New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

House of the About To Be Dead
I am in a castle, I look around the room I am in. In spite of having had recent dreams of Hogwarts, that is not what comes to mind first here. I am thinking I am in the process of designing a video game. I am designing one of the levels, this castle will be a great setting. So right now I am looking around the level, trying to see where I want to put enemies and items and stuff like that. I place the enemies all over the place, and then I decide to do a run through to see how my AI on the enemies is working. So as the level starts, the enemies attack me, so I grab a weapon and fight back. There are weapons lying around, so I am able to use the in-game weapons to fight. Most of them are melee weapons, but I also find a gun or two. Ammo is rare so I have to conserve it. As I explore the castle I see there are enemies where I don't remember putting them. I think that is great, that means the AI of the game is making the enemies track me down to attack. I kill some more of the enemies and then I see someone else is in there with me, not one of the enemies. I look closer and see Walms killing enemies. Wait a minute…. Walms? Time for a RC! I am dreaming!

Now I am lucid and watching Walms kill enemies, making quite a gory scene of it as well, it looks like he might be eating some of them… I resume killing enemies, just because I am dreaming doesn't mean they don't need to die, and I finally make my way over to where Walms is. It looks like he is going to attack me, but then he stops, apparently seeing that I'm not one of the enemies. He makes some kind of comment to me, I say I was going to see if he could use a song spell… say gravity maybe, since I don't remember seeing him use that in a dream, and I am wanting to know more about DT… Walms just looks impatient, he says ok, but he'll only show me once, there are too many people to kill to waste much time. If I need more help, it will have to be another time. He goes through these steps relatively slowly, it looks like part of him briefly teleports and then reappears, and an enemy on the other side of the room is suddenly in two pieces… it looks like the enemy got cut open by some sharp claws, which I see Walms has formed. Ok, so I will try duplicating that… I select an enemy and try to do the same thing… epic fail. The result is my arm on the other side of the room, still holding an in game sword I had found, and flopping on the ground erratically while the enemy watches it in a totally confused state. For some reason this strikes me as particularly hilarious, and I crack up laughing. Walms is looking at me like I have completely lost it, and then he goes back to killing things. I grow a new arm. I want to try that DT again, but it didn't work so well last time. I have an idea. I look at the enemy who is watching my severed arm flop about. I pick up a sword on the ground near me, then I open a portal… just big enough for the sword to fit through… and I make the destination of the portal right behind the enemy. I shove my sword into the tiny portal, it emerges from the other end and impales the enemy. I pull the sword back and the portals close.

I am pleased with that, so I do it some more. One of the enemies looks like my ex boyfriend, James. He is trying to say he still loves me, which I don't believe. Walms enters the room and is killing stuff. James says some insulting stuff about Walms, I don't remember what, and Walms gives him a dirty look. I tell Walms that this one is mine, I'll take care of him. Walms continues on his way, killing another enemy. James says he wants me to call him IWL, I say it's not going to happen. He says he really wants me to call, he misses talking to me and wants to… *glurg* Now he looks like he's about to be sick. I follow his path of vision and see Walms eating an enemy, James seems pretty grossed out by that. I find this to be hilarious, too, and I start laughing again. I tell James to be gone before Walms decides he looks like a tasty snack. James scoffs at that, saying I know perfectly well that he can… I slip my hidden blade through a tiny portal that opens behind James' neck… and thus stab him. I wake up here.

Designing the Moon
I am designing some more of my game. I am on the moon, with Nomad, and he is helping me design the game. I am working with a strange sort of biological machine, I am thinking this is normal, it is merely one of the utilities in the game design program I am using now. Nomad and I are discussing what we want to do on the moon, how we want to set things up, Nomad wants to start by terraforming the moon. Ok, that works, so we need to decide what areas we will have. I suggest different areas based on different elements, like a fire area, an earth area, an air area, etc. Nomad says that sounds awesome, and says we can start with the forest area. I am thinking of how the game can flow, and I am coming up with a vicious circle where each element needs one of the other elements and there isn't really any place to start. I am taking to Nomad about setting up the game so it will work smoothly, he seems a bit confused by the fact I am talking about video games, but he seems to play along for now. Upon finally coming to the conclusion that the earth level would be first, Nomad asks why I am talking about making a video game… I tell him this video game will be epic, with all these territories, it will make an excellent MMORPG. Nomad smiles and says that is awesome, we would make an MMORPG area for dreamers. I am a bit confused at first, then I think of something and tell him it is a great idea to use dreams to design parts of the game, maybe even most of it. Nomad says yeah, we should use dreams… dreams like this one! I look at him in a puzzled manner, he tells me this is a dream. That isn't making sense, I tell him we are designing a video game, not a dream…

Space Ark
I am with MoSh in the landing bay of the tower on the moon, we are going to go somewhere Q has told us about. I am lucid for the first time, and thinking I can't wait to see what kind of place Q has found this time. We get in our ships, MoSh gets in his ship with Asuka, I get in mine with Basara, and we launch from the tower. Before we have gone far we find a wormhole that Q has created, and we fly through the wormhole to a distant area of space. There is now a fleet of ships near us, ships flying through space going to somewhere I don't know. We fly over towards the fleet, and I see fighter ships around that look like the ships on Starfox… There is also one huge ship that looks like a section of a planet under a dome, the other ships are all flying around that one, which seems to be the one to be protected above all others. We make contact with them, and they give us permission to land, making me wonder if Q has been here before us to tell them we are coming… We land in the landing area, and there are some people there, they are talking about what the ship is for. Apparently they were able to get warning of their star going supernova, so they constructed this space ark, with a section of every kind of habitat from their home world and also a selection of all the different animals, so they would be able to start over on a new world. He says most of the space ark is wilderness, and they have to take care of everything to make sure no life is lost on the way to their new home.

Back to the Drawing Board
I am in a strange room, I know I am there to continue designing a video game, no doubt the one I was working on earlier. I am working on a puzzle part of the game now, testing it out to make sure it is working properly. The way to solve the puzzle is to step only on certain tiles and in the right order and use those tiles to reach the other side of the room. I do the jumps necessary to get across the room, I am wondering if it is the proper difficulty. Does it need to be harder? Easier? Have a difficulty setting? I'll have to give that some thought. When I am almost to the other side, I notice something wrong with one of the animated parts… there is a fan in a vent that is wobbling instead of spinning properly. So I get out of the game and enter a modeling mode, moving over to the fan and adjusting the size and shape of it to make it fit better. While I'm in the modeling mode, I adjust some walls and start adding a new room. In the new room there are two bodies that appear to be dead but will come to life and attack. This fact is actually betrayed by a slight twitch in the bodies that gives away the fact they aren't really dead. Now I just have to test to make sure they come to life at the right place to make the game challenging without making it impossible.

I am in a forest, I am lucid at the beginning of this memory. I am remembering the goal of stopping some assholes who are using animals here as slaves, working them to the death to try to find some stupid ore to make them rich. I am thinking how these people need to have their asses kicked. Since this is going to involve hunting, I have brought a company of pokémon with me, quite a few persians and several others that enjoy the hunt. The pokémon with me disperse through the forest, they are waiting their chance for the hunt. Right now all of the assholes are in one place, forcing the animals they have to clear out large areas of the forest so they can dig their mines and get to their precious ore. I make my way through the forest to where this is taking place, I find them there.

The first thing I think when I got there was how could these people actually force those animals to do anything they don't want to? The answer comes to my mind right away as if someone is right there speaking to me, is it Q? Maybe… It says that these animals are generally peaceful, not wanting to hurt anyone, which they might be willing to fight here except for the fact collars they have on are controlling them, so any resistance is rewarded with a blast of excruciating pain. What a bunch of assholes! I went into the open, looking at the people and the animals, the animals were large, they really looked like miniature brontosauruses with fur, each one about as tall as a tree. Right now they are knocking the trees over, tearing them up by the roots, and tossing them to the side like so much trash. I can feel their energy, though, and all I can feel is a sense of hopelessness… none of them dare resist because of the collars, if they resist they will die in pain… I watch that only briefly before one of the animals drops a tree a bit too close to one of the people, the collar activates, and the animal's cry of pain is horrible… it sounds like a cry of death… I am really pissed off.

I go over to the man who seems to be the cause of the animal's pain, the one who had been closest to the tree that had been dropped, though he had clearly not been in any danger of getting hit… I walk right up to him and give him a sharp shove, and I tell him to stop that or he would regret it. It seems they have to focus to make the collars work… and he loses focus when I shove him. The animal is able to get up very quickly considering the pain it seemed to be in, and the man is glaring at me, he asks who the fuck I am, and says I had better get out of the way or I will be sorry. I tell him to stop hurting the animals, he laughs at me and asks why I would care what happened to these dumb animals? They were so dumb that they just let them put on the collars with no resistance… he says that anything that stupid deserves to be used by their intellectual superiors. I tell him I will give him to the count of ten to start getting those collars off, or he will find himself wishing he had never been born. As if to show how little he thought of my threat, he activated the collar on the closest animal, who made a cry of pain. I make a stupid sounding rhyme to do a spell… "The pain you cause will not get through, instead it will come back to you." The animal stops crying out, and the man is now screaming in pain. That makes him lose focus, and he stares at me, dumbfounded. I say he's the one who looks stupid now. He tries to hurt an animal again, he only hurts himself. Several others do the same thing, and are all screaming out in pain when they try. While watching stupid people hurting themselves can be amusing, the idea is to give the pokémon something to hunt, so I pull out a sword and start attacking them, cutting a couple down before the others give up on trying to hurt the animals and disperse into the trees.

"Run!" I tell them as they do just that, "You can run but you will never escape!" Now they are where the pokémon want them to be. Scattered in the forest to be hunted. I decide I don't want to miss out on things entirely, however, so I go into the trees as well. I transform into a cute little rabbit, and hop through the trees. I hear some people out in the forest screaming and yelling, a lot of cursing… I hop farther through the trees, hoping I will come across one of the people soon. I hear movement in the trees off to my right, so I hop in that direction. I hop out of a bush to see one of the people cowering back against a tree. When he sees me, however, he seems to relax… he talks to himself, telling himself to not be so jumpy, it's just a fucking rabbit after all… He gets down on his haunches, and starts talking to me in baby talk, "Who's the stupid little bunny?" he asks in a mocking tone, "Who's going to make a nice stew for me tonight? Who's gonna be dinner?" The man takes a couple steps towards me, reaching out. I hop towards him, he says I must be a really stupid bunny, and as I get closer to him I transform into an alien like those on the movie Alien. The man stares in shock, he pisses and shits his pants just before I run my long spiked tail right through his gut, he tries to scream but all he does is vomit blood and die.

