New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I am in a place I don't recognize, but somehow it doesn't seem strange that I'm there. I am sitting at a bar and drinking a beer. This is odd since I don't even like the taste of beer, but again, this strangeness doesn't seem out of place to me at the time. The bartender comes over and starts hitting on me, and I am able to milk his interest enough to get a free beer out of it. A little flattery, a bit of flirting... I am drinking this second beer when I do something else I never do in my waking life. I bum a cigarette off of a guy sitting near me at the bar and then I bum a light off of him as well and I start smoking. I have never smoked in my life! So there I am at a bar I don't recognize drinking beer which I don't like and smoking a cigarette when I never smoke, and it doesn't occur to me to do a reality check. As I am sitting there, I hear a bit of an argument going on. I am unable to hear exactly what is being said, but when I look over I see a couple of women getting into it with each other. It quickly escalates with one of them throwing something at the other, and the other breaks out with some karate moves. One man looks like he's going to go over and interfere, but a second man blocks his path but physically and with a plaintive whining argument, "But it's a girl fight! You never break up a girl fight!"

Note: I had some plans to meet up with Tigress for a dream in the world of Oblivion. I managed to achieve my WILD, but even though the WILD was successful, I didn't wake up enough after the WILD to make myself take notes… and consequently all I remember are fragments of the dream. I really have to stop telling myself that I'll remember my WILD later just because it was a WILD… sometimes that makes absolutely no difference at all.

A fragment of Tigress and me walking down the streets of Skingrad, a city in Cyradil, the world in the game of Oblivion. There were other people wandering around and talking to each other. I did notice that they seemed to have more of a purpose than in the video game Oblivion, they didn't seem to be repeating the same mundane things over and over again, either. I didn't pay too much attention to all of the people, though, Tigress and I were heading somewhere. We finally reached a building in Skingrad that I didn't remember ever seeing before.

The next fragment included Tigress and me inside a house that looked appropriate for one of the houses in Oblivion, we were using dream powers to design it to fit our needs. Tigress was getting a bit impatient, wanting to go out and shoot stuff, but I was saying if we set things up in the house properly we would be able to meet up there more easily next time. To that end, we made three bedrooms to aid us in using FA's to our advantage. A bedroom that looks like mine, one that looks like Tigress', then one that looks like Silver's room since Tigress will sometimes be sleeping there. Finally that was done, so I set up a few mirrors throughout the house that could be used as portals if we needed it. Tigress was still impatient to go shoot stuff, so I said we could go out and find some enemies.

The next part of the dream that I recall involved Tigress and me in Oblivion, we were making our way down a canyon of sorts, there were steep cliffs on both sides of us reaching into the sky, and the path we were on was pretty narrow and it was winding upward, getting ever closer to the top of the cliffs. There were enemies everywhere, both on the path and on the cliffs overhead. The ones overhead were firing projectiles at us including balls of flame, arrows, arrows on fire… and even some lighting. Tigress was taking all of them out one by one with rapidly fired arrows from her bow, she seemed to be firing them faster than it would take to aim… But I didn't spend too much time considering her skill with the bow, as I was in a fight, myself. I had my Witchblade sword formed, and I was engaged in battle with several of the daedra right there on the path, keeping them away from Tigress, who was firing her arrows from a bit farther behind me. She was effectively keeping the enemies above from hitting us with distance weapons while I was keeping the melee attacks away from her so she could continue focusing on her archery.

The last piece of the dream I remember had Tigress and me in a large round room with the sigil stone in the center of the room, there was a beam of energy flowing from the sigil stone, and it was keeping the Oblivion gate open. Once again we were fighting. I was using my sword against the last daedra between us and the sigil stone, while Tigress, who seemed to have an infinite number of arrows, was taking out the ones trying to approach from the outside ring of the room. I took out the last daedra between us and the sigil stone, and still more enemies were pouring into the room, even Tigress' speed wasn't keeping up. She called to me to grab the sigil stone, but I didn't really need to be told, I was already grabbing the stone. Then everything went dark briefly, followed by a flash of light, followed by Tigress and myself hanging in the air a couple hundred feet over the forest below… I could see Skingrad from there very well, not a bad view… and then we were falling, and then I woke.

I was on the beach, walking along the shore and looking for seashells. It was a beautiful day out, the sun was actually a bit on the hot side, but that was balanced out by the cool breeze blowing in off of the ocean. What a wonderful day for a walk on the beach. I was wishing I had brought my swim suit because now, as I watched the waves rolling in from the endless blue horizon, I wanted to swim out into the water and let the waves carry me back to shore.

Well, I couldn't swim but I could definitely wade. So I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my jeans, and waded out into the ocean until the water was about up to my knees. I continued walking along the shore, enjoying the ocean breeze, the smell of the ocean, the sounds of the seagulls, the fact there weren't any other people out there… but wait… I did see another person a bit farther up the beach. Crap. Well, I could at least hope there weren't very many people, maybe even just the one. I wasn't about to change my course just because there was one person on the beach, so I continued walking and got closer to the person, who turned out to be a man, and as I got closer to him I realized I knew him!

"Nomad?" I asked, surprised to see him.

"That's me," he said, "This is a dream, and I was about to ride a dream wave all of the way to the moon! Hop on the next wave and ride with me!"

Riding waves to the moon? There's no way that could be even remotely possible, although Nomad looked like he was being completely serious about the idea. I then registered the rest of what he had said, this is a dream, and he was going to ride a dream wave. Not just a normal wave, a dream wave. So this was a dream, then? I confirmed that it was definitely a dream when I did a RC, turned to Nomad and said this really was a dream.

Before anything more could be said about riding waves all of the way to the moon, however, the calm peacefulness of the beach was shattered by harsh yelling, energy blasts firing, and swords clashing. Who the hell was making so much noise?! I looked and saw that the beach was covered by Templars now, stupid Templars have to come around and ruin everything, and they apparently had come to attack Nomad or me or both of us.

Nomad transformed into a giant shark that was sparking with electricity. When he did that he was in mid jump and he came down on top of a few of the Templars and appeared to swallow them whole while shocking the Templars that just happened to be too close to him. Of course that left this huge sparking shark on the beach, when he would have been much better off in the water, so I telekinetically tossed him into the water, and then I threw a few Templars in after him so he wouldn't be alone out there. He seemed to think the Templars looked tasty, as he started eating them whole, I wondered if the lightning around him meant they were at least cooked before he ate them, and my next thought was, "Yuck! Nomad, you'll get diseases from eathing those things!" As if acknowledging that, Nomad spat out a chewed up Templar onto the beach, which was quite disgusting, and terrifying to one of the other Templars who ran for his life down the beach. That was the only Templar with a brain, however, as the others all yelled and came to attack both Nomad and me.

It was about here that Nomad figured out that since he was a dream shark he could swim just fine in the air instead of in the water, so he jumped out of the water and chased Templars around on the beach, grabbing them in his massive jaws and literally biting them in half… other Templars came straight at me and attacked, they got greeted my my Witchblade sword for their troubles. I told one of them that seemed hesitant to attack me to go away and leave Nomad and me alone, we were just trying to have a bit of a fun dream, hadn't been looking for any trouble with the Templars, so just go away! He didn't seem to think that was as good of an idea as I did, however, he attacked me anyway and got my Witchblade sword run through him for his trouble. Well, no one could say I didn't try to get them to just go away. The fighting continued for a while longer until the few remaining Templars finally got the picture and ran away through portals that opened up a short distance down the beach, leaving Nomad and me alone once again.

