I hadn't gotten a single review in seven months. A big thank-you to NoahTheOverlander and guest and Guest for changing that. I'm glad to see that someone still likes this story. The rest of you guys were all giving me the silent treatment—I was starting to wonder.

Also (I'm going to be vague here), has no one noticed? Or am I actually pretty good at this? It's been, like, eleven chapters.

Events in this chapter are inspired by To Soar into the Sunset (from the A/N at the end of the last chapter), The Next Generation (a part of the Lightning and Death Itself continuum by Cke1st—thank you!), and a real actual non-fanfiction trilogy that I will name next chapter so as not to ruin it. I hope.

We're getting there! We're getting there! WE'RE GETTING THERE!

Prepare for more crazies, and enjoy. Please. By all means.

Part 4

Cover of Darkness

Chapter 25

Sound Sleeper

Gregor felt a pleasant warmth against his closed eyelids, and the bright light turned reddish-orange as it filtered through them. A nice breeze drifted over him.

Something nudged him. It was roughish and heavy, with a few pointy bits. Gregor paid it no heed. Whatever it was, it was going to have to wait politely for him to finish basking in the sun.

After a moment, it nudged him again.

Rude.

::Hey! Come on, Gregor. We don't have all day.::

Reluctantly, and after a long moment, he opened his eyes. Everything looked greener than usual, because his eyes had been seeing the bright reddish-orange eyelid-light for a while. Dreki was standing there, about to poke him again with his paw.

::He lives! Now, come on. You're going to have to walk, like, fifty feet.:: Seeing Gregor's expression, Dreki rolled his eyes and sarcastically snarked, ::Yeah, I know, so much effort. I thought we reptiles were supposed to be lazy, but you're clearly putting us to shame. Want me to carry you, O "Efficient" One?::

Then something clicked, and Gregor stopped short. "Wait. We're in the Overland?" He hadn't felt sunlight in a long, long time.

::Yeah, that's right, what gave it away? The sun? The grass? Trees, maybe? Or was it the birds?::

Gregor didn't even try to process the idea that the Iphuryn knew about all these things. He started walking instead, while Dreki led the way. "This is a dream, isn't it?"

::No. Well, yes. Well, it's complicated. We call it a hyperdream.:: There was a pause. ::Sorry I was being so... caustic. Kind of crabby right now. I think it had some kind of venom.::

Venom? It?

Oh, right. The Dark Death and all that.

He'd actually forgotten.

Hmm. It was definitely a dream, Gregor decided, judging by the conspicuous lack of that big slash across his torso.

He was being surprisingly calm, considering... all of that.

"Are the others... here? In this dream?"

::Hmm?:: Dreki seemed distracted. ::Oh, no, they're all awake. We're the only ones sleeping right now. Us and Joshua, and Luxa. Okay, maybe not sleeping, more like... unconscious. But it works either way.::

Now this was good news. "They're here? And alive?"

Dreki motioned forward, and as they turned a corner, Gregor realized he had been hearing the sound of a small waterfall without actually noticing. In front of them, the sun shone into a small clearing among the trees. A cascade of white spray dropped down a modest cliff and landed in a pool of silvery water before flowing away down a small stream.

Joshua was in the water, looking quite relaxed and staring directly at the sun, which didn't seem to bother him. He was wearing the last thing Gregor had seen him in—Underland clothes—but they looked dry. Honestly, though, when it came to anything related to Iphuryn, Gregor was already beyond further amazement, so the dryness didn't really matter.

::Well, actually, only Joshua is here.::

"Where's Luxa?"

::Luxa? I couldn't manage to invite her into the dream. Usually other species have trouble participating, but you and Joshua are a special exception because you've spent so much time with us that I think your minds are, like, coming into sync with ours or something. I mean, Joshua can sort of use thought-speech. I don't know; our kind doesn't deal with humans very often. But anyway, about Luxa. She might not be here, but I can tell she's alive, and asleep. Or unconscious.::

Unconscious. But alive. Well, it could be worse. A lot worse. Gregor was okay with this.

A thought came to him. Gregor looked down at himself and concentrated hard. After a moment, his clothes changed color.

Ha! Of course! It was a dream, after all. Maybe that explained why Joshua's clothes were dry.

