New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I thought I was about to wake up, so I told MoSh and Asuka that. MoSh asked if I couldn't dilate time, I said I certainly could try that, so I focused on Allura's method of time dilation. That seemed to work, the dream became stable again, so I figured we could keep going. I focused on opening a portal to find Kaomea, then MoSh and I went through the portal.

As MoSh and I stepped out of the portal, I looked around to see we were now on a beach next to what I thought looked a bit like a lagoon, or it at least looked like the lagoon I used to see when watching old reruns of Gilligan's Island… I looked closer and spotted Kaomea on the beach, she was looking out over the water and didn't seem to have noticed us yet. MoSh said her name, and she looked over at us with a weird smile on her face. She climbed up on a rock and slipped off all of her clothes, so she was now standing up there in the nude… I wasn't sure what to make of that… She looked directly at MoSh and then jumped into the water, turning into a mermaid on her way down and entering the lagoon with a splash. She surfaced and looked over at MoSh again, then proclaimed she likes swimming naked with men who have old souls… uh… I wasn't sure what to make of that, did it confirm she needed healing? Was that her normal behavior? I had no clue…

MoSh apparently took it as in invitation, as he waded out into the lagoon, I'm not sure if his clothes disappeared, but if they did, they didn't vanish until that part was underwater. Kaomea giggled a bit, it appeared to me she was a bit amused by his modesty, which I figured was because I was there. Kaomea hadn't really acknowledged my presence at all, and if she was going to want to get hot and wild with MoSh, that was something I didn't really want to hang around and see. But MoSh had seemed so sure that she needed healing, so I figured I would stick around for a bit longer and make sure nothing bad happened.

As MoSh and Kaomea moved farther out into the lagoon, I saw there was a whirlpool out there that hadn’t been there just a moment before. There were figures coming out of the whirlpool, too, which didn't seem too likely, and the things coming out of it were butt ugly. There were zombies coming out of the whirlpool, zombies that distinctly reminded me of the evil pirates in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the ones that turned into zombies when the light of the moon shined on them. Of course right now it was daylight, and these zombies looked every bit as disgusting as the ones on Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and the strangest thing was a couple of them were whispering something to Kaomea. She was listening intently to them, then she turned towards MoSh and smirked. She said if he was her soul mate, she was going to kill herself right now so she could spend eternity with the zombie pirate to her right. My stomach churned and I thought I might vomit when she kissed the thing, kissing a zombie? That was truly disgusting, and when she pulled away I could see the slime of decaying flesh sticking to her face, though she seemed completely unaware of it.

First MoSh looked stunned, then he looked mad, leading me to wonder if he had somehow forgotten the reason we'd had for tracking Kaomea down in the first place, to heal her from dark energy infection. Apparently she was still infected, and those zombies weren't making things any better. And she was getting nasty, too, she was telling MoSh that there was no way that any woman would put up with the likes of him, that he would grow old and die a complete no one and when he did die, no one would give a shit, that all that would be left is for him to sink into the realm of the forgotten souls and rot there for eternity, she was laughing in a nasty manner…

While she was coming up with nasty things to say to MoSh, I had turned into a mermaid and swam out towards her, she still wasn't paying any attention at all to me, I figured that was fine… she didn't need to be paying attention for me to do a healing spell. She was saying more nasty things to MoSh that I didn't catch, and then I was focusing on Touch My Heart. Before the spell could really get started, however, MoSh was charging at Kaomea, getting mad at her for deceiving him, for playing games with him when she knew perfectly well he was seriously looking for Asuka's twinner in his waking life. I did a brief double take, but then I swam away from Kaomea and grabbed MoSh, I saw all the zombies standing around Kaomea laughing at us, she was laughing right along with them, I told MoSh to quit it, we had known before coming here that Kaomea was infected with dark energy, this was just a symptom of that. He didn't seem to quite get that, so I told him that I would take care of healing Kaomea if he could just keep the zombies off of us while I was doing it. He finally agreed to that.