Nomad turned back to his normal self and asked what that thing with the Templars had been all about. I told him I didn't have a clue, I didn't even know for sure which one of us they had been after or if they might have been after us both or maybe they hadn't really been looking for either of us but just happened to find us… Nomad said they were just being stupid like they always are, so now how about riding the dream wave all the way to the moon? He pointed out to the ocean where the moon was rising over the horizon, the reflection of the moon was very clear in the ocean water. A very beautiful sight. Nomad and I didn't end up riding the wave to the moon, but we did have a nice length of time to enjoy the beach and relax there. The water was great, and we even found ourselves to be in the company of dolphins when we transformed to merpeople and swam a bit farther out into the ocean and farther up the coast. I was thinking that if it hadn't been for the interference of those stupid Templars, this would have been a perfect vacation dream!

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: My list of goals remains long, but I am trying to focus on a couple at a time. Right now I am primarily focused on sharing a DDO dream with Tigress and having both of us remember it and opening that locked book I got from the Akashic Records. With not having my nightly WILD (tonight was no exception) I had better not make my list of goals for one night too long or I will just end up forgetting all of them!

I was in a bed. I rolled over and got up. I looked around. I was not in my bedroom. I was not in a normal bedroom of any kind. It looked like the kind of bedroom one might see in an inn in an RPG. I wondered how I had gotten there. My first thought was that I needed to get home. My mother would definitely be wondering what had happened to me… I looked for my purse. I would call her. I couldn't find my purse. Shit! Where was it? What was happening here? I would get home as quickly as I could to tell my mother I was ok. So I at least needed my car keys… which were probably in my purse… which I couldn't find. Ok… this wasn't turning out to be a very good situation. I thought my keys might be in my pocket… I searched my pockets… and found I was not dressed as normal. I was wearing some strange clothes that looked like something out of an RPG. Everything was all too strange that I finally decided to do a RC… and then I realized I was dreaming.

Now that I was lucid, I left the room and found out I really was in an inn. I looked around the room down below and it was a typical RPG pub. I walked around a bit and I could hear everyone talking. They were talking about an impending attack force coming down the canyon. They were talking about their warriors not being strong enough to hold the attack off, and about how it might turn out that their easily defended canyon hiding place might turn out to also be their tomb since there was no way out except through the enemy forces. People were clearly scared shitless, talking about trying to scale the sheer canyon walls or even killing themselves to keep from falling into the cruel hands of the enemies who would no doubt have torturous deaths planned for each and every one of them. From across the room I heard one woman who didn't sound like she had already given up. She was telling the people they needed to fight for their village and not give up no matter how big the enemy forces appeared to be. No one seemed to be listening to her, and when she asked who was with her, no one responded. A few people laughed. I finally spotted her. She was dressed as a paladin, and asked again if there was no one there with the courage to fight. I raised my hand, noting the Witchblade on it, and said loudly that I was willing to fight. She peered out over the crowd and looked directly at me.

"Raven?!" she asked, "Is that you?"

I hesitated, not sure how she knew me… then she took off her helmet and I immediately recognized her. It was Tigress! I went directly over to her and climbed up on the table she had climbed onto, using it as a stage to address the people around her. She now told everyone that there were two women willing to fight for their village… were there no others? Were all those men who called themselves warriors going to be shown up by a couple of women? Were there no other women who called themselves warriors willing to stand beside their fellow female fighters? Once again no one responded… there were some embarrassed glances around, some nervous chuckles. I told Tigress that we didn't need these idiots. We could handle whatever attack force there was on our own, and have fun doing it. I said I was ready to take this quest if she was. She gave one more look around the room, announced that everyone in the room was pathetic, and said she was ready to kick some ass.

So Tigress and I left the pub full of cowards, the people around us were muttering something about that just meant we would be the first to die, and went outside into the village. Tigress must have been there for a while already, as she seemed to know where to go. I followed Tigress. She went to the front gates of the village. There were guards there that didn't want to open the gates. They didn't seem to think two people stood a chance against the invading forces. We insisted on going out. They finally gave in and opened the gates, announcing that if we really felt like committing suicide that they wouldn't stand in the way. After all, everyone in the town would be dead before long when the enemy forces arrived. We went through the gate, the guards shut and barred it behind us. I wondered why they even bothered closing the gates since they were so sure they would be killed anyhow…

There was a winding path through the canyon. Tigress and I went down the path and around a bend and then we spotted a large number of somethings approaching. We got closer and it turned out there was an entire army of what looked like kobolds. Mixed in among the kobolds were some larger orc type creatures and some that looked like humans. They were all armed with swords, spears, and bows, all in armor. That was definitely a sizable attack force. A hail of arrows shot out of the group at us. Somehow we had been spotted. Tigress had a bow and arrows. She was firing five arrows with each shot. That was an interesting trick. That resulted in a return fire of a hail of arrows, because she was also very fast with shooting them. I saw there were spear warriors just beyond the archers. Those spears up in the air looked like lightning rods! I used Battery and they worked like lightning rods, too. The spear warriors were electrocuted through their own spears. The battle continued. We encountered each other. Tigress and I were both using our swords now, I formed my sword from Withcblade. Both Tigress and I were moving like lightning. Much faster than the kobolds, orcs, and human enemies. Our swords cut through their armor like it was made of tissue paper. Tigress jumped to a couple of rocks and part way up the canyon wall, then she unleashed another rain of arrows. The enemies kept coming. I cut some more down, threw some fireballs at more of them. Tigress got tired of the bow and arrows, changed into a werewolf and jumped down off the canyon wall. She tore into a bunch of the enemies with her claws, leaping from one enemy to the next. In spite of the fact we were sorely outnumbered, we fought until all of the enemies were either dead or retreating… mostly dead. The battle was over.

Tigress and I returned to the village. The guards on the gate looked quite surprised to see us back in one piece. They were just staring. Tigress said the enemies were all either dead or they had fled for their lives. The guards seemed reluctant to believe that. I noticed for the first time that Tigress had a severed head… yuck. Apparently it was the head of the leader of the enemy forces, as it convinced the guards that we had indeed been victorious. They let us into the village now. Tigress showed the head to prove the danger had passed, at the same time as she made fun of all of those people who called themselves warriors and had not had the guts to go out there and fight for their village. It looked like they weren't sure if they should be happy with us for helping them or annoyed for calling them cowards… but the thing was, that was what they were… a bunch of cowards. Overall, the view of us was that we were some kind of heroes… which I really didn't care about. I told Tigress maybe we could go out and explore a bit. She said sure, but then she disappeared… damn… she must have woken up. The people from the town were silent now, staring at where she had been. They were muttering amongst themselves about what kind of magic she had just used. I thought I could still explore a bit. I took to flight and looked down, wondering which way to go. I had just barely gotten to go anywhere before I woke.

