No difference between dreams and reality

a nightmare, perchance

"Tell me, are you scared of me, Seer?"

"Of course I am. You're very scary, why would I not be scared of you?"

Really, he should have known it was a risk, a danger even, and in fact there was a part of him that was quite certain if it, but all the same R. F. Jackaby had chosen to take the risk. The fact that something so simple, so pedestrian as a nap held enough risk that he needed to deliberate it at all was more than a little unfortunate, but it was one of those little misfortunes that he had accepted as just one of those little facts of his life and so had long since stopped acknowledging the weighting of it. However, the long-stretching days that rolled by without even daring to blink for more than a heartbeat, let alone actually stopping to rest began, as it so often did, to press down upon him a little too hard to ignore and so he hazarded a nap. There had been no ceremony around it, curled up in the mid-afternoon sun in the beaten up old chair that he favoured, so by all right it should have been a matter of little consequence. 

But matters of little consequence rarely left him standing there in the unnaturally dancing light streaming in through the stained glass window of the ancient throne room that decidedly did not exist in the same world that he had been in before he had nodded off. For a fleeting moment he wondered if he really was there, in one way or another, or if it was nothing more genuine than the dream of a perpetually overtaxed man who had already lived far too much of a life already. 
He would have rather liked to ponder the differences between walking in dreams and dreamscapes - for there were differences, but he had not yet really had much of a chance to discuss the matter with a dreamwalker so he could only really make inferences and educated guesses based on things he had read in the past - and, indeed, would have likewise liked to have had the opportunity to look about the halls as they rang out a silent yet deafening tune of history, all the times they had seen pass still housed within them and leaving them more fascinating than the common eye could have accounted for. Unfortunately this was not a luxury he could afford, as he was very much not alone in the throne room. 

Rather artfully, the Dire King sat bathed in woven shadows that obscured even the Seer's vision, leaving the imposing silhouette an enigma. Rather unsettlingly, however, his eyes still burned unobstructed, a heavy crimson that was by all accounts ignited with the sort of madness that the human mind could not even begin to comprehend. A madness that could only come from the knowledge of the innermost workings of the universe.  

"Good, you are wise to fear me," the king spoke, a smug rumble to his voice, "If only more of your kind could learn what it is to be wise, rather than simply playing at wisdom. Are all humans so tediously self-certain that they could not comprehend the notion that they could be the one in the wrong?"

"I have it on rather good authority, being human myself and whatnot," Jackaby replied, doing a remarkably good job of keeping himself together even under the heat of the other's hateful gaze, "That it is considered one of the charms of humanity."

"There are no charms of humanity," the king countered, the sneer that would have undoubtedly curled  across his hidden features still managing to remain entirely audible in his voice, "Unless you consider your readiness to run of and die, but even then that can only last so very long before it becomes tedious too. But your lives are far shorter than the tedium runs, so there's always a space to try again."

"That isn't very nice," the man spoke as if that was not one of the more sizeable understatements of the modern age, "But it is true. Not the killing us all business, that is just dreadful no matter how you look at it, but the fact people are often too stubborn to see that they're wrong. But perhaps that it something that is not quite so much the charm of humanity but rather," he paused, swishing his hand through the air - an air that felt far too heavy and seemed to hum uncomfortably against his skin and in his ears - with a familiar clack of the bracelets that hung about his wrists, "The curse of all those considered intelligent creatures?"