“So be it!” decreed the Lord of Dreams. He snapped his fingers, and the screech of steel on stone split the air.

  Mists swirled up from the lounge’s floor. They lapped their way up the legs of chairs and tables, and of Astrid, Lilac and Dahlia, and of Proto himself. And they whirled about Somnus like this whole dreamy realm were his dervish.

  “I hope you meant it! There’s no undoing it now!” declared the Daemon of the dream realm, even as the mists rose above Proto’s head and thickened to grey opacity.

  Lights glinted into being—a thousand points of far off light, piercing through the fog like beacons. The shores they shone from were beyond sight.

  The lounge was lost in this starry grey. But, somehow, Somnus still showed clearly at its center, like the world had just showered and wiped only his spot on the bathroom mirror.

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  “ . . . where are we?” Proto squinted at those mirky points of light. They spun and tilted in parallax, as though he were gyring in a maelstrom. Yet all felt tranquil and unmoved.

  “I’m glad you ask!” said Somnus. “We’re in Chaos. Let’s have a bit of Order, shall we?”

  That wand he’d wielded in Fyrir’s dream misted into being in his hand. He waved it lightly, and branching veins of blood red suddenly flamed through the void. “I’m not as good at this as my mother is; but she’s taught me a bit. I won’t be creating any worlds for all of humanity to inhabit; but my job is to create worlds for one. We call them dreams. So, I daresay I can create a world for two.”

  Interspersed with pulsing red arteries, the mists began to rearrange themselves. They remained amorphous. And yet their formlessness started hinting toward forms, like cells in the womb.

  “So, first things first,” said Somnus. “They all heard your choice back here. None of them can hear you anymore.”

  “Now, there’s something I have to tell you! I hope you’re listening, because this is awfully important.”