New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

So now I was facing this huge dragon, I had no idea what its intentions might be, but I felt like I was losing the dream, like I was going to wake up. No way! There was no way I was going to let myself wake up now that I was face to face with this amazing creature! Refusing to lose the dream, I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and by doing this I managed to stabilize the dream, which I will continue in the next post.

The huge dragon stood before me, and I was struck dumb… , "Wow… you are absolutely AWESOME!" I said to the dragon, "Absolutely AMAZING!" That sounded like a foolish thing to say to a dragon that looked like it might be about to toast me like a marshmallow, but I was unable to contain it. The dragon eyed me strangely, it was either growling or snarling or speaking in a language I have never heard. It finally paused and then spoke in English, it asked me if I thought I could hide forever. That statement confused me, I had not realized there was a dragon looking for me, so I hadn't been hiding at all. I asked him what he was talking about, he said I already knew that, so now there was only one thing left to do… prepare to defend myself. I told the dragon I had no interest in fighting him, his only response was to say the only alternative to fighting was to die. With that, the dragon flapped his immense wings and soared off into the sky.

I was standing there in the clearing looking up at where the dragon had disappeared from sight when I saw something moving in the sky. It was just a speck at first, but that speck rapidly grew in size until the dragon was filling half the sky, the force of the wind from his wings created tornados all around that were trying to pull me into them, once the tornados were going, he added a breath of fire to each of them which made each of them from a tornado of wind into whirlwinds of flames…

All of the fire tornados were centering in on me, setting everything in their path ablaze… which I found particularly annoying since it was such a beautiful forest… I used the song Trapped Under Ice to generate a blizzard of ice and snow which quickly extinguished the flames and crushed out the tornados, also extinguishing the flames the fire tornados had started in random places throughout the meadow. The dragon was coming in for another attack, I wasn't sure why he was so set on fighting, but I told him if he insisted on a fight he would have one, but not here, it would take place somewhere that there wouldn't be so much collateral damage. I opened a large portal with that in mind and went through it, the dragon right behind me. I wasn't sure if he had heard me and agreed with me or was just following me because I was leaving, and it really didn't matter.

On the other side of the portal I found the dragon and I were in a desolate place that looked like the surface of an asteroid or a small lifeless planet, there was no breathable atmosphere to speak of, but that didn't seem to bother the dragon one bit. The pull of gravity was also greatly reduced on the strange planet. The change of location didn't seem to have any effect on the dragon at all, he was apparently too focused on me to the point that he wasn't aware of where we had gone or just didn't care. The portal closed behind us, and he just continued his attack as if nothing had happened.

The dragon came charging from the black sky, this time breathing a breath that was composed of lightning, Witchblade formed immediately and I jumped into the sky to avoid the majority of the blast. Witchblade formed into a sword and absorbed the rest of the electricity and became charged with it, sparking brightly. Having absorbed the lightning into my sword, I moved around to counter-attack… if the dragon wanted a fight that badly, I would give him one… and there was a huge fireball right behind the blast of lightning that pushed me down into the planet surface, into my own personal crater. Witchblade armor absorbed the force of the hit so I wasn't hurt, but the attack surprised me just the same.

Before the explosion even cleared I was up and in the sky, using energy powered flight like they use in Dragonball Z, using some of the speed Vegeta has been teaching me to control, such that I was up and onto the back of the dragon in an instant… only to find out there was no opening to attack. The dragon's sparkling armor scales were the very image of perfection, or so it appeared, fitting together to create as tight a seal as if they were just one solid piece. The dragon did a full flip and flew up into the dark sky with me on his back, there really wasn't much to hang on to there with the smooth scales, however, so I dropped back down to the planet surface. There were several eruptions from the ground around me, it was pretty clear this dragon had an affinity for tornado formations, but this time it was a water tornado, a water spout formed from water that seemed to come from underneath the surface of the planet.

There were five of the waterspouts, I used Battery and added a bolt of lightning to each one, electrifying them before using Whiplash to send them right back at the dragon that had created them. The electrified waterspouts surrounded the dragon now, sparking and exploding all around him until he used a massive flame tornado to burn off the water and thus leave no easy conduit for the electricity. The dragon himself was still sparking a bit as he glared down at me from his towering height as if unsure how I had managed to turn his own attack back on him.

I still wanted to know why the dragon was attacking me in the first place, so I tried again to ask what was the reason behind this attack. Before I could get more than the words, "Why are…" out, however, he was on the offensive again, this time attacking me with yet another whirlwind, this one was an ice tornado, filled with extremely sharp and fast moving shards of ice that were exploding violently against my Witchblade armor, one particularly large shard was heading for me and I sliced through it with my Witchblade sword. I used the song Phantom Lord to call forth a wall of fire that surrounded me and melted away all of the ice before it actually reached me, effectively adding a large quantity of steam to the dead planet's thin atmosphere. The dragon seemed to be getting more and more pissed off that his attacks weren't getting through to hit me, and immediately followed the ice attack with a fire attack. I used the cover of the fire and smoke to teleport to a spot behind the dragon and try to strike from there, but he was too fast for that. Apparently he sensed me back there and brought his huge tail around, using it as a spiked mace to send me to the ground again, though the attack was still largely ineffective since he hit Witchblade again.

Ok, this was getting nowhere… the dragon couldn't harm me, I couldn't harm him, so maybe I would have to try something else. If I was going to try to strike the dragon from behind, I would still need a way to slow him down, but on this planet he was even faster than he would normally be due to the decreased gravity allowing him to… gravity. That was a definite possibility… I used the song Crush 'Em by Megadeth and hit the dragon with a massive ball of gravity, sending him out of the sky and into a large crater in the planet, the size of the crater made me wonder if the planet would be able to hold itself together by the time we were done there… well, at least there was no life on it, my penticon computer had scanned and confirmed the absence of any life form even as small as a bacteria. The dragon glared up at me from the crater he was now lying on his back in… and then I saw the spot where I would have to strike, this seemed a bit too much like Smaug in the Hobbit with the one missing armored scale on his chest, but I could clearly see there was a spot there that wasn't covered with the shimmering armor.

He blasted a fire tornado surrounded by lightning at me, I used another gravity attack that effectively pulled the fire and lightning attack right back down to the dragon, creating a huge explosion and forcing his crater a bit deeper than before. The dragon issued a loud roar, but it sounded more like rage and anger than pain, so I figured the attack wasn't really making any progress towards hurting him or weakening him even. This was getting on my nerves to have been attacked for no reason at all when I had been having a nice peaceful dream, I took the opportunity to teleport right in close to the dragon, right to the spot where the missing scale was… Even as I drove my Witchblade sword into that spot, the dragon was sending another whirlwind of electricity and ice at me, I flew down the center of that whirlwind with my Witchblade sword and hit the mark where the missing scale was, driving the sword all of the way in.

This time when the dragon roared, I could tell it was even more pissed off than ever, but it was also in some pain, so apparently I had finally made an effective attack. I pulled the Witchblade sword out and jumped back out of the dragon's reach just before he tried to cut me in two with his razor sharp claws, he was laughing now even though he was bleeding from his chest, he was saying there was no way something that minor would kill one such as him. I was still wanting to know why he was attacking me, so I asked what the attack had been for in the first place. He said I already know that, and I would not escape judgment this easily. It seemed the blood loss was weakening him more than he cared to admit, he said he would be back to get his revenge, and next time he wouldn't be so easily defeated. I was getting really annoyed that he wouldn't tell me what this was all about, so I tried doing a telepathic scan to find out what he was thinking… I got a glimpse of many dragons flying through the sky over a planet covered with beautiful forests, but that was all I saw before I woke.

I focused on following don Juan and MoSh, tried to open a portal, but nothing happened… hmmm… maybe I was really not meant to follow them. I figured I might as well continue to another goal for the night…

I opened a portal to get back to the biodome, my first thing would be to check to see if anyone was waiting there for me at the koi pond. I went through the portal and entered the biodome right next to the tree which grows loaves of fresh bread instead of the usual apples or oranges, I picked myself a loaf of fresh french bread, it already smelled of butter, then I went to the bench by the koi pond. I sat there and ate my bread, it was definitely already buttered, I tossed a few pieces of bread into the pond, those were quickly snatched up by the fish. After I finished my bread I sat there a couple more minutes, but I was afraid if I sat there and did nothing for too long I would lose lucidity or lose the dream or both, I kind of felt the dream slipping even now, I stood up and focused on one of the koi to try to stabilize the dream. As I brought the koi into focus the dream around me became more stable. So what now? One of my goals was to share an Oblivion dream with Tigress… either that or a DDO dream, either way, I had to find Tigress first. I opened the portal with the goal of locating Tigress for this kind of dream.

I emerged from the portal to find myself in a grassy area near a cave. I wasn't sure where I was, but it did look something like a scene in Oblivion, which was one possibility I had been looking for. Of course I had been looking for Tigress, not for a specific location, so I thought she might be somewhere in the area. I looked around to see if I could find Tigress anywhere, and I finally spotted a woman there with me, though if it wasn't for her energy I wouldn't have recognized her as Tigress… although the form did make sense. She was a khajiit off of Oblivion, she had armor and weapons and looked ready to head into battle.

