My Dragon Prince Boards season 6, episode 608
Hello, everyone!
Finally I have some time to write this! You can not imagine how demanding is to work making television shows, everything is for yesterday, haha!
Complains about work aside, it is time to talk about my last episode of season 6, episode 8. This one was... special.
I can say without a doubt that this was one of the most emotional episodes I have ever worked on. I cried every time I watched the animatic, and I cried again watching the final episode a few days ago.
I think is a lot of things together: a lot of important things happens, characters die, Katolis is destroyed, one of the quasars is fake! Aaravos!!! ... but also because I witnessed my team bring together their A game, telling this story in such a beautiful way.
I learned a lot from this episode, specially from my Unit Director, Mike Jones, who was in charge of boarding the "Hearts of Cinder" spell sequence; what a masterclass of emotion, storytelling and cinematography! I love Jason Simpson's performance during the show, but in particular in that sequence, and I think the boards took everything to a new level.
Now, let's go back to my sequences.
My first one was Soren going down to Viren to ask him to perform the spell. It was good to have this last interaction between both of them after all the work I did with the characters in 605.
There is a lot of subtle staging in this one. The way the light is hitting over their heads, how present in the screen the staff is; Viren's hesitance is something that I remember was important for me to portrait properly.
One of the things we talked a lot during this sequence was in how to use the light as narrative element. I was not interested in the classical reading of going into the light as "good" and shadows as "bad".
But light as hope, options, forgiveness, etc.
Viren walks away from the light when he gets offered the staff not because he is going "bad" but because he doesn't feel capable to do what he is being asked to do.
Soren is coming directly to him, removing his chains, giving him back his staff, asking him for help. But Viren hesitates.
And I think that that was a genius think for the script to call. Viren is not a man looking for the first chance to "redeem" himself. I am not even sure that he believes that he deserves that possibility.
But they are running out of time. The situation is dire, and as the light get blocked by the falling debris, the options are becoming clearer. Hope is dim, but there is something to do: Hearts of Cinder.
Viren, still full of doubts, explains to Soren why the spell is so hard to perform: the price is a human heart. A price that the Viren of the past would have pay with not second thought, but not the current one, no the one who understands the weight of dark magic.
But Soren has no doubts: "Take mine" I still have chills listening to the delivery of that line. And I think here is the moment Viren decided to sacrifice himself. While he is being consumed by doubt and fear, his son will is clear, Soren will do the right thing, even if that cost him his life.
And that is what Viren never had before. The willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good. He looked at his reflection in Soren's golden heart and saw and answer, saw love, hope.
I just think is beautiful that Soren's conviction gave him the chance to do the right thing for once. Soren taught him the ultimate lesson.
I love this two so much.
My next sequence is a simple one, Terry and Claudia arriving to Katolis. I liked to draw Claudia's new hair. I wish I had more sequences with her in this season.
After this is Moon nexus time!
After all the drama with Viren and Soren the massage sequences felt a little silly, hahaha. but was fun to make.
I added the little detail of Rayla having issues landing, while Callum is just so good at it, haha. Fun to have their roles reversed for one, and Rayla being the clumsy one.
I like the moment when Lujanne ask them if they are a couple again and they exchange this nice look. I know that Rayllum is a huge thing in the fandom, and while they are not my type of ship (I am into the sapphics, you know) I think that they are pretty cute together, and Is always fun to make moments between them.
I just wanted to share with you this silly face, lol. Sometimes you draw things in boards that don't translate that well into the final show, but It is fun anyway, you want to inspire the animators to push the performance as much as they can.
Back to serious business. I love the shift when our heroes realized that there is only 2 quasars and 3 coins. Callums turn into Raylla knowing that this will destroy her. I really enjoy how the use of the lens to blur Lujanne in the Background creates this efect of hyperfocus on Callum and Rayla.
She is facing a terrible decision, who to save. So we move the camera to focus only on them. Is an intimate moment.
I like this framing, Rayla is in pain, crying, Callum is listening, but by the framing we can se that he is holding her. Callum is there for her, always.
And that is how I finished my last sequences of season 6, with Rayla crying.
Working on this season was one of the honors of my life. And I can wait to share with you how was making season 7, because was... A LOT, for sure! hahahaha.
Hope you like this! And feel free to ask if you have questions about the storyboard process!
And thanks for all the notes, comments and support! It is truly appreciated!
