Pillow Magic

It was easier to fall asleep anywhere with a pillow strapped around the neck.
For the wizard currently snoozing peacefully in a ditch beside a pitched battle between traders and bandits, it proved enough to keep him from being roused by the clashing clanging of steel on steel.
Darmant was a very unusual wizard, which was to say that even the other wizards with their idiosyncrasies gave him a funny look whenever they met. He didn’t mind, he had his dreams to go to.
As he slept, his pleasant research dream was continually bothered by this annoying ringing noise. Darmant couldn’t place the source of it, which would have bothered him more if he were awake. In his dreams, however, much happened without a purpose, and many effects without causes manifested all around him. He wished he could show others this fascinating world, but the single, greatest rule about dream wizardry he’d been taught by his mentor (a strange fellow, used his robes as a sleeping bag) was to never let another soul within your head. You didn’t know what kind of damage they could do.
The ringing noise continued to sound out, just at the edge of his little dreamspace.
And now Darmant was getting bothered. Consistency was inconsistent in dreams, so why did that noise keep coming? It must be something on the edge of his consciousness, coming in from reality, he decided. He sighed, got up from his seat at his desk, which promptly burst into a large flower and a pile of lizards the moment he stopped concentrating on them, and cast his mind out.

An opportunistic scavenger, having spotted the battle, was looking for a place to hide until the fight ended when she found what looked like a dead wizard in a ditch, with a pillow strapped to his neck that his head laid on. The grubby girl stared at the strange sight for a few moments, before her trained fingers immediately reached out to try and rifle through the wizard’s robes. He spluttered a bit when she came closer, and she jumped back, barely suppressing a squeak of surprise, but the clearly-not-dead wizard didn’t move any further. The only reason she didn’t continue her attempted thievery was that she heard a strange, collective groan. She felt a deep lethargy pass over her for a moment, and when she blinked, it vanished. The urchin turned her head towards the noise and raised her head barely over the ditch to see what that was.
The remaining combatants seemed to have all simply… Fallen down. Many were snoring loudly, to the point that the girl didn’t know how any of the ones around them could also be sleeping. She turned from the weird sight towards the weirder sight of the sleeping wizard. She wasn’t exactly an educated girl, but she could put two-and-two together, given time.
Messing with magic like that was a bad idea. So she turned and she fled, not caring how loud her footsteps were now that the cacophony of combat had settled into a sleepy silence.

Darmant woke up an hour or so later. He never could tell time that accurately when sleeping, especially given how it could just take him. He stretched his limbs out along the grassy soil of the ditch he’d fallen into, once again grateful for his pillow. He stood up with a loud, theatrical yawn, and hustled his way up and out of the ditch, admiring his handiwork. He noted the sleeping soldiers and the dozing dastards with a prideful smile, but something played on his mind. There should’ve been one more. His mind hadn’t exactly taken the strictest stock, but one was a lot closer to him than any other and should’ve been knocked right out. That certainly was unusual.
It was also incredibly exciting. That was how his own mentor had found out his own affinity for the soporific spells. Humming a lullaby to himself, Darmant made his way through the field of sleepers and dead, intent on finding his new apprentice.