She gave me a strange look and then said there aren't any Assassins in Oblivion, I said there are, there's the Dark Brotherhood which is basically an Assassin's guild, and I have seen screenshots where people have created a custom Oblivion character to look like Altaïr. Besides, this is an Oblivion dream, not the actual game Oblivion, so I can be whatever character I want. She said she wasn't trying to say my being an Assassin was bad, just that there are no Assassin's Creed style Assassins in Oblivion, so it would be interesting to see how it worked if I kept my actions limited to the game abilities of Altaïr. She said she thought it would result in a kick ass character. She said she already had a quest, she described the quest to me, our goal was to sneak into the goblin caves and find the lost magical sword of flames within, but we would most likely have to fight our way out once we had it because taking it would alert the goblins. But if we were discovered before we got the sword, the goblins would no doubt move it to a new location and we would lose our chance to steal it. Stealth on the way in, steal sword, fighting on the way out. Got it.

So now Tigress and I quietly entered the cave, the door made a creaking noise that seemed disturbingly loud, but the sound didn't draw any response. There was a long passage that lead to a ledge overlooking a larger chamber down below. At the far end of the chamber there were two goblins guarding a door, it looked like the large chamber was there so that no one could easily sneak up on the guards. The room was well lighted with torches, the goblins were too far away to make an archery shot easy, and there was no hidden approach. While the archery shot appeared difficult at best, that didn't deter Tigress, who pulled her bow off her back and aimed an arrow at one of the guards. She had one arrow aimed, a second arrow already in her hand, then she fired… and fired the second arrow in quick succession. Both of the goblins dropped silently to the ground. Nice shots, and I told Tigress so. We went down to the lower level using a ladder and went straight to the cave the fallen goblins had been guarding, Tigress found a key on one of them and used it to open the door.

There was another passage beyond the door with doors opening off to the sides, but there was no way such a valuable item, and we also had intelligence reports that the sword we were looking for was down on the third level of the dungeon. The passage ended in a larger room where there were quite a few goblins lined up, like soldiers ready for battle, but that didn't last for long before they moved out in an organized line. That left four goblins visible on the other side of the room talking amongst themselves. They didn't seem to be paying much attention to our side of the room, apparently they didn't consider the threat of invasion to be very high since they were in a very relaxed and casual state. About ten feet to their left there was a large bell that would no doubt serve to alert the rest of the goblins in the dungeon that there was an intruder. I scanned the room and saw there were also two goblins on either side of the passage exit. So, at the same time, Tigress let loose a volley of arrows to take down the four goblins in quick succession and I knifed the goblins beside the passage entrance with my hidden blade.

So our quest continued like this, us progressing silently through the maze of passages, selecting the passages that were least watched by goblins which meant that they were sometimes harder to traverse. Tigress took out distant goblins with excellent archery skills, making hits that looked neigh impossible, I snuck up on goblins that were never aware of my presence until my blade was already in them. We finally found our way down to the main treasure chamber, which had to be opened by inserting five seals in the star shaped carving. Once the seals were in place, the carving turned around and the door slid open. The room beyond looked really cool. There was a sword on display in the middle of the room, on a small pedestal in a cylinder of light, the sword was floating in the air, hilt down, blade up, and it was on fire. The room was filled with a dim blue glow.

Tigress and I went into the room and over to the sword, which was burning brightly, I somehow knew that as soon as someone touched the sword an alarm would sound. Tigress and I paused for a bit, I formed Witchblade into a sword and motioned to Tigress that she could use the fire sword since her element is fire, and then she took it. Sure enough, the sound of alarm bells rang through the caves, I didn't even know how they had been set off, but they were loud. Goblins were coming in from the chamber entrance, our way out was completely blocked, and we were completely surrounded. The goblins were growling menacingly, no doubt assured of their victory… Tigress and I fought and killed quite a few goblins. They were staying back, but they still blocked our way. We would just have to go through them.

Tigress and I were about to do just that when there was a portal, and MoSh came into the room. He didn't even seem to notice the goblins there at all, he looked annoyed at me… He said that since I hadn't followed him and don Juan he was going to completely forget everything they said and did. He said he was going to completely forget what don Juan had said about tapping into his inner power to reach his full potential, Tigress let out a "pfft" that MoSh didn't notice or ignored, the goblins were getting a bit perplexed by this newcomer that had somehow gotten straight into their treasure chamber and was completely ignoring the lot of them. The goblins were snarling angrily at all of us, especially at MoSh, who turned and told them to shut the fuck up, they weren't about to forget some important information. Well, he might as well use it during the short time he would have it… He took a few steps towards the goblins, stopped, then a wave of energy expanded out from him and incinerated every goblin it touched, though it washed harmlessly over Tigress and myself… Shortly after the energy wave MoSh disappeared, apparently having woken up.

Well, whatever had brought MoSh there, he had broken the barricade of goblins, causing quite a few of them to run away in fear of whatever that energy pulse had been. Tigress and I got out of the sword chamber and fought our way through the goblins, taking them down in huge numbers, leaving a trail of dead goblins in our wake. We finally got out of the caverns and into the sunlight, which was very bright after the caves, and it appeared it was even brighter to Tigress since she was a khajiit. Tigress said the sword was a treasure of the khajiit, it had been stolen by the goblins. I told her I thought I was about to wake up, so I would see her later, and then I woke.

Note: For the past several nights I have wanted to view the dream Walms said I had where I fought Xildron. So far I have not had any luck doing this, or at least not any luck recalling it. This night was different, though, I do recall viewing the dream and it was, indeed, an epic dream.

I was in my own living room sitting in the seat on the couch I always use typing away on my laptop. I was working on a homework assignment, but I needed to draw something… I wanted to get my drawing done on the computer, but I wasn't sure how to go about that. I was trying to draw with the mouse in a graphic program that looked sort of like MS Paint but had more features, like a stripped down version of Photoshop… I wasn't getting anything done at all. I sat there and pondered for a bit longer until I had an idea. I clicked on the screen and I got a popup saying I should buy medication to make my penis bigger… um… no need for that. I closed it and got two more popups… One for Viagra and one for breast implants… closed them. There were immediately more popups… 5 of them. First came, "Discover great sex!" The second said, "Run your own business from home!" The third said, "Erectile dysfunction is a thing of the past!" The next one said, "Are you suffering from ED?" Finally came, "Make your penis two times larger!" I was about to close those when I saw that with the order they had appeared, one on top of the others, only the first letter of each title was visible… D-R-E-A-M! My computer was trying to tell me something! I was dreaming? I did a RC and became lucid.

Ok… this was cool. I was in a lucid. Now to remember my goals. The first goal I remembered was to view the dream Walms told me about where I fought Xildron. I already had my computer on, so this would be easy. I logged onto my dream records on my computer and searched for the Xildron dream. Having found it, I double clicked it and selected to view the holo-record. This was going to be cool! The hologram played, I saw the dream from the perspective I had when I was dreaming it… the only thing was that it was a recording, so even if I thought I had made a dumb move, I was unable to do anything but watch the events unfold. Since I knew nothing serious had gone wrong, I relaxed and went with the flow of the dream.

At the beginning of the dream I was wanting to find Xildron, and I also remembered that Pablo had said maybe he could help with the tracking. I wasn't sure if that was true, but there is nothing to be lost by trying it that way at least once, so I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world. I stepped into a forest and found myself pounced on by a cute fox that clearly wanted to play. I called him Pablo and said I was there because he had said he could help me find Xildron, which was something I definitely wanted to do. The fox looked at me for a bit as if not understanding what I had said, then he looked disappointed, then he turned into his human form. He said I didn't seem to want to have any fun. I told him if he wanted, I could come back in a future dream for fun, but right now I wanted to find Xildron. I focused on opening a portal, directing the portal to track down Xildron as best as I could. It looked like Pablo was also focusing on something, though I couldn't tell on what. Finally a portal opened. I remembered being hit in the face by an energy blast last time I had tried to track Xildron, so I directed the portal a short distance away so I could get through it without being seen immediately. I thanked Pablo, told him he might want to stay there in his inner world for his own safety, while he couldn't be hurt in a dream, that didn't necessarily make it fun to get blasted to dust.

I went through the portal and emerged on what looked like a moon of some kind. I could see a planet in the sky, the planet looked similar to Earth but it had a ring around it. I looked around on the surface of the moon and wondered if Xildron was there. I scanned for energy sources and spotted one, so I followed the energy. I found someone in one of the large craters, I wasn't sure what he was doing, so I got closer to him to see if he was the one I was looking for. He physically matched the description Walms had given me. When I got a bit closer he turned suddenly and fired a blast of flames at me, apparently attacking before he could even know who was behind him. I used Whiplash to send the blast back at him, he absorbed the energy back and sent it back at me again. I formed Witchblade into armor to protect myself from the blast… or I tried to do that, but nothing happened. I looked at my wrist and saw there was no bracelet there, the bracelet that is my Witchblade was missing. How could it be missing when I never take it off? The blast of flames was strong enough to send me flying clear off of the moon and into space, in the direction of the planet with the man following after me.