Note: My first goal tonight was to go find Asuka… again. Of course I was sure I knew exactly where Asuka was, but the task of getting her out was still the same. I knew she had been taken by L again… it seems like that guy just won't quit… I am continuing to attempt my nightly WILD and I am continuing to fail at my nightly WILD. Tonight was no different. I fell asleep, no WILD.

I was walking along River road towards ITT Tech. I was late for class. I'd had to ditch my car back down River. I didn't have my backpack, but I wasn't thinking about that. I was annoyed that my car had broken down. I was annoyed that I was late for class. I was hot because I was out walking in the sun. Basically I was all around cranky. I continued walking towards the school, muttering expletives to myself about the situation I found myself in. I finally got to the school… or to where the school should've been. It wasn't there. Instead there was a pile of rubble. I wondered what had happened. I asked a man I saw. He said the school had been bombed. No survivors. What??? I looked at the pile of smoking rubble. No… had Tigress been in there? If she'd gotten there on time she would have been in there… I wanted to go check the parking lot for her car… but there were people keeping everyone out. They said something about rabid skunks in there… rabid skunks??? The man I was talking to said yeah, rabid skunks, those rabid skunks had been in there all day trying to steal the Macintosh computers. That just sounded too weird… I did a RC and became lucid.

I stood there looking at the pile of rubble for a bit, thinking about my goals. To go get Asuka back from L… again. Ok… first I had said I would pick up Pablo and take him along. So I was going to try to get to Pablo. I opened a portal while focusing on getting to Pablo's inner world. I went through the portal when it opened… I was now in a forest. I looked around. I didn't see anyone there. I wondered where I might find Pablo. After a bit of searching in the forest I found Pablo. He was in his half human and half fox form. He looked like Fox McCloud. I grabbed Pablo his left arm and pulled him through a portal I directed to MoSh's inner world. MoSh was visible as soon as I exited the portal. There was another pile of rubble, this one was the remains of MoSh's house… There was also an area around MoSh's house that was charred. The blast radius had extended outside the house and trashed some of the area around it. I grabbed MoSh and said it was time to go get his wife back. I took MoSh and Pablo through another portal that led to the biodome on the moon. That's where I figured I would find Nomad. I had figured correctly. Nomad was there looking at the koi pond. I told Nomad I was ready to go. I opened another portal to get to L's inner world and herded everyone through it.

On the other side we were all standing near the house and pool I have seen in L's inner world a couple different times now. There was a whole new set of DC bimbos there since Walms had torn apart L's first set of DC bimbos… L was lounging out beside the pool. He had Asuka right beside him, she was also lounging out. Both of them had some kind of tropical drinks. L wasn't paying any attention to us now. We got a bit closer. MoSh said he wanted his wife back. L said Asuka had chosen him. Asuka was lying beside L, and she told MoSh to go away. But she sounded like she was in a trance, kind of zoned out. I told L that Asuka would have to say that herself when she wasn't being controlled by him. He said there was no control on Asuka. I said that if that is true, he shouldn't mind if I use a song spell to free her. L gave me a dirty look. I ignored that completely. I went over to Asuka and used Breaking the Silence by Queensrÿche. L came over, apparently intending to interfere. Nomad and MoSh cut him off before he got to me. Nomad said to leave the women alone, and they guys could hang out a bit. The song spell caused the dazed look to leave Asuka's face.

Asuka looked at me and then over at the pool and then over at L. She stood up and looked annoyed. I looked back over at L, MoSh, and Nomad. Pablo was near Asuka and me. L was focused more on Pablo. He reached out and grabbed Pablo's tail, which apparently annoyed Pablo. Pablo did a wheel kick and kicked L in the face. He then seemed surprised at his own move. MoSh was pointing at L with his pinky. He seemed to be focusing on something. I looked over at L, who was now throwing threats out at Pablo. He said he was going to skin Pablo alive and have himself a brand new fox fur coat. MoSh was still focusing. I saw something behind L, at first it was faint, but then it solidified. It was some kind of reptilian alien. L didn't see his company right away, he was too busy threatening and cursing at Pablo. Now he was talking about breaking every bone in Pablo's body.

"I'm going to break every fucking bone in your body," L threatened, " and see how well you can kick once…" he looked to his left, which was where the reptilian alien was… "… kick once you… who the FUCK are you?!" The reptilian alien silvery threads that went into L's head. The alien manipulated those threads and L turned around and attacked Nomad. I focused on the song Liberate to allow L to break the mind control the alien had on him. Nomad cut through the threads that went from the reptilian to L. Once those were broken, L looked really disoriented. He looked around at everyone around him, invited Pablo back to his room for some recreational activities, emphasized that invitation with some very conspicuous winking, then he disappeared. Apparently he had woken up. Consequently the dream world we were in ceased to exist, we were somewhere else.

I looked around the new place. I didn't recognize it, we were on a barren planet. Craters marked the surface of the moon and the sky was black. There were multiple reptilian entities there. Most of them seemed to not be interfering. I wondered what they were doing there if they weren't going to interfere. Then a fight broke out, and so much for them not interfering. The fight was complete chaos. I didn't really get much of a look at what everyone else was doing. They didn't seem to want to die. Blasting them with energy didn't seem to do it. Finally the fight caused the group of reptilians to be gathered in one place. I opened a vortex portal using the song Black Hole Sun, then everyone shoved the reptilian aliens through the portal and closed it behind them. I turned around and saw we had missed one. The one who had been controlling L. That one was glaring at us. He said we may have defeated his puppets, but we would not defeat him.

I was getting ready for more of a fight, but someone else attacked the reptilian first. There was a fight that moved rather quickly, and the reptilian was getting the shit kicked out of him. But he wasn't dying. He told the person attacking him that he could not be killed. I saw that the person attacking him was Walms. Walms beat on him some more, cut him open with his claws… the wounds healed right away… the reptilian creature laughed more. Walms attacked the thing again, but this time it looked like he was trying to take a bite out of the thing… the reptilian shoved Walms away from him, asking him what the fuck he thought he was doing? Walms said he was going to eat the reptilian, of course, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. The alien looked at him weird and said Walms was completely fucking nuts. Walms didn't really pay much attention to that, he attacked the thing again. He actually took a bite out of it… yuck! The thing was cursing loudly and said there were many others that would come. Walms asked if the others were as tasty as that one, then literally ripped its head off and ate some of what came out. Yuck!

I didn't want to look at Walms over there being disgusting… so I turned to Asuka. She was looking over at Walms, she looked rather green. MoSh came over to her and put his arms around her. He asked if she was ok. She was still staring at Walms, then she turned to the side and vomited. I didn't want to imagine the sight that had made her vomit. I asked how she was feeling. She said sick to her stomach… I said for that, stop watching Walms… but other than that… she looked at me now, and said she felt weak. I used a healing spell to give her golden healing energy. That flowed through her and she looked some better. MoSh said he was going to get her home. They disappeared shortly before things around me faded and I woke.

