Chapter Text
When the waking world leaves you wanting and weary, sleep brings you here to find freedom and adventure. To face your fears and fantasies, in dreams and nightmares that I create.
And that which I must control, lest they consume and destroy you.
That is my purpose and my function.”
-Dream.
“As powerful as you are in the waking world, Dreams rarely survive there, but Nightmares on the other hand, seem to thrive.”
-Lucien.
“Would you like someone to guide you to rest,
And assure you that you’re truly doing your best.
Just close your weary and worried eyes, my dear
When they open again, I will still be right here.”
-Larri Bea, ‘Dream’s Lullaby’
—
For a long time there was nothing, then all at once there was light and sound and heat. Most mortals believe that this is how the universe started.
While Umbra was created shortly thereafter, it could not say whether this was true.
It doubted that even Lord Morpheus knew for certain, if any of the Endless did it might have been Destiny but he would never share what he read in that great book.
When the Nightmare that would one day become Umbra opened its eyes for the first time, its field of view was filled by his creator. The being that stood before it was like no other and at once he knew awe and love.
Umbra knew this despite knowing nothing else.
As all artists know, every time they create, a piece of themselves is given to their creation. Gifted to their art to make it unique and a part of something greater.
When the first nightmare took its first breath, it inhaled not air but life. The king of Dreams cast a little of himself into this new body and smiled.
For he knew that what he had made was right.
Even back then the Nightmare King was a crafter of unmatchable skill, each creation was perfect. Not in the way that the residents of the Silver City might have used the word, but perfect nonetheless. Each Dream and each Nightmare was perfectly crafted to take its place in this brand new universe.
Lord Morpheus had failed once before, he would not again, not ever.
—
In this age of young stars, space dust and silence, even here there were dreamers.
Mortals have such a limited view of the universe, though it is not their fault, they were made that way after all.
The stars dreamed as they burned brightly and the novas dreamed as they spread energy across the great empty void. Even the universe dreamed, in this age of great quiet the universe dreamed of what it might one day become and because there were dreamers, there was Dream.
None of this Umbra knew at the time, for it was a new thing then.
Dream bestowed upon him a tremendous gift, the gift of purpose, of duty.
Umbra was alive and knew within its very core exactly why it had been made and the task it was to carry out. This it would do willingly, for to do this for Dream was to enact the will of the universe.
A more pure form of destiny than any in the City Beyond Creation could ever imagine. This was no predetermined plan formed by a single consciousness. This was the rhythm and flow of existence. How all things must be, how they would be until the end of time and all things.
“Welcome little dream. We have much work to do, I hope you are ready. Your nightmares will show the dreamers what they fear confronting in the light.”
With those few words, Dream stepped away from his creation and began working on the world that was flowing out of the void around the pair. Into the empty darkness sand flowed from Dreams hands and robes, from nothing he built a world around them as Umbra took his first uncertain steps after his master. Only many aeons later would Umbra appreciate what it had witnessed in those early days, the birth of the Dreaming.
—
The first nightmare, such an innocent creature, he did not yet know just what a weight of responsibility that would lay upon his shoulders. When the universe was new, every little thing was exciting, happening for the very first time and it was there to witness them alongside his master.
When the earth dreamed of supporting life Umbra was there, to reflect its fears of a silent, still universe. While the humans would later come to call nightmares a cruel trick of the brain, it was this exact fear that made the earth try so very hard to allow life to flourish.
When the people that would one day become humanity crawled out of the First World, Umbra was there to give them pause. The eternal darkness and their simplistic gods were familiar, to leave this behind would surely draw danger down upon them, but it was the only way to become truly free. Fear of the unknown forced them to reflect on what they had and to make sure they knew what it was what they wanted.
And now, each and every night, as the sleeping minds of the universe quietened and night fell, Umbra was there.
A parent fearing for their child starting school, a deity peering into their future and seeing belief fade away like fog on a summer morning. A young man starting a new job with the hopes of a better future.
A young mortal woman, fleeing the only home and family she has ever known. Now forced to escape their controlling influence and find her own path in a world she is not accustomed to.
For each and every one of them, Umbra is by their side. Guiding them through the darkest hours and showing them those fears of the unknown, the unseen and the murky shadows of the future.
—
The Nightmare that named itself Umbra padded through the sheltered glades of Fiddlers Green on its way to somewhere else, in the form of a great dark wolf.
It had not passed by this way in several hundred years and while it was kept very busy with its duty to the Dream Lord, on occasion Umbra liked to make a little time to walk the lands of dream.
