New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

08/09/13

Dreamscape Exploration
I am at work. I have actually found a job, though it is not a job I want at all. I am sitting at a desk in front of a computer with a phone, and the phone is ringing. I don't want to answer it. But it is my job to answer it. I'm not sure what I think is going to happen when I answer the phone, just that I am sure it will be very unpleasant. I finally pick up the phone and say that this is the help center, can I help you? There is a pause on the phone, then a strange voice speaks. The voice says that if I think I can really pull a being of pure darkness into the light then I am dumber than I look. I ask who it is, telling him again that this is the computer help line, is he having computer problems? He says no, I am having computer problems. What? I look at my computer screen and it shows an image from the game Prototype. My first thought is that I was playing it at work and I need to hide the screen before my boss returns. I ctrl + tab to another screen. The voice on the phone says I can't cure a disease with a virus. I hesitate, then I ask him if his computer has a virus. Because all of the computers are equipped with an anti-virus program that should be able to handle that. I will talk him through using it if he needs me to. He says no, I am the one with a disease and a virus. The virus feeds the disease until all is lost. I now think of the song by Queensrych called Spreading the Disease. Then I start hearing the song. The song wakes me up and I realize I have been dreaming…

I am lying in bed listening to Queensryche. The song finishes and then all is silent. I wonder why the alarm went off. I sit up and I see I am in my dreamscape bed. I am still dreaming. I get up and stub my toe on a Buddha statue on the floor. Ow! I'd swear I heard a cat laughing. There's a black cat on the chair. I go over and pet it, the cat purrs. I go across the room to the door and open it. The hall is beyond it, long and with no doors. I head down the hall, the cat is right around my feet. I see a door at the end of the hall and go through it. The entire room is filled with graffiti on the wall. So many things written. "There is no cure." "The cure is a lie." "The virus is death." "Life is a disease." "Sometimes death is better." "Stop spreading the disease." There are many other strange statements around the room. A grumbling old man enters the room with a bucket and a sponge. He starts washing the print off of the walls while muttering expletives. I realize he looks like my guardian Hetfield did before I started seeing him as James Hetfield of Metallica. I go to the next room and I see a television showing a beautiful healing spring. Nomad is there. I need to go there. I step through the television into the healing springs on the moon. I hear a voice behind me yelling. "Now why don't you go hug and kiss a deadly virus? Does that sound like a good plan to you? Go hug and kiss a deadly virus!"

Nomad looks behind me at the portal and asks who that is… I tell him I have no idea, but they're in my dreamscape, so maybe it's a subconscious fear that I need to overcome. Winter is floating in the middle of the pool. I see Alex Mercer from Prototype off to the side looking around. Go hug and kiss a deadly virus? Ok! I run over and hug Alex. He looks at me strangely but doesn't do anything else. I feel a bit awkward and I back away. Ok… now that I've made a fool of myself… I slip into the water and sink to the bottom. The water feels good. Full of healing energy. I decide to stay there instead of returning to the surface. I wait there for a while until I wake.
 
Welcome to Hell
I find myself sitting on the bottom of a pool of water. It is warm and comfortable there. It seems I was just here, and now I am back here again. I have a desire to stay here. So I just sit on the bottom of the pool for a while until Nomad swims down beside me and looks at me. He speaks telepathically since speaking underwater doesn't work very well. He tells me to come to the surface, we can go take care of the task of the month. He says I'm the one who says I know the devil, or the Lord of the Pitt, or whatever he calls himself. I say ok, and then swim up to the surface. It seems harder to get to the surface than I had thought it would be. I get to the surface and pull myself out onto the land. Alex is gone, and for that I am grateful. The memories of the previous dream are still with me, and I remember hugging Alex when I clearly shouldn't have, clearly he didn't want me to do that… I lead Nomad into the tower and to the communications room. I activate the communicator and get a connection with the Courts of Chaos, which is an area most people refer to as Hell. I get in touch with an old friend, Pilgrim, who is also known as the Lord of Darkness.

