Return of the Dreamer

[Zadown]

Air ripples slightly, and the Dreamer steps through, appearing in the middle of the room. He surveys the place with his deep blue eyes and nods once, to himself. Then he walks to the nearest wall and draws the outlines of a door.

 

A door appears, looking very mundane, made of light brown wood. The Dreamer opens it, showing a well furnished but not luxurious room and is about to step through the doorway when he turns and addresses the mages around.

 

"Since I can't get to my home currently, and since there are some entanglements my dreamthreads have created here, I'll be living here for a while. I advice you not to bother me too much - I'll be doing some research."

 

The Dreamer nods absently and steps through, slamming the door after him. Still, there it remains, a wooden door where one didn't exist a moment ago.

[Yui-chan]

Sunlight streams through the huge windows on the east wall of the Cabaret room, its rays illuminating the dance of the dust in the still, quiet air as they rush towards the marble-tiled floor. One almost expects to hear a splash where they meet the hard stone, turning to flow like a luscent river over the bleeding patterns of white, grey, and black that adorn the Cabaret room floor. Across the space the lightbeam spreads, unstoppable, inexorable... until it is swallowed by a fold of ebony fabric.

 

Yui sits alone in the Cabaret room on this quiet afternoon, oblivious to the death of the sunray as she stares at the door to the Dreamer's sanctum. Images, thoughts, feelings... all that she experienced in that brief moment when their minds touched has played and replayed, demanding attention and resolution that she cannot provide. She had ignored it, at first, telling herself and others that it was simply curiosity, that it would fade with time, yet the passage of the weeks had done no more than deepen her distraction. The Dreamer's reality will not leave her alone, binding her through her curiosity as well as something ... deeper, a sense of familiarity-of-experience that she cannot explain.

 

Finally, worried by her continued withdrawal, Aegon had brought her back to the Pen's halls so that he might speak with Peredhil and the others to get the details of the event that she was reluctant to give. She'd tried to tell him it was unnecessary, that she just needed more time to assimilate it all, but the words had gotten lost in one of the Dreamer's fascinating rays of light, swallowed by the gaping maw of a crucified corpse. At the distant glaze in her eyes, her love had wasted no time in the journey, and he, Peredhil, Jakob, Ozymandias, and Gyrfalcon were all shut in the Conservatory, discussing...

 

Thus, she came to be alone while they held their little meeting, wandering idly through the hall until she found that her feet had brought her here, to a door that should not exist...

 

He can answer my questions... The Huntress sits in the comfortable, wooden chair, oblivious to anything but the simple grain of that door. ... so simple to just walk over and open it... get him to tell me what it all means.

 

Before she has even realized she is moving, she stands before the door, her hand on the cold brass of the handle. She pauses in the act of turning it, glancing back down the hallway towards where she knows the others sit talking... I'll be out before they're done. It's okay...

 

... and with the bravery of the obsessed, Yui-chan turns back to the Dreamer's door and slowly opens it, stepping inside...

[Zadown]

... and stops.

 

Behind her the door swings slowly shut, a circle of runes in the middle of its outside surface glowing one after one in a leisuredly succession, runes of warding, entrapment, protection and reinforcement, then fading back to invisibility.

 

Yui doesn't notice that at all - her attention is riveted by the view in front of her.

 

The room is gone. In its place is a massive jutting stone pier to the middle of nothing, an Astral harbor for those who know how to travel the Lost Paths between the planes. Beyond it opens the wild and unpredictable Void, looking pure black adorned with the distant pearls of far-away planes. The Dreamer has brought some of his stored things here, and the runes signaling their place in the nothing glow blue in the night between worlds.

 

The pier is not empty, either. On it and in the Void next to it float a multitude of portals - small and big ones, dim lightless gaping maws to dark places and bright ones to pretty worlds, some showing the shiny marble halls of some celestial plane of good, some burning in the dark red hues of hellfire. They are unprotected, created with raw power, and as soon as the Huntress sees them they reach out for her, whispering and gibbering to her, showering her with visions.

 

The Herald of the Dreamer sits in a round library, obviously in a mage tower, and reads a large grimoire of spells. Lesser angels fly around him, asking for orders and then hurrying to carry out them. He startles as Yui watches him and turns to look right at her ...

