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Dream closes the gates, shutters the Dreaming, as the temperature rises with the forces of Hell. He fights with mind and physicality both, yanking infinite weapons out of the residual dreamers' dreams, opens up cliffs and changes the landscape and swallows demons in boiling seas and jets of holy water. The Morningstar has yet to appear.
*
They have been fighting so long. The temperature is so high. There are lines wearing on his essence. Every one of his creations that meets an end sends a frisson of pain and grief and rage through him. And the number is only increasing.
I am Hope.
He bares fangs, and rises to meet the Morningstar in the sky, in a clash of wings and claws, of hellfire and starry ribbons, of blazing heat and pain and torment against nightmares and dreamstuff.
*
Dream has been midair fighting Lucifer with ribbons of power and fading dreams that clash with hellish flame, the flames definitively overpowering him, for too long. He's exhausted. There are fissures winding through the land itself, through him. Stars are visible through cracks in the ground like they did with the Vortex, and the palace has taken damage.
Morpheus thinks briefly to call upon his siblings – but he can't shape the words anymore, nor the intent, everything images and concepts. The Dreaming is outnumbered and outgunned and if he falls, the Dreaming falls. The remaining denizens of the Dreaming need him. And so he has to put a stop to the invasion now, or it's over.
Lucifer makes a triumphant noise and presses forward. He reaches into himself, everything around him, all the facets of who he is, the reserves of his power that make up who he is. He yanks, contorting it into what amounts to a cosmic scale of detonation, then condenses it the best he can to something that won't rip apart space-time or the rest of the Dreaming.
Finesse is difficult. Dream's still dodging Lucifer's attacks, and Lucifer's remaining army has has turned toward him. The lights and starry ribbons that unravel from him crystallize into an orb of winking stars and sanded glass. He diverts just enough power to clear his surviving Dreams and Nightmares and Matthew hopefully out of the blast zone.
And then slams what's left into the orb like a match to a fuse, overloading its fragile stability.
It glows. Everything explodes white, and he's blasted sideways. Dream has just enough awareness to know that he succeeded, that Hell has retreated. Safe. He's done it. Blood on his face, starshine soaking his front. Every molecule of his remaining essence ignites in liquid starfire. He's falling out of the sky, blackness coming up faster than the ground.
He doesn't feel the impact.
"Boss!" Matthew shrieks, the explosion of power having sent him tumbling in flight despite the distance the Boss had already shoved him to. Morpheus has overdone it, wrecked himself to try and save them all, and Matthew's just a stupid raven, he's too small and far away to catch the falling form of swirling stars and shredded black coat. "BOSS!"
Morpheus hits the ground, and another shockwave propels Matthew so far that he can no longer see him. The sky goes several shades dimmer, and there's a... horrible hush to everything. Like everything's frozen, except for Matthew. His thoughts turn to find Lucienne find Lucienne find Lucienne…
He reaches the palace, struggling for what feels like hours or days, just as the sky winks into near-total darkness.
"Lucienne," he cries. Corvids aren't nocturnal birds, and the darkness is so dark that he thinks even the most adept night-hunting owl would be lost. "Lucienne?"
His voice echoes. "Anyone? Mervyn? Merv? Lucienne… Loosh…"
"Matthew?" The faint voice unmistakably belongs to Lucienne.
"Lucienne!" he hollers again. The echoing and the darkness means it takes an eternity to meet in the middle, so to speak, but they finally find each other. "Are we the only ones?" Matthew says, quieter. Everything in the Dreaming is deathly quiet. It's like a tomb, a mausoleum to the dreams and dreamers.
"I don't know," Lucienne says. "It… seems like it, for now. You were there. What happened?"
"Um, we were losing. You know that. Boss… did something. Like raw power as an explosive device. He pushed us away… but still knocked me tumbling. And he fell out of the sky, Loosh, he fell. All of Hell's army were gone but he just fell and I couldn't get to him. He hit the ground and I just went…. careening, again, closer to the Palace. Everything felt just… Stopped. And then it started getting dark and I couldn't sense him anywhere… is he dead, Loosh? He can't be."
"If he were dead," Lucienne says, "I suspect his sister would be here. And… yes. It feels like everything has just frozen, but us."
"Any … theories…?" Matthew asks, tremulously.
"Like a power outage," she says.
"Sorry, like electricity?"
"In a sense. We've been fighting for so long. I think Lord Morpheus… effectively drained his own power out too far to use it against Hell. To save us. He's certainly not conscious if he fell out of the sky. And he is the Dreaming. His loss of power has effectively shut down the Dreaming. A theory, anyway." Lucienne exhales. "And no, I don't know what happens next. It hasn't actually happened before."
The Dreaming is dark and still, an empty stage in a theatre, devoid of its actors and propmasters and stagehands. Devoid of its director.1
*
The Dreaming is dark. It is dark, in what Lucienne thinks of as vacant and interstellar spaces, like a poem once said.1 The Library still stands, but there is no light to read anything. The Dreaming is dark.