I turned around to head back to the moon, but the man, who I had decided very well might be Xildron, was blocking my way with a wall of flames. Apparently he wasn't going to cooperate with a healing spell, I would have to get rid of some of his energy first, so I focused on the song Enter Sandman. The spirals of dark and light energy formed around Xildron, creating a large explosion contained in the center. There was another explosion around Xildron that cancelled out the explosion from Enter Sandman… I tried the more powerful version of Enter Sandman, which involves inserting a tiny piece of antimatter type energy in the center of the explosion, about the size of a grain of sand, but none the less it is enough to intensify the explosion formed there. So now the spirals of light and dark energy formed, I threw the grain of antimatter energy into the center of the exchange… normally I would get antimatter energy from Witchblade so I'm not really sure where I got the energy… and there was a much larger explosion.

This explosion clearly had an effect on Xildron, it pissed him off. He absorbed both the dark and the light energy from the Enter Sandman spell and came out of the explosion, tackling me and we shot through space towards the planet. It was clearly a live planet, I didn't want to fight on a live planet, so I opened a portal in our path that would take us to a place where it would be safe to fight without having to think about possible collateral damage.

Xildron and I fell out of the portal onto a barren planet, in a huge canyon with some impressive rock formations but no sign of life. It was too bad that we might destroy the rock formations, but at least there was no life on the planet that could get caught up in our fight. Now that there was no other living thing in the area I switched tactics to use Crush 'Em by Megadeth since apparently Xildron would absorb either dark or light energy, Crush 'Em creates a gravity based attack. The first wave of gravity pushed Xildron into a large crater, which seemed to surprised him a bit although it didn't seem to hurt him much. He was instantly came at me again, I sent another pair of gravity blasts at him… the first one pushed him against the canyon wall, the second one was from above and pushed him down into a large crater. He was going to come at me again, but I kept the waves of gravity coming… "Now I lay you down to rest, you'll never be more than second best, step inside, you're in for a ride, and we crush, crush 'em!" After a large number of the gravity blasts had pounded him into a rather deep crater I looked in and it seemed he was a bit disoriented. Maybe now would be a good chance for a healing spell…

I got closer to where Xildron was, he was just getting up and glared over at me, but by now I had already started the healing song I had chosen which was Silver and Cold by AFI. The song was having the effect of pulling off some of his unstable dark energy and replacing it with stable dark energy since I was certain his base energy type was dark. It looked like he was about to attack me when the stable energy started being returned to him, and then he stopped with a really puzzled look on his face. Did that mean it was working? It must mean it was working, he had definitely noticed something in the energy that was returning to him. I continued with the song, focusing a bit on stabilizing the dark energy I was absorbing, and the song was just about over when Xildron got a pissed off look on his face. He came directly in front of me and glared directly into my eyes, the healing spell had not done enough… there was still a lot of hate in there… he said he would know that energy anywhere. He said my mission to kill him would fail, he would send me back to the fool who had sent me… send me back in pieces. He grabbed hold of my left arm and powered up a blast of energy he had aimed at my face.

Ok, so apparently he still wanted to fight more and I was still up a creek without a Witchblade, so I decided to go the other way and use the dark energy to follow the Alex Mercer (from the game Prototype) archetypes I have developed in my mind… I used the dark energy and formed my right arm into Mercer's sword blade. I cut at his arm that was holding on to me, and he quickly released me when he was cut by the blade. So now we engaged in an intense and fast paced battle where he was using an array of physical and energy attacks and I was using the full arsenal of Alex Mercer attacks as well the armor Alex Mercer used in Prototype, the armor was hopefully going to replace the missing Witchblade armor. During this battle, however, neither of us seemed to be able to get the upper hand. I was glad I have been speed training with Vegeta or I probably couldn't have kept up! While I was mentally thanking Vegeta I must have let my guard down just a bit because I got hit by a large blast of energy and knocked into the wall, closely followed by Xildron, who was now demanding to know why… I felt Xildron probing my mind and I quickly blocked him out, but he had gotten a small piece of information… Xildron wanted to know why Walms had sent me to do his dirty work instead of coming to face Xildron himself. He called Walms a coward and said he would have to teach dear old dad a lesson.

Xildron was hesitating, apparently wanting some answers out of me which I had no intention of giving. I barely noticed that my energy was getting a bit unstable from the unstable energy I had absorbed from Xildron and from the fighting with so much dark energy that I'm not completely used to… Xildron was demanding that I say something… so I did, but it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Suddenly, the unreal silence was broken by a lament, a lament coming up from the deepest darkest abyss…" He asked what the fuck I was talking about, clearly confused by that seemingly random statement, "And from the seven gates of the dark fortress, the dead come back to life to face you… this is Hell!" Xildron gave me a look of anger and frustration, not expecting the effect of the spell he had willingly given me time to set up without interference… "Immortal fire, now rise, light my heart, light my way through the darkness, a guardian of space and time!"

A massive wall of energy erupted around Xildron and me, which took him by surprise. I guided the energy on a path to center in on Xildron, but it wasn't entirely stable… there was both dark and light energy in the wall of flames, they were mixing with each other and becoming even more unstable… instead of centering in on Xildron, the flames concentrated in the area all around Xildron, which included where I was, I had just been blasted by my own energy attack, how lame is that? I tried to get out of the path of my own immortal fire spell, I ended up right in front of Xildron. He said he would send me back to his father in pieces, my mission had failed. A portal opened behind me and Xildron absorbed some of the immortal fire energy and used it to push me through the portal, which closed behind me.

I was now in the air over a green forest, although I felt more like passing out than flying, It is extremely draining to release a large amount of energy and then get nailed by that same attack. I flew for a bit, and then felt that I was falling, but someone grabbed hold of me and took me in for a landing. I looked to see who it was and I saw it was Walms. Xildron had said he was going to send me to Walms, and he had done just that. I wondered how much energy Xildron had left, had he been able to absorb all of what I had put into the immortal fire spell? Was he still strong and ready to go or was he also about to pass out after that fight? I had no way of knowing.

I was trying to tell Walms that Xildron was coming and he was pissed, but I didn't seem able to make Walms hear me. He looked rather pissed off… was he mad at me? For starting a fight with Xildron? Whether he was mad at me or not, he was healing me, I could feel the icy cold of his stable dark energy flowing through me, I felt some better from that. I told him to be careful, Xildron was pissed. I saw no one had followed me through into Walms' world, there was a kid there… maybe Xildron wasn't in any condition to come through and get pissed at Walms right now. Maybe the fight had taken more out of him than he had let on. No matter what the reason, he had not followed me through the portal. Walms was saying something I couldn't understand, but then I was teleported and found I was in my own bed. I was still tired, I thought I had just woken up. I should take notes on the Xildron fight, but I couldn't find the energy to sit up and write the stuff down, so instead I just fell back asleep again. By the time I woke in the morning I had completely forgotten the dream.

The hologram viewing ended when I woke up, and I was on my couch with my computer. I was thinking it had been foolish to use an immortal fire when my energy was that unstable, of course that would lead to a highly unstable immortal fire spell which would be nearly impossible to control properly. Maybe if I put it together with Crush 'Em the gravity could pull the full force of the immortal fire to one target with more accuracy… maybe if I… but I didn't have time to ponder other ideas before I woke.

After tossing and turning for what seemed like forever I finally sat up in bed, rubbing my tired eyes. Why was I unable to fall asleep? Normally I don't have any difficulty falling asleep, but this was clearly going to be one of those nights where I wasn't going to heading back into my dreams. Considering that I'd made plans to go back to find Dragor and finish the task of healing him. Well, that obviously wasn't going to happen tonight unless I managed to find a way to get back to sleep soon. Feeling kind of hungry, I left my room and went to the kitchen without turning on any lights. What I found in the refrigerator made me start drooling…

it was a chocolate cake! It looked like one of the most delicious chocolate cakes I have ever seen, dark chocolate cake with chocolate icing and slivers of dark chocolate on top of the cake, a ring of strawberries around the edge of the cake. Being hungry, I figured no one would notice if there was an extra sliver of the cake missing… I cut myself a thick slice of cake and happily ate it. Only then did I realize the slice of cake I had taken was extremely obvious to anyone who took even a fleeting look at it. I was trying to figure out some way to cover my tracks when it occurred to me that I could possibly be dreaming. I did a RC and discovered that this was definitely the case. Since I was in a dream anyway, I went back to the refrigerator and ate the rest of the cake.

Feeling like a pig now, I thought about my other goals for the night. Oh, yeah! I wanted to find Dragor and try again to heal him. With the intent to locate him, I focused on opening a portal and went through it. I stepped from the portal to find myself beside a very familiar looking cave; it was the same cave where I had found Dragor the first time! I hadn't thought there was a chance Dragor would be in the same place as I had found him before… Well, since I had been there before I knew exactly where I needed to go. When I reached the large chamber in at the end of the entry passage I found the same three people there. This time, however, Dragor was walking in front of the other two who were sitting in some big chairs. It was obvious that Dragor was angry at his two companions, he was pacing back and forth and telling them they had better get off their asses and do what he told them before he got really angry. The other two seemed a bit nervous over the threat, but not enough to actually do much… that is they didn't seem to want to do much until they looked behind Dragor and saw me. When he saw the other two staring over at me, Dragor also turned to see I was there.

