New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

10/30/13

Puppet Master
I am in a dungeon of some kind. I am making my way through passages and tunnels of stone. I am thinking of it like a dungeon from one of the Legend of Zelda games. I see I am there with Link. We continue into a larger chamber where we are immediately attacked by some strange creatures. They look sort of like spiders, but they only have four legs. They kind of jump around the room. They are all about the size of wolves. They come at us as soon as we enter the room. Link starts fending them off with his sword and shield but he seems to be holding back. He says he doesn't want to kill them if he can avoid it because they aren't acting of their own free will. He says normally they are quite peaceful. I think stunning them would be a good plan. I use the song spell Battery by Metallica to summon some lightning, but I focus to keep it at a lower power. Sparks fly through the room and knock the strange creatures unconscious. Link checks on one of them to be sure it is alive. He nods at me and starts to continue to the next passage. I tell him to wait, I will charge his shield with electricity so he can knock enemies unconscious with it. I do that using Battery by Metallica again. We encounter a few more of the strange creatures in the hallway but Link knocks them unconscious with his electrified shield. We enter a large cavern now. It extends to unknown depths below us. I look down into the blackness and it looks bottomless. There is a winding path that leads across the room. The ceiling is far above us, almost hidden in the darkness. Fires around the edge of the chamber keep the chamber lit. I briefly wonder how anyone got to those torches to keep them lit but I don't spend much time on that before I see something on the other side of the room. It looks like a huge and creepy doll of some kind.

It looks like one of those evil clowns like Pennywise from the book It or something similar. The clown doll is alive, and it is holding puppet strings that are hanging down into the darkness below. Even though they don't appear to be connected to anything I figure those are what the thing is using to control the strange creatures in the dungeon and who knows what else it is controlling. There are armed guards standing along the narrow passage, blocking the way. Link says they are acting of their own free will… he knows that because they were enemies before the Puppet Master showed up. So we make our way along the narrow path. One of the guards lunges at me. I time it just right to grab hold of him and push him off the edge of the pathway into the darkness below. Link shoves another one off with his shield. I actually jump over Link and grab the next guard before he can react and I push him off of the passage as well. The Puppet Master is getting angry, saying he has to do everything himself. But he doesn't do it himself. Instead he summons forth a lot of strange creatures. Many of them are like the ones in the passages, others look sort of like ewoks with white fur.

Link says they are being controlled by the Puppet Master… but how do we set them free? I tell him I am sure all we have to do is cut the Puppet Master's strings. He looks past the army arrayed against us and at the strings hanging from the creepy clown doll. He sarcastically asks if that is all we have to do… clearly he doesn't think it will be that easy. How do we get past the guards without killing them? They are all innocent. I am thinking of Prototype, so I use moves from Prototype. I jump. But I don't just jump, I crouch and charge up a large jump. I then glide right over the Puppet Master's pawns. I form my right arm into a blade and slice through all the strings on the one side. Link is just staring at me now as if he can't believe what I just did. The Puppet Master screams in rage and about half of the army blocking Link just looks disoriented. Before he can attack me I do another charged jump and cut through the strings on the other side. Now all of his slaves are disoriented and none of them interfere with Link as he passes through them. Link says the only way to kill the Puppet Master is to destroy the gem on his forehead. I look up and see there is a red gem there that is glowing. Link says only the sword of light can do it. I have my doubts that the gem can hold up to my Prototype sword, but I decide to play along. I take hold of Link and charge a jump, getting us out of the way just before one of the clown's huge hands crashes down in an attempt to crush us. When we are high enough Link jumps off of me and drives his sword into the red gem. Red sparks fly and the gem shatters. The Puppet Master collapses to the ground with Link still standing on top. The former slaves of the Puppet Master are still a bit disoriented, but they seem to be regaining their senses. The spider creatures are dispersing. Some of the white ewoks are coming towards Link and me. They are talking to us. One of them says he does not know how to thank us for freeing them from the Puppet Master's control. Link isn't listening to them. He asks how I did that. I ask what he is talking about as I transform my blade back into a human arm. He points at me and says that. I tell him it's a long story and I'm sure I don't have time to tell it. I am right about that, and Link has barely begun to ask me more questions when I wake up.

