Darkness faded back into a wood paneled ceiling. Not his home, but there were stars painted on the wood just like Ruby’s bedroom.

His body ached all over. He'd expected his arm to be worse off, but it was just kind of cold. It took him a few tries, but he sat up. He was wearing a clean sleeping gown, the kind old Victorian men wore in cartoons, but his actual clothes were folded on a chair to his right. His gunbelt and knife were laid on top. The room was dark but from what he could tell, the decor was decidedly feminine; it was black all over, but with pink and purple frills. There was a black vanity directly across from him, and the mirror on it was shaped like a heart. Henry winced at it. He still didn’t have a reflection.

Henry checked his arm. The sleeve of his gown was rolled up to the shoulder, so he could see the full extent of the damage. There was bad bruising above the elbow, deep purple with red at the edges. Below that, the arm was as white as salt, streaked with black and silver veins. His hand felt heavy. The wound had crystallized, filled with mirror shards.

Someone had tied a black lace ribbon around his elbow, glowing with embroidered sigils. He could read these; healing, warding, binding and sealing. They were basic but competently formed.

The door creaked open and Henry made to grab for his knife, but his right hand was useless now, basically a lump of ice shaped like a hand, so all he succeeded at was twisting himself around in the blankets and slapping his belt off the chair.

A woman stepped in. She was dressed like a widow, though she wore no veil, and her long red hair trailed down to her waist. Her skin was fair like porcelain and when she saw him, her violet eyes lit up. “Henry, you’re awake!” She rushed over to his side and hugged him gently.

“Who? Wait, you’re— Ruby?” Henry sputtered. “How long was I asleep?” He blinked quickly and grabbed a hank of her hair. “It’s redder. You don’t look like a pumpkin anymore.”

She giggled and pulled the hair back. “It’s been about six weeks.”

He groaned. “Six weeks? I’m so bad at going on a dream quest.” He balled his fist against his head. “How is it six weeks?”

Ruby patted his hand. “Time moves differently in the Dreamlands than it does in the waking world,” she said. “And it moves even more strangely when you sleep in the Dreamlands.1 Try not to pass out again.”

“Right, I don’t want to run into another soft spoken demon,” he muttered. “But why are you a grownup? Puberty would not do this. ”

She stepped back, pulling up a chair. “I’m not the Ruby you know,” she said, smoothing her skirt as she sat down. “I’m how she dreams of herself in this world.”

“And what is this world?” Henry asked.

“Are you familiar with projections?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, I learned about them when I was training to go on this quest,” said Henry. “Dream worlds created from dreams of popular fiction.”

“The collective dreams of fans layered together over many years,” she said, with a single nod. “We’re at an intersection between Ruby’s dreams and Letters from the Republic of the Rhone.”

It all clicked into place. Letters from the Republic of the Rhone was an alternate history spy thriller set in a fictional country in the Camargue region along the river Rhone. Ruby read it last year and drew the city over and over, but the book made little effort to describe the local ecosystem, so she’d just filled it in with plants and animals she already knew.

Henry winced as his arm tweaked. He looked down at it again. “God,” he muttered, wondering why the return spell hadn’t activated. He felt tears coming on again and suppressed them. There was work to do.

He tried to stand up, but Ruby pushed him back down with a single hand. “You need to rest,” she said, firmly. “I’m really sorry about your hand.”

Henry struggled against her for a bit, but it was no use. “My hand’s a lost cause, isn’t it? I should just cut it off, shouldn’t I?” Don’t cry, don’t cry.

Ruby bit her lip. “Umm. Well.”

That couldn’t be good. In fact it was so bad that Henry centered himself immediately, bracing for impact. “Come on Ruru, out with it.”

She twiddled her fingers, still so like a child. Of course, she was only dreaming of being big. “That’s a piece of the doppelganger, but you know that. What you don’t understand is that it’s attached to you now. Not just physically inside your arm. It’s attached to your spirit, feeding off you. I stopped it from growing past your elbow, but if you cut your arm off, it’ll still be attached to your soul.”

Henry sighed. “I take it the only way to stop it is to kill my doppelganger.”

"Or take his token," Ruby nodded.

Henry clenched his eyes shut. “It just seems to get stronger every time I see it. How did auntie do it?”

Ruby shook her head. “I don’t know. Mom never said.” She took his left hand in both of hers.

Henry held back a swear. “Wait, your mom. Can you send her a message?”

Ruby shook her head. “When I wake up, all this stuff just fades away. I think it’s just a dream, if I remember it at all.”

Henry sighed, almost folding into himself, but he didn’t want to look weak in front of Ruby.