A little bonus:
Look a the cool crew jacket that Bardel gave us when we wrapped seasons 4 to 7! (Finally I can show it without making it an spoiler of the name of season 7!!)
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a time of need
Hob’s having what he’d thought would be an easy Sunday, puttering around the house catching up on chores and rest, when the worst headache he’s ever had splits down the middle of his skull.
It’s worse, even, than the time he’d taken an actual cleaver to the forehead, and woken up two days later still unable to see out of one eye. Hob’s hands shake and he barely manages to make it to the couch before he collapses. He shuts his eyes in agony and—
--then he’s in the Dreaming. So fast, between one blink and the next. And he knows, instinctively, that he was called here, by Dream or by the Dreaming itself. But he’s never been called like that, with a call full of such pain.
He staggers to his feet in the throne room. The sky high overhead, usually a placid field of stars, is swirling with red star matter, like the Dreaming has fallen into the heart of a nebula. It casts a crimson sheen over everything.
Lucienne is hurrying towards him, steps clicking sharply on the marble floor. “Hob? You should not be here. Lord Morpheus has closed off the heart of the Dreaming.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t intentional.” Hob takes in the deep creases in her expression as she reaches him. “What’s going on?”
“We are under attack.” She squeezes his arm, imploring. “You must go.”
“Under attack? What, Hell?” Hob remembers Dream mentioning it had happened before.
Lucienne shakes her head. “No. I do not know the details.”
A cavernous boom! echoes through the hall, shaking the walls. Lightning streaks across the sky, jagged scars that leave harsh afterimages in Hob’s vision. He pales at the sound. “Is he taking them on – whoever they are – by himself?”
“The dreams and nightmares are helping as best suits this kind of fight. But you must go.”
Hob shakes his head. “No, he called me for a reason. Where is he?”
“Hob—”
“Lucienne. Please.”
She relents, still troubled. “He is outside the palace gates, I know not precisely where. You will be drawn to the nexus of his power, I am sure.”
That’s good enough for Hob. He runs down the palace steps and across the bridge to the gates, reaching them much faster than he thinks should probably be reasonable, but then again he is in the Dreaming. The gates open to let him out, and then clank shut behind him.
The feeling of power is much stronger out here, as if the palace and its grounds had been held in a protective bubble. Lucienne was right about Dream’s power drawing him in; Hob finds him easily, standing at the bank of a river that seems to now be flowing with lava instead of water, and he’s just— just surrounded by… creatures.
Hob can’t define them any better than creatures, they are amorphous and shifting, claws and teeth and legs and wings emerging then disappearing again. He wonders why they haven’t gone to flank the palace, attack from all sides, before realizing that just as Dream’s power has drawn Hob in, it is also drawing the creatures to him. Making him the only target.
He isn’t carrying a weapon or even wearing armor or anything, and Hob’s heart pounds as he runs to him, and—
A creature leaps for Dream’s throat. Dream reaches into the air – into a dream? – his arm disappearing, yanks, and pulls a ribbon of flames straight through the creature’s body, throwing it out across the landscape. Grass scorches, and the other beasts in the fire’s path screech.
Another is leaping at his back, hundreds of teeth appearing from the shrouded mass of it in midair. Hob’s about to shout a warning, but no need. Dream turns, flings open his coat. The creature barrels in and falls into the swirling galaxies in the lining, its shriek cutting off sharply.
More run for him. Dream disappears into a dream, then reappears seconds later, a good twenty meters from where he’d been.
On the edge of a cliff.
A cliff which the beasts that charge for him hurtle off of, a cliff which was definitely not there before, because Dream brought it with him from the dream, mother of God, how is Hob even supposed to help here at all?
Well, fuck it. He’s got to try, doesn’t he?
As soon as he thinks it, there’s a sword in his hand. Dream doesn’t make note of his presence, but he must know Hob’s there, mustn’t he? Dream called him there, though God knows why.
Regardless, the creatures are so focused on Dream that Hob is able to take out two of them with his blade before they even notice he’s there.
They don’t… die, in the way he’d expect. They sort of scream and explode into dust, drifting off in the wind. He hopes they aren’t just going to reform or something.
“You are creatures of warmth,” Hob hears Dream say, across the field, to the rest of the creatures. It seems like there are more, not less, like they’re multiplying. God. “Please enjoy my warmest hospitality.”
A vicious blizzard descends on them.
