A fell chill settled upon the small village of Eyrse. Waves of roiling fog conspired with thick rolling clouds to blot out the two sliver moons which hung in the sky like the half-closed eyes of an ancient god.

The villagers had all barred their doors, latched their windows, and gone to sleep. They felt safer behind the inviolable walls of their own dreams than awake and roaming the darkness.

An unblinking lantern stood bravely in the open window of a small thatched-roof dwelling on the village's edge. A sheet of bark stood between the lantern and the open night. A pattern--depicting two open eyes with one crescent moon striking down through each--was cut through the bark.

It was a sign of warning, and a cry for help.

Writs had been posted in all the towns in the small country of Ouedan; each one carried the symbol, directions as to its crafting, and an explanation of its meaning. The pamphlets spread word of a slumberer's sickness that had taken root in the area, and that the mark might call the one being purportedly capable of curing said blight.

Many self-proclaimed wise people--mages, clerics, and herbalists--came to study the phenomenon. None of them could ascertain either a cause or remedy. The sickness' cure apparently lay beyond the reach of both men, and the gods of men.

Yet there was Banish.

Some thought him a beast of the dark, a creature of the black woods, a moon spirit, an undead revenant, or even a guardian angel. No matter his nature, the people in the area knew the mark was his.

Banish strode slowly from the forest that drew the border of Eyrse.

He had been traveling for days, sifting through a web of hearsay and nightmares that wafted through the night air's currents. At last he could see the beacon that marked his destination.

As he stood in the field beside the bedraggled and berobed skeletal figure of a scarecrow--which proved his mirror in both appearance and purpose--he was struck from within. He raised two sets of thin fingers and pressed them against his temples. He wished he could pluck out the attacking remembrances. Banish heard a snicker of haunting malevolence; it hailed from another realm and from deep within his left eye.

The laughter lent velocity to the recollection of the dream, aided its slipping over his consciousness like a grave cloth.

There was a boy who would be Banish. His eyes were lit from within, and were of the brightest, purest blue. On rainbow feathered wings, he soared in a cloudless azure atmosphere. A golden orb was affixed to the sky's center, unmoving, as if with celestial glue. It was permanent noon in his dreams, and he was the sole lord and master of the sunlit space.

There was rarely another soul within the idyllic scenery. There was just space, beauty, simplicity, and the absolute freedom such open-endedness affords. It was a semi-empty utopia; it was his dream.

Then came the shriek and the shadow; a dark cloud that besmirched formerly sacrosanct skies. The beast appeared from nowhere, from another world. It had featherless fleshy wings, ebon talons, and obsidian fangs, but was otherwise a nondescript blackness.

With one flap of its wings, it was upon him. The sun was blotted out forever. The burnish was ripped from the boy's terror-struck eyes.

As their two forms met, the creature's contours shifted. Its wings became diffuse and evaporated completely. Tentacles grew from its trunk and encircled him, ensorcelled him. Yet the talons remained, as did the fangs. He was pinioned brutally. Two appendages tore his wings away. He watched them hang afloat in the air, still iridescent but dripping crimson, as he plummeted. For the first time, he was helpless against his body's weight.

The tentacles pressed his struggling arms to his chest, and wrapped around his straining legs. The shadow's amorphous mass spread over his body in an attempt to swallow him. He tilted his face up. Being inverted, he only saw verdant rippling fields rushing towards him. When he tipped his head back to his chest, it stuck there. No matter how he tugged, his chin would not slip from the creature's fluidic form.

Cackling came from all around him as the inky matter covered his mouth and nose. The idea of drowning in the creature at such great heights before having his brains dashed upon the earth of his dreamscape stabbed him with a primal terror.

The beast smiled at him. Its smile consisted of two serrated blades hewn from onyx. When the smile broke and dove towards his face, the boy snapped his eyes shut.

He felt the teeth bite deep into his face, sliding through his flesh like a fish gliding through water. But the teeth clashed violently with the bones of his cheek and forehead and bounced free.

The youth opened his good eye, his ruined left eye twitching and unresponsive, and stabbed a look of defiance at the creature; it was his final means of struggle. The boy's insolence was shattered as a growl radiated about him, as claws dug into his flesh, and as he crashed to the ground calamitously.

Surprised and still conscious, the boy opened his right eye just in time to see fangs dig out its neighbor.

The beast had survived, unharmed by the impact. The boy's screams were lost in the creature's mellifluous mass. The beast slipped from its taloned moorings and dove into the empty left eye socket.