Note: I went to bed tonight with an unexpected goal. MoSh had come on the computer and said there were some disturbing things going on with him, he'd had a nightmare, so my goal was to go check out MoSh's inner world and make sure things were ok in there. This was the goal I had in mind when I fell asleep. Once again no WILD, but I did have the following dreams…

I was at work. It was the hospital where I used to work. I was sitting at my desk. I had been sleeping. Crap… I looked around and saw Susie also asleep. Well, at least I hadn't been seen sleeping. I got up and paced a bit in the office to try to wake myself up. I woke Susie up. She looked up at me and asked what I was doing. I said I was sleepy so I was walking to wake myself up. She said to grab a pillow and sleep then, it was nap time. Nap time? Since when did my job have nap time? She must have seen that I was confused. She asked how else am I supposed to check the inside of the servers except through a lucid dream? She said I should get to sleep and into a lucid so I could go check out the MExchange1 server while she finished checking on the Harp0 server. She lied her head down to go back to sleep. Checking servers in lucid dreams? Better get in the habit of doing RCs. To begin that I did a RC right there. I could breathe through my nose even when I pinched it… I was dreaming right now! Screw this job! I'm outta here!

I walked out of the office and down the hall to the door that led to the fire exit. Concrete stairs led both up and down from there, but instead I climbed up on the concrete railing. I did another RC just to be sure, then I jumped into the air and flew. Yay flying! Yay lucid dream! Ok… focus. I flew away from the hospital and thought about my goals. I wanted to do a DDO dream… I wanted to open a locked book I have in my inner world… I wanted to complete the task of… MoSh! That name pushed into my head with force. MoSh! I had said I was going to go check out what had happened with MoSh! I bumped paying a visit to MoSh to the top of my list of goals. I focused on opening a portal… at first it didn't want to work, but then I focused harder and it opened. I flew through the portal…

I landed in the yard outside of MoSh's house. The weather was bright and sunny. I went over to the house. I could hear voices inside, a man and a woman were talking really mushy mush to each other. I looked inside through the window and saw MoSh and Asuka kissing pretty heavy. I didn't want to interrupt their make-out session. I turned to leave, but I remembered I was going to check on Asuka. I looked into the window again. I would check on both of their energies to see if there was any sign of contamination. I looked, focused, and I saw none. It wasn't just that I saw no contamination, I saw no energy at all! They weren't real! Wtf? I quickly made up a corny rhyme spell… "Dispel the vision that I see, from illusion set me free." The illusory MoSh and Asuka vanished… and the entire scene shifted…

Now I was in the basement of MoSh's house. MoSh and Asuka were chained to two separate stone tables. There were people there torturing them. I recognized the torturers, too. Nomad was peeling MoSh's skin off and Angel was sticking rusty nails in Asuka. Wtf?! No way could that really be Nomad and Angel… Whoever it was I was going to stop them. I went in to stop them and noticed again… no one there had any energy. I repeated the spell I'd made to dispel illusions… "Dispel the vision that I see, from illusion set me free!"

The scene shifted again, but not much this time. It had just shifted so that Nomad and Angel were being tortured by MoSh and Asuka instead of the other way around. "Dispel this vision that I see, from illusion… glurk…" My spell was interrupted when I nearly puked. MoSh had just torn one of Nomad's eyes out and fed it to Asuka, popping it into her mouth like a piece of candy… Yuck! I went through my dispel illusion spell faster so I wouldn't get distracted again… "Dispel this vision that I see, from illusion set me free!"

The scene changed again. Asuka tied up naked between two trees in a forest, MoSh videotaping as a line of disgusting looking men forced themselves on her. Asuka was screaming and crying… no… repeat dispel illusion spell… MoSh and Asuka swapped places, the ugly men were doing MoSh from the rear while Asuka filmed it and laughed, "How do you like it, you sick fuck?" Um… no… repeat dispel illusion spell. The scene shifted. Asuka and MoSh having pretty violent and raunchy sex… well, I don't know how they like to do it… The people had no energy, not real. Repeat dispel illusion. MoSh stabbing Asuka many times and then coming towards me with the bloody knife… no… dispel illusion… MoSh and Asuka skinning live animals, couldn't tell what kind… no… dispel illusion. This was getting ridiculous! Asuka giving oral pleasure to MoSh then suddenly ripping his… um… you-know-what off with her teeth… no… dispel illusion, dispel illusion, dispel illusion! Damn it! Why wasn't it working?! I focused carefully, not paying any attention to the screaming around me as who did I-don't-want-to-know-what to who… and focused on the spell, "Dispel this vision that I see, from illusion set me free. All this horror cannot be, make it gone, so mote it be!"

I stood there with my eyes closed a bit longer. No screaming… no sounds of raunchy sex… no crying… no sounds of animals in pain… I carefully opened my eyes. I was outside of MoSh's house. There was a strange fog hanging over the area. Q telepathically told me it's called a fog of illusion. The fog lent a creepy aspect to everything. I used the song Full Moonlight to gather up the strange fog from all over, in the house, all around… into a small orb that I threw into a void.

Ok, now where were MoSh and Asuka? I had to find them. I felt for their energy and found it. They were both in the house. I went in through the front door, following Asuka's energy because she was closer. I found her in the kitchen, in the pantry, cowering in the back corner trying to make herself invisible. She saw movement, shrank back, but then came to me crying tears of relief. She said she was so glad to see me… MoSh had been infected with dark energy, he was trying to kill her, and she hadn't been able to do anything for him. She said she had tried to get out of the house to get help, but he was always waiting there with his huge knife, saying which parts of her he wanted to cut off first… "Please help him," Asuka said, "It's not his fault… it's dark energy, I'm sure…"

I checked Asuka for energy corruption. I found none, but I did a Touch My Heart healing spell on her anyway. Golden energy flowed into her. I then followed MoSh's energy. It was downstairs in the basement. I found him there. He seemed to be sneaking along the back wall, trying to blend with the shadows, getting closer to the stairs. He saw me there and apparently thought I was Asuka. "Come on, Asuka," he said, "Try to fight it! You need healing! Just fight it for a bit… I really don't want to hurt you!"

"I'm not Asuka," I said. He heard my voice and recognized it. He came running over to me and put his arms around me. He said he was really glad to see me, Asuka needed healing… and she needed it bad. He motioned to the far side of the room. Shawna came out. MoSh said Asuka had tried to kill both of them, and neither Shawna nor him had been able to heal her. But she needed help badly… I would help, wouldn't I? I said I already had seen Asuka and I had used a healing spell on her. I used Touch My Heart on MoSh and Shawna, though they didn't look infected, either.

When MoSh and Asuka were in the same room, I told them what illusions I'd had to break through in order to get to the reality of MoSh's inner world. The psycho version of MoSh trying to kill Asuka and the psycho version of Asuka trying to kill MoSh and Shawna weren't real, they had just been illusions. Very convincing, very hard to penetrate. I told them there had been a strange fog all over the place, the fog of illusion. They seemed to understand and accept that, now everyone was pissed. Who the fuck had put that there? How had they gotten in? I wondered if it was something L had done when he was inside before, or if he had used another dirty trick to come back and do it… because if he had come back after the incident last night, he was apparently looking for a permanent playmate in Walms. The idea that L secretly finds being beaten to a pulp to be a turn-on crossed my mind briefly, but I got rid of that because it would make me sick very quickly…

Asuka, Shawna, and MoSh were all hugging now. MoSh pulled me into the hug. We all hugged there for a couple minutes, everyone was relieved that things seemed normal now. MoSh was thanking me for helping. I said I would be there to help any time, I was glad he and Asuka and Shawna were all ok. The dream slipped, and I woke up, disappearing right out of the group hug.

