Dreams and Nightmares
“I found something!”
Jade looked up from the book she was skimming through, a large tome set atop a haphazard array of other large books. She had been working for hours. Well, weeks, really, but hours straight today, looking for anything that could help her puzzle out the strange phenomenon she had encountered with Thatis and Symparu. Somehow, some way, the two young lovers had reached out to one another through their dreams, even across the vast Eternities. They had never met one another in the waking worlds, and could not have, as neither possessed the planeswalker’s Spark. And yet somehow, from different planes, they had found one another in their dreams.
And Jade was determined to bring them together for good.
“Nephractanini!” The sound of her real name shook Jade from her thoughts, and she looked over to the ancient form of Raleris, the Lorekeeper. He was seated at a reading desk not far from hers, his long white beard pinned against his chest by the book he was examining. He was pointing at the page in front of him excitedly, although there was the tinge of annoyance in his voice. “Did you hear me? I’ve found something!”
Jade pushed herself away from her table and rose, inwardly cringing at the sound of her stone body creaking as it shifted. The noise almost brought a tear to her eyes, as it did almost every time she noticed it. And she noticed it all the time.
“What have you found, Raleris?”
“It’s from a plane called Nambru.”
“Nambru,” Jade repeated. “I have never heard of it. Have you?”
“Not that I remember,” Raleris said, the annoyance returning slightly. “But that’s not important. Look here!” He pointed again to the page he had propped open. “It says here that the Dreamstriders of Nambru are known across the plane for being able to walk through dreams!”
Jade glanced apprehensively at the Lorekeeper, then tentatively reached for the book. “I thought you wanted me to expand my studies away from dream phenomena.”
“I do,” Raleris said, “and I hope that soon you will, but for now, I see no way of steering you from your course, and anyway, this seems like it will prove a fascinating field trip for you.”
Jade glared at Raleris for a long moment. She was far younger than the utterly ancient Raleris, but she was no child, and it always rubbed her the wrong way when Raleris treated her as such. For his part, the old man seemed thoroughly amused by her responses to such treatment, and usually only intensified them when she said something. So, without comment, she shifted her attention down to the book in her paws.
She scanned the lines over carefully, scrutinizing word choice and deciphering, or at least attempting to, hidden meanings. Finally she looked back at the Lorekeeper. “Interesting,” she said, then stopped, thinking.
“Well, what do you make of it?” Raleris asked.
“It says that the Dreamstriders can move through dreams, but it does not say how. Nor does it specify what sort of movement they have.”
“What do you mean?” Raleris asked, a small smile forming on his lips.
“I am myself a Dreamcatcher. I can, in a sense, move through people’s dreams. But I do not actually move.”
“But you did when you were on Sertaria, didn’t you?” Raleris prompted.
“That is different,” Jade said. “That was moving from her dream to his.”
“Are you certain about that?”
Jade thought for a moment about that one. “Not absolutely certain, no.”
“And besides,” the Lorekeeper continued, leaning back smugly. “How do you know that these Dreamstriders don’t do the same thing? Maybe they move from their own dreams into someone else’s, eh?”
“It is possible,” Jade admitted, flipping the page and reading over the lines. She tilted her head to one side. “Odd.”
“What’s that?”
“It says here that there is a sapient species on Nambru that doesn’t dream.”
“And that’s odd?”
“It’s more than odd,” Jade said, considering. “It’s impossible. Or, I thought it was. I have never encountered a species that didn’t dream.”
“Well, then, I think that settles it!” Raleris said, clasping his hands together excitedly.
“Settles what?” Jade asked.
“With two separate dream phenomena on the same plane, it seems like Nambru is the perfect place for you to do some field work.”
“You want me to go to this plane? Why?”
“To learn, of course!” Raleris said, smiling. “Go there, and see what you can learn of these Dreamstriders, to see if they can help those dream lovers you found. While there, see what you can find out about these…what are they called?”
Jade scanned the lines of the tome in her paws a second time. “Uh, Blobars, according to this.”
“Good, good. Go there, and see what you can learn. And see if you can learn anything about their world beyond your focus of the dreaming, eh?”
Jade sighed. “Fine. I will go. I take it you will not be coming with me?”
Raleris glanced over at the chaotic mass of books on Jade’s reading table and grimaced. “No, I think I had best stay here,” he paused, shuddering, “and try to put things in order.”
Jade growled slightly. “Very well.” She paused. “Thank you, Raleris.”
“You’re most welcome. Now good luck,” he smiled coyly, “and sweet dreams!”
With a soft groan, Jade prepared herself, drew her mana, and then finally vanished from the Infinite Library, hoping to learn something that could help make her dreams come true.
* * *
The Blobar village was a quiet place. Almost silent, actually. It had taken Jade four days to find it, wandering around Nambru under its strange, purple sky. When she found the village, she was greeted enthusiastically by the Blobars, which had been one of the strangest experiences of her life. The Blobars were unlike anything she had ever seen. They appeared to be some sort of ooze creature, but more solid than the few oozes she had encountered before. They were large and blob-shaped, coming about up to her waist. They appeared in a variety of colors, mostly yellows, reds, and blues, and could occasionally spawn two arms that stuck out like tree branches from their sides and swayed as they moved about, though often they had no limbs at all.
