New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

09/25/13

Dark Tower: Vampire
I am in a dark place, on a long road. I look around to see where I am. I am not alone there. Roland, Susanna, and Eddie are standing in front of me several paces. Where's Jake? I have the idea I have missed some of the story… Jake should be here. Did I somehow lose Jake? It is sort of cold. Not really a physical cold. More of a cold that extends into the heart and freezes it there. Roland is pulling a cart of some kind with all their stuff on it. Oy trots over beside Roland and snuggles up a bit as if to try to keep Roland warm. Roland picks up the bumbler and pets his soft fur. Eddie and Susanna are snuggled together for warmth, Eddie is carrying Susanna on his hip. I pull my white Assassin robes closer around me for warmth, but it does little good. I wish I had someone there for warmth… no one is there. I catch up with Roland and the others. Roland finally notices I have arrived. He says he had started to think I wasn't coming back. I say I have been having problems with dreaming lately, I haven't been able to do much. He looks at me strangely but says nothing more. Eddie and Susanna seem oblivious to my presence. I ask where Jake has gone. Roland looks sad and says Jake didn't make it. Now I want to kill someone. I find I am quite angry. How did I miss the time when I needed to be there to save Jake? This is absurd. There is snow on the ground, but I don't think that is the source of the cold. The cold is deep inside. It seems Roland has noticed my anger. He says he felt the same thing, too, wanted to kill the very writer he had gone to save… but it would have done no good. There are houses up ahead. One of them has lights on. We approach and see there is a man standing outside. He seems friendly. He greets us all in a cheerful manner. Something seems off about him. I feel like I want to punch him in the face. The man invites us all inside. I think it is a bad idea. I want to keep going. I don't want to stop here… unless it's to punch the jerk in the face. Not sure what is wrong with me. Is he being TOO nice somehow? He has a hideous skeletal horse type animal with him. I'm not sure if the animal is neglected and abused or if it might be somehow demonic. Everyone wants to go inside with the man. No one else seems to dislike him like I do. His house is a wreck but everyone acts as if it was delightful. Wtf? He tries to feed us crap. I turn it down, which surprises everyone some and seems to piss him off somehow. Everyone else eats it like it was fine dining.

Then the guy starts telling jokes. Dumb jokes. Jokes that even Eddie doesn't seem to find very funny. Though I think Roland is about to bust a gut. Susanna does bust something… a large pimple on her lip. It goes SPLAT and is apparently quite painful as she laughs so hard and for some reason smacks herself in the face like most people would smack themselves on the knee. Yuck. It bleeds all over the place as Eddie tries to stop the bleeding with a napkin… a dirty napkin. Double yuck! But everything in the house is dirty, so there's really nothing to be done for it. Roland finally stops laughing enough to notice. I go over to her and tell her I can heal that sore. She says I can't and heads off to the bathroom. Now I find I'm mad at her. I am just so pissed. I glare over at the man who is still trying to crack jokes but is being ignored for the time being. He looks different than a couple minutes ago. Younger? More healthy? It hits me… he's sucking energy like a fucking vampire. He is a fucking energy vampire. I go over to him and ask him if he is hungry. He says no, he had enough to eat at dinner. I say he looks like he needs dessert. He wants energy? Here… have some. I start pumping energy into the guy on purpose. He tries to block it out, tries to act confused… but he is transforming without seeming to be able to control it. Transforming into a strange demonic form.

Roland apparently is the fastest to react. He probably thinks I am being attacked, he pulls his revolver and blasts several shots right into the vampire's head, killing it instantly. I find I am pissed at Roland. I look over at him, glaring at him, but he just backs off a couple steps, asking if I am still me. I force myself to relax a bit and say I am fine. I hear a sound from what might be the basement. Susanna comes back out of the bathroom after hearing the gunfire. She looks at the dead vampire, who is now decaying into a zombie. We all go outside so we can find the entrance to the basement. Down underground we find a cage with a boy locked inside it. The boy cowers in the far corner, afraid. Has that vampire been feeding on this kid repeatedly? Probably. I think maybe I should heal him. But I don't get a chance to before I wake.

Note: I fell asleep this night with my energy in a very unstable state due to some problems I had during the evening. When I say unstable, I mean unstable to the point where I was not able to finish my evening class in school… I had to tell the instructor I wasn't feeling well and then leave early. While I had managed to calm down some by the time I went to bed, I was still very unstable. A large portion of my negative energy was directed at the Templars who have given me nightmares on the previous two nights… so my main plan was to kick Templar ass. I had this plan in mind when I fell asleep, but I was not successful in entering my WILD. Fortunately, my intentions were strong enough that I still ended up where I wanted to be…

I was in my room. I was in bed. I rolled over and thought about the events of the previous evening. I was a nice mixture of pissed off and depressed, basically quite unstable. I was thinking that was why I was being unable to sleep. I sat up in bed and stroked the kitty beside me. She purred. I got out of bed to use the bathroom. I thought I should try to stay in the habit of doing an RC when I wake up or get up in the night… even if I don't think I've been asleep… I did a nose-pinch RC and found that I was dreaming. I became fully lucid.

