All three of them looked up at a nightscape going blood-hued, drowning away the spangled stars.

  As the heavens ruddied, lights started streaking afar like comets. But they didn’t dwindle—they grew and persisted. Sounds reached them moments later, halfway between the wail of jets and the shrieking of raptors. The earth first shook, then heaved and quaked convulsively.

  “What in the world . . . ?” wondered Proto, looking at Astrid. For once, she appeared as utterly baffled as he felt.

  As for Emil, he looked the most dumbstruck of all. But his shadowy image was only half-there now.

  One of those streaking lights struck the earth. A gigantic semi-orb of light spread into being around it.

  Moments later, a tidal wave of flame was roaring toward them from the point of impact.

  Gasping, Astrid threw one arm around Proto and flung out her other palm toward the impending pyroclasm. A violet orb surrounded them just as the flames struck. He watched fire rage around that violet semilucence, mere feet away.

  Emil was in the inferno, but he did not react. Indeed, he just smiled wistfully. That was the last Proto saw of him before he wisped away to formlessness.

  The whitish-grey mirk that had been rushing toward them on the horizon abruptly burgeoned all about them, immersing everything.

  Proto couldn’t see clearly. But he felt those mists lifting him and bearing him away.

  After a moment, he found himself hurtling through the starry grey obscurity that they typically crossed when returning from dreams. But instead of emerging into the misty blue corridors of Somnus’ Palace, he just kept flying through the void, tumbling toward oblivion.

  He felt like he couldn’t breathe, no matter how hard he tried. Pain jabbed through his lungs. But after a while, this stopped bothering him. As when a foot falls asleep, those prickling pains soon faded into warmth.

  Through a bleary haze, he saw a hand with violet nails, extended toward him. He faced it—and there was Astrid. She looked like a swimmer who’d been holding her breath for longer than she could bear. Her face was furrowed with strain.

  She waved that hand at him violently, desperately. He pondered it a moment.

  Then, he clasped it.

  Squeezing his hand, Astrid turned toward a point of light in the distance. She began accelerating toward it, dragging him limply along.

  The light grew before them, like a star transforming to a sun, until the brightness dwarfed all other things.

  Then, abruptly, the world snapped back into being—a misty blue hallway, a white sliding door, and Proto and Astrid, heaving in breaths on the floor. Both did so for a full minute without saying anything.

  As Proto got his lucidity and bearings back, he scanned his mentor—tousle-haired, staring wide-eyed at nothing. “What was that?” he finally asked. “Did he get woken up by a fire alarm or something?”

  “No. Not a fire alarm,” spoke Astrid numbly, staring afar. “He just died.”

  Proto stared. He felt like his world’s floor had fallen out from under him. “And those red skies? Those streaking lights?”

  She looked at him for several seconds, her lips pressed. “Let’s go speak with Somnus.”

  Nodding uncertainly, Proto followed her back to the lounge. Many voices echoed down the corridor as they approached.

  Upon entering, he found the elegant old chamber was more crowded than he’d ever seen it. All of Proto’s friends were there, and almost all the other visitors, shadowseers, and miscellaneous assistants that he’d seen here. Hubbub reigned. Many were talking to many at once. But at the center stood Somnus, and the largest crowd was gathered around him.

  “So, what’s going on?” Proto asked Mayger, who happened to be standing nearby. The lithe man had his pink hair slicked back and was wearing aviator sunglasses, but he’d lifted them off his eyes atop his brow. His face was furrowed and, for once, showed no trace of an ironic smile.

  “I was just cast toward oblivion together with a dying dreamer,” answered Mayger. “How about you?”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Same, I think.” Proto glanced at Astrid, but she was focused on Somnus.

  “We’re not the only ones, unfortunately,” the pink-haired man observed. “Far from it.” He gestured toward several other visitors nearby, rubbing their heads and looking shellshocked.

  Proto stared. “What happened? So many dreamers dying at once. Nuclear war?”

  “You’d think so, right?” said Mayger. “No. Something much weirder, according to Somnus.”

  Proto turned toward the Lord of Dreams, who was answering questions from at least two dozen people massed around him. For once, he neither had a drink nor was in the process of getting one.

  “What about Uberta?” demanded Wentsworth, the mustachioed oddball who always wore a three-piece suit. “She was supposed to be back a half hour ago. Is she Lost? What are we going to do about it?”

  Proto recognized Uberta’s name. She was that Velma-looking woman with thick glasses and figure-hugging turtleneck sweaters. He’d played cards against her once.

  “Yes, Lost, so it seems. And Annar too. And others,” sighed Somnus. “As I said five minutes ago, before you got here, we’ll find them all. I’ve been doing this for aeons, and none of my visitors has ever been Lost for good. At least, not unless he chose to be.”