The strangest thing, though, was their faces. Despite appearing like an ooze, the Blobars had faces that took up the majority of their bodies, with a large mouth near the ground, and two big eyes above that. And their faces were expressive, too, the way a human’s face often was. When they had greeted her, their massive mouths twisted upward in a great grin that looked very much like those Jade had always seen on humans, elves, or kithkin. Their eyes were wide and bright, and they moved about with a scooting motion that could almost be described as dancing. But they never spoke a word. Jade suspected that they were incapable of speech, as they never made any noise apart from the soft squishing sound they made when moving. They made their intentions and desires known through movement and expression, and Jade struggled to follow along. Fortunately, the simple creatures seemed infinitely patient with her.
They had also welcomed her eagerly, offering her a meal, and the use of the largest of their huts. Jade had spent a fair amount of time that first day trying to visualize how they had managed to assemble the huts in the first place, but the arms they occasionally spawned proved stronger than they appeared when Jade saw one carrying a bundle of firewood in for the communal cooking pit in the center of the village. That first night, the entire village gathered around and made faces at one another. Jade was, at first, confused, until she realized that, in their own way, they were telling stories.
Jade was utterly fascinated with the Blobars, and they with her. Unlike their malleable and expressive faces, Jade’s stone visage could shift only minutely, and so she had no way to mimic their mode of communication. So while they remained mostly a mystery to her, she suspected that she was an even bigger mystery to them. And yet, they treated her as an honored guest, offering her fruit and vegetables from their shared stockpile and making sure she was comfortable. As night descended on the village, the Blobars started to wander off one by one into their huts until finally Jade was shown to hers.
As enthralled as Jade was with the Blobars and their strange ways, she was even more curious to see what, if any, dreams they experienced. The book Raleris had found in the Infinite Library claimed that they did not dream, but Jade refused to believe that, nor had the book given any reason why the writer had come to that conclusion. Perhaps he had been a mind mage of some sort and had been unable to sense them, or perhaps it was mere speculation. Either way, Jade considered herself the best qualified to find out for certain.
And so, that first night, Jade had gone looking for dreams. Jade had been born into a Dreamcatcher family. Her mother and father had both been Dreamcatchers on their home island of Neira, and they had taught all of their kittens the skills needed to walk the dreams of those around them. Jade had been the prodigy, outshining her sisters and brothers at an early age, both mastering the old techniques and inventing new ones. The Sanvas Tigerfolk, her people, prized Dreamcatchers highly, and paid well for their services, in food, trinkets, and esteem. And Nephractanini, the famed white tiger herself, had been the best.
And that was why, as Jade eased herself into a sleep that was half trance, half repose, she found herself increasingly frustrated when she couldn’t catch a single dream. The shared Dreamspace Jade saw whenever she went searching for dreams was a strange, chaotic place where a hundred thousand swirling images and feelings comingled into a vivid maelstrom of pure experience. When there were just a few dreamers nearby, the Dreamscape was disorienting. When there were hundreds or more, it was a cacophony. But there was almost always some inlet, some point of access, to someone’s dream.
Now, though, the Dreamscape seemed like a wasteland.
Nephractanini knew she was dreaming, and that it was her own mind creating the image of an endless expanse of dry, flat land. She knew that the eternal sky above was nothing more than her mind and her magic trying to create an image to explain her lack of perception. The emptiness was a representation, a metaphor for the emptiness of the Dreamspace. Still, compared with the roiling chaos she was used to, the calm was eerie and unsettling. It was almost a nightmare.
Jade was determined to continue on, however. She walked for a time in the wasteland of her dreams, always resisting the urge to give herself over completely to sleep and allow her own dreams to come unbidden to her. She refused to believe that a sentient being could exist that could not dream. But the wasteland did not change. It remained flat and unending, each step taking her to a place that looked precisely like the one she had just come from. There was no difference, no change, no variety. Even while she moved, there seemed to be no movement.
Jade was nearly ready to give it up for the night when she noticed the first, and only, change she had seen. The ground was as it ever was, but the sky, which had been a deep purple or perhaps black, was filling with color. Jade stopped walking and stared upward as the colors began to spread out, mingle, and separate again. It was a beautiful display, but completely different from the almost violent contrast of sights and emotions she usually saw. Concentrating carefully, she took control of her dream self and lifted into the air, flying through the dream without wings or fears.
As she did, the colors of the sky descended to meet her halfway, and she was enveloped in a living rainbow. It was like standing in the center of an aurora as it danced across the heavens, and for just a few moments, Nephractanini was awestruck. Then, she felt it, the same sense she had gotten since childhood, when she caught the sensation of a dream. Afraid she would lose it before she could explore, she willed herself into the nearest of the dream openings, and found herself in an indescribable space saturated with pure color.
There was no ground and no sky, no sense of direction at all, not left or right, up or down. There were only streaks of color moving into and out of one another. A vibrant yellow the color of daffodil dominated the array, mixed with dozens of shades of blues, reds, and purples. The colors danced in an ever-changing pattern that Nephractanini at first assumed to be random, but the longer she stayed there, the more the pattern made some degree of sense to her. Then, in a small streak down what she could only describe as the center of that space, a new color emerged, a soft green color streaked with white. As she watched, transfixed, the color grew and expanded, almost consuming the other colors as it enveloped her.
Nephractanini woke from her trance with a shudder. She drew herself up to a sitting position on the floor of the Blobar hut, shaking her head. She looked down, and although the darkness of the night made it impossible to see, she immediately recognized the color she had seen in the dream. It was the precise color that had been hoisted on her. It was the color of jadestone. It was her color.