The Dreaming is dark. The palace gates stand closed, and inside is an inky blackness. The sleepy sickness does not return, but nor does anyone dream. No one dreams. Not even Hob, who can't even reach the gates of the Dreaming. (For a while, Hob could get to the gates of the Dreaming – so could everyone else, for a few years – and then the dreamscape went blank and dark).
There's no word from Dream, from Lucienne, from Matthew. Yet, if Dream were dead, he would know, right? The world would surely be affected more severely? A few more years drag by. Hob resorts to increasingly improbable methods of trying to dream. Of trying to contact Dream.
*
The Dreaming is dark. Matthew tries to find Dream, again, and spends an indeterminable amount of time in the quicksands of time, a dragging darkness, alone in the nowhere.
If Lucienne nearly crushes him in a desperate grip when he finally finds his way back to the palace, well, neither of them have to mention it. Matthew shakes and trembles. Lucienne trembles, too, more finely. They are alone in this stasis of night and time.
"I do not think Lord Morpheus's parents are particularly caring of the situation," Lucienne says.
"Sorry?" Parents?
"His parents are Night and Time. Right now, everything seems to be… far too close to their realms and theirs alone. Maybe Destiny's, too, if our fate is written."
"I do not like this idea," Matthew says.
"Neither do I," Lucienne answers.
The Dreaming is dark.
*
The Dreaming is dark, and Lucienne and Matthew tell each other stories as they to try find Dream's gallery. Maybe they can contact a sibling. They are Theseus in the maze, with no light, and no Ariadne. But there is no monster. Just the dark.
The palace seems to have become a foreign object to them, almost unnavigable as the Dreaming sits dark and stuck in its own limbo. There is no judgment day. If this is how their world ends, it ends not with a bang, but a whimper.2
The Dreaming is dark. Hob dreams of nothing. Everyone dreams of nothing.
He sits at the New Inn, increasingly unfocused on grading papers, on his lecture notes that are devolving steadily into existential confusion, when the door opens and someone in black enters. It's not Dream, and no one else notices her. A silver ankh necklace dangles, catching the dying rays of sunlight. Apt, because Hob knows her, even though he's never asked for her.
"You're Death," he says. "Dream's sister."
"Yes," she says. "I'm not here to take you, if that's a concern. And Dream's alive, as far as I can tell, but – " she hesitates.
Hob closes his lecture notes. "We should probably do this in private." Internally, he's shaking apart.
Hob serves Death an apple cider and pours a finger of whiskey for himself in his flat. "Something's wrong with Dream and the Dreaming, I've been worried sick," he says. "Scared. For him, for us."
Death smiles gently. "Understandable."
"What happened?"
"There was a battle," Death says. "Dream closed the gates to protect the Dreamers; the battle went on so long that the lack of Dreamers effectively dropped the whole realm into stasis after a point - after Dream overused his powers to drive off Hell. They're not dead, just... frozen. As they were?"
"Why can't you just go there?" Hob raises a brow.
"I've tried getting in, but I'm not a Dreamer, my presence ... was not welcomed. Ordinarily I wouldn't interfere with his affairs like this – he's gonna be so mad later – but after Burgess, I..." She trailed off with a sigh.
Hob has so many other questions about a thousand diverging topics, but he focuses on the Dreaming in stasis from a lack of a dreamers. Dream, trying to protect everyone and – well. "I want to help," he says.
"I thought you might," she says brightly. "You might be able to get in, as a Dreamer who also has a connection to the Dreaming. If I take you to my gallery."
"Gallery?" Hob asks, but he's already packing away his papers.
"It's a way for us Endless to contact each other and cross into each other's realms. Lucienne and Matthew finally managed to reach Dream's and ask me for help."
*
The Dreaming is dark. "Hob," says Lucienne, voice painfully relieved, as he steps through.
Hob's steps bring a tiny increase in the ambient light, just enough to see right in front of him. For Lucienne and Matthew to see in front of them.
"I can feel … Dream, I think," he says. There's a tiny frisson of power, flickering and fading, tugging on him. He follows it. And follows it. Through dark and cold fields, greenery where dahlias slump, sleeping wilted in the empty silence.1
Forward, and forward, and Hob follows something he doesn't understand. Lucienne and Matthew follow, the librarian's hand linked with his to avoid losing him to inky darkness.
Dream groans, and tries to open his eyes. They're glued shut. His body is on fire. He can't feel a lot of it. Something had woken him up. What was it? Voices. Gentle hands. He can't follow, and his mind slips into the dark again.
Hob stares, horrified, in the dim light, at his friend's crumpled form, the ground cratered around him from the impact Matthew had described. Dream's face is covered in blood, red and silver, like he'd nearly bled out through a nosebleed alone. His dark shirt is saturated in something darker still and glimmering. His coat is shredded. His limbs are askew and his entire presence seems flickery, not quite there.