I was in bed. I rolled over and stroked the furry animal beside me. Soft and silky fur. The cat started to purr. So sweet… I stroked her for a couple minutes before I realized I had to get up and use the bathroom. I got out of bed and looked over at my bedroom door. There was someone in the doorway! Wtf? I grabbed a sword I had beside my bed. I know it is a cheap sword, but it is at least pointy… I held the sword towards the person at the door and asked who it was. The person, a man, said I sure am jumpy when I'm not lucid. He turned the light on. It was briefly blinding, but my eyes adjusted quickly. I recognized him. It was Walms. Wait a minute… he's in Mexico! I did a RC and found out I was dreaming.

I put the sword down and asked Walms how long he had been there. He said not long. I said that was good, having people coming into my room and watching me sleep is a bit creepy. He said he was wondering how long it would take me to notice him there. He said if he had been an enemy, it wasn't nearly fast enough. I said but then again, he's not an enemy. Hostiles put off entirely different energy… even if he was looking to attack me for a training fight, he would still be putting off different energy. Ok… remember the goals… I was going to take Walms to see L. At the same time I thought that Walms said it. I opened a portal while focused on getting back to L and both of us went through it.

On the other side we were in the same place where I found Asuka. There was a beautiful pool with a lot of women swimming and lounging around the pool in string bikinis. I spotted L almost right away, too. He was sitting in one of the chairs watching all of the women. He was practically drooling. The women seemed to be deliberately showing off their bodies to him, all laughing and giggling like they were having a great time. I wondered how brainless they must be to enjoy the pool with that piece of shit lounging on the side of it… or if he was in the pool, the pool would then become a toilet with a piece of shit floating in it. Yuck!

L got up when I arrived. I hadn't been trying to hide my energy or anything, so he no doubt saw that I was there. He got a big grin on his face. He said he was glad to see that I had changed my mind about coming back. Now for some more appropriate attire… my Assassin's robes changed to a blue string bikini… like the one on this woman in the photo… and then go ahead and enjoy the pool and the refreshments. I looked at the bikini I was now in, but I didn't bother changing it. There were more important things to do here than argue over my outfit.

I told L I had brought a friend. L said that is great! He said he hoped I had brought Tigress… she is the cat's meow. I frowned at the comment and wondered if he could manage to make himself sound any lamer. I said I had brought a friend who wanted to play with him. He said that sounded great, where is she? Walms was there with me, and L didn't look pleased to see him.

"Nope," L said immediately, somehow getting his women to gather around him as if to prove this point, "No way. No guys. Girls only. There is no way I'm going to bother playing games with any guys. No way, it's women all the way for me. Women only. No…"

It seemed like L was protesting a bit too much… Walms interrupted L. He said maybe he would just have to get rid of these distractions then. I didn't object to that… those women were clearly illusory DCs and not real people. That was proven even more when Walms cut a few of them open with his claws and instead of bleeding they deflated… like blow-up dolls. Walms deflated all of the women dolls around L, which seemed to piss L off. I wondered why he cared since he can always create more DCs. Either way, the goal of getting L pissed was working. They got into a brief fight, L summoned up some armor. He said nothing could penetrate that armor… and in just seconds Walms had shredded it all off of him, leaving L looking shocked and yelling expletives… Walms appeared behind L, beat on him a bit, and then threw him down on the ground, saying something about L being too pathetic to offer any kind of a decent fight… Then Walms was on top of L… it sounded like he was threatening him. I didn't hear everything that was said, but I got the basic gist of what was said. The basic idea was that if L ever bothered Ranma (what Walms calls MoSh) again Walms would come back to have some more fun with L. L was trying to look pissed off, but I think he was hiding fear… I think he was about to shit his pants. I was just about rolling on the ground laughing. Walms tossed L aside, apparently not seeing him as worth any more of his time. Walms looked back over at me. I think he said something, but then I woke.

Note: Still no luck with my WILD attempts. I am not sure why that is happening so rarely now when it used to be so common. I had one primary goal for this night, and that was to track down Asuka and bring her home. Q found a fake Asuka in MoSh's inner world, so the only conclusion, or most likely conclusion, is she was kidnapped. Other than that there is my usual list of goals…

I was lying on the living room couch. My mother woke me up. She said I had slept through half the movie. She suggested I go to bed if I was that tired. I told her I didn't feel tired. She said if I wasn't tired, I wouldn't have slept through so much of the movie. I thought a minute and realized I couldn't even remember what movie we had been watching… ok… she must be right. I must be tired, even if I didn't feel it… or maybe the nap had been all I needed. I got up from the couch and went into my bedroom. Something didn't look right there… there was a desk with a desktop computer on the far side of the room. I thought there shouldn't have even been room for that desk… I did a reality check… and found I was dreaming!

Now fully lucid, I focused on remembering my goals. Asuka! Yes, I had to help MoSh get Asuka back. I used my bedroom door as a portal for a change of pace, and I opened it and walked through into MoSh's inner world. I turned around just in time to see the doorway behind me fold up on itself until it became too tiny to see… and it was gone.

I looked around for MoSh. I saw I was standing in the living room of his house. MoSh looked over at me. He said he had been wondering if I wasn't going to make it. I said I had, and now we had better get going. No time to lose in getting Asuka back. I was pretty sure I already knew where she was, but I figured I would let my tracking guide my portal anyhow… just on the off chance we were wrong about who had taken her. I focused on opening a portal and on finding Asuka. A portal opened, MoSh and I went through it…

On the other side of the portal we were in a strange place. It looked rather nice. There was a swimming pool there, and it was a beautiful pool. There were several women with perfect bodies lying out on lounges sunbathing and a few more in the pool. I briefly felt ashamed of my large belly and second chin before I reminded myself that it is a dream, and in dreams I have neither of those. There was a man standing on the patio surveying the scene, practically drooling over the women in the pool. He looked like a faker biker, dressed in leather, but somehow it looked like he was trying so hard to look cool that he really just wound up with an epic fail. I knew who that was, it was L. I also saw there was one woman sitting on a chair on the patio, she didn't look happy to be there. That was Asuka. I went over to Asuka. I hadn't even reached her before L spotted me and seemed pleased. He said there is always room for one more bathing beauty in his place… I saw in my reflection that I suddenly had on a string bikini that left little to the imagination. I was about to curse at L, but I got distracted admiring how nice my dream body looks compared to my waking body. L told me to help myself to a drink at the bar or dive into the pool, the water was always the perfect temperature. Wait a minute… I wasn't there for a pool party…

"Asuka," I said, "I have come to take you home."

"She is very happy here," L said, "Now go ahead and enjoy yourself. Don't worry about the others."

"I think Asuka can answer for herself," I said to L, I was a bit annoyed, "Asuka? Let's go home. MoSh is worried about you."

