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.

02/15/13

Zombies in the Dark
I am in a strange place… it is totally dark, or almost totally dark. I wait for a couple minutes and my eyes seem to adjust to the lack of light. I am in what looks like an underground sewer system. There is a small amount of water sitting in the bottom of the passage. I look around and I see I am not alone there. MoSh is there with me. I wonder if I have managed to end up in a Dark Tower dream as well. I see a small animal pass through a cross passage up ahead. I recognize the animal as a billy-bumbler, an animal from the Dark Tower world.

Shortly after the billy-bumbler passes I see a man pass, and I recognize Roland. It seems I have ended up just where I wanted to be for a change! I tell MoSh we should catch up with Roland and see if there's anything he needs help with. Before we can act on that, however, there is a slumped figure slinking after Roland. Then another one. The figures are vaguely humanoid, though they seem as comfortable on all fours as they would be on two legs, maybe more so. A third one comes to the intersection and looks towards us. The eyes are glowing gold in the darkness, and the thing hisses menacingly.

It has sharp teeth that look more appropriate to a shark than a person. It charges at MoSh and me, hissing and snarling. When it jumps to attack us I make sure it lands on my hidden blade. It keeps pushing towards me for a bit longer, snarling and hissing and spitting gross stuff all over me before it dies. It looks and smells like a zombie. I tell MoSh we should get the other two before they try to sneak up on Roland. I don't know what the odds of sneaking up on Roland really are, but I don't like the idea of firing a gun down there… the walls look ready to collapse at the least disturbance. MoSh agrees and we hurry on to follow the two that went after Roland. By the time we catch up I see that Roland has killed one of them with his knife and is facing off against the second. Apparently they failed to sneak up on him. Oy is hiding behind Roland. MoSh comes up behind the second one and takes it out with what looks like a large knife. Roland asks who is there. I answer and tell him it's Raven and MoSh. Roland says he could sense someone there but couldn't see who it is. I tell him there are some mutants creeping in the sewers with us, but we should keep going to find Jake, MoSh and I would help keep the creatures off of Roland and Oy. As we travel, Roland confirms the part of the book we are in, but is then interrupted by some bad singing… followed by even worse singing… Roland says that was Jake. I hear something moving in a passage to the right and I turn just in time to meet a mutant attacking me with a hidden blade to the neck. Roland asks if I can actually see them. I tell him I have good night vision… at least in dreams I do. I hear MoSh fighting one in the other direction, he returns soon. He says they are mean. I ask if he got bitten, for some reason I think it would be bad to get bitten. He says no. Oy is getting impatient. It seems like we have been going in the dark for a long time when there starts to be a bit of light. Oy indicates we have to go down to a lower level. We descend a ladder into a long hallway that ends with a door like might be found on a ship. I remember that Jake is just on the other side of the door. Roland tries the valve, but it is tight. He looks around and spots a vent shaft, then tells Oy to go and look and come back. The billy-bumbler seems glad to cooperate and hurries into the vent when Roland boosts him up to it. I wonder if any of the mutants will come this far into the light. I never get to find out because I wake.

For the Love of Alex
I am lying on my own bed, feeling particularly lonely. I am not lucid to begin with, so I just lie there wondering if there is anyone out in the world who would be a match for me. I am thinking there is not. I finally get up and leave my room to find my mother using an elliptical exercise machine in the living room. The living room is much larger than it is in my waking life, and there are so many exercise machines that I can't even see the furniture. My mom says if we are to watch tv we will be exercising. I think this is odd. I finally do a RC by pinching my nose. I can still breathe. I am dreaming! I go outside and look around, trying to think of what I want to do. I think I could complete a task… either a task of the month or of the year. Since I was feeling lonely I decide on a task of the month… get a cupid to make a celebrity fall in love with me. And I know just the celebrity. Now to find him… I fly towards town where there are more people, so there is a better chance of finding who I am looking for.

I soon spot him. Alex O'Laughlin. He looks like he did in the series Moonlight. Now for a cupid… I focus on summoning one. A cherub appears, hovering in front of me with a bow and arrow ready.

The arrow has a heart on the end of it. The cherub is actually a bit cranky, and impatiently asks who it is I want to fall in love with me. I point at Alex O'Laughlin. The cherub laughs and says me and every other woman… but I got to him first. He fires his arrow at Alex. The arrow hits Alex in the left shoulder blade and then fades to nothing. Alex looks over at me, I notice the cherub has already disappeared. Alex stares at me for a bit and then comes right over to me and kisses me square on the lips. It is a warm and passionate kiss. Beth, the reporter who falls in love with Mick St. John, is staring, incredulous like she can't believe her eyes. I kiss him back, and we are kissing for a good length of time before I get too excited at what could happen and I wake up.

02/10/13

Human Vampire
I am flying over the Nile river in Egypt, looking down at the green foliage and sandy beaches. I make note of the fact this is the first time for quite a while that I have been able to enter a dream through this method. I fly off over the desert towards the pyramids. I realize there are people following me on the ground. I identify them as Templars. I don't really want to deal with Templars right now. I remember a task of the month for DV, however, is simply to give a flower to the next DC I see. I fly back to the banks of the Nile and look for a flower. I find a pretty one and I pick it before flying back to where I spotted the Templars.