The dream had been about her.
* * *
Jade stayed in the Blobar village for several days, fascinated not only by their dreams of pure, vivid color, but by the creatures themselves. She began to learn how to read their bizarre but expressive faces, and they started to learn how to read her far more rigid movements. They were accommodating beyond all expectation, and seemed thrilled whenever she accepted whatever they offered. In the midmorning of the fourth day, one of the Blobars, a particularly happy yellow one, sauntered up to her, its arms out and swaying as it moved. As it reached Jade, it held up a large red fruit, similar to an apple from other planes, but softer and three or four times larger. Jade accepted it gratefully, bowing her head, which she had come to use as a replacement for the words “thank you.” The Blobar grinned widely, turned away, and moved off again, swaying gleefully as it went.
Jade found herself smiling. In all her travels across all the planes she had seen, she had never encountered such simple and happy beings. There was a tranquility there, a silence that Jade had at first resisted, but come to appreciate. Even the Infinite Library was never this silent. Raleris, for one thing, thoroughly enjoyed talking, even while both he and Jade were reading. But even when the old Lorekeeper did not speak, the Library itself had its share of noises, from the occasional creaking of overstrained bookshelves to the soft humming of the magic that sustained it. But here, the silence was almost complete. It was broken only by natural noises and the soft movements of the Blobars, or of Jade herself.
It was, above all else, peaceful.
Undoubtedly, it was this prevalent silence, for so many days, that made her notice the heavy, thundering sound approaching as early as she did. Before her transformation into living stone, her hearing had been exemplary, and although her new form did not catch sounds quite so well as before, whatever this sound was, it was not trying to be subtle. Jade spent a few moments trying to pinpoint the source of the sound before turning to the west and heading toward the edge of the village.
There, striding confidently toward the Blobar village, was the largest Rhox Jade had ever seen. He walked with his head held high, his horn pointing straight up toward the purple sky in a silent monument to his strength. He wore thick metal armor over the vast majority of his body, but wore neither gauntlets nor boots. His hide was a deep gray color, and across his back he had slung a small travelling pack from one rope and a large shield from another. Jade watched him wordlessly as a few of the village Blobars began to gather around her to watch with mixed expressions as the large stranger approached.
The Rhox strode directly up to Jade, looking her up and down with obvious interest. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke to Jade, his voice low and loud. “Greetings. I am Dorn of the Path of the Majestic Storm. Is this your village?”
“No,” Jade said, indicating the Blobars. “It is theirs. I am merely a guest here.”
“I see,” Dorn said, giving a slight bow in her direction, then turning to the Blobars. “I would like to beg your hospitality for a time.”
“They cannot hear you,” Jade said. “They have no ears.”
Dorn seemed to think about this for a few moments, absently reaching up to touch the foremost of the two horns on his head. “Ah,” he said, thinking. Then he turned back to Jade. “May I inquire as to your name?”
“They call me Jade,” she said.
“Who does?”
“Most people I meet. I find humans, particularly, struggle to pronounce my true name.”
Something flashed across the Rhox’s eyes, and again he brushed his hand against his horn, which Jade noticed was covered in strange letters etched into it. “Are you willing to share with me your true name?”
Surprised, Jade managed a slight shrug of her stone shoulders. “Nephractanini.”
“Nephractanini,” Dorn repeated, pronouncing the name flawlessly. Jade was impressed. “That is a strong name,” the Rhox said. “A good name. The humans do you a grave disservice by forcing you into a new one.”
Unsure of how to respond, Jade simply said, “Thank you.”
Dorn bowed his head to her. “Please tell me, Nephractanini, are you able to communicate with these noble creatures?”
“Somewhat,” Jade admitted. “Although I think they struggle to understand me as much as I struggle to understand them.”
“I do not doubt it,” Dorn said. “Would you kindly ask them if I might stay with them for a time?”
“I will try,” Jade said, turning to the nearest of the Blobars. As much as she could, she tried to pantomime his request, indicating to herself and then pointing to the hut she had been using, and then pointing to Dorn and indicating toward all of the huts at once. She pointed at the fruit in her paw, and then back to Dorn again. The Blobars then turned to each other and began flashing a variety of facial expressions, and eventually, they turned back to Jade and smiled.
“I believe they have agreed,” she said, “although I cannot be certain.”
“If they disapprove, surely they will let me know soon enough,” the Rhox said, smiling. “Tell me something, Nephractanini, if it is not too personal a question. You are one of the catfolk, aren’t you?”
Jade looked away from him. “I am.”
“Might I ask, how is it you have come into such a strange form?” When she did not respond, Dorn continued. “I mean no offense, of course, but I have never seen anything like your form before. Please forgive me if…”
“No, it’s alright,” Jade interrupted him. “I admit, it is far from my favorite topic of discussion, and I would rather not go into detail, but I was cursed by a powerful mage named Raiker Venn.”
Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “Human?”
Jade’s head snapped back toward Dorn. “You know of him?”
The Rhox shook his head. “No. But such depravity is typical of humankind. Such an action, coupled with them taking your name from you, made the assumption an easy one.”
“I was the one who was foolish enough to make a deal with him.”
“Yes, a deal with that sort is a terrible mistake,” Dorn agreed sympathetically. “But even such sins may yet be forgiven, if you will decide to follow the Path of the Majestic Storm.”