Fiddlers Green was an area of particular beauty within the Dreaming, a place born from the dreams of travellers of all kinds but especially those of seafarers.
How it entered into the human unconscious Umbra did not know, but for several thousand years, Fiddlers Green had been the manifestation of the dreams of ocean-faring travellers as their long voyages out at sea left them imagining a land they could return to, which captured the perfect warmth and comfort of home.
A peaceful place for weary bones to rest and forget the hardships and struggles of their journey.
In many ways, Fiddlers Green was an antithesis to Umbra. They existed to give dreamers a place to while away their sleeping hours, safe and warm, where they knew there was no threat.
It was a land of soft low rolling hills, its meadows filled with bright wildflowers and tall grasses, warm winding streams bubbled and churned around smooth, sun-baked rocks and flowed into its placid, shimmering lakes which mirrored a warm afternoon sun.
To some, it might seem as though this would create animosity between the two, but in their own ways, each dream knew that it existed to support and balance out the other. Without Umbra, what would it be that the dreamers sought to hide from beneath Fiddlers leafy trees. And without Fiddlers Green, an eternal sense of fear and uncertainty would do the dreamers no good.
They were pure opposites and good friends, in their own way.
—
Much like himself, the Dreaming was both at once a place of constant change and also a place of eternal stability. Certainly things moved, dreams came and went. New ones were made, those who had served their purpose were unmade and the landscape shifted and moved along with the moods and whims of its creator.
But looking past these slight shifts, the core of the Dreamlands were as stable and inflexible as the waking world. Beautiful places like Fiddlers Green and the great city of Badhdad, the small town of Ulthar and the deep kingdom of Atlantis had all been captured in their most perfect moments, preserved and protected forever within the Dreaming.
And that is of course not to mention creatures like himself, the Dream Lord’s librarian and a number of others who may count themselves amongst the oldest of all this realm's inhabitants.
Their purpose laid out before them by Morpheus aeons ago, to be carried out until the last dreamer died and this realm was no longer required by the inhabitants of this universe.
Umbra was a creature of eternal change, but even in that way he was consistent. Never able to maintain a single form for too long, this was the permanent core of what it was. The fear of the unknown was a feeling that all life felt at one time or another. Mortals, gods, the people of the fairy. Some had more confidence than others, some were better at pretending, but all of them in time would harbour some fears of that which they could not know. And it was in this place that Umbra found his home.
Shifting again, Umbra took on the form of an owl, with wings that seemed to absorb the warm daylight of the glade and reflect back only the cold light of stars that twinkled within his feathers.
Flapping his great wings it took off, flying now over the canopy of trees and casting his broad shadow down upon whatever other dreams and inhabitants of this realm walked the woods and fields of this part of the Dreaming. Sending shivers down their spines and perhaps encouraging them to return home or visit a close friend, to anchor them in a sense of the familiar and the comfortable.
Umbra returned to his little realm within the vast landscape of the Dreaming, passing over the houses of Secrets and Mysteries which acted as the border outpost between the islands of Dream and the lands of Nightmare.
He knew that he was home once the bright, lively worlds of the Dream King faded away, as the shadows grew longer and sharper than they should have been. The trees seemed to shift and move, obscuring the paths below and those sounds just out of hearing, suggesting that something was right around the corner grew more evident.
The Nightwoods were its little kingdom, a gift from Lord Morpheus himself in which it could supervise and work and improve upon the duty that Umbra had so generously been given.
Regardless of age, experience and power, there were such an inordinate amount of dreamers these days that a few thousand years ago lord Morpheus had allowed Umbra to take on a small retinue. These minor Nightmares were fragments of himself which the Dream King had shown him how to produce, they listened when they had to and enacted their roles well enough for his liking.
Nightmares, especially ones as specific as this, had a tendency to lose the roundness of personality that Dreams like himself or the other more complex concepts had. Which resulted in them appearing a little more like chaotic children than fully rounded individuals.
But it was more than worth the hassle they caused, as these few dozen little creatures assisted Umbra with many of the less complex dreams his duty required he provide. This allowed him to spend much more time crafting the truly masterful nightmares for the dreamers that needed them most.
So many of those outside of the dreaming dismissed the importance of dreams or what they could do. But for those with more open minds, Umbra delighted in crafting something to make them wake sweating and terrified with a new sense of the world around them. While he had certainly met some who would push the idea that enjoying this should make him feel guilty, Umbra knew in his core that sometimes the only way to grow was to suffer. Even if that was in small ways, like during the hours of sleep.