Plans: Nothing big... MoSh wants to try to talk to the idiots who call themselves his guides, I would like to punch them in the face. The usual list of goals is also part of the plan.

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Are You Retarded?
I am in MoSh's inner world, out in front of his house. I don't immediately remember why I am there, so I figure the best thing to start with is to find MoSh. I go to his house, and I am greeted at the door by Asuka. She says MoSh isn't here right now. I wonder where I can find MoSh, so I ask Asuka that. She says he isn't dreaming yet, but he should be soon. I go into the house and wait for a bit, Asuka seems to be in a good mood, she is humming a song to herself. I wait for a bit and soon MoSh comes down from upstairs. He seems to know what I'm there for better than I do, so I just listen to him. He says he wants to find out some things from his guides. I follow MoSh for a bit and we meet up with a man, I see another man in the area, they are his guides? He asks what he's supposed to do about Saim. How should he proceed? I ask if they are the ones playing matchmaker between MoSh and these other women. One of them says yes, but... I interrupt, I am annoyed at the fucked up job they've been doing on that topic... I ask them if they're deliberately playing dirty jokes on MoSh or are they both just retarded? The man closest to me gives me a dirty look and asks if I can do better. I mutter that a blind monkey could do better... A website like Cupid.com or something like that would do better... they could at least find single women that aren't on the opposite side of the planet! They don't seem pleased with me, and I figure I could've handled that better...

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The Kiss
Note: This fills the requirements for the basic task of the month for DreamViews, which is to kiss a DC.

I am out in a forest of some kind, wandering along a narrow path through the trees. The birds are singing, there is a gentle breeze blowing... The breeze is slightly chilly, but then someone there with me puts his arm around me. I look beside me and I see Bakura is there with me.

We continue walking through the forest, neither of us is saying anything, but neither of us really has to say anything. I enjoy just being out there with him. The trees slowly thin out until Bakura and I are walking more on a rocky path than a forest trail. We reach a rock overhang where I can look out over the valley below, the view is magnificent.

Bakura and I sit there on the edge, my right arm around him and his left arm around me... It's really very nice. Who needs a waking life boyfriend when I can meet up with guys like this in dreams? I turn to look at him at the same time he turns to look at me, and we kiss... a warm and loving kiss with absolutely no pressure for it to be anything more than a kiss... and the fact it does turn out to be much more than a kiss is exactly what I want. ^_~

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Journey to the Center of the Earth
I am at the entrance to an average looking cave. There is nothing out of the ordinary about it, though I have the idea my destination is somewhere in that cave. This is a DDO quest, and I have to go in there and check out what the orcs have been doing down there. I also have an active quest to investigate some disappearances from some surrounding towns. These disappearances seem unrelated to each other, but I have a feeling they are all related to this quest in the cave.

Once I am into the cave I find it is really more of mine, this has been dug out rather than formed naturally. I follow the paths deeper and find those who created the mine are still working it. The passages are crawling with orcs. I have to kill a couple of orcs as I explore the mines. I find that while each level of the mine is quite small, it seems to go down forever. I wonder how long it has taken these orcs to dig this deep. On my way down, four kobolds carrying a container of shiny rocks hurry past me, paying absolutely no attention to me at all. Odd... I kill more orcs, then a human passes me, saying if I am caught standing around they will all be punished. He hurries on. I kill another orc, a kobold sees this and throws himself at my feet, blubbering. I tell him to speak clearly, he says the orcs are working their slaves to death in the mines, there are humans and kobolds, all of them just want to be free. Two orcs come, one grabs the kobold, the other says to put him in the cage as a warning to the others, any talk of freedom means death.

