Mr. Elias Bell could see dreams.

Not just his own. Everyone's.

When people slept, Elias could step quietly into their dreams. He had wandered through castles made of clouds, sailed oceans of lemonade, and once attended a birthday party where the guests were all talking cats.

He had always thought it was a rather splendid gift.

Until one night, he met the Nightmare King.

Elias had entered the dream of a little boy who was having trouble sleeping. Instead of the usual dragons and flying machines, Elias found a grey kingdom where everything was silent.

At the top of a hill stood a small man wearing a crooked crown.

"I am the Nightmare King," he announced.

"You don't look very frightening," said Elias.

The King frowned.

"I am working on it."

He raised his arms, and suddenly hundreds of gloomy clouds filled the sky.

Elias smiled.

"That's your problem."

"My problem?"

"You've forgotten what dreams are for."

Elias snapped his fingers.

The clouds turned into enormous balloons.

The grey ground became green grass.

The Nightmare King's crown turned bright yellow.

"Stop that!" cried the King.

But Elias was already running.

The King chased him across the dream, changing everything he touched into something dull and dreary.

Elias changed it back.

A castle became a playground.

A dragon became a puppy.

A storm became a shower of marshmallows.

At last, the Nightmare King tripped over his own crown and landed in a puddle of chocolate pudding.

Elias offered him a hand.

"Come on," he said. "You can do better than nightmares."

The King looked at him suspiciously.

"Can I?"

"Of course."

The King stood up.

Then he smiled. And the whole dream changed.

Elias laughed.

Hed never seen anything quite so wonderful.

But as he turned to leave, the Nightmare King quietly whispered:

"Elias?"

"Yes?"

"There are other dream kingdoms."

Elias stopped.

"And some of them," said the King, "have kings who don't like being defeated."

Elias looked toward the horizon.

For the first time, he wondered just how many dreams were waiting for him.

And somewhere, far beyond the stars of the dream world, a distant bell began to ring.

The War had begun

For the next few weeks, Elias didn't think anything of the King's warning. He continued to visit peoples' dreams, quietly observing the strange and wonderful things that appeared within, sometimes adding little touches of his own when he found it appropriate. One night, when he visited a dream that looked like a tropical ocean full of fish, he transformed himself into a stingray to explore it. He had tried first to become a dolphin, but that hadn't worked. He wasn't sure why a stingray felt like the most natural form--maybe something to do with how they were stealthy, lurking in the background near the ocean floor, just like he lived in the background of peoples' dreams.

He was enjoying all the different types of coral in the sea, millions of times more vibrant than the waking world, when he first saw the shark.

At first, he only saw its shadow above him in the water. His stingray form darted underneath a many-pronged red coral, peering up at the dark shape between the branches. The shark circled lazily through the sea, causing all the small fish to flee as well. Elias thought it was another part of the dream until he noticed the water changing color from bright blue to dull grayish-blue wherever it swam. It reminded him of the Nightmare King's world.

He tried to transform it into something else, but it resisted his efforts. Finally he swam out to confront it head-on, swishing his venomous tail back and forth. "What are you?" he asked, speaking just fine even though he had no human mouth.

The shark answered in kind, surprising him. "A shadow, an emissary of my Nightmare King."

"Impossible," Elias said. "I defeated the Nightmare King. He's no longer turning everything drab and dull; he's become the king of a much more beautiful kingdom."

The shark's body shifted, turning from flesh and blood into an inky blot of darkness with blurred edges and pointed teeth. Ink leached off of its body into the surrounding water, staining it dark. The shadow grinned. "There are many Nightmare Kings, each ruling over a different kind of nightmare. In the past, they have not intruded on each others' domains, enjoying an unsteady peace. Now that the Nightmare King of Drab Silence has been defeated, each of the other kings sees an opportunity to gain power over the others. Whichever king emerges on top of this Dreaming War will become the most powerful being in the universe, shaping every dream to his design."

"And how would a Nightmare King obtain this power?" asked Elias warily.

The shadow shifted into a leaner, meaner shark with a narrow nose and sharp scales. A predator.

"Why," it said, "by killing the one who defeated the King of Drab Silence, of course."