Well… that was entertaining… I turn back into a bunny to see if I can sneak up on another one. I hear movement, and I hop in that direction. I soon hear screaming from over there, and I wonder what is happening. I hop through the bushes and peek into a clearing on the other side to see someone is over there holding one of the people to the ground… and eating him?! I wonder who that is, I don't think any of the pokémon would have taken human form… I hop through the bushes so I can see the scene better, and I recognize Walms… he is the one eating the asshole… He really looks quite disgusting right now, covered in blood and eating some guy that is weakly struggling to free himself. Another of the assholes comes through the trees, maybe following the sound of the other one's scream, then stops and stares at the scene in stunned and horrified silence. Walms glares up at him with a really nasty looking smirk on his face. The man starts stumbling backwards, trips, and falls flat on his ass… a foul odor wafts over from him. Walms gets up and wipes some of the grossness from his face, then tells the man in front of him to get up and run… Walms says he at least wants this to be some fun… The man is blubbering, but he finally rolls over onto his front, scrambles up, and stumbles into the forest. Walms walks calmly after him, chuckling to himself. The guy Walms walked away from isn't quite dead, he is still twitching… The last thing I see before I wake up is the life fading from his eyes as he dies.

I am in my own living room working on my laptop computer as I doing so often when I notice that the stickers on my laptop that normally spell out, "ARE YOU DREAMING?" now says, "WHO SHOT MR. BURNS?". Um... that isn't right. I am not immediately able to identify what is wrong, but it catches my attention as I am looking at the screen. I look over at the stickers, looking more closely now, now it says, "WHO SHOT MR. WALMS?" Wait a minute... someone shot Walms? When? Who? For somewhere in there I get the idea I should Google that... I type in the question into the Google search box and hit search. It comes up with one result only, and that is a link to a Dreamviews journal entry by Walms, which seems odd to me since he deleted all his dream journal entries from Dreamviews. I click on it and it pulls up a dream entitled, "Worrying and worrying." I click on the entry to take a look, I am taken by surprise when an entire holographic image of the dream forms around me... awesome... my dream viewing software! I must be dreaming! I become fully lucid.

I looked around the new setting, and I realized I was back in MoSh's inner world. I saw MoSh, two Asukas, and Walms all there, they were talking about training, then MoSh and Walms walked off and left the two Asukas alone. MoSh and Walms are talking about training when a strange entity appeared and merged with one of the Asukas... the one it merged with was the Asuka twinner, the Asuka who lives here sees that and looks quite alarmed. I recognize the entity that invaded, it is the same entity that had attacked me before! What is it doing here? Did the twinner of Asuka allow the thing in? Did it force its way in? Maybe it lied its way in… It doesn't really matter how the thing gets into the Asuka twinner, it is in there now. I know what it wants, to eliminate dark energy completely. The Asuka twinner glows briefly with a bright light, but then she returns to her normal appearance. Asuka is staring at the Asuka twinner, she looks quite worried… She asks the other one if she is ok, the twinner responds in the ethereal voice of the light entity. She tells Asuka not to worry about her friend, she means the other Asuka no harm. Asuka asks the entity what it wants here, the entity says there is someone there that needs healing, and it is very urgent, it may already be too late. Asuka asks who needs healing, the entity points at Walms. Asuka acts surprised that the entity would say that, she says he seems fine to her… the entity asks if Asuka can't see that Walms is being consumed by dark energy… Asuka says he always has dark energy, but he isn't being consumed by it, it's just there.

While that is going on, I see that Walms has been showing MoSh a couple of things, but now he is coming back over to the two Asukas. Asuka is still talking to the entity, who is seeming very adamant that Walms needs healing even though Asuka has said there really is no need for that. Asuka says the entity can leave in peace, because if Walms really does need healing, we have healers right here who can take care of things. The entity says it will take care of the healing right now, one wave of light energy should wash all that dark energy right out of him (Walms). Asuka tells the entity she thinks that might end up hurting Walms rather than helping him, and the entity simply responds that it won't matter since Walms is a dreamer, the worst thing that could happen is he'll wake up. Asuka looks like she is about to say something else, Walms sees the Asuka twinner, under control of the entity, gathering up a lot of energy and asks the two Asukas what they are doing in a somewhat alarmed manner, just as the entity releases a huge wave of light energy that looks like a tidal wave. I find myself reflexively trying to throw out a barrier of dark energy to block the attack from reaching Walms, but of course that is an epic fail since I am merely viewing a hologram of the dream rather than actually participating in the dream. The wave of light energy washes over Walms, there is a blast of dark energy as it seems Walms was attempting to counter the attack… then when the wave is past Walms is gone. The entity nonchalantly states that Walms must have been too far gone to be saved and then it splits out from the Asuka twinner and is gone.

Now the Asuka twinner looks very drained of her energy, Asuka responds by fusing with her twinner so the two of them can share energy. MoSh soon comes over and sees that there is only one Asuka there now, he asks where the other Asuka went. The merged Asuka says they are both there. MoSh looks around a bit more and then asks where Walms went. The merged Asuka said he had gone, he must not have been feeling well. MoSh seemed to find that statement to be a bit strange, he says Walms had seemed fine to him…

Note: I am trying to journal this, but it doesn't seem to be fitting with the dream I had on the same night as this dream happened… I know what I remember from viewing the dream, but something really seems wrong with the situation… I'm not sure if it is accurate or not…

I am standing in my living room, and I am spontaneously lucid… either that or I had become lucid before and just have no memory of the dream there. I look around, not sure what I am going to do. I try to think of goals I have, I remember I have one goal with MoSh, it is a goal to view a psychic reading he got a while back. I am not sure if this will work, but both MoSh and I figure it's worth a shot. I am about to focus on a portal to MoSh's inner world when the television comes on by itself. I go over to the TV and see it has a live video feed of MoSh's inner world house… wtf? Is there really a camera there or am I just seeing it because I want to go there? I use the television as a window… the television is a large flat screen, quite a bit larger than my waking life television… and I step through into MoSh's inner world.

I emerge in MoSh's inner world to find MoSh and Asuka in the living room, I don't notice what they are doing there, because I immediately get a feeling that they need to be healed… both of them. I wonder where that feeling came from, but I figure there's no need to question it much. If I heal them when they weren't really needing it, that's not going to hurt anything. So I go into the living room, which surprises them a bit, and I focus on using the song Voices on them, a general healing spell since I am not sure why I feel the need to heal them at all. When I am done, MoSh looks at me, he looks confused, and he asked what that had been about. I say I had a feeling about it. MoSh says ok, so now can we go view his psychic reading? I am about to say yes when I get a strong feeling that Kaomea needs healing… due to difficulties between MoSh and Kaomea, I simply tell him I have to go but I'll be back if I can. He tries to tell me to wait a minute, I open a portal to Kaomea and go through it.

I emerge from the portal in a fairly normal looking neighborhood and I look around. I was searching for Kaomea, so I figure she must be somewhere in the area. I walk for a bit, getting anxious and uneasy, I have the idea I need to hurry, and finally I spot her near a café. I walk over to her and she starts talking to me as if she knows me, but not as if she knows who I am. It's like she thinks I'm someone else. Well, that doesn't matter any. I focus on the song Voices again, sending light energy through Kaomea. She seems a bit surprised at that, and responds by giving me a hug… She says it's been nice talking to me… ok… whoever she thinks I am… I now have the feeling I need to hurry up and heal Walms… um… why do I need to heal Walms? That's not normal for him to need healing… But even though I am questioning the feeling, it does not go away or even weaken slightly, so I move a good distance away from Kaomea. I open a portal to the moon, to the biodome and go through it, closing it quickly behind me. I wanted to get to Walms quickly, I didn't want Kaomea following me. I look around the biodome and see a man with dark hair, a black shirt, dark eyes that are almost black, tanned skin, those eyes are beautiful, and he looks somewhat muscular… but I don't take the time to investigate him. I scan and see no sign of Kaomea. So now I teleport outside of the biodome where I open a portal to find Walms.

I exit this portal in what looks like a school of some kind. I look around one more time, scanning the area, I want to be absolutely certain Kaomea didn't follow me… I am feeling paranoid about that idea right now… and I see no sign of her. Good. I look around the place for Walms. I wander around the school for a short time and then exit there into a green field that looks like the athletic field. I spot Walms there, I'm not sure what he is doing, it doesn't look like he is doing much of anything. I go over to Walms, Walms notices me, though I am not sure how to explain the certainty I feel that he needs a healing spell when it looks like he is feeling fine. I try to explain myself to Walms, and he is answering me, talking to me like he knows me, but like with Kaomea, it seems like he doesn't see me for who I really am. I think I don't have time to figure this out, and I hope he won't mind using a healing spell… I focus on the song Voices again, though this time the energy it formed was adapted to match Walms' energy rather than the usual golden energy. He didn't really respond other than to give me a puzzled look. I think maybe I can relax now that I have healed Walms, but no… I barely have time to take a deep breath before the certainty is upon me that Nomad needs healing. Wtf? Do I have to go and heal everyone we know? Do they really need healing, or am I being something along the lines of obsessive compulsive? I don't know, but I feel I have to follow the feeling to heal. I open a portal while focusing on finding Nomad.

I exit the portal in another place, I don't recognize it at first, then I decide it is just because I have been jumping around so much… Because I have the idea I ought to recognize the place, I am just getting so confused. I look around to find Nomad, he's why I'm there after all. I follow my instinct through some trees and into a green meadow where I find Nomad, I am not sure what he is doing, and I don't even take the time to say 'hi' because even though I haven't finished healing Nomad yet, I am getting the feeling that Tigress needs healing right away… So I use Voices on Nomad, it is hard to focus because I am wanting to leave so fast, but I manage to do it and the spell works properly. Nomad says something to me, but I don't pay any attention, I open a portal to go find Tigress.

I exit a portal into a different place, but I immediately know Tigress isn't there. Where is she, then? I try the portal again, but this time the portal doesn't want to open at all. I am getting to a point near panic, thinking I have to find her, it's urgent… I focus on opening the portal yet again, still nothing. Another feeling is merging with the feeling I have to heal Tigress… I have to heal Pablo! But I haven't even found Tigress yet! I have to find Tigress before I can go heal Pablo, Tigress is first… I have to find Tigress… I open a portal, not able to clearly focus on either Tigress or Pablo, and I go through it.