Landing in a nearby tree on silent wings, Umbra passed his gaze over the dim, grey forest floor and watched creatures running here and there, squirming in the dirt or on their way to complete some task or other.
This was a strange little world and he had yet to find another dream or dreamer who had an appreciation for such things, but it was his and he was proud of it. Every dark, brittle tree had been lovingly grown, each squirming, wriggling creature that remained just out of sight had been raised to an exacting standard. Even the deep shadows of this place had been carefully laid down in just the right way to create the perfect balance of fear and confusion.
Many assumed that the lord of this realm was the only one who could sculpt its landscape and while it was true he could undo everything Umbra had created here with a thought, he was not as truly obsessive as that. Dream did indeed have something of an intense interest in controlling his realm, but for those amongst his oldest and closest council there was a little leeway. As long as they did their jobs of course.
Umbra felt himself changing once again, and so gracefully dropped from the branches above as it began to take the form of a stag.
Hooves pressing heavily into the cool, soft earth below, the Nightmare of the Unknown strode through his realm with pride and a critical eye. These last few decades had been decidedly busy since Morpheus had returned from his time of long absence.
The Dreaming had fallen almost entirely into ruins while he had been gone, with but a few dreams staying behind in the rubble in the hope of keeping things going till he returned. The rebuilding process had taken a long time, not just of the Dreaming itself, but the very fabric of dreams had been damaged while he had been away. The poor dreamers of the universe had suffered greatly in that time and for some there was no recovery.
All they could hope to do was fix what they could and ensure something like this would never happen again.
However, after much hard work, Umbra’s desire to visit the waking worlds had begun to itch again and today that long departure was about to come to an end.
Of all the worlds and planes of the universe, much like his master, Umbra always found himself drawn back to Earth and the humans. They were such a fragile species, but their capacity for imagination, fear and dreaming was something to behold. Who would have thought that so very much could fit into such a delicate thing, and their capacity for fearing things they did not know or could not predict was incredible.
He had walked the hills and woods and roads of earth many times over the last hundred millennia and even now Umbra was enamoured with them.
This time however, he felt himself being drawn towards a much more specific place. He would not know where exactly that was until he arrived, but there was something of a convergence coming. A culmination of many years, unknown places, people and circumstances. A life drifting into the unknown and afraid to do so but insistent on not turning back. Layered with this was an added complexity, something which humans quaintly liked to call magic. Though exactly how that was involved Umbra also wasn’t certain, which pleased him greatly.
While Morpheus had his Dream Vortexes, Umbra had his own little mystery to explore. Though hopefully one far less dangerous than an end to all the Dreaming, it merely hoped to discover who and what this human was and see if perhaps his abilities could aid them in their journey through life.
—
Slipping through the shadows, Umbra passed from the greater Dreaming into the minds of the dreamers. Flittering through the minds of the sleeping, the shadow of his presence cast itself far across dreams and darkened them for a moment before it was gone again. In his wake a swathe of dreams turned sour, humans and animals both brought to sharp, gasping wakefulness as their pleasant dreams turned to nightmares.
After a little time, Umbra came to rest in one dreamer's mind in particular. He knew as soon as he arrived that this was the one. It radiated fear and uncertainty like a beacon.
Breathing in deeply, Umbra began to work. From empty darkness and stray thoughts he built a dream. A dense alpine forest, a road that wound ever onwards. Family, death, sorcery, this human’s mind was a whirlwind of fears and anxieties.
In her dreams she was running, running from her family, from what she had seen and what she had done. Running and hiding until she was totally lost but never truly able to escape.
In this dream Umbra took the form of a raven, midnight black with pale eyes. Some thought this an act of worship or attention seeking for the Dream lord, but this was not so. The raven was a form much appreciated by Dream and it was because of these same features that Umbra has a similar care and respect for them.
He saw, though not with his eyes, the young woman sprinting through the underbrush, trying to find her way back to a road that would not appear. She was panting and sweating and afraid, a primal fear of some darkness that followed at her heels.
That was when he felt it, there was something else here.
It had been faint at first but was growing ever stronger. At first he thought it was merely the shifting wake of his passage through this woman’s unconscious mind, but the more he probed the more he realised something else was going on here.
Taking on the form of a monstrously large bat, Umbra took to the skies leaving his subject alone for a little while as it tried to figure out what it was.
