Chapter 24
The lucid dreamer walks a dangerous line between reality and fiction. If we can take control, take action voluntarily, within that unconscious unreality that exists inside our dreaming minds, then the fuzzy haze of dreaming gives way to the more palpable senses which most of us associate only with the literal and the three-dimensional. Dreams are made up of feeling, thought, ideas, and therefore are always composed more of the impression of a thing than the actual physical substance. Once the dreaming mind gains awareness within dreams to the point that those fluctuating shadows of ideas and fledgling thoughts become congruous with the tangible then the certainty of dreams being mere illusion becomes uncertain. The irony of this is that through our own awareness of the dreaming state we give credibility to the dream itself, thereby transcending the dream's intangible nature through the mere act of lucid observation. It is the proverbial Schrödinger's Cat- until observed lucidly; the dream both does and does not exist. Once observed lucidly, it becomes the choice of the dreamer to determine what is and isn't real. However, if a dream can be made into a reality, that posits the question of what might become of the reality which had been left behind in favor of the dream? It stands to reason that the transition can be applied both directions, which opens a myriad of avenues of thought which would appeal to even the most casual existentialist in exciting and exotic ways.
Up until that point, Link had only entered the Dreamworld by choice, save for the time he had been cursed by Nyarlath in the castle dungeon. When he laid himself down to sleep at night he had still enjoyed the normal tranquility of everyday dreaming. He was, therefore, very surprised to find himself standing over himself, watching lucidly as he slumbered quite naturally upon the stone floor of the little jail. He had drifted off listening to Zig's story, his boots discarded near the bars of his cell, and his hands folded behind his head to cushion it from the harsh stone floor.
"You're alive, aren't you?"
The unexpected voice startled him. He whirled around, scanning the empty cells for a source. Peculiarly, he saw no sign of the shades of Zelda and the others, as he had in the other incarnations of the Dreamworld. Yet he was not alone in the little jail. One other person occupied the cell which had, in the Waking World, contained the single zombified resident of the lonely little prison. It was not a re-dead, but a man, short and meek, with a vest of tarnished leather, and a wide-brimmed hat which hung down in front of his eyes. He was lounging in the corner of his cell, much in the manner the solitary re-dead had, his elbow hung casually on his one bent knee.
"Were you talking to me?" replied Link.
"Do you see anyone else around?" said the man, without looking up at him. The voice was nasal and contained a singular, whining quality. It reminded Link of the high-pitched squeaking of a mouse, molded comically into language.
"Who are you?" said Link, taking a few steps closer, so he could peer through the bars at the dark little man.
The hat brim did not so much as quiver, and Link could not see the mouth of the speaker as he made another whining utterance from the shade of his slumped posture, "I am Lysander, the famous bard, though I don't expect you would have heard of me. I have been in this jail cell for the past ten thousand years."
"That's impossible," said Link, unable to resist cracking a stupid grin, "You can't have possibly been here for ten thousand years. No one can live that long."
"Impossible?" said Lysander, and though he still did not lift his eyes to meet Link's, the boy could feel the mocking demeanor of the self-proclaimed bard as he went on, "Curious that one who walks among the dead and the dreaming as freely as a wolf walks among sheep should be so closed minded, using words like impossible. After all, possibility is wholly relative to your perspective. Alas, you are partially correct; I have not lived ten thousand years. Indeed, it would be more accurate to surmise that I have not lived in ten thousand years, that ten thousand long years have I not lived within the confines of this claustrophobic cell, and that you are my first company in as much time."
"What are you talking about?" said Link, beginning to feel somewhat off put by the stranger. It was something in his enigmatic and flowery mode of speech, and the lilting whinny of his squeaking voice that made Link feel as though he would rather not have to speak to the bard at all. However, there was no one else around, and Link had questions that needed answering.
"Isn't it plain enough to paint on?" said Lysander, "I've gone out with my boots on, rode a league on the pale horse, paid for my last ferry ride, though I haven't thus far been able to redeem my ticket."
"Wait a minute," said Link, an inkling of understanding kindling in his mind, which was not accustomed to deciphering euphemisms or unraveling colorful metaphors, "Are you trying to say that you're…"
"Dead?" said Lysander, "As a doornail, I believe is the cliché, although I have never met any sort of nail that seemed particularly alive, door related or otherwise."
"So you're a ghost then, or what?" said Link, skeptically.
"Not precisely," replied Lysander, "Ah, to be a poe, and take my very name from the melancholy nature of prose and pentameter, and drift most freely from cemetery to cemetery to bask in the radiant despair of those who still live and breathe. Even that sort of anguish seems a savory thing when looked upon from the prison of my multi-millennial confinement. Ghost I am not, though I count myself among the dead, I lack that singular incorporeal quality which is enjoyed by the less world-bound of the posthumous."
"You aren't telling me that you are the re-dead I saw in that cell in the Waking World, are you?" said Link. His eyes narrowed suspiciously at the stranger.