I thought about what I wanted to do… I was feeling pissed off… and I wanted someone to take that out on. Templars! They were the origin of my current problems, so I would take it all out on Templars! I had told them that continuing to disturb my dreams and turn them into them nightmares would result in serious consequences. Now it was time to deliver on those consequences. I focused on opening a portal to find a Templar base, I would go straight to them and have a kill fest right there in their base. The portal opened and I went through it.

I was now in a Templar base. There were Templars wandering around. They all were going about their own business. At first no one noticed me. Those were the bastards who had turned my past two nights' dreams into nightmares… they were the cause of the instability and the situation that had led to an argument between a friend and mine who had told me that he no longer wants to be my friend… I walked over to the Templar closest to me as the others moved out of sight. I could feel unstable dark energy inside of me… my energy had been unstable all evening, and now I could finally do something about it! I grabbed the Templar by the throat and slammed him against the wall. He let out a surprised 'glurk' but could not speak to alert the others. I squeezed his throat until I felt something get crushed, then I let him down. He grabbed his neck and was choking… he couldn't breathe… he coughed up blood, collapsed, and died.

One dead Templar was not nearly enough. Time to start killing them in larger numbers. I went into a room with two Templars there. A big guard and another who looked more like a scientist. I used Master of Puppets on the guard, and made him beat the other Templar to death. I then made him grab a scissors from a desk and imbed it into his own throat, followed by using the scissors to cut the wound larger. He pierced his own jugular vein and bled out . I continued through the base. I met several Templars in the halls. I stabbed each of them with my hidden blade before they realized I didn't belong there. I looked into a large control room. There were 15 Templars in there at control stations. I let a tendril of Witchblade out, it went through the room and pierced the throats of each Templar. The instant I retracted the tendril, the blood flowed freely and they all died.

As I continued on my way, I tried to think of a creative way to kill the next Templar… I found a lone Templar in the hall. He stopped and looked at me. I used Damage, Inc. to set him on fire. The Templar was quickly engulfed in flames. In a blind panic, he ran into another room with a number of Templars in it. He wanted someone to help him, but all he ended up accomplishing was to set several more of the Templars on fire… now there were five Templars panicking in the room, engulfed in flames and screaming in pain. That didn't last long; they all collapsed, dead. I killed the next few Templars I met with my Witchblade sword. Electrocuted a few with lightning. Crushed several more with gravity. And each Templar I killed was immensely satisfying. My unstable energy was simmering down to an icy rage.

It was around here that I thought I was waking up… but I wasn't finished getting my payback against these Templar assholes! I focused on Allura's method of time dilation and the dream stabilized.

I made my way down into a dungeon. That looked like the kind of place where they would carry out their tortures. There were hooks on the walls from which lanterns were hanging. I used telekinesis and lifted a Templar up, impaling him on a hook through his abdomen. He was still alive when I left him, coughing up blood as he tried to call for help. The next several Templars I came across met the same fate as the first one, hung from those iron lantern hooks. I found three more Templars near an open dungeon cell door. A couple of big guards and a smaller one. I could hear them talking, I could hear them clearly.

"Ok… when she gets here," the one said to the others, "You grab her like last time. All you have to do is chain her up in this room, and we'll let the rats do the rest." He laughed.

I was standing right beside the three Templars now, between the two larger guards while the smaller man was facing away from me, looking at a door. "So…" I said, "What's the plan here?"

"Weren't you listening at all?" the Templar said with some frustration, "You two grab Raven, chain her up in the dungeon, and then we watch the rats eat her alive! Now get it…" the Templar had been turning around, and was now facing me. There was a big guy on either side of me. "There she is right now! Grab her, you idiots!"

Each of the big Templars grabbed one of my arms and held on tight. I didn't even try to pull free. Time to activate Witchblade. Nothing happened. The smaller Templar held up a remote and laughed. He said the dampening field was up, so I could forget my little tricks. I told him it was their loss. Using Witchblade would have brought them to a much quicker death than the alternative… The smaller Templar told the other two to put me in the cell; the rats are hungry. He laughed again. I focused on controlling dark energy into tendrils. The tendrils wove from each of my arms and wrapped around the arms of the big guys beside me. At first they didn't seem to notice. Then both of them started screaming and let go of me… or they tried to let go. Each of them had a black tendril boring its way into their arm. Each attempt to pull free resulted in more pain.

