The dreamscape swirled around her like a funnel, flashing images from both her waking life and of her recent adventures as a dream lord. She saw herself as a child at the lake house, inventing Tomas the Heart Render after being singled out for the shunning treatment by the other girls. In another image, she claimed a redcap's axe as her dreamblade. She applauded as her sister Emily accepted her Pulitzer. Horatio the sapphire dragon craned his serpentine neck at Kendra as she hotly promised to look out for Emily, and only Emily, and to let the rest of dreamland take care of itself. She said so clutching the odd onyx and ceramic amulet he'd tossed, without explanation, at her feet.

The tornado of memories invited introspection -- which she had no time for. She tore through it with her axe, spinning upward into a clear yellow sky. Kendra zoomed quickly through the dreamscape, until a single structure caught her attention.

It was a rustic bungalow built into the side of a hill, which in turn was almost entirely overgrown with trees and mosses. Glowing lantern light gently leaked from its rounded windows. On closer inspection, she realized that what she'd taken for the rocky substance of the hill was the crumpled body of a dead giant, over which the vegetation had grown. She moved toward it, and the ground squished beneath her boots. The earth was soaked with blood.

The Provider limped into sight from around a corner. His plastic armor was as damaged as it had been the night before; Virgil's injured face could still be seen clearly behind its shattered helmet. He held his hand out to her; it contained a dully glowing ember.

"What's this?" she asked.

"The Sweeper's plan to beat you tonight is predicated on your having a hole in your soul. He'll spawn enemies designed to exploit that weakness. If you don't have the hole, you'll mess up his whole strategy."

"How do you know his strategy?"

A chunk of melted plastic dropped from his armor. "He used to trust me. Here. Take this." He thrust the ember at her.

"What is it?"

"It's the last bit of my soul that isn't all covered in the Sweeper's ashes. Take it. It should just about fill up the space."

Kendra backed away. "I'm supposed to believe in the objective existence of souls now?"

"Haven't you learned anything? This is the dreamscape. Anything our minds can envision can exist here as a physical object. Is this from my real soul? What does it mean if I give it to you? I can't answer those questions. What am I, a priest? All I know is, that cackling ghoul double crossed me and I want to see him freakin' destroyed. Humiliated. And if you and Emily get a break, well, so be it. I'm allowed to rechannel my anger, aren't I? So I'm an idiot. So I wasted years of my life with pointless, poisoning hatred. Do I need you to tell me that?" He blinked away tears. "So just take this and do whatever you want with it. It's not like I'll need it anymore."

As Kendra reached out and took the ember, it flared, surrounded by a bright orange nimbus. When it reached her palm, it sank down in, illuminating her arm, then traveling to her breastbone. A glowing white handprint appeared there, fading away a few seconds later.

The Provider was already gone.

Kendra flew toward the thorn cathedral, unsure that this exchange meant anything at all. It was Virgil, after all. As a defense attorney, a belief in redemption was an occupational requirement, but this was the guy who'd tried to kill her, for real, barely a day ago.

Let's say this did give her an edge. She was still about to face a far superior opponent, in a winner-take-all situation. Victory wouldn't come as a gift, from Virgil, or anyone else. It would have to come from inside her. And she still hadn't the first clue how to make that happen.

When she reached the cathedral, it had changed again. Now ungainly, gigantic rocket boosters, reminiscent of the fuel tanks they used on the old space shuttles stood on either side of it, like a pair of incendiary bodyguards. It wasn't hard to guess what they represented: Gideon Thane's imminent plan to set Monolith Forest ablaze once he was done with her. Every dreamer in that cathedral represented a person who'd die inside its dayside equivalent, the Tribulation compound.

By the time she touched down, her enemy was there, waiting for her, his now-enormous sword already in hand.

"I'm afraid this will have to be our last joust, Kendra," said the Sweeper. "Your potential is vast, but your present technique pitiable. In short, you bore me. So let us propose stakes that will settle matters conclusively."

"Propose away," she said.

"Haven't you guessed? The rest of your soul, for Emily's freedom."

"Meaning, you let her go both here and in the dayside world? Before it all goes boom?"

He waved his hand as if this was the easiest of concessions. "Certainly."

She opened her mouth to say "Yes," and heard herself saying, "No." That's what she was missing. It went back to her conversation with the dragon, when she'd told him she'd fight her battles only in the real world. To win here, she had to believe it mattered. More than the daylight world, even. Because this was where people's minds were shaped. Where they found hope, or had it taken away from them.

"No, it's my soul against everyone's freedom. If I win, the scaffold of thorns dissolves, forever. Everybody goes free."

The dragon's amulet, which swung around her neck, hummed approvingly.

The Sweeper clucked his tongue, as if making a calculation. "Very well," he said.

Kendra flew backward, creating space between herself and her opponent. The Sweeper did the same. For the first time, she was able to perceive the battleground from several angles at once. She was where she was, but also seeing it from above, as if receiving a satellite transmission. The relationships between the battling creatures became clear to her. She could direct her allies to fight in a coordinated fashion, making best use of their weird abilities. She spawned zungar, redcaps, scientist chimps, and orangutan shamans.