 

She shakes the vision out of her head and resists the other portals as they try to shout their story to her. With a cold feeling Yui thinks what would've happened if a normal mortal would've stepped through the door, instead of an archmage.

 

Pushing the insistent visions to the back of her mind, she finally sees the Dreamer, who sits on the stone pier itself. His clothes are tattered and they show some blood stains, but he seems to be uninjured ... and in the middle of doing something that requires extreme concetration. Jaw locked, eyes shut, he trembles slightly but sits otherwise still.

 

And then, with a convulsive shudder, he opens his steely grey eyes wide and stares at Yui Temae with an accusating look on his face.

 

"I said no interruptions!"

 

A fraction of a second later the shout is explained a bit further, when one of the darker portals bursts larger and out of its orderly rectangular shape and ejects a black amorphous mass of .. something.

 

"Now look at that!"

 

The large mass writhes and pulses, setting out the contingency spells of the place by its mere hostile presence - an angel and a demon appear on both sides of the planewalker, a set of enchantments wink into existence, locking down all manners of magical travel ... and the door outside fades out, disappearing utterly.

 

Twin stars of anger flare up in the Dreamer's now bright red eyes. He gathers mana, the ley lines of magic getting drained so much they shine weakly, flickering in the edge of vision. The planewalker holds power enough to crush a small town in his fist, illuminated by the aura of pure magic floating aroud. The potential for violence hangs in the air...

 

... and he just lets it go and dismisses the two guards with a small motion, eyes fading to dirty white color.

 

He sighs.

 

"Well, what is it, m'lady? I hope ye didn't interrupt me for anything trivial..."

[Yui-chan]

Yui shudders slightly, chilled by the threat of the moment past as much as she is awed by the magical ebb and flow of this fascinating place. It feels almost like I am floating in a pool of pure mana. I can feel the currents around me, thicker and stronger than anything I have ever felt in Terra. And the way he gathered it around himself... I have no doubt that the Dreamer could have ground me to dust in an instant, had he wished to.

 

She meets the colorless eyes of the Dreamer, then, her own faded-green a vibrant contrast in the heat of excitement. As he gazes back expectantly, she finds herself drawn up short, opening her mouth in a first failed attempt to explain herself and then closing it again helplessly.

 

Why, exactly, did I come here? I can't just tell him that it was curiosity, and he certainly won't understand this strange... fixation on what he showed me.

 

The Dreamer frowns impatiently at her hesitation, and Yui winces. Well, here goes...

 

Gathering her composure about her, the Huntress bows slightly to the Dreamer and intones, "Please forgive the interruption, sirrah. I regret my poor timing."

 

Straightening, she meets the dingy depths of his gaze bravely. "I came to ... I came seeking knowledge, knowledge which I had hoped you could provide. ... May I stay for a short bit?"

[Zadown]

The Dreamer smiles slightly and rises from his uncomfortable position on the pier.

 

"Ah well, the experiment has failed utterly already. 'Twasn't your fault, really .. I forgot to lock the door."

 

He glances at the place where the door was and shrugs, his eyes again shifting color; this time strands of silver and gold flow through them, and they turn from dirty to pure white.

 

"Well, now that you are here for whatever reason, please allow me to train my woefully inadequate skills as a host."

 

The Dreamer smiles again, this time properly (but his scarred face makes the effect more scary than friendly), and with a few muttered spell-words creates a floating dark disk made of the Void to serve as a table. He turns to look at his warehouse of floating runes, and after a moment of contemplation draws forth two beautiful wooden chairs, which he sets on the both sides of the table. Motioning Yui to sit down, he looks around the place, mutes the portals down and creates a floating ball of light. Satisfied that everything is as it should be, he too sits down and leans on the table.

 

"I think this is about the best I can do ... so, please tell me, what do you want to know?"

[Yui-chan]

Yui frowned slightly, sitting there before the scarred face of the Planeswalker. Now that he'd asked the question, she wasn't sure how to begin.

 

How do you ask a person about the things in his head? Where on Terra can I start?

 

She was acutely aware of the uncomfortable stretch of silence as well as the impatience in the pristine white of his chameleon eyes. When the words still would not come forth, she sighed softly and met his gaze.

 

"I ... am not sure how to voice my questions. They're a bit too deep and too ephemeral." She managed a slight smirk. "I would suggest that it's like trying to reach out and grasp a cloud, but I have the sinking suspicion that you could do so with a thought."