Banish growled and placed a palm over his eye-patch, heartened to find that it was still there. With one shaking forefinger, he traced and retraced the silver rune emblazoned on the black patch, as if it would quiet the beast within. There was a mirror image of the rune etched into his palm.

Dropping his hands to his sides, redistributing the concealing folds of his cloak, Banish composed himself physically and mentally. He rapped lightly upon the door of the modest hut.

"I am Banish. You have displayed my mark, and I have answered its call," he said as the door opened.

"Yes, of course I did, of course you are. I'm sorry. My name is Taera," said the weary woman behind the door. She thought the cloaked man's voice was softer and lighter than she had expected. It was instantly comforting and disarming. Contrary to common sense, Taera allowed the stranger to enter.

"I know you must be desperate, the posting of the mark is often preceded by a long trail of failed healing attempts."

"I'm sorry sir, but I must tell you that we, I, have few items of worth, and not much money to pay." She kept her eyes averted.

"It is of no concern to me how great or little wealth you possess. I would that we not speak of such matters before the completion of my work. I make no promises of success and require no collateral to begin. Who has fallen to the illness and what were the circumstances?"

"Well, first my son took ill. It happened a handful of suns ago. He complained of being tired one day, from dawn to dusk. He did not wake the next morning, and I quickly grew concerned," she glanced at the doorway of the adjoining room, the family's shared sleeping quarters. There was immense fondness and devotion in her gaze.

"I stayed at his bedside the next day. It is a mother's duty, a mother's love." Banish winced imperceptibly at the statement. "I held his hand and talked to him. By day's end, I was hoarse and tired. But, worry wouldn't let me sleep.

"With my son trapped in sleep and me by his side, only my husband could tend to the fields. Father's show love in ways different than mother's, and my husband, Karn, took the duties of the rest of the family upon his own strong shoulders. He was up all of the first night working. After a couple days, he collapsed in the fields.

"I didn't know whether he fell from exhaustion or the sickness. He hasn't opened his eyes since, and I haven't been able to close mine. I couldn't ask my neighbors for help. They'd have to deny me to save themselves.

The woman's explicit concern for her family was endearing and led Banish to recall his own youth, his own family. It was a stark comparison.

He could recall their faces vaguely. Both his father and mother had been too busy to squander much time in his presence. Those times when they were not busy, they spent sleeping. The adults of the small, isolated village of Solm were all preoccupied with the practicing of a peculiar religion.

Banish's father, Corpheus, was the high priest, his mother, Anasi, the high priestess. The onus of teaching the other inhabitants the ways and means of upholding their relationship with the Shrakti, the shadowy gods they worshipped, lay solely upon their shoulders. The relationship was a tentative binding, requiring constant upkeep on the part of each townsperson of adult age.

When he was not submerged in a stream of chores, he was either day dreaming or night dreaming. In the village of Solm, the greatest share of the work was the children's. Each adult over the age of sixteen spent half of each day in sleep.

The youth would not fully comprehend the interconnections between his parents' work, the children's toil, and the adults' everlasting fatigue until it was too late. Such discoveries drastically altered the course of his existence.

"May I ask whether anything out of the ordinary occurred prior to the onset of your son's illness?" said Banish. "Maybe a stranger passed through the village?"

"Umm. Now that you ask, there was a man who came through a ten-day ago. With all that has happened since, I forgot. Is it important?"

"Please tell me anything you can recall about him, especially his demeanor, and maybe his eyes." Urgency entered Banish's polite voice for the first time.

"The traveler, I don't rightly remember his name, seemed tired, very tired. He didn't say where he'd come from or where he was going. Besides, we were too busy to ask."

"He had not come from Solm, had he?" interrupted Banish.

"He may have. I don't know if he mentioned his homeland. But his voice was strange, sir--shallow and toneless. And his eyes, sir, they were odd too. Black as coal, all of them."

"That's all most helpful." Banish could not tell the woman how he suspected her wanderer had come from the village he once called home, before he was ousted. He could not tell her about the day he had broken Solm's sacred pact and loosed the Shrakti and the sleeping sickness upon an unexpecting world.

"This night you shall prove yourself worthy and avoid being consumed by the Shrakti's holy flames," Banish's father said to him, using the tone reserved for priestly sermons. "You will enter fully into our world, our culture. This evening I will guide you through the rituals that will prepare you for the possession. The meal, the motions, and the chantings will all serve to calm your mind.

