Su Ming had originally planned to wander around the city. If he could run into other incarnations of the Outer Gods, perhaps he could use them to counter Nyarlathotep and achieve his goal.
For example, that Outer God that had always hung in the sky, disguised as the moon, but was actually a gigantic blood-red meatball.
But no sooner had he stepped outside than Nyarlathotep impatiently put on a haunted spectacle for him. If he followed the original plan, he would probably end up passively watching the entire show Nyarlathotep had prepared.
Su Ming did not want to watch his show, did not want to follow his arrangements, and especially did not want that black man to get any enjoyment out of him.
So he chose to dream again within the nightmare, seeking out this special dimension's nominal administrator.
As mentioned before, The First Dream was now more like one of the Old Ones. It no longer resembled Dream, but in essence, it was still an embodiment of Morpheus, the First Dream—an embodiment of dreams.
In terms of authority, the Nightmare Dimension had once split off from the DC Universe, so The First Dream should still have some home-field advantage here.
Hopefully his judgment was correct. After all, he had too little information, and that was the problem when facing the Old Ones.
Without information, you wanted to investigate. Yet the more you learned about the Old Ones, the closer you came to madness.
But if you investigated nothing, then facing the Old Ones would be like groping in the dark. Tactically, that was extremely passive. Deathstroke excelled at using intelligence to set up his plans; without that advantage, he would be entering unfamiliar territory.
"Dreaming again within a nightmare?" Zatanna pinched her delicate chin between her fingers and thought