Snow whips in wild gusts across the landscape, ice biting Hob’s cheeks. He can’t see Dream very well anymore. He hears a splash and a creature howling, and imagines Dream must have pulled a frozen lake from a dream about ice skating, or perhaps from a nightmare about drowning.
He makes his way towards Dream, determined to stay by him so he has someone at his back, even if that someone is Hob, whose powers here are meager in comparison to Dream’s.
He finds creatures in the snow and slaughters them, all of his sword work from decades past coming back to him. They come at him with fangs and claws and tails bristling with spines, but Hob isn’t afraid. His desperation to keep Dream safe is far more powerful than that.
Irrational, to want to keep Dream safe in the Dreaming. But he feels it all the same.
“This is my realm,” he hears Dream growl from somewhere in the storm, voice reverberating despite the howling wind. “It bends to my wishes. But you? Let us see how you like the dark.”
And he turns off the sun.
The Dreaming is plunged into absolute, pure darkness the likes of which Hob has never seen. There’s no moon, no stars. Hob blinks and throws his hands out, trying to balance.
And then realizes…
He can see.
Somehow. Not with his eyes, quite. But with some kind of direction at the back of his head, like the Dreaming itself is guiding him. Neat, that. Also quite likely to drive him mad if it lasts for any amount of time.
He follows the direction of Dream’s voice and finally gets close enough to see him again. There are still so many damn creatures, where are they even coming from? They are blundering now, in the dark, but must have other senses for they’re still managing to, eventually, turn for Dream. Hob watches him turn the ground beneath a group of them into quicksand. They scream and flail as they sink.
“Do you not tire?” Dream asks, idly. “Do you not relent? That is disappointing, for I tire. Of gravity, in particular.”
The realm turns upside down.
Hob’s feet stay planted on the grass as his brain spins wildly to reorient itself, but the creatures aren’t so lucky. They go tumbling down – or up? – into the air, screaming. Hob wonders if Dream’s just accidentally done the same to the entire realm, but no— looking behind him, he can see the core of the Dreaming, the palace, all the residences, still oriented the same way. Opposite to them. What in--?
Maintaining two sets of opposing gravities at once seems to be costing Dream. His chest heaves. He flips them back over again, pushing his sweaty hair back from his face. The sun pops back up into the sky, too, which is… Hob decides to interrogate it later and just be grateful for the light.
“Dream!” Hob calls, as soon as his dizziness subsides.
Dream spins to him, seeming startled. “Hob?”
So then he didn’t realize Hob was there, at least not consciously. By the time Hob reaches his side, the sword has dissolved from his grasp. “Fuck. That was… insane. Are you okay?”
Dream looks at him, brow furrowed. The rushing winter winds die down as their eyes meet, leaving drifts of snow behind. “Why are you here? You should not be here, it is not safe. I have closed off the heart of the Dreaming. How?”
“You… called me?” Hob says. “I think.”
Dream’s frown deepens. “I do not… recall. Regardless, you must go. The Dreaming is not safe at present.”
“Why? Isn’t the fight over?”
“No.” Dream looks out at the horizon. A wave of sickly, mixed colors is growing there, like oil spreading across the sky. “The real fight has yet to begin.”
“What? What about all those creatures?”
“Those were scouts. Hunting dogs.” Dream huffs. “Their masters thought perhaps they would get lucky and catch me unawares, not have to dirty their hands. Foolish. They will pay for it.”
Hob looks around, horrified, as that oil keeps spreading upward from the horizon. With it, a wave of what Hob can only describe as grayscale follows across the landscape. Color leaches out of everything and disappears. Dream watches this, expression tight but measured, following the arc of the spread.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Hob asks.
“Let them expend their energy. Color is immaterial, I will restore it later.”
“Lure them into complacency?” Hob guesses, faint.
Dream nods. He looks even more dramatic with no warmth to his skin, all stark black and white lines.
“What are they? The invaders?” Hob asks.
Dream hums. “The closest waking world corollary would be… bacteria. It is a sickness, of sorts. They would infect and devour us.”
Hob means to say something intelligent but what comes out of his mouth is, “Bacteria have hunting dogs?”
“Well, they hardly have teeth of their own,” says Dream.
Hob shakes his head, as if that could possibly help to clear it. “And you’re going to fight these things on your own?”