"O! Cruel fate! Alack, alas, and alay!" wailed the bard, "I am too consumed by my own sorrow, I can scarcely form the words, but I must tell thee that there is truth in thine supposition. I am that same wretched creature you saw here in this very spot in the world that people call 'awake'. If you have seen that dismal place, then I should make a supposition of mine own and spake it thusly: You have seen others, and many of them. They go about day by day in blissful ignorance, never suspecting the futility of their damned existence. I alone bear that burden, and so my torment is made ten thousand fold of theirs, once for each monotonous year so spent. They pay me no heed, and do not know the reality of their fate. What is reality though? Who's to say if the real world lies here or there or anywhere at all? If I were not cursed with the awareness of my grim position, I would probably be content much the same as they. I dare not speculate what similar ignorance might shield the minds of the living and conscious from equally incomprehensible horrors lurking on the outskirts of 'reality'."
"I'm not so sure I understand," said Link, his head spinning with the unnecessary complexity of the bard's squeaking monologues. Link had thought that Zelda spoke eloquently, but Lysander seemed so bent on flexing his lexicon that his speech became a labyrinthine parody of eloquence, serving more to confuse the boy than to convey meaning. He hazarded a guess: "Are you saying that all of the re-dead think they are alive? That they are somehow trapped here?"
"I could not have said it better!" replied Lysander. Link was sure that this was true.
"I saw them," said Link, reflecting on the horde of bizarre zombies and the odd way they had pantomimed the everyday behaviors of urban folk, "But what caused this? How did they become like that? And why are you any different?"
"That is a tragic tale," said the bard, and finally the wobbly brim of his wide hat shifted upwards, and Link saw his gaunt and sallow face, its ruddy sockets drooping in the manner of a basset hound. Brown irises shimmered from the sunken orbits, and the whole effect of Lysander's face was one of a man nearly in tears.
He went on, "The cause is a difficult thing to place. Perhaps the best thing to attribute their pitiable state to is decadence and pride. Once this was a great city, and therefore it is a comfortable delusion for its denizens to believe in its enduring greatness. How? I do not pretend to understand the means, for the nature of their perpetrator defies understanding in the most hopeless of ways. Why am I different? Why is anyone what they are? If you mean to ask how I came to be different, for I was not always so, then I must tell you that I have always been a dreamer of some considerable proficiency. My father often criticized me for being slothful, but to dream is to exercise the mind and the soul! Some of the greatest works of authorship that have ever been transcribed were born in dreams. Thus, after a time I became instinctively savvy to the unnatural existence I and my contemporaries were leading. At first it was mere suspicion, and if I could I would turn back these ten thousand years and leave my curiosity un-satiated, but too often does the lure of the unknown and the mysterious win out over the security of the mundane and the familiar. To put it briefly, I stole a glance behind the veil, and since then I have been unable to ignore what previously was beyond my scope of perception, and with the expanding of my perspective I have become eternally and miserably aware of what I really am, and what this city really is."
"Who would do something like that to an entire city? And why?" said Link, "It doesn't make sense. What does anyone get out of it?"
"It was meant to be a source of power," said Lysander, "When the Dream Engine was built it was claimed to be revolutionary; a powerful stride forward for the evolution of industry and technology. They said it would operate inexhaustibly, with the power of a million coal furnaces. For a time, it seemed to work, but it was never meant to be. Too proud were the people of Kadath- they knew not how dark the energies were that they sought to command! It was doomed from the start, though pride had blinded all those who could have stopped it. By the time I noticed something was wrong it was too late, the damage had been done. Even if the process could be reversed now, it would not save the people of this city. The best they could hope for is peace in death."
"What is a dream engine?"
"A rare piece of magical technology. It siphons magic off the souls of the dead or the dreaming, converting it to physical energy, or so I've come to understand. On a smaller scale, many useful feats can be accomplished with the use of such a device. For example, a dream engine could be used by a powerful magician to communicate with the dead directly. It would simply require that some major component of the physical remains be attached to the device… the brain, the heart or the skeleton usually."
Link was suddenly reminded of the peculiar spirit of Jabu-Jabu which had guided him in the depths of the Temple of the Mind, and the shining eldritch green veins which ran along the walls and ceilings of the dark and cavernous passages of that aquatic dungeon. He felt foolish for not noticing the similarities immediately upon seeing the ghastly green glow of the lamps which lined the streets of long-dead Kadath. However, Jabu-Jabu had not seemed dangerous in the slightest. There had to be more to it. Link pressed the issue,
"I think I may have come across a machine like that before," said Link, "But it didn't seem dangerous to me. For one thing, there wasn't an army of zombies surrounding it. What is the difference here?"
The bard tilted his head to the side in a contemplative fashion, sighing audibly as he allowed his mind to mull over the question. At last he said, "I think it could best be understood as a problem of scope. Mortal souls are ill fitted to endure the rigors of a dream engine. It drains some of the physical substance which ties the mortal to the living world each time the engine is used. Therefore, after a few uses, the power provided by a mortal soul is used up, and further contact becomes impossible. However, in the case of a less consumable being, a fairy or a nature spirit or a dragon, etcetera, the power source is more potent. There are still limitations, but even the most mundane of fairy folk could fuel a small dream engine for a considerable amount of time before its natural magic was exhausted. In the case of Kadath, an attempt was made to harness a spirit far greater than has been tried before or since."
