There were no dancers. Just pounding music, strobe lights, glitter, and ten thousand alcoholic beverages on the floor where there should have been people.

Ronan began to do donuts.

The tires squealed; drinks flew; speakers toppled; plastic splintered; metal twisted; glass shivered.

Destruction drowned out both the club’s music and Ronan’s and it was gorgeous.

Then Ronan woke up. Heart pounding. Hands still clenched in fists. Ears ringing with remembered sound. Paralyzed. What had he brought back? Only the dream’s furious joy.

That was the best dream.

The first thing the dreamers destroyed with Bryde was an exit ramp. The battle was undramatic, uncontested. Once upon a time there was an exit ramp cut deeply into a mountain by bulldozers, a cloverleaf of asphalt imposed upon the wild. And then once upon a little later time, the exit ramp didn’t exist anymore. It was just a pile of rubble that returned the hillside to its natural form, the work of a transient storm dreamt to thrash just beneath the soil. Why did it even need to be there, a new highway, a new cloverleaf, in the middle of nowhere? Because it could be.

Next there was the dump. Trash piled upon trash. Old groceries rotting, new appliances rusting, plastic bottles bleeding out the remainder of their contents. Ronan had never seen a dump so big, hadn’t believed such dumps existed in the United States. He hadn’t imagined there was so much trash in the country, much less in a single dump. It took all night even for a dreamt, blue fire to burn it all, and when the fire took the support buildings and the road leading to the dump, too, the dreamers didn’t stop it. It was only when the otherworldly flames began to creep toward the trailer park below that Bryde spat scornfully and signaled for Ronan to smother it with a quickly dreamt, dissolving blanket.

The next to go was a brand-new shopping area, which was identical to the shopping area just a few miles away, which was identical to the shopping area just a few miles away, which was identical to the shopping area just a few miles away, which was identical to the shopping area just a few miles away, which was identical to the shopping area just a few miles away. The dreamers arrived and they put on their masks and less than an hour later it was all gone. Dug up. Dug under. A dreamt dirt dragon charged from the ground to destroy and then dissolved just as quickly when the chaos was through.