“But…” Ruby tapped her chin. “I think I know how you can defeat it.”

Henry perked up. “How?”

“Your damaged arm,” said Ruby. “It has a part of the dream token in it. He’s using it to drain your power, but if you could harness its magic, you’d be able to drain him.”

Henry stared down at his hand. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s the only way I’ll get out of this.”

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The doppelganger fell hard onto rain soaked streets. A dark city loomed above him, black shapes lit only by the yellow of far up light bulbs, or the garish cyan and red of neon signs, far closer. He stood, feeling the substance of his body crack. He grunted in pain. He’d need to feed soon, or he’d die.

There was a trickle of power coming to him from Henry. It was calling to him across the void, leading away into the abyss like a silver thread. He could tug on it at any time, use it to climb towards him like a sinner on a spider’s thread. But the journey from here to there was vast, deeper than hell, a distance impossible to measure.

He stumbled into an alley. He’d absorbed several other doppelgangers, and their mass was inside him, their limbs, names, faces. Henry had torn off a lot of that, but he was stronger than any given doppelganger now, at least any that hadn’t consumed their double.

He called up the foreign mass to fill in his cracks and sloughed off any material too damaged to be worth repairing. The sound of glass tinkling to the floor sounded as he dropped the crushed and burned dreamsilver from his sleeves and pant legs.

The doppelganger needed more power. As it was, he was stronger than any mortal man. He could sprout the limbs of the doppelgangers he’d absorbed, turn to liquid or knap blades from his flesh. It was good enough to hunt down a mere mortal, but the doppelganger knew Henry’s power, knew everything Henry knew about himself. Henry could defeat the doppelganger; magic gave him too much reach and flexibility.

He sharpened his finger and sketched out a sigil on the wall, pressing his palm to it, willing it to part for him just like it would for Henry.

Nothing.

Well, he’d known it wouldn’t work. Getting magic was the whole point of killing Henry.

“Are you alright?” The doppelganger turned. There was a girl standing at the entrance to the alley, holding a red umbrella. Her long dark hair was wet, and she wore a surgical mask on her face. “You look lost,” she said. “Are you hurt?”

The doppelganger blew some water out of its face. “I’m fine.” He was cold, wet, hurt, already feeling feverish. His human vitals became real whenever he thought about them, and now that he’d thought about them he couldn’t stop.

“You don’t look fine,” she took a step into the alley, tilting her head. “Why don’t you follow me out of the cold?”

The gears of his brain ground against each other for a moment as they turned in contrary directions. Why not? If this was a trap he could just kill her. He nodded.

She straightened up. It was hard to read her expression with the mask, but it seemed like her eyes were smiling. “Alrighty! Come this way!” She stepped toward him and offered an arm. He took it, and she took the lead, holding the umbrella so it shielded them both. It wasn’t quite big enough, but they were both already very wet, so it didn’t really matter.

The alley opened up for them, widening into a broad street as they walked. The light from the neon signs become more diffused, illuminating the wet walls and floor as if they were painted with a luminous brush. The letters were all in a language the doppelganger could not read, but their shapes reminded him of arabic. He felt a sense of nostalgia for something, though he couldn’t remember what.

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“I’m Leila,” said the girl. “And what’s your name?”

“I’m—” he had wanted to say Henry, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to use that name until he took it. “I don’t have one.”

She clicked her tongue. “I’ve got to call you something. How about ‘boy’? Or is that demeaning?”

“Just ‘you’ is good enough,” the doppelganger muttered. “That’s what pronouns are for. Referring to things without names.”

“But you’re not a thing, you’re a guy,” she said, turning off the street into another alley. An inner voice told him that wasn’t true. He wasn’t a “guy.” He was something less than a person. A reflection. A trick of the light brought to life by the imagination. There could be no name for him.

The alley was home to a set of stairs leading up the side of a dingy brick building, illuminated by a single incandescent bulb sticking horizontally from the wall, steam rising as its heat evaporated the rain.

Leila led the doppelganger upstairs by the hand. “Will your parents be alright with this?” asked the doppelganger. She seemed to be about his age after all—that is, Henry’s age. The doppelganger may have had all Henry’s memories but he’d only been awake for a few days. Fourteen years spent dreaming of being Henry wasn’t much.

Leila withdrew a key from her sleeve and opened the door. “I’m sure they won’t mind.” She stepped into the apartment and beckoned with a finger. The doppelganger stepped inside. The door shut behind him, and the lights flickered on.

The apartment was dingy and dirty. Overturned furniture and broken tchotchkes littered the floor. There were stains on the peeling wallpaper and desiccated floorboards that could have been old blood.

