An Ode to Night

This dream starts in -- of all places -- an elevator. The camera faces the doors, watching as the light clicks from button to button, sometimes shifting unnaturally, with numbers changing order, or taking on other shapes entirely. Then, with a shudder, the elevator comes to a full stop. The doors open slowly, frost building on the lens of the camera as the air wades in, accompanied by a glowing blue light from panels in the walls. To the northwest is a bank of bizarre machinery, surrounding a cubic device with strange runic patterns almost like circuitry. It pulses with green light, an occasional dark bubble emerging from an opening atop it. This green energy flows into the machinery, the dark bubbles breaking into tinier motes of foam before spreading out and disappearing into the machinery as well. Tesin recognizes the designs -- they are nigh-identical to the Well of Darkness. The Fivefold Cauldron. Three hags spin about the cauldron as it bubbles -- Mother Maelstrom, Daughter Drift, and Old Nanite.

Old Nanite: “So she comes, Mother.”
Mother Maelstrom: “Why, yes, she does. The Queen of Night.”
Daughter Drift: “What’s so special about her, she’s ugly! She’s yellow!”
Old Nanite: “Bah. Looks matter naught in the dark, deary. Not to the Lord.”
Mother Maelstrom: “Only the outline...”
Daughter Drift: “The Androids are a problem. Shall we kill them?”
Old Nanite: “She could tune the Cauldron… And SHE could understand it.”
Mother Maelstrom: “Tell the boys to shoot them first.”
Daughter Drift: “What of the White Owl? And the Baron?”
Old Nanite: “Minor distractions. They will not make it to our door.”
Mother Maelstrom: “Destiny decrees. Fall or flee.”
Daughter Drift: “Ooo destiny. I see it too -- kitty kitty, deep in trouble.”
Old Nanite: “The irony makes his fate all the sweeter.”
Mother Maelstrom: “His last Walk! The sweet becomes bitter.”
Daughter Drift: “The Sigil could be useful…”
Old Nanite: “I could use another pillow.”
Mother Maelstrom: “You can have what’s left after I eat his brain. So many folds...”
Daughter Drift: “And then? If we win, what of Khaim?”
Old Nanite: “Victory, sweetling.”
Mother Maelstrom: “Yes, Daughter. Victory.”

The three hags then throw their heads back and laugh, and that laughter carries us out of the dream, and into the light of day.