“I’m afraid I have never heard of it.”
“That is no matter,” Dorn said with a grimace that Jade suspected was meant to be a pleasant smile. “Ignorance of such things cannot be blamed on the ignorant, but rather on those who have failed to teach them, and as I suspect that none who walk the Path have ever come to this place before, there can be no blame given to any.”
Jade nodded. “My mission is one of learning,” she ventured.
“A noble cause,” Dorn said. “I, myself, studied for years before journeying out into the wider world, to share what knowledge and, I humbly hope, what wisdom, I was able to gain. Tell me, Nephractanini, once I get settled here, may I speak with you more about the Path?”
Jade stared up at Dorn’s large, black eyes. She was not particularly interested in the local religions of Nambru, as they had nothing to do with the dream phenomena that she had come to research, but Raleris had wanted her to spread her focus wider to learn more about the world as a whole. Besides which, as a being with the ability of speech, this Rhox was far more likely to be able to tell Jade about the Dreamstriders than the Blobars would. So, reluctantly, Jade nodded her head. “Yes, of course. I would be fascinated to hear more about it.”
“Excellent,” Dorn said. “Then I shall talk to you more on it soon.”
And he did. Over the next two days, Dorn spent as much of his time as Jade would allow telling her as much as he could about the Path of the Majestic Storm. He spoke of their history and their tenets, about their place as both the children and the protectors of nature. He spoke of the goodness of the beasts of the land, the sea, and the air, and how they needed to be protected from the great evils of the world. He spoke of beings he called the Warbringers, beings of pure malice who holed up behind their evil barricade, the Great Bulwark. Jade was unsure whether this was some sort of mythology from the plane’s past or an actual location, but from the conviction in Dorn’s voice, she was in no hurry to visit their either way.
Much of what Dorn told her was interesting, and, when she was being honest with herself, appealing. Dorn spoke often of the harmony preached by the Path, and other concepts that Jade could appreciate, such as the strong protecting the weak. She found herself nodding when he spoke of the importance of feeding those who could not hunt for themselves. She was pleased to hear that the Path believed in educating all, and not merely the fortunate and select few. And she found herself thinking back on Raiker Venn when Dorn spoke of punishing the wicked who preyed upon the innocent with deceit and cruelty.
At first, Jade had been wary of Dorn. When the big Rhox spoke, he was often animated and excited, standing and towering over her as he preached. More than once, she feared he would try to shatter her to pieces as he drifted into topics like the Warbringers. But as the hours wore on, she came to realize that it was simply his way. Perhaps his people had different mannerisms than she was used to. If they shared a world with the Blobars, who had such an entirely different form of communication from hers as to be completely alien, it seemed quite likely to Jade that the Rhox did, too.
At night, Jade continued to explore the Blobars’ dreams. She found herself relishing the unfettered space of their shared dreamworld, even if she could not fully understand what it represented, or what it said about the perception of the peaceful creatures. The night Dorn had arrived, she noticed a streak of dark gray in some of their dreams, and the green that must have represented her remained. She believed that this signified that the Blobars were dreaming about their visitors, and that they associated people and things with the colors they perceived, but she could not be certain. It was just too far outside of her experience.
It was the second night after the Rhox’s arrival that Jade ventured away from the Blobars’ dreams of color and motion and into Dorn’s dreams. These were quite different, far more lucid, like the dreams she had seen from other beings all of her life. When Jade first found herself there, she was at first startled as the vibrant hues of the Blobars’ dreams melted away into something that could have almost been real. She was in a distorted dream-vision of the Blobar village, and Dorn was standing with his scutum at the edge of town, bracing himself.
Suddenly, Dorn’s dreamworld erupted into flames. A moment later, there was chaos everywhere as dark, twisted forms materialized out of the ground itself. They were abominations, filled with fury and hate, and were tearing the village and the poor Blobars apart. Most disturbingly, they wore human faces. But Dorn charged through their ranks, using his shield as a weapon and bashing away the twisted foes. He fought on relentlessly, and slowly, the enemy numbers decreased, and so did the fires threatening the village. Dorn was tireless in his defense, and eventually, the enemy was defeated.
Jade looked around in shock at what she saw. The bodies of the dark foes had fallen to the ground and begun merging into a single, tarry substance, and Dorn waded through it like a river, reveling in his victory. Suddenly, Jade felt something strange, something she had not felt since her childhood. She felt another presence in the dream. She looked around, her lithe, white dream-self scanning the surroundings like a predatory cat in the deep jungle. Then she saw him, a human with skin darkened both by sun and age. He wore a simple loincloth that hung down to his bent knees, and a decorative chest adornment made of bone and vine. Across his brow was a small band of silver with a small blue gem gleaming softly in the center of his forehead. He looked like a shaman of some type, but what caught Jade’s attention most was his eyes, which were deep, sunken, and sad.
Suddenly, he became aware that Jade was staring at him, and he turned to stare back. His mouth curled just slightly at one corner, and he spoke, his whisper echoing through the dreamscape in a sound like Jade had never heard before.
“May I come to you?” He asked, his voice breaking.
“Who are you?”
“I am Milak, a Dreamstrider,” he paused. “May I come to you?”
Before Jade could respond, she heard a thunderous roar from her left. When she looked, she saw Dorn, his shield raised, charging at Milak like a stampede. The Dreamstrider’s eyes grew wide at the unprovoked attack, and just before the Rhox could get there, the man vanished, and Jade could no longer sense his presence. The shock of the encounter was enough to jar her awake, and from there, she could only try to sleep, wondering how she was ever going to find the Dreamstrider again.
