Ikuuna Canon/Prologues/Red Nightmare

Red Nightmare is an Order of the Red Dream prologue in the Ikuuna Canon.

Order of the Red Dream Prologue

Red | 2/13/26

Sovittelija Väisänen was not a believer in God — as far as she was concerned, no self-respecting Nälkän ought to even claim to be — but if there ever was something of a hell, she was standing right in the heart of it. A suffocating haze of jet black smoke, tinged scarlet by dozens of pairs of rear vehicle lights, oozed into every corner of what might as well have been the whole of the world. It rolled over soot-coated hoods and coiled around flickering light poles, seeming to make a deliberate attempt at strangling everything within the reach of all its wispy extremities. Väisänen had pulled the checkered scarf she’d been wearing over the bottom portion of her face in a vain effort to rid her lungs from the stabbing aches that had already ensued from her breathing in some of the noxious fumes, but two distinct odors still managed to worm their way through the scarf’s crannies and into Väisänen’s burning nostrils. The first was the acrid tang of molten rubber and corroded steel. The second was something rancid and downright nauseating; she knew what that was, and it only turned her stomach all the more.

“All this sickens me just as much as it does you, my Võlutaar. Had we any other choice…” Väisänen’s eyes pivoted away from the murk of muted colors before her as her head angled in the direction of the Ritarikunnan Ylevä Sovittelija, who she had very nearly been touching shoulders with. The Karcist allowed her muffled words to trail off and be overtaken by a distant but ever-loudening chorus of emergency vehicle sirens, the collar of her denim jacket pinched over her nose and her own eyes locked on an invisible focal point, as if willing the fog in front of her to part prematurely and reveal the disaster site of her and Väisänen’s making. The two Nälkäns were clad in concealing winter wear and standing with their backs to the bumper of an amalgam specially tailored by wealthy collaborators in the Vātula to appear indistinguishable from a mass-market brand MPV — its body an iron-sulfide carapace derived from the ones sported by volcano snails, its windows the molded and calcified shells of glassy nautiluses, and its tires a sophisticated set of quilted belly scales from the common black kingsnake.

That wasn’t the first feat of carnomantic engineering to bless the Nälkä of the twenty-first century and it was unlikely to be the last; the same collaborators responsible for the development of the Nälkän MPV had invented the doppelganger MP5K-PDW submachine guns that both Väisänen and the Ritarikunnan Ylevä Sovittelija conceal-carried on their person, and they had since resumed work on a previously-abandoned project that, if successful, could replicate entire living spaces on nearly a 1:1 scale. Very little was ever asked of the Vātula, and yet they always overdelivered — quiet, efficient, low-cost, and low maintenance. Those all were qualities invaluable to any good tool of the Order of the Red Dream, and if not for said tools, they might never have shedded their roots as a splinter of the usurped Adytum’s Dream and become the world’s only Nälkän espionage organization. They also might never have lasted in their vicious and still-ongoing cold war with Adytum’s Dream’s loose-lipped successor: Adytum’s Wake. All those victories notwithstanding, today was proof enough that even the best tools can sometimes prove to be insufficient.

“I don’t doubt your judgement, Ylevä Sovittelija…” Väisänen’s voice, strained from smoke inhalation, came out as little more than a croaked gasp as her eyes flickered back to the smoggy road on which she and the Karcist were still standing. The two had parked their Nälkän MPV on the highway shoulder and, having masked their modifications with a sophisticated blend of accessories and cosmetic products, looked to only be a pair of naive rubberneckers. Väisänen paused as a parade of deafening screeches and flashing red lights streamed by the gridlock of vehicles to the Nälkäns’ right before grinding to an abrupt halt somewhere up ahead. She continued just as soon as the sirens had gone quiet, “...but this is not sustainable.”

Väisänen gestured in a broad swiping motion with one of her gloved hands to the haze of smoke in front of her, and as if on cue, a white beam materialized to carve away the veil that been cast over the Nälkäns’ eyes for what felt like entirely too long. As the fog finally parted, the two could make the beam out to be a surge of water jetting from a hose clutched tightly in the fists of a burly and heavyset firefighter. The firefighter’s face was tautened into a look akin to one a doctor might have as they prepared to break the news of terminal diagnosis to their patient, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. A trio of buses — if the blackened husks could still be called that — were arranged in a haphazard ‘Z’ formation as part of a massive multiple-vehicle pileup that occupied over three quarters of the road and congested traffic on both lanes. The peeled and faded words ‘Arkham County Penitentiary’ were just barely visible beneath the warped window bars of the nearest bus. This outcome was exactly as the Karcist and Võlutaar had predicted, but their hearts dropped to nearly the bottoms of their ankles regardless.