Asuka looked up at me with a rather blank look on her face. She stared at me for a few minutes before she finally answered. She said she didn't want to go back. She said she wouldn't force herself on MoSh any longer. I asked what she was talking about. She said she knew everything now. She MoSh doesn't want her back. She said he had willingly turned her over to L, not once, but twice. He had willingly given up to L in a contest where she was the prize, and then when he had the choice between her and the alternate Asuka, he had chosen the other one. She said he had been hoping she wouldn't survive the battle to get her flame back. He had been counting on her dying so he could have the better version of her. She said she understood why. She said he had tried to, but he had never been able to forgive her for lying to him. Right now this was the only place she belonged.

I noticed that the whole time Asuka was talking she basically showed no emotion. It was as if she was rehearsing a script. I had no doubt in mind that L had put those exact lines into her head. L said the fact MoSh had sent me to get Asuka and hadn't come to get her himself. Wait a minute… MoSh had been with me to come get Asuka… where was he? Had he woken up? This wasn't a good time to wake up… I looked around and headed back in the direction I had come from. I reached the place where I had entered through the portal. I looked around. I saw MoSh. He had wandered off in the other direction. Wtf? I went over to him and asked what he was doing. He looked over at me. He looked a bit puzzled. I asked if he was even lucid. He looked at me. He looked at his hands. He pointed at me with his pinky… and then announced I was real.

"No shit, Sherlock," I said, "Now let's go get Asuka." MoSh was wanting to know if Asuka was ok. I said she was fine apart from the lies L had been filling her head with… which he hadn't been there do dispute just now… MoSh followed me over to the pool, seeming much more alert and lucid. Asuka was still sitting in the same chair. L was watching me bring MoSh back. He didn't seem overly concerned about that. I wondered if he had a plan up his sleeve. I figured it didn't matter. Whatever his plan was, it wouldn't work. MoSh saw Asuka and went over to her and said he was there to take her home. She started repeating the rehearsed lines she had given me. MoSh interrupted her before she was done. He said none of that was true. After MoSh's protest, Asuka just continued with her lines. I told MoSh I was sure she was under the influence of mind control. I would have to break the control.

"Breaking the silence of the night, can't you hear me screaming?" I focused on the song Breaking the Silence by Queensrÿche, "I look for your face in the neon light, you never answer… I could make all the wrong seem right if you were by my side, I'd gather all the tears you cried and hide them deep underground!" The song played through. L's certainty that we wouldn't be able to do anything to get through to Asuka seemed to be wavering. The song had its effect on Asuka. Her eyes cleared, and she looked over at MoSh. She looked on the verge of tears. She looked at me and then at MoSh. She said everyone kept saying MoSh hated her now.

"That…" Asuka stammered, "That's not true, is it?"

"Come on, Asuka," MoSh said, "You know I love you!"

Asuka got up, looked a bit dizzy, and walked towards MoSh in an unsteady manner. She looked kind of drunk.

"Why don't you two just go home?" L said, "Asuka wants to be here with me. Although Raven, if you want to have a swim you are certainly welcome to stay…"

"I'd sooner swim in a sewer than in a pool with you," I said, "And if Asuka wants to stay with you, why does she look like she's about to puke?"

I used Master of Puppets on L. If he is so fond of mind control, let's do a little on him. "Master of puppets is pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams, blinded by me you can't see a thing, just call my name, I'll hear you scream! Master! Master!" I ordered L to release Asuka. He did. She came over to MoSh. L snapped out of the mind control, I hadn't meant for it to last very long. He got mad at MoSh and me for forcing him to do things against his will. He said no one forces him to do anything! He is his own man and…

"And there is an alien pulling your strings," MoSh said. He created a hologram of the alien in this picture. "It's a Reptilian, or a Draconian… and I saw one of them draining your energy.

L looked at the picture briefly, having been completely interrupted from his yelling at MoSh and me. He looked at the hologram, then at MoSh, at the hologram, at MoSh…

"Are you on drugs?" he asked MoSh, then he looked at me, "He's on drugs, isn't he?"

I didn't really have a chance to answer. MoSh was answering. "I saw it," MoSh said, "It was draining your energy. It is controlling your every move. Maybe that's why you're such an ass."

"You're making excuses for me being an ass?" L asked, sounding thoroughly confused, "Now there's a new one. Now why don't you just leave these two lovely ladies here with me, and go on your pathetic way?"

"I'm not staying with you," Asuka said, "Go back to your stupid DC bimbos," she looked at me, "They are all DCs, you know. Just illusions. He couldn't get the attentions of a real woman if he paid her…"

"And if I have to look at your face for one more second," I told L, "I think I'll vomit. So we'll all be going. Have fun with your DCs… which is like using blow-up dolls, right? So have fun with your blow-up dolls." I opened a portal to get us all back to MoSh's inner world. The three of us went through. On the other side of the portal, we were all in the yard in front of MoSh's house. I closed the portal before L could consider following us. MoSh had his arms around Asuka, who seemed happy to be there. I was going to ask if Asuka was ok. I didn't have a chance to say anything.

Note: I had a whole one night WILD streak… lame. I didn't succeed in a WILD tonight, and my goals were pretty much the same as last night. I have a list of goals I am working on, tonight was to be focused on sharing a DDO dream with Tigress and unlocking the book from the Akashic Records, and viewing a dream MoSh had where he told me don Juan left a message for me if I can find it. Hmmm… one out of three ain't all that good!

I was in bed. I sat up and looked at the clock. It wasn't on. Damn… power outage. Now I would have to reset the clock and the alarm… fortunately there wasn't anything I particularly had to get up for the next morning. I lied back down on my pillow, but then my pillow squirmed from underneath my head, hissed at me, then jumped down and left the room. Oops… that was a cat… and apparently she didn't appreciate being used as a pillow. I sat back up, thinking I should do a RC before going back to sleep. My RC revealed that I was dreaming.

Ok. My first goal was to have a DDO dream with Tigress. To do that I would first find Tigress. I focused on locating her and opened a portal. A portal opened, I went through it. On the other side of the portal I was in a strange place. It looked like a dungeon of some kind. Was Tigress already in the DDO dream? Because this definitely looked like a possible DDO dream… I looked around to see if there was anyone else there with me. I wasn't alone. There was a man and a woman there with me. I looked at them… Tigress and MoSh. I said hello to both of them and gave each of them a hug. We were all together in a DDO dream!

Ok. I wasn't sure what the goal was, and neither was anyone else it seemed, so the first thing to do was to just explore the dungeon. The three of us began looking through the dungeon. There were enemies there. We came across a group of kobolds.

I formed Witchblade into a sword and fought them in the manner I would fight them in a true Dungeons and Dragons game. Tigress also had a sword, MoSh was just beating the shit out of them… A bit farther along the dungeon we found a group of orcs. We quickly dispatched of them, as well. They had been guarding a door. Unfortunately the door was locked, and none of the orcs had the key… so we headed in the other direction. A few more battles with kobolds… this was proving to be quite a fun dream… and then we found an encampment of kobolds. There were quite a few of them, and we covered each others' backs as we took them all out. The sheer number of kobolds in the room made this a bit more of a challenge than the previous fights. A couple of them seemed stronger than the average kobold, too. When we finished, there was a chest in the back of the room. All of us went to the chest and opened it. There was an array of treasures in the chest, gems and gold, and there was a cool looking sword. Tigress looked at her own blade, which was charged with elemental fire energy, and kept it. I looked at my blade, Witchblade, and I kept that. I handed the sword to MoSh since he didn't have one. We gathered the gems and treasure, the last item in the chest was a key, Tigress grabbed the key and then we left the room through the same path we had entered it through.