I am now in a forest, I am not sure where I am or who I should be looking for, so I call out to both of them, "PABLO!!! TIGRESS!!!" I don't get a response, or at least not right away. I look around a bit more to try to find them, when something is moving and it comes over to me. That something is a cute fox, I guess I found Pablo, which isn't entirely a relief since I have yet to find Tigress… Pablo is a fox, and he is looking at me strangely. I use the song Voices on Pablo, I somehow manage to make the song spell work… Now I have to find Tigress. I hear a voice behind me, it is Pablo, he is now in his form that looks like Fox McCloud, and he has a hand on my shoulder, he says to calm down, what is going on? I don't want to take the time for this, I tell him I have to heal Tigress. I focus on a portal, but nothing happens. Damn! Damn! Damn! I have to find her now! I sit by a large tree and try to think how I can find her. The next thing I know there is a fox pushing his nose up onto my lap, I don't object to that, I can still keep thinking. The fox begins to purr softly… and purr… and purr… the sound is soothing, like the sound of a cat's purr, maybe I can focus better on getting back to Tigress. Pablo purrs… and purrs… I have come up with nothing, but I feel a lot calmer. Pablo continues to purr… and purr… and then I wake up.

Note: More fragments today…

Raider vs. Raider
I am in a forest, I look around to see where I am. The forest looks normal, and I am not aware I am dreaming right now. I walk along one of the paths to see where I might be, thinking things seem a bit strange for reality. I don't actually do a reality check, but I slowly become a bit more lucid at a time. I reach a village and see there are quite a few people wandering around, most of them seem worried about something. One of them acts briefly like I was an enemy, then calms down. She says there are raiders on both sides of them, they didn't know what to do. Raiders… that could be interesting, so I ask where these raiders are. She says they are to the north of the village, but I will want to avoid that place. I don't pay any attention to her, instead I take to flying, which shocks the people in the village, and I head north. There are raiders to the north of the village, but they don't seem to be interested in the village, they are busy fighting each other. There are quite a few of them, they seem to be broken up in smaller groups, battling amongst themselves. The ones I see seem to be blindly cutting down anything that moves, whether it be an enemy raider, a plant, or an animal trying to escape… What a bunch of assholes. I land and form Witchblade into a sword and kill the first group of assholes with little difficulty. They seem to have had the idea a woman wouldn't be a threat… There are quite a few of these groups, so I am going from group to group and doing the same thing in each place. There is an injured lion type cat near one of the fights, I heal the cat, and then the cat decides the raiders look pretty tasty. I come to another group of raiders who are killing themselves… and no, they weren't killing each other, they were killing themselves… One of them struck his sword out in front of him, then somehow the blade was behind him and he ran himself through… what a strange flux of space-time… I see that happening in a few places, and then I spot someone near one of the groups. He isn't there for long, but I would have sworn it was Walms… I catch another glimpse of him near another of the battles where raiders are killing themselves… One of them injures himself and then the lion I healed, or one just like it, pounces and finishes the job. There will be a lot of meat for scavengers to feast on here…

I'm Going to Disney Land!
I am in a large theme park, in the dream I believe it to be Disney Land. I am not lucid, so I think I am there on vacation or something. I wander around a bit, I realize I have a camera on my sun glasses. I can get footage of places Disney Land doesn't want me to get footage! I also will have fun. I go over to Space Mountain and take a ride through there on the front car, it is a lot of fun. It was faster than I remembered, but the tunnels are so dark I don't know how well my footage came out. I go to Star Tours, the virtual reality simulator, and it is not as fun as I remember it. The simulated motion sucks. I get the footage anyway. I am thinking I came here with my mom, and she will be waiting up front for me to leave, but there has to be time for one more stop. The Matterhorn! I will get footage on that! I head to the Matterhorn and am waiting in a line that doesn't seem to move when I wake up.

Smokin!
I am at school, but it is a much larger school than my normal school. I am walking around the halls trying to find my next class. I have no idea where to go, I need my schedule. That is in my locker, so where is my locker? Shit, I don't know that, either. Damn first day of classes. Tigress is there with me and she says she's off to her class, she'll see me when class is over. I think that's no help, since I don't have class with her for this one. I wander around more, everyone else is now out of the halls and in their classes. I wander to the edge of campus and stand there with a couple other girls talking and clearly ditching class. One of them offers me a smoke. Without even thinking about it, I never smoke IWL, I accept the cigarette and the light. I am standing there smoking with the girls. One of them says her mother checks her purse, so she hands me her pack of cigarettes. She said the only condition is that I share with her. I say sure and put the pack in my purse. Somehow here time is missing, because the next instant I am getting home in my car. I go inside the house and say hi to my mom. She says hi, but then sees my open purse and the pack of cigarettes. She looks so disappointed. I say they're not really mine, I am holding them for a friend… then I realize how lame that sounds. I tell her ok, they're mine, but I only smoke about one cigarette every month or so… if I smoked more, she would smell it on me, right? Right? I don't think she believes me.

Note: MoSh says he got a PM from Walms stating that Asuka has been poisoned. The best I can tell, it appears that Walms was going back to MoSh's inner world to get something he lost there, Kaomea was there, and everything went unstable ending up with Walms leaving a poison of some kind in Asuka. Apparently this was the cause of the illness I tried to cure last night. MoSh said Walms had refused to help cure her, Walms said he just wouldn't go near her in a dream… so my goal was simply to go find Walms and get the antidote, then take that back to Asuka. I fell asleep with my light / sound machine and successfully slipped into my WILD…

I am in my own room, but I know that I am dreaming, I am in a lucid dream. I remember my goal is to go find Walms to get the antidote to Asuka's illness, so I focus on opening a portal to locate Walms. Just as the portal is about to open, another portal opens and MoSh comes into my room. MoSh says he can make sure Walms tells him how to heal Asuka, I tell MoSh that he's already told me and the only thing I have to do is go get it. He pauses for a bit, it looks like he isn't completely lucid, and then he seems to remember. He says yeah, he remembers, but he doesn't seem fully convinced everything will go that easily. I tell him I usually get a feeling about that kind of thing, and I wasn't feeling anything to indicate a problem. The portal I had opened to locate Walms closes before I get a chance to make sure it stays open, so I have to open another one. I realize that is just as well, as the first portal was no longer accurate, apparently Walms had moved. I go through the new portal, MoSh follows me through.

MoSh and I exit the other end of the portal, I look around and see we are at the edge of a forest near an old building of some kind. I scan the area to see if I can find Walms there, but it is not difficult to find him, he is over near the building holding something. I get a bit closer and I see he is holding a strange animal… or a bug? It is about the size of a bunny rabbit, it is furry, but it looks a lot like a beetle. It looks like a big, furry beetle. I get close enough to Walms and ask about getting the antidote, instead I get a bug… the fluffy but Walms is holding flies into the air and hovers only a couple inches in front of my face, staring into my face with huge multifaceted eyes. I reach out to touch the bug's fur, it looks really soft, MoSh tells me to stay away from the bug in case it is dangerous. The bug responds by hissing loudly at MoSh, a strange hissing / squealing noise, then it flies away into the forest. Um… ok…

I turn my attention back to Walms and start to ask about the antidote again, MoSh says he wants the antidote right now. Walms says the cure is simple, really, all it takes is a bit of his blood… so come get it. He disappears from sight, drawing a crude expletive from MoSh, it looks to me that Walms apparently wanted to make a game of it to get the antidote. I feel a short burst of instability, I wonder if maybe it would be a better idea to just go back and get our trio of genius docs to fix the problem, since Walms had already told me what the problem was, curing it would be a piece of cake for them… without even waking them from their nap. I may have been considering talking to Washu, Janet, and Maura, but MoSh was already gone, breaking down the front door of the building and making about as much racket as a rhinoceros charging through a china shop… I follow MoSh into the building, I can see he is chasing Walms, who seems to always be just a bit ahead of MoSh. I soon lose track of them in the maze of halls and passages in the building. That is fine with me, I hadn't figured a straight forward race would get me anywhere. MoSh had that one covered, I'd have to take another approach.

I stop trying to follow MoSh and Walms at all, and I focus on a tracking spell, not to use in a portal, but just for tracking alone. The first thing that comes to mind is "All Nightmare Long" by Metallica, "We hunt you down all nightmare long…" and it would only stand to reason I would find Walms in the middle of a nightmare somewhere… I focus on the tracking, and I feel an instinctive pull in one direction, so I follow that pull. It actually leads me out of the building completely, I find I am on the third floor of the building and the forest is stretching out below me. I jump out of a broken window and fly over the forest, form shifting in mid flight to become a raven… wait… too obvious… I change into an eagle… that also seems too obvious… I change into a simple tree sparrow… I fly down into the trees, still following my instinct as to where I would be able to find Walms. If he is out here, I wonder where MoSh is… is MoSh following Walms out here? Is MoSh following a fake Walms in the building? Am I following another fucking DC? I realize I am muttering as close as a song bird can get to expletives… well, I would follow my tracking instincts, and just see what I find.

I am getting close to the signal source, so I land in one of the trees and look over beside a tree where I see Walms sitting there looking at an animal, this one looks like a rabbit of some kind. I flutter down closer to Walms and the rabbit, trying to be sure that it's really Walms and not a DC this time. I land on a low branch only to have the rabbit spring from Walms' arms and attack me… with fangs… psycho rabbit! Ok… I hadn't expected that, but I react as the sparrow would and take wing, chirping expletives at the rabbit as I fly out of reach. Walms calls me a silly bird, and says I should have known better than to get that close to a… (I don't remember what he called the bunny animal). I fly over closer to Walms and land in a tree near him, and I do my best to unobtrusively scan him to be sure it's not a DC. Real energy signature, looks right… I don't think it's a DC… Walms is looking at me strangely, I wonder if he can tell I'm not a normal sparrow, well if he can, I'd better make it quick or have to do the whole tracking thing over again, and I'm not sure how much longer I'll be in the dream.

I flutter down to the ground as if I am going after a particularly tasty seed or worm, poking around the ground with my beak, of course not picking up anything… my Witchblade has adjusted its size and form to my altered form… so the easiest way I can think of to get what I need is to use that. A tiny tendril of Witchblade extends from my right leg into the grass and other vegetation, snaking its way around to where Walms is standing and watching me, the tendril of Witchblade is behind him now, it snakes its way over and claims the sample I need while making no more disturbance than a light breeze. Walms is looking at me very closely… I decide not to wait any longer. I pull the tendril of Witchblade back and take flight into the trees. I wonder if Walms had any idea it was me he was looking at, I wonder if he knows I got what I was after… I figure it doesn't really matter, now I have to get the antidote back to Asuka.

