AN:Alrighty, here we go. A little prep before the push to take out the looters.

Chapter 42.2: The True Nature of Fear

The morning came, just as most mornings did, when it wanted and without the consent of those who it came upon. Mornings were jerks like that.

At the conference table sat four people. The first was thoroughly exhausted fox girl who sat upon an inflatable pillow.

The second meeting attendee was a satisfied seeming Valkyrie who wore an uncompromising smile. The third was a lord of darkness who bore a sheepish expression that occasionally shifted to one of triumphant exultation. It was as though his face could not decide whether it was embarrassed or a boss.

The fourth individual who sat at the table was a pajama clad redhead who wore an expression that shifted between curious, hurt, and annoyed. Shara pouted at each of them in turn then slammed her fist down on the table in a parody of rage. She had not put much energy into assault on the table at all. "You guys suck."

Ashton coughed once then looked away. As she did so, she wiggled her posterior against her inflatable pillow a little to try to find comfort. Her healing factor was higher than a normal human of her level, but that did not mean she had healed up after the terrifying and wonderful evening she had experienced.

Sonja smiled at Shara then made a dismissive gesture. "How you slept through the noise that we made is anyone's guess."

Shara pouted extra hard at Sonja, just for that. "I was doing important things in the dream world, so that we could focus on this one for the next few days."

"Like what?" asked Scott, curiously.

The red head gaped at him like a fish for a moment, then made a little tittering noise. "Well, important things..." she said before looking away, a blush rising on her cheeks.

"Such as?" asked Scott once more.

Shara looked at him then sighed. "It's a surprise, alright?"

He nodded to her. "Fair enough."

Talk regarding the night before continued for some time as Scott had to sit through the tales of his bold love making. Shara's face reddened significantly as Sonja spared no detail about the experience. Scott, for his part, felt that it was a point in his favor that he did not walk out of the room on some pretext. Sonja's ability to tell a vivid and frankly erotic tale was noteworthy.

Ashton whimpered a little whenever she was mentioned and she wiggled her ass a little in pained response. Scott had apologized for his roughness several times already, not that she had minded the events that led to her posterior pain.

After the tale was told, the quartet got down to business. It was time to discuss the upcoming plan to take on the looters.

"I think we should bring twenty people." said Scott.

Sonja rubbed her chin for a moment. She was not completely versed in the style of map that people on Earth used, but she had the general idea of it. "The sheriff said that he could bring that many people as well. Will it be enough to break into their stronghold?"

Scott laughed merrily then said, "Who needs to break in? We just need to be ready to pick the bastards off."

He leaned forward and began to explain the plan that he had come up with. The girls listened and then made suggestions for changes to the plan. Each of the girls had an idea that made a decent plan into a great one. The only question was; would it work?

The rest of the day was spent in preparation for the assault. They would head out a few hours before dawn the next morning. If luck was on their side, they could be in position before the looters knew what hit them, and attack them while their bodies slept on Earth.

Scott sent Shara out to perform reconnaissance with her ninja team to make certain that everything that they had been told was true. He trusted the sheriff as much as he could trust anyone outside of his faction, but that did not mean that the people who worked under the man were as trust worthy. All it would take was someone in the police faction to sell them out and things would go bad.

Sonja would spend her day drilling the main forces in the dream world. She took them out to hunt and train as a unit since they would have a few days to prepare themselves better that way.

Ashton dealt with complaints regarding the faction and matters that required managerial skill and logistics. She had been a wonderful asset in that regard.

Of the four, only Scott had no immediate job regarding the raid. The reasoning was simple. He had a more important task to perform. He had decided that it was time to officially learn how to fly.

In the past, when the real world and dream world had been separated by the veil of sleep, Scott had considered himself to be Blackthorne in the dream and Scott in the waking world. Now, he had decided that he would be Blackthorne for official business discussions and when in dragon form. He would be Scott to his friends, and when not conducting official business in human form. It would simplify things in his mind.

"Alright, let's try this again." said Blackthorne. He stood atop a cliff overlooking a green valley below. It was a location a few miles north of the island castle. Below him he could see a river winding through the area, and a few random animals wandering around. If he hit the ground again, it would hurt just as much as last time, though perhaps not as much as the time before.