This time it was immediately apparent that none of them wanted to waste time on idle chat. The three of them attacked me on sight, firing large blasts of energy at me. Witchblade formed immediately and protected me from the power of the blast, the force of it propelled me back through the passage and out the mouth of the cave. I landed there and looked back into the cave where I saw the three of them coming, Dragor in the lead. I waited for them to approach me as I considered my options for getting Dragor on his own. There was a blur of motion as the two guys with Dragor split to my right and left and attacked me from those directions. Now was the chance… I opened a portal directly behind Dragor and charged directly at him, right into his lightning attack and tackled him right through the portal…

The portal I had opened led to an isolated location; a dead world not far from the planet I had been on when I found Dragor. I hadn't specified where the portal should go, I had just directed the type of location I had needed the portal to lead, and I had wanted it to lead somewhere that a big fight between Dragor and me would not hurt anyone else. I surveyed the surrounding area. The landscape that surrounded us was completely devoid of life. Dragor stood glaring at me, the only thing I could see in his eyes was pure hate. And yet I knew that somewhere inside of him there was a spark, a chance for his heart to be healed, a chance for him to be set free of this hate and to live his life how he chose. But he was not going to make healing him easy, it was obvious that he was going to fight it every step of the way, holding onto is hatred in the same manner a drug addict will hold onto their drugs even though those drugs are killing them. He said if I wanted to play, this would be the last game of my life.

All I saw was a blur of motion as Dragor came directly at me in a full on attack. My training with Vegeta must be doing some good, as I reflexively jumped into the air and avoided Dragor's attack, coming down on his back with a hard kick that sent him head first into the dirt where he dug a trench with his face. That didn't even phase him, though, as he did a flip back onto his feet, turning to face me at the same time. He had a smirk on his face. He said he was glad this wasn't going to be as easy as he had thought it would be with me being a mere human. He moved his hands as if he was doing a Final Flash like Vegeta on Dragonball Z, instead of an energy blast, however, a blast of lightning came out of his hands. I used Whiplash to deflect the bolts back at their source. After reflecting back in the opposite direction, however, the bolt of lightning split into two separate bolts, circled around, and hit me from behind, the result was I was knocked over and was sparking all over. Dragor, apparently thinking the attack had done more than it actually had, was laughing at me and asked if I wanted to change my mind about fighting him since he really saw no advantage to destroying an opponent as weak as me.

Ok… it was time to stop being on the defensive and go on the offensive. I had the idea that since I had attempted to heal him he would expect light energy attacks and know how to block them. I thought maybe he wouldn't expect the dark energy techniques I have modeled after Alex Mercer on Prototype…

I had the song Phantom Lord by Metallica playing, but more because it helps me get more energy than because I was using it to focus a spell. I selected Alex Mercer's spike attack, sending dark energy into the ground to have it erupt right under Dracor in the form of razor spikes. Dragor responded instantly, jumping into the air, clear of the spikes while laughing. A bit more dark energy… and a blast of dark energy lightning came from the tip of each of the spikes, centered in on Dragor. Apparently he wasn't ready for that one, as he failed to get out of the way as the dark energy lightning wrapped around him and pulled him into the ground hard as the spikes retracted. So now Dragor was even more pissed off and on his back in the middle of a small crater.

But I also saw that the dark energy inside Dragor was beginning to become more unstable as he had tried to absorb some of the energy in the lightning attack I had just hit him with. With it being unstable, there would be a better chance to draw some of it out. So I switched from Phantom Lord to Silver and Cold by AFI (Your sins in to me, my beautiful one…). The effect of this healing song was to pull quantities of dark energy directly out of Dragor and into me. Even that wasn't as easy as it sounds… he was more than willing to relinquish some of his energy, in the form of flame attacks, sending waves of black flames in my direction. I had to redirect my healing spell, place it in conjunction with Fuel by Metallica (Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire!", to absorb all of the dark energy as it came in my direction. I was focusing on The Curse by Disturbed to try to stabilize all of that dark energy as it came it, but it was looking like it might be too much energy to stabilize all at once.

No matter how unstable my energy might be getting, Dragor's was much more unstable because he was pissed off. He erupted into a massive blast of fire powered by dark energy. The entire area around him burst into flames, flames reaching high into the sky and scorching the ground around them, burning into the surface of the planet itself to make a large crater there. I could hear Dragor inside the flames laughing maniacally, saying that there was no way he could be defeated by one as pathetic as a mere human, his full power would crush me like a gnat… he continued yelling and laughing, sounding like nothing short of a complete lunatic. The flames around him blasted into an even brighter blast which was nearly blinding to look into. Witchblade was protecting me from the force of the flames as I focused on absorbing some more of the energy…

This wasn't getting anywhere… but it did appear he was expending a large amount of his energy into all of those flames. So maybe I might have some success in using a healing spell at this point. So I focused on using the song Touch My Heart off of the Devil Hunter Yohko soundtrack. The song started playing, and the first thing I noticed was something I'm not used to seeing… it was forming a sphere of light energy around me that was blocking out the dark energy flames. I was able to approach Dragor much more easily than I had expected with the dark energy being blocked out by the sphere of light. When I got close enough to Dragor I was able to move on to the next part of the spell; a pillar of blue and white energy erupted around Dragor,

which clearly got him even more pissed off or maybe it was actually hurting him, because I could hear loud roars from within the energy pillar that I couldn't tell if they were of rage, pain, or both. The pillar of light burned bright until it had burned off all of the dark energy flames and left nothing but a huge charred crater with an unconscious Dragor in the middle of it.

I went over to Dragor, he was alive, though he looked quite disoriented from the entire ordeal. I had some unstable dark energy inside of me… so I was focusing on The Curse by Disturbed (Defying the curse that has taken hold, never surrender, I'll never be overcome!) to stabilize the dark energy inside of me. I had gotten it mostly stabilized when Dragor got up and looked at me strangely, still looking very disoriented. The song spell to use now was Of Wolf and Man (I feel I change, back to a better day… Hair stands on the back of my neck… In wildness is the preservation of the world, so seek the wolf in thyself! Shape shift nose to the wind, shape shift feeling I've been, move swift all senses clean, earth's gift, back to the meaning of wolf and man!) to change Dragor back to his true form, which is that of a blue dragon.

Dragor now had the form of a huge dragon, three heads, shining scales that looked like they were made out of brushed steel, breathing bolts of lighting, roaring so loud that the surrounding mountains were shaking with the sound. The entire dragon was sparking, an electric dragon, it was an awesome sight to see. The dragon finally calmed down and looked directly at me with its middle head, now the dragon had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen…

Dragor made a snorting sound in my direction before flapping his massive wings and taking flight into the sky and disappearing through a portal that appeared there. He had just disappeared from sight when everything around me faded and I woke.

When we got back to MoSh's inner world, I noticed the dream seemed to be ending. Time to dilate time. I told MoSh I wanted to do something more with him if he didn't mind. He said that was cool. I figured that might not even matter… if he wasn't going to remember me. Either way, I decided to dilate time. I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, dilating time to the point where one hour in waking life equaled four hours of dream time.

I asked MoSh what he wanted to do. He said he didn't have anything specific in mind, so he would help me with one of my goals. The nature of my goals eluded me at the time… Since I couldn't focus on something specific to aim for, I focused on opening a portal to take MoSh and me somewhere we needed to be. The portal opened. MoSh followed me through…

Once we were on the other side, I had a look around. I saw a familiar face… I focused on placing the name… Lonewolf! So why had my portal brought MoSh and me to see Lonewolf? There were a couple of women there with Lonewolf. I didn't recognize them. I looked around to take in the situation. I realized there was a battle going on. There were zombies attacking. I figured that was why I was there. There were a couple of other people right there with Lonewolf, but I didn't recognize them. I headed towards the area where the main advancement of zombies seemed to be coming from. There were so many of them… I wondered how it had happened that these zombies were attacking Lonewolf and his friends… I looked into the hoard of zombies. There were also some other things out there that appeared to be demons. I still didn't understand why they would be attacking Lonewolf, but it didn't really matter. They were attacking but that was about to stop.

MoSh and I were now outside the main gate of what looked like an ancient fortress. MoSh changed into his naga form and flew off. I thought a few extra of me would be a benefit. I used the song Divide by Disturbed to multiply myself. I multiplied myself until there were 256 of me. I considered going on to 512, but I decided against it. The battle raged on. All of the copies of me attacked the enemies with Witchblade swords, some of the Witchblade swords were charged with light energy lightning which made them even more effective against zombies and demons. I had the idea one of my copies was using a fire weapon of some kind… I didn't have time to contemplate why just one of my doubles was using fire… I saw areas of the hoard bathed in green flames. That was no doubt MoSh's doing…

It seemed that the hoard of enemies knew no end. Cut through endless numbers of them and more just came to replace those. I followed the direction that the zombies and demons seemed to be coming from. I fought my way through the hoard of enemies, past several of my clones, I spotted some more green flames off to my left… I happened to think that a big fight should involve more people… I looked around the hoards of zombies. There were lots of me fighting through there. I also did see a few other people. Sephiroth was a short distance to my right, I spotted Link off to the left… I wondered who else was there. I continued tracking the zombies back until I found where they were coming from. I found that the zombies and demons were coming through a portal as if it was a tunnel, and they seemed to just keep coming. To fix this situation I would have to close the portal.