  “Meanwhile,” he went on, “we’re all going to be practicing what to do if your dreamer dies. That is, if he goes to the Mists mid-dream, and brings you along with him. This is, alas, something that’s likely to happen to more of you in the coming days.”

  “Why?” asked Astrid. She’d made her way through the crowd and now was facing Somnus directly.

  “Ah. Welcome, Astrid. Glad to see you’re well,” replied Somnus. “I’ll explain this again, for you and everyone else who’s arrived in the last five minutes. In short, the world just ended.”

  “Well, no. It didn’t end,” he continued, as half his audience gaped, “although half of humanity thinks so at this point. But who can blame them? Winged figures with horns are screaming through the red heavens and raining fire upon them, wreaking worldwide ruin, as the earth convulses and heaves great cities to the ground. I’d likely reach the same conclusion.”

  Astrid tilted her head at Somnus. “ . . . what?”

  The Lord of Dreams sighed. “This is a long story, and if I try to tell it all right now, then before I’m halfway through, I’ll have fifty more people in here demanding that I start over.”

  “In short,” he said, “a scientist named Fyrir and some of his colleagues had been doing research on the Fossil of my mother, Flua-Sahng—that is, her remnants up there in the breathing world, from when she still had a corporeal form. Fyrir invented a device that used my mother’s power to awaken my brethren, slumbering in the depths—the Elements—and prod them into a fury. They’ve erupted from the earth and are now destroying it.”

  Astrid blinked slowly and shook her head.

  Somnus sighed again. “Yes, I know. I feel like I’m Oppenheimer trying to explain the hydrogen bomb to some Amazonian tribe. Or worse, Congress. Do you have time for twenty years of schooling?”

  “ . . . so, why aren’t you up there, raining fire?” asked Proto. He’d made his way toward Somnus and was now near Astrid.

  “Hello Proto. Good question. That’s because, like my mother, I lost my bodily form up there long ago,” replied Somnus mildly. “I’m left with my dream form, my Daemon form, which you all know and love. That’s quite alright with me, since I spend my days visiting dreams anyway. And I’d sure hate to be up there right now!” As he said this, his eyes met Proto’s and gleamed strangely.

  Then, he was facing the crowd again and it was gone.

  “So . . . what should we do?” asked Jag.

  “What we’ve always done!” shrugged Somnus. “What, you think this is the first time I’ve seen civilization rent? How about the fall of Rome? That was a long time coming. But I had a bad feeling once they started smashing my statues. Or, ugh, the invasion of the Sea Peoples. Any of you remember that? What a lovely little world it’d been, till they utterly ruined it.”

  “Anyway, what I’ve learnt is, a world in chaos needs guidance more, not less,” concluded the Lord of Dreams. “We’ll go on doing what we’ve always done. Which for you, Jag, means you’ll do precisely what I ask of you.”

  “Or maybe not! Maybe this all is just a dream!” Somnus turned to Proto and smiled pleasantly. “Maybe you’ll wake up, any moment now. Wouldn’t that be lucky!”

  Proto’s face flushed. “This is bizarre,” he found himself saying. “Elements? Fossils? Fyrir? Fire from the skies? Out of nowhere, everything’s destroyed? Why didn’t we know about any of this? What is this?”

  “Yes, who ever heard of people losing everything without being forewarned and given a fair chance to avert it?” the Lord of Dreams retorted lightly. “Fate may be fair in the long run. But it’s up to us to make each day that way. As much as we can. As I told you when you arrived here.”

  Proto didn’t know what to say. He felt like a child whose understanding of the world was based on goofy remarks made by his elders playing with him, who’d just spoken to him seriously for the first time.

  Then again, everyone else looked dumbstruck too. Even Astrid—whose habitual coolness rarely slipped for more than a second or two—was now staring with wide eyes, looking young and uncertain.

  “I . . . guess it doesn’t feel like a day for drinks, does it,” observed Jet. He had a half-full glass of something brown in front of him.

  “I don’t know that I’d go that far,” mused the Lord of Dreams. “When almost everything has changed, it’s good to seek some sameness out. A world aflame still needs rest and sleep, drinks and dreams. And so do we.”

  “On that note, excuse me a moment.” Somnus strode through the crowd toward Lilac at the bar, pointing her to a bottle. “Quickly, if you would. In about thirty seconds, people are going to start asking me questions I’ve already answered and demanding explanations I’ve already given. It will go better if I’ve had this.”

  Meanwhile, Proto stood there dumbly for a while. And when he finally found a seat, he stared off at nothing. He tried to wrap his mind around everything Somnus had just said—which, indeed, he soon had to repeat to the next crew of returning visitors.

  But Proto’s mind kept going back to the dream he’d visited earlier. “Friends and . . . ” He recalled that wistful smile on Emil’s face at the end. And he felt like the world as he knew it, much like that red-jacketed man, was wisping away smilingly into nothing, nothing at all.