* * *
The next day, Jade and Dorn’s conversation had a much different tone to it. It began much the same as it had the two days prior, but Jade found herself more critical of his views, particularly when he spoke of the Warbringers. When Jade pressed him for more information on them, he finally relented and gave them the name Jade had expected him to. Humans. When Jade tried to speak out in favor of humans, Dorn grew angry, citing any number of atrocities that humans had committed.
“I cannot deny that,” Jade said, “but that hardly means they are all vile creatures of evil, Dorn. They have done great goodness, too.”
“Any goodness you perceive in human action is a deceit they have orchestrated to fool you,” he assured her. “Humans are evil by nature. Just as the bear will kill in the deep forest, or the shark will feed in the deep ocean. It is their nature. Will you walk boldly into a bear’s den because you have played with a cub that did not maul you? So it is with humans. Perhaps you have met one that did you no ill in that meeting. That does not mean they do not plan to, when the opportunity arises, and the timing best suits them.”
“But the same can be said about any number of creatures. Goblins, for instance, often…”
“What is a goblin?” Dorn interrupted.
Inwardly, Jade cringed. She had not considered the possibility that this plane had no goblins. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Jade said, trying to move off the topic. “The point I am trying to make is that other creatures are also destructive.”
“And if I say that Aven are wise, does that mean the Turtlefolk can’t be, as well? Never have the teachings of the Path suggested that Humans are the only deplorable beings to exist. They are merely the worst.”
“Even if that were the case, that is no reason to believe that all of them are, by nature, evil.”
“Imagine a pit of snakes,” Dorn said, leaning a bit over Jade as he spoke. “Venomous, aggressive snakes. Imagine a child were thrown into the pit, and the snakes, as is their nature, strike and bite at the child until it is killed. Now, killing a child is a deplorable act, is it not?”
“It is, but…”
“Now,” Dorn continued, ignoring her, “imagine that you could watch closely enough to see which snakes bit the child and which did not, and suppose further that you could remove all of those snakes from the pit who struck the child. Now the pit is filled only with those snakes who did no harm to the child, who had done nothing deplorable. Would you be willing to place another child in that pit, merely because the snakes there had done nothing wrong?”
“No, but I would not wish to place a child in a pit anyway, regardless of what was in there.”
Surprisingly, Dorn laughed slightly. “Very well. What about yourself? If your stone skin were vulnerable to the snakes’ fangs, would you walk through the pit? Or, if you prefer, remove the pit entirely from the question. If your home were overrun with such snakes, would you suffer them, or would you see them destroyed?”
“That is not the same thing,” Jade said.
“Isn’t it?” Dorn insisted. “You have said that you have known humans in your life, yes? Think on them. Can you honestly say, with a certainty that is unshakeable and complete, that they can be trusted? What of the Raiker Venn you mentioned?”
“It is unfair to judge all humans on the actions of Raiker Venn.”
“Perhaps, but it is foolish to dismiss his actions out of hand. It is, after all, yet another piece of evidence in the long history of human depravity. With the history they have crafted for themselves, a history of death and devastation, can you truly say for sure that darkness does not lie within each of them?”
Dorn’s choice of words made Jade think immediately of Raleris, a human and her teacher, and the phthisis that tormented him. The Lorekeeper had not said much about his illness since he had taken Jade on as his apprentice, but she had occasionally pressed him for information. And, when Raleris was occupied elsewhere and certain she was researching dreams, she had found a tome or two in the Infinite Library about it, as well. And if ever a human being carried darkness within him, it was Raleris.
“You are thinking about somebody, aren’t you?” Dorn asked her.
“Yes,” Jade admitted. “A human who showed me kindness. He took me on as his apprentice, and…”
“So he is your master, then,” Dorn said, lowering his head as if he were a parent disappointed in a small child.
“He is not my master,” Jade growled, annoyed. “He is a teacher. My friend.”
“And are you allowed freedom, or do you move at his command?”
“He directs my studies, if that’s what you mean.”
“Just as humans direct the mounts on which they ride to war,” Dorn said, shaking his head. “Humans desire only to have their whims fulfilled. Tell me, this ‘teacher’ of yours. Did he give you something you had wanted to make you his apprentice, or did he buy you with promises?”
“He…” she began, then paused. When Raleris had found her, she was hunting down Raiker Venn, hoping to force him to reverse the curse, or, if he refused, to kill him for what he had done. She had been close to him, and getting closer with every ‘walk. But when she met Raleris, he had convinced her to give up her chase, and the trail, now, would be too cold to follow. He had told her of the Infinite Library and offered her a place to study, and had promised, only promised, that in two years, if she wanted to, she would be free to return to her hunt. Jade’s heart sank as she remembered his words, and thought on Dorn’s.
“It was promises, wasn’t it, Nephractanini?”
She hung her head, but eventually nodded silently.
“They are all the same,” Dorn said, annoyance in his powerful voice. Finally, he seemed to decide something. “Are you willing to travel, Nephractanini? I have something I would like to show you, something that might perhaps convince you of the truth I speak.”
Jade looked around at the Blobars, who were happily going about their business. She looked back to the Rhox, who was watching her intently. Jade sighed. “How far is it?”