Navigating the mind of a mortal was no easy thing at the best of times. They could be a labyrinth of thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams which were intertwined and often connected in ways that even they didn’t realise.
It was at times like these that Umbra truly appreciated being what it was. Having a purpose like the one Lord Morpheus had given to it made life so much easier and more straightforward than what these poor creatures had to deal with. Stumbling through life, moving from one thing to the next in the hopes of finding some ‘purpose’.
Putting into words how Umbra, or any dream for that matter, perceived the mind of a dreamer was no easy task. He was at once both the dream this woman was having but also existed within it as a separate entity. While…Zahra, that was this dreamer's name. While Zahra was tossing and turning in her bed, Umbra prowled through the depths of this mortal's mind as gently as it could to discover where this strange sensation was coming from.
Unfortunately, by the time it discovered the cause of the sensations it was far too late.
—
Another of the reasons that Umbra had more recently taken up the act of creating more minor Nightmares through which to carry out his responsibilities was because of his age.
A being like Umbra was a rare thing in this universe and as far as it knew, apart from the Endless and perhaps a few others, it was one of the oldest still living beings in the universe.
With this came a certain weight of presence, all those thoughts and memories. The psychic shadow that Umbra cast was too much for more sensitive minds and so it had to send smaller fragments of itself to do work that it could not do in person, so to speak.
And that, he realised, was the case here. Deep within a closed off part of Zahra’s mind were the remnants of some kind of magic and it seemed as though Umbra had shattered it upon arriving in her dreams.
What it had once been he had no ability to tell, magic was a tool of gods and mortals, not something for most residents of the dreaming. But whatever it had been, all that was left now were trace elements and the sensation that something from a long ways away had suddenly noticed this mortal.
Umbra had made a mistake by coming here and now this Zahra human was in trouble because of him.
Despite how he knew the Dream King would be most annoyed if he found out that Umbra had returned to the waking world, now he clearly had no choice. Whatever was coming for this poor unaware human, Umbra could not sit idly by knowing that it was his fault.
He had to find her.
—
It had been several hundred years since Umbra had last managed to slip away to the waking world. Be it Dream’s watchful gaze or just its own sense of responsibility to its duty, Earth and its plane had remained as a destination to imagine and think on rather than to visit.
Of course, he had not been entirely out of the loop for the full span of years, the dreams of humans contained more than enough information to keep him somewhat up to date and the invention of the internet had created something of a revolution in his nightmares of the unknown. But on the whole, the modern world was something of a mystery, always seen in fragments but never as a whole.
Until now.
Concerned that he may continue to do more damage, Umbra withdrew from the dreams of the human woman and in his place sent one of his lesser forms.
A simple dream, manifesting as arriving at school having done no preparation for a test you didn't know was happening. It was a blunt and unimaginative thing but it would at least allow Umbra to keep an eye on the woman until he could find a way to reach her via some other means.
Waiting for the sun to rise in her part of the world, he sensed the human being pulled from dreams and back into the waking world. For now the Nightmare would be blind to her actions, but with enough caution and a little preparation, it may be able to take advantage of the perfect opportunity.
Lord Morpheus’s work was never ending, and therefore neither was the work of his dreams and nightmares. Considering only the small number of dreamers that Earth contained as the blue and green marble rotated during its orbit of the local star, its inhabitants awoke and slept in an endless cycle.
This meant that drawing too much of its focus away from its eternal task would draw unwanted attention from Umbra’s master. Thankfully aeons of work had refined this nightmare into an incredibly efficient worker and a few hundred mortals would not mind if their dreams were that much gentler for one sleep.
With a little more of his attention turned onto this mortal, Umbra kept a close eye out for any changes in the dreaming that might give him some sign or opportunity to make his move.
Thankfully he did not have to wait long
—
The automatic doors made a soft chime as they slid apart. For just a few moments, letting the grey and rainy morning into the store, along with the smell of petrol and a hint of rotting leaves and the comforting smell of a forest floor.
It certainly wasn’t the cosiest of locations, but it was dry and warm and out of the rain.
The till attendant suddenly started awake and looked up as he entered but paid the young man no mind. It was another quiet morning and he was the only person to enter the store in the last few hours, though casting her gaze outside, she saw no vehicle that he could have arrived with.
Perhaps he was a walker, he certainly looked wet enough to have walked out here from town though he didn’t seem to be dressed for the weather outside.
