bottle went from full to empty and another seal was broken; more drinks were poured and swallowed. I had lost count of how many drinks Jason had before he started to sway, his eyes drooping heavily. As he sluggishly reached for the near-empty glass, I used magic on Jason for the first time in nearly two decades. The Sandman had instilled all of the Ronin with a sliver of his power, enough to quiet a crying child or to reassure them back to sleep after a night terror jerked them awake. I hoped it would be enough to work on Jason in the state he was in. His hand trembled, and in the space of a breath I feared it would not be enough. Then his arm dropped and he fell sideways. I rolled away to avoid being trapped, and his head landed on the pillow I had been leaning against. I watched him for a few moments. His breathing was even, though his body would twitch every few minutes, and a single tear escaped from the corner of his right eye. With everyone sleeping, my magic became stronger and I pushed myself to stand, the immobility of my camouflage removed. I walked over and settled myself against his chest. I needed the feel of his heartbeat against me to enter his Dream. I closed my eyes and felt the slow, steady beating of Jason’s heart. The rhythmic thumping was the deep bass of war drums, and I felt myself fall backward into a cold chill that bit through even my fur and stuffing.
IV.
It isn’t the cold that snaps my eyes open, it’s the heat. Oppressive and heavy, it feels like a weight bearing down on my entire body, a weight that is only added to by the sight that meets my eyes. Gone are the castles with dragons soaring around them and the oceans teeming with pirate armadas that I remember filling Jason’s dreamscape decades ago. The seas have dried, the mountains worn down to daunting sand dunes, and the prairies and woodlands replaced by a desert village that seems without end. The village expands past the borders into the Dark. If the nightmares have broken through, then that may explain Jason’s distress; I need to know more.
A soft wind wafts through the village, ruffling my fur, and on it I hear Emily’s laughter and smell Jason’s wife’s perfume. The wind and the happiness it carries are ripped away by a rippling wave of noise unlike anything I have heard before. Discordant tones chatter back and forth, setting my teeth on edge, and I sprint toward the disturbance. Dreamer is in my hand as I round the next corner, ready for anything except the sight that awaits me. Jason, bloodied and covered in sand and grit foreign to the dreamscape, huddles behind the smoldering wreckage of a car while cradling a rifle against his chest. The ring of metal on metal sings out from the other side of the vehicle. I watch as he raises the rifle to his shoulder and braces his elbows on the hood of the car. His movements and actions indicate that he sees something I cannot, as he begins firing. Controlled and collected, he does not fire randomly or let the chaos overwhelm him; he’s choosing his targets.
A shout from behind me has us both turning at the same time. Another soldier has been struck and stumbles out of the house he has been sheltering himself in. I look over to Jason and see the horror in his eyes as the soldier is shot twice more. Jason pushes up from his own position and runs toward the fallen soldier; I can only watch in mute horror as I see him stumble and then fall to the ground, inches from his comrade. The clench of his teeth and the set in his jaw show the pain he is fighting against as he pushes himself up and crawls forward to grab the back of the vest the soldier is wearing. Jason heaves and pulls, trying to get the soldier into the house. The body doesn’t move. I see it now, a shifting formless mass clinging to Jason’s back and shoulders, like a cancer. Jason makes no indication that he can see or feel the sickly brown tendrils running from the soldier’s body to the form clinging to him, but I can, and now I see that there