The three of us made our way through the passages back towards the locked door. Most of the passages were empty, but there was a hidden door that had opened. Kobolds were swarming out of it to ambush us as we tried to return to the locked door. MoSh, Tigress, and I all engaged the kobolds in battle and we were victorious. Dead kobolds now littered the ground. The three of us continued until we found the room with the locked door, which was still littered with the bodies of fallen orcs. I thought about the fact they disappear in DDO, but apparently not here. Tigress had the key and she unlocked the door. We all went through it.

On the other side of the door we were in a larger chamber. There were distracted orcs in the room. I wondered what they were doing… Tigress snuck up on one and killed it with one strike. That alerted the others. We got into another battle. We fought our way through the orc infested chamber and over to a narrow passage out the other side.

The orcs didn't seem to stop coming. Kill one, three more came in. Once we were all in the passage, we slammed shut a stone door and barred it from the other side. Good. I could hear orcs pounding on the door, but it was holding up to their pounding quite well. They wouldn't be following us down this passage.

The narrow passage was dark and ominous. It was creepy. There were spider webs on the sides of the passage, and that just made it look even creepier. The three of us finally reached the end of the passage. We were now in the largest chamber yet. There was a path around the chamber about halfway up the wall, and ladders led down to the bottom of the chamber. Tigress swapped her sword for a flame bow. She said she would cover us from above, because this looked like a trap. MoSh and I climbed down into the pit… and sure enough, it was a trap. The far wall of the chamber collapsed, and a giant spider came into the room. It was HUGE. And it looked pissed. A bunch of smaller spiders also came. By small I mean about the size of a German Shepherd… compared to the big one which was about the size of an elephant… We got into a fight with the spiders.

I fought my way through a lot of the spiders. MoSh apparently decided he didn't want to mess with the blade and changed into a large winged cobra. Tigress was up on the ledge, and she was proving to be deadly accurate with her arrows. One arrow pierced the head of each of the dog sized spiders she aimed at, and that made the spider burst into flames. She had cleared my way to the big spider. I went in quickly, aiming for one of its legs. The spider shot web at me. I cut through the web and then through its front right leg. The leg was hanging on by skin. Tigress fired a couple of arrows into the big spider. There were poofs of flame where the arrows hit, but it didn't kill the spider. The spider turned and fired web at Tigress. She dodged to the side of the web. While the spider was distracted, MoSh bathed it in green flames. The whole spider was flaming. I was attacked by some dog-sized spiders. I ran them through with my sword. A stream of web was aimed for Tigress. I intercepted it and cut it down. Tigress nailed two dog-sized spiders trying to jump on me from behind. MoSh had bitten the huge spider… yuck… I didn't envy MoSh. Enough playing around with this boss. I jumped to a pile of crates, to a taller pile of crates, and onto the spider's back. I ran Witchblade right into the spider's head. As the spider turned, one of Tigress' arrows went in to one of the spider's eyes and disappeared completely. Whether due to the poison, the sword in the brain, or the flaming arrow through the eye and into the brain, the spider finally collapsed and burned into a pile of ashes.

MoSh turned back to normal. Tigress came down to join us. There was a chest in the middle of the room where the spider had fallen. We went there to open it. We all opened the chest together and looked in. There was a treasure inside it. There was also a strange blue orb. I wondered about the orb. Did it have magical properties? I picked up the orb to look at it. There were words written deep within the orb. I looked closely to see what was written there. The words said, "This is a dream." Wtf? Oh, well… this was a dream DDO level… what else had I expected. I passed the orb around and everyone had a good laugh about it before I woke.

Note: No WILD again, which is pretty much becoming the norm. My first goal was to go and heal MoSh, and that was in my mind when I fell asleep. I am getting a lot better at the FA's, though. That is getting to be my most consistent form of lucid dreams lately! My memory wasn't great, had a couple of short dreams which are both in this entry.

*Darkness Within*
I got out of bed to go to the bathroom. I am getting into the habit, so I did a RC almost right away and found I was dreaming. I remembered my first goal of healing MoSh. I opened a portal and headed off to MoSh's inner world, now I was fully lucid.

I entered MoSh's inner world in a usual place. I was in the front yard of MoSh's house in his inner world. I looked around and spotted MoSh. He was standing in the yard, facing away from the house. The general area was bright and sunny, but the area right around MoSh was dead and dark… the grass right around MoSh was dead, it looked like he was standing in the middle of a cloud of smoke. I went over to MoSh. MoSh looked at me strangely. He looked weird. His eyes looked strange. There were black swirls in them, though he was smiling at me. It looked a bit creepy… I told MoSh I was there to do a healing spell on him. He said go ahead. I used the song Silver and Cold, pulled dark energy out of MoSh and into me. I was paying more attention this time to be sure I didn't try to absorb another entity with MoSh's dark energy. When the song was complete, I used Touch My Heart and replaced that dark energy with light energy. The cloud of gloom around MoSh seemed to disappear into nothing, and he looked normal again.

Well, MoSh looked mostly normal again… he looked worried. He said he was worried about Asuka, he thought the intruder might have infected her with dark energy. I followed MoSh into the house. Asuka was sitting in the living room watching something on television. MoSh seemed hesitant to look at the screen. There was a puppy playing on the television. It was cute. I told MoSh it was cute. He looked and agreed. He said he wanted to heal Asuka. Asuka smiled and said she was fine. MoSh wanted to be sure. So we did a healing spell on Asuka. I didn't sense any dark energy in her, so I just went straight to Touch My Heart. The room filled with golden energy and that golden energy flowed into Asuka. She looked very relaxed. I sat down on the couch beside her for a bit.

I was sitting there. Asuka had a remote control in her hand, and she was channel surfing. I wondered what she was looking for. She said she was looking for a movie to get into. I thought that was interesting... also that she had answered a question I had only thought... She finally settled on a channel. There were people on the screen talking to each other about dreams... something to do with traveling to other worlds in their dreams. Cool! Sounded like an interesting movie! Asuka got up, and went over to MoSh. They went over to the television and stepped into the screen. Woah... I'd forgotten about the idea of going into the movie... but that had been part of the plan. Ok, so now it was my turn. I saw MoSh and Asuka in the movie now. The other characters seemed mildly surprised to see them, but not overly alarmed. I went to push my way into the screen... and instead my head came into contact with a solid surface. The TV wasn't a gateway... it was a solid wall! Wtf? I tried to push my hands through the screen, but I was getting nowhere. It was frustrating. I tried a couple more times, getting frustrated even more, and then I woke.

