Nocturn Core (Abridged)

I was in my dorm room. It seemed that the world was going to collapse, destroying the souls of everyone in it. The only way to save them was to take them to another world entirely. Although I don’t recall doing it, I knew I had created a portal for them in my room to take them to Nyre. It was the safest place I could offer them. People ran through the portal in desperation. As I explained it to Autumn, we could save everyone who wasn’t actively dreaming up the “waking” world. In the end, it would only be as stable as the dreams of the last person dreaming it – probably not stable at all. Autumn was clearly worried that I would try to save everyone from the world’s collapse. I ran into the room connected to mine and warned everyone there that time was running out. They had a matter of minutes to escape. I checked the bathroom and found a little girl being attacked by shadow creatures. They pinned her to the wall.

Drawing Apheri in a swift motion, I tore through the shadow beings and banished them from our world. The little girl threw her arms around me on the verge of tears. I reassured her and brought her back to my room where the portal awaited. With Autumn’s help, I convinced her to go through to Nyre. The other portals I’d created around the world were allowing billions of people to escape the crumbling world, but the number of people I expected to die with Earth was still enormous. Some of them refused to believe it was happening.

“I have to try to save them,” I told Autumn. She grabbed my arm.

“You don’t have time,” she replied. “Four minutes won’t be enough.” I almost argued, but when I thought about it, I realized she was right. I would die with the rest of them if I stayed here too long, and then what would become of Nyre? Perhaps it would collapse just like Earth. I gave in and joined her in stepping through the gray-blue rift.

The dream jumped. Autumn and I sat on the back of a riding lawn mower with my grandpa. After coming to Nyre, he found an enormous plantation and built a house. It seemed like a lot of land for him to take care of… He was living his dream, so he didn’t mind the work. We accompanied him back to his house before going our separate ways. Autumn and I wanted to find the people we saved in Illinois. I also wanted to make sure no one had found Nocturn Isle. I couldn’t trust Earth’s society with Symphony. Autumn didn’t want to drive, so I agreed to it. A light snowstorm blew in as we departed.

I was reading The Law of Nines in the commons. A guy sitting next to me reached over and turned the page as I was about to finish it. I figured he had been reading along and wanted to continue without me. With a brief glance in his direction, I turned back to the previous page. I made a point of taking a slow drink from my glass of water to show him that I wasn’t going to speed read for his satisfaction. He turned the page again. This time, I glared at him. It was Absence. As usual, his hair was white, but it was shorter. He had his own copy of The Law of Nines, but he was much further in the book than me. I made sure my glass was almost empty before spilling the water all over his copy of the book.

I set the glass down and rose from my chair. There was no need to worry about what he might do to my book. I was only dreaming, after all. I left my backpack on the floor. I took the quickest path outside – straight back to a garden. I realized I still had the book and dropped it right there. Bringing it would just get in my way. Once I was outside, I looked up at the open sky. Smiling, I took flight. The walls narrowed near the roof of the building, so I had to turn my body to fit through. To my surprise, I looked over my shoulder and saw a library on top of the campus center. Weird. I flew further up, kicking off walls to better navigate what quickly became a maze of black metal. It looked like another bizarre architecture project. I wanted to find a portal to the Monolith Gardens. If I was lucky, I might even meet up with WritersCube! I saw an old furnace inside the third floor, but I realized making that into a portal wasn’t going to be as easy as finding a preexisting one. I was sure a portal would turn up if I kept searching.

The fourth floor was a GameStop. I saw the sun rising on a TV and focused my attention on that. I remotely paused the video when the sun was clear of the horizon. It began to glow white. Since I proved to myself in my last lucid dream that I could easily pass through glass quite easily, I ran headfirst into the TV screen. The sun portal widened as I approached and engulfed me. I fell through it with no more sensation than an internal shift in my weight. I pictured huge trees in that brief moment between entering the portal and appearing on the other side. Instead of reaching the Monolith Gardens, I found myself back at the open window through which I entered the fourth floor. I hit the ground running and picked up still more speed. This time, as I fell through the glowing, pulsating sun portal again, I summoned a vivid picture of the Monolith Gardens in my mind. It still didn’t take me there; it just dumped me into emptiness. I frowned.

I waited for the dream to come back, but after a while, I was sure I was awake in bed. I went back to sleep, intending to do better next time.

I was on a train. Two guys noticed that they both had Swiss Gear backpacks. I showed them mine, and they laughed when they saw I had one, too. I realized one of the guys was Eric Weller.

“Eric?” I blinked. He pointed at himself as if to make sure I was talking to him.

“Yeah, I’m supposed to be Eric. Who are you supposed to be?” The phrasing of his question was bizarre. I replied in a manner that struck it down.

“I’m Josh.”

“Oh! Right!” Awkward silence followed. We got off the train and came to a room with strangely shaped windows… It was painted purple throughout. I thought about how much I wanted to realize I was dreaming. Then, confused by the origins of the thought, I looked around. I was dreaming! I grabbed Eric by the shoulders.

“Dude, we’re in a dream. What do you feel like doing?”

“I dunno…”

“Neither do I! Let’s fly!” I threw him out the window forcibly and jumped out after him. He didn’t know how to fly, so he just tumbled toward the rugged mountain valleys below us. I swooped down and pointed a finger at him to levitate his body in the air.

“What are you doing?!” he cried, waving his arms.

“Try moving. Float up.” As I spoke, he drifted upward. He panicked when he couldn’t change directions, however, and I had to bring him down with my magic finger. “You’re bad at this…” I brought him down to a boat on the side of a mountain. I gave my intent to summon Nicole, and voila! There she was, standing on the deck. She looked around, then at me. “Welcome to my dream,” I said. “Is it really you, or are you just ‘supposed to be’ Nicole?” Eric didn’t seem pleased by my teasing question.

“I’m me…” Nicole said. “So hold on, we’re dreaming?”

“Yes. I saw a portal while I was flying around. Let’s go into it!” Nicole agreed, so we flew up to a purple vortex in the sky. Darkness spiraled into it as it seemed to spin. We were both sucked in. Hopefully, dream Eric didn’t starve in the middle of nowhere – we left him behind. The vortex filled my vision.

I had a false awakening. I sat up in bed, staring down at my hand. My arm was incredibly long – at least five feet – and each of my fingers branched off into two. I felt like I was going cross-eyed. I couldn’t focus on anything properly. After a while, things stabilized, and my hand was normal.

“I guess we’re not dreaming,” I told Nicole.