“My dreams and nightmares are already helping me by letting me pull from them, so that I do not have to create everything from scratch,” says Dream. He watches as the oil spill completes its transit of the sky. The only color now is the swirling above them. “This is not a fight of physical prowess. You must leave.”
“I can’t die, Dream.”
“I would not see your mind shredded on my behalf.”
“Is that going to happen if the Dreaming doesn’t fall?”
Dream frowns. “Not… likely. And the Dreaming will not fall. I will not let it.”
“Then it’s settled,” Hob says.
Dream sighs. “You are monumentally stubborn.”
“That’s what got me this far in the first place. Can’t stop now.”
That pulls a tiny smile from Dream. “No. I suppose not.”
A shudder runs through the landscape, vibrating under Hob’s feet. Then another, like the ground itself is shivering. Hob shifts to maintain his balance, as he might once have on the deck of a ship. Dream doesn’t move at all, like the shivers travel right through him.
The air goes hot, then cold, then blazingly hot again, struggling with itself. The snow around them starts to steam. Dream’s jaw clenches, and the temperature drops violently once again, below freezing. Hob’s breath fogs in the air.
Dream is glaring at the horizon. “Stay present,” he tells Hob, in the tone one might use to call, On your guard!
Never bring a sword to a battle of minds, Hob thinks deliriously. His blade hasn’t rematerialized, and it would be useless anyway. Hob himself feels useless, but like hell will he leave Dream’s side.
“How did they even get in?” he asks.
“The boundaries of the Dreaming are porous to permit the passage of dreamers,” says Dream. “Unsavory things sometimes slip in as well.”
“Often?”
Dream’s eyes glint. “Only when enough time has passed that the folly in doing so has been forgotten.”
It’s in moments like this that Hob really thinks about how old Dream is. It’s easier to conceptualize his age in this way, funnily enough. An ancient lord once again protecting his kingdom from invaders is something Hob’s mind can grasp, even if the timescale in this case is absurdly long.
“Going to teach them a lesson, then?”
Dream smiles, slow and predatory; Hob sees in it the nightmare of every prey animal that has ever dashed through a dark forest, fleeing the gleaming of teeth. “Oh, yes.”
He closes his eyes. His fingers flutter at his side, like he’s plucking the strings of an invisible harp. Snow lifts in swirls around them, though there’s no longer any wind. Another shiver runs through the ground.
“What are you going to do?” Hob asks, at a whisper. He doesn’t know why he whispers; it just seems right in the face of the approaching power storm.
“There are known ways to destroy a waking world bacterium,” Dream says. His eyes are still shut, brow furrowed in concentration. “Burn it out, freeze it out. Take away its sustenance. Make the environment unsustainable for it. But bacteria that feasts on dream matter cannot be destroyed by something as simple as temperature; the temperature is, after all, a part of the Dreaming itself. It can gorge itself on the heat and cold as easily as on anything else.”
“So what will you do, then?” Hob asks.
Dream’s lips quirk up in a smug smile. “I am the Dreaming,” he says, not actually answering the question. “They cannot have me. If they insist on having me, then I will simply not exist at all.”
Before Hob can so much as say wait!, Dream's power screams into being around them more tangibly than Hob’s ever felt it, the air charging up with electricity, the fabric of the realm warbling around them. His ears pop with the pressure change, a whine pitching higher and higher in the atmosphere and making him wince, and Dream’s form fuzzes in and out like TV static.
Dream’s hands rise at his sides like he’s finding his balance in the shifting world around them, or perhaps conducting the dreams in an invisible orchestra. He hums, pleased with whatever he can feel rumbling through his power. Then he presses his hands outward.
Hob… doesn’t know exactly what happens, then.
It’s like everything blinks out, then back on again, like turning on and off a light switch. It’s so quick his body doesn’t even react until several seconds later, when a tremor of unease shivers up his spine. For it wasn’t like before, when Dream had blacked out the sun – Hob would swear that in that millisecond of darkness he felt nothing, not the ground under his feet, or the air he was breathing, or his own clothes against his skin. He’s not even sure he existed in that moment.
Everything around him is exactly the same, except that those threads of oily color circling the sky have disappeared. Just like that, gone, the bacteria dead, or at least banished, and Hob has no idea what Dream even did.
Everything in the Dreaming looks the exact same--
--except Dream.