There were endless numbers of enemies coming out of the portal… it would be hard to close as long as that was going on. So my answer to that was to power up a large energy blast, using Dragonball Z as my archetype. I powered up a Final Flash of light energy and then fired it directly into the portal. It fired directly through the portal, incinerating zombies and demons as it went. I couldn't see what it hit at the other end, but there was a huge explosion that set the entire portal unstable. The portal itself exploded in a blast of energy that incinerated all of the nearby zombies and demons. The portal collapsed in on itself, finally leaving nothing behind but some dispersing light. I was now standing in a large empty space. I looked around and saw what was left of the zombie and demon hoard moving away from my location. I wondered if the enemies had even noticed that their portal was destroyed and there would be no more reinforcements…

So I went back into the fray and continued helping the others fight. My copies were starting to disperse a bit too far, and that was getting disoriented. A couple of my copies were in a swamp like area… which was not consistent with my current location. I wondered where those copies had managed to get themselves… The fight continued for a while longer, but now there was a definite end to it all. Finally there were only a few of the enemies left. Before the last one fell, however, I lost the dream and woke.

Note: Tonight I wanted to do some more training with Vegeta. Vegeta has said if I really want to improve, I need to come train on a regular basis. I'll just have to see if I can keep my motivation up. So I won't go into detail on the training today, but I will just say that we did a bit more practice on what we did last night and then moved on and did the one with the drones… which I had thought was something Vegeta made up, but I have been told that is also from the Ranma 1/2 series… except in the series it was actual bees that Ranma caught, here they are small robot drones. This makes sense… Vegeta really likes the series Ranma 1/2… Next, I planned to track down someone who needs their heart healed. Inside, I am a healer... and I think it has been having a negative effect that I haven't been doing that kind of healing much lately. I also wanted to take a closer look at the locked book. I successfully slipped into a WILD…

My bedroom was dark when I woke up. I rolled over and got ready to go back to sleep. But first a reality check. I discovered this was a dream! I got out of bed as I became fully lucid…

I thought about my next goal. I used my first dream training with Vegeta, in which he once again did some amazing time dilation. Several hours of training fit into only about an hour of waking life time. Maybe even less than an hour. It takes a little time to actually fall asleep and get into the dream state even with the aid of meditation… Now I wanted to track down someone who needs to have their heart healed, to have their inner flame restored. First I asked myself who I wanted to try to locate. I remembered an individual referred to as Xildron, who I found out about from another dreamer. It seems that Xildron used to be a dragon, but got in a fight that ended in his death… and then some idiot resurrected Xildron as a human, which didn't make him very happy. It seems his energy is also unstable creating hostile behavior… I want to find him to stabilize that energy (the way I now see healing someone's heart) then he will be as he was meant to be. I'm not sure if I have enough information to track him… so instead I just tracked down the situation, which would no doubt lead me to someone who needed healing. So with that goal in mind, I opened a portal. I focused on allowing my tracking ability guide the portal to somewhere that my abilities would be needed. A portal opened and I went through it…

On the other side of the portal I found myself in a forest. It was a beautiful place. I walked through the forest for a while. The forest was filled with the sounds of singing birds and a gentle breeze blew through my hair. I wondered if my portal had gotten me anywhere near a situation like the one with Xildron… I didn't see anything that looked right. I decided it didn't really matter. Q keeps telling me I can't heal everyone, so I just have to focus on the ones I can find. So now I just needed to find the individual in the area who needed to have their heart healed. I walked through the forest for a while longer, just enjoying the setting. The forest slowly thinned out as I reached a rocky area at the base of a mountain. A cave opened into the mountain side. I approached the cave. Maybe the person I was looking for was in there. I wondered who might be living inside a cave. I entered the cave, making sure to remain silent as not to disturb anyone.

It started getting darker as I progressed farther into the cave. I adjusted my vision as the darkness became too deep to see well. The cave descended farther back, past a couple of passages leading off to the side. I stayed with the main passage. I finally reached the end of the passage, which was a large chamber. The flicker of torches illuminated the chamber. There were three individuals there. There was one on the left who had reddish skin, which looked like they might be scales, black hair that was basically a long mohawk, that went halfway down his back. The hair flowed down between two horns that were curved and had nasty looking points. He had ratty looking blue jeans on. The person on the right was dressed in black robes. I could not see anything of the thing's face or any other part of his body. Just glowing eyes… and those were glowing with a silvery light. The third man in the middle had normal caucasian skin, long hair that was a really light blonde or maybe silver, and he was decked out in nasty looking armor. The armor looked a lot like the armor in this picture, without the head piece and the lion insignias on the chest weren't lions… they were dragons. The colors may have also been different… I can't remember the exact color of the armor. All three of them appeared to be glaring at me, although it was hard to tell about the one in the dark robes…

I completely ignored the fact I was being glared at as I scanned each of them for a possible spark. The two on the outside didn't have any spark, or at least none that I could see… The man in the center had a spark… I could see that for certain. The man in the center needed to be healed, but I didn't see anything that could be done for the other two. I knew immediately that the other two were going to cause trouble for me when I tried to heal the third one. Now I walked farther into the room until I was right in the center of the chamber. Up until now no one had said anything, all three of them had continued to stare at me. Finally the one in the middle spoke. He spoke in a low growling voice. He asked me who I thought I was, and what did I mean by intruding in their lair. I said I had come to see him. He laughed a laugh that was completely without mirth. He said he had no business to discuss with the likes of me. He said I had made a fatal mistake by coming here, because now I could not be allowed to leave. I found myself under attack.

A massive blast of flames came from the demonic man on the left at the same time as the ground was cracking open beneath my feet, an attack coming from the cloaked figure on the right. I jumped into the air with quick reflexes I didn't realize I had. I found I was flying into the air, the chamber was much higher than I had thought. I flew through a large hole that led all of the way to the surface and out into the open sky. The three people from the cave followed me out. Three attacks came at once… fire, lightning, and ice. I spun quickly and did 3 rapid Whiplash spells, sending the fire at the ice, the lightning at the fire, and the ice at the lightning. That didn't interfere with them for long… All three of them came at me all at once. I made a dive to the ground, falling like a rock and then pulling to a quick stop as I landed. Three massive energy attacks were right behind me. Witchblade formed armor over me at the last possible second before the attacks hit. There was a huge explosion that forced me down into the ground. I felt an immense force pushing me down, it lasted for a short time, and then it stopped. When I finally extracted myself from the ground I saw the blasts had left me in the middle of a large crater… I could hear the three men laughing up above, saying that foolish human should have known better than to intrude. Time to try something else.

As the three of them were laughing, I flew up from the middle of the crater fully covered in my Witchblade armor. I used the spell song Crush 'Em by Megadeth. I hit the demonic entity with a blast of gravity that forced him back into the mountain, forming a crater there. "Heads I win, tails you lose! Out of my way I'm coming through! Roll the dice don't think twice, and we crush! Crush 'em! Now we lay you down to rest, you'll never be more than second best! Step inside you're in for a ride, and we crush, crush 'em!" The gravity had him pinned to the mountain. I heard him cursing loudly about how he intended to burn the flesh from my bones slowly for that. Almost in the same move, I hit the cloaked figure with a blast of gravity which forced him into the ground, forming another crater right next to the crater made when I hit the ground. More cursing. More threats of torture and death. Meh… I've heard it all before, been through some of it. I heard them saying this would not hold them! It didn't need to hold them long, just for a bit while I used a healing spell on the third one. One more blast of gravity would have to hold the third one while I did the healing spell. I had the song Crush 'Em going in the back of my mind to keep the gravity fields supplied with energy. I could hear the song playing in my mind, or maybe in the physical area around me. I couldn't tell if the others could hear it or not.

The third man cursed fluently at me. I ignored his threats, too. I focused on the healing song Devour by Disturbed. "I will devour you, take all the pain away. I cannot stay my hand, from reaching out so that I can empower you. For all eternity. It seems to ease my mind, to know that you've brought meaning to my life." That was going just fine until the other two were breaking free. I tried to divert more energy to holding them, but that interrupted my healing spell… and the action proved to be too little and too late. They were both free now. They attacked me and I avoided their attacks, there was an explosion of flames and some energy behind me. The third man, the one I had come to heal, was right in front of me now. He grabbed me by the front of Witchblade. I looked into his eyes and did a scan. I found an image of a dragon there… A bluish green dragon with beautiful scales and wings, like this picture, but the dragon had three heads…

The man spoke in a low and angry growl. He said he didn't know who the fuck I was or where I had come from, but now I was going to… He stopped short as he noticed my telepathic scan. He roared at me to get the fuck out of his head. A portal opened and he threw me through it before I realized what he was doing… I hadn't been expecting that move, I had figured he would try to kill me… As I felt myself falling through the portal to an unknown destination I woke.

I was in a strange place. I looked around to see where I was. I was in a strange city. I looked around and I saw that I was in a space between two buildings. I looked out on the street and saw this city appeared to be populated by orcs. They were moving quickly from building to building, talking to each other only briefly before moving on. I saw that there seemed to be a lot of orcs near one building. I wondered what was happening over there. I wondered how the orcs would react if a human was suddenly found among them. I hesitated for a few minutes due to that, but for some reason I felt ok about going out onto the street, into the open. I felt ok about it, as if doing that would not put me in any danger. I stepped out onto the street and headed for the building where all of the activity seemed to be taking place.