"Later, when you dream, a young god will come to you. You will be more in control, more cognizant, more at home in your dreams than ever before. If you have never been able to recall a dream, then this night will surely be unique." It had bothered the boy deeply to find that his father's knowledge of him was so scant that he did not understand the important place dreams already held in his life.

"There will be a brief period of peace once you enter the dream, yet you must not grow complacent or distracted during this time, it will not last long.

"The sky will darken rapidly, as if covered with thick pitch. Then, the darkness will gather at one point. It will fall upon you in a glorious torrent. I cannot tell you what exact form it will take, for the gods are amorphous in and of themselves. It is only when they enter our realm, through the crossroads of our dreams, that they take shape. Remember that whatever grand shape it takes is specially chosen for you, and you should feel honored." Banish did not recall feeling honored. He recalled feeling violated.

"And what happens after tonight?" the young boy asked his priest and father.

"Ah. After tonight, you will be an adult, judged worthy and responsible enough to carry the holy burden of the Shrakti while you sleep, and worthy of securing our people's relationship with our gods while you wake. You will pass on your daily labor to those younger than yourself."

"Yes, but will I still dream?" he said, breaking off his father's pious diatribe.

"Not in the same way you do now. Your dreams will be your offering to the gods. They will do with them what they see fit."

"And if I refuse the blessing?"

"No one refuses the blessing," his father's visage clouded, as if a violent storm was breaking upon his brow. That was the first time Banish thought of his father as something more sinister than a simple country clergyman.

"Very well, father," he said, a boy hemmed in between his desire for his father's positive attention and for the retention of his most valued possession. "I'll do my best not to disappoint my people."

As the dark god-youth scratched and clawed its way into his left eye, and his screams wracked his lungs and throat with searing pain, he could sense the creature sinking weighty anchors into the churning waters of his mind. As the anchors sank deeper, he felt his dreamscape dissipating, slowly becoming a shadowy realm better suited to its new master.

The golden sun, and the light it radiated, shifted through the spectrum until settling into a livid reddish purple. The fields of green grass responded to the color shift by turning a burnt brown hue.

The creature, satisfied with the sound connections it had made to its new home, paused to bask in the violet rays cascading in through the boy's eye. Banish could not forget the feeling of the beast shuddering and sprawling ecstatically within his skull.

During this brief period of relative rest, the boy recovered from his shock enough to remind himself that he was merely dreaming, that the damage to his body was only imaginary. He found he still had some feeling in his right hand, could still move it if he wished.

After the Shrakti had glutted itself, it shoved a clawed hand out of the eye it had overtaken. It grasped at the boy's throat in an effort to pull itself loose. With an arm and hand free, the thing began to reach towards the neighboring eye. To complete the ritual of the covenant, both eyes must be conquered, obliterated, and blackened completely.

The boy lashed out with his right hand and gripped the straining, thrashing black appendage. He managed to momentarily hold the vile thing at bay. Though he could not rip it free, he found the strength to thrust the monster back into his left eye socket. He yelled, with liquid-filled lungs, for release, both from the monster that had attacked him, and from his freshly corrupted dream world.

Soon afterwards, he found himself no longer screaming in a dream, but in the real, waking world. And he immediately knew that something was terribly wrong, and that he would never return to his idyllic dreamland.

"Have you any blacksmiths, guardsmen, doctors, mages, or fletchers nearby?" posed Banish.

"Yes sir. I believe there is at least one of each in town. They would be asleep now, though, save for a few scouts on patrol," Taera replied.

"Good. I am going to begin now. I must warn you that things will happen that might appear strange and frightening to you, but any interruptions could endanger the three of us. I will not force you to comply, yet I must advise you to wait outside."

"I am sorry, sir. I will not leave my boys."

"That is fine." Banish did not know whether her desire to remain was generated by familial obligation, love, or sensible mistrust of someone so unnatural in appearance. "Then you can help me move this bed closer to the other."

The mother nodded in assent.

As Taera settled herself down on the three-legged stool her son had inexpertly made for her several seasons prior, she kept her eyes on Banish.

She watched with unblinking eyes as the stranger stood between her husband and son. He raised his right hand to the patch-covered eye. He muttered an unintelligible string of syllables while tracing the silver diagram. As the incantation ceased, he pressed his palm against the leather covering. After a brief flash of blinding light, he pulled the patch loose and calmly raised it to his forehead.