I head into the building, now I want to find MoSh, because I figure he will want to be there when Asuka is healed. I then kick myself as best as I can in the form of a sparrow, wondering why I didn't just track MoSh the same way I tracked Walms. I finally do that and open a portal to go straight to MoSh. A small bird-sized portal opens and I go through it into MoSh's inner world. MoSh is looking around for something there, Asuka is there with him. She looks fine, there doesn't appear to be any sign of her previous illness relapsing. I ask how she is feeling, she says fine. I tell her I have what we need for the antidote, but I feel it should be done in the healing glen. MoSh asks if I checked the blood to make sure it is safe. I tell him it is safe, I have no doubt in my mind about it… I open a portal and go through into the healing glen.

In the healing glen there is a pool of the healing water, Allura is there waiting for us. She says she will have to remove the time stasis from the toxin, so that it can be neutralized. She does something, though I can't tell what, then says Asuka is ready to be healed. Asuka gets into the pool of water, I realize I have no idea what to do with the sample… d'oh! Not bright. Apparently the Crystal Golem knows more than I do about that kind of healing, he takes the sample and pours it right into the pool of water with Asuka. The water turns a disgusting black color, MoSh moves to pull her out of the water, but the Crystal Golem stops him and says the poison is being purged from Asuka, drawn out by the blood sample he had just added, so this isn't a negative effect. The water gets really disgusting and finally the Crystal Golem lifts Asuka carefully from the water and bathes her in light energy. I use Touch My Heart to clear any remaining dark energy from Asuka, I barely get that done before everything around me fades to black and I wake up.

Note: This was another night of all fragments, so here is what I can remember from the fragmented dreams.

Looking for WHO?
I was in a forest, I'm not sure how I managed to get there, but I was spontaneously lucid… or most likely I had become lucid before my memories of the dream begin. I was eating an apple and thinking it tasted exceptionally good, almost like a caramel apple, but there was no caramel on it. I turned around to follow a path that I thought led back to my place, but there were three people blocking my path. Two men and a woman who had a look to them that said they thought they were better than everyone else. Of course this gave me an immediate dislike of them. One of the men, one with dark hair slicked back against his head in such a way that it looked like one solid oily mass, said he would have me tell him where they could find Makarthos… wtf? I told him I had absolutely no idea who they were talking about, which was true. The woman said I spoke the truth. The man sighed, I looked to keep track of the other man, and it looked like he was standing lookout for something. The man said he would have me tell him where… Walms… could be found. I said I know no Walms, but the woman said I was lying. The man asked again where Walms could be found, I said I had absolutely no idea… the woman said that was truthful… I asked why they were looking for Walms. My question was ignored, the man said since I have a bit of Walms' energy in me, I could surely locate him. I said I do not know the location of anyone using that energy form, let alone Walms. The woman said I was being truthful. The man grumbled an expletive and then said they should go, Makarthos had to be somewhere close. All three of them disappeared, leaving me wondering who the hell they were.

Healing by Proxy
I was in MoSh's inner world with MoSh, Asuka, and Kaomea, I was lucid, and I knew my goal there was to transfer some healing spells to Kaomea, which she had requested I do. I told Kaomea that often times using healing spells was the best way to learn them, so if she was up for it, we could go to a place where both a soul healing and a physical healing would be needed. She agreed, so I opened a portal while focused on finding a Callisto from the television show "Xena: Warrior Princess" who needed healing. I trusted my tracking to find an appropriate version of Callisto. Kaomea and I went through the portal into a forest where I spotted Callisto hiding behind some trees, looking in the opposite direction. We went silently over behind her where I looked where she was looking. There was a woman near a small house that Callisto was watching, I heard her mutter something about taking away everyone Xena had ever loved… I got Callisto's attention, she turned around with a start, apparently surprised that there was someone there. Callisto pulled out her sword, but when she did I noticed that she was only able to use her right arm, her left arm looked quite badly wounded. She told us to stay out of the way, she could take a couple unarmed travelers with just one arm. I ignored Callisto's comment and told Kaomea to do the healing spell, I would focus the energy through her to show her how to use it. So I focused the spell Touch My Heart through Kaomea to Callisto. It's not the usual healing spell I use on different versions of Callisto, but I felt it would work, and it has more uses than the one I usually use which is Until it Sleeps by Metallica. I could tell the dark energy had been cleared from Callisto, but she was still physically wounded. I told her we would heal that wound, it looked like it was becoming infected. Now free of the dark energy, Callisto allowed us to use Voices from the Macross Plus soundtrack to heal her physical wound. Again, I focused the energy, but directed it through Kaomea so she could be the one to do it.

Must Save Kitty!!!
I was sitting in a classroom, it was a normal classroom like many others I have been in, though it was clearly not my normal school. I also didn't see anyone I knew in the class, but none of this seemed unusual at the time. The instructor was lecturing in front of the class, I felt a distinct dislike of him, but I wasn't thinking of any particular reason why I would be angry at him. He was teaching biology, talking about internal organs of mammals, which I was not finding at all interesting. I was thinking it would be fun to disrupt this class with a display of TK… too bad I couldn't do that… The instructor told everyone to gather around. He had a sedated cat on his desk now, and he was preparing to dissect it! No way! I told him the idea of doing that was sick and disgusting, he said if I was offended I was free to leave early, but study internal organs of mammals in the book for the test. I said I would leave… and so would the cat, at which point I grabbed the sleeping kitty and ran out of the classroom with it. It seemed everyone was after me, saying they wanted to dissect the cat, which was about to make me physically sick. I turned around and saw a lot of people back there… and went off into a classroom and then into a closet to hide with the sleeping kitty. It turned out I had chosen the history classroom, and this closet had weapons from history… surprisingly they were real, not models, so I grabbed a sharp sword. The door opened, the instructor was there, he said just because I oppose dissection doesn't mean others have to be deprived. I told him I don't oppose dissection at all… I was ready to do some right now… "How about you go first?" I said as I pulled the sword out and sliced the instructor open with one quick upward cut from his crotch to his chest… his intestines actually spilled out, just about making me puke, everyone else ran for it as the instructor collapsed and bled out on the floor.

Dreaming Rocks!
I was near a large arena that was used to host huge musical concerts, and I knew it was someone I wanted to see this time, so I went to find out who. There was a random concert here every week, and this one was the week for Heavy Metal, so I wanted to at least check it out. Best of all, the concert was free, used just for the band's publicity. I was wonderfully surprised when I found Metallica was playing, that was strange since they are already well known, but as usually there was no ticket needed. The concert was already underway, and I hurried into the arena. There were many people there, but I managed to make my way to the front of the arena, right up to the stage, the music was so loud and that was sooooo cool! I listened to the music for a while, then I felt dust tickling my nose, so I reached up to rub it. Something seemed weird… I pinched my nose… and was still able to breathe, I was dreaming! I took to flying, but I didn't want to leave, the concert was too cool. So instead of leaving, I flew from one vantage point to another to see the concert from all sorts of viewpoints that no one else was able to get to. Strangely enough, no one seemed to notice my flying around in there.

Note: Tonight was composed of fragments which I will post here. Actually, I'm sure there was more to each of these dreams, but those are parts that I am not able to remember at this point. So here are the fragments:

Under My Skin
I was in the lab / sick bay in the biodome tower with Tigress and Janet, I couldn't remember how I had gotten there, but somehow I was lucid. I looked around, I saw Tigress talking to Janet for a bit, so I just waited. I remembered Tigress saying she wanted Janet to check us both out to see if we might have any parasites inside us. She came over to me and said Janet had given her a clean bill of health, so there was no need for her to stay here any longer. I wondered where she might be going so fast, didn't she want to stick around and maybe do something after Janet checked me out? Janet told me to lie down on the sick bay bed and she would check me out. I did that, and I couldn't see what she was doing, I was lying on my stomach, but she was talking about some rather disgusting leech type things that she was removing. I wondered if Tigress was waiting for me… I saw someone out of the corner of my eye, I looked and I saw Nomad. He said there were parasites on me, he was sure he had sensed those there. Janet said there sure were, but she was almost done getting them all off. Nomad asked if she had gotten the ones off of Tigress, too. Janet said Tigress hadn't had any parasites on her, though she had checked for them. Nomad seemed to think that was odd, but he didn't say anything.

Mistaken Identity
I was in my room and lucid, I remembered I had a goal of locating Walms and restoring his flame, which he had told me was out. I knew from how he had acted that it wasn't completely out, but I thought maybe he could use a bit of help getting it strong again after encountering some strange energy that had apparently damaged it. He said he had been staying away from everyone until the flame was restored so he wouldn't look to pointlessly hurt anyone (if the flame had been out that wouldn't have mattered) so I might have problems finding him. I focused on locating Walms, he said his energy would be different, so I wasn't really sure what I would trace. So I just focused on what I know about Walms from talking to him and sharing a few dreams in the past, using a song spell for tracking… and thought it took a bit more energy, a portal finally opened, so I went through. I exited the portal into a forest area, looked consistent with somewhere I might find Walms. I looked around, not sure where I might find Walms, but then I spotted someone over beside a particularly large tree. I went over to him and looked at him closely, I couldn't see much in the way of energy there, well that fit… I had expected that Walms would be hiding his energy pretty well. I called the person Walms and said hello, I said I was there to restore his flame, and I was sure I hadn't been followed. I got a blank look as a response, so I thought maybe he wasn't lucid… I told him he was dreaming, I added that I was Raven Knight. He continued to give me the same blank look as if I was speaking in a foreign language… damn… I wondered if there were times that Walms was non-lucid that he didn't remember English… "Yo estoy Raven Knight," I stumbled in Spanish, "Estoy aquí para restaurar el fuego interior ... Walms? Estás soñando, ya sabes ..." That same blank look that was beginning to get quite frustrating… "How cute…" a voice said from my right, "She doesn't recognize me…" I turned to my right really fast, just in time to see someone vanish… Walms?! Then who was I talking to? The person I had been talking to said something that made absolutely no sense… um… I went over to the place the person had vanished… that was Walms, no doubt… "Wait a sec!" I called, even though he was long gone. I focused on opening a portal to follow him, but my memory ends here.