“Most of a day’s walk.” He looked up at the purple sky above them. “We should reach it by nightfall, I would think, though we will need to camp there.”
“Very well,” Jade said. “But, if you show me this thing and I am not convinced, will you agree to drop this subject once and for all?”
“This is a subject I can never simply drop. It is my duty to save those who have not found the Path. But, if you will not listen to me further, I will agree to give up on your conversion, if that is what you want.”
“Alright then,” Jade agreed. “Let’s go.”
Jade took a few moments to try to express her thanks to the Blobars for their friendship and their hospitality, and then she and Dorn set out. They spoke little as they walked westward in the direction from which Dorn had come. Jade spent most of her time thinking about the things that Dorn was saying. Deep inside, she could not bring herself to accept the Rhox’s philosophy. She could not accept that there was no true goodness in the human race.
Still, it was a difficult thing to deny. Raiker Venn was the most thoroughly evil being that Jade could think of, and he was certainly human. She knew it was a foolish fallacy to believe that because one human was evil, they all were, but she could not deny the possibility that Raiker was as evil as he was because he was human. She thought back to her childhood. Her parents had always kept Nephractanini and her siblings away from the human settlements, instead offering the talents of the Dreamcatchers only to the other tigerfolk of the Sanvas. They had never told her why, except to say that they were dangerous. She had thought little of it then, but now, she had to wonder.
Most of the time, she thought about Raleris. He had seemed a kind enough man, funny in his own way and certainly caring. And yet, he did always try to push her away from the studies that most interested her and into those that interested him. He would sometimes snap at her for not knowing things she had no reason to know, and he seemed more annoyed at her at times than anything else. He seemed to want to make her into some sort of imitation of himself, rather than allow her to develop her own way to run the Library. And of course, worst of all, were his dreams.
Jade usually did not like to enter into people’s dreams uninvited, but there were times when, quite simply, she couldn’t resist. She had first entered Raleris’s dreams accidentally on Sertaria, on the island of Zyzjvol, searching for any signs of Raiker Venn. Instead, she stumbled into a nightmare of oil and death, and at its center, the smirking form of the Gentleman Poet himself. Later, when she learned that it was Raleris’s dream she was witnessing, Jade had been sure the Lorekeeper was an agent of evil, sent to destroy her. He had convinced her otherwise. And although Jade did not want to admit it, she now found herself wondering if her first impression had perhaps been correct.
There was less than an hour of daylight left when they reached their destination. They had just crossed over from the tall grass of the savannah that surrounded the Blobar village into the twisted trees of the forest when they came upon a partial clearing that had been cut away to make room for a small village. As they came in view of the simple huts, Dorn stopped and turned slightly to her. “If your stomach is weak, Nephractanini, you may wish to prepare yourself now.”
Jade was about to ask what he meant when the scent hit her nostrils. She gagged on the odor. It was the unmistakable stench of death.
“What…” she started, then coughed. After a moment, she recovered, her voice still caught in her throat a bit. “What happened here?”
“Humans happened here,” Dorn said mournfully. “Come, see their villainy.”
He led her to the far side of the village, where Jade saw a sight that froze her blood. In a large, undignified pile, there were stacked the corpses of at least thirty catfolk: men, women, and children. Each one had been slain brutally, and were covered in blood and worse. Jade stared unbelieving for a long moment before she had to turn away, although the sight would not be so easily driven from her mind. It was a sight she knew she would relive in her nightmares for nights, perhaps years, to come.
“Are you…” she began. “How…how do you know this was humans?”
“I saw them myself,” Dorn said. “When I first arrived here, it was near a cat village further into the forest, and I happened on a raid. Humans, riding on huge, flightless birds, slaughtered the catfolk. I was too late to stop them, but I hunted the humans through the forest for weeks after that. But with their birds, they were too fast. Each village I found was like this one, but after this one, I lost their tracks. They escaped me, and their own judgments, for now, at least.”
“Why…why didn’t you bury them?”
“Bury them?” Dorn asked, scoffing. “That is the humans’ way, to poison the ground with their vile corpses while denying other creatures sustenance that might prolong their lives. That is not the way of the Path.”
Jade did not even have the energy to argue with the Rhox. Instead, she just said, “I need to sleep on all of this.”
“Are you convinced now?”
“Just…” she said, shaking her head. “Just, let me think it over. In the morning, we’ll…talk further.”
Dorn nodded, then pointed to three of the huts at the far end of the catfolk village. “When I scouted this a few days ago, those three huts were empty, and reasonably secure.”
“Were there…did anybody…was anybody killed? In any of them?”
The Rhox shook his head. “They were clean.”
“Thank you,” Jade said, walking toward the left-most hut. She heard Dorn say something to her, but she did not register what it was. All she wanted to do was lie down and hope that her dreams would be kind to her, and let her forget everything she had seen and heard. Sadly, her dreams had no such mercy. In her nightmares, she relived first her visit to the murdered village, and then the slaughter that occurred there, as her own mind reassembled the events. Jade saw herself, as a fur, flesh, and blood catfolk, running scared from the humans on their mounts, screaming in terror as their spears and swords cut through those who ran beside her, friends and relatives she had never actually known.
Then, almost suddenly, the nightmare stopped. It did not end, it simply stopped. The catfolk were frozen in mid-stride, expressions of horror frozen on their feline faces. The Humans still bore down on them, their weapons held ready, but they were as statues all around her. Jade stared dumbfounded for a long moment before she heard that same, whispered voice cut through the sudden silence.
