The female rolls from his embrace, tear stained eyes opening to gawk up at me in mute horror.
“No,” Thanatos bellows, standing among the disposed of corpses of my dolls when the darkness around us diminishes.
“You’re too late.” A manic grin stretches my lips. “I’m finally whole.”
The foundations of the island itself quake at my birth. Changing reality has become nothing but a whim. Bending it and twisting it to my satisfaction.
Pain explodes outward through my skull bringing me swiftly to my knees. Screaming, clutching my head, the internal battle raging inside me almost rips me apart. Four unique personalities struggling for supremacy in one body. It’s chaos. They are not as weak as I imagined. All three war for survival. To think, feel, and exist.
I can’t breathe.
The agony is unbearable, building, building, building….
Robin stands defiantly, her red rimmed eyes mirroring the suffering I’m experiencing. “I know it hurts. Trust me, I know. But you have to do this. You said you weren’t a hero, but you are to me. All three of you. Don’t let that psycho win. Don’t let it rob you of the life you’ve started fighting for.”
27
Morpheus
I feel Robin’s strength entering me from her words. Her compassion and kindness. The fact she’s never stopped caring and is the first person to ever break through our self-imposed walls. Things the madness sees only as weakness not realizing the potency of these softer emotions. Robin and her pure heart. We won’t let it become collateral damage to our inner war against ourselves.
This will either unite or shatter us forever. We all have a right to be.
I sense Illusions and Nightmares agreement. Their separate efforts to gain control combining with my own instead of against it. So many centuries wallowing in self-pity. I’m the one who ruined us. I did it to myself. But I’m also the one who is going to save us because nobody else can. In forgiveness is healing and when you let go. Acceptance claims me like a soothing balm, quieting the conflict as three become one.
Power. It hums through us.
Madness’ strength diminishes against the onslaught within. No longer stronger than us when we combine. He’s not too much for me now. Just a lone whisper in the middle of an ocean. Trapped. Unable to escape and take his own physical body and flee like I sense he desires to. Joining with us has been his doom. Underestimating us his fatal mistake. Without a body of his own he can no longer harm anyone and I intend to keep it that way. Quieting his struggles seam by seam internally, his physical form is plucked undone by my will. Unravelling from existence as if it never existed at all. Wiped clean. Vaporised. Blowing away on the wind like stardust. It leaves a soft golden glow in its wake sweetly mellow, liquid, rich defeating the remaining essence of his malevolence still housed inside my consciousness.
I can see the molecules in the night air when I finally reopen my eyes. Every particle vibrating at its own frequency. A billion fireflies sparkling around me. The dulcet sounds of the world smooth and euphonious reach my ears. It’s as if I’m looking at everything for the first time. New-born and awed at the cosmos.
Four have become one.
I’m whole.
Sandman.
The god of dreams in all his ultimate unbound glory has risen.
“What are you waiting for? I command you to destroy them,” Cupid hollers, landing a few feet away, his wings fluttering elegantly.
Frowning at his tone, I shake my head in refusal. “No one commands Sandman.”
With one thought, I paint the darkened sky with the soft glow of stars. The moon comes next, in all her pale silvery glory. When sunset comes, I’ll decorate the clouds burnished orange with entangled fanciful towers of grey stone. There’s so much to do. So many things to create. My mind buzzes with the possibilities all that went before forgotten. No time for distractions.
Lunging toward me, the venomous one-eyed god shoves a finger into my chest. “What the fuck are you doing? This isn’t play time. I gave you an order.”
He’s an irritation. One I won’t tolerate while I work. Twirling my finger, the wind picks up with force. A column begins to take shape. Rotating violently, the tornado escalates. It tosses up half of the meadow along with the strewn cadavers cutting a huge swathe of destruction in its aftermath.
Cupid tries to flee. Fragile wings beating, they don’t have the strength to escape the twister. Sucked into