As I walked across the street I noticed that the orcs were noticing my presence. They were turning to look, appearing very curious about me. None of them seemed hostile, though. They just seemed curious. I reached the building where all the activity was with no interference. When I got there I saw that the orcs were rushing in and out of the building. None of them were paying much attention to me. I looked into the building. There were orcs in beds everywhere. They looked to be in various stages of injury, They were all being tended to by doctors or healers… When I got in there, one of the orcs came over and quickly ushered me outside. She followed me off to the side of the door. She said the hospital was very busy, so unless I needed medical help, could provide aid, or needed aid, please stay out of the way. I asked what was going on. She smiled, then she turned and walked away.

I still wanted to know what was going on. I wondered who could tell me something about what was happening. While I didn't feel any hostility, I did feel an intense sense of urgency. I walked down the street towards someone who looked like they were in charge. Just as I was getting close to him, however, another orc came running up. This one was female. She said there was another attack force approaching. The male orc looked very disturbed by that. He said they didn't have any more warriors to send. He said most of them were too badly injured from the last attack… and those who weren't injured were completely exhausted. There was no way they could handle another attack… This sounded like a possible DDO quest. I would have to find out more. At thinking of it as a DDO quest, I stopped for a moment… DDO? Tigress does RC's when playing DDO… so I would do that, too. I did a RC and found out I was dreaming. But my goal was still the same. Find out what was going on.

I asked who was attacking. The woman looked at me strangely. She said the trolls, of course… I asked what she meant. She asked if I had just dropped from the sky… the troll army, they were attacking again. She said I had gotten myself into the wrong place… there was no way their defenses could handle another attack. I asked how many trolls. She said there appeared to be well over a thousand trolls… their biggest assault yet… And then there were the traitors who had fled the city to join with the enemy. She said hope was lost. I said no, it wasn't. I told her I would just have to intercept them. She said there was no way I could do that alone. I told her not to worry, there was an army ready to move in. An army? She asked an army of how many? I thought for a bit… I said definitely 256, I was expecting it would be 512, maybe as many as 1024. She asked if I didn't know how large my own army was. I said it depended on how many they had managed to gather up. She said maybe they should save themselves and run. She said full grown orcs couldn't match strength with a troll… and no offense, but an orc is much stronger than a human.

The orc that looked like he was in charge interrupted the woman. He said if the humans wanted to go out and get themselves killed in battle, then that is to be commended. It is much better to be killed in battle than to live in fear. The woman said that it is also foolish to go into a battle when you know you can't win. The leader said it was, in the end, up to the humans what they wanted to do. He said if my army of humans could hold the attacking hoards off just long enough for them to get the injured, the very young, and the very old to safety they would be extremely grateful and would make sure my army and I were well rewarded. He added that if we were in need of supplies… armor, weapons, rations, their resources would be at our disposal. It is well known that orc armor and weapons are among the best, although humans probably would have little use for orc rations… except for the mead… I told him not to worry, we were already well equipped. I asked where the trolls approached from. He said the south. I said perfect, we would have no problems intercepting them. With that I headed for the gate to the city.

I took flight, much to the surprise of the orcs around me, and flew over the gate and headed south. There were, indeed, hoards of trolls. I saw some orcs mixed in with them. I landed in front of the hoard. I landed near the one who appeared to be the general. I walked right over to him. I asked him if there was any possibility of them turning around and going home so things wouldn't have to get ugly. He and several others around him laughed. He said this stupid human amused him… so if I wanted to live, he was going to give me to the count of 10 to get out of his sight.

"All the way to 10?" I asked mockingly, "I'm impressed. I didn't realize trolls could count that high." The general glared at me and said I was no longer amusing him. I told him if he turned his forces around and left immediately, no one would get hurt. He said I would be wishing no one had been hurt. He took out his sword and tried to run me through. His sword hit my Witchblade armor, which formed instantly. The troll was quite surprised by that. I said if he was surprised by that, wait until he got a load of what was coming up next. I was about to focus on my multiplication spell when I saw there was another human there with me. It was Tigress. She asked what was going on. I motioned towards the army of trolls and orcs. I said if she wanted to help, just go ahead and kill something. In fact, kill lots of somethings. The trolls laughed some more. I guess the idea of Tigress killing lots of them was very amusing to them. Tigress multiplied. There was a paladin version of herself in shining armor with a large glowing sword… a rogue version of herself which was a halfling and had a dagger dripping with poison… and a fighter version of herself which was a warforged and was carrying two nasty looking swords… and that was in addition to her normal self.

So now I focused on the song Divide by Disturbed. 2… 4… 8… 16… 32… 64… 128… 256… That's where I normally stop. I saw that all of Tigress had dispersed into the enemy army, killing as she went through them. I thought I saw the pally split into two pallies, so Tigress wasn't done dividing, either. So even as the trolls attacked all of my clones, I continued multiplying… I wanted to push the limit. Another split… 512 of me. Every part of my mind seemed to be consumed by a different part of the fight. Cutting down a troll here, running my Witchblade sword through an orc there… There were still so many more trolls than there were of us… Should I keep dividing? I wasn't sure what would happen… I decided I had better not chance it until I knew for sure 512 would work well… So the fight continued. Having 512 of me was rather disorienting, but since all of us were focused on the same task, that made it easier. All of us were utilizing our Witchblade swords to cut down trolls and orcs wherever we found them.

Then I noticed something… one of the orcs had put his sword through one of my clones! His sword had managed to penetrate her Witchblade… I wondered how that was possible. Had dividing the Witchblade that many times made it less effective? My Witchblade spoke to me in my mind, saying the others were not as strong due to the dividing… but the original me still had a fully effective Witchblade. I felt the energy from the clone return to me. Ok… 511 of me… The fight was intense, and disorienting as I tried to direct each of my clones at the same time. A couple more clones went down, but that was nowhere near the number of trolls to fall. Soon the field was littered with dead trolls and also some fallen orc traitors. Only Tigress and I were left… there were 64 Tigresses and 486 of me.

Tigress looked around at all of the Ravens standing around her. She asked if I could have made any more of me. I said yeah, I thought I could have, but I stayed with 512 for now. The next step up from 256. Both of us absorbed our clones back into ourselves and surveyed the area. Nothing but death. Tigress started an intense fire. She said many of the bodies would burn, and create fertilizer for the earth… and the ones that don't burn will feed the scavengers of the wilderness. I looked at the burning carcasses and thought that was the first time those trolls and orcs would ever be useful to anyone. I was looking at the flames when I woke.

I was outside my house. I looked around and saw the desert around me. Nothing looked out of place, it looked the same as my waking life. I was hot due to the fact it is the desert and it is summer. I wanted to go back inside where it would be cool. I walked back over to the house and tried to go inside. The front door was locked. Wtf? Why was I locked out of the house. I went around to the back side of the house and found the two doors on the back of the house were also locked. Damn! I tried to think where we keep the emergency key hidden, in case one of us needs to get inside and has no keys. I couldn't remember. I looked around, under rocks, under pots, everywhere I could think of that the key might be hidden. No key. Damn… my mother must have taken the key in.

So by now I was really hot. I wanted to get somewhere cooler. I really needed to cool off. I went to the front yard where there is a small pond with a few fish in it. I found it was dry. There was no water in it, and several dead fish were on the bottom. The plastic bottom of the pond was cracked and splitting as if it had been empty for years. I walked away from the dry pond and over to the gate at the end of our driveway. The gate was lying on the ground. I walked down the road a ways. Sooooo hot… I saw some trees all together that gave a nice amount of shade. That would have to do. I went over to the trees. I could feel cool air coming from under the trees. I got down under the tree. The foliage was so thick that I couldn't see through it, but there was a small hole through the plants. I crawled into that hole to immerse myself in the coolness. The hole went on forever… this was weird… and it got me curious as to where it could lead… I kept crawling and emerged in another place where it was dark. Night time? And I wasn't in a desert… I stood up and did a RC… I was dreaming!

I walked across the meadow for a ways until I reached a small rocky hill. I looked up into the rocky area. I was getting a weird feeling about the area. I had the feeling I was being watched. I looked around a bit, looking mostly towards the rocky hills because they provided so many places to hide.

I was scanning the hills when I heard movement behind me. I turned quickly, activating my Witchblade sword in case I was attacked. I paused once I was turned around and then put my Witchblade sword away. I was being followed, but I was being followed by MoSh, not an enemy. MoSh said it looked like I was still mad at him. I looked around a bit more… the bad feeling hadn't left me just because I had identified MoSh. I responded to him in a quiet tone, saying I wasn't particularly upset right now… but this place was giving me the creeps. He asked if the Templars had been attacking me again. I said the Templars were all dead. That was where my negative energy had gone. At least they're useful for something…

It looked like MoSh was about to say something else, but he never got the chance. Someone apparently thought it was necessary to prove me wrong about all the Templars being dead… There was movement in the rocks. Templars emerged from the rocks. There were about 20 of them… not many at all. This would be easy. I formed my Witchblade sword and attacked them. They attacked. Some of them had weapons that looked like futuristic laser weapons, others had swords. I attacked them. Cut through one and ran my sword through another. I saw Templars attacking MoSh… I also saw him kicking the shit out of them. This fight was over quickly. The Templars were lying around us, dead. The bodies quickly disappeared as they woke up.

"Ok…" I said to MoSh, "Now all of the Templars are dead,"

MoSh was going to say something again. I felt the dream slipping away. I tried to focus on dilating time. I told MoSh I was about to wake up… but I would try dilation… but I never even got a chance to get focused before everything faded and I woke.

