Dream started off story-time by telling him of the gangs of vampires destroying his favorite city, Rippertown. It was a ramshackle city of burnt-out street lamps and toxic water. The vagabond residents lived for free wherever they pleased, under bridges and abandoned buildings, and they bounced from party to party, rave to rave. But, a Vampire Prince was destroying the anarchy with his gentrification and franchised blood bars.
Hypnos told him the story about how he lost his two favorite pistols in a card game with a methed-out cyclops on that very ship.
And then the Jinni explained why he was in the shape of an eleven-year-old boy. He had belonged to a six-year-old orphan in Carpathia, who had needed an older brother to help fight off bullies. He found, in many realms, he wasn’t treated any better as a child than when he was adult-sized. It was often worse, which broke his heart.
“Yeah… kids are great. I don’t have any. My brother does, though. He’s a good kid. Hell of an imagination,” Hypnos said proudly.
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
Our hero quirked an eyebrow, “You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?”
“As in I don’t know. Don’t be a git. Do you know your name?”
Our hero stopped, and wondered, and remembered not a name.
Hypnos narrowed his eyes, “Give you a hint, mate. It’s not Jinni.”
“I… I guess I don’t remember my name, or if I ever had one.”
“Well, that’s okay then, because I’ve got a treasure map to help us find it!” Dream materialized a yellowed and tattered scroll.
Our hero took it and unrolled it. It was a map of worlds on top of worlds, sphere after sphere, with tree roots and caves and waterfalls connecting one world to another in faded black ink. There was The Firmament, Asgard, and Tartarus, over which there was a red dot and an arrow marked you are here. But there were other names that our hero found either unbelievable or unfamiliar like Avalon, Fairy-Tale World, Dream, Akasha, Faerie, Jontunhiem, Sheol, Umbraland, A’lam Al-Jinn, Cockainge, Diyu, and many, many more. The map took up every inch of the scroll he could see, and he was sure if he kept unrolling it, the map would never end, circle on top of circle, worlds colliding.
Our hero’s eyes followed the red line going from you are here to this is where you’re going, marked by a big red X drawn over a place called The Netherworlds.
The eleven-year-old shaped Jinni raised an eyebrow.
“How?” was all he asked.
“Expand the image like you do on a touch screen,” Hypnos told him, and he did as he was told. The map zoomed in to show the detailed passageways of Tartarus. He followed the weaving line through the canals, into a dark pit called The Silence, where the line took a ninety-degree turn down into The Underworld. From there the line zigzagged to a plane called The Axis Mundi, where there was a pinpoint marked The Garden. A warped and knotted tree was drawn there, and at the base of the tree there was a hollow which would take him to The Netherworlds.
“That’s how.”
“It’s hopeless,” the Jinni said, despite the ember of hope burning him from the inside out.
“Why?” Hypnos asked.
“In... Tartarus- I can’t get out. It’s my-”
“Punishment?”
The Jinni snarled. “Fate.”
“No. See,” Hypnos leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled, “this is a dream, a dream wiffin a dream, wiff Dream inside of itself.”
“...okay?”
“I never get involved in politics, but when I do- No one plays fair if they think they can get away wiff it, and I can get away wiff it. Every adventure requires a first step, yeah?”
“Okay…”
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road can take you there.” He tapped a finger on the map, then to his temple. “How do you run from what’s inside your head?”
The Jinni gave this some thought, “Fake it ’till you make it?”
“Exactly! Imagination, mate! Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality, and reality is a dream, or a nightmare, however you want to look at it.” Hypnos snickered to himself, then said, “Meself, personally, I like nightmares, but in this instance, you should take the shortcut.”
Our hero squinted at the jumbled strands of logic. “You want me to dream myself out of my nightmare?”
“Yeah, pretty much. You dreamt up this map. This is your dream. I’m just the stuff it’s made from. You have got to go in to get out, mate. Savvy?”
“I mean,” his brows pulled together in a condescending scowl, “that sounds nice, but it sounds like hippy-dippy bullshit. You think I can just wish I may, wish I might, really, really hard and dream myself out? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” His voice was stern, but he never raised it.
“No, I’m not, but once you get the idea, throw it away, and if you can’t get it, throw it away. I insist on your freedom…”
The Jinni’s head tilted to the side, and his eyes wandered around the captain’s quarters.
“...which is why you won’t remember this when you wake up.” Hypnos gave him a sympathetic smile, and our hero nodded.
