15th April
12:48 GMT
Robert half-closes his eyes for a moment, then shakes his head.
"Yeah, I can feel it."
The manor of Fawney Rig hasn't changed since last time I was here. There's a party of Chinese tourists walking the grounds, but they're almost immediately more interested in Robert, Wallace and me than in the location. To most people it's just the base of operations of a group of mystical rip-off merchants who were
briefly a thing in the seventies and eighties. I'd say something, but the absolute
last thing the universe needs is anyone
else trying to trap the Endless. It was hard to see on a country-by-country basis, but when I looked at the statistics worldwide his imprisonment killed thousands of people who went to sleep and never woke up… Or woke up and lost the ability to sleep.
I haven't tried looking at the same period on other planets.
Wallace frowns as I pay for our entry and we head towards the house.
"Are you serious about this? This… Endless guy was trapped here for seventy years, and there aren't any… I don't know, magical barriers here?"
"The only heavy-duty bound spell was the one keeping him imprisoned. Otherwise, it was all minor stuff. While it worked.
"
Robert nods. "Yeah. It feels weird, but it's a
background weird."
Wallace nods uncertainly as we enter the house. "So how come no one else spotted this sand stuff?"
"The man who owned the place before the National Trust bought it didn't believe in magic. The only reason he kept the setup downstairs in one piece was so that he had something impressive-looking to show potential 'investors'. I still don't think that anyone who actually knows anything about magic has made it safe.
"
Wallace stops. "What?"
"Oh, no, no." Robert shakes his head. "Dad told me. They got someone called Cursitor Doom to check the place over in the eighties. Should be alright."
"But we're relying on it
not being alright, right?"
I lead the way towards the basement.
"Dream sand is only dangerous in high concentrations. And even then, actual dream manifestations require long term exposure.
" I take a warded gas mask out of subspace and offer it to him.
"It shouldn't be a problem
anyway, but just in case…
"
He takes it from me and looks at it for a moment.
"Kid Sandman, here we come."
He puts it on over his face, fiddling with it in a vain attempt to make it comfortable. I have
no idea how Wesley Dodds managed for so many years.
"So how are we finding this stuff?"
"I scanned the sand that Fate had.
" I lead the way down the stairs into the basement.
"And while my ring couldn't make sense of the exotic aspect, it gave me a pretty clear reading on the 'sand' part. So all I've got to do is scan for that sand, and we should have it.
"
Robert frowns. "I thought they took his stuff off him as soon as he got here."
"Yes, but it was in the building for years. If he spilled some inside the circle, or they spilled some in the house somewhere, I should be able to find it.
"
"Unless they were having some building work done."
"Sand isn't just
sand. I can distinguish between the molecular structure of
that sand and the stuff that's used in the local buildings.
"
I step out into the basement and walk a little way around the room, letting the others come in. Robert looks fascinated, though I'm not sure how much of that is due to the history of the place and how much to whatever his arcane senses are telling him. Wallace-.
"Oou
really couldn't put a throat mike in this thing?"
"It would be an extra point of weakness and complexity. Ring, find me some sand.
"
Orange light washes outward, covering the inner surfaces of the room. And like a
disclosing tablet, colour pools in particular areas of the room. Nooks and crannies in the stone floor, the walls, the tapestries and the stairs. Not a lot really, but worth noting.
I make a pulling gesture with my left hand and it comes, flying through the air and coming to rest in a small construct box. No, not a lot, but perhaps we can do something with it.
"Stuff dreams are made of." Robert frowns. "What happened to the woman who was using it?"
"She starved to death.
" I shrug.
"Sort of. She only lasted as long as she did because she spent so much time in the Dreaming, but her body was a
mess when she finally died.
"
One last strobe around reveals nothing, and I turn to leave.
"And what happened to her house?"
"Her father's brother got it in his will, and he sold it. The family who moved in ended up having bizarre waking dreams, galloping nightmares, believing they were other people, all sorts of weird stuff. There was a nasty legal battle over the sale which ended with the bank repossessing it. They couldn't sell it, a few people tried squatting there which resulted in it being burned down. It's a grass field, now. There's no way we're getting any sand from there.
"
I fly back up the stairs, tiny quantities of dream sand making themselves known as I go. I…
Vaguely remember Morpheus dosing a few people with sand during his escape, but after this long I doubt that I'll get more than a few grains anywhere which isn't somewhere where he did that. Probably just the bedroom of the former owner, Alex Burgess.
"…supposed to help us find him?"
Robert and Wallace follow me back up, Wallace shaking his head.
"Fate can use it as a focus for a spell to detect other people using dream magic. It's not something a lot of magicians use, so it should show us where to look.
I wanna see if I can use it alchemically. If this stuff can make anything I can imagine
real, I might be able to make a potion to fix Sandy."
"You think so?"
"This… Something like this needs a real expert. But there aren't any. There's some people who use scientific
equipment to do alchemy, but there's no one who's actually studied it
scientifically. So it's not like when Tempest and Aquagirl do a whole lot of math to work out how their spells should go; this is basically…
Guessing."
He grimaces under his mask.
"Hey, Oh El: Sandy didn't ever get the same kinda dreams that Sandman did, did he?"
"Not as far as I know.
"
Based on sources that I've found
here and based on the handful of Justice Society of America comics I read with him in them. Mostly what I remember of
that is him complaining about how libidinous everyone had become since the forties and then getting into a fight with Hawkman over Hawkgirl.
"No, that would be too easy."
We continue through the house until we get to the bedroom. They've redecorated it to look how it did during the heyday of The Order of Ancient Mysteries, but… Yes, a decent amount of sand lurks under the carpet. Probably a good job that no one tried sleeping here since Alex died.
I hold up the small construct box with even less sand than John had. And I'm not
completely sure that it
is all dream sand.
"I think this is all we're getting. Time to head back.
"
...Oh, that just makes it worse.