Note: This is officially my 3rd WILD in a row! I can now safely say my dry spell is over! I didn't have any particular goals for tonight, so I ended up not focused on much of anything as I used my light / sound machine to meditate as I fell asleep, and I slipped into a WILD…

I was in my own room still. I almost didn't recognize that I had passed from my waking self into a dream state. I got up and left the room, heading outside. It was daylight outside, so that was one key difference between the house in my inner world and the one in my waking life. I was lucid and dreaming. I wondered what I might do. I thought for a bit, and then I thought I might be thinking about it too much… I didn't want to lose the dream before it had even begun. After a bit more thought I remembered that Tigress and I are working on a project for our capstone in school, one big project that is supposed to demonstrate what we have learned in the past couple of years. That game started right at the U of A, so I would go there to start the walkthrough of the game. It would be much faster to fly than to walk, or even drive, so I took flight and headed in the direction I knew the U of A was located in.

I landed on the street I have designated to be the setting of the beginning of the game Tigress and I are making. I focused for a bit, I closed my eyes and focused on manipulating the dream scene. I was in my own inner world, so this was not a difficult task. When I opened my eyes the area looked just like I had imagined the setting of the game would look. So now it was time to start playing. The street behind me, which was to the south, was blocked by road construction. There were holes and warning cones set around, and there was random construction equipment also blocking the way. That left one way for me to go. I headed to the north. I remembered there was supposed to be a hidden area off to the east, through a small opening in a fence. I went to that.

The opening in the fence was there. I slipped through the opening and went down the alley behind the fence. There was a tall fence blocking access to a parking lot which would be out of bounds if the player were to go there, and there was a turn to the north shortly before the parking lot dead end. This was also a dead end, but there was a crate down there. The crate looked abandoned, next to a dumpster. I went to check it out. There was some stuff in the crate. When I looked in it, strangely enough I found there were some energy drinks in it. Many of the cans were broken open, which was probably why the crate had been discarded… but I found a couple that were intact. I slipped those into my backpack. This was the first time I really noticed I had a backpack on, but it made sense since I was a college student and I would need to carry stuff… Now that I had found the hidden items, I returned to the main street and continued walking around.

A bit farther to the north on the main street there was more construction. That effectively sealed off this section of road. There was nowhere for me to go from there. So I had to turn around and head back. I knew where I needed to go to trigger the next part of the game, I just wanted to look around a bit more. I had seen all there was to see here, however. I went over to the bus stop near the center of the section of the street, right across the street from the hidden passage through the fence. When I got there it triggered the next phase of the game.

The sky, which had been bright and blue, seemed to darken even though there were no clouds. Everything around me seemed to get darker, actually. There had been birds singing, but now those went silent. In fact, all of the ambient noises I had been hearing were now gone. The sounds of birds singing, of the wind in the trees, of traffic in the distance… now it was as quiet as the grave. And this area was beginning to look quite creepy. I felt a chill run down my back consistent with what the character might be feeling. I saw, or maybe sensed is a better word, movement behind me. I turned quickly and saw a robed man standing there with a sinister grin on his face.

"Did you really think we wouldn't find you?" he asked, "Well you were wrong. We have eyes and ears everywhere. You should have known it was just a matter of time. You'll be coming with me, now. Or, of course, if you resist we could do this the hard way…"

"Who the hell are you?" I asked the strange man, "And what are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere with you!" I had an instinctive knowledge that if I went with him it would mean big trouble.

"I thought you might say that," the man said, "That is disappointing. It is unfortunate, but when you weren't willing to cooperate, my men were forced to kill you." He made a gesture to the trees off to my right, which were now enshrouded in a strange fog, giving the area the same kind of creepy atmosphere I had seen in Silent Hill video games… Shapes moved in the fog and then emerged. There were four men in black hooded robes. They quickly surrounded me, cracking their knuckles.

"When the deed is done," the first man said to the four around me, "make sure you take anything of value off of her. This will look like a simple mugging where multiple assailants robbed this poor young college student, brutally beating her to death in the process. And you must make absolutely certain that she is beaten to DEATH. There will be no repeat of your last failure."

I had let myself get into character, so now I felt definite fear for my life. These four goons weren't small men by any stretch, they had me surrounded, they had orders to beat me to death, and they looked quite eager to carry out those orders. I looked around quickly to see if there was anyone around that might help me… but there was no one there… at least no one I could see through the fog… maybe I could slip between them and escape? That was my only chance… The space between two of them was slightly larger than the space between the others, so I made a quick break for that. I never had a chance of making it. One of the goons grabbed me suddenly and violently pulled my arms behind my back, holding them there. Apparently the idea was that one would hold me while the others did the beating. I tried to pull free of the man behind me, but he was too strong… there was nothing I could do…

"This is gonna be fun," the goon directly in front of me said as he approached me. All I could do was pray the end came swiftly… but no. As the man pulled his right arm back to throw the first punch, I found myself reacting on instinct somehow. Moving my body in such a way as to gain leverage, I bent over and flipped the man behind me over my head and threw him into the one in front of me. Both of them went tumbling to the ground. My first thought was still on escaping… so I tried to run for it again. One of the other two men grabbed my arm as I tried to get away. Acting completely on instinct, I turned around and kneed him in the crotch really hard. He doubled over in pain, grabbing his aching privates. I brought my elbow down hard at the base of his skull, knocking him instantly out cold. I turned and intercepted another of the men coming at me. There was another one coming at me from the other direction. I took advantage of the situation and grabbed their heads, slamming their two heads together. Both of them were out cold. The last man was more hesitant to approach me. But he finally did… and he met up with my foot to his face. I did a roundhouse kick just like I have seen Chuck Norris do countless times, but I had never imagined myself doing one… Not only did I do it, I did it well. My foot made contact with his face with surprising force, knocking him back onto the ground, also out cold.

The one first man to arrive, who was clearly the leader, was not pleased. He was glaring at the four men on the ground. One of them was regaining consciousness… The leader went over to the one goon regaining consciousness and helped him to his feet.

"You have failed me for the last time," the leader said to the goon. He pulled out a knife he'd had hidden in his robes and stabbed the goon in the gut. The look of shock on the goon's face turned to one of pain as the leader slowly and deliberately twisted the knife. He pulled the knife out, letting the goon fall to the ground, bleeding and clutching the wound. I got ready for the leader to attack me now… but he didn't. Instead he motioned and four more goons came out, these ones were armed. They had nunchucks that had blades on one end of them…

"So it won't look like a typical mugging…" the leader said, "I don't care! Kill her!"

I was wondering how my newly discovered martial arts skills would match up against these guys… I would soon find out. They were surrounding me again, but now someone else arrived. This man was dressed somewhat different than the others, and he was apparently on his own. He threw a sword to me. I hesitated and was about to ask a question.

"There's no time for questions," he said, "Just fight!" I had no choice but to fight. And now I was discovering that I had instinctive skills with the sword, too. My skills with the sword proved to be more than the enemies could stand up to. Between the new arrival and me, we quickly took care of things. But this time I hadn't just knocked the enemies out… I had killed them. After the fight was over, I was staring at the dead men, more than a bit disturbed by how easily it had come to me to kill them… I had never killed anyone in my life, and now I had killed two of them… but I'd had no choice… I noticed that the fog had lifted, and the place was no longer creepy… except for the dead people.

"Come on," the man who had helped me said, "We have to get out of here!"

"What the fuck is going on?!" I asked.

"There's no time," he said, "Malum just left… he will surely be back with more everto… we have to get out of here!"

"Malum?" I asked, confused, "Everto? What the…"

"There's no time!" the man insisted, "The Ascendentae will answer all your questions, but you have to come with me! It is no longer safe here!" The man opened a portal and I followed him through… (to be continued)

Note: The rest of the night was filled with fragmented dreams, and they are all listed out here:

*Tower Defense*
I was on top of a tower. There were four of us there, and one of the other three was Tigress. I didn't recognize the other two people, but they were men. The tower was circular and quite tall. I could see far out over the surrounding area, which included a cleared meadow area and then a thick forest. The meadow was too circular to have been natural, so I figured it had been cleared to provide a defendable area. The four of us were covering all four directions from the tower. Tigress was on my right. We all had bows and arrows. Enemies were storming the tower. We were picking them off with our arrows. The enemies were firing arrows back, but it was proving harder for them to get their arrows up to the top of our tower than it was to shoot arrows down from the tower at them. I was surprised at my own accuracy. I glanced to my right and saw Tigress was also picking off enemies with deadly accuracy. The fight continued for a while, and was actually rather boring. The enemies seemed to be slowing down, and it was shortly after picking off the last enemy and seeing there were no more enemies coming that I woke.