Dream looks like he tumbled down a cliff then ran ten kilometers through bramble bushes. His hair is falling in clumps over his forehead, his long coat torn, his forehead prickling with sweat. His nose is bleeding, the red of it shockingly bright as color leeches back into the gray landscape, though he pays it no mind as it trickles over his lips. His hands are shaking where he holds them out, fingers now closed into fists.
“Any of you who have survived,” he snarls, glaring up at the sky, presumably speaking to the remaining bacteria, “carry a message home to your people. Enter my realm again, touch a single one of its inhabitants, and I will personally unmake your entire species. Do not test me.”
Is unmaking a species even in Dream’s power? Hob wouldn’t have thought so, but he wouldn’t care to test that theory right now, were he the species in question.
Dream wavers, then, and Hob just barely manages to lurch forward fast enough to catch him as he falls. He goes to his knees in the snow, and Dream collapses against him, shaking horribly. He coughs, a horrible, wet sound, and blood spatters Hob’s shirt.
Hob’s heart jumps into his throat. “ Dream —” He tries to get him down onto his side, but Dream clenches his hands weakly in Hob’s shirt.
“I will be—” he starts, and is cut off by more coughing, blood dripping from his lips. “Fine, in—” Another spasm of coughing. A tremor shakes violently through him.
“Shhh.” Hob holds him close. “I got you.”
Dream heaves for breath. He feels feverishly hot, now, sweating and shivering. “What the hell did you even do? ” Hob asks, running a hand over his back, a bit frantically.
“I unmade the Dreaming,” Dream says, each word a wheeze, “ripped it back into-- into its original grains of sand. Thus. Expelling the bacteria. Into the void that surrounds us, where it-- cannot survive. And then I put- put the Dreaming back, exactly as it was. It must--” he wipes blood from his mouth with a shaking hand, only succeeding in smearing it all over his cheek-- “must be done in an instant. To avoid causing harm.”
“What?” Hob breathes, a vast understatement for the horror and awe that he feels. “Dream, what?”
“Breaking my ruby gave-- gave me back power I hadn’t-- hadn’t seen in eons.” He coughs once, hard, spitting up more blood onto Hob’s shirt. “Nevertheless, I may be… down here for a while.”
Hob smoothes a hand over his shivering chest. “It doesn’t seem like it’s avoided causing harm.”
“Causing no- no damage is impossible, but I managed to contain it within-” he wheezes-- “within my- aspect- and not the rest of the Dreaming.”
“I didn’t even know you could bleed,” Hob says faintly. It’s more disconcerting than feeling the world unravel around him to see Dream shaking and coughing up blood. He’s heard that Dream was weakened when he first escaped his long imprisonment, before he’d recovered his tools, but this is on another level.
“Usually, I cannot,” says Dream, which doesn’t help at all.
“Alright, let’s get you down, then.” Hob maneuvers Dream to lie on his side on the ground. Dream rests his head in Hob’s lap, eyelids fluttering. Around them, the world seems to waver, and then stabilizes again.
Dream feels it, too, and says, “Worry not. The realm is stable. It is merely. Reacting to me.”
“My concern’s really you right now, love,” Hob says, running a hand through Dream’s hair. “Though it’s good the place isn’t going to collapse.”
Dream hums at his touch, closing his eyes. His breathing’s evened out, but it doesn’t seem like he’ll be getting back up under his own muster anytime soon.
It’s not long before footsteps crunch in the snow behind them, wingbeats by their side. “My lord!”
“Lucienne.” Dream’s voice is a low rumble against Hob’s thigh. “Matthew.”
“Boss!” Matthew lands on the ground beside them, Lucienne reaching them a few moments after. Matthew’s gaze catches on the blood on Hob’s shirt and he says, “You hurt, Hob?”
Hob shakes his head and nods toward Dream. Matthew squawks in alarm, feathers puffing up, and flies up to land on Dream’s shoulder, nudging at his hair with his beak.
“I am fine, Matthew,” Dream says without opening his eyes. It’s somewhat unconvincing considering how hoarse his voice comes out, and the fact that one of his ears is now bleeding.
Hob is… fairly convinced that he will be fine, once he’s rested. Fairly.
“Just put himself through the ringer, that’s all,” he says, wiping the blood that’s trailing from Dream’s ear away with his sleeve. “We’ll go home, get some food in you, have a nice bath, and get some rest, hm?”
Dream hums in agreement. “Lucienne, how fare the dreams?”
