Chapter Text
It is, perhaps expectedly, Dereliction—the nightmare that stalks dreamers with the things they have left undone—that resolves the brewing argument. In the decade since Lord Morpheus failed to come back from his pursuit of the Corinthian, the denizens of the Dreaming have become divided between those who think their lord has abandoned them and those who worry that something terrible has happened to him. Lucienne has done her best to reassure them, but even her most convincing arguments have done little to quell the discontent. Which has led them to this point: dreams and nightmares arrayed against each other in Lord Morpheus’s throne room, shouting with increasing volume and anger.
“I’m ashamed of all of you.” Dereliction’s words cut instantly through the din, evoking as they do her domain of shame.
The room goes instantly silent, every pair of eyes turning towards the nightmare seated primly on the stairs to their lord’s throne. Dereliction is wearing the eldest of her three faces: gray hair in a neat bun, conservative skirt and cardigan, sensible shoes, and a disappointed frown on a face with a hint of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. In this form, she is the disappointed grandmother, librarian, and teacher who makes you feel like a tiny, misbehaving child.
Even Lucienne, with the additional power granted to her position, feels that weight of disappointment.
Dereliction may not be as flashy or direct a nightmare as the Ravening, the Corpse March, or, universe-curse-him, the Corinthian, but she remains one of Lord Morpheus’s Major Arcana and most powerful, enduring nightmares for a reason.
The rest of the dreams and nightmares in the room shift restlessly, lowering their heads and avoiding Dereliction’s gaze. Or, most of them do.
“Of course it matters!” Letterman Chad calls. The flashy dream that brings visions of stereotypical masculine bravado had been one of their lord’s last creations before his… departure. And he remained one that Lucienne little understood. When she had cautiously voiced her confusion about the dream’s strange name and appearance, Lord Morpheus had told her that Letterman Chad represented a dream of man that had yet to manifest. At the time, she had accepted the answer; after his disappearance, though, it had taken on new meaning. She wondered, sometimes, whether her lord had had his own prescience about his absence. In one dark moment, she had worried that Letterman Chad’s existence was an attempt by their lord to buttress the Dreaming against a planned abandonment. She tries not to dwell on that possibility.
For all that he is one of the younger dreams, Letterman Chad shows no fear in confronting the oldest and strongest in the realm. He faces Dereliction head-on, shoulders squared and expression mullish. “If Lord Morpheus has abandoned us—”
“Then the result will be exactly the same as if he is injured or captured or otherwise unable to return,” Dereliction interrupts, steady and implacable. She, at least, Lucienne has always understood, even if she never liked the nature of Dereliction’s powers or what their strength said about the guilt that plagued their lord. “Our powers will wane, the Dreaming will collapse, and the dreamers will suffer. That will, in fact, happen faster if we leave.”
Letterman Chad scowls. “So you want us to stay here waiting for Lord Morpheus to return while the Dreaming fails around us? Why should we suffer when he’s abandoned his duty just like the Prodigal?”
“He hasn’t—!” another dream shouts.
“It. Doesn’t. Matter," Dereliction interjects. On her feet, she now stands taller than every being there except for the hulking Ravening, whose curling ram’s horns brush the room’s vaulted ceiling.
“It doesn’t matter why Lord Morpheus left,” Dereliction says, starting steadily down the stairs. “Maybe he has abandoned us. Maybe he is being kept from us. Maybe he is working and will not appreciate our interruption. None of that matters. What matters is getting him back.”
“Getting him back?” Lucienne asks cautiously. It’s what she wants, but she can only see one way of accomplishing that.
Dereliction meets her gaze and nods decisively. “Yes,” she says. She looks around the room, meeting as many sets of eyes as she can. “We can all agree that we and the Dreaming are doomed if he remains gone. So our only option is to find him and bring him home.”
Lucienne bristles. “We are not permitted to go into the Waking World,” she says coldly. “It is not our place.”
“We’re well past that,” Dereliction says. Her voice is equally cold. “Already some of us have begun to leave for the Waking. What are a few more of us, especially if we can find our lord and return him to the Dreaming?”
A decade ago, Lucienne would have refused on principle, but she can see the murmurs of agreement from dreams and nightmares who were at each other’s throats only moments before. And yesterday some of her books had gone blank; this morning, they had vanished completely. This situation cannot hold for much longer.
Reluctantly, she nods. That sets off a new round of murmurs in the room.
“And what if he has abandoned us?” Letterman Chad demands. “What if he doesn’t want to come back? What then?”
Dereliction’s gaze turns to him, and the temperature in the room drops several degrees. Letterman Chad fidgets but doesn’t break her gaze; foolish, bullheaded bravado is, after all, the greatest inoculation against guilt. Dereliction considers him for a long, fraught moment.
“The Dreaming must have a ruler,” she says finally. “If he has abandoned us and cannot be shamed into returning…” She shrugs. “Dream of the Endless cannot die, but if necessary, he can be replaced.”
The approval this time is a full-throated cheer, and the last of the divisions between the denizens of the Dreaming dissolve completely. Lucienne wants to object to this casual plotting of Lord Morpheus’s death, but the words stick in her throat. Never has she felt more keenly the divisions between those of Dreaming who are Lord Morpheus’s creations and those, like her, who began life as human and came here only later. She has always known that for dreams and nightmares their function comes first. She’s just never realized how deeply that runs.
