Strange the Dreamer

Sarai sends her moths down to Azareen and Eril-Fane, who are both sunk deep into grief. She reflects that if she could give the two humans names to identify their suffering, Azareen would be “Grief” and Eril-Fane would be “Shame.” Sarai wonders why they don’t comfort each other in their mutual suffering. Sarai understands that her father suffers because he saved his people by sacrificing his own well-being; he killed the gods to set his people free, but in so doing, he mutilated his own soul and doomed himself to lifelong shame and self-loathing. Sarai next enters Lazlo’s dream, where he is eagerly expecting her. The way he looks at her begins to transform the awareness she has of herself into something far more positive.

As Sarai and Lazlo learn more about each other, Sarai begins to have hope that both the citizens of Weep and the remaining members of her family can be saved. Lazlo brings the mahalath into his dream, and Sarai chooses to remain under the fog with him, relinquishing control and placing her trust in him.

Sarai and Lazlo allow the mahalath to change them: Sarai into a normal human girl, and Lazlo into a blue-skinned godspawn. Sarai tells Lazlo the truth of everything, including Eril-Fane and Azareen’s story. She relates how Isagol tortured Eril-Fane by manipulating his emotions until he was forced to feel love for her, while still feeling the intensity of his authentic hate right alongside it. When the gods took Azareen up to the citadel as well, the presence of his own wife stoked his hate for Isagol so high that he broke free of her will and killed everyone. Sarai also tells Lazlo about the unforgivable act that the Godslayer committed: slaughtering all the babies in the nursery. Lazlo reels from the revelation that the seemingly heroic Eril-Fane did such a thing. Telling the story activates a deep grief in Sarai, and she realizes that although she feels that she cannot forgive the Godslayer for his actions, in a way she already has granted him forgiveness, because she understands the reasons for his actions and empathizes with the suffering he endured because of the gods. Sarai tells Lazlo the truth of her gift and is relieved when he does not recoil from her in disgust. He recognizes that because of her history and the way that she has lived, she had no other choice but to use her gift to inflict the darkness of nightmares upon the humans below. Lazlo does not think Sarai is a monster and still wishes to be part of her story.

Lazlo suggests that Sarai fall asleep in his dream so that he can keep her night terrors at bay.

Thyon uses Lazlo’s spirit essence and, unbeknownst to Lazlo, unlocks the secret to dissolving mesarthium.

Just as Sarai settles into Lazlo’s dream with relief, her night terrors approach.

Sarai’s nightmare conjures up the form of the dead god Skathis who rides his horrible mesarthium monster, Rasalas, and is coming to take Lazlo away: an amalgam of all the Weep citizens’ traumatic memories that Sarai forced them to relive in her sleep. At first, Sarai is overwhelmed by terror and panic, but then she reclaims her power and banishes the nightmare.

The following morning, Lazlo shares all that he knows about Sarai and the other survivors with Eril-Fane and Azareen. Although the news is difficult for Eril-Fane to hear, he does not want to engage in more bloodshed and plans to meet with the survivors to discuss a truce. They plan for Lazlo to meet Sarai in his dreams again to ask her to persuade the other godspawn to agree to the idea. Lazlo confesses to Eril-Fane that he knows all the details of the hero’s true history. But there’s something still nagging Lazlo—over the years, there must have been thousands of godspawn, and he questions why the nursery only contained about 30 on the night of the Carnage. The question of what happened to the rest remains as yet unanswered.

Thyon has been successful in his experiments, thanks to the odd “veil of reverie” that he experienced after re-reading Miracles for Breakfast to mine the book for further clues to achieving the new alchemical goal of dissolving mesarthium.

Lazlo is shocked to hear the Tizerkane speak so bluntly about their desire to kill the godspawn. When he tries to protest that the godspawn are people, they argue that the godspawn are monsters deserving of extermination, not mercy. Lazlo realizes for the first time how deep the hatred of Weep’s citizens runs; they wish only for vengeance and are not interested in understanding the godspawn at all.

Drave, who is the demolitions expert, or “explosionist” amongst the delegates, decides to blow the citadel up to achieve glory for himself.

Sparrow accidentally interrupts Feral and Ruby having intercourse.

Sarai stands up to Minya’s tyranny. Refusing to seek vengeance and feeling no shame for her decision, she declares her intentions to make peace with the humans by extending empathy and finding a way to coexist with them. Minya mocks Sarai’s plans until Sarai reveals that a human, Lazlo, has seen her in both dreams and reality and is not repulsed by her. Minya is shocked but doesn’t abandon her position, instead declaring that any human who sets foot in the citadel will die. Although Sarai feels sick at the thought of hurting Minya, her desire to protect others from harm rises up in her, and she screams her moths at Minya to force her sibling out of the citadel.