Behind Leila hung two pulsating, black masses. They were oily and studded with a multitude of glowing red eyes and shining white teeth. They stretched out their limbs, long humanoid arms with too many joints and too many fingers. They looked like spiders emerging from an egg sac.

Ahh yes. The doppelganger remembered what this world was. The Thieves of Simhabad, a book set in a city haunted by ghouls. They would invade people’s homes, hollow them out, and use them as lures to bring more people in. The doppelganger looked at Leila. She removed her mask, revealing writhing, spidery mouthparts. “Sorry, you,” she said, and it sounded like it came through a mouthful of marbles. “You seemed nice.”

The doppelganger called his knife into his hand. “I’m not.” He locked the door.

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Ayane’s world was a land of red earth and red light. The sun was huge and red, and the moon reflected its crimson light by night. It was only indoors that the true colors of things could be seen.

She sat by the window, strumming a new song from the dwarves, half in and half out of the moonlight. She wore a blue robe, one of her special privileges, and the moonlight stained half of it a wine burgundy.

A soft rapping sounded at her door. She stopped her playing and crept over to it. The last time she’d been interrupted in the middle of her playing it had been Prince Ramades. He’d been defeated and enslaved by Ordog and had been sent to bring her dinner.

Thinking about him gave her a headache. After Ghun took over, it seemed as though all her life before then had been something she’d lived a thousand times before. It seemed she knew how things should have turned out; joining the prince, helping him lead a rebellion, and eventually falling in love.

But now Ramades was dead. There was nothing left of that world. She mourned the prince, and the friends she would never meet, but it was distant, fading, like the mourning one feels for a person they meet in a dream.

They knocked again. Ayane placed her hand on the knob and turned slowly, not about to let just anyone into her room at this late hour. She peeked through the crack, ready to slam it shut if need be.

There stood a young person, taller than her but bent nearly double. They were covered in fine grey fur and protrusions of green crystal. A long ratlike tail twitched nervously behind them. Clody, Ordog’s court jester. They were sweet on her. “Ayane,” they whispered. “Run away with me.”

She sighed. “Oh, Clody. That’s a very tempting offer, but where would we even go?” Her tone was just a little flat, but she suspected Clody would read it sincerely.

Clody’s face lit up; she was right. “I have a way out. We can leave right now.”

Ayane furrowed her brow. “It’s easy enough to get out of the castle. I meant the long term.”

Clody stepped forward, trying to take her hand, but they bumped their hooved feet against the doorframe and she did not widen the gap any further. “I mean I have a way out of this world,” they said. “The dwarves have doorways to other places. We could go anywhere. Their world, somewhere else…”

“Not very good options,” said Ayane, frowning harder. “I definitely don’t want to go to their world.” But another world altogether? That was tempting. “Show me your way out.”

“I thought you weren’t interested,” said Clody, with a smarmy grin.

“I’m interested in seeing if you're telling the truth,” said Ayane.

Their face fell immediately. “You don’t trust me?”

Ayane pushed the door all the way open. Clody yelped and stumbled back. “Show me your way out,” she demanded.

Clody nodded, mouth splitting into a wide grin, then slunk down the hall. They were as quiet as a mouse, despite their crystalline hooves. Their disfigurements were the result of multiple akanite overdoses; it was a miracle they were still alive at all. Clody had been Ordog’s court magus once, calling greenery from the ground and making the city flourish. But the akanite turned on them, burning out their magic and crystalizing their flesh.

Ayane had a crystal of her own, an ajana, on her forehead, pale blue and shaped like a little flower. It had been implanted when she was young, harvested from the growths on a dead magus. Clody was only alive today because they amused Ordog, and now because Ghun had no interest in creating more magi from their corpse.

Clody led her down from her tower, down through the main keep to the buttery; Clody had a copy of the butler’s keyring for reasons Ayane was suspicious about but didn’t care to confirm. The sounds of the kitchen above them sounded like whispers through the stone. A castle’s kitchen is never empty; the fires are always lit, something is always cooking or being prepared, kitchen implements are being cleaned, coals are being raked, all in advance of the day’s toil.

They came to one of the massive wine butts at the far end. They were laid on their sides and wide enough for Ayane to stand inside with her neck bent. There was a strange symbol carved into the lid, a circle containing a triangle pointing down, with a line through the tip. Clody touched it and it flashed a gentle gold. The lid of the barrel slid back like a folding screen. Ayane let out a quiet gasp.