So while MoSh was attacking the zombies, I went over to Kaomea and focused again on the song Touch My Heart, using it to pull dark energy out of her and replace it with light energy… if she was Asuka's twinner, then she should be using light energy… This time the song played through without interruption. I saw MoSh off to the side a couple of times doing an interesting version of underwater martial arts… and kicking serious zombie ass with it. One of the zombies got almost close enough to interfere with my spell, but MoSh interfered with him and kicked him so hard in the face that his head flew off. I was thinking MoSh had been acting a bit negative himself, so I finished Touch My Heart, directing some of the healing energy at MoSh, as well. After this was done I woke.

Note: I don't have any solid memories of when I was going to share a dream with both of them to try to remember music, but I am remembering some music that I don't think I've actually heard IWL.

Note: I had even more plans tonight than last night, it seems that when I have a lot of stuff planned that I have an easier time remembering the goals and remembering the dreams. That might be one reason my drought went on for so long, when I couldn't count on a lucid, I didn't really make any plans… This night I had plans to meet up with Kaomea, MoSh, and Asuka, and we were going to try to play some music and then remember it IWL. In addition to that I had a Law and Order: SVU dream planned with Tigress, so I figured I would be able to remember something and accomplish something… I started by using my light sound machine and slipping into a WILD…

I entered the WILD, the scene around me slowly became solid as the patterns of colors solidified into a consistent scene. Once the scene had resolved itself I realized I was in the front yard of MoSh's house inside his inner world, I was thinking that hadn't happened much lately and it seemed a good sign that I was appearing there now. MoSh was outside the house, I'm not sure what he was trying to do, but when he saw me he stopped and came running over to me, something was clearly wrong. He said now they were both infected, both Asukas were infected. Both Asukas? He said yeah, both the Asuka he has known for a long time and the dream self of the waking life twinner of Asuka. Kaomea was also infected with dark energy. I wondered who had been attacking Kaomea, but I figured that didn't matter until after she and Asuka were healed, cleared of the dark energy infecting them. I asked MoSh where they were, he said Asuka was in the house being kept there by Data, but he didn't know where Kaomea was right then. Ok, then, Asuka first. Both MoSh and I went into his house.

Inside the house I saw the normal place I am used to seeing, though I knew it had been a while since I had successfully visited there, MoSh indicated the stairs, so we went up there. Data was at the door to one of the bedrooms, I could hear Asuka in the room getting all kinds of angry and letting out expletives that might even make a drunken sailor blush… that was definitely not the Asuka I know… So I went into the room, I saw Asuka lying on the bed by herself, but as soon as she saw there was someone coming she summoned a naked DC and started making out with him. The DC was one of those guys that is pretty good looking, but looked like he was all good looks and physique and absolutely no brains. Of course since it was a DC, that was no doubt true. MoSh came into the room behind me and saw Asuka making out with the himbo, Asuka looked over at us as if she was just now noticing us. She told us to leave, she was making out with a real man for a change instead of the loser she normally hung around with. She looked over at MoSh as if she had spotted him for the first time, then she said there the loser was right now, maybe if he took some notes he could figure out how to be a real man, too.

That was just absurd, suggesting that her stupid DC was any kind of a real man, so I used my own dream control to alter her DC into a little wimp who got up off of her and revealed his 'manhood' was about the size of a small earthworm and just as floppy as a dead worm, too. He chuckled at it as he played with it for a bit, then he shriveled up and blew out the window on a light breeze, I told her that was how much of a man her DC really was. Now to take care of things, I went over to Asuka, who was a bit annoyed at me for bursting her illusion of the hot DC boyfriend, and I focused on the song Touch My Heart, drawing the dark energy out of Asuka and into myself, replacing it with light energy which she was supposed to have. The song finished with no difficulty, and Asuka was sitting on the bed looking at me, then she looked at MoSh, then she had tears in her eyes, though I wasn't sure if they were tears of sadness over what had just happened or tears of rage at the assholes who had done it… Asuka said this couldn't happen again, not right when MoSh might be meeting the girl he was meant to find, no one could be allowed to fuck that up…

