Chapter Text
“My lady?”
Despair turned, pulled from her contemplations.
“I-It’s Lord Morpheus. He’s come to the Mire.” Her attendant fidgeted under her gaze.
“I presume there’s a reason you haven’t shown him in?” The question was genuine, but her attendant would not meet her eyes.
“Yes. He’s… my lady, he’s on the Low Road.”
She stood. “Take me to him.”
“At once, my lady.”
The Low Road of the Mire lived up to the realm’s name. Sludge dotted with hopeless souls spanned endlessly beneath Despair’s walkways, its color ranging from sewage-green to blood-brown across the expanse, with occasional pockets of more exotic hues — to her left lay a malicious purple-pink, to her right a searing, radiant orange. Directly ahead, the muck became deepest black, dark as midnight. Dark as nightmares.
Her brother huddled in the center of the blot, skin pale against the ebon ooze. Bereft of his chosen raiment, it was clear that he’d been stripped of his domain’s implements.
Despair’s eyes burned with an unfamiliar fire. How dare someone treat her brother so? How dare they bring one of the Endless to such a state?
She controlled her fury. She would need information, to properly target her retribution.
Despair stepped off the walkway and knelt beside Dream. “Tell me your sorrows, troubled soul,” she murmured, although it burned to treat her brother like a common mortal.
“Jessamy,” Dream whispered, face pressed into his knees where they were pulled into his chest. “Dead before my eyes, and I helpless in this prison of glass. So long her devotion lasted; I know not how many years she persisted, trying to reach me, until she finally succeeded — and met her death for it, while I could do nothing, trapped as I am by these mortals. The Ruler of Dreams, brought low by a summoning spell and a wayward nightmare. How pathetic I am…”
“What are their names?” Despair’s voice was carefully even.
“Burgess,” Dream hissed, knuckles whitening on his elbow. “Roderick and Alex Burgess. The father is the architect of this, but I can no longer find pity for the son.”
“Where are you?”
“England. The basement of a mansion or manor house. So many years and so few scraps of knowledge… and my only hope of rescue, gone. I shall never be free of this place…”
“You will,” she vowed in a low voice. Despair laid a hand on her brother’s arm, seeing as she did a flash of the face Dream showed to the material world — sat upright, expression revealing nothing but quiet defiance. “Now see me, brother,” she commanded, bringing her power to bear.
Dream straightened as he became present, gaze focusing on her after only a moment. Another moment passed before he spoke.
“Despair.”
The Endless were beings of abstraction, their forms more idea than matter. They did not require food, or water, or air; their muscles did not atrophy in stillness. Their voices did not grow raspy in disuse.
“Greetings, Dream. I would ask what brought you down this road, but I already know — pardon my rudeness, I thought to handle the practicalities before limiting our time.”
Dream was staring at her, almost in disbelief. “Sister. How…”
“You came into my realm by the Low Road. I make it a practice to notice such things. And since you have visited me, it’s only right that I should pay you a visit in turn.” Despair’s smile was sharp.
“You… would help me?”
Despair let her left hand clench, modulating her right to merely squeeze her brother’s arm. She drew breath to say something flippant about precedent-setting, but looking into Dream’s eyes she found herself saying only, “I will.”
Dream’s face didn’t change, but his form began to shimmer — he was leaving the realm of the Despairing, and they had only seconds more. “Be careful,” he said urgently. “They knew how to trap me, they have my tools — be careful.”
“I will. I’m coming, Dream. I’m coming.”
All at once her brother was gone. Despair’s realm had no more hold on him. The Mire around her faded from light-sucking void to mere black. She stood, the muck of her domain leaving no trace on her flesh or garments.
“Send a messenger to the Dreaming,” she ordered as she stepped onto the walkway. “Tell them to expect the return of their Lord in no more than a week.”
“It will be done, my lady,” her attendant said.
“I will be away for the same period. Send to the Palace — prepare my tools for a trip to the material world.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Some upstart mortals had visited despair upon her brother. Well, she would see how they liked having Despair visited upon them.