Templar Party
I was in what I thought of as my house, but it wasn't like my waking life home. The inside of it was very similar, but there was a huge deck out back where there were a lot of people having a party, there was music, food, a swimming pool, and everyone was having lots of fun. But somehow I knew the guests were all Templars… I was also thinking my mom had no idea who she had invited over. I tried to tell her, but she wasn't listening. She went outside to take care of the guests, but I stayed in my room. I was able to look out my window at the partiers outside. I didn't want them to see me, so I was staying low and just peeking over my window sill to see them out there. My mom looked frustrated, then she came inside and found me spying on the party. She said she didn't care if I stayed long, but it was rude of me to not show up and at least say hi to our guests. I said I couldn't do that, those were all Templars, and they would surly know that I was aligned with the Assassins… She told me not to be silly, they wouldn't know that unless I went out with a sign that said, "GO ASSASSINS" or something dumb like that. She said she wanted to see me outside in 15 minutes, and that was final. With that she left the room. I knew for sure that the Templars would recognize me, so I had to get out of there. I went out of the back door and headed for the gate, trying to hurry before I was seen… epic fail. I hadn't made it halfway to the gate before my mom spotted me and brought everyone's attention to me. The Templars looked over at me, I could tell by the way they looked that they knew I was with the Assassins… My mom, oblivious to everything, was cheerfully introducing us, which is not actually like her normal behavior at all.

Note: Tonight I pulled a Walms! FA, get out of bed, RC… continues to have a nice lucid dream… *does the happy dance* I just wish I could make myself do a RC every time I wake up in the night or in the morning, I would catch a lot more FA's… Yay for FA's!

I woke up in bed, got up to use the bathroom, and for once I thought to do a RC right away… and it turned out I was dreaming! Awesome! I was in the middle of a real FA!

For some reason this idea seriously excited me at that point in time, almost as if I had never had a FA before, and I had to focus to calm myself down a bit before focusing on remembering what my goals for the night were. I remembered that one of my goals had been to go meet Erik's guide with MoSh, but that was already done. So what was my next goal? I didn't have any other goals for the night, so that meant I was free to figure out what I wanted to do. I thought I could check out the house in Oblivion, the one in Skingrad, and even though I hadn't been in contact with Tigress I could still do something there on my own. Hmmm… instead, maybe I would try to just try to open a portal to get somewhere I was needed. I focused on Through the Never and on opening a portal, then I went through that portal…

I found myself back in MoSh's inner world, which took me by surprise since I had already completed the goal I had with MoSh. So maybe there was something else I had to do with MoSh tonight, which was fine, but first I had to find him. I looked around MoSh's inner world for a bit, taking real notice of it for the first time, and realizing things there were far from normal. Things were quite dark and creepy, like used to happen quite often, but it hasn't happened much recently, so what might have happened to create this problem? Since I thought that might be why I was there, to clean up the place, I started focusing on cleaning up the dark energy and replacing it with light energy. I went into MoSh's house and started cleaning up in there, I saw Asuka in there as well. She was clearly not well, she was cackling like some kind of a mad woman, and her eyes were solid black. She was throwing some kind of strange energy bolts at me, they seemed to be made of solidified dark energy. I could tell she needed serious healing, so I focused on the song Silver and Cold to pull dark energy out of her and Touch My Heart to replace it with light… and she disappeared.

I didn't know where Asuka had gone, but I figured I would find her again soon, as long as she hadn't left MoSh's inner world… and if she had left MoSh's inner world, I would track her down then. I continued through the house, absorbing dark energy from the place and replacing it with light, then I went back outside and continued doing that. I walked around for a bit absorbing dark energy, I wondered where MoSh might be, and where were the kinds, Data, the EMH he recently installed? Was this really MoSh's inner world? Or could I be in the wrong place? Well, no matter where I was, Asuka had been there and she had been seriously infected. Maybe I should find Asuka next, then check to see if I was really in MoSh's inner world or if I might be in the wrong place somehow… after all, I hadn't focused on reaching MoSh's inner world, I had just focused on going somewhere I was needed.

As I was about to open a portal to track Asuka down I saw that I wasn't alone, there was someone else there standing not too far from me. I went over to investigate and see who it was, it looked like he was surrounded by an aura of dark energy, but it looked stable and I didn't sense hostility… So I went over to investigate the person closer, to see what he was doing there, and when I got closer to him I recognized him… it was Walms! I went over and said hello to him, I asked if he was here to clean up some of this dark energy, after all it would be just a midnight snack for him… He didn't answer me, instead he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, if it wasn't for the fact that he is lucid in 99.9% of his dreams, I would have thought he wasn't lucid there. But then he does have a few non-lucid dreams… occasionally. I told him he was dreaming, maybe he should do a RC, check out the gravity of the area or whatever it is he does for a RC. He looked at me strangely, making me have serious doubts that I had identified him correctly, I was having serious doubts that it was Walms at all…

I felt I needed to clean the place up, so I continued absorbing dark energy, and I saw that Walms, or the person I had first thought was Walms, was doing the same. I continued cleaning up dark energy, Walms and I got separated while I was cleaning the place up, and I ended up wandering into the garden area out behind MoSh's house, where I found Asuka. She looked just as nuts as she had before, she attacked me with dark energy bolts again, I dodged the attacks and jumped up into the air, sending a couple of tendrils of Witchblade to hold her and keep her from disappearing again. I looked around, and the area that might or might not be MoSh's inner world was much cleaner than it had been, it looked a lot brighter and was clear of dark energy, so now I had to get Asuka healed. I focused on the songs I had tried to use before, Silver and Cold to draw dark energy out and Touch My Heart to put light energy in, and this time it seemed effective. After the song spells had completed, Asuka looked like her normal self and seemed quite confused at the fact she was tied up, so I let her loose.

The first thing Asuka was wanting to know about was MoSh, she said she didn't know where MoSh was, she might have done something to MoSh, she said she should have known something like this would happen, she knew she would never be able to keep control if she tried to fight, why had everyone insisted she try to fight when we all knew she would lose control again? Why? I told her I thought Vegeta and Tuvok had helped her with that, but she said there's no way either of them would ever understand the force inside her, that there is no way she could control it… I saw she was crying, saying she was sure she'd done something horrible, and it was MoSh she had done it to, so what now? I told her MoSh can't be seriously hurt in a dream, but let's find him. I opened a portal, focusing on finding MoSh, and then I led Asuka through the portal.

On the other side of the portal I found MoSh was there, and he was there with Kaomea, he looked quite worried about something. He seemed glad to see me, he said Kaomea needed healing, he said he had tried to heal her as best as he could, but she really needed to be taken to the healing glen for healing there. I said Asuka could probably use the extra positive energy, too, as she had been really badly infected somehow. I focused on opening a portal to the healing glen, and then all of us went through it, MoSh, Asuka, Kaomea, and me. I telepathically contacted Basara even as we were going through the portal, so when we exited into the healing glen, Basara showed up there soon after. The Crystal Golem was there, and we did a group healing spell, Basara, MoSh, and I did healing spells along with the Crystal Golem, the entire area was filled with golden energy. The golden energy was very relaxing, and it is here that I woke.

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 exited the portal right next to the koi pond, which was where I had expected to emerge, I looked around and saw I was alone. There was no one waiting there right now. Maybe I should wait around for a bit? I felt the dream slipping… I was going to wake up… but there was so much left to do. I also wanted to see how long I could make this dream. I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and the slipping dream stabilized.

I looked around the koi pond again, everything looked more vivid now. I was by the koi pond, and I didn't see any sign of anyone else there with me. I remembered that Blake was going to meet me there, but I didn't see him, and wasn't I going to meet someone else here? Was it Yuri? I didn't think so due to our inverted sleep schedules, I know time isn't linear, but somehow the idea of dreaming with someone who won't have their dream about me until after I had already posted my part of the dream seemed like asking for a paradox… So who was it? Miss Maya from Mortal Mist? That sounded possible, but I didn't remember making any actual plans to meet, my intention had been to read some more of her dream journal to find out more about her inner world and her dreams, but I have been so busy with my job and homework and school and journaling and… and… There was a lot to do! What was I doing hanging around here? I had to get going!

Next I wanted to complete the task of the month, which is to ride a unicorn. Stardust is a winged unicorn, so there would be no problem there, and it would be fun! I opened a portal to my inner world, focusing on getting to wherever Stardust happened to be, then I went through into a wide grassy meadow. There was a nice breeze blowing across the tall grass, and Stardust was grazing in the meadow with her wings folded neatly back, the feathers on her wings glistened in the sun, her pure white coat was contrasted by her flaming mane and tail which were literally made of fire, her single horn reflected in many colors and looked razor sharp on the tip. Such a beautiful animal… After briefly admiring her, I walked over to Stardust, she greeted me with a friendly nuzzle, then a bit of a nip, I got the idea she was annoyed at me for not visiting more often. I climbed onto her back and we took to the skies!

Riding on the back of a winged unicorn, or I guess Stardust is a pegasus and a unicorn combined, was a wonderful sensation. Even though her mane looked like flame, it didn't burn me as I leaned forward and held onto Stardust's neck as we flew through the sky, watching the landscape of my dream world below me, the fields, the forests, a town that looked like a pleasant neighborhood… I could see my own house down there, it doesn't look like my waking life house, but somehow I still recognized it. I had just flown by when I realized there was someone outside of my house… I urged Stardust to circle back and I got back just in time to see Walms disappear into the house. Was he looking for me? Good timing, I just happened to be here! I landed in front of the house and dismounted, patting Stardust on her muzzle before I approached the house. I opened the front door of the house, nothing in here is locked since the shield keeps the undesirables out, and I looked around the living room. No sign of Walms. I looked through the house, it isn't very large, so that didn't take me long, but no sign of Walms. Damn… he must have woken up. I could wait for him to come back, but I wasn't sure he would come back, so I thought maybe I had better move on to my next goal.