“May I come to you?”
Jade wheeled around and saw Milak. He looked tired. Exhausted, even. Still, after everything Dorn had said to her, and everything she had seen, she did not trust the man, and growled at him. “Was this your doing?” She asked, indicating around her.
“I froze the nightmare, yes,” the Dreamstrider said. “I did not think you wanted to continue it.”
“Not the nightmare,” Jade said, dropping down to a crouch. “The slaughter. What part did you play in it?”
“I played no part in what you are seeing,” the man said, his eyes shutting slightly before he managed to force them open again. “I wanted to, but…”
“You wanted to!” Jade snapped, baring her teeth. “You wanted to have a part in this atrocity!”
“Please,” he said, his voice painfully weak. “I wanted to…” his eyes shut again, and his body seemed to grow transparent. He opened his eyes again, but only managed to do so half way. “Stop…” Again, his eyes closed, and Jade relaxed her stance a bit. Whatever else Milak was, he was dead tired. “Please,” he managed again. “May I come to you? I…will…explain…”
Finally, Jade relented. “Fine, you may come to me. But if this is a trick…”
“Thank you!” The relief in the old man’s voice was palpable. He bowed his vanishing head, then touched one hand to the small blue gem set into his metallic headband, and an instant later, he seemed to vanish into himself. A few moments later, Jade found her dream fading away, and she felt herself waking back up to the physical world. It was dark in the small hut, but there was enough moonlight streaming through the window to allow her to see that she was not alone. Against the wall to Jade’s right, she could see a form that looked suspiciously like Milak.
Jade scrambled out of the simple bedroll and struck a fire in the fire pit that the previous occupants of the hut kept ready, and as the fire sprang to life, she saw that she was correct. Milak was reclining against the wall, looking precisely as he had in her dream, though perhaps even more ancient and decrepit. Jade stood up to her full height to look down on the Dreamstrider, who looked exhausted beyond her ability to describe it.
“You had best explain yourself quickly, human,” she warned.
Milak looked up at her and forced himself to nod. “I will. But first, let me just say thank you. You just saved my life.”
“I did?”
“I was trapped, surrounded, at the Summit. I’ve been searching the dreams for a way out for hours, and I couldn’t have had more than an hour before the Horde grew tired of waiting.”
“The Horde?”
Milak nodded again. “The Karrin Horde, the same as those who destroyed your village.”
“You said that you wanted to play a part in that,” Jade said, threateningly. “What role did you intend to play?”
“I had hoped to prevent it,” he said, gasping for breath. “The Horde went on the warpath three months ago. The Dreamstriders have been trying to warn the people, but there were so few of us left, and the Horde tried to stop us.”
“You tried to warn the people through their dreams.”
“We tried to warn them to run, but they did not listen. I think…” he stopped, breathing heavily. “I think we could not make them understand. It was…” again, he tried to breathe through raspy breaths. “Our failure.”
“You were hoping to organize them against the Horde, is that it?”
The old man shook his head. “The Horde is war. In war they thrive. They live by death. I thought I could escape them here,” he coughed hard, and Jade could hear the looming doom in his throat, “but they have won, at least against the Dreamstriders.”
“You mean, the Dreamstriders are…”
“I am the last,” he said sadly, slumping his head.
Jade moved closer to him, crouching down next to him and holding his hand in her jadestone paw. “Please, tell me how you move through people’s dreams. Please, I must know!”
He managed to look up at her. “Do you wish to use it for war? To take revenge on those who have wronged you?”
Jade shook her head, knowing that the old man’s time was short. “No, I want to bring two people together, two lovers, who cannot reach each other but through their dreams.”
Even as he was beginning to slide into the grip of death, Milak smiled. “That, that is a noble purpose.” He nodded to himself, and then reached up and laid a single finger against the band of silver resting on his wrinkled brow. “The Diadem,” he said, his voice dry. “The Dreamstrider Diadem. The wearer can enter dreams…” he paused, then looked at her pointedly, “as you can.”
Jade nodded. “It is an ancient magic of my people. We were Dreamcatchers. We helped people who were tormented by their dreams. We brought them peace.”
Milak’s smile widened. “Peace…” His voice was little more than a whisper. “Perhaps you do understand.”
“But I, or any of my people, could never move ourselves through the dreams. I did it once, but I do not know how. Do you?”
“You have walked the dreams. You know the space they inhabit. It is shared.”
Jade nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Like a lake,” Milak continued weakly. “But most dreamers cannot swim, if you catch my meaning.”
“You mean, they cannot cross the lake.”
The old man nodded. “But sometimes, magic can build a bridge.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Jade said. “When I ‘walked through their dream, I didn’t use any magic, nothing other than what I’ve done all my life.”
“Some magic,” he said, coughing again, louder this time, “is stronger than spellcraft.” He shook his head to himself. “The Dreamstriders are dead. Give this to the lovers. Let us do some small good in our passing. It is better than no good at all.”
Milak reached up and grabbed the Diadem with a shaking arm and struggled to take it off his head. Before he could, however, the door to the hut burst open, and Dorn stepped in, his rhinoceros face furious. He stared down at the Dreamstrider as he brought his free hand up to gently caress his horn. “Vile one! How did you get in here? I was patrolling the village, and I would have seen you.”
“He is a Dreamstrider, Dorn,” Jade said.