“Everyone is frightened, but safe,” she reports, then adds, sounding fond, “They were a bit confused by the sun going out.”
“Yeah, that was an interesting party trick,” Hob agrees, and Dream chuckles.
It’s still bloody cold out here, post-blizzard. Hob doesn’t trust Dream’s usual I don’t feel temperatures excuse when he’s so drained of power, so ripped apart.
He gathers Dream up in his arms again, wrapping his coat tighter around him. “Let’s get you in from the cold.”
“So… we’re just not gonna talk about that moment when we all went to the shadow realm, then,” Matthew caws as Hob gets to his feet, lifting Dream up with him. “Do I want to know what that was?”
“Probably not,” Hob tells him, as Dream says, “Hob Gadling, I am capable of walking.”
“Uh-huh,” Hob says with no confidence. “Sure, love. Just indulge me. Consider it some kind of foreplay for later, if it makes you feel better.”
Matthew mutters, “Ick,” but Dream smiles and relents.
“Much later,” Hob warns him. “Mister Coughing-Up-Blood.”
Dream rolls his eyes, but allows Hob to carry him.
Fortunately, it’s not far – the Dreaming transports them quickly back to the palace, though with less certainty in the movement than usual. “Lucienne,” Dream says as Hob divests him of his long coat and lays him in his bed. He looks like he’s about to try to pop back up, and Hob presses a hand to his shoulder, subtly keeping him down. “Please instruct everyone to let me know immediately if they find anything awry. The realm is cleansed, but I do not like to take chances.”
She inclines her head in understanding, casting a small smile in Hob’s direction, too, for good measure. Presumably for his efforts in keeping Dream lying down.
Matthew lands on Dream’s knee. “Seriously, boss, you good? I don’t know what was going on exactly, but whatever it was felt… not great.”
“I am ‘good,’” Dream confirms. “Some amount of damage is usually sustained in fighting off an illness, is it not?”
“If that’s how you want to put it,” Matthew says.
“I’ll look after him,” Hob reassures them both.
They take their leave then, Matthew giving Hob a little salute with his wing, and then Hob and Dream are alone. Hob slips Dream’s boots off, laying a blanket over him, then sits beside him on the bed, resting a hand on his chest. “Are you feeling any better?” he asks. “You have to let me know if it gets worse, I’m dead serious, Dream.”
“I’m not certain what weight that carries when you cannot die,” Dream says.
Hob raises an eyebrow. “Try it and find out. Now, still.”
He finds a damp cloth – thanks, Dreaming – and starts wiping the blood from Dream’s lips, and his hands.
“I see now why the Dreaming called you here,” Dream muses. “No one else would dare speak to me in this manner.”
“The Dreaming called me?”
“I did not. Not intentionally. I would not have brought you into such a battle.”
“Well, I wasn’t much help anyway,” Hob observes. He tips Dream’s head up and gets him to drink some water, likewise manifested by the Dreaming. “You did all the work with your world-bending powers.”
“Perhaps you are a reward,” Dream suggests as Hob lets him lie back down. He finds Hob’s hand and kisses his fingertips.
“Oh, yeah? A prize for your heroism?”
Dream tugs on his arm. Hob slips off his own shoes and discards his blood-splattered shirt, and obediently lies down beside him, gathering him in his arms. Dream cuddles up to him, giving a pleased hum, resting his head on Hob’s shoulder. “A comfort.”
Hob runs a hand through his hair and kisses his forehead. He still can't help but worry a bit, after everything he saw Dream do, but it's good to see him feeling more comfortable. “Sweet thing. You were very brave. Clever, too.”
“You do not have to praise me for performing my function,” Dream grumbles.
“Yeah, but you love it.”
Dream mutters again under his breath, but doesn’t move away. Hob squeezes him tighter, and he softens again.
“Get some rest, now,” Hob tells him.
“You will stay?”
“Course. Think I’ll abandon my king in his time of need?”
Dream hums, evidently pleased.
“But am I going to wake up with a terrible hangover after this?” Hob asks. “Whatever the Dreaming did to summon me felt like getting hit over the head with a pickaxe.”
“Maybe,” Dream says, sounding only the slightest bit chagrined about it. “It had to pull you through the barrier I had constructed.”
He tucks his nose against Hob’s throat, snuggling closer, and Hob just sighs, defeated. “Worth it, to be here for you,” he admits, and feels Dream smile.
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