The orc tells me to get back to work or share the kobold's fate. The kobold is begging for mercy, the orcs laugh... right up to the point where I kill them with my Witchblade sword. The kobold is at my feet again, thanking me, I say I need to find the slaves. He leads me deeper into the mines... more orcs die by my blade... we come to the bottom level of the mine where a bunch of bedraggled humans and kobolds are digging in the mines. There is a central chamber where I find out what the orc meant by "the cage" when he threatened the kobold. There are small cages hanging over a deep pit, most of them have dead bodies in them in various stages of decomposition... a couple of them also have live slaves in there with the decomposing corpses... yuck! Those slaves look very weak and sick, no doubt deprived of food and water. There are many orcs... it's killing time! The orcs are taken by surprise as I attack, some go down without a fight, I kill all of them. I free the slaves, heal the live ones in the cages, and teleport all of us to the surface. I am thinking I have a lot if rewards to claim, but it was here that I woke up. For some reason I always wake up before I can claim my rewards! Damn it!

As I enter my WILD, I find myself in a prison cell. There is nothing of special note about the place, it looks like a typical dungeon prison cell from some kind of a medieval or RPG world or something like that. I look at the door, it is locked securely from the outside, so there is no way I can open it up. I wonder how I am supposed to get out of there. I am messing around and I realize I am dressed as an Assassin, so I check and find my hidden blade is present. I have no other weapons. I wait for a bit, listening by the door, and finally I hear someone out there. I pound on the door, demanding someone come in there immediately, I figure it doesn't matter who it is. If it's a friend, I'll be glad to see them. If it's an enemy, they'll be sorry they met me. I wait a bit more and then there are keys in the door, it opens. A thug comes inside, it is pretty clear he is a thug, and he definitely doesn't look friendly. He pulls out a knife and says if I don't shut up he'll give me something to scream about. I say he wouldn't dare, he's alone. No one there to save him. He says he could handle me well enough, since I don't even have any weapons. I laugh to myself as he says that and tell him to prove it. He comes towards me, and I activate my hidden blade right as he arrives. He has a shocked look on his face as he is stabbed, he collapses to the ground and dies.

I don't have to look much to find the keys he had used to get into my cell, I take them since I am not sure if I might need them on my way out. I put my hidden blade away and peek out the door of my cell, there are surely more guards around there. There is one guard walking away from my cell on patrol. He turns around the corner and disappears, so I look quickly around one more time and head in his direction. I peek around the corner and see he is coming in my direction, patrolling back, so I lie in wait and greet him with a hidden blade to the gut… he dies. I make my way through the passages silently, though I am not sure when someone will find the bodies I am leaving in my wake. There is a locked door at the end of the hall, one of my keys fits it. I open it up just a crack and look in there to see there are some things on the table in the room as well as three guards. But that's ok… one of those things on the table is my sword! One of the guards is right next to the door… perfect… When I feel ready, I open the door quickly, slamming it into the guard by the door, vaulting over him as he is falling down to imbed my hidden blade in the throat of the guard across the table… that move must have looked pretty cool… I grab my sword from the table and run it through the third guard, cutting the one I knocked over as I spin back. There are now three dead guards in the room and I have my sword.

There are other items there, as well. I see a staff of some kind which I pick up, a strange book of some kind, and a small bag of something I don't take the time to examine. I pick up everything, I don't know who it belongs to, but I am certain it doesn't belong to these idiots here… I leave the room into an open area, a courtyard of some kind. I look around before completely entering the courtyard. There are several places to hide in the courtyard, and I think I can make it to the far gate without being seen. So I start making my way across, going from one area of cover to the next, using the night to cover my movements. I reach a spot about half way to the exit when I hear something, it sounds like an angry animal. I look around and see there is a wolf… or some kind of wolf animal, looks very large even for a wolf, and very pissed off. The assholes who had me locked up have the animal chained up on some rather short chains. I decide that is unacceptable, so I will release the wolf before leaving the compound. I'm not going to leave anyone chained up here.

