Tabaris knew his master was away. He knew his master was away and that that meant he was not supposed to be practicing any magic except for the basic spells he was now allowed to use at any time. As a mage apprentice, there were certain rules he had to follow. Independently, he was only allowed to use the spells his master had cleared him on after he demonstrated his ability to perform them safely; all other spells and incantations were restricted to use under the watchful eyes of his master or another mage.

Tabaris knew his master was away, he knew this and still he had a very advanced spell book open before him in his workroom.

Ever since he was a little boy, Tabaris had been plagued with rather vivid dreams of his little brother, who had been killed in a carriage accident when Tabaris was only five. Since then, his nights were filled with nightmares where he relived the fatal accident that killed his brother in addition to more pleasant dreams where he was reunited with his little brother, his favorite playmate. Once he had begun his mage studies, Tabaris had become obsessed with the realm of Dream and the studies related to it. Although he was much too young to even think about transcending realms, Tabaris constantly begged his master to work with him on spells related to Dream instead of working on the same basic spells all the other students were working on. When his master had refused, time and time again, Tabaris decided to take matters into his own hands.

During breaks, Tabaris spent a lot of time in the small library his master owned. There he sought out books that talked about Dream and transcending the boundary that kept mortals from accessing the greater realms. He poured over the pages of the books, filling his head with dreams and desires. He knew, he just knew, that if he could break the barrier of Dream, he would be able to see his brother again. If he could control his dreams, he would never have to suffer through another frightening night of watching his brother die; he would never have to be separated from a pleasant reunion with his brother when dawn came and forced him into the waking world.

One book in particular had recently caught his attention: Transcending Realms--The Mage?s Guide Into Dream. This was perfect! It had several different spells inside, all exactly what he needed. He spent weeks collecting the materials he would need for the least complicated of the spells. When his master was gone for the weekend, off to visit an old friend of his, Tabaris took his fate into his own hands.

?Just need to add the last ingredient and it should be done.? He dropped something that looked very much like an eyeball into his cauldron and stepped back as smoke started to pour out of it. Now all he had to do was raise his wand, say the initiation word, and the portal should open.

?Chronotism!?

BAM! The commencing explosion rocked the entire city block.

Tabaris woke up, his brain pounding painfully within his skull, his back propped up against a chair. He was on the floor. There was something wet pouring into his eyes. When he reached up to touch it, his hand came away crimson red. He paled. Getting knocked out had not been part of his plan, but he could handle a little blood and a really big headache. Yes, all of it would be worth it if his spell had worked. He looked around eagerly for the result of his casting.

There wasn?t a portal in sight.

In fact, there wasn?t much of anything except a great big mess including, but not limited to: an obliterated table, two blown-out windows, blackened hunks of unidentified bits of objects, and itty bitty pieces of charred paper floating through the air.

Tabaris was in trouble, a lot of trouble. He had just wrecked his workshop and he had just performed (tried to perform) magic that was both way too advance and completely illegal, under his training code, for him to do. Add to that the results of the actual spell he performed. It obviously did not work as planned but it had certainly done something. The question was: what?

Tabaris spent the next few days first explaining what had happened to his lab to other students at the Academy (he had fibbed and told them that the had been trying a fireworks spell in preparation for the upcoming summer holidays), and then scouring the library for spells to fix what he had done. One of the older students had been nice enough to help him repair his lab, making any physical damage done to it unnoticeable for when their master returned. However, the magical damage done was still a major problem and getting worse from what Tabaris had seen. It was just this morning, in fact, that he had watched a group of clowns appear on a street corner and then march down Center Street as if this was a completely normal event. It was not, in fact, normal at all, especially since the circus was not due in town for another month.

Although, the clowns may have been one of the more normal things he had seen lately, he realized later. The garbage can outside the Academy that had started walking around and eating up garbage on its own was surely less normal. As was the group of talking storm clouds following a young schoolboy around and purposefully raining on him as they laughed and jeered, striking his bottom with lightning every few moments just to watch him jump. The random tower that had appeared two blocks over from the Academy with a princess stuck in it and apparently no way to get to her was not normal. The dragon guarding said tower that attacked any man that came near it was not normal. The rainbow that actually led to a pot of gold, the group of girls outside the caf? with pre rhinoplasty noses, the vampire he ran into the other night that looked like he came straight off an Earthen cereal box (pasty white face and tacky cape included), the increase of monsters under the bed, the increase of monsters in children?s closet, sightings of the boogie man, the little boy talking to his golden retriever and the golden retriever talking back?all of these things stretched beyond the limits of ?normal? and they were all Tabaris? fault.