 

An idea struck her, then, one that she nearly dismissed as being more brash and forward than was her wont... However, the need for clarity broke down that moment's hesitation.

 

"Would you... would you tell me about yourself? I saw such ... tantalizing hints of so many things when we ... 'passed'. My curiosity refuses to release me..."

 

Wincing, she lowered her eyes to her hands clasped upon the inky surface of the table. It was so much to ask, and done so clumsily...

[Zadown]

The Dreamer closes his eyes. Then he starts to speak, eyes still closed, first slowly and then quicker and quicker:

 

"Tell you about myself? About the hundreds of years of my history, the gods I've warred against, the few planewalkers I've met, the things I've done and the spells and words of power I've found? About my strenghts and weaknesses, about my fortresses, strongholds, the places of Astral that are mine, about my servants, bound spirits, demons and angels, about the things that owe me and about those to whom I owe? About Good and Evil and their eternal useless meaningless battle and how I walk between all that, and about Order and Chaos, the two stronger powers? About my core of being and the contradictions there?"

 

He stops and opens his purple eyes slightly.

 

"Oh .. any of that would be quite expensive information, m'lady. Knowledge is the currency of Astral, and I do have my enemies, many with the powers to bribe anybody very handsomely. Unless you choose to invoke the debt I owe you, this conversation is ending, unwitting play piece of the Gods of Order."

 

With that, the Dreamer gestures and the door reappears to the same place it was in the first place.

 

Red strands of color swim in the swirling purple of his eyes...

[Yui-chan]

Knowledge must be shared, not stolen... I could never invoke that debt just to have my questions answered. The thought pricks her, causing war between her curiosity and her honour. The outcome, however, is never in question.

 

Yui sighs, eyes downcast after following the Dreamer's gesture to the newly-reappeared door. After a moment's hesitation in, she stands slowly and turns towards the doorway, her fingers trailing across the smooth surface of the table as she thinks.

 

... no. I can't leave here with nothing. Those grey-green eyes are thoughtful as she turns her head back towards the Planeswalker, watching the colors of his eyes shift and swirl absently. I must convince him, somehow... get him to share something inexpensive...

 

Nodding to herself once, the Huntress pauses and allows her shoulders to follow her head, standing before the Dreamer with her hands pressed upon the table. He frowns slightly, an action that makes his scarred visage even more foreboding, and the red in his eyes thickens as he watches the mortal compose her words.

 

"I could never demand that you share something of yourself with me, Dreamer, so lay that fear to rest." He blinks, taken aback a bit by a response that is precisely the opposite of what he'd expected, the purple consuming most of the red within the orbs of his eyes. "Instead, I am just asking for something to help me know you. Will you not even give me even the smallest, most innocent story from your existence?"

 

The Huntress pauses and drops her eyes for a moment as if to rest from the effort it takes to be so brash, but the hope is still there as she raises them again to his. "Tell me 'no', and I will respect your wishes. I do not wish to be a bother, only, perhaps, something of a friend..."

[Zadown]

The Dreamer blinks.

 

"A friend?"

 

He leans back in his chair looking straight into Yui's eyes, his own pair shifting again, this time to the deep blue of the Void.

 

"To even be my guest is a hazard, no matter how little or how much I might like you - I have my set of enemies, as I said, and they might strike against me on any given year. In such event, you would be like a twig in a flood, a lone dry leaf caught in a bushfire. I have seen a mortal being hit by a spell meant to take down a greater planar force - his disintegrating outlines flickered a fraction of a heartbeat and I saw with my second sight his soul being torn to shreds. And that was the outter aura of the misfired spell which hit him, nothing more."

 

The Dreamer pauses for a moment.

 

"I wasn't really accurate with my spells then, yet."

 

He continues staring at Yui, unblinking, motionless. Then he makes a dismissing motion with his right hand and straightens in the chair.

 

"... but a story, well, that I can tell. Perhaps it will make you see things somewhat more as they are - that there is a great gulf between what I am and what I seem to be. Many think that I am a human, ascended to this position, and that I have the flaws and merits of one. That is not really the case..."

 

The planewalker's voice trails off.

[Zadown]

After a pause he starts again, this time with storyteller's cadence. Feet above the table a small globe of light appears and grows to larger three-dimensional illusion, which shows the same visions the planewalker paints with words.