I quietly go over to where the animal is chained, and it lunges in my direction. I wonder if the wolf will be able to understand what I'm there to do or if it will think I'm one of the enemies. I try to calm the wolf down, I tell the wolf that I am there to help, I will get those chains off, just don't attack me. The wolf does seem to understand that, so I go over there and unlock one of the chains that is holding the wolf. The wolf doesn't wait any longer for me to unlock the second chain, rather it pulls the second chain hard and breaks it before heading off across the courtyard. The wolf is making a lot of noise and commotion, which gets the attention of practically every guard in the place. The guards first look shocked that the wolf is free, then they look terrified of that, then they look dead after they get torn apart by teeth and claws… I watch the carnage for a bit until the wolf gets to a point where I won't be able to see it any more. The wolf looks back at me, I'd swear it shot a knowing nod off in my direction, then is gone from sight. The sounds of more carnage come from that direction. Now that there is no more benefit from secrecy, I take out my sword and take the direct route out the nearest exit and into the forest, cutting through three guards as I go.

I am hidden in the forest, I sit down to rest for a couple minutes. I am wondering if the wolf sure got out safely. I didn't see that it would be a problem considering what had happened to the guards I saw get torn apart. I am sitting there when I hear a sound from farther away in the forest. I hear something that sounds like growling, a couple sounds like a yelp, some growling that sounds suspiciously close to expletives, and finally a thud. Wtf? I wonder if something happened… I follow the sounds for a bit, making my way through the forest until I woke up.

Note: I am far behind on my journaling, I am really going to try to make this a summary of these dreams without skipping anything important. I know… I have tried to do this before and epically failed, I am trying again.

So preparing for battle, the three of us enter into the portal… and are instantly swept into a divergent dream of epic proportions, the following dreams all took place simultaneously on different planes, in different parallel worlds…

I exit the portal and I am immediately greeted with a large explosion that blasts me about 50 feet backwards, I would have passed through the portal again if it hadn't closed behind me. I land on the ground and realize I have been protected by a quick reacting Witchblade. I look around to try and get an idea of what is going on. I am completely surrounded by chaos, it is hard to keep track of anything that is happening. What I am able to identify is there is a massive battle around me between Templars and someone else, a lot of them look like Assassins, though many of them look unfamiliar to me. I sense where I need to go almost instinctively, so I start making my way through the battle field without paying any more attention to the chaos than I have to in order to keep from getting blasted.

It seems that the Templars have a problem with my trying to pass through the battle field undetected, however, as a bunch of them get in my way and are clearly going to give me trouble. I have a sense of urgency, so I don't want to spend time playing with Templars right now… so I form Witchblade into full armor and a sharp sword and charge right into the group of Templars, cutting through the couple in front and then jumping up into the air, using a blast of energy to propel myself up higher, and I end up flying right over the main group of them towards a mountain that I immediately identify as my destination. There are Templars firing everything they can manage to fire at me, arrows, burning arrows, energy blasts, guns… Withcblade is blocking much of it, and much of it is missing, I am thinking they really don't have a clue what they're supposed to be doing here. I come to a landing, not at the base of the mountain, but at the entrance to a cave about half way up the mountain. I hurry inside the cave and am now sheltered from the barrage of crap being fired at me by random Templars.

