Bentis sighed wearily as he trudged up the ramp and into the Threshold of the Order of the Sable Moon. He spent most of his days copying both lives of obscure saints and such remnants of Dream history as he could find. His nights were spent in the City relating the histories to his students in the hope of preserving the precious memories. His waking body was old and growing frail and he had begun to fear that it might fail him before he could finish his task.

 

He evoked Locate and smiled to see that his young friends were at the Fountain of Wishes.

 

Nightwing, Skandren and Termish were playing in the waters of the Fountain, but as soon as Bentis entered, they stopped and turned to their Master.

 

"Another tale, Master?" Nightwing asked.

 

"Oh yes," Bentis replied, mounting the stairs and seating himself on the rim of the Fountain, "Another tale of disaster and doom."

 

"And battles?" Termish added.

 

Bentis smiled wryly, "Battles enough, even for you, Termish.

 

"Many of the Master Dreamwrights were angered by the coming of Dreamstrike. Far from seeing it as a solution to the Wars, they believed it posed an even more terrible danger to the City. A group of them, the Entropy Coalition, secluded themselves and began to study ways of countering Dreamstrike. They turned to the study of chaos energy in hopes of finding a way to tap that energy and turn it against the Dreamstrike Masters. But their attempts to manipulate that energy would have disastrous results.

 

"The creation of the City had imposed Order on a portion of the raw essence swirling within the Chaos. As Chaos strove to destroy this kernel of Order, the forces beating against the City walls had intensified. The work of the Entropy Coalition upset the delicate balance that had been achieved and weakened the Walls of the City. Small rips and breaks tore the fabric of the Walls; holes just large enough to permit creatures of chaos to enter the City: Nightmares.

 

"The first eruption of the nightmares into the City became known as the Day of the Savaging. Masses of Mares rampaged through the City, collapsing every Dreamer they encountered. No place, from the outermost keeps to Threshold, was safe. The hideous carnage wrought by the Mares stunned and horrified the Dreamers and forced them to organize and cooperate… for a time."

 

The portal chimed, and the group at the fountain looked up resignedly as Alkinia entered and came up the stairs towards them.

 

"Sour old bat," Skandren whispered to Nightwing.

 

"But a lonely sour old bat," Nightwing whispered back.

 

Making the best of it, Bentis smiled and said, "Welcome Alkinia. We’re talking about the Nightmares this Dream. I found a history which tells of the Entropy Coalition tampering with the walls and giving the Mares access to the city."

 

Alkinia nodded and took a seat on the edge of the Fountain.

 

Bentis continued, "The first step toward protecting the Dreamstate from the Mares was taken by Klin Benfar, one of the greatest of the Master Dreamwright Elders. He developed the first Sanctuary; an area whose ambient essence prevented any aggressive actions and caused searing pain to any Mare who entered it. Klin Benfar and his apprentices constructed sanctuaries throughout the Dreamstate. These sanctuaries finally gave the Dreamers safe places from which they could mount their stand against the destructive tide of Nightmares.

 

"But still the Mares swarmed throughout the City and travel remained perilous. The various factions of Dreamers banded together to deal with the Mares. They fortified their keeps, equipping them with Sanctuaries and armories. Guards posted themselves to keep the Mares from overrunning their Houses. Regular patrols were formed to hunt and collapse the hordes of Mares."

 

Nightwind shivered, "It must have been a horrible time!" she exclaimed.

 

Termish’s eyes were glowing and he replied, "Terrible and heroic! I wish the old chroniclers had told more about the battles."

 

"At least now we know why they were able to fight in Threshold at first," observed Skandren, "There were no sanctuaries at all before Klin Benfar."

 

Bentis nodded, "Good point, Skan. I’d forgotten we were wondering about that the other dream."

 

Bentis continued with the tale as he remembered it from his transcription, "As House organization grew stronger, their philosophers attempted to discover just exactly what these vile creatures were and how the Dreamstate might be freed from their threat. In an effort pioneered by Relminius the Blind, philosophers throughout Underlight began to study the essences left behind when Mares were collapsed. The most influential scholars of Mare essences were the Trinity Brothers, Bajo, Medio and Gato, who developed three of the major methods used to dispose of essences.

 

"For a time, the problem of how to combat the Nightmares occupied the Houses even above their differences over the Freesoul versus Illuminate question. The Mare threat was ever-present and acute and forced the Dreamers to suspend their internal wars to face their common foe.