She looks like Pilgrim from the Spawn series with large black bat wings. Pilgrim comments on the fact it has been quite a while since we have talked, and we spend a bit of time talking to each other, and Nomad, too. I finally get to the point where I ask if the Pitt is around, to which Pilgrim says she believes he is. She says he's not around too often, having quite a few other multiverses to deal with, but he is around right now. I tell her that is great, I'm bringing Nomad through. One of the mirror portals opens and both Nomad and I go through it.

On the other side of the portal Nomad and I are standing in a place that definitely looks like Hell, like the biblical version of hell. There is fire everywhere, the sky is red and choked with smoke clouds. I see open flows of lava that flow like rivers and streams. Smoking volcanoes riddle the surrounding mountains, a couple of them are actively erupting. Pilgrim is right there to meet us. She says it has been so long since any of us have been out here that the Pitt can spare a bit of time if we want to meet with him. She comes with us towards what looks like a large fortress. A foreboding fortress. We go inside and to a large room where there is an even larger demon. Lord of the Pitt is sitting on what looks like a throne, well he is really more kicked back on the throne and relaxing. Nomad transforms into a somewhat demonic looking form and walks right over to the Pitt and starts talking to him as if they were old friends. The Pitt doesn't seem to mind. Nomad says that the round of drinks is on him.

He summons up some beers, different sizes dependant on the size of the person drinking it. Pilgrim and my beers are normal size, his is medium since his demon form is a bit larger than a human, and the Pitt's is HUGE. So the four of us sit there in the throne room of Hell with the devil himself drinking beers and chatting for a while. I'm not sure how long this goes on for. I don't remember any details of what we talked about, though. Not sure how much time passes before I finally wake.
 
City of Infection
I am in what looks like a park. I look around there and see it is nice and green where I am standing, but not far off I see smoke and fires burning. I wonder what is going on there. I see that I am not alone. Nomad is there with me. He looks over at me and asks if I am ready to go. He says he has already taken out several tanks and a strike package of three helicopters that were called on him because he transformed into a big cat in front of some Templar idiots. It was fun. I look around a bit more and I see Alex Mercer from Prototype is there with us, as is Q from Star Trek.

Q says the doctor is in the hospital near the center of the zone we are in. He says the dimension is pretty stable, so use mostly whatever powers we want… within reason. He looks in my direction and says dropping a massive Immortal Fire in the center of town would not be considered within reason. I hadn't even thought of dropping a massive Immortal Fire, so I am not sure why he chose to single me out. Q looks over at Alex and then at Nomad, saying such a small group should be able to get in and out without stirring up too much of a disturbance, which is what we want because stirring up too much of a disturbance might lead to a nuclear cleansing… which would be a completely pointless loss of life. Many humans were as yet uninfected, and it is only humans that are susceptible at all. Other animals have proven immune, except maybe monkeys… there were reports of monkeys in the zoo eating each other… Q looks throws me a syringe of blue fluid. He says to give it to the local Alex Mercer, it will make sure he isn't affected by the vaccine. I ask what if we don't see the local Alex Mercer. Q says he is sure we will once we start making a disturbance, and he is sure we can't do it without making any disturbance. So after saying to go at it Q disappears in a flash of white light.

So we leave the area of park that looks healthy and enter the city around it. The city looks trashed, like some kind of post apocalyptic nightmare. Cars wrecked everywhere, fires burning, even dead bodies left in the street. What I notice is that there is no movement in the street. No people, no zombies, no Templars… no one. But I hear some commotion ahead, so we keep going. We come to an intersection where there is chaos. Nomad transforms into a cat man, looks part tiger, and pounces on a zombie that was about to kill some woman.