So now I wanted to share either a DDO dream or an Oblivion dream with Tigress, the main idea is for both of us to remember the dream. So I focused on locating Tigress with my next portal, from there we could go to a DDO dream or an Oblivion dream, or maybe she would already be involved in something cool and I could join in. I focused for a bit and finally the portal opened, I went through it…

And I exited in a desert, it looked like the southwestern area of Arizona, somewhere in the Sonoran desert definitely. Since Tigress lives near me IWL, and I live in the desert, this didn't surprise me, it was just that Tigress was having a dream in the desert. I looked around to see if I could find Tigress anywhere, but I didn't see anyone at first, so I started walking around until I finally spotted someone. There was an aged Indian shaman here wearing a hat and looking at me with a very intense gaze, I wondered who that was and why he was here while Tigress didn't seem to be. Since the man seemed so focused on me, I walked over towards him… I recognized his energy. Somehow, instead of ending up in Tigress' dream, I had ended up locating don Juan…

I woke from the previous dream and rolled over in bed. I had to go pee… damn. I didn't want to take the time for that, I'd just had a dream and I needed to take notes on it before I forgot anything. I sat up and grabbed my dream book, using my cell phone as a light, I took a couple rapid notes. Blake, moon bus, you're dreaming, bullshit. Ok… hopefully that would be enough there. I got up to go use the bathroom, patting the cute little kitty on my bed as I made my way around the bed in the dark. It seemed darker than normal. I opened the bedroom door to head for the bathroom… and there was someone standing there! I jumped about three feet, very surprised to see someone there at the door. I tripped over some crap on the ground and fell backwards onto my bed, great… there's an intruder and I fall backward onto my ass… not a good start. The guy in my doorway didn't hesitate at all, he seemed to be in a hurry. He called me Raven, said something about being in a hurry… the cat on my bed meowed… the man seemed to be staring at me for a bit, then he reached out and grabbed hold of me and pulled me through a portal. My first reaction might have been to resist, but in spite of the greeting, I wasn't sensing hostility, so I didn't resist.

The man and I emerged from the portal in a desolate place, the only visible life in the area were a group of individuals right around me, one of whom was the man who had grabbed me. I looked at the others, one of them was a beautiful white dragon… that one caught my attention so much that I didn't really notice the others as well as I could have… the dragon was pure white and so beautiful that she almost seemed to be glowing with light energy. I was staring at her, I had the feeling it was a female, when the man who brought me there said I was dreaming, do a reality check, and choose a better form unless I intended to meet Xildron as a cat… I finally recognized the man I was talking to, it was Walms, and apparently this had something to do with healing Xildron, so I would be using a healing spell on… wait a minute… hat he just said something about meeting Xildron as a cat? Who was he calling a cat? I looked down at my own hands… um… paws? Wtf? I was, indeed, a cat… not a panther… a kitty cat… so I transformed into my Assassin form, not needing to do a reality check to realize this was a dream. Walms said something to a couple of the others and then he was gone.

Ok… so what now? I looked around at the others there with me, none of them looked familiar to me, but they were clearly my allies now. I scanned the area for Xildron, and I found he was really quite close, he soon came into view, he was a dragon, and what a dragon! I can't really describe him, but here goes… I might be able to come up with a pic for later… he was a large dragon, shiny black scales that looked like flawless impenetrable armor, huge wings that looked like they were made up of many faceted jet black gems, four arms that ended in huge razor sharp talons, and heads… one, two, three, four, five… no more time to admire the dragon, he was attacking. I took flight and evaded the initial attack, as did everyone there with me, I remembered that I wasn't really here to help with the fight, I was here to focus my energy on the healing while the others took care of the attacks, so I just evaded the attacks and saved my energy to use on the healing spells I would use when the time felt right. Right now if I used a healing spell I knew he would just block it, and it would be a waste of energy. I could see the others had erected a force field of some kind around all of us, maybe to keep Xildron from leaving? Maybe also to keep enemies outside the force field from coming in, it appeared Xildron really did have an army out there trying to get inside to give him backup…

So I was staying out of the way as the fight was going on, which seemed like kind of a waste not to be helping in some way, but I didn't want to deplete my energy fighting when I would probably need it to heal Xildron. So instead of attacking Xildron, I used my first healing spell, I focused on Silver and Cold by AFI, and its effect of drawing some of the unstable dark energy off of Xildron into myself. I was getting large amounts of the dark energy now, it certainly wouldn't deplete my energy, I would have more than ever, and I was focused on stabilizing the energy as I received it. At first I thought Xildron was going to respond to my energy drain, but he was quickly occupied by attacks from the others. Unstable dark energy was something Xildron had an abundance of, and I was well into a third rendition of Silver and Cold before it started to become too much dark energy that I was absorbing, I would have to get rid of some of it somehow because I was having trouble keeping up with stabilizing it all. I couldn't safely do that here, though, because while my allies, Walms' kids, could absorb and use the dark energy, Xildron could also absorb it back into himself which would be counterproductive to the healing process. I absorbed more of his energy until it was at the point where I couldn't control any more, and then I did a quick portal, focused on locating a Templar base. The portal opened…

I emerged from the portal right over a Templar base, I could see the Templars below me going about whatever no good business they were currently up to, but I didn't take the time to watch the Templars for long. Instead, I just released a massive blast of the unstable dark energy on the Templar base, focusing it out as a blast of black flames that took the form of a huge fireball. The fireball descended on the surprised Templars, and before they even had a chance to fully register what was happening, there was a massive explosion of dark energy and their base was left as nothing more than a large crater in the ground. I wasn't sure if any of them had escaped, but if they had, they were surely looking at the crater gong, "What the hell was that?!" I had no time to survey the destruction of the Templars, I went right through the portal back to Xildron, which I hadn't even bothered closing when I had first arrived.

The fight was still going on when I got back, and it made me wonder if anyone had noticed I had disappeared for a bit there. I closed the portal and went back to draining excess unstable dark energy off of Xildron, the less energy he had to fight the others, the better. Since I had vented a large portion, I was once again having no difficulty stabilizing the dark energy as I received it. Xildron seemed to finally be weakening, the attacks of the others were getting through much more often now. It looked like they were trying to restrain Xildron, most likely so he would be unable to block the healing energy so easily. I saw the beautiful white dragon again, flying in towards Xildron, she was using some light energy to try to bind the huge black dragon. The others moved in and managed to immobilize Xildron, but it didn't look like they would have him immobilized for long, I got a telepathic message to heal him already, the message was from a woman, she said she didn't know how long they could hold him.

Ok… need a healing spell… but Xildron's base energy is dark energy, so the spell would have to just stabilize his dark energy, not purge it out, if anything it would be helpful to purge out any incompatible light energy for now… The first song I thought of was Touch My Heart off of the Devil Hunter Yohko soundtrack, but that normally uses light energy… so what if it normally uses light energy? Feed dark energy into the spell, it would use dark energy. All of those thoughts flew through my head in just a second or two, then I was focused on the song Touch My Heart and also on feeding dark energy into it. The song was playing loudly in the desolate land, spirals of energy erupted around Xildron… he tried one more time to get loose from the others before the spell had him surrounded in healing energy, and I saw one of Walms' kids, a male in a human form (I don't have them straight, so I'm unsure of this one's name), was hit by a blast of energy and knocked out of their formation, he was slammed to the ground where he made a large crater. I focused as much stable dark energy into the spell as I could do, and that energy, a dark flow of energy that looked like the normal golden healing energy with the one exception that it was dark instead of light flowed into Xildron. It looked at first like he was going to try to block it, but maybe he saw it was energy he wanted, or maybe he just didn't have the energy left to resist, but the healing energy got through.

The healing song was over now, and the others I had been fighting with were standing around Xildron, who was still an impressive looking dragon even though he looked a bit worn out. I looked to see if I could find the one who had been nailed by Xildron during the healing, but I couldn't see him. I wondered if he had been forced to leave before the fight was completely over. I also wondered where Walms might be, he would surely want to know that the healing spell on Xildron had been completed, though there would be no way of knowing for sure that it had worked until Xildron recovered at least some of his energy. He seemed calm now, but he might just be tired… The feeling I had was that the healing energy had done its job and Xildron would be ok now. I didn't have a chance to even try to check to see what effect the healing might have had on Xildron, this was the point when I woke.

Note: For the past several nights I have wanted to view the dream Walms said I had where I fought Xildron. So far I have not had any luck doing this, or at least not any luck recalling it. This night was different, though, I do recall viewing the dream and it was, indeed, an epic dream.

I was in my own living room sitting in the seat on the couch I always use typing away on my laptop. I was working on a homework assignment, but I needed to draw something… I wanted to get my drawing done on the computer, but I wasn't sure how to go about that. I was trying to draw with the mouse in a graphic program that looked sort of like MS Paint but had more features, like a stripped down version of Photoshop… I wasn't getting anything done at all. I sat there and pondered for a bit longer until I had an idea. I clicked on the screen and I got a popup saying I should buy medication to make my penis bigger… um… no need for that. I closed it and got two more popups… One for Viagra and one for breast implants… closed them. There were immediately more popups… 5 of them. First came, "Discover great sex!" The second said, "Run your own business from home!" The third said, "Erectile dysfunction is a thing of the past!" The next one said, "Are you suffering from ED?" Finally came, "Make your penis two times larger!" I was about to close those when I saw that with the order they had appeared, one on top of the others, only the first letter of each title was visible… D-R-E-A-M! My computer was trying to tell me something! I was dreaming? I did a RC and became lucid.

Ok… this was cool. I was in a lucid. Now to remember my goals. The first goal I remembered was to view the dream Walms told me about where I fought Xildron. I already had my computer on, so this would be easy. I logged onto my dream records on my computer and searched for the Xildron dream. Having found it, I double clicked it and selected to view the holo-record. This was going to be cool! The hologram played, I saw the dream from the perspective I had when I was dreaming it… the only thing was that it was a recording, so even if I thought I had made a dumb move, I was unable to do anything but watch the events unfold. Since I knew nothing serious had gone wrong, I relaxed and went with the flow of the dream.

At the beginning of the dream I was wanting to find Xildron, and I also remembered that Pablo had said maybe he could help with the tracking. I wasn't sure if that was true, but there is nothing to be lost by trying it that way at least once, so I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world. I stepped into a forest and found myself pounced on by a cute fox that clearly wanted to play. I called him Pablo and said I was there because he had said he could help me find Xildron, which was something I definitely wanted to do. The fox looked at me for a bit as if not understanding what I had said, then he looked disappointed, then he turned into his human form. He said I didn't seem to want to have any fun. I told him if he wanted, I could come back in a future dream for fun, but right now I wanted to find Xildron. I focused on opening a portal, directing the portal to track down Xildron as best as I could. It looked like Pablo was also focusing on something, though I couldn't tell on what. Finally a portal opened. I remembered being hit in the face by an energy blast last time I had tried to track Xildron, so I directed the portal a short distance away so I could get through it without being seen immediately. I thanked Pablo, told him he might want to stay there in his inner world for his own safety, while he couldn't be hurt in a dream, that didn't necessarily make it fun to get blasted to dust.

