The Realm of Souls

    I don't know what souls actually look like. Most books don't bring up souls, and those that do say that only the most powerful Nightmares can see their true form. I've heard many theories. Some say they're meant to be animals, non-human creatures that lack any consciousness. Some say they resemble a sea of light, tainted by poisonous darkness. I've always pictured them as stars, pouring light throughout the Infinite, giving it shape and meaning. 

   Souls are everything to Dreamworlds. All you see from far away is the soul that powers it, but as you get closer you become engulfed in the darkness the Nightmares wield, the power they use to denote who is strong and who is week. When you get close enough, you see a world that looks real, but isn't. It's an illusion of what the waking world is, but if you aren't careful, it can fool you into thinking that it is real. That's when the Nightmare's frighten, anger, and sadden you, which will cause you to produce more power, that they then use to create other, stronger Dreamworlds.

   That's what I've read about, in books I can only find in the Temple library. Since they are of the temple, I don't know how much of what I've read is true, but it reflects the reality I see when I travel through the Infinite, night after night, looking for the one person who will allow me to stay away the way every other human does effortlessly. 

   But sometimes, you want to know what a world will look like before you enter it, what the heart of a Dreamworld really is. That's what The Realm of Souls is for. It allows me to look into a Dreamworld, and see what was put there, without traveling to it. 

   The four brightest lights represent the four realms the Nightmares control, all of which have their own corresponding Dreamworld. You would think they're different colors, but that's not really true. The shadow realm is, as you might expect, shadowy and dark. The Sorcerer realm is brighter than the sun, which makes sense for magic users, but it's also blue, instead of the white you would think it would be. You would  also think that the Fairy realm is showy, while the Monster realm is muted, but it's actually the other way around. The monster Realm looks like a rainbow got condensed into a marble, and while the Fairy realm is the same idea, it's much more muted and the colors move much more slowly. I can't help but wonder if that means the Fairies world isn't as wonderful as they claim it to be. 

    I don't really care about the Nightmare Realms, since I can't control them anyway. I need to find the soul of my village, which I know is here somewhere because I looked for it the night I left home. It's so small it's practically invisible, and I swear it's somehow gotten dimmer since I last saw it. But it's here.

   I reach out to grab it, and hold it in my hands. I don't know much about charters, but I do know more power helps a village or city survive power grabs by Nightmares. I don't have power of my own, but when I'm lucid power always does what I ask it to do. I pull it into the soul, and I will the soul to get brighter to compensate. I wait, then it reaches the appropriate brightness, so I set it free to wander through the Infinite once more. 

    I can't guarantee that's actually doing anything, but I expect they wouldn't want me to be doing anything anyway. I'm the worst human alive, after all.