The Good and the Bad

   One can get too used to living in a crisis I suppose. 

  I have to work to stop humans from overtaking us, but I can't forget that, unlike humans, I have a responsibility to others in my life. My father, my mother, my brothers and sisters, and my beloved Selma. Perhaps not objectively pretty, according to my other friends, but to me she shines brighter than the sun. 

   Before her, I viewed love as simple. You spend all you time with a person, and they fill you with unmatched joy. That's not what our relationship is like. We fight, we complain, we annoy one another, and only sometimes do I see her at work and think "I'm so lucky to have you." But I wouldn't change anything. She reminds me, when I forget, that reality is supposed to be flawed and messy. That couples ought to have rough patches, that sometimes we should feel sad and alone. Without darkness, all of the light in our world would be overwhelming. 

Darius

    "So this is it, isn't it?" 

   I hold in my hand the most powerful Artefact in Estellia. Something with such destructive potential that it has twelve levels of security you have to clear. Once, I've been told, it lead to the fall of a Nightmaredom, until the gods corralled the user, a man named Dalton, and forced him into bondage. 

   It's innocuous, a little silly even, but one should not let appearances fool you.

   "Yes," The Artefact Master says, "This is the infamous Rubber Ducky of Doom, Darius."

   "I must ask, does it squeak when you squeeze it?" 

   "Please don't. I know it doesn't hurt, but I feel so embarrassed." 

   I jump, then look at my hand. It occurs to me, for the first time, that this duck's been looking at my face this whole time. I'm not sure how, the eyes appear to be painted on, but they most certainly are. 

  "I'm sorry." I say, "I was unaware that you were sentient." 

   I've never seen an Artefact that was sentient, though I'm told there have been many throughout our history. They've never been anything dignified though, like a sword or a crystal ball. It's always been things like yo-yos, cheap pens, fake jewelry, and stuffed toys. The department of Artefacts loathes such things, they say it's hard to tell them from normal things, and they don't follow the rules of Artefact creation. 

   "Well," I say, "I need your help, Darius. There's someone going around the Infinite causing trouble in the Infinite. I need you to find them."

   "Do you know what their name?"

   "No."

   "Do you know what they look like?"

   "No."

   "Do you at least know whether they're a human or a nightmare?"

   "No. I've only seen them once, you understand."

   "Then I'm not sure that I can help you. People are always stirring up trouble in the Infinite after all."

   "I see." I say, putting Darius down. "Then I guess I didn't need your help after all."

   "Don't feel bad." Darius says, cheerfully, "I think she'll attack someone else soon."

    "Who?" I say.

    "I think it might be the person who attacked you. She's off to the Fairylands to play, but the new princess want to banish all humans. I don't know what'll happen, but it looks like they're going to fight. Poor thing, I don't think she'll win, and this new princess is vicious." 

     I sit and think out loud. "So if I send a guard to the Fairylands, they'll be able to find her and capture her."

    "No. She won't be awake."

    "She'll be trying to fight someone while asleep!" I say. 

    I don't need to tell you that power doesn't work well when one or both parties are awake. It's why all humans provoke conflict when awake, and then never sleep. 

    "I think that's what she mostly does. Actually, I think she already fought you once already. And she… Won?"

     Darius blinks, using magic far beyond what I could ever do. "Wow," it says, "whoever she is, she's strong. She could take Dalton in a fight, and maybe even win."

    "I'm not sure." I say, thinking back to the human that attacked me. "What do you think I should do?"

     "Have an artist on sight to draw her picture. Then post it in all the Nightmare realms. Soon, she'll be in prison."

     "What if she lives in the human realm?"

    "They'll be even more desperate to find her. No sense in letting somebody put you in danger after all."

     "Okay." I say. "I'll send someone over then."

     I hand Darius back to the Artefact master. "Do you need any payment?" I ask.

     "No." The master tells me, "But if you could have a shipment of cotton balls sent over, that would be appreciated."

     "For cleaning purposes I assume." I say.

     "Yes," he says, "but they're also his favorite." He gives Darius an affectionate squeeze, not enough to make him squeak.

     "I'll send them over as soon as I can." I say, "And thank you, very much, for your help." 

A Break in Reality

    "What do you mean there's a break in reality?!" I yell. 

   My assistant shrinks back. "That's what the report says." She tells me. 

   "Get me the Sorcerer, Now." I bark.

   "She's too young." Comes the reply.

   "Between her innocence and Estellia's safety, I choose Estellia. Bring her to me now." I say.

   She scurries off. But she comes back an hour later without the Sorcerer. "She's… busy." is all I can get out of her. I keep pushing, all the way until the end of the week, but I can't get any sense from her. 

 

   "What is your problem James?" Emily asks me late one afternoon. We're at Dream tower for a meeting regarding the rumors swirling about. Right now, that's the last thing on my mind.

    "The problem is that there's a break in reality and I can't get it fixed." I scream. I wish I wasn't required to be restrained, else I'd bang the desk I'm sitting at. It's an old desk, a relic from the days when this tower was first built. Emily looks over at me from a different desk. It's smaller than mine, but much newer, painted with little figures of sprites. A fitting desk for a Fairy princess. 

    "Have you inspected it?" 

    "Of course I did. Do you honestly think I'd be so incompetent as to not have it inspected as soon as possible? Protocol dictates that I make sure it can't spread."

  "Then why can't you fix it?" she asks, sounding annoyed. 

