Author's Note: welcome to the final part of the Dreamthorn Trilogy, a crossover between Revolutionary Girl Utena and Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" graphic novel series. If this is the first you've seen of it, the first two parts, "Objects of Desire" and "By the Rose" can be found in my profile. Thank you for reading.


A Duel for All the World: Prologue – Nightmare Overture

Ohtori Academy lay open to those who looked down from the tower.

Miki stood at a window on the tower's highest story, the morning light casting his shadow behind him across the red stone floors. He held his stopwatch in one hand, and watched the students pass far, far below. A small table with a notebook atop it stood next to him. A frown creased his otherwise youthful face.

Click.

He made a single note, then clicked his stopwatch again. So many variables to track, but the pattern showed itself clearly now.

Click.

He wrote faster, his hand steady and making no mistakes. A moment later, he let his watch drop, then checked his notes from the past seven pages. He let out a quiet sigh, and closed the notebook. Just as he'd thought. Worse than he'd hoped.

The sound of two sets of footsteps came from behind him. Miki didn't turn to look. Only two people would care – wait. He listened again, heard a third set of steps, then glanced over his shoulder. "Good morning," he said, formal and awkward.

Ever since they'd all come to live up here, nearly everything had been formal and awkward. For most of them.

"Miki," Juri said with a nod. Behind her, Nanami and Tsuwabuki stopped and greeted him as well. "How bad is it?" she asked.

Miki flipped his notebook back open and held it out to her. "Just as I thought, Juri," he said. "It's the same thing over and over now." He turned back to the window, picked up his stopwatch again and clicked it, only half-conscious of the action.

"The same people pass by the same places, every day. It used to be every month, then every week, and now, everything's been the same every day this week. I wonder if they're having the same conversations every day." He paused, then said quietly, "I wonder if they'd realize it."

Juri stepped up next to him, her blue eyes on his notes. "You're certain of this?" she asked. She looked down the chart he'd made, noting significant things and the times they occurred. When she reached the end, she flipped the page, and found a chart filled in for the past six days.

"So," Juri said, "in a few seconds, these two people should bump into each other." She tapped a row with her thumb.

Miki held up his watch. "Three . . . two . . . one."

Down at the academy's front gates, two boys in uniforms smacked into each other, as one had been staring at a girl not far ahead of him. They exchanged a few words, then laughed it off and went on their ways.

"Do you think," Nanami began, "it'll start to repeat faster now?" Juri and Miki both turned to look at her. Concern and fear mingled in her expression, though her voice held steady. "I remember that – I remember when I started having a conversation that I'd had a month before, the same thing word for word." She stepped past them, and leaned her forehead against the window. "It shouldn't happen to us here, should it?"

Juri and Miki glanced at each other, not needing to say a word. Nanami was still sure that this place would protect them. She, out of all of them, might know. How sure anyone else was, that was open for debate.

Months ago, the student council convened to discuss something they'd all noticed – life on campus was starting to repeat itself. They'd all had conversations that they'd had before, and while they'd realized it, the people they'd spoken to had seemed completely oblivious. They'd come to no conclusion that day, but agreed to watch for others who might have realized it was happening.

In time, they'd gathered not only all the council members, but several others – Nanami and Tsuwabuki, as well as Miki's sister Kozue, Nanami's friend Keiko, and Shiori, someone Juri knew but apparently didn't wish to speak of.

The small group had discussed the strange happenings and tried to figure out what could be causing them. When Juri brought up that they hadn't received any letters from Ends of the World for some time, Nanami had suggested seeing if he was in the tower.

Miki still remembered the looks that the others gave her that day. He'd done the same, wondering how Nanami could have known who Ends of the World was and where he lived. It seemed impossible – they'd only received letters, and none of them had suggested that Ends of the World could be nearby, let alone on campus. Nanami claimed she didn't know how she knew, only that she'd remembered something.

Not something, Miki thought. Someplace. A place at the top of the tower at the center of campus, several stories above where the council held its meetings. An apartment of many floors, with giant rooms and tall windows, and a planetarium projector in the center of the topmost floor. It sounded like something from a dream. But with nothing better to go on, they'd followed her suggestion.

When they entered the elevator, they found that there were buttons that hadn't been there before. The button for the highest floor took them to the room Nanami had told them of, the red-floored chamber. And not long after that, they'd found that they were not the only ones in this place.

Kanae, a young woman who claimed she was engaged to a man named Akio who was to be the next chairman, said she'd been living there for nearly a week. She didn't know why. She didn't know where the chairman was. She didn't know why she'd come there. But she'd been cooking for quite some time, and was so happy to have people to share the place with, it was so big and she was so lonely sometimes. . . .

Miki took a deep breath, drawing himself out of his memories. In time, he and the rest of the council had come to realize many things. Not only had they received letters from Ends of the World before, long before, they'd played their way through the dueling game many, many times. Each time, the prize was a young woman with purple hair. Each time, one of them would fight the others and triumph over them all. Each time, the victor was known as the one engaged to the Rose Bride.

And each time, none of them recalled what happened once the game was over. But they remembered the game starting again, and again, and again. Some of them had tried to count the time, to see how many years it amounted to. None of them had ever finished counting, for reasons they didn't speak of.

"They're as bad as we are," Juri murmured, looking out the window again. Nanami's assurance of their safety hung in the air between them, a doubtful promise. "And they won't even know."