I now find myself in a long passageway, it definitely looks like the dungeon Nomad described seeing Asuka in, so I head down the hall to see if I can find her. I come around a corner and get attacked by a Templar guard, this one is stronger than the ones outside, he also seems to know what his mission is, his mission is clearly to kill me. He has some kind of weapon that fires tendrils much like a Witchblade, and those tendrils are spiked and wrap around me. They never actually get a hold on me, however, as I power up an energy field that holds them at a distance and then the energy field becomes strong enough to incinerate the tendrils in white flames. Not only that, but the white flames travel along the tendrils back to the Templar and engulf him in white flames, he burns brightly for a moment and then is gone. I continue down the halls, somehow sensing which way I have to go through the labyrinth of passages. I come around another corner and find myself face to face with the face of a big cat / human or something, it is hard to tell because it has its mouth wide open and is roaring deafeningly in my face… roaring an expletive? Roaring that it wants to be taken to Asuka now? Why is he asking me where Asuka is? If he's a Templar he should already know where Asuka is… if he is a Templar… So I wait for him to finish his yelling in my face, most of it isn't intelligible anyhow, then I finally decide to summon and pop a large breath mint into the yelling mouth.

That has an instant effect, the mouth closes, and the cat face has a thoughtful look on his face as he sucks on the breath mint, then he gets an interesting look on his face and says my poison tastes good… but it wasn't going to… uh… he stops talking mid-sentence. I tell him it's not poison, it's a breath mint for his foul breath. He stands there looking for a minute, then he clearly recognizes me as Raven, and it is the same time that I recognize him as Nomad… he says we have to get Asuka out of there, I say I know, and we continue down into the dungeon farther.

There are more Templars in the way, we take them all out, although the last one in the way looks more like a large mech than a regular Templar, and it has a lot more power than normal Templars. But between Nomad and me, we take him down without much trouble… I trip him up with some tendrils of Witchblade, Nomad ran something large and sharp through the thing's neck, which I hit with lightning… so the Templar mech was tripped, impaled and beheaded, and then electrocuted. I figure that should do the trick, and it does, so Nomad and I continue into the lowest part of the dungeon where we find Asuka chained to a wall, naked, it looks like she has been beaten badly… and there is a Templar there with a burning torch, he is burning her repeatedly and laughing at her. Before I can even react, Nomad was apparently so pissed nothing could get in his way, he is on top of the Templar tearing pieces off and throwing them randomly around… I get hit in the face with an unidentifiable chunk of bloody flesh… yuck… Since Nomad seems to have the Templar taken care of, I go over to free Asuka, heal her, and also to summon up some clothes to cover her, a nice kimono like I am used to seeing her in, she seems happy to see me. I am getting a hug from Asuka when Nomad finishes with the Templar and looks over at us, he is covered in blood and yuck but seems pleased with himself…

Note: I had a goal tonight of meeting up with MoSh, checking on and doing a healing spell on Asuka, who has been absent from his dreams lately. After that MoSh wanted to go view an event from a Carlos Castaneda book where Castaneda was watching don Genaro do something interesting near a waterfall… I'm not sure what, but MoSh said that to see the full extent of it I would have to look at his energy, not just his body. So we have tried to do this before and met with an epic fail, so we're going to try it again. I used my light / sound machine to meditate. I fell asleep and successfully slipped into a WILD…

*Execution*
Ok… I immediately noticed something was off… I was actually over someone's shoulder and being carried… wtf? Was this some kind of attack on MoSh's inner world? Because that was where I was supposed to be… I tried to ask the person carrying me who the fuck he was, but I found I couldn't speak… my mouth was full of a foul tasting fabric… yuck… I went to take it out of my mouth, but I found my hands were bound tightly behind my back. Ok… this was annoying. I tried to activate Witchblade to cut through my bonds… nothing happened. This was really starting to piss me off. I was going to try something else when the man carrying me slung me off of his back and stood me on my feet, which I also found were tightly bound. I looked at the jerk who had been carrying me and did a double take… it was a fucking Templar.

I tried to curse at him, momentarily forgetting my mouth was full of foul tasting cloth… apparently curious as to what I would say, the Templar removed the cloth. After a couple of spits to try to get rid of the taste, I did curse at the Templar. I told him if he didn't want a personal tour of Hell then he had better get those bonds off of me immediately. He just laughed. He said I was the one who would be going to Hell… He said he was glad I was awake for my sentence, although he was sure I would have awakened as it was being carried out. No one could sleep through that.