*Stargates*
I was at school, or I think it was school. It looked more like a mall. A lot of stores, but I was thinking it was a school. I was there with Tigress. I walked down the main hall with her, looking at the different stores. I was thinking they were all there to sell school supplies. There was one that had a lot of games in it. Most likely for game design research. I went inside. There were computers and games and such, and in the back of the room… there was a stargate! Awesome! It looked so real. I went over to it and looked closer. Someone asked where I wanted to go. I said I wanted to go to… I didn't have time to finish saying that when it opened of its own accord. Something was coming through… a lot of somethings. Gou'ald were coming through. They were shooting at people as they ran for cover. Tigress looked around and then pulled me along. There were Gou'ald attacking random people. I wanted to stop them. I was trying to pull away from Tigress, but she seemed determined not to let go of me.

I went with Tigress out of the mall / school into a grassy field. No parking lot? Never mind, there was a space ship hovering in the field. I called to the people who were running away to follow us to the space ship. A lot of people started following us, some of them were ahead. A lot of the people either didn't hear or didn't understand or didn't believe, so they weren't following. They were heading off in random directions. I reached the ship. A couple of people helped me into the ship. I turned around to grab Tigress. I reached for her hand… and then she disappeared. What the hell? Where had she gone? Had the Gou'ald done something? I had to find her! More people were climbing into the ship, but I just wanted to go back and find Tigress. I jumped back out of the ship, some of the others protested and some said I was nuts, and I started looking through the crowds for her. She couldn't have just vanished! That was impossible, unless… I did a RC… and I found I was dreaming!

Yes! I used Battery on a bunch of Gou'ald… but I got too excited at finding this was a dream and I could do something about it that I woke up.

Note: My ability to WILD has really gone down the crapper lately. On the other side, the number of FAs I have that turn into lucid dreams has gone way up. I guess I'm just greedy and I want it all! My plans for this night were to go back to a Legend of Zelda dream MoSh had a ways back and also to find out who it was I released that dark energy entity to last night. The other thing I wanted to do was open that locked book. I have a feeling there are a lot of answers in it if I could just remember to open it!

I was in my car. I was driving down a road. It was snowy out, and I was thinking I didn't have much experience driving in the snow. I was being very careful. I was there to meet MoSh. I was going to pick him up. Then there was a place we were going to explore. An ice cavern, like the one in the video game Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past. I drove up a winding hill, sure my car would get stuck, but it didn't. I pulled up in front of MoSh's house and got out of the car. I went up to the front door and knocked. MoSh came to the door. He looked at me strangely. I told him I was there so we could go see the cavern that is like the Legend of Zelda. He said that was cool. He followed me out to my car and we both got in.

I started the car and drove back down the hill… or actually I did more sliding down the hill. I slid right into a gigantic pothole. The pothole swallowed the entire car. The car fell downward for quite a ways before crashing to the ground. It hit the ground with much less force than I would have expected, though. I asked MoSh if he was ok, he said yeah, no thanks to my driving. I told him it would have helped to have warning of pothole-zilla. We both got out of the car. The car was totaled. The wheels were now completely flat, and the frame was smashed up quite a bit, too. Great… I wondered if this would raise my insurance payments. MoSh and I went through the only way out of the giant pothole that now looked more like a sink hole… That was through a passage to what I felt was north.

MoSh and I entered an interesting room. There were strange statues in the room, and the floor was practically made of ice. I stepped onto it without looking and immediately fell on my ass. MoSh said to be careful, much of these rooms would be slippery. I said I had noticed that. We entered the room, I was more careful this time. I was wishing I had ice skates… that would be easier… and suddenly I did. I somehow explained that to myself by saying my shoes just convert to ice skates when I need them to… wtf? What an excuse to avoid doing a RC! I skated into the room, MoSh followed me. He didn't seem to be slipping around… I wondered why? Maybe he's just more used to walking on ice since he lives in Canada… As I was about to reach the other side of the room, an ice carving in the wall came to life. I instinctively threw a Damage, Inc. fireball at it and it melted away. That seemed to trigger a door in the left side of the room to open. That was the only other exit, so MoSh and I went through it.

MoSh and I entered another room with a floor of ice… and strange jelly fish like creatures that were floating in the air. MoSh knocked them out of the air with a couple quick martial arts moves, they laid lifeless on the ground. MoSh went over to one of them and picked something up. He showed me what he'd found… it was a key. A golden key. I wondered what that was for. MoSh seemed to know. He took it to a locked door on the north side of the room and unlocked the door. He looked back at me as if to ask what I was waiting for. I skated over and joined him in going through the door.

Stairs led down deeper into the dungeon. Fortunately these weren't slippery. MoSh and I emerged in an ice cave at the bottom of the stairs. A cave led away to the south with branches leading off to the east and west. There was a dead end at both of those side tunnels. It seemed we had reached the end of our travels. MoSh headed down the passage. I skated after him, not sure where we were trying to go. MoSh went around the corner to the west. He found a loose panel in the wall and pushed it. I heard a grinding sound as a portion of the wall slid aside. The passage to the east was no longer a dead end. MoSh went over to that new passage and went into it.

This whole thing was seeming more like a level in the Legend of Zelda than I had realized at first. Weird monsters, a maze like dungeon, hidden switches to open hidden passages… Maybe it would help for me to start thinking as if I was playing a game of Zelda. Think like Link… I followed MoSh into the next room, which was an intersection of passages. Exits to the north, south, east, and west. The other three passages were closed. There were four orbs in the center of the room. All of the orbs were glowing red. I noticed each of the doors was a different color. North was blue, south was green, east was yellow, west was red. Ok… this was a puzzle. I went into the center of the room and touched an orb. It changed color and the red door closed. Ok, when all the orbs were the same color, the door of that color would open. This was complicated by the fact each orb affected the orb to the right of it… I fiddled around with them until they were all green. MoSh and I went south.

In the next room it looked much like the previous one. Another ice chamber, a few decorative statues… but there were strange creatures there attacking us. They looked like small demons or gremlins riding on upside down turtle shells… weird… those shells allowed them to maneuver very well on the ice. They were all attacking us, I had to do skating maneuvers I didn't know I was capable of to avoid them. MoSh and I were able to get rid of them with fire spells. And this seemed to just keep going on. More ice chambers, floating jelly fish, hidden passages and keys… It continued until we entered the largest chamber so far…

In the largest chamber there was creature made entirely of ice, or that's what it appeared to be. Made of ice, the ice was carved out in the form of a… um… I'm not sure what. It had a bull's head, the tail and stinger of a scorpion, eight legs, sharp pincers… um… someone had gone ape with the genetic manipulation… The thing had been standing like a statue, but when MoSh and I entered, it attacked us immediately. Throwing its stinger directly at MoSh, who dived to the side to avoid it. MoSh and I fought the thing using fire spells, which seemed to be the only thing that would affect it. The fire spells slowly melted the thing down until there was nothing left but puddles… but there was something left. There was a man standing there, the ice had apparently been formed around him. He was saying the ice king had been using the ice to control him, but now he was free. I wondered if that was true or an excuse… He opened a door in the back of the chamber.

MoSh and I went into the next chamber. There was a sphere of ice in the center on a stand like a giant crystal ball. In the middle of the crystal ball was a woman. I wondered how she had gotten in there. I figured this 'ice king' person had trapped her there. I figured a bit of fire would get her out… but before I could do that, I woke.