Sarai and her moths await Lazlo when he enters his bedchamber; the two meet in dreams and kiss passionately until Lazlo’s physical form rolls over in his sleep and crushes Sarai’s moth, breaking the connection.

Thyon has succeeded in creating something that can erode the mesarthium—something that combines both alchemy and magic, though the narrator gives no detail as to what. He has managed to create a small hole in one of the mesarthium anchors. Drave the explosionist arrives undetected.

Lazlo rejoins Sarai in the dreamspace, and they use their love to make the entire dream around them beautiful. Lazlo shows Sarai how he can make one of the citadel’s anchors, Skathis’s Rasalas, into something beautiful and whole instead of a beast made of rotting carrion and mesarthium. Sarai is hopeful when Lazlo tells her that Eril-Fane and the others wish to make peace with her and the other godspawn, but she is quickly overcome by despair. She tells Lazlo of Minya and her power. Thyon peers in Lazlo’s window and notices how radiant he looks, even as he’s sleeping.

Thyon comes bearing the strange news that the azoth distilled from his spirit could not touch the mesarthium, but when he distilled it from Lazlo’s spirit, the mesarthium reacted. This causes him to question Lazlo’s true nature.

Sparrow and Ruby reconcile.

Lazlo recalls the monks telling him that when he was a baby, his skin was gray, but it eventually faded to a normal brown. When Lazlo touches the mesarthium now, it makes his skin go gray. Sarai watches via her moths as Drave ignites an explosive at the site of the Rasalas statue.

When Thyon returns to his laboratory, he realizes that the piece of mesarthium that he cut away (which he let Lazlo hold during their confrontation), now bears the mark of Lazlo’s fingers, further suggesting that there is something special about Lazlo that enables him to affect the supernatural, impenetrable metal of the gods.

Drave blows up the citadel and is killed in the blast; Lazlo is injured, and Sarai enters his mind to call him back from unconsciousness. There, she finds him digging in an orchard that represents his subconscious; he says he is looking for his name and “the truth.” He finds a white feather from Wraith, the white eagle. Sarai pushes Lazlo to wakefulness.

Drave’s explosion causes an earthquake that dislodges the citadel’s anchor (Rasalas); the giant seraph comes loose from the sky.

In the citadel, one of the godspawn children topples from the edge.

As the city of Weep falls into destruction around him, Lazlo springs into action, motivated only by instinct. He knows that he was made for this kind of situation, here in the world of dreams, magic, and fairy tales incarnate. He lunges for the obliterated mesarthium and holds up the citadel with his bare hands. Guided by instinct, he directs the mesarthium to remake itself and rebalances the citadel, remaking Rasalas just as he did in his dream. Feeling triumphant, he directs the giant angel to fold its wings, releasing the sky and freeing Weep from its shadow. Lazlo feels that he’s finally figured out who he is, even if he doesn’t know his real name. As he withdraws his hands from the mesarthium, Lazlo sees that his skin has become the blue of godspawn; around him, his friends from Weep do not know how to react.

The people of Weep who love Lazlo for who he is are overcome with cognitive dissonance at the revelation of his heritage and look to Eril-Fane for guidance. Eril-Fane thanks Lazlo for saving Weep, signaling that he and the other citizens of Weep are capable of moving beyond their instinctual hatred of godspawn. Lazlo learns that a blue girl has fallen from the sky and is dead.

Sarai rises as a ghost from her body and despairs that Lazlo cannot see her, and that she cannot touch him or speak to him. Lazlo’s grief turns into rage, and Rasalas mirrors his actions and screams out his anguish on a macrocosmic scale, turning the entire city into a scene of loss. Lazlo finally understands that the citizens of Weep would have killed Sarai, and even though he knows they did not actually do so, he feels that he has lost both Sarai and his beautiful inner vision of an idealized Weep. Meanwhile, Azareen and Eril-Fane finally hold each other, and Eril-Fane lets himself cry. Sarai’s ghost dissolves into the sky as Lazlo rides away on Rasalas with her body.

Lazlo begs Minya to bind Sarai’s soul and make her a ghost. There is palpable tension between Minya and Lazlo; it’s clear to Minya that he is Skathis’s son and has inherited the power that she believes should be hers by right. Lazlo cannot bring himself to hate Minya; he pities her, frail and child-like as she is. Minya complies with Lazlo’s request, but she assumes control of Sarai’s ghost as a way to extort Lazlo; he must do whatever she says or Minya will relinquish the binding on Sarai’s soul. Lazlo agrees, knowing that he holds everyone’s fate in his hands and realizing that his “legend” has only just begun.