The dreamscape assembled itself with more intention than usual.
No white stone room this time, nor pillars climbing beyond any reasonable height, nor columns of sunlight piercing gaps in the clouds.
Instead, the space manifested as a forest in early rain.
The trees were enormous, their canopies interlocking overhead in a dense weave that caught most of the rainfall and turned it into a slow drip along bark and branch. Beneath them, a campfire burned in a small clearing, its light steady despite the damp. The air carried the scent of wet earth and pine, along with that peculiar cleanliness that follows rain.
Six figures materialized within the clearing.
They did not arrive together. They appeared the way dreamers arrive at things: suddenly present, as though they had always been there and had only just noticed.
Each one looked down at themselves first, then at the fire, and finally at one another.
None of them looked like themselves.
A fennec fox sat nearest to the fire, ears wide and attentive, tail curled around its feet.
A red panda perched atop a low root nearby, small and bright-eyed, already turning her head in every direction with open curiosity.
An otter had settled beside the fire with a relaxed posture.
A rabbit sat further back, ears swiveling, her eyes moving between everyone with barely concealed interest.
On the opposite side of the clearing, a penguin stood with its flippers pressed close to its body, scanning the treeline.
Beside it, a meerkat had risen to its full height and was doing the same, though with considerably more visible tension.
The rain dripped.
The fire crackled.
None of them moved.
It was the otter who finally broke the silence.
"You are the lucky ones chosen this time around."
The voice was feminine and composed, carrying the air of someone who already knew enough to be at ease.
The meerkat turned toward her.
"May I ask where we are, and why we were brought here... miss?"
His voice was careful.
"You are within his realm."
It was not the otter who answered, but the fennec fox.
Her voice was cool and unhurried.
Her ears twitched a fraction, as if she was holding something back.
"As for why you are here... he is the better one to explain it."
"He?"
The penguin spoke for the first time.
Her voice was unexpectedly soft.
The red panda bounced once atop her root.
"There!"
A small paw shot upward.
Everyone looked up.
On a branch of an ancient tree, thick as a building's column and stretching from an impossibly wide trunk, sat two figures high enough that the details beneath them were swallowed by shade.
One was an enormous cat.
A leopard, perhaps.
Though the assumption required generosity.
Most of its shape was submerged in shadow, leaving only a pair of unblinking golden eyes with vertical pupils visible.
The other was a man.
He sat beside the shadowed creature with a bloodied spear resting across his shoulders, his posture loose.
The armor he wore had seen more than armor ever should.
Where the leopard was darkness and gold, the man was iron and dried crimson.
Together, they occupied that branch with the quiet authority of things that had simply always been there.
The campfire's light did not reach them.
They had their own.
Silence settled briefly.
The rain filled it.
Then a voice came from everywhere at once.
It was not particularly loud, nor did it seem to carry any effort. Yet when it reached them, they felt an encompassing warmth, as though they had been drawn into their mothers' embrace.
It gradually encroached upon their bodies, and by the time their minds caught up, it was already too late.
"Welcome, children."
None of them misattributed it.
It could only have come from the shadow upon the branch.
"To my humble abode."
The meerkat straightened.
The penguin went very still.
Even the fennec fox's ears shifted—the only tell she allowed herself.
It was the rabbit who spoke next.
Her feminine voice was curious and entirely unguarded.
"May we know who you are, mister...?"
The newcomers tensed.
The red panda covered her snout with both paws.
The otter's expression, limited by her face, somehow managed to resemble restrained amusement.
The golden eyes regarded the rabbit for a moment.
Then they closed briefly and opened again.
The rabbit remained where she was, still staring with those bright, interested eyes.
A beat of silence passed.
"A child who does not yet know to be afraid."
The voice was unhurried.
"That is not without its own value."
The clearing breathed.
The fire shifted.
The shadows between the trees deepened for a moment before returning to normal.
High above, the golden eyes did not blink.
"I am the Guardian of the Last Sanctuary of Respite."
Each word arrived like the toll of an ancient bell.
"Bringer of the Inevitable Salvation."
"I am Mercy."
"...And I have invited you here for some rest."
A short silence followed.
"...Rest?"
The meerkat's voice was careful, the word rolling around his mouth as though he could not quite wrap his head around it.
"That is so."
The voice moved through the trees without effort.
"For longer than your histories remember, I have watched the struggle of your kind. I have watched you reach and fall, and reach again. And so, as you stand at the edge of what may be the last great reaching of all..."