“A what?”
Jade glanced over at Milak, who was staring up at Dorn. “I thought the Dreamstriders were well-known across all of Nambru.” Suddenly, Jade’s mind flashed back to her conversation with Dorn earlier that day. “When I first arrived here…” she whispered, then looked up at Dorn. “You’re a planeswalker, aren’t you?”
“I do not know what you mean,” Dorn said through clenched teeth. “What I am, Nephractanini, is a Zealot of the Path of the Majestic Storm. And what that is,” he said, pointing at Milak, “is a human.”
Milak looked up at Jade, sadness in his eyes. “Remember that if you fight war with war, war wins. If you fight war with peace, peace at least has a chance.”
Before he could say any more, Dorn was across the room. He moved so fast that Jade barely had time to turn away before the Rhox brought his shield down across the old man’s skull, smashing it with a sickening crack. Jade looked back, the sight of the old Dreamstrider enough to confirm his death. The Diadem was still on his head, but the gem fixed in its center was cracked. Dorn must have struck it when he killed the old man. Jade reached for the diadem, but Dorn was faster, and scooped it up.
“Is this what you have sought? Is this what you would sell your spirit for and make a deal with a human? What is this, that you would so defile yourself to obtain?”
“It’s a Dreamstrider Diadem, and it can bring two people together, Dorn. Two loving people can use that to find each other, in peace, not in war. You cannot tell me that is a vile desire.”
“Can’t I?” Dorn asked, furious. “And who are these people, then? Huh? Humans, I’ll bet. Everything you do is for them, after all.”
“No!” Jade said. “One of them is a Kor.”
“What is a Kor?”
“They’re just another kind of person, like you or I. Like us, they have two legs, two arms, a head, and a heart. Their skin is pale, and they…”
“They sound like a breed of human, to me.”
“No, in fact, on many planes, the humans steer clear of them, like on the home plane of the Kor I wish to help. That’s why it’s so important that I help them, because if his people knew he loved a human, they would…”
“I knew it!” Dorn said, and Jade cringed, angry at herself. But she did not have much time to reflect on her mistake. “I see you for what you are now, Jade.” He said her name as though it were an insult. “You are a slave to the humans, well and truly owned. You have already sold yourself to them. There is no redemption for you now, and no mercy. Let us see now how a human-made statue shatters.”
“Wait!” Jade yelled, and Dorn paused.
“If you have any last words, or last confessions, you had best make them quick.”
Jade hung her head, gathering her mana. She knew she could not fight him. Her talents had never been for combat magic. But she was not one of those fortunate planeswalkers who could leave a plane in the blink of an eye. She just needed to buy herself a little time, just a few, precious seconds.
“That old man was not your enemy,” she said to Dorn, just hoping to distract him. “He had tried to prevent what happened here, as you would have.”
She closed her eyes and hung her head. Dorn shifted his weight slightly. “I pity you, Nephractanini, I truly do. Never have I met someone who has been so taken in by the lies of the humans, someone with so much promise, who sold it all so willingly to slavers.”
Jade took a deep breath, then looked up at Dorn. “And I pity you, because if all you can do is hate them, then hate will dominate your life, because you have no idea how many of them are out there in the Multiverse.”
“The what?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Jade said, casting a sorrowful look at the Dreamstrider Diadem in Dorn’s hand. “And you and I, I think, will meet again.”
“Perhaps in your dreams, Nephractanini, if the dead can dream.”
“No, Dorn, not my dreams. Yours.”
And with that, Jade vanished into the æther, leaving behind a very confused, and very furious, zealot.
* * *
“You mustn’t keep punishing yourself,” Raleris said, pouring Jade a cup of tea. “There was nothing you could do about it.”
“But it was right there, Raleris!” Jade said. “The answer, the one thing that could have helped bring Thatis and Symparu together, and it was a paw’s length from me! And I couldn’t take it!”
Raleris eased himself into his chair across from Jade’s at the small dining table in the Infinite Library. “If I had another year of life for every time something similar has happened to me, I wouldn’t have been worried about finding an apprentice.”
Jade nodded. “It has happened to me often enough, as well,” she said. “But I hate to think that the Diadem is in the possession of that, that…”
“Zealot?”
“I had a few more colorful words in mind.”
Raleris chuckled. “I suppose so,” he said. “Nephractanini, listen to me. You did great work on Nambru. Really, you did. You learned more about those Blobars than we ever would have known, and we know that the Dreamstriders are a part of their history. Plus which, now we know about this Dorn fellow, and can keep a look out. And don’t worry about the lovers. We’ll find another way to help them. I’m sure of it.”
As Raleris sipped his tea, Jade merely stared at him. For perhaps the first time since meeting Raiker Venn, she was glad her face was stone, and couldn’t give away a hint of what she was feeling. Mostly, she felt ashamed. Not because she hadn’t obtained the Diadem, or that she hadn’t stopped Dorn, or saved Milak’s life. She was ashamed of what she had thought of Raleris, ashamed that she had, if even for a few moments, trusted Dorn more than the Lorekeeper. And when she heard Raleris use her real name, which he had worked hard to learn to pronounce, she was suddenly, and completely, sure about him.
“Thank you, Raleris,” Jade said softly as she looked away and down at her tea. What Raiker Venn had done to her was a horrifying thing, but maybe the Infinite Library, and Raleris the Lorekeeper, would be the dream that woke her from that nightmare.
