chanting, cheering horde around them.
This was a different Brianston than spirit-Grimm remembered seeing with his mortal eyes. Although dotted here and there with a few small structures and crumbling ruins, it was largely stark and bare. Only the large detention compound and maybe a dozen other buildings were in evidence.
However, one magnificent structure surpassed all the rest: a splendid edifice in grey marble, decorated with inlays of gold and lapis lazuli. Proud columns held up an angular, terracotta roof, on which hung an engraved gold plate, bearing the legend ‘UNCLE GRUON, THE SLEEPER. ONLY IN DREAMS IS THERE REALITY. ONLY IN DEATH, LIFE.'
Now, Gruon was close; spirit-Grimm recognised a presence beneath the lavish portico, and he drifted towards it. Dream-stuff floated away from the structure in all directions, fine tendrils resembling strings of wet dough, forming dense knots here and there and laying over the dream-city in a complex, knotted web. At its centre must lie Gruon, whoever, or whatever he might be?
Despite the magnificent structure above the ground, Gruon's underground mausoleum seemed to consist of a series of huge, shattered stone blocks. Even spirit sight could not penetrate these, but all that was needed was to follow the stringy tendrils to their source.
Ten feet? Thirty feet? A hundred feet down?
Aaah!
Spirit-Grimm fell, fell fell…
With a bump, he came to rest on the streets of Brianston. Not the shattered wasteland of reality, but the magnificent illusion he had seen as a mortal. Spirit-Grimm looked down and saw he had apparent form, an avatar. This was no human form, but a damp, doughy mass that shivered and shifted. He was in the sleeping mind of Gruon.
The citizens of Brianston were as clear and vibrant as they were to his astral eyes, and they shied away from this strange, muddy figure, emitting cries of horror and disgust as they recoiled from him.
Where is Gruon's temple?
This was not as easy to determine as it might have been. Looking through Gruon's dream-eyes, spirit-Grimm saw the buildings and streets shimmering and changing at irregular intervals, and the only true physical structures in Brianston were not apparent.
However, the fleeing citizens reacted to the invisible presence of the real, solid edifices, avoiding contact with the imperceptible buildings. Spirit-Grimm oriented himself by the motion of the fleeing crowds, discerning the position of the detention compound from the clearly-outlined voids in the terrified mass as it took flight.
In this strange, fluctuating world, there was no marble-and-gold portico. In its place was an indistinct grey blur, towards which spirit-Grimm walked on unsteady legs of wet mud.
It seemed as if his invulnerability to walls and barriers did not extend to this bizarre, mental construct, and the astral Grimm felt resistance at the periphery of the grey, shimmering field.
Push, push!
With a pop that he felt rather than heard, the unreal city disappeared, and spirit-Grimm became aware of… what?
A confused melange of sensations and emotions filled the astral body.
Emotion, pain, disquiet!
This was no human, demon, or, indeed, any sentient being.
Confinement, sorrow and anguish… Why can't I find this mind? Where is Gruon in this mass of emotion? It's almost as if he doesn't exist!
A shock lit up spirit-Grimm's sensorium with blazing effulgence.
There's something else… some new presence…
Grimm's essence plunged into the grey mire, deeper, deeper, and the spirit eyes located a brilliant, gleaming thread, running away into the distance. This was the sign of a true, mortal being! The astral being clung onto the tendril as if it were his own life, sliding along it at an increasing rate…
Bump!
A small, middle-aged, dark-skinned, bald man sat cross-legged on a stone bench, a long, white pipe clenched in his teeth. Looking up, he removed the pipe from his mouth and smiled.
'Hello, Grimm Afelnor.'
In shock that overwhelmed his astral serenity, spirit-Grimm looked down at his avatar, seeing the blue and yellow silk robes he habitually wore as a mortal. Now, he had arms and legs, and a true human form once more. He was sitting on a very solid-seeming stool in the middle of-nothing!
As if from a great distance, he heard a voice, “Are you all right, Questor Grimm?” This was a dream of another sort; the physical world seemed so far away now. What, now, was real, and what fantasy?
All right, Numal, he pulsed along the long, silver thread trailing behind him, using an analogue of the clumsy, leaden speech that mortals used. It's getting very strange, but I don't seem to be in any great danger yet.
'Have you got a handle on it yet?” the smiling, gnome-like man asked.
'What?” Spirit-Grimm now seemed to have a voice, instead of a series of vague, drifting thoughts. Now, confusion, a mortal feeling, had replaced spiritual tranquillity, and spirit-Grimm now seemed to have been crammed back inside his prosaic, physical form.
'It's all a dream, moron! Haven't you worked that out yet?'
Grimm slapped his hand to his occiput, his apparently-real hand finding a dense mass of hair. All the familiar, complex panoplies of adolescent anxieties flooded into him with an intensity he had never even known in his true, mortal form.
'Erm, yes, I am quite aware that Brianston isn't real, thank you.'
'I'm not talking about that, idiot! I'm talking about the whole dragon thing. Good spell, isn't it?'
'Dragon? I don't know what you're talking about. I'd be very grateful if you'd just treat me as an ignorant-'
'Well, that's easy enough, I'm sure, boy.'
'Why don't you just tell me who you are? You seem to know my name well enough, you-'
Grimm swallowed an insult; dumped back into a semi-physical body, he felt about as powerful as a newborn babe in this bizarre, empty world.
'I am Garropode the Creator, Grimm! A long, long time ago, I was a Guild Mage, just like you. A Seventh Level Manipulant, unsatisfied with his lot. I became so confident that I believed I could create a true living creature from nothing but my own thoughts, and I succeeded where so many others had failed. I managed to create a dream so real that the borders between reality and fantasy began to blur into a cohesive continuum. That is where I lost control. Now, my creation and I are one. While you are here, in my realm, I know all about you. Out there, I am nothing.'
Dream-Grimm shrugged. “I can handle ordinary speech quite well, Garropode; there's no need to try to impress me with abstruse comments. Ignorant as I am about your craft, I'd be very grateful if you'd confine yourself to something a simple soul like me could understand! Another stream of incomprehensible babbling might sound good to you, but it doesn't enlighten me in the least.'
Grimm looked into the mage's dark eyes and saw absolute nothingness.
Garropode sighed. “I am sorry, Grimm. I have been alone here for a long time, and the whole thing seems so simple to me. I do understand if it is too arcane for a mortal like you.
'I have seen everything that has happened here for the last two hundred years, and I am tired. Gruon was my greatest creation, my triumph. During the course of my interesting little experiment, I saw him blossom and grow from a vague concept into an independent physical being. I had no idea that my little intellectual diversion would end up taking over my whole life. I became so obsessed with my living dream that I poured more and more of my essence into him, spending more and more time in his mind-until I became Gruon!'
Grimm shook his head, reeling in confusion. “I understood that the people of Brianston were dreams of Gruon. Are you saying that Gruon is one of your dreams? If so, will he not vanish when you wake up?'
'I cannot wake; in a sense, I no longer exist as an independent being. Whatever Gruon once was, he is now a true, living, breathing being with his own identity and self-awareness, and most of that is me. I am trapped here, in this created body, and I cannot escape. My own body must have turned to dust long ago, and I have nowhere to go. This is my new reality.'