He has little kitty claws that are as big as Alex Mercer's claws… and cuts through a couple more zombies with them. Alex's hands had morphed into claws and he tore a zombie apart before it could attack a couple of people cowering back against a car. I form my Witchblade into a sword and remove the head of a zombie before using Damage, Inc. to shoot a fireball at some other zombies. So we made our way down the main road leading to the center of the area, taking out any zombies in the way and healing any injured civilians we happened to find. I notice that there don't seem to be any Templars around, so I figure they just haven't noticed we're there. After all, we haven't made any disturbance that they would notice. The hospital is the largest building in the area and very distinct. There are Templars around the hospital. It looks like they are determined to keep anyone from going in or out. This is really easy to get around without alerting them. All three of us take the form of Templar soldiers and walk right into the hospital without being questioned.

Once we are inside, I wonder where the lab is, where will we find the doctor? I am thinking I could do a telepathic scan of someone when I hear a noise off to my left. I look over just in time to realize Alex has just consumed someone… but who? And why? He says he knows where the lab is. He says the Templars have been holding back and waiting for the doctor to finish the vaccine so they could use it for their own purposes. But time is up… the vaccine is done. He heads down a hall, Nomad and I follow him. We pass through a couple doors that say authorized personnel only and then into a lab. I look around the room. There is a man on the other side of the room near some test tubes of liquid. He is doing something on a hand held computer. There is a woman right behind him. She is about to stab him in the back! When Nomad says something to alert the man, who I am assuming is the doctor, the woman quickly hides the knife and turns away from him to see who else is in the room with her. I recognize her right away… she's Karen Parker, Alex's ex-girlfriend from Prototype.

Seeing that we are all disguised as Templar soldiers she doesn't seem particularly alarmed to see us. She speaks quietly to keep the doctor from overhearing and asks if we've come to make sure she doesn't run off with our precious vaccine. I hear some explosions outside. I wonder what is going on out there. Both Karen and the doctor look in the direction of the noise as well. The commotion dies down and all is silent again. Karen is speaking a bit louder now, asking us if we don't speak. A couple soldiers come to the door and look into the room. One of them asks if we've seen anything suspicious. He says Mercer is in the building. Karen seems a bit alarmed by that idea. The soldier says not to worry, they'll track him down. I find myself wondering, they'll track him down and then what? Get their asses kicked? The two soldiers leave the room. Karen is right next to me now, I'm not sure what she is looking for. Is she looking to see if I might be Alex Mercer in disguise? She sees the syringe of blue fluid sticking out of my pocket and asks what that is. Before I can even consider answering someone else enters the room. It's Alex Mercer, looking like himself. He says Karen should have known she couldn't hide. Karen starts making excuses, says she really had no idea what was going to happen and she is glad to see Alex is safe. Alex grabs hold of Karen, she grabs at me but just gets the syringe of fluid. On a strange hunch, I tell her to be careful with the syringe, if that stuff gets on Alex it'll kill him. She responds by immediately jabbing Alex with the syringe and injecting the contents. Of course nothing visible happens since the fluid in the syringe was just meant to make Alex immune to the vaccine. Karen looks over at me and exclaims that nothing happened. I pretend to think about it for a bit and then I say I just got it backwards… the fluid in that syringe was supposed to protect Alex, not kill him. Whew, that was close… Karen tries to pull away from Alex but doesn't get very far. He sarcastically says he can see how happy she is to see he is safe… She reaches towards me and says, "Help me…" and I can see fear on her face now. Before I even have a chance to do anything, however, Alex takes her from the room and both of them are gone. I guess I could follow them… but why? Nomad is talking to the doctor. He says we are there to make sure he gets safely out of the city with his vaccine. We head back to the front of the hospital. There is still some chaos going on there. A couple helicopters are in the air, some soldiers are yelling into communication devices to find them… and kill both of them! So no one really questions when we jack a tank. We are on our way to the edge of the city when I feel the dream slipping. I tell Nomad I will have to go, but if I'm needed I'm sure I'll be back… and then I wake up.