractures of imagination, but even that was almost impossible.
Yet I managed to make them heed.
Because I was not bound by the dream.
The Dreamlands I had stepped into were not a mere projection of Kranthall's imagination, they were the real thing.
The true Dreamlands.
And more than that, it had taken a law formation as earth-shattering as my own to even allow the possibility of being heard by the Daemon Sultans.
To them, I was no ordinary mortal. I was an exception, an existence that did not belong to the dream. And that alone was enough to make them turn their attention toward me.
But if they did not… well, I had my ways.
A thin mist seeped in from nowhere, glowing faintly from within like dust caught in twilight.
The ground under me rippled, softening into something that looked almost alive, as if the Dreamlands themselves were shivering in anticipation.
[The Daemon Sultans have turned their flutes.]
The voice of the existing echoed throughout the vicinity, and it felt as if every particle hummed the same damn tune.
[The melody of the outer chaos stirs.]
[The Blind Idiot God twitches in his sleep.]
[All creation shivers in anticipation.]
The sky above cracked, not with thunder but with sound.
Invisible waves burst outward, bending light and pulling the horizon inward with an overwhelming pressure.
[The Song of the Center resounds beyond comprehension.]
[Meaning begins to lose shape.]
[Order begins to dissolve.]
[The Daemon Sultans descend.]
Then came the sound.
It was not music, not yet, just a dull, off-beat humming like someone blowing into a cracked flute.
The pitch wavered, broke and realigned, repeating it again and again, each time a little clearer and a little closer than before.
The fields around me heaved upward in spirals of melting geometry.
Gravity twisted, reversed and for a second I could not tell if I was falling downward or upward.
The sky convulsed like it was trying to vomit out everything it had ever contained.
An immense pressure fell over me like the whole sky had decided to lean on my bones, pinning me in place.
I could barely stand.
[The Daemon Sultans stand facing you.]
The voice resounded, its weight settling over the Dreamlands like a silent verdict.
Though for me, I could see nothing except some shadows dancing without any source in the distant.
They wavered in slow, deliberate motions, their edges blurring as if the world could not decide whether to acknowledge their existence or reject it entirely.
The air seemed to pull taut, tightening around my skin as the space ahead twisted with a presence too large to reveal itself fully.
[The Daemon Sultans wonder at your construct.]
[The Daemon Sultans maintain their gaze upon you.]
The air trembled again, subtle but sharp, like a taut string plucked in the dark.
[The Daemon Sultans measure the weight of your existence.]
A slow pressure coiled around my ribs.
[The Daemon Sultans find no precedent for your form.]
[The Daemon Sultans compare you to no known construct.]
A cold hush spread across the field, swallowing every trace of warmth.
[The Daemon Sultans examine the law imprinted on your being.]
[The Daemon Sultans take interest in the fracture you bear and acknowledge your divergence from the dream.]
The shadows distorted, their movements syncing for a moment before scattering again.
[The Daemon Sultans do not recognize your origin, yet do not reject you.]
The stillness grew denser, as if waiting for something, maybe from them, maybe from me.
[The Daemon Sultans contemplate the possibility of intrusion.]
[The Daemon Sultans remain silent in their judgment.]
[The Daemon Sultans continue to observe in hostility]