Clody preened. “The invaders’ magic is different from ours. Anyone can use it if they know what to do. Even someone like me could be a magus again, if they learned the proper signs and symbols…”

The door revealed a set of stairs carved into the castle foundations, cut so perfectly into the living stone that it was almost like they’d been shaped from clay and fired. Ayane touched her ajana, willing it to emit a pale light, bright enough to show the path until it turned out of sight.

The adventurous part of her wanted the stairs to go down for miles and miles, but in truth the stairwell was just a story or so deep. It let out into a large room of stone blocks. There were barrels and crates all around, and toward the back were workbenches with alchemical tools and vials of strange liquids, but in the center was the strangest thing of all, a long pool of water where floated a small boat with no sails. The water in the pool was flowing like a river, into a pointed arch in the wall. Beyond the arch was…sunlight. A river valley with rolling green hills. Ayane’s eyes bugged out of her skull. “Is this where they come from?” she muttered.

“Indeed not,” a voice chimed in, and Ayane jumped at the realization that they weren’t alone. Her eyes darted around until they found the source of the voice, and then she sighed in relief. It was Braehar, the dwarf she was friendly with. She was short and stout, just shy of four feet, typical for dwarves. Her marble skin was grey, mottled with pale blue, and her densely textured hair hung in two tails on either side of her face, framing opalescent eyes that looked huge thanks to the thick lenses of her glasses. “I’m glad you were able to convince her,” said Braehar, nodding at Clody.

Ayane narrowed her eyes at Clody. “They made it sound like it was their idea.” They shuffled nervously behind a barrel. “What is this place?” she asked Braehar.

The dwarf adjusted her glasses. “This is where Ghun keeps his secrets. A small lab, and his personal portal,” she gestured at the impossible doorway. “It must be kept open to anchor this world to the real one, otherwise it would become prohibitively difficult to find again. But it can be moved for short periods of time.”

“The real world,” said Ayane, flinching at the word.

Braehar sighed. “I know it must be hard to believe, but it’s true. This world is a projection, a collective dream, imagined by thousands of people who have read the same story.”

“And you wanted to show me that I’ve been living a lie?” asked Ayane. “Why? Just to hurt me?” She shook her head. “I have no reason to believe that the world on the other side of that arch is any more real than this one.”

Braehar gestured at the portal. “Oh, that world is a dream too,” said Braehar. “I have set it to send you to a paradisiacal land, a projection of a terrestrial paradise named High Brasil. Let us not quibble over what’s real or what isn’t.”

Ayane shook her head. “Fine, no quibbling. Why are you helping us? It’s one thing to chitchat or share songs, but this is different.”

Braehar sighed. “I never wanted to hurt the people of this projection. I joined Ghun’s expedition for research purposes, but I think things have gone far enough with him. You should leave.” She walked up to the portal and patted the doorframe. “Take Clody and run.”

Ayane took a deep breath. “I—” She rubbed her temple. “Why aren’t you coming? And why is Clody involved in this?”

“I have attachments back home. Ghun could hurt the people I love if I deserted him. But you two have each other.” Braehar raised her eyebrows, giving her a slight smile. “No need to be bashful. Clody has been helping me in the laboratory, and they’ve told me about your special relationship. Who am I to stand in the way of young love, eh?”

Ayane turned her head and shot Clody a withering glare. They crouched down behind the barrel, slowly, until they were out of sight.

Braehar withdrew a cigarette holder from her coat, placed a cigarette in it, and lit it up. “So I take it you are not, in fact, young lovers.”

Ayane put her hands over her eyes, trying to will her anger away. “No. We are not.”

Clody whimpered from their hiding place.

“Such is life,” said Braehar, exhaling a puff of pink smoke.2 She pointed her cigarette at Clody (or rather, the barrel they were hiding behind) and said, “You will find someone, mein liebling.” Tracing a smoke circle in the air, she added, “But, regardless of all that, I want you two to go. Things are getting worse here. It’s best if you disappeared.”

Ayane peeked at Braehar through her fingers, then looked at the boat, then at that glorious, beautiful, green world. Could she really live there? So much water, and the strange green trees were laden with fruit. She took a step, then another, dropping her hands as embarrassment was replaced with desire.

The ground began to rumble, and Ayane stopped short. She spun around in time to see the wall opposite the stairwell move. Amber light cut slices in the shape of double doors, and lo and behold, they split apart, sliding and folding like curtains. It was a portal, not to another world, but to Ghun’s quarters. Then he and a handful of cronies stepped into the laboratory.

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1. Experienced dreamwalkers can choose whether it moves faster or slower. Henry is not experienced at all.

2. She smoked a mix that was mostly tobacco, spiced with a hit of refined akanite dust.