"Dream," he whimpers, hand sliding out of Lucienne's as he skids to his friend, falling on his knees. He prods with his hands gently, trying to elicit a response, anything. Dream's eyes flicker under his eyelids and he makes a soft groan, but doesn't wake. Morpheus has always run cold, but now it's like touching dry ice, a freezing contradiction of a burn.
Matthew catches up a minute later, and caws in violent distress.
There's nothing to carry him back on, even as the sky lightens to a night lit only by a crescent moon. Hob tries to keep Dream as still as he can, stable as he can, lifting him into his arms.
In the darkened palace, lit only by a wider, full moon and the stars, Hob and Lucienne lay Dream down on the softest surface they can find, a couch in the library. Matthew nestles into Dream's shoulder. Lucienne wipes his face clean of blood, and Hob feels along the back of Dream's head for wounds. There's blood matted into Dream's hair along with dirt and grass, so Hob cleans the wounds there, too.
He and Lucienne strip off the coat and shirt. Dream's hands twitch and his eyelids flutter, but he's not aware or strong enough to speak or acknowledge them. His body seems insubstantial and weak, the moonlight almost shining through it. There are gashes of voids and stars, and what distinctly appear to be scorch marks and burns.
"We need to bring in more dreamers," Hob says. "I don't think we can heal this otherwise. How much can the realm handle?"
"I don't know," Lucienne admits. "But if he's not going to get better –"
"Stay with him?" Hob says, tremulously. "I need to open the gates. Or something." He shrugs off his jacket and lays it over Dream.
"As if I could do anything else." Lucienne looks down at Morpheus, twining her hand in his.
Dream jerks, like a live wire's touched him, even unconscious. His eyelids flutter as an influx of Dreamers enter the Dreaming. Slowly the realm lightens into a dusk, a twilight, a different kind of liminal space. Dream twitches again, and whimpers violently.
The gashes on his body start closing over. There's movement within the palace, and Hob sees Lucienne openly weeping. She embraces a dark-skinned dream with beautiful nebulas under her skin and wings. "This is Gault," Lucienne says, smile radiant. It's the first time Lucienne's smiled since Hob has gotten here, and he wonders if she ever smiled in all the years in the dark with only Matthew at her side in what had to feel increasingly like a tomb.
He looks down at Morpheus to give Lucienne privacy as Gault swoops in to kiss her face.
Matthew has taken to chewing on Dream's hair with his beak, preening and grooming him, as they wait for him wake. It takes a long time. It takes until it feels like the entire realm has woken up except for him. Though, Lucienne explains, he is the realm, so he's probably diverting all his power into it. She's settled back by Morpheus, holding onto Dream's hand with her left and Gault's on her right.
"I'm glad he has you," Hob says, looking down, and taking Dream's other hand.
"I see you succeeded," Death says, voice clear and strong and joyous as it cuts across the room.
"Yes," Hob breathes, and kisses Dream's forehead.
*
Dream's body feels weak, aching, and corporeal. Yet when he opens his eyes, blinking away the bright light, all he feels is warmth. There's a feathery press against his head, and gentle voices around him. Warm hands hold his. Hob on his left. Lucienne on his right. Matthew in his hair. Death perched on the edge of a couch by his feet.
Light streams in through the the decorated glass in the Library. He blinks again, and tries to say something, but his head throbs and his mouth has turned to sand. Possibly literally. A glass is pressed to his lips as Hob raises his back and head up to drink from it.
The realm. Lucifer –
"You drove them away," Lucienne says.
"Did a number on yourself, though," Matthew says. "You fell out of the sky. And then it was dark for a while."
"What?" he says, because it's the only thing he can think to ask.
The story is worse than he thought. "What?" Dream demands. "Years?" He sits up too fast for anyone to stop him, only the room starts spinning with grey at the edges.
"Lie back down," Hob says, and Morpheus can't muster resistance to it. "You were broken lying in that field, Dream. Don't you dare get up."
Death swats his foot. "Nope."
His head hurts too much to try again. And a bit selfishly, it feels nice to have everyone holding onto him like this. Because it's warm and safe. It's everything he thought he might want trapped in a glass and steel orb for that century.
"You already gave everything you had, and it was enough, love." Hob's hand grips his tighter. Dream looks at him. He could sink into this.
"You fell out of the sky in front of me," Matthew says, quieter than he usually is. "After you pushed me and the others back. After you blasted Lucifer out."
"I left you in the dark for years," he says. "You and Lucienne. The Dreamers."
"No, Morpheus. You saved us," Lucienne says.
His eyes are wet. "You have stars in your eyes again," Hob tells him. "They're so bright, love."
He finally lets himself have it, between Matthew's preening and Hob's hand steadily rubbing against the muscles in his shoulder, Lucienne's thumb over his other hand. Dream sags into the couch, some of the tension draining out. He lets it go entirely, drifting toward a truer rest this time.
"There's cracks in everything. That's how the light gets in, you know," Death murmurs.3
His eyes flutter shut.