Suddenly she knew what to do with the amulet. She tossed it into the field of battle. It lodged itself in the earth, growing in size until it was six feet tall. Energies zapped out from its ceramic blue scarab to invigorate her creatures, speeding their progress and strengthening their blows.

She could even hear, as a harsh, subvocal growl, the commands issued by the Sweeper to his allies. He directed them frantically, improvising furiously.

She taunted him. "You expected me to spawn only fear and madness creatures, didn't you? Creatures to match the dark spot you put in my soul?"

Redcaps decapitated one of the Sweeper's sinister butterfly creatures. He tried to keep it together, but it dissipated in a flash of spent energy.

The Sweeper's white outfit steadily blackened. He tore open his frock coat, spilling ashes like they were gouts of blood. They turned into creatures and stampeded at her, barreling through her lines. Her allies fought with glee and fury, but were scattered.

A trio of elephant demons pounded Kendra's way. They grabbed her, trampled her, and threw her toward the Sweeper. His laugh crackled like fire, burning her ears.

This wasn't how it was going to end. Emily depended on her. Hundreds of people she didn't even know did, too. She couldn't let them down. If there was something special inside her, she had to find it now.

Dropping her axe, Kendra tore open her suit jacket, ripped her blouse, and tore at her flesh. Something poked at her from the inside. An axe slashed out, tearing a hole in her chest from within. Through it leapt a new Kendra, twice as big as her former self. With old flesh drying and slipping off her wet, fresh-birthed skin, she stomped over to the Sweeper and, with her gargantuan axe, cut him to shreds. As it slashed through him, his separated parts burst into flame.

They degraded to ashes, and blew away across the blackened plain.

On giant feet, Kendra strode to the thorn cathedral to carefully pry at its massive front doors. She willed the building's hard, woody surfaces to transform themselves into pliant leaves and stems. The structure wilted to the ground, releasing its prisoners. They stumbled through the dream plane, dazed. She willed their wounds away.

She awoke to the sounds of groans and smashing glass. Virgil was opening the barred door to her prison cell. Kendra wove to her feet and groggily readied herself for another fight.

"No, no," he said, "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm freeing you."

He grabbed her arm and pulled her from the cell.

She still wasn't quite awake yet. "Whuh . . . What?"

"We've got to get out of here fast. Governor Rimkus has scrambled his bombers."

"Where's Emily?"

"Couldn't find her."

He dragged her from the cell area into the surrounding barracks. Cultists were pulling off their jumpsuits, knocking over beds, and tearing framed portraits of Gideon Thane from the walls. Others sat crying, or lay stunned and sleeping in their cots, oblivious to the chaos.

"Wow," said Virgil, "when you change something in the dreamscape, you don't kid around." He ran to the nearest sleeping foresters, shaking them awake. Kendra followed suit. Above them, through the structure's amateurishly constructed roof, they heard the boom of oncoming jets.

The sound brought the enraged former cultists collectively to their senses. They rushed for the exit. Kendra and Virgil, pausing to make sure all of them got out, were the last to leave.

They crashed through the surrounding forest. Dark skies hung overhead; only flickering fluorescent light from the abandoned compound lit their way.

Pathetic wails turned their heads. A group of ex-Foresters had surrounded a frail, gaunt man. Kendra had never seen him in the flesh before, but knew all the same that it was Gideon Thane. He held out a bony arm, pleading for mercy. Cesar Flores was among the mob, and the first to start kicking.

Kendra yelled at them to get out of the target zone before it was too late, and plunged on. Virgil took a moment to grimly savor Thane's beating, then caught up with her.

"So how long an amnesty do Emily and I get before you try to kill us again?"

"I won't do that again, I swear. I was messed up."

"The Sweeper drove you crazy, did he?"

"No," said Virgil, tripping over a log. "I did that to myself. I gotta admit I'm surprised to be here. Giving you the last good part of my soul -- I thought that would do me in for good, that my dream form would mutate into a horrible creature of corruption or what have you."

She was only half listening. She'd seen someone, up ahead.

"Instead, I don't know. I feel light. Clear. Like by giving away part of it, I got all of it back."

Leaving Virgil still engaged in monologue Kendra ran toward Emily. Her sister had stumbled in a pile of loose, dried brush. She called Emily's name. Emily turned to her; she held out her hand to get her out of the weeds. The peculiar, hypnotized expression was gone. The real Emily was back.

They embraced, as the scream of the oncoming bombers reached a crescendo.

Kendra wrapped her arms around Emily and pulled her tight. She'd come so close . . .

The bombers turned and veered away, their payloads undropped. The Governor might be dream-addled, but the pilots evidently weren't. They'd seen the cultists abandoning the compound, and aborted the run.

Kendra pulled Emily along with her as they ascended a slope leading out of the park. Em bombarded her with questions, which she promised to answer later. She had to figure it out herself, before trying to explain it. By deciding to commit herself fully to fighting her battles in the dreamscape, she'd crossed a line, the significance of which she couldn't begin to guess at. But for the immediate moment, there was only one goal: to get to a phone and to call their mother.

"You're safe," she told her sister. "Emily, you're safe."

She kept repeating it, all the way up the hill.

This concludes Cathedral of Thorns.