"Could human technology defeat the Enemy?" Mel asked, looking around the throne room and meeting the others' eyes one by one.

"I don't think so," Amber shook her head sadly, "We saw how scared everybody was today. This was something they couldn't even understand, I don't think they're going to get over it quickly. It's still something out of a nightmare. But maybe... if we can use what the scientists have made? Can we use modern technology to make our powers more effective? Invent some kind of weird hologram that will take the place of the ones who're dead? If we can tell them how we fought the Enemy however many thousand years ago, maybe there's some genius who can use that, and work out a plan with all the things the army has now that the ordinary cavemen didn't have. We have to hope there's something."

"We have to hope," Jack nodded at last. "I don't believe there's anything we can do now, but I agree we have to keep trying. Because the smallest one-in-a-billion chance has to be better than nothing. It's all we've got, so we have to give it everything we've got. Even if that's just hope."

"Hope and ingenuity," Alex nodded, "And courage, and just a little... magic."

"You need to tell me about that," Amber added another question: "You still didn't tell me what kind of powers you have, or how they work. Is it just dream things? I guess it's not something like laser eyes and super strength if people now might not be impressed, but what have we got?"

"You know mine, I think?" Violet asked, making it clear she wasn't sure how much they'd said, "I can remember things. I can remember anything I've ever seen, and I can call people into my dream. It only works with people who aren't alive, though. So like, I could bring King Charles the second into my dream, and he'd be a really confused ghost. But I couldn't bring a live person. And I have to know enough about them first, so it'd take lots of reading history books."

"You called me though, and I'm alive."

"You're a reincarnation of someone who's dead," Mel shrugged, "Seems like there's different rules for us anyway. She can pull your soul out of your body, but if she does it too much you might not be able to get back, and to do that she has to know something about who you are now, and a lot about who you were before."

"That's why you start by asking me my name, then?"

"That was half your dream and half mine. Yes, a couple of questions to learn how you see yourself, so I could pull you here properly. I think the chamber helps me as well, but I'm not sure how. When I'm dreaming about this one place, it's easier to summon the rest of you. As long as you're one of us and you've accepted who you are, I can bring you here even if you were in the middle of doing something. Like, the room knows about my powers and how they're supposed to work."

"Seems like it's not as simple as it is in the comics," Amber shrugged, "Are they all so complicated?"

"I think it's more that we don't understand them properly," Jack answered, a little bitter about something. "Once upon a time, I'm sure there was some kind of science behind these. But it's something we haven't even come close to getting again, so now we just have to deal with these confusing abilities that don't really make that much sense."

"There might be things you can do that we don't even know about. So we have to keep learning. So what's yours?"

"I guess if we're doing a show-and-tell, I'll give you a quick summary," Jack grumbled, "You got something else to say, Violet?"

"Might be better to wait a minute. Arnie's in bed, think she wants to see us."

A few moments later, there was a flicker of purple light, and Arnie was sitting between Jack and Alex. There were only two empty seats left, around a table that had seemed so massive before.

"I wasn't sure you'd all be here," she said, glancing around the table. "Still haven't asked about time zones and all that."

"It's pretty late here," Amber said, like that explained everything, "It's only me and Mel you've got to worry about bedtime for, I think the others are always dreaming."

"Oh, yeah. It's weird getting used to that. Like, I'd just started believing that there are real people out there who can talk to me in my dreams, and then you tell me that half of you are dead? It's like I gotta get used to it all over again."

"You were going to say?" Mel cut into a pause that had seemed equally uncomfortable on all sides of the table.

"Oh, yeah. I heard on the net about some kind of monster attack, and I was hoping that's not some kind of portent. Like, a sign–"

"The Enemy is on Earth," Alex interrupted her. "Incarnate and living, at least as far as we understand it. Those of us not confined to the mortal plane could feel the energy, and we knew without asking what it meant. That all our efforts could be for naught, that we have failed in the one task that destiny has been counting on us for over the last twenty thousand years."

"All at once? It can't be. Maybe we're late, and we're not ready, but we can still–"

"That's what I said. It's ninety years before Violet's due to be born, that's the earliest way we can get all six of us together. But we hoped that with modern technology – things that didn't exist when the prophecy or destiny was written – and if we all work together, there might be a way to find the Princess even if some of us can't go there in person."