Taera could not see what lay behind the eye patch. She dared not move; timorous at the prospect of being caught in the tangle of whatever uncanny magicks were being released. She could see two shadowy tendrils looping from Banish's turned face; one snaked down each of his arms, eventually coating left and right forefinger. The stranger pressed one inky fingertip against the foreheads of the son and the father.

He spoke words in a muted voice, the meaning unfathomable, but Taera sensed by the tone that they were words of command.

The shade of Banish's fingers lightened as the flesh of the son and father darkened beneath them. The process continued until both shared the same slate gray color. With another vocal order, the connection was complete. The woman covered her mouth to keep herself from wailing an interruption. Banish closed his right eye in silence and concentration.

When he reopened his eyes, one clear blue, one black as jet, he was buffeted by the five-fold perceptions of an alien world. It was a quaint farming family's dream.

The plants were twice as tall as they would naturally grow, and grew still larger as he watched.

The sun in the sky had been wrapped with the violet hue he knew so well, its light diffuse and malignant. And the smell of the creature was there; it was impossible to describe in any language not originating from their native realm. The stink in his nostrils brought the psychic pains of his youth to the doorstep of his mind.

Banish knew the beast was there, somewhere, likely unhidden, basking and bathing in the joys of its world recreated. Yet he could not see it from his position, buried amongst the purpled plant life.

He would have to uncover the location of the invader and its captives quickly. The enemy would soon sense his presence, and though it would at first only recognize another of its kind--the beast trapped in his eye--the deception would not last indefinitely. The Shrakti were not social by nature, he knew, and each one jealously guarded its stolen dreamscape even from its own kin.

There were high bluffs to either side of the field in which he was crouched, yet it would take more time than he dared spend to scale them. If Banish was to find what he sought, he would require senses more keen than his own. The acute far-seeing eyes of a bird of prey would prove useful, but a bird would be just as visible to its prey.

"Come beast, I have need of you," whispered Banish as he grasped at the violet shadow suddenly radiating from his left eye. He tugged at the insubstantial energy and pulled forth the Shrakti residing there. Through the use of his will and imagination, he shaped it into the form of a shadow hound. Sculpting a creature with only an ethereal composition taxed his concentration. Banish knew that he could show the beast no weakness. A spectral chain of psychic energy tethered the dark being tightly to his wrist.

"Now wretch, sniff out your brother. And if you make a sound, I will surely see you suffer for it." The monster gazed at the man with thinly veiled malice smoldering in its flickering eyes, then it was off as silent as one shadow traveling through another.

Banish knelt in the dirt between two rows of column-thick stalks. He needed to hold onto his concentration if he were to keep his unwanted cohort under control. He closed his own eyes so that he might better focus on what his minion saw.

Picking out the scent was simple, as it pervaded every corner of the dream world. The Shrakti growled and ran off. For some time Banish could see only plants rushing past his borrowed eyes. Forward, backward, and side to side the hound leapt and sprinted. The movements upset Banish's sense of spatial orientation, already taxed by entering the dream.

Then the space before his eyes spread wide, the rows disappearing altogether. The cramped quarters gave way to a vista of a hillock topped by a cabin much resembling the place of the family's cohabitation in the waking world.

To the left of the cabin were two figures, one taller than the other, certainly the father and son. Above them was a single ominous storm cloud isolated within an otherwise clear, light purple sky. It cast a shadow upon them and bristled with vicious energy. Whenever the farmers' shuddering and cowering carried them too far from the center, too near the shadow's edge, there shot down a bolt of dark energy that sent the grass aflame momentarily.

Presiding above like a lazy archon, face turned upwards towards the corrupt sun, limbs spread out in relaxation, was the invading Shrakti. Each time a bolt nearly incinerated one or both humans, it cackled gloatingly.

The image of the creature grew steadily larger, steadily closer, and Banish noticed his hound's growl of defiance rising in audibility. It strained to a crescendo of maniacal laughter. Understanding the willful beast did not intend to stop at spotting the invader, Banish transformed the elastic fetter into an inflexible form. The beast gave out a choked squeal and jerked to an immediate, unconscious halt.

Hand over hand, Banish followed the tether's crisscrossing indirect path to its end. He grabbed the beast by the scruff of its neck, shook it until its form began to disperse, and reinserted it into his skull. He did not even notice the pain any longer; the action had become mundane and autonomous.

Through the stalks he could see the dark usurper of the dream world still torturing its captives. It would still be some time before the creature had deadened their spirits fully. Banish contemplated his options with skipping mental alacrity.