 

"It was the seventh year after the drows of the plane called Anvil had started their exodus with their own pocket dimensions, sailing the Void with their dark oaks, twenty and five years before the Clash of the Pilgrims; the Year of the Unfinished Wine in the calendar of the Essurs, year 1527 of the Second Wheel of the Fifth Time by the scribes of the Kestern.

 

I had barely gotten my first real scars by then, scars that I decided not to remove from this vessel of my powers, since they were marks of failure to myself. I was still young, still unbound to any task or direction. Order beckoned, but I had too much to do, too many paths to explore, and I did not take the hand of Law - my mage sigil stayed as the burning flame in a broken triangle of Law from which two of the eight arrows of Chaos flee; a powerful sigil of independence, the same I still carry with me with a few modifications.

 

I had gained enough to see past Good and Evil - I did not note them in the sigil of my adulthood times at all. Still, it was those two clumsy eternal fighters that drew me into their useless mock battle. I should've interpreted the flows and the castings of the bones better; the signs were there, and the tracks in the Astral, subtle changes in the structure where they had passed, they held the keys for it all, too.

 

Armies were on the march, through my part of the web, but I didn't see the whole picture then. I only did as I had to do: I set out to block their way since they had not paid any toll or any respect to me. The black side of that particular skirmish had a great general, though. He knew of me, and he set his playing pieces so that those of the light could decimate his lines easily - if they would travel past a particular place.

 

The Prison of the Dark God, some called it, but of course there are dark gods a'plenty in the multiversum, none of them the unique particular only one, and so those of us who know more called it Kss'kath's Cocoon - a dark sphere of worldcrystal it was, and the paths around it tainted, but it was a safe path for us uninvolved ones.

 

And there I met the first ones of Daronath the Just, heralds of his army, high and pure, arrogant and powerful. We met floating in the Astral - me alone, my back to the absolute nothing of between, on my left and right sides my guards, a demon and an angel, the Seven of Daronath backed up by their army. It looked like the path was on white fire, so thickly was it covered by mortal heroes, lesser angels and holy warriors of the god.

 

Me and them, a planewalker and a holy army - there I called for what was by right mine, tribute to me. There they scorned me and declared me as one of the Evil, and the Seven challenged me, all there right next to the Cocoon.

 

Gods are shallow sleepers."

 

The Dreamer stops and the image in the illusion stops, showing all that the planewalker has described, suspended.

[Zadown]

After a lenghty pause he continues, and the pictures in the illusion wake up again.

 

"We had barely started the battle and only one of the Seven had retreated from the battle, only two regiments of the white army had suffered enough casualties that they backed down. I was riding the battle trance, weaving a net of death across the path, but they were fighting back and I was in some danger as I often was during my more reckless youth.

 

Then the Cocoon burst and the ... thing that had been inside it oozed out, tainting the path with its presence, corrupting the angels left and right, shining in power darker than I did. I am sure that was planned, now that I look backward to that moment, but then I just cursed at the unfortune of it and retreated slowly, watching the dark being crush its way through the army of light.

 

The First of the Seven rose against the defiler, a bright brilliant star against a sea of darkness, and his sacrifice let the army flee away from the scene of carnage. I floated there and observed as the dark tentacles surrounded lazily the white speck of fire, confident in my ability to outrun the huge power.

 

The dark mass overpowered the star, and for a moment everything was silent. I turned to go, when my senses made me turn my head. There and then I saw the genesis of Sarnael - out of the black sea of corruption it rose, both bright and dark, flexing its huge wings and shaking its head violently as in great pain.

 

It was the progeny and symbiosis of the First of the Seven of Daronath and Kss'kath the Dark: a planar being of highest possible power and the core of the dark god in one. And the first thing its hate-filled eyes saw was me, floating indifferently in the Void, watching his birth with blue eyes.

 

It swore an oath of vengeance then, an oath it has tried many times to fulfill by crushing me. So far, it has not succeeded.

 

So far..."

 

The Dreamers voice fades out and he turns to look at the picture floating in the illusion, an angel of unsurpassed beauty; white wings, black armor and black sword, red shining eyes, skin white as snow, face bearing black marks as if it had cried dark tears. With a slight shrug he gestures and the illusion winks out of existence.