The Dream King stood, and gave his best mate a playful punch on the shoulder, “Come on. We still got a few seconds before dawn back in your world, and that’s like hours here in Dream. Let’s chase that horizon.”
Our hero took a breath. “Okay, but this time, I’m Captain. Set sail due East.” He turned to look at Hypnos with a smirk.
“Aye, aye, Capitán.” Dream smiled.
****
Death doesn’t sleep. Death doesn’t dream. He removed those needs when he separated Ego from Id shortly after the beginning of time, if you can call it that. Back then he didn’t call the two parts Ego and Id, but Thanatos and Hypnos.
And with that separation, Thanatos did not dream. Despite this, he was dreaming of a flat gray reality, which was very cramped. The bleak horizon was uncomfortably close all the way around the gray, rocky plane, and before him were three women cloaked in dark rags.
The youngest sat at a spinning wheel, twisting fleece into yarn. The middle one measured the freshly spun yarn into lengths, some ever-so-long, others quite manageable and unremarkable, and a more-than-comfortable amount were shorter than your pinkie. The eldest one cut the lengths and laid the allotted threads down in a wicker basket as she went. She looked on at Death with empty sockets, holding her rusty shears open and ready to cut.
The youngest, Clotho, hummed a dreary tune to the rhythm of her foot pressing on the treadle of the spinning wheel, which creaked as the footman danced up and down. Though she was the maiden amongst her counterparts, her stained fingers, hollow eyes, and scabbed lips were hardly comely.
None of them were beautiful in the traditional ways goddesses appear: elegant, graceful, alluring, shapely. But they were beautiful in their moroseness. The darkness contoured their countenance at drastic angles. Their lurching movements and draping fabrics were phantasmal, and with their blackholes for eyes they were bewitching specters. Once you have seen your fate, no matter how gruesome it appears, you cannot unsee it. You cannot look away. You will see it in everything you do, and it will haunt you with its tenebrous beauty.
“Good afternoon, Ladies.” Death addressed the Fates. “And how are we today?”
The Book of Fate levitated above its Romanesque pedestal a short distance off, and never did he think too loudly about how to steal it. If he thought it too loudly, if he let the thought form into words instead of a fleeting wisp, the three women might discover the thought and take corrective or preventive measures.
“What is so urgent-” that it couldn’t wait, that you couldn’t send a memo, that you pulled me from my ever-important duties, that you found it necessary to disrupt my meeting, “-that it needs my immediate attention?” The question still came off annoyed, but at least it wasn’t directly insulting.
“There are workings we cannot see…,” began the eldest, Atropos.
“...in the house of Laufy” said the second, Lachesis.
“Bring them out into the light…,” said Clotho.
“... and we will ensure your victory…,” said Lachesis.
“...in your next big fight,” finished Atropos.
He knew they were referring to Loki and Eros. It would be easy enough to tell the Fates that it was business and nothing more, which was true, unless they already knew something he did not. And if he did what they wanted, then victory in his next big fight could mean damn near anything. He could rig the board for the next big fight to be whatever he wanted it to be, and the Fates knew he could and would do this. He and the Fates had made countless business transactions of this manner before. It was open-ended for his benefit, a perk of working with the Fates, but also a lure to get him to do things he’d otherwise never do. Then again, no one gets rich being honest, and when you’re The Grim Reaper ethics and morality are dismissed as a naive dream. They can’t hold up to bitter, cold, dead reality.
Thanatos realized he had been silent for too long. The wheel had stopped spinning, and three sets of black sockets were burrowing into him.
He took in a breath and gave a slight cordial smile. “Of course.” He bowed at the neck, and the Fates stood from their places. They glided up to him with an uncanny grace and twisted around him like funeral shrouds. Their discolored, bony fingers grazed his pure white suit. Their scaly cheeks pressed against his chest. A dry tongue somehow managed to lick the soft flesh behind his ear. He was towering, and they were small, but one by one he wetted their mouths of dust with the kiss of Death, and he was overwhelmed by their absolute power.
This was how deals were struck between the Old Ones. No one could remember why anymore. It had probably happened back when Eros had been a force to be admired, and desired, and feared, and worshiped. Only Desire would have invented a pact-sealing kiss.
As theses formidable women spiraled around him in folds of dark linen, Death heard them moan, and laugh, and hum that dreary, dreary tune. He awoke, as it were, in his white office with a man in front of his desk, droning on and on about interest rates and real estate. Thanatos gave his head a light shake to clear it, and he nodded as if he had been listening to the man the entire time.
