Lymn and Cherri

The sight was familiar to Lymn. Though the goddess Oriana had given the dream-wolf a second death, Lymn didn't feel fury or frustration at seeing her again. Instead, she padded forth leisurely, knowing what she'd have to do- again.

The goddess looked up from a man's prone form, his body contorted around a miniature star. But he would not die, not here. Oriana's visage twisted to face the wolf. "Hello, little dead dream." she said confidently, her grin inhumanly broad as her third eye peeled open. "Your death was the day of my birth, and I don’t mind repeating history-"

Lymn rushed forward as an interruption, stepping on the edges of the nightmare as Oriana assaulted her with azure magics. But Lymn arced around their cold light, moving outside of conscious space. Reemerging into awareness, the wolf was upon Oriana, sinking her teeth into her throat. Despite the power the goddess had held on the Plane of Chaos, here in the Dreamscape, she was just a figment. Her ending was an anticlimax at best, just a moment in a sleeping man's nightmare. A sharp jerk of Lymn's head, and Oriana's form broke, becoming hollow, limp, and flat. The seeming goddess was but a bloodless echo of the sleeping man's memories, the embodiment of his trauma.

The man's mind collapsed, frayed but whole. His name was familiar enough to Lymn: Zaamassal. He had helped Lymn find her reincarnation, and so she stood guard over his dreams. She knew that no matter how transient a nightmare was, its notions could become reflected in life. Of course, this was doubly true for a man such as he. But a sleeping terror could always hold the seed of waking disaster for a vulnerable mind.

But there was no time for nostalgia, and she stepped back into the fringes of the Dreamscape. There were countless troubles and worries creasing sleeping minds, and it was her duty to guide them. Though the Prime World echoed most strongly for her, there were endless dreams from myriad planes laid before her senses. A curiosity was sparked by Oriana's memory, of how dread threats could emerge in even the hinterlands of reality. Far from Indines and its neighbors, she could smell something bent and long-lost, something that broke the rules of the great games between worlds. It could be left to the people of this foreign realm, of course. The waking were resourceful, and they might end this disaster before it troubled any other plane.

Or, perhaps, she considered, they could use the fangs of a guardian who defied the rules as well...