His black eye glowed with dark-fire as he stretched limbs of consciousness out into the dreams of the other inhabitants of Eyrse.

Rapidly, like flashes of inspiration, images of a hundred dreams and nightmares shot through his sprinting mind.

A young mother of three dreamed of putting her feet up by the fire, all her work done, her family sleeping quietly. A man was entangled in the bare limbs of a woman younger and more beautiful than his wife, more beautiful than any woman could ever be after being touched by time and reality. A young boy saw his older sister turn into a shape-changing demon and battled her fiercely for their parents love and affection.

Banish saw a fletcher working feverishly. With a hatchet and set of tools, blessed by the goddess of archery herself, he had hacked off a limb of a great tree and hewed it into a bow which could be bent only by a giant's strength. With the same tools, he had carved an arrow which needed no steel or iron arrowhead to pierce through armor or shield. The wood of the arrow, once cut to a perfect point would not dull or alter in form until it again met the blade that made it.

The fletcher mopped his brow with a grubby shirtsleeve as he set the finished bow and single arrow down on his work bench, and then pleasantly passed into sleep.

Banish watched carefully and picked his moment with practiced precision. After the fletcher closed his eyes, the world around him began to dissipate and fade away. The world outside the workshop turned to a blackness stretching towards infinity, the wooden walls turned to a ruddy vapor. Soon there was nothing left but the man and his masterpiece. Banish stretched out his hand and grabbed the dream bow, taking it back to the field. He placed it on the ground before him with proper reverence.

Immediately he was off again, to distant dreams. He spied a young woman who was an initiate priestess of light, both in dreams and in reality. However, in her dreams she was a veritable religious prodigy. Her calls to the sun goddess were always swiftly answered.

She was battling dark monsters in a midnight wood, where no illumination could travel. She picked up a fallen branch and brandished it as if it were a holy cudgel. The monsters were unafraid. They laughed hideously at the weak display of pretend violence, flews dripping with anticipatory hunger.

As the beasts closed, the white-robed woman pointed her branch towards the ground--the direction she had been taught the sun would be at that time of night. She pronounced a series of syllables. And as light erupted from the earth and concentrated itself in a vibrant mass around the limb, Banish committed to memory the sounds and the fervor backing them. While the woman swung her branch, bristling with light energy, dissolving each beast it struck, Banish continued his dreamwalk elsewhere.

He walked into another dense forest, unremarkable but for the enormous stag that came crashing by him. Cloaked in fallen branches and leaves was a hunter. He was a master of his art, deft at stalking and shooting on both sides of the dream divide. Yet, it was only in his dreams that he found worthy sport.

When he caught sight of his prey, the ranger arranged his body so that it was still perfectly concealed. He raised his great bow, as carefully camouflaged as his body, and lined the knocked arrow up with a clear path to his target.

The hunter pulled back the bow string and released it. As expected, the animal turned its antler-heavy head towards the sound of the shot. The arrow raced towards the creature's eye.

"I apologize for the intrusion, friend, but to save some of your neighbors I have need of your admirable skills," said Banish, thrusting his semi-substantial hand through the woodsman's skull.

The man stiffened and collapsed as his techniques, honed by thousands of hunts and fired shots, flooded into the dream-thief's mind.

Returning to the farmer's dream, Banish felt adequately supplied for the battle ahead.

He took a few deep breaths of the stinking air, trying to steel his courage and steady his nerves. He felt a slight ripple drift through him, as if a pebble had been thrown into the stable surface waters of a dream.

Looking up, he saw a flickering image becoming clear beside the father and son. It was the image of a woman, finally succumbing to the inescapable pull of sleep. The Shrakti above them stretched a limb down and wrapped its long fingers around the image of Taera.

It was time to act. The Shrakti was slightly weakened as it tried to drag the woman permanently into its clutches, as it stretched the dream to encompass another mind. When it finished, it would have another spirit to feed from, and be significantly stronger.

One knee bent before him and one bent beneath, Banish picked up the god-blessed bow and knocked the arrow with an ease he had not earned. His muscles were synchronized with the bowman's pilfered motor memories. He gauged the distance between himself and his target's chest, the pulsing core of the creature. He felt the light wind wash against his pale face and could tell how far to the side he should aim to compensate.

Locking the position of the shot in his short term memory, Banish then raised the arrow higher, so the wooden point aimed directly at the purple sun. He quoted the priestess' prayer, carefully adding the correct cadence, feeling the faith well up within him.

