New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I was in my inner world, in the area that has been set aside for the child, Dela, who I brought back from a place where everyone was convinced she was some kind of demon. When I found her, she was playing some rather nasty games with a couple of my DC's that had been placed there to keep her company. There was a male DC there, he was screaming and scratching at his own skin, and I could see something moving under there… just then he managed to scratch all the way through the skin on his arm, and in addition to blood coming out, a bunch of bugs came out, an assortment of bugs including beetles, centipedes, maggots, flies… a bunch of them… came out of the wound, his entire body was filled with the things… He was screaming in terror as more of them came out of his mouth, muffling his screams… There was also a woman there, she had a sharp knife and she was very slowly and deliberately peeling off her own skin. She wasn't screaming or making a single sound, but she had a rather realistic look of terror and pain on her face, especially for a DC. I had to double check the two just to be sure they were really just DC's, the small amount of energy they had was consistent with my own DC's. I dispelled the DC's and told Dela to stop doing that. Her response was that she was bored, and she didn't know any other way these dummies could keep her entertained. She added that it's not like they're really alive or anything…

Well, I couldn't deny that, but what I was hoping to do was help her get control of her dark energy so she wouldn't have the need to go around doing such things, at least not randomly. She would at least reserve the nastiness for those who deserve it. She said that since I had come, perhaps I would find some way to entertain her for a while… after all, aren't mothers supposed to entertain their daughters? There she went calling me her mother again… even though I wasn't really. It was almost like she read those thoughts, because she added that of course I was her mother… I had adopted her, hadn't I? Sure, I wasn't around much, but even that was more than her real parents had done, they had been too scared to be around her, they thought shutting her in the basement would keep them safe… but they had eventually learned. So how about me? She asked if I was too scared to fulfill my motherly duties, to spend a bit of quality time with her daughter? She said she also didn't like being kept in this place full of dummies, she wanted to be moved somewhere else right away. She said being around only these drones could make a girl downright antisocial… I thought she seemed antisocial enough. I told her there were some things I was going to try to teach her, but she immediately laughed at that idea and said there was nothing she could possibly learn from me… cocky brat… I asked if she really wanted to leave this place full of drones and be around real people again, she said of course. I said that as long as she cooperated with her lessons, she could do that. She gave me a dirty look for a bit, then a contemplating look, then apparently decided to play along.

So since I wasn't feeling drained right then, I took her out into an open area of the containment area and focused on setting up a flow of dark energy between us, the idea was basically the same as when Walms had given me the first amount of his stable dark energy since the only dark energy that had ever been inside me had been unstable. So we ended up making a game out of it, a form of tag actually. The goal of the game was to peg the opponent with a ball of dark energy while avoiding getting pegged by absorbing the opponent's energy ball before it reached you. It seemed a good way to get her to expend some of her unstable dark energy at me while allowing her to absorb some stable dark energy. It became quite an interesting game, actually, playing it throughout the containment area Dela had been living in, efficiently exchanging dark energy. I would send her a stable energy ball, she would absorb it and then send an unstable one back, which I would absorb and stabilize. The plan had been to make sure she was able to absorb most of my energy balls, but she was able to do most of it on her own, she was already quite good at sensing when there was energy approaching her. This actually made for a quite fun game.

When the game was ending, it was clear that Dela was expecting me to take her somewhere there would be real people instead of just the drone DC's. I told her she was not to attack any of the real people outside of this containment area, since they weren't simple DC's. She said of course she wouldn't attack anyone, as long as they were nice to her. I wondered what qualifications she had for counting them as nice… did she expect people to do everything she told them to do? She would find an unpleasant surprise if that was what she was thinking… since most of the people in my inner world… actually all of the ones who stay on permanent basis… are familiar with dark energy and able to handle it. I opened a portal and took her to Vegeta's house, I figured he could even help her with controlling her energy. Serena was outside with the twins, Gene and Amanda, and Vegeta was demonstrating something to the twins. I went over to them and asked if Vegeta and Serena would mind keeping an eye on one more, Serena got a big smile on her face. She asked who the pretty girl there with me was. She scoffed at the compliment, I told Serena it was Dela, and Dela would need a place to stay while she was learning control over her dark energy. Vegeta looked at her and said she would learn it fast enough here. Dela gave me a dirty look and said I wouldn't get away with just dumping her off on someone else. I told her I wasn't dumping her off, but since this is my dream self and I would have to wake up, I wouldn't be able to stay with her all the time. She looked a bit perplexed at that comment, I told her Vegeta and Serena could explain… I was about to wake up. And then I did wake.