Ok, this guy was dense, so I would have to show him a thing or two… his armor was metal, so the first thing I thought of was to use Battery on him. Nothing happened. I repeated myself, "Battery!" Still nothing happened. The Templar laughed. He said I should know perfectly well that stuff doesn't work in waking life. I told him that this was a dream. He said the drugs must have gotten me quite confused… but I had already been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. He said I had seemed to lose my senses when the method of my execution was announced… but he was glad to see I was fully lucid and able to experience every moment of it. I said of course I was lucid, it was a lucid dream. He said I could tell myself that all I wanted, it wouldn't change a thing. He pushed me to the side, I fell to the ground since my hands and feet were still tightly bound. I looked up and saw the Templar opening the doors of an old medieval execution device known as an iron maiden.

At first I wasn't really sure what to say… was this madman really intending to use that thing? He picked me back up by the ropes on my arms and carried me over to the device, setting me between the open doors. He laughed and said this was going to be fun. I had no thought that I could be actually killed here… I knew it was a dream… I told him if he even thought about trying to use that thing on me I would see him in the dark realm where I would have a front row seat to watch the cruelest demon I could find slowly burn the flesh from his bones. He just laughed again and started swinging the doors closed. I told him I had been leaving them alone because they hadn't been bothering me, but doing something like that would mean all bets are off. So unless he wanted to know… While I was threatening, he had continued swinging the doors slowly closed. The spikes on the doors were poking me, and pushing me back a bit into the spikes on the back of the device. He laughed when my words got cut off, then with one final hard shove, he pushed the doors completely closed.

The first reaction I had was that I couldn't believe he'd actually had the balls to do that… and of course his balls are something I would cheerfully relieve him of… That thought only had an instant in my mind before I was hit with a wave of excruciating pain, feeling each and every spike as it was rammed through my body… it was immediately the worse physical pain I have ever felt… and then to top it off, they had piped in some kind of loud screaming that sounded a bit like an enraged banshee who was also in pain. But this was a dream… why was I feeling so much physical pain in a dream? That damn screaming was too loud for me to think… and then I realized the one screaming was me… apparently an unconscious reaction to the excruciating pain… With an enormous effort of will, I forced myself to close my mouth and think… I just had to wake up. So I focused on waking up. Wake up… wake up… wake up… nothing happened. I tried to move a bit to wake myself up, but the attempt at movement only redoubled the excruciating pain I was in by shifting my position on the spikes… And still I did not wake up. Why could I not awaken? I also noticed I was no longer silent. I hadn't started screaming again, I was just emitting low groaning sounds of pain that sounded like the expression of someone in the deepest pits of despair. I could hear laughter outside… the Templar was enjoying this.

I remembered reading a couple of articles, from when I was doing some research on torture devices I could put in a dungeon for a video game I am designing, about a person shut inside an iron maiden living for as long as a couple of days. How long had I already been in there? Not long, I didn't think… this was a dream. That meant I would wake up. But how long would that take? This was a dream… that also meant I should have my powers. Why weren't they working? Maybe something was blocking them… I just needed to focus to overcome that block… As I was trying to focus, I unintentionally shifted my body again… another wave of unbelievable pain… an involuntary cry of pain and despair… a laugh from the Templar outside… broken focus. A simple ability, like telekinesis… I focused on opening the doors to the iron maiden. That would either result in my being free or in my dream body bleeding to death and me waking up. At that point either alternative was an acceptable result. Nothing happened. I was going to try to focus better when the floor literally dropped from beneath my feet. But of course I was pinned on the spikes and could not fall… instead I was hanging on the spikes now… and what I had thought was the worst possible physical pain got about ten times worse…