*What Goes Around Comes Around*
I was in a subway tunnel. I was walking along the walkway at the side of the tunnel. The path was there for maintenance purposes. I saw there was a subway intersection ahead where two tracks merged into the one. There was a young man on the path with me. He was using a hot glue gun to form words on the wall of the subway tunnel. The words were not very visible, but they would be raised off of the wall slightly. He was doing that when another young man came over and got all kinds of pissed off at him for that. The second man grabbed the glue gun from the one who had been using it on the wall. The second man shoved the hot glue gun in the first man's mouth and pulled the trigger, filling the first man's mouth with hot glue. The first man's cries of pain were muffled. The second man kept adding hot glue until it covered both the first man's mouth and nose, then he dropped the first man onto the ground and watched him suffocate. The killer laughed and kicked the victim a few times as the victim suffocated. The killer headed down the path towards the intersection. He stepped out to cross to the other side of the intersection. Right as he was in the intersection, two speeding subway cars, single subway cars, collided there in the intersection and crushed the killer between them… The car operators somehow got out of there uninjured, there was no one else on board either car… only the killer had been killed. Well that was karma for you…

*Metallica's New Member*
I was at a Metallica concert. I had a ticket to get in. I went inside the arena. It wasn't a very large arena, and I felt I was very fortunate to have gotten a ticket. I went to find my seat, but my seat sucked. I thought maybe I could find another seat that hadn't been filled. Maybe someone had been unable to attend. I walked through the seats and saw most of them were filled. The concert was about to start. I saw an empty seat. I sat down, it was only five rows from the stage. The concert started, and it was loud. I watched as the band members came out on stage. Lars Ulrich was on drums, James Hetfield was on guitar and singing, Kirk Hammett was on guitar, and then the fourth member came out… and it was MoSh! I did a double take! Wow! MoSh had joined a band! And not just any band, he was now the fourth member of Metallica! I thought that was awesome, I would have to congratulate him after the show. And this meant I know one of the members of Metallica! I could meet the rest of the band, too! I was so excited while I watched the concert. MoSh was rocking! He did a solo part way through the concert… my only thought was wow! The concert ended, and I was headed to the entrance to back stage to see about talking to MoSh, I told the bouncer to just tell MoSh that Raven was there to see him. The bouncer didn't believe me, but I saw MoSh back there and he waved at me, telling the bouncer to let me through.

*Winter in June?*
I was in my normal house. I left the house to go get the mail. The ground outside was covered with snow! In spite of the fact I live in a desert and this is the middle of summer, I didn't think to do a RC in response to the snow. I threw a couple of snowballs at a large cactus. I threw a few at the house. I hit my mother with one of them. She was not pleased. She told me to stop messing around and go get the mail. For some reason our mailbox was so far away I would have to drive to get there. I left the house in my car. It really was a long ways to the mailbox. I drove down a couple long streets and made several turns before I realized I was hopelessly lost. I figured things must look too different being covered with snow… and so I wasn't recognizing the place. I didn't want to admit to anyone that I had gotten lost when looking for my own mailbox… so I kept looking for it, and I figured to explain why it took so long I would just tell everyone I had gotten stuck in the snow.

… so I figured to open a portal to get MoSh and myself back to my inner world… where he said he would take a look at the locked book from the Akashic records to see if he could help me get it open… (Continued from last entry…)

MoSh and I were in my inner world in my bedroom. I looked around and picked the book up off of my chest of drawers. I looked at the book for a couple of minutes. I remembered that MoSh and Tigress have said they would help me figure out how to open the book. I handed it to MoSh, and he looked at it for a few minutes. He set it on the bed and pointed at it with his pinky. I wasn't sure what he was trying to do, but I left him to do that. Tigress had also said she would help… but she wasn't here. Maybe I should go find her. I was thinking about finding Tigress when I felt like I was going to wake up. But I didn't want to wake up yet, I was on a roll with this nice long WILD. I wanted to know how long I could make it. Wait… it was another goal of mine to attempt time dilation. I would do that quickly before I woke, and maybe I would be able to extend the dream!

My plan was to try Allura's method of time dilation. I figured MoSh would try Walms' method, and then we could determine which one works best. I figured I would have to try both to find which one works better for me… but for now, Allura's method. Her method starts with visualizing or summoning a normal analog clock, a digital one will do no good. So I focused on that clock.

Soon I could see the clock clearly in my mind. I didn't figure there was any need to summon one, actually I thought that might make it harder. The next step is to increase the amount of time that will fit on the clock by compressing all 12 hours into half the space, then filling the empty half with 13 through 24. At this point the clock displays twice as much time as is normally displayed on it. The resultant clock will look like the 24 hour clock shown here.

Since 24 hours are now compressed into the space normally used by 12, this works out to a time dilation of 2 hours of dream time for each 1 hour of IWL time. I focused on using this technique, first vividly visualizing the 12 hour clock and then gradually compressing the time on the clock until it was a 24 hour clock. I continued compressing time until 48 hours fit on the clock. That should be 4 hours of dream time for every hour of IWL time. I didn't know for sure if it was working, but I did notice that the dream had stabilized. So maybe that meant I could call the time dilation of this dream a success? Either way, this dream was going to continue.

Since Tigress had offered to help me with the locked book, my next thing to do would be to find her. I focused on opening a portal to find Tigress. A portal opened. I went to tell MoSh I was going to find Tigress, but MoSh was gone. The book was still on the bed, still locked. I wondered if MoSh had woken up. I wondered if he had discovered anything before waking up… I figured I would have to wait until the next morning and find out if he remembered anything. I went through the portal I had opened to find Tigress…

On the other side of the portal I was in a green field. There was a fight going on not far from us. There were a bunch of people dressed in red robes fighting another person… it looked like one person against a large number. I wondered what was going on there, and I also noticed the single person seemed to be winning. I headed closer to the fight to see if I could figure anything out. I saw that I recognized the single fighter. It was a woman who looked like a paladin from the Dungeons and Dragons Online game, and I recognized that paladin! It was Tigress! Ok, it appeared that if I wanted Tigress' help with anything I would have to help her out first. This looked like the making of a DDO adventure, so I really wanted her to remember this one.

I went over to Tigress, and called to her. She briefly noted me, and continued fighting. I formed Witchblade into a sword and attacked the enemies. I wasn't sure why they were fighting, but I figured Tigress' enemies were my enemies. I engaged the enemies, fighting with my Witchblade sword, blocking attacks, cutting enemies down all around me… with both Tigress and me fighting, it didn't take long before the entire enemy force was taken down. A few remaining enemies fled across the field to a forest. I put my Witchblade sword away and greeted Tigress. I asked her if she was lucid. She said it was finally happening, we were sharing a DDO dream. I agreed that was awesome… what's the quest? She said that there were some people being held captive in the mountain dungeon, and our quest was to rescue them. I said that sounded like a good quest to me! Tigress and I headed across the field towards a mountain. I could see a cave in the mountain, and that was no doubt our destination.

Tigress and I reached the cave entrance in short order. Sure enough, there were more red robed people inside the cave. They were guarding a locked door, but once we killed them, we found a key on one of them and were able to get inside the cave. Beyond the door it was more of a dungeon than a normal cave. There were long halls and large chambers. There were enemies all around, and they all attacked us on sight. Some of them attacked with melee weapons such as swords and maces, others attacked us with projectile weapons such as arrows and darts, and there were even some that were attacking us with energy attacks. We fought the enemies, taking them out quickly as we progressed through the caverns. We searched the underground complex for a while and finally found the entrance to the main dungeon. There were more enemies down there, of course, and there were numerous prison cells.

We killed the enemies that waited for us there, and then investigated the prison cells. In each of the prison cells there was a single prisoner. The prisoners were humanoid in form, covered with fur, had fluffy tails, and there was a flap of skin between their arms and their legs that looked kind of like the 'wings' of a flying squirrel.

The prisoners were all chained and hanging upside down from the ceiling, dangling about a foot off of the floor. They looked badly beaten, badly injured. It looked like they had been beaten, burned, cut… Allison and I got the prisoners down by cutting through their chains. I did a healing spell on the injured prisoners, and then they were ok to get themselves out of the dungeon. We assured them all the enemies in the upper chambers were dead, and the prisoners headed for the exit. We finished releasing all of the prisoners in the prison cells. We went into the next room and found a nightmare…

In the next room there were more enemies, and they had several prisoners in that room, too. One of the enemies had a prisoner tied to a spit and had them hanging over a fire. He was rotating the spit around as if cooking a chunk of meat, but the prisoner tied to the spit was still alive, and already showing signs of serious burns all over her body. Another enemy had a prisoner chained to the wall and was whipping the prisoner violently, blood spraying off with every lash. A third prisoner was chained to a concrete slab and covered with blood, there were several rats chewing on the prisoner's body… a fourth had a noose around her neck and was positioned so her toes barely touched the ground… so as long as she could stand on her toes she would be able to avoid strangling to death… There were four enemies standing around, and they attacked us on sight. We had to fight those four enemies and then the ones who had been torturing the prisoners. We freed and then healed the prisoners, who then headed for the surface, leaving the dungeon quickly.

Tigress and I were now in the torture chamber alone, only dead bodies were there now. I felt like I should be looking for a reward chest and then recalling back to the surface… but this wasn't an actual DDO game! Tigress looked around one more time, apparently making sure that we hadn't missed anything. She came back over to me. I asked if she was going to remember this dream. She said we were playing DDO. I said yeah, but we were playing DDO in a dream. So she would have to remember the dream when she woke up. She said she would remember this when she logged off. Logged off? I repeated that it wasn't a game… it was a dream. She said she was going to log off now. She disappeared. Wtf? She must have woken up… crap. I started feeling like I was waking up… but I could dilate time! I didn't have to wake up at all, or at least not until I was good and ready to! I could spend as long as I wanted in a dream! I tried to focus on Allura's method of time dilation again, but between the excitement at the idea I could stay in a dream as long as I wanted and the fact I was already in the process of waking up, I was not able to focus and I woke.