MoSh said that Kaomea had been infected, too, so we should go find her and heal her. Asuka was apologizing to MoSh, and she was also cursing whoever had infected her, and she was fluently cursing them for infecting Kaomea… She said it wasn't fair for them to start attacking Kaomea, before Kaomea even had a chance to get used to the idea of shared dreaming and finding MoSh in dreams and that MoSh was her soul mate and… and… She said no only was it unfair, it is just flat out wrong, there was no way they should be allowed to do that. MoSh said we needed to go find Kaomea, then we could heal her and make sure everything was ok. I thought I was about to wake up, so I told MoSh and Asuka that. MoSh asked if I couldn't dilate time, I said I certainly could try that, so I focused on Allura's method of time dilation. That seemed to work, the dream became stable again, so I figured we could keep going. I focused on opening a portal to find Kaomea, then MoSh and I went through the portal.

… To be continued…

I think for some reason Nomad wanted to fight the Crystal Golem… whatever. I stayed with Spike and contributed my healing energy to his recovery.

I stayed by Spike's side for a while, I had the idea I was going to wake up. Well, this time would no doubt mean I was waking up for real since I have never succeeded in doing two time dilations in one dream before. But hell, there was nothing to lose by trying it again… I wondered exactly how long I could spend in just one dream doing time dilations over and over before I reached the limits of the laws of physics and could go no farther… I wondered if there was a limit other than my own abilities… would trying to dilate time too much create problems? So I focused on using Allura's method of time dilation again. That wasn't working… if anything it seemed to be causing the dream to go more unstable, which was the same thing that had happened last time I had tried to dilate time for a second time in a single dream.

Ok, I would give it one more shot… I put my right hand on the ground and tried to focus on it… my hand looked blurry, I wasn't able to focus on that… so I turned and focused on Spike… he was part of the dream… I could see the rest of the dreamscape… ok, that part was good. Now what, count? Yeah, the next part was to count and focus on each count extending time, I wasn't sure if I would get that right or not, and focusing on everything at once was getting a bit disorienting, which was making the dream slip more. I forced myself to resume my focus, then count, 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… Spike, the healing glen, this minute in waking life stretching out to allow for more minutes of dream to fit into it… 6… 7… 8… 9… 10. I was still crouched on the ground, I could vaguely sense my physical body in bed as I tried to hold onto the dream. I stood up in the glen, trying to get my dream body in a position as different from my physical body as possible… I didn't want to sense my physical body… I heard a voice, please tell me it isn't a waking voice… that some asshole was about to wake me up…

But it was the Crystal Golem, he was coming back to check on Spike, he asked if I was ok, he said I didn't look well. My attention was redirected at the Crystal Golem, and the dream stabilized as I was distracted from the sensation of my physical body. I wasn't sure if that counted as successfully using Walms' method of time dilation or not, since I had been sure I was about to lose the dream until the Crystal Golem had directed my attention back into it… The Crystal Golem was saying Spike would be fine now, but he could not truly be safe until we went back and defeated the Vampire King once and for all. The Vampire King? He had called himself Death… but I really didn't care what the asshole called himself, he would not be going after Spike again. Nomad was with the Crystal Golem, he said he was ready to kick some ass. Our Spike said he would teach that bastard what he could really do. Pablo seemed somewhat hesitant to come, I don't think he liked the idea of fighting Death (which was still how I was thinking of him) again. So this time the Crystal Golem opened a portal and those of us who wanted to fight went through…

On the other side we were in the desert again, I looked around to see who was with us, I saw Nomad, Altaïr, Spike, and Angel with me… where had MoSh gone? Had he woken up? As if reading what I was thinking and knowing who I was looking for, Nomad said MoSh had woken up while we were back in the glen. Damn… that was one fewer people to fight this Vampire King who calls himself Death… I noticed that the midday sun was shining brightly on the land, making everything almost blindingly bright, would that have any effect on Death? If he was actually a vampire, it seemed like it would… but I realized it didn't when the ground shook and he came flying out of it like a bullet, landing on the sand in front of us looking as evil as ever, he was laughing at how we were looking at him, he said of course the sun didn't hurt him, he was Death… the king of the vampires. I said I wasn't amazed that the sun didn't hurt him… what I was amazed at was that I had just discovered a life form that can exist and function without the presence of a brain! That clearly pissed him off a bit, and now more bats poured out of the darkness below and flew right into Death, into his cloak, becoming part of him… there was no doubt about it, this guy was made of bats! As the bats continued to add themselves to him, his power level was increasing and he was also physically growing until he was about 20 feet tall, blood dripping from his fangs, eyes glowing red… um… I wondered if he had actually put any effort into his powers or if he just wanted to look scary.