Stepping fully inside, Umbra looked around the drab, run down little convenience store as though it was something beautiful. As if amongst these shelves were a wealth of treasures and curiosities and not simply faded magazines and out of date food.
This drew a slight bit more attention from the sleepy till clerk, though little more than a cursory glance before she returned to the book she held open on her lap, having almost dropped it when she had nodded off.
Taking a deep breath, to truly appreciate all the wonderful scents that a place like this produced, Umbra started walking again. Beginning at the aisle closest to the door and making his way slowly around the store.
Listening intently to the hum of the refrigeration units, looking closely at the rack of magazines next to the crisps and snacks. Slowly running his fingers over the thin film of dust that lay on the cereal boxes. Truly this was a remarkable place, why humans built so many of them he really wasn’t sure.
There appeared to be only one human here, so it was quite likely that this was the Zahra mortal that he was looking for. Her shock of bright red hair, all done up in dreadlocks was something to behold and made her stand out from the drab surroundings. Her skin as dark as his was pale, they were quite the contrasting pair.
But he was content to take his time and fully savour all the delightful human items and sensations before investigating further.
They weren’t entirely different from things that could be felt and heard and smelt within the dreaming, but there was just something so tangible about the waking world.
It got stuck under one's fingernails, in your clothes. It left its mark on you in a way that the impermanent dreams simply could not.
Umbra truly had missed this strange, messy, noisy world and all its little inhabitants. In that moment he felt truly jealous of how much time the Dream King spent here.
After several minutes of wandering up and down the aisles, Umbra noticed that the woman behind the till was now watching him, attempting to do so subtly by holding up her book and peering over the top of it at him.
Realising perhaps that his seemingly purposeless wandering was causing the young human some anxiety. He picked up a few random items from the shelves and finally walked over to the counter and set them down. A jar of pasta sauce, two packets of crisps, a bottle of water that had been on the shelf for at least a month and a three month old gossip magazine found themselves landing on the counter in front of her.
“Good morning Zahra, how are you today?” Umbra spoke in a far more chipper tone than was deserving of the dreary morning that it was, but it did pride itself in remembering to lean in slightly and make it look like he was reading the name from the badge pinned to her shirt.
The guy standing in front of Zahra looked to be about twenty four or twenty five, about her height if a little shorter and could have easily stepped out of a gothic fantasy novel.
He had thick black hair that fell down around his ears, and made how pale he looked even more obvious.
He had a sharp jawline and the high cheekbones of a male model .
Though what stood out the most were his silver eyes.
The guy smiled at her but it felt weird, off somehow, as though he wasn’t quite sure how to do it, way too much teeth. He was certainly giving it a shot though. Trust her luck to get a weirdo first thing in the morning. And what the hell was he buying, it looked like he had just randomly picked stuff up as he came over to the till.
“Doing about as well as I can be given the situation.” Zahra plastered on the barest suggestion of a smile and did her best not to make eye contact with the weirdo. Unfortunately, despite her reply being drenched in sarcasm, it appeared to go directly over this guy's head and he continued smiling awkwardly at her.
“Well that is quite good isn’t it. Though you do look like you haven’t gotten much sleep recently, why do you suppose that is?” Zahra looked up from running the items through the scanner and stared at the man, her eyebrows lifting as far up as they could possibly go as she was momentarily lost for words.
“Excuse me?” She asked, the slight tremor in her voice barely hiding the utter disbelief and anger she was suddenly feeling.
“Well, I’m just referring to the fact that you seemed to be asleep when I walked in, your eyes look to be a little bloodshot and you do have some rather large dark marks under your eyes. Which I believe are usually side effects of not getting very much sleep..” Umbra was interrupted mid-flow as Zahra quickly stood up from the stool she had been sitting at and leaned across the counter to glare at him.
“Get out. Get out of this shop right now. I don’t know who you think you are dude but I am not putting up with this today, you can leave and take your shit with you.” Umbra opened his mouth to reply, but quickly reconsidered, looking at Zahra’s face.
Uh, yes well, thank you Zahra. I appreciate your help this morning, have a nice day now.” Clearly this whole ‘being human’ thing wasn’t quite so simple as he had remembered. Limiting himself to such a form also seemed to be affecting him in other ways. Surely as his full self he would understand exactly how to get the girl to tell him exactly what he needed to know, but in this case, perhaps a slightly more subtle method might be called for.
Umbra left the store, feeling embarrassed and quite guilty for upsetting the poor human even more than he had done last night. All emotions he had not experienced in a very long time, clearly he had a lot of work still to do.