John was asleep, which was odd because John rarely ever slept, and in fact, didn't like sleeping as he felt it robbed him of precious living hours; although, the thought of dying in his sleep had always appealed to him but had yet to happen. “That's the way to go.” he often thought. He liked anything that could take him quickly and painlessly. Heart attack, brain aneurysm, any type of bodily failure that would take him in the blink of an eye would be in John's top 5 ways to die. It was almost just like sleeping naturally for John. No big painful wake up, no broken bones or cuts to mend, just oxygen returning to the brain and a deep breath in. He almost died in his sleep in a fire but later thought “in his sleep” wasn't the right terminology. Yes he was asleep, and yes it killed him before he could wake up, but he still felt everything; everything until there was nothing left to feel. Once all your nerve endings are burnt off the fire stops hurting, but getting there is an unpleasant trip. But here he was, asleep, and dreaming no less. He found himself standing on some kind of desert plateau like Wotan's Throne in the grand canyon. In the dream the sun was hot and had that immediate sunburn twinge to it's rays, the type where your limbs need to keep moving or they will burn. If you could brush off sunlight this would be the time to do it. He found it hard to breathe and the air humidity and temperature kept rising. John could see something slowly rising around the rim of the plateau. He couldn't make it out at first. It almost looked like a blanket being flapped in the wind, later he thought it might be some kind of raging sea water, or some kind of reverse mudslide (a mud rise?). All his guesses were falling short and the higher it got the more it changed before his eyes and John was running out of schema's to assign the whatever he was witnessing. Suddenly John became afraid. As the mass rose from around the plateau so did the temperature. The reverse mudslide idea he was trying to process suddenly gave way into one of John's worst fears. “Lava.” he said as a chill ran down his spine. Of all the ways John had died he had never encountered Lava, and he didn't intend to. The idea of simultaneously sinking, burning and petrifying terrified him to no end. Not realising he was dreaming he began to panic and frantically looked around the plateau for any kind of bridge or exit. Not knowing what to do his legs started running on their own outside of his control in some kind of evolutionary defence buried deep in his lizard brain. But as he ran he began to get a different picture. He started to see large leathery plates overlapping and interlocking like some kind of giant suit of armour. The rising and writhing of the mass outside the plateau now seemed in perfect rhythm with itself. John got closer still and saw something unexpected: fur and feathers! He took a few steps back and saw the head of an enormous flying beast swirl up around the plateau. The monster had the body of a serpent but with many legs tucked in for increased aerodynamics; it had several large bat-like wings whirling gale force winds with every flap; It's head looked as though someone had crossed a tyrannosaur with a tiger and it had many eyes scattered beautifully from his snout back to a fearsome row of horns around the crown of its head. A brilliance emanated from his face and he seemed to carry the rising sun in his mouth. It was so brilliant that John could not look directly at it. The beast continued to circle the plateau and rise higher and and higher and as it soared higher and higher the sun also rose above it and shone more and more brilliantly. John was completely overwhelmed, he looked up to see the noon day sun shining hotter and brighter than he'd ever known and as he averted his gaze he realized that he was in darkness. The beast, the dragon, the monster, the god continued to rise and John began to see it's tail. The tail was strong and thick like a hundreds of years old oak tree one would find deep in the most forgotten parts of the forest. The tail was covered in quill spikes and on each quill rode the shimmer of a star. John looked, amazed, as he stared into the endless number of constellations carried on the dragon's tail. The beast rose and rose and rose until it hit it's apogee; at the highest point it could go it let out a roar of pain, it breathed out the sun and collapsed. Down and down it fell, the monster that carried the dawn, and since it fell from such a height the tail of the dragon was whipped up to where its head had been, and the force of the whiplash shot the stars off of the dragon's tail and into the sky. The monster fell and fell and fell and John began to run for fear of being crushed by the great beast. The creature hit the ground with a thunderous calamity that shook John to his core and knocked him over. As he tried to steady himself he looked at the dragon, whose head was now facing John. John caught his breath as he saw an expression of pure panic on the monsters face, the same panic he felt every day when it was his time to die. The dragon pathetically tried to scramble towards him, frantically clawing at the dirt and wiggling over to him, and then his expression changed and John knew that he was taking his last breath. He walked over to the beast and put his hand on its snout. It took a deep breath in, paused, and then exhaled the hottest fire imaginable and consumed John whole. John awoke, sweating, panicked, but relieved as he began to realise that he was, in fact, still alive.