"What sort of spirit?"
"One beyond understanding, yours or mine. Something so alien as to be wholly unrecognizable and so powerful as to be godlike in its potency." The gaunt cheeks and dark eyes of old Lysander grew grim and serious and gone was the wistful and frivolous melancholy of his disposition. There was something else there now, something darker and more intense.
He held Link's gaze in his own and said, "He- it –is one and many, and knows no true name, though it borrows thousands. I have known it to be sometimes Vaati called, or Aghanim who rent the throne of Hyrule, or Ganondorf the King of Thieves, who once rode a black horse out of the West and brought with him seven years of pestilence, or Demon King, whose name is Death and we in Kadath dare not speak, but none of these is truer than a reflection in a mirror, and none represent but a small fraction of the whole. Here it once was Nyarlathotep, he who is the Crawling Chaos and the Haunter of the Dark, the Lord of the Desert and the Black Pharaoh of the West, but known first as Nyarlathotep though this name holds no more meaning than the rest."
"How do you know of Hyrule if you have been in here for ten thousand years?" replied Link, distracted by the sudden mention of his native land so far away.
"The ravens," said Lysander, regaining his bland melancholy, "They are his. They are him. Just another facet of the Legion. They whisper to me through the window, and mock me with maddening news of the world beyond the wall. I know much, and yet I know little. Ten times has proud Hyrule come near to death, and ten times have I heard only the evil news, yet the world turns in spite, and though the black ravens mock I know that they must never have won entirely."
"There is an evil wizard that I've met named Nyarlath. He took the throne of Hyrule from the Royal Family, and I've been trying to help them get it back, but Nyarlathe… Nyarlatho… Nya…"
"Nyarlathotep-"
"Nyarlathotep, right, thanks," said Link, "I haven't heard that name before. Do you think they are the same person?"
"It is possible that the wizard you speak of is a facet of Nyarlathotep, as many such magicians are, but not the true Nyarlathotep. The potency of the beast is tapered by its prison in the Dream Engine, and the projections which it creates lack the substance of the original. They are but mere dreams; shades of the real beast, which still remains trapped here at the center of long-dead Kadath. As I have said, such reflections of the true evil have walked the world in many different forms, but never have they been aware of their true nature. It is most curious that one of them should choose to take a name so derivative of their progenitor. I would hazard to guess that it is not mere coincidence."
"This is all really confusing," said Link, "How can they be him and not be him at the same time? Where is this Nyarlathotep?"
"Dead and dreaming in the blasphemous tower at the heart of corrupted Kadath," replied the bard, "Yet it has been said: 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.' So grim and so true… I would that it was mine, but alas the prose comes to me from the tongues of the foul ravens, and I know not from whose pockets they plucked so fine a trinket."
"I think I have to see this Nyarlathotep for myself. I have a few questions to ask him," resolved the boy, bravely thumping his chest with a closed fist, "I don't care what kind of a monster he is. I have to help my friends get out of this place, and if he's in charge, then he's the one I need to talk to."
"If you gain an audience with Nyarlathotep it will not be by your choice, it will be by his," warned Lysander. The bard pulled himself to his feet, using the bars of his cell to brace himself. He seemed week, and his legs trembled beneath him precariously, so that Link thought he would crumple before him like a paper doll. He did not fall, however. He took two shuffling steps towards Link, pressing his face between the bars which divided them, and his eyes were wild and full of madness as he said, "Seek not the Crawling Chaos. Stare not into the face of the Black Pharaoh! You will find nothing but madness there, and he will twist your mind so that your actions and your thoughts are not your own. He will turn goodwill against you, and pave your path with deception and false promises."
"I'm sorry, but I'm not afraid," said Link, simply, "Please, can you tell me a way out of here? I have to get to that tower."
"Pitiable fool! Do you not see the world as I do?" cried the bard, "This place is no prison for you. Look there, upon the door to your sad cell! Open, as it has ever been. If you wish to leave you may do so in quite the normal fashion, but say not that Lysander the Bard neglected to warn you how dismal your fate will be if you go to that place."
Link spun around on his heel. The door was open! He hadn't noticed, so enthralled had he been with the enigmatic words of the pitiful bard. Even the larger metal door which sealed the individual cells in the greater vault stood open wide.
"Sorry, but I gotta go!" said Link at once. He waved to Lysander before scampering out of the cell and disappearing through the open vault door.
"Wait!" cried the bard, but the boy either didn't hear him or didn't listen. The old bard clicked his tongue disapprovingly, shaking his wide-brimmed hat back and forth.
"I didn't even get a chance to warn him about the temple guards," said Lysander to himself, "Too bad, I quite enjoyed having someone to talk to. Ah, well… he will be back before long, and if that's true he won't be leaving the next time."
He slumped back against the wall and reclined, once more letting the brim of his hat fall down before his eyes, and resumed his quiet and endless brooding.
NOTE: "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die." This sentence is a quote by H.P. Lovecraft. His works are public domain, and therefore legal to use, but I feel that it is important that I make it clear that I am by no means taking credit for this brilliant piece of writing, and merely borrowing it for thematic purposes.