After hanging there with my mind clouded by pain for what felt like forever, the floor closed again and I was once again standing on something solid. Apparently that was something they would do for periodic amusement. I could now hear at least two or three Templars outside laughing. One kept saying to do it again. Another said they had to wait… set a pace for the pain, deliver it all at once, what do they do for fun then? For fun?! For fucking FUN?! Those fucking sick bastards, what kind of mind does a person have to have to think putting someone in a device like this is fun?! Rage and dark energy were boiling up within me… and I let it. The dark energy brought a feeling of cold numbness, which blocked out most of the pain. It was not stable dark energy, and I didn't care. I let it be unstable, let it expand and fill me until it was bursting out of me like an explosion… and then there actually was an explosion…

The resultant explosion that blew the iron maiden into three separate pieces… blasted the two doors off to the front, and threw the back half against the wall behind me. One of three Templars got slammed with a door to the iron maiden… it had flipped around in the explosion and he was now impaled on the spikes of the door. Another Templar was staring at me… and kept repeating two words… Oh, shit… oh, shit… oh, shit… He disappeared, abandoning his partners like the coward he was. I was currently pissed and full of unstable dark energy. I used telekinesis to lift the free Templar and slam him into the back half of the iron maiden, impaling him on the spikes there. Must have hit a vital organ or two, because he died quickly. I noticed the one pinned under the door was still moving. I went over and looked at him. His face was contorted by pain and terror. I wondered what I looked like that would instill such a fear response… as if that was a request, I saw a brief 3rd person view of myself… I looked like Sorceress Edea from Final Fantasy VIII (the form usually called the Queen of Night), but in addition to looking like a dark sorceress, I looked dementedly pissed off…

ok… it was a bit disturbing, or it would have been if I hadn't been bursting with unstable dark energy. I stepped on the door under which the terrified Templar was pinned... forcing the spikes further into him, and eliciting a cry of pain and a plea for mercy. I had no urge to be merciful… I gave one more shove down on the door and then walked away as the Templar was grimacing in pain and trying in vain to lift the heavy iron door off of himself.

I walked over to the dungeon door… and did absolutely nothing, but the door blasted off of its hinges apparently of its own accord. I left the dungeon into the main Templar base, throwing dark energy spears at the Templars, randomly impaling them and pinning them to the wall. Some died quickly, others cried out in pain as they hung there dying a much slower death. I got to the center of the base, or what looked like the center, and unleashed an Immortal Fire of pure unstable dark energy, a wall of black flames burst out from me, incinerating everything in its path. I was feeling a bit disoriented… and the scene around me shifted.

*Visions of Castaneda*
Now I was in MoSh's inner world where I had intended to go in the first place. My dark energy had been drained off in the Templar base, and I just felt drained rather than homicidal. I collapsed to my knees in the yard in front of MoSh's house, taking deep breaths and trying to calm myself down. I noticed all my wounds had somehow healed, probably from the intense energy flow… The door to the house flew open and MoSh came running out with Asuka right behind him. MoSh got over to me and was worriedly asking if I was ok… what had happened? I wasn't able to answer right away, which seemed to worry him even more… but finally I was able to tell him I would be ok. Data was there… and he opened a portal. MoSh picked me up… I was trying to tell him I could walk just fine… and carried me through the portal, Asuka followed, and we were in the healing glen. Basara also showed up, and we did a mutual healing, with the crystal golem putting in extra healing energy. My dark energy was stable again, completely controlled.