I went through the portal and emerged on what looked like a moon of some kind. I could see a planet in the sky, the planet looked similar to Earth but it had a ring around it. I looked around on the surface of the moon and wondered if Xildron was there. I scanned for energy sources and spotted one, so I followed the energy. I found someone in one of the large craters, I wasn't sure what he was doing, so I got closer to him to see if he was the one I was looking for. He physically matched the description Walms had given me. When I got a bit closer he turned suddenly and fired a blast of flames at me, apparently attacking before he could even know who was behind him. I used Whiplash to send the blast back at him, he absorbed the energy back and sent it back at me again. I formed Witchblade into armor to protect myself from the blast… or I tried to do that, but nothing happened. I looked at my wrist and saw there was no bracelet there, the bracelet that is my Witchblade was missing. How could it be missing when I never take it off? The blast of flames was strong enough to send me flying clear off of the moon and into space, in the direction of the planet with the man following after me.

I turned around to head back to the moon, but the man, who I had decided very well might be Xildron, was blocking my way with a wall of flames. Apparently he wasn't going to cooperate with a healing spell, I would have to get rid of some of his energy first, so I focused on the song Enter Sandman. The spirals of dark and light energy formed around Xildron, creating a large explosion contained in the center. There was another explosion around Xildron that cancelled out the explosion from Enter Sandman… I tried the more powerful version of Enter Sandman, which involves inserting a tiny piece of antimatter type energy in the center of the explosion, about the size of a grain of sand, but none the less it is enough to intensify the explosion formed there. So now the spirals of light and dark energy formed, I threw the grain of antimatter energy into the center of the exchange… normally I would get antimatter energy from Witchblade so I'm not really sure where I got the energy… and there was a much larger explosion.

This explosion clearly had an effect on Xildron, it pissed him off. He absorbed both the dark and the light energy from the Enter Sandman spell and came out of the explosion, tackling me and we shot through space towards the planet. It was clearly a live planet, I didn't want to fight on a live planet, so I opened a portal in our path that would take us to a place where it would be safe to fight without having to think about possible collateral damage.

Xildron and I fell out of the portal onto a barren planet, in a huge canyon with some impressive rock formations but no sign of life. It was too bad that we might destroy the rock formations, but at least there was no life on the planet that could get caught up in our fight. Now that there was no other living thing in the area I switched tactics to use Crush 'Em by Megadeth since apparently Xildron would absorb either dark or light energy, Crush 'Em creates a gravity based attack. The first wave of gravity pushed Xildron into a large crater, which seemed to surprised him a bit although it didn't seem to hurt him much. He was instantly came at me again, I sent another pair of gravity blasts at him… the first one pushed him against the canyon wall, the second one was from above and pushed him down into a large crater. He was going to come at me again, but I kept the waves of gravity coming… "Now I lay you down to rest, you'll never be more than second best, step inside, you're in for a ride, and we crush, crush 'em!" After a large number of the gravity blasts had pounded him into a rather deep crater I looked in and it seemed he was a bit disoriented. Maybe now would be a good chance for a healing spell…

I got closer to where Xildron was, he was just getting up and glared over at me, but by now I had already started the healing song I had chosen which was Silver and Cold by AFI. The song was having the effect of pulling off some of his unstable dark energy and replacing it with stable dark energy since I was certain his base energy type was dark. It looked like he was about to attack me when the stable energy started being returned to him, and then he stopped with a really puzzled look on his face. Did that mean it was working? It must mean it was working, he had definitely noticed something in the energy that was returning to him. I continued with the song, focusing a bit on stabilizing the dark energy I was absorbing, and the song was just about over when Xildron got a pissed off look on his face. He came directly in front of me and glared directly into my eyes, the healing spell had not done enough… there was still a lot of hate in there… he said he would know that energy anywhere. He said my mission to kill him would fail, he would send me back to the fool who had sent me… send me back in pieces. He grabbed hold of my left arm and powered up a blast of energy he had aimed at my face.

Ok, so apparently he still wanted to fight more and I was still up a creek without a Witchblade, so I decided to go the other way and use the dark energy to follow the Alex Mercer (from the game Prototype) archetypes I have developed in my mind… I used the dark energy and formed my right arm into Mercer's sword blade. I cut at his arm that was holding on to me, and he quickly released me when he was cut by the blade. So now we engaged in an intense and fast paced battle where he was using an array of physical and energy attacks and I was using the full arsenal of Alex Mercer attacks as well the armor Alex Mercer used in Prototype, the armor was hopefully going to replace the missing Witchblade armor. During this battle, however, neither of us seemed to be able to get the upper hand. I was glad I have been speed training with Vegeta or I probably couldn't have kept up! While I was mentally thanking Vegeta I must have let my guard down just a bit because I got hit by a large blast of energy and knocked into the wall, closely followed by Xildron, who was now demanding to know why… I felt Xildron probing my mind and I quickly blocked him out, but he had gotten a small piece of information… Xildron wanted to know why Walms had sent me to do his dirty work instead of coming to face Xildron himself. He called Walms a coward and said he would have to teach dear old dad a lesson.

Xildron was hesitating, apparently wanting some answers out of me which I had no intention of giving. I barely noticed that my energy was getting a bit unstable from the unstable energy I had absorbed from Xildron and from the fighting with so much dark energy that I'm not completely used to… Xildron was demanding that I say something… so I did, but it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Suddenly, the unreal silence was broken by a lament, a lament coming up from the deepest darkest abyss…" He asked what the fuck I was talking about, clearly confused by that seemingly random statement, "And from the seven gates of the dark fortress, the dead come back to life to face you… this is Hell!" Xildron gave me a look of anger and frustration, not expecting the effect of the spell he had willingly given me time to set up without interference… "Immortal fire, now rise, light my heart, light my way through the darkness, a guardian of space and time!"

A massive wall of energy erupted around Xildron and me, which took him by surprise. I guided the energy on a path to center in on Xildron, but it wasn't entirely stable… there was both dark and light energy in the wall of flames, they were mixing with each other and becoming even more unstable… instead of centering in on Xildron, the flames concentrated in the area all around Xildron, which included where I was, I had just been blasted by my own energy attack, how lame is that? I tried to get out of the path of my own immortal fire spell, I ended up right in front of Xildron. He said he would send me back to his father in pieces, my mission had failed. A portal opened behind me and Xildron absorbed some of the immortal fire energy and used it to push me through the portal, which closed behind me.

I was now in the air over a green forest, although I felt more like passing out than flying, It is extremely draining to release a large amount of energy and then get nailed by that same attack. I flew for a bit, and then felt that I was falling, but someone grabbed hold of me and took me in for a landing. I looked to see who it was and I saw it was Walms. Xildron had said he was going to send me to Walms, and he had done just that. I wondered how much energy Xildron had left, had he been able to absorb all of what I had put into the immortal fire spell? Was he still strong and ready to go or was he also about to pass out after that fight? I had no way of knowing.

I was trying to tell Walms that Xildron was coming and he was pissed, but I didn't seem able to make Walms hear me. He looked rather pissed off… was he mad at me? For starting a fight with Xildron? Whether he was mad at me or not, he was healing me, I could feel the icy cold of his stable dark energy flowing through me, I felt some better from that. I told him to be careful, Xildron was pissed. I saw no one had followed me through into Walms' world, there was a kid there… maybe Xildron wasn't in any condition to come through and get pissed at Walms right now. Maybe the fight had taken more out of him than he had let on. No matter what the reason, he had not followed me through the portal. Walms was saying something I couldn't understand, but then I was teleported and found I was in my own bed. I was still tired, I thought I had just woken up. I should take notes on the Xildron fight, but I couldn't find the energy to sit up and write the stuff down, so instead I just fell back asleep again. By the time I woke in the morning I had completely forgotten the dream.

The hologram viewing ended when I woke up, and I was on my couch with my computer. I was thinking it had been foolish to use an immortal fire when my energy was that unstable, of course that would lead to a highly unstable immortal fire spell which would be nearly impossible to control properly. Maybe if I put it together with Crush 'Em the gravity could pull the full force of the immortal fire to one target with more accuracy… maybe if I… but I didn't have time to ponder other ideas before I woke.

I felt my dream slipping, too, so I did the time dilation trick I learned from Allura, causing the dream to stabilize. Good… at least that seemed somewhat consistent… So my next goal was to go see MoSh… I focused on opening a portal… I opened a portal and went through it into MoSh's inner world…

I stepped out into MoSh's inner world and looked around for MoSh. I looked at his house which was where I have come to expect to see it. I instinctively knew it was his, but it didn't seem to look the same. It was hard to describe the differences… and it wasn't negative in any way, everything was still very nice, it was just a bit different. I didn't have to go over to the door, MoSh came out to me. He asked if I was ready to go view the scene with Castaneda. I said sure, but I did need to be sure of where we were going. MoSh said that was no problem, he would get us there. I could open the portal, and he would guide it. I said that was fine with me, and then I opened a portal, focusing on letting MoSh guide it. When it opened, both MoSh and I went through…

On the other side we were in a desert. I looked around the desert. The sun was bright and hot. I was a bit surprised at the surroundings. I told MoSh I thought there was supposed to be a waterfall or something… MoSh said there was. I said I didn't see any water anywhere near us… He looked perplexed. He said we must have ended up in the wrong place. I told him we could just try again. I was going to focus on another portal when the ground started to shake. Some big things erupted out of the ground. They looked like the graboid creatures from the movie Tremors… and there were two of them.

What the fuck? MoSh looked up at them, and they completely distracted me from opening a portal. One of them tried to grab me in its enormous mouth, apparently thinking I would make a good snack. I formed Witchblade into a sword and attacked it back, getting up on top of its back by flying. MoSh had changed into his naga form and was attacking the other one. This thing didn't have a head to cut off… but it also didn't appreciate being stabbed with a sword that increased in length to be long enough to go all of the way through it. The thing took off at full speed across the desert with me on its back, holding on to the sword to keep from being thrown off. I pulled the sword out and jumped off of the graboid, hitting the ground and rolling before returning to MoSh.

I didn't see the other graboid, but I didn't know where it had gone. MoSh was in his human form again. I asked if he was ready to stop playing with giant underground worms and go do our viewing. He said yes. I was about to open a portal when I saw something around MoSh's feet… a smaller graboid?!

