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The difference between Delight and Delirium was a vast gulf. In the Time Before, Delight had been sun-streaming breezes and flower-crowned meadows, dog tails wagging, fresh-baked muffins. After The Transformation (such a bland term but what else did you expect from Destiny, who insisted on calling it The Transformation because ThAt'S wHaT's In ThE bOoK, no we're not calling it Unravelling) Delirium donned a mask of two-toned eyes and sometimes-teeth and words that swam with rainbow fishes.
Delusion-that-was-Dream did not look terribly different from Dream-when-he-was-Himself, except that sometimes the stars in his eyes became black holes and, when Despair held her hands up like a picture frame and lined them up just so, layering brother upon sister like scars upon scars, she could see where Delusion and Delirium blended into each other. Another change was that the borders of their realms (Delusion's and Delirium's realms, that is) had stretched during their rulers' Transformations so that the borders met the bleeding edges of Despair's kingdom. Despair was the only one who knew about this because she had felt the warping borders, except that Desire also knew because Desire and Despair shared everything.
Despair had expected a blaze of triumph when she told Desire about the borders but Desire had taken on an uneasy pall instead. They liked to rile Dream but they hadn't wanted him irreparably damaged. Now that he was changed Desire took to avoiding Death, either because they didn't want Death angry with them or because they didn't want to face the possibility of Death taking Dream/Delusion by the hand, and fixing the Dreaming via resurrection.
Despair couldn't understand why Desire was afraid. Death wasn't so frightening. Despair knew. She had died before but then she'd come back.
These things never stuck, you see.
Delusion did not think Rose Walker would be a problem.
"She's a Dream Vortex, brother mine," Desire said with a roll of their honey-hued eyes. "You're going to destroy the universe again, and I'm going to have to save you. Again."
"The last Vortex was a star," Delusion pointed out. "This Vortex is a human. She is far more reasonable than a star."
Despair felt a flutter of delight at the thought of the universe dying, all those billions and billions of souls withering away, wailing and sobbing when they realised the end was Extremely Nigh. She dug her hook into her arm, grinning.
"I will tell Delirium not to take the Vortex, if it worries you so," Delusion offered. He was far more peaceable as Delusion than he had been when he was Dream, which pissed Desire off even more. They missed their brother. It was no fun when he no longer got all prissy-faced and sulky when Desire meddled. He simply floated along, serenely convinced he was right regardless of Desire's jibes and insults.
"You would trust Delirium?" Desire sneered.
Delusion shrugged. "She is more capable than you believe, dear sibling." With that he strolled away. Tame nightmares skulked in his wake.
Desire said, "We're fucked."
Despair laughed.
"You can't change him," The Corinthian had told Lucienne. Boy, had he been wrong! He deserved a fucking medal for Incorrect Opinion of the Century. Apparently all one had to do to change an Endless was lock him up in a glass ball for a hundred years without light, air, food, touch, speech, his Kingdom, his Raven, and his Dreams and Nightmares. That sounded like a whole lot of work to The Corinthian. Thank the Creator those Burgess idiots had done it for him.
The new Lord, Delusion, didn't want to kill the Dream Vortex, which suited The Corinthian just fine, thank you. Rose trusted the man who'd found her brother, and all The Corinthian had to do was go along with Delusion's plan to… well, he wasn't sure what Delusion's plan was, but given the Lord's new name his plan was probably a bad one. Anyway, Rose would live. Eventually her powers would overwhelm her and she would tear apart the Dreaming, and its Lord as well. The Corinthian would be free to wreak havoc as he pleased. Ah, the sweet taste of success!
One hitch: Delusion was no longer trying to contain The Corinthian. He was convinced The Corinthian could be guided onto the right path and that Unmaking him wasn't necessary. Which left The Corinthian free to do whatever he pleased as long as he occasionally taught humanity about facing fears or bettering themselves or whatever Delusion had been nattering on about during his Dream-days.
The Corinthian's long-term feud with his creator had been unexpectedly solved, and The Corinthian didn't like it one bit. Where was the excitement? The tension? He had to admit there had been something damn alluring about Dream's simmering rage and self-righteous power. Delusion just didn't have the same spark.
Fine, then! New plan! The Corinthian was going to push some buttons. See what made His Lordship snap.
"You… killed the Dream Vortex?" Delusion said slowly.
The Corinthian smirked. "My murderous urges got the better of me," he lamented, cheerfully.
Lucienne, standing beside the stairs to the throne, stepped toward the Lord. "Sir, this may be… unexpected, but is this not good news? The Vortex is no longer a threat."
Delusion paced in front of the sweeping staircase. "She was never a threat," he mused. "We might have used her power." He looked over at The Corinthian, who excitedly braced himself for lordly wrath and punishment.
"Was she asleep when she died?" Delusion asked, too calm. The Corinthian pouted with all of his mouths. The Vortex had been unconscious when she died, as mortals tended to be when they had been bleeding copiously from their eye sockets.
Why?
"This is kind of cool, I guess," Rose Walker said as she clumsily fluttered her new wings.
"You get used to it after a couple days. Whatever counts as a day here," Matthew replied, full of smug wisdom. He was very pleased about no longer being the new kid. (Merv Pumpkinhead was less pleased. More Ravens meant more shit to clean. The Dream Ravens didn't even need to shit but as former humans they found comfort in the familiarity of bodily functions. Or maybe Ravens were just dicks. Who can say?)
Rose hopped carefully through the grass of Fiddler's Green, who had come back to the Dreaming with Rose. Apparently the Vortex and the field were friends. Life was strange like that. Rose bent her spindly legs and pushed off from the soft ground, wings spread wide.
Her sense of direction needed some work. She flew straight into The Corinthian's legs. The new Raven was the most exciting thing in the Dreaming at the moment, and The Corinthian had hoped for some entertainment while watching Rose find her Dream-legs (which are like sea-legs, only made of dreamstuff). The Corinthian chuckled, amused at her ineptitude.
"Shut up," said Rose the Raven. She was still upset about being horrifically murdered. Fiddler's Green blew a threatening gust of wind as a show of support.
The Corinthian shut up.
Desire waved as they, Delusion, and Despair watched Rose and Gault disappear in a swirl of sand. The two of them were off to be Jed Walker's Guardians. Jed had been promptly adopted by Unity, and was all set to inherit a large house and a larger fortune.
"My granddaughter makes a beautiful Raven," boasted Desire, as if they'd had anything to do with it. Despair grumbled. Delusion walked back to the Palace, where he had decided the next order of business was to alphabetise all the books in the Library. Lucienne said it couldn't be done because the books had minds of their own and liked to visit each other, and only Lucienne knew how to track them down. Delusion was sure he could convince the books to listen. He was their Lord, after all.
Realms away, Destiny sighed as he read his Book.
The next family dinner was going to be weird.