 

"To stem the tide of Mares flooding unimpeded throughout the City, a group of Master Dreamwrights led by Syriand the Graceful and Lagumbar Staggern developed a means of fencing off sections of the Dream from one another. They developed "portals" at strategic locations. These portals operated on the same principle as sanctuaries and were impassible to the Mares. Later, a group known as the Seekers of Knowledge learned that being contained by portals made the ambient essence within an area easier to harness. This eventually spawned new types of Arts meant to take advantage of these areas of effect. It also led to the development of one of the most significant Arts ever created: Join Party."

 

"I never knew that there hadn’t always been portals in the Dream either," remarked Skandren, "the early Dream must have been very different. And not just because there were a lot more Dreamers."

 

The others nodded, and Bentis continued, "Syriand and Lagumbar, assisted by an alliance of Dreamwrights and Dreamsmiths, moved through the lands, segmenting them with portals. They started at Threshold and worked their way outward through the various planes, including even the Great Houses at the far reaches of the planes. As they worked, they were guarded by patrols of Dreamers who collapsed all the Mares in each "room." Thus, the rampaging hordes of Mares were cut down. They were still able to enter at certain spawn points, but the portals prevented them from moving freely through the Dream. The Nightmare Wars were over, but one of their most powerful legacies was just being created.

 

"Even as Syriand and Lagumbar finished construction of the portals, a new artifact was under development in House Calenture. The reclusive Dreamsmith Master Zordon and his group, the Forgers Circle, building on the research of Gato Trinity, were completing the creation of a new kind of talisman which would forever change the Dreamstate: the Orb of Calenture.

 

"The Orb was an entirely new kind of artifact, for it could take the essence of a Mare and banish it from the Dream. The creation of this artifact angered those Dreamers who believed that banishing was not the proper way to handle Mare essences. Even those groups who agreed with banishing envied Calenture the possession of such a powerful artifact. Soon the Dreamsmiths of the other Houses learned to create artifacts which could dispose of essences in the ways that suited their beliefs. These prime artifacts were held sacred to the Houses as the Dreamers found ways to use them in ritual and ceremony."

 

"Are there any of these artifacts left?" Termish asked.

 

Skandren shook his head, "All the Houses have fallen and no one knows what became of their treasures."

 

"And yet, it sometimes seems as though there’s still something alive, at least in some of the Houses," Nightwing said, "I feel it when I go to Sable Moon. Sometimes it feels almost as though there’s someone there who wants to tell me something."

 

Bentis nodded sadly, "We’ve lost so much since the great days. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that the ancient dreamers could have been so careless with what they had. Everything seems to have set off more wars.

 

"The new prime artifacts were no exception. The creation of sanctuaries and portals had ended the worst of the Nightmare Wars. The Houses were left strongly defended and well supplied. And now they had a new reason for hostility. For a time, even the hostilities between Freesouls and Illuminates took second place to the controversies over the handling of Nightmare essences.

 

"Because the handling of essences is simply a part of the beliefs!" Alkinia exclaimed impatiently, "We know that our souls come to the Dream, not even a Nightmare can enter this plane without a soul. Since they are creatures of the Chaos and have no souls of their own, they steal the souls of the unawakened to gain entry to the City. When they are collapsed, the souls are still trapped and must be properly disposed of to free the souls."

 

Termish blinked at her and asked, "But if there are no more prime artifacts, how can you free the souls now?"

 

"We cannot," Alkinia admitted, "Therefore we do not hunt. It is a terrible thing to leave those poor souls trapped within the mares, but it would be worse still to destroy them entirely by collapsing the mare and leaving the soul to die, trapped in the essence."

 

Bentis continued, "At first there were minor skirmishes and heated debates, then two of the most powerful houses in the Dream, House Calenture and Dreamers of Light clashed at the Battle of Rock Falls. Calenture were Freesoul banishers and the Light were Illuminated imprisoners, and that day they fought over the fate of the essences stored in their prime artifacts. When the battle was over, two rulers of the Light had been Dreamstruck.

 

The City of Dreams was poised on the brink of another all-out war. The Houses took advantage of the portals to seal off the parts of the lands they claimed for their own, mounting patrols which would attack and collapse enemies who trespassed. Daily skirmishes became the rule again and the Dream braced for the coming conflict. The reality of what was about to happen was far worse.

 

"And there, the present parchment ends!" exclaimed Bentis.

 

"Oh no! We have to find out what happened next!" Nightwing exclaimed.

 

"I will keep searching, my friends. Many of the books in the library I’m working in now seem to have loose parchments between their pages and in their bindings as padding. I’m hopeful that there will be more histories here," Bentis assured them.