Amon remained silent, listening as the Emperor explained the most crucial battle of the Attilan campaign.
Did this happen in the Aether world, or inside my mind?
Did that matter? Dreams were bridges connecting the Material Universe and the Aether Dimension. When primitive shamans drank mushroom soup laced with hallucinogens, witnessed divine miracles in their trances, and conveyed the future to tribal chiefs, the shaman's dream—even the shaman themself—became a bridge. Among every school of magic throughout history, disciplines related to dreams and souls had always been the most profound, elusive, and mysterious, because dreams and souls pointed directly to the origin of magic: the madness and chaos that sapient beings struggled to comprehend. This world was the fulcrum through which they influenced the Material Universe, but the beings beyond the veil thought the same.
The sage in crimson robes stood beside Amon. Molten steel boiled beneath the deck at their feet. The searing heat drove the Power Armor's detection systems into frantic alarm, while the Tactical Scope showed nothing but blinding white brilliance. Red-hot light filled the entire space. Every breath of air had been heated through, saturated with the smell of hot metal.
Neither Catherine nor Constantine, Maximus nor Black Bolt, seemed able to see the Emperor and Amon. There were bodies everywhere. Vibrating stress had torn open the alloy ceiling, and crimson molten iron surged and splashed like ocean waves. The molten metal crashed against the casing of the enormous central Plasma Reactor, gnawing irregular scorch marks into the flesh clinging to its surface. Countless energy lines and pipes had been violently torn apart, spewing electrical sparks and steam. Many corpses and fragments had fallen through slanted fissures into this place, shattering on impact before being scorched black by the blazing floor. Through the thick smoke rising