From the quarters of the First Chancellor, Damus looked over the new city. The smell of boiling tar and ready pitch wafted up to the citadel. More than any other city, new Ivrea was prepared for the invasion. Would the Troll King take the bait? That remained to be seen. He was sure that all the preparations were in place, but since the strange communication through the Disk his mind sometimes wandered. Turning from the window he entered his sanctum. In its centre was the Dreamseat. Since his magics had reached new levels of power he had spent more and more time in that chair.

Probing the minds of the powerful, easing the fears of the doubting; dreamwalking was almost like entering another realm, where the hopes and fears of the living were most vividly manifest. The elven blood that ran through his veins allowed him to work and do magics while the world slept. It was in the quiet times when he became the puppetmaster and the sleeping the unknowing marionettes. He had little time however to perfect the work. Events were closing in, soon all his works would be tested as never before. He thought of the Manticorum and wondered how many would live to see the next spring.

Shrugging off the melancholy that threatened to settle in, Damus lowered himself into the Dreamseat. The chamber lights dimmed, the door and window became solid walls. Elven voices filled the chamber with a quiet chant. Damus voice joined with theirs, incanting the chords of sorcery, summoning the power of the enchantment.

Damalanthus stepped into the dreamscape. He walked over to the tower window and looked into the night sky. Millions of stars filled the void, each one a dreaming mind. Clouds of all hues and colours spanned the heavens. Looking down he saw New Ivrea as a small dot at the base of the now immensely tall tower, amazed at how people perceived things. Clouds wrapped around the tower, dark and stormy like the war that was brewing, and beyond the walls of New Ivrea he could see hordes of dark and formless monsters. They pressed against the walls like angry waves, fears breaking against the hope keeping them at bay.

Movement in the dreamscape was a matter of invention. Damus concentrated and his flying carpet appeared, lifting slowly off the floor. With a woop Damus rocketed out the window, banking up into the heavens, New Ivrea becoming just another star in the great void. In a blink his dreaming mind had traversed the void, and a darker star began to take on shape and definition. The clouds soon became stormy seas, and in the distance a gloomy island began to take form. Having come here before, Damus showed some caution, for a great Raven circled the island. He had tried to come here before to visit the dreams of Souriin and his Necromancers, but the bird had barred his passage. A flock of ravens had risen up from the jungle to pick away at the carpet, almost casting Damus loose into the void. He halted just off the shore, the raven circling idly over the beach. The beach itself was strewn with bones, and the stench of death wafted from the isle. 

Concentrating again, Damus extended the invitation to meet in the dreamscape. The bones on the beach began to animate, crawling over each other, reaching out into the sea. Soon a pier of bones had formed, ending just before the carpet. 

"Souriin Draco," Damus called into the mists, "Souriin, the time is upon us. We must talk."

She approached the Master of the Ceremonies slowly, her dress hardly moving with her footsteps, making it look like she was gliding on air. The musicians, hired permanently for the entertainment in Griffon Keep stopped their music in a final wail of notes. Her voice echoed across the hall in a loud hiss: "Tell Damalanthas that my Master will be in the University library two days hence at noon."

She gestured, and spoke a word of power, causing those who recognized a spell to duck beneath tables. Smoke covered her, and she was gone...