He let an unhurried pause ensure.
"I have decided to bring some of you here. To rest your weary souls for but a moment. Those who fought the hardest deserve at least that."
The feeling arrived before anyone could prepare for it.
It carried the flavor of happiness, yet it was not happiness. It resembled peace, yet it was not quite peace either.
It was something else. A blend of them all.
Like the sensation of setting down a burden that had been carried for so long it had ceased to register as a burden at all.
Every clenched jaw. Every suppressed grief. Every decision made through exhaustion and sustained through sheer necessity.
All of it loosened at once.
The pull of it was overwhelming.
...And it promised to ask nothing in return.
It lasted only a few seconds.
Then it receded into a low warmth, like an ember rather than a flame, and the clearing returned to its ordinary serenity.
The meerkat was the first to shake himself free.
"Lord Mercy..."
The honorific had adjusted itself automatically.
"Can I ask you to elaborate on standing at the edge of defeat?"
The golden eyes were already closed.
The armored man on the branch answered in his stead.
"The reason for your summoning has already been stated."
His voice was quieter than the leopard's, but no less deep.
"It is better to be content with that. Reaching for things beyond your power to influence will only undo what you were brought here to receive."
He paused.
"And—"
The sound was brief.
A displacement of air moving faster than sight could follow.
The spear was no longer resting across the man's shoulders.
It had crossed the clearing entirely and buried itself beside the penguin's left foot, pinning an elongated shadow to the ground—a shadow that had been stretching toward the otter in a shape it had no natural reason to take.
No one spoke.
The penguin had not moved.
She stood with her flippers still at her sides.
What filled her vision in the instant after the spear struck was not the clearing.
It was somewhere red.
Corpse mountains of shapes she recognized and shapes she did not piled in every direction beneath a sky the color of dried blood.
And above it all, there he was, looking down at her with golden eyes eerily similar to that lofty being.
A silence swallowed the moment; a silence so vast it seemed to have no floor.
She had no time to scream before the clearing snapped back into place; the fire, the rain, the scent of wet pine.
The spear was already resting across the armored man's shoulders once more.
He regarded the penguin with an almost pleasant expression.
"This sanctuary does not require your presence. It is offered as a courtesy."
His gaze drifted across the group.
"If you feel no need to remain, you may say so. You will not be summoned here again."
A beat passed.
"But dishonesty is not something this place permits."
Silence lingered.
It was the red panda who broke it.
"Alright!"
Her voice landed in the clearing like a small, warm collision.
"That is more than enough of that. They received the message very clearly, I am certain."
She glanced upward with an expression that somehow remained readable despite the animal face.
"What if they decide to leave before hearing about the benefits? That would be such a terrible waste."
The armored man looked at her for a moment.
Then he settled back beside the sleeping leopard and closed his own eyes.
"See?"
The red panda turned toward the group with obvious satisfaction, gesturing around the campfire with her small paws.
"Much better. Now then. Since Lord Mercy is resting, it is time for us to conduct some business!"
The rabbit's ears swiveled forward.
"Business...?"
"Business," the otter confirmed.
Her composed voice carried a thread of warmth.
"It has become apparent that not just anyone gets summoned here. Only those with significant accomplishments, or the clear potential for them. Which means what you are looking at..."
She gestured around the campfire.
"...is a gathering of resourceful individuals."
"And when a gathering of that kind occurs," the fennec fox said from where she had not moved once, "trading is natural. Information exchange at the very least."
"Is that so? I understand."
The meerkat's posture had changed into something more assured.
Perhaps it was some old instinct recalibrating to the new shape of the conversation.
"And Lord Mercy permits these exchanges?"
"He does."
The otter nodded.
"Lord Mercy presides over more than rest, but also salvation, so he will not stop us from cooperating."
"But do not expect free help because he believes true salvation can only be brought by individuals themselves."
She glanced upward briefly.
"He provides the space. What is done within it belongs to us."
She let them absorb the statement, then added:
"Within the limits already demonstrated, of course."
A brief silence followed.
Above them, the rain found a gap in the canopy and fell in a clean silver line beside the clearing.
The fire adjusted itself without prompting.
The otter looked between the penguin, the meerkat, and the rabbit in turn.
Her expression shifted into something resembling a smile.
"So..."
She tilted her head.
"Shall we begin?"
The human smile was admittedly strange on an otter's face.
Yet… the white rabbit found it oddly endearing.