So the fight started. He unleashed hoards of the bats now, from inside his cloak, they were all glowing with dark energy auras, and those auras made me think of something… Walms might want to kick this guy's ass! So I telepathically tried to contact Walms, I was hoping it wouldn't wake him up as my telepathy has done in the past, I was trying to be careful with it… As I was focusing on contacting Walms, the enemy had grown to about double his original size… more bats had been flooding from the ground and adding themselves to his mass, so now he was about 40 feet tall… I felt a contact of some kind, had I gotten through to Walms? Hopefully I had… I told him that there was an epic fight just starting where I was, so if he wanted in on it, get out here, and there was some yummy dark energy in it for him… the response I felt I was getting was confusion, and a response sounding like, "Who the hell are you?" That took me by surprise, I thought he would have recognized my energy since we've shared several dreams, but whatever… I identified myself as Raven Knight and said there were snacks in the form of dark energy covered bats… and one really big guy that was creating the smaller snacks, he could be dinner. Walms seemed to be about to give me a response… then I lost all contact… he had woken up. Damn! Of course after the confused response I had gotten I was wondering if I had actually gotten through to Walms at all…

So I turned my attention back to Death, he had picked Spike up in one hand and was laughing at him, it seemed he thought none of us could be a considerable threat to him… there were thousands of bats attacking us, so I summoned a natural enemy of the bat… there were large insects in the area that were a lot like praying mantises, and they came and attacked the bats in huge numbers. Nomad had also done a summoning, and a huge flock of black birds dove from the sky and attacked the bats… there was a battle raging in the sky, the other creatures of the desert were just as anxious to banish Death as we were, I'd contacted the insects but I was not exerting any control over them… they were attacking completely of their own free will. Angel was creating walls of white fire that were incinerating the bats on contact, Death was still over there laughing because we were so busy with the bats that we hadn't even gotten close to him…

Well, it was time to change that. The birds and insects were keeping most of the bats busy now, Death was holding Spike up for everyone to see and saying he was just going to have to crush our friend like the gnat he was. That was much easier said than done, however. Out of nowhere Altaïr came from above and literally cut the hand that was holding Spike clean off. Spike, of course, got free easily and jumped up and onto Death's back, quickly striking at the exposed target, tearing into Death's neck and drawing his energy right out. Death was roaring incoherently in pain and rage, trying to reach back and grab Spike… if he was weakened, he would be opened to attack… so I called scarabs, flesh eating beetles, from the ground to cover Death, consuming the flesh right off of him, Nomad was bathing Death in flames at the same time. The scarabs didn't seem to notice the flames, their carapaces were protecting them while Death was being burned. When the scarabs were finished and the flames passed, there was nothing left of Death than a charred skeleton… but he still would not die! He just kept yelling maniacally that he was Death, the Vampire King, and nothing could kill him! He could never die!

Death was trying to crush whoever was at his feet, we all got clear of him, Angel was firing some kind of white light directly into Death's eyes which seemed to be both hurting and blinding him at the same time. While she was doing that a couple of Nomad's ravens swooped down and plucked the eyeballs from their sockets… yuck… and dropped them into the sand, where Death proceeded to step on his own eyes by accident… also yuck… Nomad was blasting Death with what looked like acid, it was smoking and dissolving the bones on contact, Death was screaming something incoherent again… maybe I could hurry his demise along.

There were tiny worms in the desert… worms that fed on the bones of animals that had died in the desert, so I called some of them, basically ringing the dinner bell for them. They came out and burrowed into Death's heel bone, Nomad was giving me a strange look, I said they would infect and consume the bones. Nomad turned into a huge dog and was gnawing on one of Death's bones, an arm bone, while it was still attached. Nomad tore the bone off and ran off a ways and buried it, he seemed to be finding this to be an amusing game.

