Chapter Text
As far as these things went, contracting a god was actually a fairly mundane process.
“You can imagine it for yourself,” Dream said levelly, wiping the last of the sticky honey from his hands as he spoke. “I’m sure you could come up with something interesting. It’s not hard.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” said the god. His name was GeorgeHD. He lounged three or four feet above the muddied ritual grounds; the hems of his thick, dark blue robes folded over themselves to anchor him to the earth. His face was just as familiar as it wasn’t. “I’m only surprised anyone thought to appeal to them—”
“Appeal to you,” Dream corrected. “Let’s not bring them into it so early. We hardly even know each other.”
HD smiled ironically. The sight sent a sharp twinge through Dream’s chest. “You know my name and my face. Isn’t it the same?”
“Not at all,” Dream answered. But HD must have already known his answer; he knew how Dream felt about the face he wore, knew how Dream felt to look up and see it marred by blank, untouchable godhood. So he swallowed down his grievances with a surge of deep, inexplicable loathing.
It was all fine. It was all planned. Dream folded his hands together behind his back, twisting his fingers before they could do something as stupid as tremble.
“You know more about me than any other,” HD said, unperturbed by or else enticing Dream’s sudden surge of emotion. “That must count for something.”
“It doesn’t,” Dream said tartly. He took a deep breath and pushed onwards. “Anyway, I’ve laid out the terms of the contract to you. If there’s anything you want to change—”
“Personally,” HD said, “I’d like to skip to the interesting part. Don’t you agree?”
He sank down into the mud, billowing robes settling onto the dirt like puffs of clouds in the sky; even the dirt didn’t dare to kiss the soles of his shoes or cling to the hems of his cloak. Under long, black eyelashes, his pale gray eyes peered up at Dream with a curious glimmer.
“Fine,” Dream said, mostly for his benefit. He strode forward, hastily closing the gap between them; HD merely smiled in a way that didn’t reach his eyes and cupped Dream’s cheeks with long, cold fingers. He had an extra joint, Dream noticed; he had known that, but it was startling and strange to feel on his skin. A real thing about something so extraordinary.
HD said, “And you’re sure about this?”
Dream laughed. “In any case,” he said ironically, “I’ve started something that has to be ended. If possible, I’d like to do it on my own terms.”
He leaned down—even their height differences were the same—and bound their pact with a kiss.
◈
“You’re home early,” Sapnap said, obviously surprised. He sat on the floor by the fireplace, his shield propped up against one knee as he polished it. When they were younger, Dream used to rag on him all the time for maintaining his equipment indoors. Now it sent a twinge of fondness through him.
It had been a long time since he and Dream had been in the same room at the same time. The world had been ended for almost a year at this point, but they kept odd, conflicting hours. And of course, there had been the fights, the purposeful avoidances. Even now, they were as strangers to each other. All that history wedged between them.
Dream shut the door behind him and latched it. Through the window, he saw that the blue sky had dipped into smeared oranges, pinks.
“I’ll be gone for a while, I think,” Dream said, loosening the buckles of his armor—but not shucking it entirely. He wanted a little room to breathe at home, but the warm weight of the netherite soothed him. He did remove his sword, tossing it to the side so he could wipe it down later; the ax he kept. Then he went to settle next to Sapnap, a few healthy feet away, like two casual acquaintances catching up on their separate lives.
Sapnap scrutinized his face.
“That’s nice of you,” he said neutrally. Dream thought he understood the deeper implications of that without clarification; George had, after all, disappeared without a word. All those years ago. He felt it like a chasm.
Suddenly exhausted, Dream scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Yeah,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know. It shouldn’t take that long, but it’s just—” he hesitated, then pushed on. “Well. You know. I missed you. I didn’t want you to think that you had missed me, or that I didn’t miss you. Or whatever.”
He was mixing metaphors—stumbling blindly around for some kind of relief from their estrangement. Sapnap said nothing in reply, so Dream finished, lamely, “You’re my best friend. That’s always going to be true. Regardless of, you know.”
Sapnap stared him with some strange, unreadable expression on his face.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s—you’re my best friend too.”
“You don’t have to lie,” Dream said, smiling faintly. He clapped Sapnap on the shoulder and rose, feeling itchy and untethered from his own skin. “It’s okay. I just didn’t want to leave without letting you know.”
“But you’re coming back,” Sapnap said. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” Dream said. That was the whole point of the conversation: to set him apart from their history. A light suspicion had worked itself onto Sapnap’s expression, though Dream thought it best not to address it.
In any case, it was the chase that was important; the struggle that ruled everything. George was not gone as long as Dream could perpetuate it and, anyways, all eyes were on him now. He would do it. He’d bring him home.