"Carlos Castaneda," I said to MoSh, "Let's go watch him." MoSh looked surprised. He said no, we didn't have to do that tonight. He said I should get my rest. I felt the dream slipping, too… but for some reason I thought it would be a worst case scenario to let this entire dream be wasted on being tortured by and subsequently killing stupid Templars. I wanted to do something productive. I told him I was ok and I wanted to do it now. I focused on time dilation to stabilize the dream, turning one hour of IWL time into four hours of dream time… I asked for the book… then I remembered it was called 'A Separate Reality' by Carlos Castaneda. I summoned the book. I opened it and skimmed for the word waterfall or don Genaro. Found mention of don Genaro, so I transported MoSh and myself to my room in my inner world and got my laptop. I loaded the book into my laptop through a scanner and then activated the holographic viewing system… I was wondering if it would work… the new scene took shape around us. We could now watch the events in the book… and see the events of the book instead of looking like snack food to a bunch of hungry graboids.

I looked around and saw the target of our viewing. Castaneda, don Juan, and a couple other guys were sitting in a line on a row of rocks that they were using as chairs. They were all staring at a waterfall. The waterfall was quite beautiful, but I didn't see that the beauty of the waterfall alone would command their full attention for that long… I looked over at the waterfall. There was an older man climbing a trail beside the waterfall. It looked like a difficult trail, but the man looked like he was in much better shape than his age might indicate. For the most part he was sure footed about his ascent to the top of the falls where he disappeared from sight.

MoSh touched me on the shoulder and asked if I was sure I was ok… he said it looked like something pretty serious had happened to me. I said I was ok now. He hesitated, then said since we were here, we might as well do it right. He said to point at don Genaro with my pinky when he came back into view. I didn't say anything about that not being my method of energy scanning… I knew what he meant, that was really all that was necessary. The man, apparently don Genaro, appeared by the edge of the waterfall at the top.

I focused on seeing his energy, not just his body. At first I just saw a bright aura, he had strong energy… but also pure and stable. No corruption there, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I watched him for a bit, then his energy field seemed to change its shape, he was clearly manipulating his energy. I watched from next to MoSh as he used tendrils of energy like ropes to help him get to a small stone in the middle of the falls… and then to an even smaller one… somehow without getting swept away. He wouldn't be swept away, he had his energy tendrils to hold on to. He stayed on the second stone for a while, positioning his energy tendrils just right, removing them from the first rock and anchoring them to the far bank of the river… And then he used them to pull himself over to the far bank where he landed with cat-like grace on all fours. He paused there and pulled his energy tendrils back into himself, then finally stood up and looked down at his audience. All four men were staring wide eyed. Don Genaro now momentarily glowed brightly, expanding his energy field in a bright and colorful aura that looked like it might be visible from space… before disappearing from sight on the other side of the waterfall.

It started raining now. The four men who had been sitting got up. I could hear Castaneda talking plaintively to don Juan who was responding as one might to a child who is complaining too much… responding in a tone that sounded like a reprimand… but I couldn't hear what they were saying. And I also had the feeling it didn't matter what they were saying. MoSh and I had been there to see don Genaro's show, not to find out what Carlos Castaneda was complaining to don Juan about… MoSh asked what I had seen. I told him what I had seen, don Genaro using his energy tendrils to help him get across the flowing waterfall without falling off. He commented that it seems I had seen it. I said yeah, I have been able to see energy in the dream state for quite some time… though I didn't remember seeing someone use the energy in that manner before… MoSh said that when Castaneda and don Juan had first watched this, it had been in the physical plane of our own home world… and then Castaneda had written about his experiences, although Castaneda had not been able to see what don Genaro had done at that point. Castaneda had looked, but had not been able to see. That didn't seem odd since most people on our physical plane aren't able to see energy…

The hologram shut down at that point, apparently MoSh and I had seen everything we were going to see. MoSh said don Genaro had been manipulating his energy body on the physical plane of our world. I said yeah, that was pretty cool. I saw MoSh and I were back in my inner world again. I went over to the couch and sat down. MoSh was walking around looking at things. I could feel myself about to wake up again. I told MoSh that I was about to wake up, and time dilation seemed like too much effort to try again when it has never worked the second time anyway. MoSh was saying something else to me when everything faded and I woke.

… 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.