The dragon rose up from his resting position then took in a mighty breath. His wing had taken a little damage last time, but it had healed quickly enough. He was ready. Blackthorne gripped the edge of the cliff then threw himself off the side. His wings snapped open and entered into a rapid descent. He did his best to coax his wings up so that he would be able to catch the air, but it was more difficult than one might think. He had many of the instincts of a dragon, but he had not been born with wings originally. It was like trying to use a second set of hands when he had never had more than one set before.

Down, down toward the ground below he plummeted. As he fell his wings tilted upward slightly. He began to move forward, but even as he did it became obvious that he had not quite gotten it right. Blackthorne swooped forward at great speed, but his bulky body dragged heavily against the ground for a short distance. He tore up the landscape while sending dirt, rocks, and bits of scale flying around in the process.

He skidded to a stop just before his head slammed against a boulder. Blackthorne's vision swam as spots of light floated before his eyes. Dazed and unable to right himself, he continued to lay there for quite some time while his vital essence worked to restore his health as best it could.

Once he became properly coherent once more, he frowned then rose to his feet. He favored his left foreleg heavily for a time as he walked steadily toward his goal, the hill that he needed to climb in order to get back on top of the cliff.

Such was the fate of the dragon. Blackthorne had to learn how to glide before he could learn how to fly. He could not get up enough running speed to fly straight away, yet. Instead he was forced to hurl himself from atop a high place and risk splattering his body upon the ground with each attempt.

Once back on top of the cliff he settled in for the long wait. He did not want to change back and forth between dragon and man at the moment. It might also be easier to become the shadow and float up high into the sky then shift into dragon form, but that felt like cheating. He needed to do this like a dragon with no shapeshifting power if he was to ever truly understand what he had become. He would need to be able to leap off tall structures and take flight immediately in the future. There might be no time to float up into the sky each time.

Hours passed, and then days. It was the third day of his personal training before he finally managed to perform a swooping dive that he felt was perfect, and managed to continually do so at will. He did not pull up too soon and cut his forward velocity short. He did not pull up too late and skid along the ground.

During the time that he had spent training, he had come to understand more about his new body. He felt a keen connection with his draconic nature, and felt a better capacity to move his body had developed. It would take time to truly master himself, he had not even managed to figure out how to breathe fire while flying yet, but he had taken an important first step. In all of fantasy literature one of the most terrifying things conceived was the shadow of a dragon crossing overhead just before it swooped down. It was always shown to be an ordeal so frightful that brave men fled from the shadow itself.

"Now, let's try it." said the dragon, a hint of jubilation in his tone. Blackthorne shifted forms and became a shadow. The cloud of darkness roiled outward then floated upward at a slow, but steady pace. He could move a bit faster after he had changed his size category, and faster still as his spirit stat went up. However, the cloud of darkness was still his slowest form, though it was his most versatile.

Blackthorne rose ever upward, a slowly whirling miasma of darkness that looked akin to an inverted tornado. He rose high into the air, higher than the cliff, higher than the low hanging clouds. He continued to rise up until the land began to look like a strange curve. Surprised by how high he had gone, he continued onward and upward.

Soon he had moved beyond the world and rose above the curvature of the dream world. Darkness surrounded by an infinite sea of darkness, Blackthorne rose higher still and saw the sun peak around the planet that he called home when he slumbered.

He could not speak, there was no air to vibrate against, Blackthorne could only exist there sensing the wonders of the wider universe beyond the dream. He flowed sideways for a time and found that within the vacuum of space he could move quite quickly. Unfortunately, he was unaccustomed to crossing such a vast distance in such a little amount of time. He became lost temporarily as he tried to re-orient himself and return to where he had once been.

In the process he noticed something quite strange. He was not alone in the darkness of space. Rather, he felt a strange presence, three of them in fact. Blackthorne turned his consciousness away from the dream world for a moment and took stock of the sensation that he felt coming from the far distance. Though the vastness of space was cold, he felt great warmth from the trinity of presences that washed over him.

Three stars flared in the distance, each a different color. Those stars seemed to be more than floating balls of gas and light. They felt almost alive, somehow. Slowly, the warmth faded over time. The stars became nothing more than stars once more.

It left Blackthorne in a sense of wonder for a time. The dream world continued to turn slowly behind him, and the sun peaked out at him from his right. Yet, for the first time did he wonder at what might be beyond either of the worlds that he knew. There was a great, expansive, universe out there and at least part of that cosmos had welcomed him for a moment.