His robes, he found, were quite comfortable, even though they did not really exist. They grew on him. They moved like water and darkness, spread out behind him, little tendrils curling at their edges. He had a hood like Grimmus's, empty and black, and something like a steed to ride. The Mare had white eyes and long, protruding fangs, and on her back the Nightwalker found it quite easy to pass between the dreamstates.
And so the assignments went. He wound back through the eons, doing a kind of dreamsifting of his own. It became a thoughtless action, and he visited thousands of millions of dreamstates and never looked back.
Slowly, the man he once was disappeared. He was now wholly and completely the Nightwalker. The bringer of fear. Dealer of chaos. The seeds he planted no longer contained his personal vendetta, and slowly, the Nightmares he made became less volatile, more controlled. He learnt to split himself into a thousand parts at once, visit a thousand dreamstates in the space of a simultaneous second.
His physical appearance – not that he could see it – began to change, too. He became frightening and grotesque to those who could see him in their Nightmares, although the sightings were few and far apart.
At last, Grimmus deigned to allow him into the Corporeal again. It felt like a begrudging old friend, welcoming him back with half-open arms. But now it was like the dreamstate. As he rode his Mare through the cities he marveled at how he could move through physical bodies like he was made of ashes.
Every body he walked through left an imprint on his mind. For a brief second he caught a glimpse of their dreamstate, their thoughts and their feelings and the insides of their heads. Each was different. When he got used to the sensation he purposely walked through as many people as he could, seeing infinitely different lives and perspectives with every step. If they were particularly happy, he reached deep in and pulled out a long-lost worry for them to nurse.
He couldn't help it. It was habit.
It was here in the Corporeal that he happened upon the third Cardinal – or to be exact, the woman whom he thought would eventually become the third.
He'd found her in the middle of a brawl, on one of his outings. He'd passed, intangible, through several bodies, until he felt one broiling with uncontained fury. Here he'd stopped. Pulled the pin on her anger. Stepped aside. And watched as the woman launched herself at her opponent.
Fists flew. Screams escaped like fleeing birds. A fringe of onlookers formed around the two fighters. The Nightwalker was one of them, watching with a satisfied smile.
After all, he did enjoy suffering.
When he found her dreamstate, a long while later, at first he did not recognize it at all. It was a ruin, charred and ashy, checkered with cracks that boiled gold and fire. But then he felt the rage, and he recognized what the dreamstate once was – a scape of mountains and a lonely moon. The one he'd glimpsed when he'd passed through her body.
He smiled to himself. Another Manifestation. Grimmus would be pleased. He scattered his dust, just to make sure – and instead of disappearing, like they had in the Seamstress's, the grains tore themselves apart.
The Nightwalker's smile grew, and he travelled on, making a note to visit again.
The second visit, she was there. An eidolon on the peak of a shattered mountain.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her face was arrogant, haughty, and in her stance was written power. The Nightwalker was almost taken aback. But this he had somehow expected.
He rose to his full height – almost the size of the cliff upon which she stood – so that they were eye-to-eye. "I am the Nightwalker," he whispered, but it was an earthquake. "Who are you?"
She responded not with words, but with her Gift.
The dreamstate shattered, and suddenly he was small again. The both of them floated in empty space. There was no light. Nothing. He felt panic scuttle in his insides.
For all he knew, he did not exist anymore.
The woman laughed from nowhere, the same sound as the world falling apart. "O Nightwalker," she said. "Can you tame this sort of Night?"
No, he did not say.
She had destroyed the dreamstate. He reeled. Unraveled. This was not Grimmus's domain – the dreamsifter would not come to rescue him.
He was lost.