“Lucienne,” Dereliction calls, dragging her away from her thoughts. The room turns towards her. Lucienne firms her lips, straightens her shoulder, and pulls her purpose around her like armor. She is the Dreaming’s Royal Librarian and a former raven of Lord Morpheus. Even among her lord’s strongest dreams and nightmares, she still has power.
“Dereliction,” she responds.
Dereliction smiles, a softer thing now that she’s getting what she wants, and Lucienne fights back the burst of pleasure that sings through her veins. This too is a function of Dereliction’s purpose.
“You are Lord Morpheus’s librarian,” Dereliction continues, “and of us all you have the best head for organization. You also know our lord best. Coordinate our efforts?”
The command is only barely disguised as a request, but Lucienne accepts the symbolic authority. She cannot sway them from this course, and she wants so desperately for the same thing they all do.
“I will,” she says.
She packs away her doubts and turns to the gathered dreams and nightmares. They are committed now, an avalanche of the Dreaming’s power beginning to rumble down the mountainside. You cannot stop an avalanche, Lucienne knows. All you can do is try to give it direction, then get out of its way.
“I have tried everything I can to find Lord Morpheus from the Dreaming,” Lucienne begins, “but there are perhaps other ways that would only work in the Waking World that I had not considered. I will need to do more research.”
She heads absently for the library, murmuring under her breath. Her mind is already churning, dragging out all the scraps of knowledge she had not previously dared to contemplate. She hopes enough of the books remain. She barely notices the Major Arcana—Dereliction, Gault, Fiddler’s Green—that follow her in, except to irritatedly shove Letterman Chad off her desk. Why such a new dream feels equal to the major powers of the realm…
The thought irritates her, then slips away as she dumps books and scrolls onto her desk. She loses herself in the rhythms of research. Her lord’s creations come and go, trekking into the depths of the library to fetch whatever she needs and answering her questions about the aspects of being dreams that she can never hope to understand.
Finally, the answer comes. Lucienne doesn’t know how long it’s taken, only that even her endless strength is flagging. She has not faltered, though. Nor have the dreams and nightmares. Instead, their ranks have swollen as they are all caught in the tantalizing feel of coming closer to an answer.
“I have it,” Lucienne says, staring down at the book in her hands.
It is one of the few books not kept in the library, so it had taken her much too long to remember it existed at all. Lord Morpheus has always kept the dream books of his ravens in his personal chambers, holding the secret dreams of his constant companions closest to his heart. Jessamy’s book is not nearly as thick as Lucienne’s; she had lived a much shorter life before becoming a raven and hasn’t served nearly as long.
Still, her book near-crackles under Lucienne’s fingers with the strength of Lord Morpheus’s regard for Jessamy. Lucienne wonders what her own book would feel like, but hadn’t dared to pull it from the shelf where she found Jessamy’s. Her lord’s feelings—so commonly hidden by his stoic aloofness—are laid bare in the power he invests in these books. Touched as she was that Lord Morpheus had kept her book close even though she was no longer his raven, holding it would have been a transgression too far, especially for simple curiosity.
They are back in Lord Morpheus’s throne room. Lucienne had called together all the dreams and nightmares she could—all who would come—when she’d realized the answer she held in her hands. They gather now, filling the space with the press of their bodies and the ripples of their power.
“We cannot track Lord Morpheus,” she says, “and if any humans know what has happened to him, their dreams are hidden from our gaze.”
It galls Lucienne that anything should be kept from her oversight; she hopes those dream books, if they exist, have merely vanished as the Dreaming begins to fail. If humans have hidden themselves—and Lord Morpheus—from the Dreaming on purpose… She has begun to understand the longing her lord’s creations have to tear the world apart in their search for him.
Fortunately, that will not be necessary.
“If we can’t track Lord Morpheus or the humans—”
“We can track Jessamy,” Lucienne interrupts. She’s grown more able to tolerate Letterman Chad’s brash self-confidence in the last few days. That does not mean she will tolerate him delaying their mission. Not now.
“The dream books of every Raven of the Dreaming are imbued with Lord Morpheus’s power.” She hoists Jessamy’s book and feels the gathered dreams and nightmares reach for it with their own power. “I cannot find Jessamy through the Dreaming, but you should be able to find her in the Waking World by following our lord’s echo on her book.”
The dreams and nightmares trade glances. Lucienne’s waits, hoping desperately that this will work, that they can do this. Finally, Dereliction nods and steps forward.
“It is a sound plan,” she says. She smiles at Lucienne, and Lucienne cannot help but smile back.
They have a chance now to find their lord.
Bolstered by that encouragement, Lucienne begins calling the dreams and nightmares forwards in pairs—one dream and one nightmare—to touch Jessamy’s book and feel the unique blend of her dreams and their lord’s power. One by one, each pair departs, stretching out into the minds of the dreamers they can still access. And from there, the Waking World beyond.
Lucienne holds onto her hope as she watches them go and tries not to let her worries rise. They are all committed, and she can’t take back what she’s done. And besides, she tells herself, if anyone can find the Lord of the Dreaming, surely it is his own creations whose very purpose is to touch the collective unconsciousness of the world. They have to find him.
They will find him. They will find him, and they will bring him home.