Note: Tonight's goals included further training with Vegeta, to which MoSh wanted to come… I wanted to search for Xildron, about whom I learned from another dreamer. Now that I have a bit more information about him I wanted to try to search for him. I also have the continuing goals of completing the tasks of the year, sharing a DDO dream with Tigress where both of us remember, and trying to get more healing dreams in like I used to… of course this can be done in conjunction with other goals… With my goals in mind, I slipped into a WILD…

As I entered my WILD I took a few minutes to look around. I found myself in MoSh's inner world looking at MoSh's house which was, once again, completely different than when I last saw it. I took only a couple minutes to look at MoSh's brand new house, who is it that keeps giving him new houses all of the time, anyway, before going up to the door and knocking. The door opened and MoSh greeted me as he came out onto the porch. When he said to open a portal, however, I stopped him there and said he really needed to take a look at his own house from the outside. He asked why, he wouldn't remember it anyway. I said it is possible that he would remember the house… I was going to hope he would, anyway.

MoSh followed me out onto the grass in front of his house where a black dog ran over to greet us looking happy. I turned MoSh around and pointed at his house. It looked a lot like this picture except the front porch was larger as was the deck above it, and there were curved bay windows on either side of the front door. Asuka was on the deck over the front entry area, calling down to MoSh and waving to him; she called out a hello to me, as well. MoSh turned around and surveyed the house, paused to pet the dog, surveyed the house again, then turned to me. He said it is nice, asked what the big deal was. I told him it wasn't the same house as it had been on past days. He seemed to brush that idea off and said of course it was the same house, houses don't just up and change of their own accord, do they? I opened a portal to the area outside of Vegeta's house after figuring I wasn't going to get anything else out of MoSh.

MoSh and I stepped out of the portal to find we were face to face with Vegeta, who had apparently been there waiting for us. I asked how long he had been waiting; I didn't really want to train with a cranky Vegeta who had been waiting too long… He said that of course he had just come out when he felt our energy approaching. He had returned a short time ago from Walms' place, where he had found Walms this time, though he was not convinced Walms had been up to his usual standard of lucidity. I commented to him that if Walms was dreaming, there was somewhere around a 95% chance he was lucid. But apparently Vegeta didn't want to take any time up with discussing how lucid or non-lucid Walms might have been… he was ready to get straight to business. He had us do some speed tests. I watched MoSh fly through them at such speeds I could hardly see him move at all, I was sure I was nowhere near that fast. Vegeta came over to me and looked at me as if he had just heard that thought. He said that to begin with, I am not in competition with MoSh… and second, if I could see myself move I would see pretty much the same thing, so stop focusing on MoSh and focus on my own training.

The next part of the training was with both Vegeta and Serena as we moved onto swords. This part of the training involved using swords only, not to be supplemented by any powers or aids, so that immediately ruled out the using of my Witchblade sword, which was a bit disappointing. Instead, Serena brought out a pair of swords that were identical to each other, handing one of them to MoSh and one of them to me as she arrived. She then proceeded to demonstrate her skill on a fighting dummy, executing some flashy moves I have never seen before, but it looked like she hadn't even touched the dummy. It looked like she hadn't touched the dummy, that is, until she was done and the dummy turned to pieces almost as small as dust. Having demonstrated her speed and skill, we moved on to training on various sword techniques with Serena and Vegeta's help. The training included some fighting more dummies, some sparring between MoSh and myself; I changed one of the dummies into Dennis before hacking it to bits, but Vegeta seemed to think that was more of a distraction than a motivation. With Vegeta's time dilation we got a good training session in.