Rohis, 11x17 ink on bristol
The Dream Eater
On the days when she wished to pass time in stories, or on the nights where I annoyed her and she would repay me in nightmare my mother would speak of The Dream Eater. The antithesis to Nylu, and the opposite of hope.
When night would come, as it always does, and you find yourself in the dreaming state, you will walk into The Ebony Desert. This is the realm of all dreams. A black mass devoid of light and swirling with the sand of dreams. My mother said spending your sleeping hours here is why we would wake with sand in our eyes. “Dreams are a powerful thing and the sand in your waking eyes prove the existence of its strength.”
Often it is here in The Ebony Desert where you may be guided to the light of The Alabaster Sea. But on nights where hope does not call your name, where silence wraps its hands on your mind and you cannot find peace in the swirling sands you will find yourself lost in this empty desert.
It is a starless land of nothingness. Hopeless and void of anything. It is much larger than The Alabaster Sea, as it is far easier to fall into nothingness than it is to find hope. This black place is the home of The Dream Eater, Rohis.
Due to it being a vast plane Rohis is usually not encountered. Only the most troubled minds that have fallen into despair are unfortunate enough to encounter him. My mother also said the most disobedient of children would be plagued by the machinations of Rohis. He was every child’s boogeyman. Fortunately for my mother my fear of The Great Wolf deterred most of my antics.
Should you be unfortunate enough to pull yourself into the sights of Rohis the first thing you would hear is a song.
Far in the great void of the sleeping mind one may hear a slight hum. A broken tune slowly making itself known in The Ebony Desert of the dreaming state. A grand organ plays along to this song with untuned keys. Each hit of the mallets against string are a tone-deaf offering to a being far more incomprehensible than the melody of the song preceding it. This mass of flesh The Organist sits in is an extension of itself and its instrument, playing a grand ballad to announce the approach of despair.
Following the keys of The Organist a single violin accompanies this horrid song. The Violinist plays a solo over the top of cracked organ pipes in imperfect syncopation. The distorted melody of chaos and horror embodying the very being whose hand holds the instrument. A bow of the hairs of beings not known to man glide across the mismatched strings of the violin, creating with it a sound too deafening for our ears to comprehend. These beings gather in collective worship to bring with them the announcement of a god even they, horrid in appearance, fear.
Upon hearing the detuned keys of an organ and the high pitched strings of a nightmarish violin the dreamer will hear the deepened tone of a hollow cello. The Cellist, with its multiple arms, holds tightly to an instrument made from the skeletal structure of the cellist that preceded it. The Cellist holds dearly to its instrument both in reverie to its predecessor and to the god of which it plays for. The head of this hollow body molded into the deformed skin of its player as conviction and dedication to its eternal song that it plays with its fellow instrumentalists. As the unwelcoming song of The Ebony Desert becomes more and more clear to the dreamer the approach of something far worse than this broken tune begins to make itself more and more known.
In the deep abyss of the dreamers mind there are a legion of gaping maws which sing to the broken tune of a black hole. Collective in intention they sing an endless song accompanied by a cellist, violinist, and organist. The cracked key of which they sing is nothing short of deafening. Incomprehensible melody and harmony, a screeching plague upon The Ebony Desert. The formless Choir moves in unison, their millions of voices corralling to become the massive voice in worship of a God much more glorious and horrible than they are.
This song that stretches the endless void that is The Ebony Desert is the only one that echoes across its empty space...
This group of monsters, all horrid in their own right, are only the procession welcoming their Outer God, The King of Glass, The Dream Eater. Rohis.
Rohis brought with him the pressure of all despair and hopelessness. The aura around him crushing to the point where the sands of The Ebony Desert turned themselves into obsidian glass in his vicinity. My mother would always warn me of obsidian glass. She said it was a black mirror that showed the darkest reflection of us, and that if stared at too long then that self will find you in The Ebony Desert. It was like calling Rohis to you. Broken mirrors and obsidian glass were the calling cards of despair, and my mother always asked me to avoid them.
Rohis was a bodiless creature. Floating through the void of your mind, nothing but a torso covered in tattered cloth. Underneath the shredded robes he is but a crimson skeleton of a body that once was. Hollow underneath everything. This is all Despair is. His arms, made of flesh, had a long reach, and should you fall into its embrace it would bring you no comfort. His long fingers pulling you into the shards of glass that swirl around him, killing you slowly by a thousand cuts as you sleep. It is the game of misery to cut away at you slowly until you are nothing but bone.
The face of Rohis is hidden by a veil that is attached to the broken glass crown that floats above his head. The Dream Eater pronounced himself the king of an empty kingdom and the crown of broken glass that floats above him is a mark of his pride.
“Despair is a hollow gift”, my mother would say. “It is easy to grasp. It is easy to fall into. It may seem like it has answers. That anger and sadness you may feel has a place, but it doesn’t not have a home in your soul. It may only be a visitor. Should you marry yourself to it and build your house there you will find its foundation on quicksand. Despair comes to you in a box wrapped in glittering stars. But it is a hollow gift. Once opened you will find nothing, and all you will receive is nothing in return. This is why Rohis wears a veil. For behind his veil lies the face of nothingness.”
Despite his hunched and weary appearance Rohis carries an intense strength and with that strength bore a grand sword. This weapon was of an immense size yet Rohis carried and swung the blade with incredible ease. The blade was sharp enough to cut the fabric of the restful mind and the flesh of Hope. Its pommel was decorated with the head of a wolf, the most common symbol of Rohis from which he derived one of his many names, The Great Wolf. Every child in our quiet town feared the howls of wolves at night, and knew it was the time to be home lest they become lambs for the slaughter. Despair stretched its hands into everyones homes.
Rohis, much like every god and depiction of a god that we know, wore a halo to signify his divinity. But the halo of Rohis was no call to divine power. It is a symbol of all that he embodies. Rohis wore a golden black hole as a halo, consuming everything in his way. My mother would speak of the golden black hole as a beautiful and terrifying thing. It was the opposite of every other halo. Hollow in the center and consuming of everything. A false light, only for you to get close enough and be consumed by the pull of its force.
My mother would often tell me that Hope was born from Despair. That Nylu was birthed from Rohis. That despair as a fundamental being existed first in all things and that Hope found herself alive from the chest of nothingness. That the universe was a dark and empty place, void of light. Until a light arose from the void and took its body to create something worth living for. To create hope. To make life. Rohis does not love this counter-being made from his own body, no. He hated this thing for it was everything he was not. The king of the desert hates the ocean. The darkness hates the light. The First hates The Second.
He carries no scars as the scars of Hope are the absence of his form. He says his body was stolen to bloom a garden of which nothing should have been born. Some storytellers will tell you he is jealous to not be that garden, some say he is nihilistic and stuck in his ways and whose sole purpose is that of desolation. My mother said it is simply his nature, just as it is the nature of Hope to be beautiful. Rohis is an unforgiving creature. His battles with Nylu are plentiful and most of their battles are depicted in our religious teachings. Most of their fights falling on great historical events and wars. For every persecutor there was a defender, for every tyrant a rebel, for every war there was Nylu and Rohis. Religious depictions and doctrine would speak of their battles and the shaking of the earth as they happened. Nylu wears her scars proudly for her triumph, and Rohis would always return to an empty kingdom.
My mother is no longer around to tell me these stories, but they are things I vividly remember. I think often of Nylu, of Rohis, of the Gods. I pray when I can. I have not been sleeping well as of late. My mind is restless. And when I close my eyes and fall into The Ebony Desert all I can hear is the song of something dreadful.