I saw the signs of the worms spreading out from the place where they had entered, causing a spider web network of cracks to form throughout Death's entire bone structure. The bones crumbled as the bones were consumed, I could understand some of what Death was saying, he was saying this wasn't possible, he was immortal, he was Death, he was the Vampire King… and then he turned to dust and blew away on the desert wind.

There was movement around us, there were still some bats around. We didn't attack them, I figured they were without a leader now and would just return to the safety of the caves. But they were not doing that, instead they gathered around Spike, changed to their vampire forms, and bowed to Spike. They were all hailing him as Spike, the Vampire King. I wasn't sure what had happened, but one of the vampires answered Nomad who also seemed a bit confused. One of the vampires, an attractive female, came over and said the old Vampire King was dead… and the one to have most recently drank of his blood was Spike, so that meant the crown would be passed on to Spike for his part in the demise of the Vampire King Death. The vampires seemed quite pleased to see the last of Death... I looked at Spike, surrounded by his worshippers… he looked a bit awkward there, but wasn't showing it much… He told them they could stop bowing, the sun did seem to be draining their energy, so Spike told them to get back down below before they all burned up.

Spike came over to me and commented that his being the Vampire King was certainly unexpected… he then added that he had already chosen his queen. He kissed me. I felt the dream slipping again. I'm not sure how long I could extend a dream for, but this time I didn't fight it, I was kissing Spike as I woke.

I opened a portal back to the biodome, to the location beside the koi pond, figuring I would check there again before moving on to my next goal.

I wasn't sure how much of the dream I had left, so I thought I had better extend the dream before it was too late. I focused on using Allura's method of time dilation, condensed the time on the clock in my mind's eye. I didn't notice much of a change, not really anything I could clearly identify, i thought maybe that was because I hadn't been losing the dream when I did it. With that done it was time to figure out what to do next.

I waited for a short time at the koi pond, but no one showed up, and then I thought it was time to continue to my next goal, which was to share an Oblivion dream with Tigress. As we had agreed upon earlier, I opened a portal while focusing on getting to the battle arena in Imperial City, Tamriel. A portal opened and I went through it, wondering If Tigress would be waiting for me on the other side or if I might just go ahead and have an Oblivion dream on my own if she wasn't. As I emerged into Imperial City I saw that I needn't have worried about it. I spotted Tigress right away… picking the lock on the chest containing the money from people's wagers? What did she want with money? I also spotted a guard heading our direction, he would surely see her. While I had no doubt that she could handle anything the guards could bring, I didn't really want to waste the whole dream fighting off stupid Imperial guards instead of looking for an Oblivion gate to close. So I went over to the guard and asked him a typical Oblivion type question, what was going on lately. He asked if I had been living under a rock, everyone was worried about the Oblivion gate that had opened up right in front of the city. He said it was just a matter of time before the daedra came through and attacked… Tigress came over to us and said she had heard about the Oblivion gate, and we were going to close it. The guard laughed and said if it was that easy the guard would have already done it.

So Tigress and I ignored the guard laughing and headed towards the front of the city, towards the main entrance. There were guards there, and they didn't want to let us leave, they said it wasn't safe out there due to the Oblivion gate being so close to the city, so no one was being allowed to enter or leave. Tigress and I just headed for another of the exits, that one was guarded, too, it looked like they had sealed the entire city off. This wasn't a problem, Tigress and I just climbed up the side of one of the buildings, we didn't really want to start flying from the ground where it might be noticed, and then we flew over the walls to the city and landed outside.

There was no wondering where the Oblivion gate was, the eerie red light and the wilted and dying foliage clearly indicated where the gate could be found. We followed the light from that, I saw some daedra out in the distance, the Flame Atronach were clearly seen against the darker landscape, but they didn't seem to have seen us. Before long Tigress and I found ourselves at the base of a massive Oblivion gate. There were several scamps milling around, they didn't even know what had hit them before they were dead. I had my Witchblade sword. Without any hesitation we went right into the Oblivion gate, leaving Tamriel behind.