The Order of the Red Dream had just robbed sixty-three Nälkäns of their chance to one day see Ikuunan, because not a single one of those sixty-three could have survived the detonation of six Nälkän IEDs — ignitable pods of compressed methane purchased from the Hunter’s Black Lodge — that each of the buses had been arranged behind closed doors to be fitted with prior to their departure. Furthermore, the operation had come at the cost of one their own Koeaika Vartijat, who had been inserted into Arkham County Penitentiary’s general population to help facilitate the extraction of the Nälkä but could not be exempted from the transport in time. Said Nälkä were a runaway subsect of the Church of the Red Harvest that had spread like a plague among inmates of the penitentiary following the incarceration of an irresponsible Harras; they alone had very nearly shattered the veil of secrecy that the Order of the Red Dream had warred for over a century to protect. Having already pondered the implications of that a thousand times over, the Ylevä Sovittelija hesitated for a moment to speak as she calculated how best to admit that Väisänen was right.

“Our world may have changed, but our duty has not. If we are to keep the Red Dream alive and protect our brothers and sisters of the Nälkä from themselves, we must seek to redress their wrongs with absolute certainty. Nothing less will suffice when we all are on the brink of being rooted out and destroyed.” The Karcist’s words crawled out of her lips with a sort of grim resignation attached to them as she scanned Väisänen’s face for any semblance of doubt — and there most certainly was — before finally locking eyes with her.

“What if that isn’t possible? We’re on the cusp of a future that cannot be predicted or controlled, and that has forced us to become entirely too convoluted in our work. We don’t have the luxury of government backing; I fear it’s only a matter of time before we’re faced with a problem that we don’t have the resources to solve.” Despite still meeting the Ylevä Sovittelija’s gaze, Väisänen seemed to talk more to herself than she did to her Karcist and failed to conceal a flood of emotions that she had been restraining for quite some time. Väisänen’s tone was exceedingly sharp, to which her face twisted into one of immediate regret as she added, “Sorry. I’ve forgotten my place.”

The Ylevä Sovittelija closed her eyes and slowly shook her head, her features softening ever so slightly as she recognized that her Võlutaar hadn’t meant to direct any ill will towards her, “You are forgiven. I don’t deny that we are beginning to lose control, but so too are we close to bringing the Nälkän imperative into fruition.”

At the Karcist’s last few words, Väisänen’s expression lightened into one of equal parts hope and incredulity, her head craning forward and her voice now exuding a sort of cautious optimism, “The Adytum Initiative?”

“Yes.” The Ylevä Sovittelija nodded as her gaze briefly diverted from Väisänen in an unconscious move to ensure that no pedestrians happened to eavesdropping, but all those that she did notice were gathered around the sea of emergency vehicles that had since formed into a loose perimeter around the pile-up, and so she continued, “My contacts in Abraxas Group are reporting that they’ve been asked by representatives of the Klagivar to pool some of their resources into a special project; they won’t say precisely what, but we know of only one could require such an extent of the Klavigars’ involvement.”

Väisänen’s posture visibly relaxed at that, her taut face fully drooping into something of a relieved one as she let out a breath she’d been holding for what felt like years but had almost certainly only been a few minutes before adding, “Then the Red Dream just might not become a nightmare.”

“That remains to be seen. It’s highly likely that our vocal contemporaries will be joining us when the day arrives, and I doubt they’ll take kindly to it.” The Ylevä Sovittelija growled out those words, her teeth gritted and her lips tightened into a thin line, but the flash of anger promptly vanished as her eyes darted upward and fixed on a point someplace high above, “In any case, our work here is done; it’s best we leave. The Jailers are not aware of our existence, and I would much rather they stay that way.”

Väisänen followed the Karcist’s gaze, and sure enough, a perfect alternation of red and green blips — the navigational lights of an unmarked UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter — had begun to dot the starless void of a night sky overhead. The two Nälkäns shared not so much as a scarce hum of mutual acknowledgement, and yet their hustle back to the moist interior of the Nälkän MPV was perfectly synced, as was their desire to leave the molten husks of their nightmares behind as the MPV peeled off of the highway shoulder and vanished into the traffic.