  "Because protocol also dictates that I can't fix it without the Sorcerers help."

  "There are thousands of Sorcerers. Pick one and fill out the paperwork so that this won't be a problem anymore."

  I turn to her. How can you be so stupid, I think. "I can't pick any sorcerer I want to Emily. It needs to be the God of the Sorcerer's realm."

  "The one that died a little over Fifteen years ago? The one that's too young to help you, according to the laws? The one that the Sorcerers have to keep secret until their twenty-first birthday?"

   "This is an emergency." I scream, "I have to get this fixed now."

   "It seems to me that you either have to ask a lesser Nightmare for help or wait another six years. Unless you just want to rip the world apart now and get it over with."

   "I'm not allowed to ask a lesser Nightmare for help, not unless the Humans think that there's a major threat to them."

    "Well why didn't you say so in the first place? Am I not one of the race of Illusionists? I'll whip up a proper emergency and then you'll have what you need to fix this by sundown tomorrow."

   "How?" I ask.

   "If I told you, you'd have to stop me. Just wait until the panic starts, then you can handle the rest."

    Something tells me it won't be as simple as she says it is. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try. I look down at my stack of papers for the next agenda item. It's about the human. Of course it's about the human. Things have been so quiet for so long that a human who can hurt us is terrifying. There used to be a lot of them, or at least that's what I've been told. 

   "When are we going to get rid of this human once and for all?" I ask, thinking about my run in with her.

   "In due time. It's not like she's capable of destroying Estellia, after all." Emily says. 

The Human Race

     So many humans live in the lands of Estellia. They go about their lives in complete ignorance of what's really going on around them. As a god it's my job to keep it that way, since that way they'll fall for our tricks. So many humans, yet so little power can be spared for lesser Nightmares.

   Most humans, eager and greedy for power, leap at the chance to become a Nightmare. What they don't know is that the amount of power you can have is dependent on how lucid you're able to go. You could, in theory, get better at going lucid with practice. The problem is that in order to become a true Nightmare, you must give up your ability to go lucid, for good. Unless you lose power, you can never go lucid again. While it's true that most humans can go lucid, most of them never learn how. It's much easier to go lucid when you're asleep then when you're awake, and humans are trained, by us, to never sleep at all. 

   There are, of course, those who sleep regardless. Weakness isn't limited to High Nightmare's after all. We're always on the lookout, lest they get so good at going lucid power no longer sticks to them. After that, there's not much we can do. 

   What worried me is that I've heard more and more about a human who's able to take out Nightmares by herself. I didn't put much stock into it at first, since most of these accounts claim she was using a plastic star shaped necklace to do it. Yes, I know there is such a thing as a Rubber Ducky of Doom, but I feel that any human nowadays would just turn a rock into an Artefact. At least then, it would be dignified. 

    Then I ran into her myself, after I made a declaration that I realize now I didn't think through. I don't know how I was supposed to know a human with the capability of fighting off a god just so happened to homeless, but apparently I was, because she took me out instantly. It shouldn't have, I know how to block, but I wasn't expected a human wearing a white shirt and dark pants to end me with a glance. 

   To be fair, I don't know many humans personally. Fairies and Monsters let humans live as themselves in their domains, but Sorcerers and Shadows don't. Ours is a land of laws, and laws only matter if people are able to follow them perfectly. It's impossible to create laws that encapsulate humans, since most of them don't sleep or eat. 

   So much the better. It's hard enough building a Dreamworld for those who matter. If we had to include humans in our Dreamworlds, they would never get made at all. 

The Laws of a Dreamworld

     Humans like to pretend that Dreamworlds, unlike Estellia, are lawless. This couldn't be further from the truth. Since a Dreamworld is only as strong as the belief of those who inhabit it, Laws are essential to keeping them together. Not just laws governing behavior, but laws governing the way things move. 

    What you need to remember when creating a dreamworld is that the physics, whatever they might be, need to make sense on an instinctive level. You can't just write them down on a piece of paper and expect everyone to follow them. If people don't follow you're physics without thinking, or worse, they can't, then your dreamworld won't feel real to them and will subsequently cease to exist. 

    It is also essential that your dreamworld be built to withstand conflict, even if you plan on building a dreamworld that functions without it. Conflict can add depth, but it can also tear a dreamworld apart if both sides don't feel that their viewpoints can be expressed. Always make sure your world feels meaningful to those who live in it, even if you disagree with their views. 

    Finally, make sure that your dreamworld is malleable. If it can't be changed, people aren't going to want to engage with it which means they aren't going to be able to believe in it as easily. So make sure that people can change it, even in small ways, to suit them and their needs. You don't need to create a utopia, you just need to create a world where people can be happy. 

   Above all else, make sure people believe in your dreamworld without being pressured to do so. If you've built your dreamworld well, belief should come so naturally that even criticism won't undermine people's perception of its reality. That is to say that even if people don't find it fun, they'll still feel that it has value. Believing in something and knowing that it's real are not the same thing, after all. 

The Shadow Leader

     I come from a proud tradition of lawyers. When my family isn't creating order, we're deciding what the old order means. That's what my father told me when I was a boy. He taught me everything I know about handing out justice. He was so good at his job that every human hated him. Someday I hope I can say the same. 

    I have no interesting history to share. My family is quite proud of being the most boring people in Estellia. I wouldn't have become the god of Shadows otherwise.