Miki shook his head. "They're not like us, Juri. We found out. And we know what's happened to us."

"We don't know!" Nanami stepped up and shoved her way between Juri and Miki, glaring at them each in turn. Behind her, Tsuwabuki protested, but she ignored him. "How can you say we know, when we haven't learned a thing?"

"But we have learned, Miss Nanami," Tsuwabuki protested. He took a step forward, then hesitated. "We know this is where Ends of the World was, and we haven't started to forget. That's something, isn't it?"

"Something, perhaps." Juri gave both Nanami and Tsuwabuki an even look. "But there's no guarantee that the same won't happen to us. Even with all that we've remembered, we could still forget."

Juri didn't show it, but Miki could guess her meaning. All that they'd remembered. . . .

It seemed that the duel game's nature was to bring chaos and upheaval into their lives. Miki remembered a driving need to win, an overwhelming desire to be the victor that trumped every other emotion he'd ever had. During one game, he'd sabotaged Saionji's sword to make hm lose, and nearly crippled Touga. And yet . . . in the next game, somehow, he'd been so weak that a minor injury from his first and only duel kept him in the school's infirmary for nearly a week.

Who was Ends of the World, to have done all this to them? And why had he enjoyed . . . playing with them so much? Try as he might, Miki couldn't think of any other way to explain it.

"You could forget," Nanami said, bitterness in her voice. She crossed her arms over her chest. "I won't. My brother--" She shook her head, once, and needed say nothing more.

Miki nodded, and gave her a sympathetic look. Some of the things he remembered about, and with, Kozue still made him uncomfortable at the very least.

As though on cue, Touga strolled into the chamber. He wore his council uniform still, the shirt half-unbuttoned to expose his chest. Some things would not change, it seemed; of all of them, Touga seemed the least worried about their situation, and if anything he'd remembered disturbed him at all, he didn't show it. Behind him, Keiko stood in the room's doorway, waiting there as though she had to be invited in. Her eyes never left Touga.

"Good morning," Touga said, his voice deep and mellow, sounding like he'd only just risen from sleep. "Has staring out the window taught you anything?"

Miki turned and stood up straight. In nearly all his memories, Touga was head of the student council, and the habit of treating him as the one in charge had proven hard to break. "The same thing's happening every day now, Touga. It's been the same for a week."

"Not that you seem to care," Nanami snapped.

"Such harsh words," Touga said, giving her a lazy smile. "Don't blame me for your memories. It was what you wanted--"

"Enough, Touga," Juri said, her voice sharp. Miki knew that look in her eyes; he'd seen it every time the two of them were in the same room ever since they'd come here. In a quiet moment, Juri had confided in him – during one game, Juri had borne an unrequited love for Touga, and it seemed she couldn't forgive that. Whether she hadn't forgiven Touga or herself, Miki didn't know. "None of us wanted what we did. We were being toyed with."

"You say that," Touga said with a casual shrug, "but I don't seem to remember many protests. From any of you."

Miki tuned out their argument; Touga often argued with Juri and Nanami both. He seemed to enjoy baiting them. Now that Miki considered it, Touga seemed to enjoy baiting everyone, though Saionji had been his favorite target lately. Saionji had just short of imprisoned himself in one of the lower floors of the tower; only Kanae saw him when she went down to bring him tea and food.

Of everyone, Touga seemed to have spared only Kozue. Miki decided he didn't want to know why.

Something Nanami said brought Miki's attention back to them. "And we can't leave! There's no way out! You know that!"

Miki nodded. It was true. Just over a week ago, he and Juri had discovered something bizarre and worrisome on the edges of campus. Campus itself was falling apart, breaking around the edges, with only a strange, purple-fringed darkness filled with stars on the other side.

What this meant, Miki couldn't guess. But staying in the tower seemed like a reasonable option for now.

"Perhaps you can't," Touga said, then turned and walked away, wrapping an arm around Keiko's waist when he reached the door.

Miki looked to Juri as Nanami fumed silently. They shared another glance, then looked back out across campus. He didn't bother checking his watch or his notes. He'd been watching for months. He knew the patterns wouldn't change. The people wouldn't change.

Nothing would.

"You remember her, don't you," Juri said.

Miki nodded. "I wish I knew where she was. Maybe she'd be able to figure out what's going on."

Juri shook her head, and a small, sad smile reached her lips. "I don't think so. She wasn't the type to figure things out. She was . . . she would do something about this, about all of this."

"I hope so," Miki said. They didn't need to say the girl's name; they both knew it. The only one who'd worn a rose ring who wasn't here, the one they'd all forgotten about once she fought the final duel. The only one they'd all fought and, in time, they all lost to her. Even Nanami had joined that game, and judging by the others' memories, even those who hadn't been on the council had played a role.

Even Kanae, it seemed, though it was hard to get her to talk about much of anything.

"Utena Tenjou," Miki whispered, as though speaking her name could somehow change things.

"Where are you?"


A world and more away, Desire floated within the heart of a great monolith in the shape of itself, and knew all that transpired at Ohtori. Desire saw its creation, a world without a ruler, doomed to repeat itself until it fell apart, all those within it gone forever.

And Desire knew what had transpired, and Desire considered the consequences, and Desire realized what could come of this. And Desire grew intrigued.