In the early morning hours of Monday, when all the other students were sleeping in, enjoying the fact that they had a week?s vacation as their master was still away, Tabaris was up and flipping through the pages of a large tome entitled: Quick Fix-Its and Other Repairs for Magical Mistakes. He was unable to find the exact spell he needed--he had hoping one entitled, ?How to fix accidental breaches between your world and Dream? would pop off the page at him but had been disappointed in this hope--but he thought he found one that was pretty close. He finished flipping through the book, checking to make sure there were not any better ones, before turning back to page 153 and looking over the spell he had found: ?Fix-It Spell #124--Closing Accidental Portals Between Worlds.? Sure, he was working with realms not worlds and what he had caused were not exactly portals as much as they were ever-growing tears in reality, but he thought with a few adjustments he could make it fit.

He spent the rest of the day gathering and preparing materials for his fix-it attempt.

At night, when he thought he could more easily sneak out of the Academy (from under the prying eyes of his fellow students) and find the nearest breach, he dragged his materials along and set out down the street. Hiding himself away in an alley next to the corner where he saw the clowns appear just the other day, he started mixing ingredients. Fortunately, he didn?t need to wait for a full moon or any such nonsense to perform the spell; the people who designed the quick-fix spells obviously knew that if someone was using them, they needed them to now and work fast!

A half hour passed and he was ready to perform his task. If he understood the book correctly, the mixture was supposed to produce a smoke that would drift into the portal--or breach, in this case--and seal it shut, healing the rent. He took a deep breath, whispered the incantation in order that those passing by would not hear him, and waited.

Pink smoke drifted up from his cauldron, wafting around in the air before heading towards the breach near the end of the alleyway. It was working, Tabaris realized as elation filled him. It was working! And if it worked here, he would just need to search out all the other breaches (which could take a while, considering that they had torn open all over this area of RhyDin and had spread across the city the days following the initial accident) and fix them in the same way; he even thought, with a glimmer of hope, that he could possibly fix it all and his master would never even have to know about it.

Such optimistic thoughts came crashing down around him as the pink smoke started to filter into the breach. Instead of slowly drawing it closed, as it was supposed to do with portals, Tabaris saw--to his eternal horror--that the breach was expanding at an incredible rate! It was becoming bigger than any of the breaches he had seen so far! He quickly ran forward, waving his arms in the air and trying to prevent any more of the smoke from reaching the breach with little success. ?No no no no no!? He cried, running about wildly and drawing much attention from pedestrians, on their way to the various bars in the area, as he finally kicked over his cauldron to prevent any more smoke from rising. The thick mixture sizzled and hissed as it poured forth from the cauldron, burning a whole in the ground and in Tabaris? left shoe.

Growling in frustration and pain, Tabaris ripped off his ruined shoe and chucked it at the now gigantic fissure in the fabric of reality, not at all surprised (as many of the people standing around, gawking at him, were) that it disappeared into the misty land of Dream that lay beyond the breach. Ignoring the confused murmurs of those standing by, who had only seen the shoe disappear into thin air as they could not see the breach, he grabbed up his cauldron and marched back toward the Academy with a heavy heart and one shoe missing.

It was back to the drawing board again.

Tabaris? master returned and to say that he was not happy would be a severe understatement. He had heard rumors of weird happenings in the city while away but he had never dreamed that said weird happenings were caused by one of his students, and Tabaris no less! Calm, rule-abiding, studious Tabaris was the last person he would suspect of breaking the rules. But Tabaris had crossed the line; he had broken many rules.

Upon returning to the city, the master mage of The RhyDin Academy for Magework--whose first name was Alfonso, unbeknownst to all his students--immediately confirmed that something was indeed dreadfully wrong. He could see the residue of different Dream realms (a branch of studies that was one of his hobbies) all over the place. Once he started to be on the lookout for such signs, he started to see the breaches. The first time he saw one, he caught his breath. Who could have caused such a thing? What could have caused such a thing? The closer he got to his school, the more horrified he became; for anyone who was persistent in looking, there was a clear trail of residual magic pointing right to the Academy.