The tainted sun broke free of its corruption, hurling pure golden rays. In response, the arrow tip began to glow with a blinding radiance.

The Shrakti hovering above the family was only slightly distracted by the spectacle, assuming that its efforts to force the mother's mind into the dream had loosened its control of the world.

Banish grinned at his erstwhile successes. He readjusted his aim to take into account the slight movement of his target and made sure the arc would be perfect. He focused his mental might, drew other necessary energies from the family, and pulled the bowstring. Before his fingers could slip, before his muscles could weaken and fail, Banish released the string. The scintillating arrow sung through the nightmare sky.

"Now I need your demon wings. My own bright wings were torn from my back long ago. Take me to your sibling. Follow the arrow's path. And recall that if I fall and die here, your existence will be ended as well." He could feel another growl of dissent, this time rumbling like thunder in his skull. But through the flesh on his back, bursting through the fabric of his cloak, grew a pair of featherless black wings. Banish grunted in response to the agony of transformation and took to the air.

There was a soul-piercing scream, a sizzle of burning matter, and an explosion of bright white light as the creature was struck. Banish could hear the sounds but raised his arms to shield his eyes from the blinding flash. When he touched down in front of two stunned people, he saw that the Shrakti and the cloud had been eradicated. The wife also was gone--safe on the other side of consciousness.

The farmers rubbed the blindness from their eyes. Banish scanned the area for leftover bits of the beast. If any portion of the core survived, he thought, it could escape altogether or find a hiding place in which to recuperate.

Above, Banish saw what appeared to be wisps of noxious black smoke. He jumped up and, with one snap of his inherited wings, soared upwards. "I shall not suffer your survival. Your temporary kingdom shall now become your tomb. You are only one of many who have met with such a fate, and I'll not stop the hunt until all of you are driven from the dreaming worlds. One day, there will be no more dark-eyed, soulless bodies to spread your seed."

A hollow voice wafted through the air, sneaking into Banish's ears, "You are a fool, an anomaly that should not exist, and will surely not exist forever. Such is the nature of your mortal kind. You know little of us, of our numbers, or our abilities, even with all of your triumphs. The creature sheltered within your skull and I are infants. Maybe someday you will be so unfortunate as to meet one of our elders."

"By that time, I too will be more experienced. I tire of your prattle. You are destroyed." As the wings beat behind him, keeping him unfailingly aloft, Banish raised his hand to the sun and again spoke the words of the light prayer.

With hands bathed in heat and light, he grabbed at the trails of smoke that constituted the Shrakti's remains. He did not unclench his fingers until the hollow screams of the demon faded completely.

When all was silent again, his wings disappeared.

Plummeting to earth, recalling the smell of blood and feathers, watching the ground rushing fatally to meet him, he said, "Very well beast, you make your point clear. You have served your purpose."

Before the unforgiving earth could claim him, Banish hurled himself back into the waking world. The farmer and son reclaimed their unique shared dream.

"Are you well, sir?" said Taera cautiously, rushing to her savior's side. He was on the floor, a heap of black cloak and scrawny limbs. He pried his weary eyes open and grinned.

"Everything is fine now. The sickness has been dealt with successfully--cured, if you will. Your family will suffer no more and will soon recover."

Taera watched thin smiles appear upon the previously expressionless faces of her husband and son. She kissed each forehead, hoping to speed their recovery.

"Now, as for the matter of payment." Banish's voice was breathless.

"Of course, sir. Anything we own is yours for the asking."

"The cure has taken a dramatic toll on my vitality."

"Do you need to rest? I can get some straw and make a bed."

"No. I cannot sleep. Trust me when I say that it would do me more harm than good. What I ask in lieu of possessions, or place of rest, is simply to partake of your family's dreams."

"It's an odd request. But after what I've seen this eve, I'm not surprised. Would such a thing harm them?"

"No, you have my word. Dreams recuperate a person's vitality in a way that basic rest does not, and without them, I become the weakened wraith you see before you. I must rely upon the gratitude of persons such as you to postpone my inevitable fate."

"I've no reason to mistrust you."

"Very well," Banish muttered, making sure his stance was stable enough to hold his flimsy weight.

As one palm was replaced over each dreamer's head, Banish communicated a message to the Shrakti living within his mind, "We have earned this bit of succor tonight, wretch. You and I have damned ourselves to this life, and we have unleashed a pox upon this land. Let us drink deep these uncorrupted dreams and grow vigorous. There is much to be accomplished before we finally unmake that which we have wrought."