“I have things to do too,” Sapnap said. He set his shield aside, watching as Dream crossed the house to get a glass of water. “How long will you be gone? I’ll try to get them done before you come back. We can go out together afterwards, if you want.”
Dream thought about it for a while “A week, probably,” he said. “Maybe a little more. It shouldn’t take too long, but there are a few things that could go wrong. Nothing dangerous.” The last part was a lie, but what did it matter? It wasn’t Sapnap’s life. There wasn’t much that could take Dream out of the running anymore. Maybe if he killed himself.
Sapnap considered this for a moment. “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Dream says. “As soon as the sun rises.”
“Wake me up before you leave, then,” Sapnap said, rising too. His shield clanked to the floor. “I’ll see you out.”
◈
THE DRAGON HAD BEEN SLAIN 28 TIMES TO DATE. The last time someone had revived it, they had died before reopening the End, leaving their unfinished business to grow mold in there. Dream ascended the steps of the portal room with absolutely no intention of clearing it out.
“How noble,” HD said dryly.
Dream ignored him. He gestured towards the filled portal.
“Are you going to help me or not?” he asked.
HD’s bloodless lips curled in faint amusement. “Of course. I live to serve.”
He stretched out one pale hand, palms nearly swallowed by the sleeves of his deep blue robes. Dream could see every jut of bone against skin; his long, stringy fingers appeared almost translucent in the flickering torchlight. He crooked the last odd joint of his index finger in a quick, jerking motion—and every torch in the room hissed and died. A dim blue light snaked its way through the cracks of the stronghold’s stone bricks, flooding the room with an eerie weightlessness. HD curled up his fingers into a fist and flipped his hand over, opened it palm-down like dropping something.
Dream heard the portal wheeze a little. The cold, ozone scent vanished like it had been yanked backwards, into the void. Then the eyes in the portal pulsed once, twice, bloodshot and blinking rapidly; the one closest to Dream squirmed free of the frame with a muted pop! followed by the ones next to it, then the ones next to those, rising sequentially. As they rose, each eye spun towards HD innerably, as planets drawn to his gravity; then they broke, crumbled down into fine green dust. The starry abyssal portal shredded itself and disappeared as if a magician had whisked a string of handkerchiefs briskly back into his hat.
“Cool trick,” Dream said. He crouched down to touch the empty portal frame. “Now what? There’s nothing here. Nowhere to go. If you’ve tricked me—”
“You don’t need Eyes of Ender where you’re going,” HD said patiently. “You’re very smart, Dream. Whose eyes do you need?”
Slowly, Dream stood up. The heat of the lava receded from his face. He smelled a waft of clean, damp air, like the breeze by a lake or a river, although he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. The portal frame was still empty but the bottom had opened out into a dark, endless chasm.
There were no stars where he was going, but HD had been right. Dream was very smart. He was in control. He had all the eyes he needed already. There was really nothing more to it—he took a deep breath, put one foot in front of the next, and stepped forward into the open air.
He didn’t close his eyes. Death by fall or death by drowning: he would meet whatever came next with his eyes wide open.
◈
“YOU’RE KIDDING,” GEORGE SAID. He was laughing a little, the side of his mouth quirked up the way it always did when Dream said something ridiculous. “That’s—”
“No, hear me out,” said Dream, hurrying to explain himself between bouts of laughter. “It’s like…”
Dream—the other Dream, the one beyond all of that sunlight and dreaming—looked at his companion. They were on the other side of the mirror-water, the two of them: similar, but changed so far as to be unrecognizable.
Not that HD had ever been there. Not that Dream had ever been there either. He stepped away from the pond, boots sinking into the soft, tumbling dirt as he climbed up the hill. Above them, the sky was undoubtedly blue behind hundreds of thousands of eyes.
“Nice weather,” HD said idly.
“I guess,” Dream said, half-heartedly. He began the trek down the opposite side of the hill, where he could hear a river. Moving water. A good start. The eyes followed him as he trekked down the hill. The river was rushing, bold and wild; between foam he could see fragments of dreams or memories—George’s mouth as he spoke; the sand on a beach; Dream’s sword flashing down; Sapnap, underwater, dark hair free and wild as the sunlight poured in and he swam to the surface. Brief flashes and glimpses before they dispersed and submerged under the crash of waves.
“This is the River of Memory,” said HD. “Mnemosyne, in Greek myth; named for the mother of the nine muses: ‘Speak, Memory!’ The invocation of the muses, etc.—you know the like. It’s your contribution, not mine. You like familiar things, don’t you?”
Dream said, blandly, “Probably.”
HD smiled. “Then,” he said, “go drown in it.”
Dream descended the hills and knelt by the river bank. He bent down, hands folded over his knees, and took it inside of himself.
◈
SPEAK, MEMORY—
George was running. This was an early memory. Dream could identify it by a million little tells: his boyish face, the clumsy joy of his motions, tripping over stones. He could also tell because he had been part of it.