He tried it again.

Then he made a bucket of water appear, and splashed it in Joshua's face.

The latter spluttered and coughed and wiped water out of his eyes, noticing him for the first time. "Ugh. Happy to—sniff—see you, too. Hard to believe this is a dream when—cough, cough— when the feeling of water up your—cough—nose is so real. Bleh."

Gregor grinned, and made the bucket disappear.

::Well, you caught on quickly,:: Dreki observed with a snort. He stepped into the water.

Gregor noticed that a faint purple smokiness seemed to be wafting up where Dreki made contact with the water, and was drifting downstream in the gentle current. Then he noticed it was coming from Joshua too.

"Uh, what's that purple stuff about?" he asked.

::What? Purple...? Oh, is it coming from me and Joshua?::

Gregor nodded.

::I see it as greenish. But it doesn't really matter; your brain is just filling in the details. The water is healing the damage from the Dark Death's venom. Of course, it's not actually healing our physical bodies,:: he explained. ::It's just a dream, and dreams obviously can't do that. The only things it could be healing are our minds, so that's what the venom must have affected. I guess it would make sense, if the Dark Death uses mind-control, that it would have a venom that affects the mind. Come on in.::

Gregor stepped into the water, and was surprised to find that it was warm, and... sort of delicate. It didn't really feel like normal water. But it probably didn't matter. Maybe his brain was just filling in the details. So maybe, for Dreki or Joshua, the water was fizzy or something. Weird, how they saw things in different ways. But they always agreed on what the things were. Like, when he had just splashed Joshua with the bucket, he had definitely gotten a reaction. And then Gregor started wondering whether everyone saw the same colors and stuff, in real life. Maybe, when Joshua saw the color red, he was really seeing what Gregor would call brown, but was thinking of it as red because that was what red looked like to him.

Nope. He stopped thinking about that. That line of thinking was definitely going to lead to a massive headache. Ugh.

It probably didn't even matter anyway—

Nope. Stop thinking about that.

Gregor looked down at himself. No creepy purple stuff. So he must not have gotten any of the venom. That was good.

Okay, now a multitude of small bubbles were beginning to appear on Joshua, like the bubbles that appeared when you were watching a pot slowly start to boil. Should he even ask?

He asked.

::Now that, I don't know about. That worries me,:: said Dreki, staring at Joshua as if the boy had sprouted an extra head.

"Okay, okay," said Joshua. "Can you just explain more about these... ult... meg... no, hyper... was it hyper? Yeah, hyper... dream... things?"

Dreki closed his eyes in a longsuffering sort of way. ::Yes. Those. It's... primarily a form of communication; we can share dreams with anyone around the world as long as all parties are asleep. There is no known distance limit, like there is with mind-speech.::

"So why is this dream taking place in..." Joshua gestured vaguely at the scenery around them, making sure the action splashed some water into Gregor's face.

::The Overland? Right. This place is what we call the Healing Grounds. When someone is unconscious, or injured, or mentally unstable, we bring them here. That's also why you'll never find an Iphuryn who's legitimately insane.::

"Huh. And what is this pool called? The fountain of youth, or something?"

::Unfortunately, no. In truth, our lifespans are not much longer than that of a human. This entire place is just called the Healing Grounds—the specific features don't have names, and vary depending on who's participating in the dream—but most of the time, the setting is just the place where you're currently sleeping, and if someone else in the dream is in a different place then they'll look like they're surrounded by... kind of a hazy bubble of their area. The Healing Grounds are a special exception. Well, actually, everyone can meet at the same place if they agree on it, and at least one of them knows what the place is like.::

"It depends on who's in the dream? Is someone, like, hosting the whole thing? I mean, whose dream is it?"

Joshua was asking the questions, and they were good questions, so Gregor just listened.

::The dream is... initiated by one of the participants,:: Dreki said slowly, ::but it doesn't belong to any one person.::

"So... where's the dream, uh, hosted?"

Dreki shrugged, which was such a human action that it threw Gregor for a moment. ::I don't know,:: he admitted. ::Maybe it's a collaboration between everyone in the dream.::

"And you can still have regular dreams, right? Like, non-hyper dreams?"