It wrapped around MoSh's foot, but I just cut it off . A couple more of them reached out of the ground for us, but MoSh and I quickly took care of them. Now MoSh was looking at something behind me. I wondered what. He wasn't saying anything, he was just pointing. I turned around to look behind me and I saw the granddaddy of all graboids was rearing up and towering over us… that thing was about twice the size of the other ones, and it was pissed off.

It was towering over us about as big as the tower at the biodome… which is quite tall… I was considering what action would be best to deal with this… most likely to just open a portal and leave it be, after all, this was the graboids' home, not ours… when someone appeared… and he created some kind of spinning disc blades from the air, cutting the graboid down… He asked if we were ok, MoSh was staring at him like he thought it was an alien from space. I looked closer and thought I recognized him… but I couldn't place it… I thanked him for helping, then he disappeared.

MoSh wanted to know what the fuck that was. I said I wasn't sure, but I thought I had recognized that guy… I said let's go before we draw the attention of every single graboid on the planet. I opened a portal and we went through it… we ended up back in MoSh's inner world. Ok… let's try that again. I focused on opening a portal, trying to remember what MoSh had told me the location was like. I remembered a waterfall… but that was all I remembered! Dammit! A portal opened, MoSh and I went through it.

MoSh and I were back on the desert planet. Ok… I hadn't been completely sure of where I was going, but I had absolutely not focused on coming here again… I looked around, wondering if I could find any reason why we were here again! There were more graboids. I didn't really want to fight more graboids… I had drawn the conclusion this was their world, and we were the intruders, so I thought avoiding them would be best. I got MoSh's attention as the graboid attacked us, also apparently thinking we looked like a tasty morsel. I pulled MoSh out of the way. The graboid turned and was coming at us again… then it got nailed with a bunch of ice spears, and it disappeared. Wtf? I looked around and saw the same guy I had seen before, giving us a dirty look. I focused on recognizing him… Walms! I did know him! I was about to say something to him when he asked why we had been attacked. I was going to say we looked too much like graboid snack food when the scene around us shifted…

MoSh was getting quite frustrated. He was upset that we hadn't ended up viewing the Castaneda scene we had been aiming for. I wondered what kept getting in the way. I wondered where Walms had gone… or rather where we had gone. I wondered if whoever had teleported us had also teleported Walms… I looked around, wondering if there were any graboids here… then Walms was there with us. Ok, well at least he was in the same place. He came over closer to us and proceeded to give me some dark energy… um… I didn't really need any dark energy, but ok… He put dark energy in MoSh…

"Hey!" I said to him, "What did you do that…" and then he was gone, "for… um… Never mind." I went over to MoSh and focused on taking the dark energy out of MoSh, replacing it with light. Why had Walms attacked MoSh? That didn't make any sense… I thought MoSh and Walms had been friends since quite a while before I started talking to / sharing dreams with Walms… MoSh looked a bit disoriented. He asked what that had been. I told him he'd gotten dark energy, I had taken it out. It felt like the dream was slipping again. I remembered that last time I had been unable to do a second time dilation, so this time I didn't even try. I told MoSh I was waking up. I opened a portal back to his inner world. We went through it. MoSh said maybe he could dilate time… I told him I had already done that in this dream, and last time it hadn't worked twice… He said he was going to try anyway. I don't know if it worked for him or not because I woke.

I was floating in space next to Q. I was already lucid. I'm not sure how I had gotten to that place, but I felt perfectly at home floating in the vastness of space. I looked around to see where in space I was. I saw there was a binary star nearby. It was very bright, so I didn't want to look directly at it. Both of the stars in the system were yellow stars. Q told me that one of them was about the size of Earth's sun, the other one slightly smaller. I could see a planet not far off. It was a terrestrial planet, a large round chunk of rock in space. I could see it was covered in craters and it didn't look habitable. I asked Q if that was a planet I could go to. Q said since it is a dream, I could go wherever I wanted. I thought for a minute… I had not asked the question I wanted to ask. I asked if there was any chance life could develop on the planet. Q looked at the planet and shook his head. He said he didn't see life forming. He said the planet is considerably hotter than Mercury, no atmosphere, temperature on the day side averaging around 1000° F and the temperatures on the night side averaging as low as -500° F. He said there was another planet I might want to take a look at, though.

Q teleported both of us instantly farther away from the pair of stars. This was another terrestrial planet, and it had a ring around it. I could also see a somewhat dusty atmosphere. Q pointed at the planet. He said that one was closer to Earth, with the temperatures being just a bit warmer there on average, it had a thin atmosphere so the temperature extremes were more than on Earth but not as extreme as on the first planet ranging from -110° F on the coldest nights at the poles during winter to 247° F in the hottest regions during the summer. He suggested we go see the surface of the planet. We flew down to the planet, through the thin atmosphere and landed on a ground made of soft dirt. I was surprised the dirt was so loose. Q said it was loose because there hadn't been any rain to wet it so it could be packed down tightly. I looked across the barren landscape. The dunes of dirt everywhere… there were rock mountains not very far away. It didn't look like it could support any form of life as it exists on Earth.

I asked Q if this one would have life develop on it. Q said unfortunately it is sterile. Completely sterile. He said a massive solar flare from one of the stars had irradiated the planet and the building blocks of life were no longer there. I asked if he couldn't restore life, or the possibility of life. He said he's not supposed to interfere like that. I asked what if I could figure something out. He said I have free will, so I can do whatever I want there. I looked around. The only thing there seemed to be plenty of was dirt and sunlight. I asked Q if some plant life could get the process of evolving life going here. He said plants would be a good place for life to start here. It certainly wouldn't be fish… I looked around some more. Whatever plant I put here would have to be able to live through anything, in the harshest conditions. I asked Q what the air was made of. He said carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen primarily. Carbon dioxide… plants can use that… release oxygen… Oxygen bonds with hydrogen to make water… it seemed like that could start a cycle of developing life. But what kind of plant could live in this kind of harsh environment long enough to get that process started? I thought more, I found myself thinking of Walms. Why was I thinking of Walms? I remembered he planted some plants in the biodome. For some reason I was thinking that a plant created by Walms should be able to survive anywhere. I suggested that plant to Q, and he said it sounded like an excellent choice.

So Q teleported both of us to the biodome. I looked where he indicated. There wasn't just a few small flowers… it was a miniature jungle of flowers. Apparently Walms' flowers had done very well in the biodome. Of course the biodome has very favorable conditions for plants, unlike the dead planet Q and I had been on… I went to the jungle of flowers and looked at a fairly small one, but it looked big enough to be well developed. I started carefully digging. The dream was still very vivid. I was noting the feel of the soil as I dug carefully around the plant's roots, making sure not to damage any of them. The root system was well developed… and it was moving on its own… and it bit me! I pulled it off of my arm and held the flower in such a way that the roots couldn't bite me again. I looked at the active roots… I should have expected something like that on a plant created by Walms… I asked Q if he was sure the flower could survive on that dead planet. He said he could guarantee it. He said if it couldn't, he would have told me when I suggested the plants. I carefully collected five more plants, being careful not to get bitten again… and then went back to Q. I was ready to go back to the planet, the six were about all I could keep at once without being bitten.

Q teleported us back to the surface of the planet. He said there were places to put the flower so it wouldn't get buried in the drifts of dirt. He said it would most likely still survive and pop out after the wind storm passed, but this would give it a better advantage. We were in an area that was sheltered by rock mountains, and there was very little wind here. I got down on my knees and dug at the dirt. It was very dry and very loose. And it felt so very real. Of course it was real. I set one of the plants down beside me to dig the hole to plant it in. As soon as I set the plant down, however, the roots dug into the dirt on their own. The thing had just planted itself! So there it was, one pretty flower in the otherwise barren dirt. I went to plant another, but Q said to spread them out to make things move along more quickly. I got up and was ready to leave. Q said he thought the plant could use a bit of energy to get it started… like plants on Earth would use a bit of fertilizer to get started… I was going to use normal healing energy, but Q stopped me again. He told me not to forget who had made these flowers. I got the idea, and I gave the plant some dark energy. It immediately looked stronger. I saw inside the flower the name 'Walms' was now clearly visible. I got a brief image of a race of people developing on the planet, discovering this flower was where life had started, calling the flowers the flowers of life and worshipping Walms… and that image was a bit disturbing… oh, well. Odds were any people developing there probably wouldn't even recognize those marks as letters.

Q and I went around the planet and planted the other flowers, or rather I let them plant themselves… gave them some dark energy, and then Q and I stood and looked at the sixth flower. It seemed six flowers weren't nearly enough to populate the planet with plant life. I told Q maybe we should bring some more. He said it wasn't necessary, but if I wanted to… Q said the planet already had a bright future… but for one problem. He teleported us to space near the planet. He said it was on a degrading orbit, and would fall into one of the suns soon. Great… nice time to tell me that… He reached out towards the planet. From my perspective it looked like he was giant and he was moving the planet with his hands. He shifted it a bit farther from the suns and said that looked good. He said that was a stable orbit for the planet. I said I thought he wasn't supposed to interfere. He said tapping it into a stable orbit is nothing compared to bringing life forms to it… He teleported us back to the biodome.

I looked at the jungle of flowers again. I saw something farther in… it looked like a light. I wondered what that was. I crawled into the jungle of flowers, pushing towards the light. It seemed to be moving as I approached it. I kept crawling and finally I reached the edge of the flower jungle and fell out, about two and a half feet down to the floor… I was awake now. I looked back at my bed. I had been crawling through the blankets instead of the flowers, and I had fallen right out of bed. Ow… I now believed I was awake, so I lost lucidity.

FA - I got up and went to the other room. I picked up my fluffy white kitty Princess and went into my mother's room to say good morning to her. She asked what had happened, she had heard the thud. I told her I had been dreaming and I had fallen out of bed. I sat down in the desk chair and turned to look at her… and noticed for the first time she was holding and stroking a chicken. A white chicken. Wtf? I asked her where she had gotten the chicken… she said we had always had the chicken. I asked her why she was petting a chicken. She said it had gotten stressed out, and she was trying to soothe the chicken into laying an egg. She said she wanted eggs for breakfast, but the chicken was too stressed to lay an egg now, so she was trying to get the chicken relaxed enough to lay an egg. She said if I wanted eggs, it would be up to me to soothe the chicken enough so it would lay another egg. I was just sitting there staring at my mom, with a cat in my arms, as my mom stroked the chicken and spoke soothingly to it… It was here that I woke for real.