On the other side of the gate was the planes of Oblivion, which look just like I remember seeing them in the video games, although the layout of things was a bit different. There were three primary towers that were situated around the Oblivion gate, and there was a beam of energy coming from the top of each tower and feeding into the Oblivion gate. I wondered if all of those had to be stopped in order to close the gate, or would getting rid of one of them set the gate off balance and force it to close? There wasn't a lot of time to consider that, Tigress and I were attacked by more daedra, this time it was a group of Flame Atronach around us, throwing fireballs at us, Tigress and I quickly dispatched the enemies with our swords, then we headed for the nearest tower.

The interior of the tower also looked familiar, there was a winding stairway going up the tower, then there was a pillar in the middle where I could see numerous daedra stationed there to watch the stairway up. Those were sitting ducks for Tigress, she picked them off one by one with her arrows perfectly hitting their mark, piercing the necks of the daedra for the instant kill. I went ahead of Tigress, so the daedra were noticing me first, and I was fighting the ones that were actually on the stairway, I found a key on one of them that I knew we would eventually need. We made our way to the top of the tower where we found a cage with a man in it, the man was very badly burned, and when I looked closer I saw he was already dead. There was a hole in the ceiliing with a glowing light visible through it. There were also doors at both sides of the room, I checked the one closest to us and found it was locked. Sure enough, the key I had gotten off of the daedra fit the lock and the door swung open… to reveal an ambush of daedra summoners, and they summoned an ambush of scamps, and soon we found we were completely surrounded. Time to fight, run my sword through a scamp, behead a daedra summoner, slice a daedra summoner open from his left shoulder to his right hip, hit another daedra summoner with a bolt of lightning as I ran my sword through another scamp… Tigress and I fought our way through the room, killing all of the daedra in our path.

Tigress and I exited through the far side and went up another ramp to the top chamber of the tower. Reaching the top of the tower proved to be actually rather anti-climatic, there weren't even more of the usual daedra enemies let alone something that would qualify as a boss. The sigil stone was there, however, and there was a beam of energy shooting out of one of the windows towards the Oblivion gate down below. Tigress reached over and grasped the sigil stone, pulling it out of its place. The beam of energy to the Oblivion gate ceased, but the other two remained, seeming to be unaffected. I was looking at the energy from the Oblivion gate when it started going unstable, but before I could say anything about it Tigress had already spoken, saying the gate was going to explode if the other beams weren't stopped. That could either successfully close the gate or it might blast a permanent hole in the dimensional fabric and give the daedra a permanent access to Tamriel. So to make sure it didn't lead to that, I flew towards one of the other towers while Tigress flew towards the other one.

I reached the tower rather quickly by flying, entering through the same opening the energy beam was coming out of. The daedra must have seen me flying towards the tower, as there were a bunch of them in the top chamber waiting for me. I didn't want to take the time for all of them, however, the gate was getting more unstable all the time, so I used Enter Sandman in the room, the spiral pulled all of the daedra into it and then exploded, destroying the daedra in a large blast of dark and light flames. I hurried in and grabbed the sigil stone, causing the stream of energy from it to cease. I looked out of the tower at the Oblivion gate just in time to see the other beam also cease, and now the gate collapsed. I wondered if this gate wasn't so nice as to deposit people from Tamriel back in Tamriel, not that it would be a problem for Tigress and me, but it could be annoying for anyone trying to fight the daedra… A wave of energy came from the gate and washed over everything, a blinding light, and then Tigress and I were both in mid air… but for some reason we lowered to the ground slowly and landed gently on the ground. Nothing was left of the Oblivion gate but a hole in the ground, and I could see a lot of amazed Imperial guards standing around staring at us. I was going to say something to Tigress, but she disappeared. My time to go, too. I opened a portal back to the koi pond, not sure how much longer the dream would last, I just didn't want to try to explain things to the guards. I got back in time to take one more look to see if anyone was waiting for me at the koi pond before 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.