They learned to survive dangers no ordinary mortal might ever hope to experience and live… They learned to destroy the living and to resurrect the dead. They learned to summon great winds, to throw fire, to raise the waters, to break open the very surface of the earth. And by this means they learned their magic, their power over all men and all the forces of nature.

In these dreams no pain was unfamiliar to them. They learned the histories of all their pasts and all their futures. They fell into burning suns and froze on silver moons. They walked the moonbeam roads, the astral roads between the worlds. They journeyed beneath the earth, into the lands of sunless, crystalline beauty, where vast, glowing rivers roared and strange, unhuman beings ruled. They explored the corridors of measureless palaces and wandered through unmappable landscapes without horizon or end. With horrible joy they made war against the never-to-be-born. In sublime terror they made love to the undying. In these dreams they walked with the denizens of hell and made bargains with the Lords of Chaos, even indulged in compacts with the Dukes and Duchesses of Law. In these dreams, while they lay upon the dream couches of the Dreaming City, they consorted with demons, with angels and with violent, desperate men, with cruel warlocks, powerful witches and all manner of supernatural beings. They made pacts with the great elementals of fire, water, air and earth. These sons (and sometimes daughters) dreamed the long dreams of Imrryr the Beautiful, the Dreaming City. No mortal could learn all there was to learn in a single lifetime, and thus it was that the lords of the Bright Empire conceived a means by which their sons might gain all their inherited wisdom.

Elric of melnibone