::Oh, definitely. I don't know about humans, but for us, dreams can be pretty surreal.::

"Oh, tell me about it..." Joshua muttered. "That's true for us, too. Of course, there's the occasional nightmare—"

Thankfully, before they started going down that road, they were interrupted.

::Hey, everyone,:: said Nichron, who had appeared out of nowhere.

::Late as usual,:: Dreki heckled, but Gregor could tell he was glad to see his fellow flier.

::Things are mostly okay in the real world,:: Nichron reported. ::We flew about six hours before we stopped to rest. Simon got the idea to head for the colony. Hyperion and Iapetus were able to carry you:: —that was to Dreki— ::and of all the fliers, Aurora and I were hurt the worst. Well, other than you, of course. We just fell a good distance, and we're pretty much fine. You, on the other hand, have got a nasty gash across your side, and so does Joshua. The cuts are lined up, actually. There's heavy bruising, too.::

"Yeah, we got hit by the same spike-thing," Joshua offered. The boy visibly winced.

::Luckily, nothing seems to be broken,:: Nichron told him. ::Your wound closed surprisingly quickly, at least according to Arian. But she said it "looks weird", and even I could tell that you have a high fever.:: Then the flier looked down and saw the water bubbling around Joshua. Or whatever. It looked like bubbling for Gregor, but maybe Nichron saw something different.

Joshua, like Gregor, seemed to be unreasonably calm about this. He frowned for a moment, then asked Dreki, "Would I be right in saying that you guys heal very quickly?"

::Yes, that's right. Our bodies have an interesting... vitality.::

"Your blood definitely went into m—ugh, this is weird—into my injury a few hours ago, right?"

Dreki grimaced. ::Definitely. The same spike hit both of us. So what does that—oh.::

"Yep. My system is probably rejecting and trying to fight off your... blood." Joshua looked thoroughly nauseated.

There was silence for a moment.

The deep, terrible kind of silence.

At last, Nichron said, ::Joshua... I can almost guarantee that your system isn't going to win.::

There was a pause as the dark-haired boy absorbed that.

For a moment, he seemed to struggle to find the right words, but then just gave up and asked bluntly, "Am I going to die?"

Gregor's breath hitched.

Dreki seemed to deflate. He took a shaky breath, and answered softly and horribly.

::I don't know.::

That statement, though truthful, carried a terrible finality.

Gregor didn't know what to say, or what to do. He was frozen.

But Joshua wasn't. He slowly straightened, and held his hand up, palm-out, toward Dreki. The flier stared poignantly at it, then closed his eyes and gently pushed forward so that his muzzle rested against his rider's palm. They stayed like that for a moment, and when they separated again, it struck Gregor how much this action held the same weight as clasping a bond's claw in your hand. It was so fitting.

Then Gregor was launching himself at his friend, holding him like he could never let go as he saw all the good and horrible times they had shared together flash past him like rays of dying sunlight filtering through cold leafless trees. He didn't know whether he was crying; he might have been. But his entire world had suddenly shrunk to the slim, bony life slowly ticking away in his arms.

Then the world came back to him. He realized that his throat was gritty, and something seemed to be lodged in his stomach.

"Gregor," Joshua said quietly. "If you don't mind, I've always wanted to know about your adventures in the Underland before this."

Gregor wouldn't have refused even if his life depended on it.

So they sat down into the sparkling water, and over the course of a few hours he told it all. It was an eye-opening experience not only for Joshua and the Iphuryn, but for Gregor too, because for so long he had tried not to think too much about his own story. Joshua interrupted him many times with questions, but the Iphuryn stayed in the background and rarely interfered, doubtless feeling the weight of the situation. Though they sat in the water for a long time, they never got wrinkly or stiff.

And then, before he quite realized it, he was done. Now there was nothing hidden, no part of Gregor that he had not made known. And it was a breathtaking feeling.

Joshua spoke.

"There's one thing you still don't know about me. I've never told anyone. But you should know."

Gregor nodded mutely.

"My mom wasn't the only one who died in that car crash. Gregor, I was... am... a twin."

Despite himself, Gregor's jaw dropped.

"You... you're... you hav—you had...?"