Despite his reservations and high opinion of Tabaris, it did not take long to deduce who would be tampering with the Dream realms; Alfonso knew Tabaris? sad history and his burning desire to see his brother again. Bringing Tabaris before him, the boy was quick to pour out the whole story and confirm what Alfonso had feared: during an attempt to open a singular portal for himself, Tabaris had somehow set off a chain reaction that ripped holes throughout the barriers that separated the mortal realm they existed in from the greater Dream realms.

Other students watched in dismay and anticipation--for what student didn?t like to see someone else get in trouble--as the door to their master?s study closed, on the scene of Tabaris standing before the master?s desk awaiting his punishment, and did not open again for a very long time. If they listened closely, they sometimes imagined that they could hear their master shouting, although the silencing spell that was applied to the master?s study made that impossible, and could only guess at what was being said.

When Tabaris did exit the room much later in the day, his head was downcast and he did not meet the eyes of his fellow students as he trudged back to his room.

?Packing your bags, Tab??

?Yeah, we heard you messed up reaaalll bad this time,? taunted another student.

He ignored them all, weighed down by his own guilt as the danger of what he had done had truly been brought home by his master, and closed the door to his room in their curious faces.

With one avenue of information gone, the few students still hanging around turned to their master, who had left his door ajar. One brave soul slowly approached the door, sticking his nose in, ?Master?? He almost lost that very important part of his face as his master looked up, scowling at the older student and pointing at the door. It slammed shut almost too quickly for the student to get out of the way, smashing against his face with a resounding thud! Alfonso ignored the sounds of laughter and the student lamenting, rubbing his nose and complaining that he was going to write home about such foul treatment, outside his door as he started to write a very important letter to The RhyDin Watch, informing them regarding what exactly was taking place in their city: Dreams were on the loose.

Even with enlisted help, it took the group of mages well over a week of long days and sleep deprived nights to search out and place a seal upon the hundreds of breaches that had cropped up all over the city after Tabaris? little incident. Despite all the hours of work they had put in, they knew there was still a chance that some of the smaller breaches had not been located and sealed; the small ones were the hardest to find, but did not prove any less dangerous to the public in the end.

As each breach was sealed over, the guards standing watch over it were sent out to find/capture/kill any errant dreams they could find with the help of the public. They left the talking flowers in the park alone, knowing that they would fade with time and that they were not causing any true problems save to insult an ugly hat one old woman was wearing, but had to try and reign in the clouds that had wafted through the breaches as they tended to send bolts of lightning or downpours down upon unsuspecting pedestrians on a whim. Once the majority of the breaches were sealed a group of mages, allowing the others to finish with the locating and sealing of the breaches, aided The Watch in the rounding up and dispatching of the Dreams.

When the group of mages and The Watch reconvened, they agreed it was time to make another official announcement. Later that day, The Watch sent out a final update to the public:

Dear Citizens of RhyDin,

As many are already aware, The RhyDin Watch, in line with a group of mages led under the guidance of Master Alfonso Laroche of the RhyDin Academy for Magework, have been working tirelessly to stem the invasion of Dreams into the city. Under the guidance of the mages, the breaches that have allowed the Dreams into the city have been located and sealed over, blocking any further entrance into our realm. However, the mages would like for us to remind the people that there is a slight possibility that not all breaches were located and sealed over and there is a very slim chance that Dreams could still break the seals over the next few months as the breaches naturally heal themselves. That being the case, The Watch is asking members of the public to report anything truly suspicious to their local Watch headquarters.

In addition to the breaches being sealed, The Watch has also worked diligently to return the Dreams to their rightful realms or outright destroy them if the former is not possible. The public is to be reassured that most of the more dangerous Dreams have already been dealt with at this point in time and that few still need to be apprehended. However, The Watch requests the aid of the citizens in further locating any errant Dreams but NOT in the dispatching of these. There have been several injuries reported as citizens have tried to handle Dreams by themselves, in addition to several accidents where a normal citizen of RhyDin was attacked, mistakenly identified as a Dream. To avoid any further incidents of these kinds, the public has been asked to allow The Watch to handle the further ousting of the Dreams from this realm.

Sincerely,

The RhyDin Watch

?You do realize that seriously understates the current situation we are in, do you not?? Alfonso frowned at the Captain of the Watch that had sent out the public notice earlier that day. ?There could be countless Dreams still out there, blending in with the rest of this city?s weirdness, despite our best efforts. Even worse, there are still breaches open that we have been unable to locate on our own. The problem is in no way truly contained!?

The Captain waved off the mage?s concerns, ?What the public doesn?t know, doesn?t hurt them.?