“You’re so dumb,” said Dream—the younger version of himself, at least. His hair had fought an extended campaign against the wind, and lost every battle. It curled wild and uneven into his eyes. As he spoke, George lunged for him; he bounced deftly back, rocking on his heels with a triumphant satisfaction that soaked into every fiber of his being. “Just say it. Come on.”
“You’re the dumb one,” George shot back. He tumbled into the grass, pushed himself back up to take another swing at Dream. “Why do you want me to say it so badly?”
“It’s a matter of principle,” the younger Dream said, skidding to the right to dodge; he jabbed right back, landing a light hit on George’s shoulder, which sent him stumbling briefly back. “Look, I’ll even go first: I love you, Dream. It’s not hard!”
“Okay, okay,” George said, laughing. “Since you said it first, I’ll do it just for you: go fuck yourself, Dream.”
“Shut up,” said the younger Dream. “Why would I fuck myself when I could fuck your mom instead?” He grinned like this was a good joke which, admittedly, it kind of was, even though watching the proceedings made Dream want to claw his face off of his skull.
It had been a simpler time. Maybe that was true of everything that Dream had already overcome, but it seemed especially true here. Everything about this was—-easy. Uncomplicated. A time before living; a fossil of a memory driven to extinction. It could not exist again.
“...so dumb,” George said, swiftly dodging—for once, dodging! His triumph was clear on his face; and on the younger Dream’s, a pleased sort of surprise—and retaliating with a strike of his own to Dream’s chest. He drove the blade forward against Dream’s iron chestplate, forcing him to stumble backwards, before landing a solid kick to Dream’s knees; Dream folded under the force of the blow, still laughing as he parried George’s next swing with an easy flick of his wrist.
“I’ve got you now,” George said. The edges of his words curled with glee.
The younger Dream’s throat bobbed. How this whole scene must look, to him: George, towering above him—a rare sight—face framed with sun; blocking out the light to blend everything else into shadow.
“You’ve got me,” he breathed. Dream looked away from the whole mess, which was really as easy as breathing, except he wasn’t breathing at all. He was inhaling water, the cold rush of it flooding through him like electricity—
◈
“AND UP,” HD said. Dream’s head dripped with water; he sneezed once, twice, wiped his face with his sleeve and pressed the wet hair out of his eyes. The two of them sat in a rowboat—quaint, clean, oak wood smooth and gleaming under the early morning sun. “How did it go?”
“Old memory,” Dream said wearily. He had forgotten there had been a time before the whole world had been coated in that thick, gray misery. Even the colors had seemed more vibrant in the memory. Some nameless yearning had sunk into him like a blow.
They sat there a while, pushed onwards by the gentle lapping of the river’s tide. Every time Dream looked up, he was struck by the sky—what must have been thousands of eyes crammed against each other, all different colors and sizes, staring right at their rowboat. Piercing right through Dream.
Occasionally a few of them blinked. To say it was disconcerting felt like an understatement but then again, Dream had been the one to invite them to watch. If it was strange, it was no one’s fault but his own.
Dream folded his hands over his lap. “Why did I see that? The memory.”
“The purpose?” HD said. He seemed perpetually amused by Dream’s actions, as if he had never seen anyone act so plainly against common sense before. Even now, he spoke partly as if he was only humoring Dream: “The Mnemosyne is still shallow and calm here. If you want to see a more illuminating memory—”
“I do,” said Dream.
“Then you’ll have to journey there,” HD said, trailing a hand through the water. “I should warn you: most of your time will be spent in the River. This boat serves only as a transition point—a place for you to come up every now and again. And if you spend too long submerged in the River…” he smiled, all teeth. “Well, it’s like any other body of water. You’ll only drown slower.”
Dream studied him. All those sharp edges; his stiff indifference.
“So what should I do?” he asked.
“Push yourself to the brink of death, if you must,” HD said, shrugging one shoulder. “Probably, you should drown in the past until you can’t bear it anymore. Who am I to say? You’ll have to come to terms with something at some point.”
“Helpful,” Dream grumbled. Still, he let it slide because his purpose was more important than anything else—more important than HD’s own interests, more important than whatever tragedy Dream might incur through his methods.
He stood up, careful of the boat’s rocking, and rolled his shoulders back. He had to keep the momentum crashing along, and he mentally prepared himself for it the way a man on death row prepared to die. It was worth it—he had to believe that much, or he would drown. The belief would buoy him to shore.
“I’ll see you on the other side, then,” Dream said. The water seemed deeper now—was that just him? No, it couldn’t be. Everything metaphorical was also literal, here.
He took a deep breath, held it. Fell backwards, over the edge of the rowboat. Plunged into the water. Probably better than anyone, Dream knew that the only way out was through.