Joshua nodded minutely, eyes and voice distant. "His name was Derek. He was the older one, just by a few minutes, but he took it upon himself to be the leader, between the two of us. I was as close to him as... as I am to you now. We were so energetic, got into trouble all the time... Mom always had so much trouble, trying to control the both of us." He said it quietly, without enthusiasm.

"And then, one day, we were on the way home from a trip... I fell asleep on the ride home... and it all went wrong. I woke up in the hospital." He blinked slowly. "Alone."

Gregor couldn't speak.

Joshua shook his head distantly. "I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror, because I saw his face staring back at me."

Dreki had had enough. He wordlessly curled up around the boy and wrapped him in his wings, rumbling softly.

"I guess the moment I really started to heal... was the day I met you."

Gregor could only stare at his face. Then he turned his eyes and looked at the water, flowing slowly but inexorably away.

Dreki slowly breathed out a horrible breath. ::My blood is killing you.::

Joshua turned to face the flier. "Don't think of it that way," he said softly, working a hand free to trace the edges of Dreki's ear-flaps.

Gregor heard his friend take a deep breath before addressing both Iphuryn. "What about your stories?"

Dreki blinked expressively. ::Well,:: he said, his thought-voice sounding so very tired, ::instead of telling the whole thing, which might take too long, let me just try sending it directly. I hope this works.:: His eyes lost focus.

And after a few seconds, Joshua inhaled sharply, whipping his head up to stare at the two Iphuryn as if he had always known them and yet, somehow, as if he had never seen them before.

"Wow," he marveled. "That's incredible."

And he wasn't referring to the fact that it had worked.

There was silence for a moment.

The deep, fulfilled kind of silence.

They basked in the feeling of knowing and being known so fully by people they trusted with their lives. If Gregor had tried to describe it, he probably would have failed. Even though he wasn't even the one who Dreki had told his story to.

After nearly a full minute, Joshua took another deep breath, and shifted. Dreki released him, but he stayed at the flier's side, leaning against the tough hide.

"So," Joshua said, different-colored eyes moving around the group. "Anything else we should talk about?" His voice was louder now, and stronger. Resolved.

::Right. Guys...:: Nichron spoke up. ::You know what I was talking about, after the other cutter army passed us? You know, way back near the beginning, when Simon and Iapetus fell. I saw something in the cutters' minds... I think what I said was "some kind of odd presence in their minds that seems to be controlling them." I thought it was some kind of command from their colony, but now I think different.::

Dreki understood immediately. ::They're being controlled by the Dark Death?::

Nichron was silent for a moment. ::I'd assumed they seemed so mechanical because cutters are just minions... but I think I underestimated just how fitting that description is...::

::So they're being controlled by the Dark Death. If we take it out, will it knock the cutters out of the war?:: Dreki mused. ::Or even—if the Dark Death is controlling the other cutter-allied species too—could it end the war completely if we somehow managed to kill it?::

"There's no way it could be that easy," Joshua decided. "But it would definitely be a start."

"I guess we'll have to find out," said Gregor.

He noticed, with only a little bit of alarm, that Joshua's form seemed to be fading. He didn't seem so solid now.

"You'll have to find out," Joshua corrected him.

For the first time in hours, Gregor could speak without his throat feeling like it was closing up. "Yeah."

Joshua addressed Dreki. "If I could do this again, it wouldn't even be a decision."

Dreki's face slowly changed into what might have been a smile, and he blinked once. ::See you on the other side, Josh.::

His friend was literally fading away, so slowly and yet so quickly. Gregor couldn't quite process it.

Joshua smiled softly, turning back to face him as his form was still just barely visible, and whispered five words that he would carry forever.

"Thank you, Gregor. For everything."

And then he was gone.

(Sorry, I'm not sorry.)

I actually wanted to write this chapter using right-aligned text, to set it apart as being a dream, but sadly that isn't a thing you can do.

The way I'm planning it so far, the hyperdreams won't be a major thing in the story; they'll just be a kind of side gimmick. But we'll see.

Hey, I have an idea. Should I make chapters viewable to you guys while they're still under construction? Like, set up a Google doc that anyone with the link can view, or something? That might be interesting. Tell me your ideas!