New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

"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…

On the other side of the portal I was in what looked like a temple. I felt the dream was slipping. I was about to wake up, but I wasn't done there… so I didn't want the dream to end yet. I repeated what I had done last night, using Allura's method to dilate time. I focused on the 12 hour clock, then morphed it into a 24 hour clock… then to a 48 hour clock… and I felt the dream stabilize. I looked around again. The man who had come to help me with the goons was standing there looking at me strangely.

"Come," he said to me, "The Ascendantae awaits." He turned and walked away.

I followed the man as he walked through the halls. He knocked on a large door at the end of the hall. Someone on the other side said we should enter. The man I was with opened the door and we both went into the room. There was a man sitting on the other side of a desk looking at us as we entered. The man referred to the man who had brought me as Salus, and said he could go now. Salus turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

I'd had a million questions I'd been wanting to ask, but now I didn't seem to be able to manage any of them. The man behind the desk, the Ascendantae, stood up and came around the desk. He looked at me closely as if evaluating me or something… I didn't like that much. Something about him reminded me of Sean Connery…

I wanted to ask what he was looking at, but he started speaking before I got a chance to. He said Salus had already told him about finding me. He said Salus had also told him about the everto finding me. He said that was not a good sign. He said that if the everto had started looking for their… then he trailed off. He paused and then said he was sure I wanted some answers. He said all the answers I wanted awaited me at the end of the negotium.

"At the end of the what?" I asked, having no idea what this negotium could be. He said it was a simple task. All I would have to do was go to the end of a passage and retrieve a book. A special book that, if I was who they believed me to be, would be able to retrieve. And I was the only one who could retrieve it. That all sounded really strange to me… The man pulled a hidden lever on the desk. A section of the floor slid aside and there was a stairway down into darkness below. The Ascendantae said that the answers awaited at the end of that passage. I looked down the passage into the darkness. I wondered what might await down there… I wasn't sure what I was going to do… but I figured I would not know what was going on if I didn't go down there.

I was about to go down the stairs when the door to the office was flung open. There were a bunch of people in the door… Templars! Wtf? My full lucidity came rushing back to me as I let myself get out of character… There weren't supposed to be Templars attacking here… the Ascendantae was also perplexed. Of course he was a DC I had made for the game… But he was programmed to respond. He went over towards the Templars. He demanded to know the meaning of this intrusion. I told him those were the everto, so he might want to go down the passage himself to escape. He didn't leave, instead he pulled out a rather fancy looking glowing sword and attacked the Templars. One of the Templars hit him with a blast of energy, and since he was a DC that wasn't even intended to fight, the Ascendentae disappeared. I was prepared to fight the Templars now. I was more focused on them, so the dream set I had created fell apart around me. It turned out I was now on the moon.

One of the Templars came towards me and seemed pleased to see me… wtf? He came over and shook my hand with one of his hands and said it was good to have me on their side. What? I asked him if he was on crack… He looked at me strangely and then laughed. He tried to lead me back to the others as a friend would do. I pushed his hand off of me. I asked what he wanted, intruding on my dream… He said it was time that we got down to business. I said I didn't have any business with him… He said if I could just convince MoSh to join us… I repeated that there is no 'us' going on here… He looked at me strangely. He said the joke had gotten old. I said I wasn't joking about anything. These guys really thought I would be working with them!

I asked him what would make him think I had joined their side. He said I had clearly accepted the dark energy… I told him that doesn't mean anything… unless the goals of controlling people by force that and the rest of the Templars were aiming for had drastically changed there was no way I would ever be helping them with it. He looked at me strangely. He didn't seem to be getting the point. I told him to go away and let me finish my dream in peace. The one who had been talking to me looked over at the other Templars. He didn't seem to know what to say now. I told him we had found a good balance… they don't interfere with my dreams, and I don't kick their asses on sight. So unless there was something else that didn't involve me joining them, please go away and let me finish my dream. The Templar closest to me grabbed my arm and said I would be going with him. I said no, I would not, so he would have one more chance to just leave in peace… Instead he tried to pull me with him. I shook him off and opened a vortex portal that dumped all of them someplace around Pluto…

I went to focus on restoring my dream world and continuing my video game development dream. Before I even had a chance to get the dream realm reformed, however, there was another visitor. This one attacked me on sight, throwing spears of light down at me. There were explosions all around me as I jumped out of the way of the attack, getting quite annoyed at my dream being interrupted yet again. I looked to get a closer look at the attacker, and I saw he looked like an angel of some kind… he didn't even pause in his attack, though, throwing another wave of glowing spears in my direction. I used Whiplash and sent the energy spears right back at him. He avoided the attack and landed on the ground not far from me. I asked him what he thought he was doing. He said he does not talk to demons. He continued attacking me. A whirlwind of golden light erupted around me, mixed with fire. This guy was really annoying… This attack was easily countered with a small wave of dark energy that neutralized the attack. The angel was already throwing more light spears at me, I jumped out of the way and hit him with a bolt of lightning by using Battery. Electricity didn't seem to hurt him… I tried a bolt of lightning made of dark energy… that did hurt him. It knocked him backwards. I told him he should get a better definition of what a demon is before attacking random people, then used a vortex portal to send him where I had sent the Templars. Maybe all of them would have some fun together.

Ok… now finally to get back to my video game dream… But the dream was slipping again. I focused on doing another time dilation. The clock with the 12 hours, changing into the clock with 24 hours, changing into the clock with 48 hours… but it didn't seem to be helping this time. The dream slipped away 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)