The third Templar just stood there and stared at us for a bit, muttering something about the dampening field he had mentioned before. He pulled out a sword and was apparently intent on just killing me so I would wake up and be away from them. A third dark energy tendril snaked out of where my 3rd eye would be and wrapped around the sword. The Templar dropped the sword and turned to run down the hall. The tendril was faster, and it bored its way into the Templar's back. Armor was nothing to the dark energy tendril. All three of the Templars were now screaming in pain. Their screams brought more Templars to see what was happening. The tendrils that attached me to the three separated, and I was able to direct those tendrils and more at the arriving Templars. Most of them didn't have a chance to react… a couple tried to cut the tendrils with swords, but that was completely ineffective. So soon all of the Templars in the room, the three I had found there plus 12 who had come to check it out, were writhing on the ground in pain.

I went over to the Templar who had been telling the big stupid ones the plan. He was grimacing in pain and clutching his abdomen. I kicked him there and lifted him up. I told him I knew he would wake up soon, but for his sake he had better have learned a valuable lesson… don't fuck with me. And don't go back to fucking with any of my friends, either. Harm one of them and the results will be the same, maybe worse. Get the picture? He cursed at me. I slammed him against the wall and said if he was still failing to get it, there's a lot more trouble where this came from. So stay away from me, stay away from my friends, or there would be consequences. I dropped him on the ground where he continued to writhe in pain. I wasn't sure what the dark energy tendrils were doing… or maybe I was… they were eating the Templars alive from the inside out. Well, they had intended for me to be eaten alive, so their plan backfired.

I went into the dungeon cell and looked around. Chains and shackles on the floor clearly meant to chain a prisoner so they couldn't move… cages with horribly underfed rats inside them; add animal cruelty to the list of Templar offenses… I felt my dark energy. It still felt like an icy rage… I was glad the Templars were in pain. But not the animals… they had done nothing. I opened the cages. The rats weren't in such bad condition that they couldn't make a run for it when given the chance. They ran for the cell door and out it. I heard more screams from the Templars. I glanced out and saw some of the rats were on various Templars. The Templars seemed nearly immobilized with pain from the dark energy tendrils… and now there were rats on them. A rat chewing on a Templar's ear, a rat chewing on a Templar's cheek, a rat chewing on a Templar's nose… The rats would be fed… but it was fresh Templar on the menu… I shut the cell door and was waiting to wake up. Now I was alone in the dark room with nothing but the background sounds of Templar pain.

I was waiting in the dark room to wake up. The icy rage inside me made the Templars' dying gasps of pain sound like wonderful music… then there was silence. Ok… now to wake up? Maybe that dampening field was still there and I would have to leave here by normal means and then wake up… I formed a fireball in my hand… my abilities seemed to be working fine.

"Raven!" came a voice from behind me. Wtf? Who had found me here? I turned and looked behind me, I saw MoSh was in the room with me. The icy rage I had felt inside had been starting to subside… but suddenly it surged back again, almost as strong as it had ever been. Now it was MoSh's turn… I would see him writhing on the ground in pain… I would… wait… no… I turned my gaze back to the blank dark stone wall. Watching Templars suffer… ok. But not MoSh… no. I focused on that blank stone wall and on The Curse by Disturbed, must stabilize the dark energy. It'd had its fun with the Templars… and that's all it was going to get. MoSh was saying something about dark energy and an attack. I said that telling me to stay out of his dreams doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he is just going to come into mine. He said he needed my help to stop the dark energy something… I said if there was a dark energy threat, get Walms or Tigress… and if it was simply an extremely powerful threat of any kind, get Vegeta… but don't stay here. My energy is currently about as stable as nitroglycerin… well shaken nitroglycerin, and could blow at any moment. And it was getting very unstable… it hadn't been very unstable earlier because I had been working with it to eliminate Templars, but now I was actively fighting it… and that was creating instability.

That was it… I wouldn't be able to keep it inside any longer. I turned back towards MoSh… who took a step back when he saw how crazed I probably looked… I opened a vortex portal right next to MoSh that led back to his inner world, used telekinesis to push him through, closed it behind him and then BOOM! There was an explosion… and then I was no longer standing in a Templar base… now I was standing in a crater… um… ok… I hadn't realized the explosion would be quite that bad… although the icy rage was completely gone now. Completely vented off against the Templars. I looked around the crater… I didn't think a single Templar could have survived… which brought me to a chuckle. But I felt stable. Finally it felt completely under control. Now that control was restored everything faded and I woke.