I scan them from above and select one that looks kind of hot. They are approaching me, but I ignore most of them and land directly in front of the one Templar I have chosen. All of the Templars surround me, there are about ten of them, but I am focused on the one. I walk over to him and tell him that this is all a bit awkward… but I think he's hot. I hand him the flower with a smile. He just looks confused. Another Templar grabs the flower away, throws it on the ground, and stomps on it a few times. He says it was probably poisoned. I tell him he's just jealous because he didn't get one. I figure I have completed the task, so I focus on opening a portal to somewhere I need to be. A portal opens, and I go through it before the Templars can interfere. I close it immediately behind me. I find I am now on a dark street. There are several people there. They are in a fight. One of them looks like Alex O'Laughlin. He's so hot.

There are two other guys there fighting him, and they seem to be kicking his ass. I think that is strange since he looks like he did when he was a vampire in Moonlight, he should be kicking ass. Mick's ex-wife, Coraline, is also there. I wonder if this is the brief period where Mick was human but got in a fight with a couple of vampires. Coraline says she will give them what they want if they just leave Mick alone. Mick has just gotten thrown up against a dumpster, so I get between him and the vampire thugs and tell Coraline not to give them anything, I have a different deal for them… leave Mick alone and I leave them in one piece. One of them, a vampire that has one solid black eye, sniffs the air and tells me to stay out of what I don't understand. I tell them not to underestimate what they don't understand. The vampire says he's a little hungry anyway and grabs me like he thinks it will be easy. I twist his arm around and kick him away from me, which clearly takes him by surprise. I tell them it is their last chance. The vampire with one eye says to kill the fucking bitch. They both come at me. I form Witchblade into a sword and remove both of their heads, both heads have a permanent look of shock on them. Coraline asks how I did that, how could any human do that. I go over to Mick and focus some healing energy into him. I remember he will be a vampire again before too long, but for now he needs healing. I am gazing into Mick St. John's eyes when I wake up.

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 had said something about checking back on MoSh to see if he wanted to go on an adventure, but I figured I could accomplished another task of the month for Mortal Mist in the process. I would go through a mirror to get back to the biodome!

So with the goal of going through a mirror to get back into the biodome, and thus back to MoSh, I summoned a mirror right in front of Pablo and myself. The mirror was a full body mirror, oval in shape, and it was sitting up off of the ground on a stand. It would easily make a large enough portal for Pablo and me to go through. I am not very familiar with using mirrors for travel, so I tried a couple of times… I tried touching the mirror… it was solid. I then focused on making the surface of the mirror fluid, picturing it as if it weren't solid but instead was the perfectly still surface of a pool of water, so when it was touched it would ripple. I visualized that clearly in my mind and then reached out and touched the mirror again. I got the ripples I was looking for. So now I just had to set the destination. I focused on the portal leading to the hot springs in the biodome. As I was focusing, the mirror changed from a still reflective surface to an actual portal in the mirror… I thought that looked really cool, a wormhole starting at the mirror… so I picked up the Pablo fox, held him close against my body so we wouldn't possibly get separated, and stepped through the mirror into the wormhole.

The ride through the wormhole was a rather wild one, like going on a really intense roller coaster… only much faster than any roller coaster I have ever experienced. The wormhole seemed awfully long considering that the distance between the surface of the moon and the biodome isn't that far… It seemed to me that in that case it was senseless to use a wormhole since it seemed to be taking much longer than just teleporting there or using a normal portal. But whatever, I wasn't in a huge hurry, and the ride was rather fun… or at least I thought it was fun… the fox in my arms looked a little nauseated… and then we finally came out the other side of the portal… and fell down over a desert, I landed on the back of a horse… wtf? I was on Stardust's back, Pablo was clinging to me, no doubt as surprised by this turn of events as I was. I looked around and saw I wasn't alone, Nomad was with us… so was Angel… and MoSh… and Altaïr… Spike… they were also riding horses… and we were being chased by Templars also on horses… what the hell was going on here? I had set a portal to go to the biodome and now I was here…

Ok, while I wasn't sure what was going on or how I had ended up here, it was pretty clear that I would have to fight the Templars… I rode over closer to MoSh and asked him what was going on, had Nomad found him in the biodome? Were Asuka and the kids ok? He gave me a strange look, but I didn't have time to think about that, Templars were shooting arrows at us. I moved away from MoSh and started throwing fireballs at the Templars. Nomad was throwing white blasts of energy, MoSh was throwing what looked like small daggers that were sparking with a green light… We were doing that, then suddenly Angel jumped from her horse, pulled out a couple of short swords, and proceeded to hop from horse to horse, killing the Templar on the back of each horse before moving on. She soon got back to the rest of us and got back on her horse, which had continued running the whole time. I used Battery and called down lightning to strike as many Templars as possible, taking them out while leaving their mounts unharmed. I didn't want to hurt the horses… We rode farther across the desert until we came to an enormous sink hole… we got off our horses to investigate. The horses were getting fatigued, well Stardust wasn't, but the others just had normal horses… I looked and saw the Templars' horses had continued following us even though they had no riders. I focused on teleporting them… not sure where, but I could see that it had lots of green grass and plentiful water… it looked like paradise for horses. All of the horses disappeared, including Stardust.

Nomad was looking down into the sinkhole with obvious interest, he said he wanted to jump in it. I asked why, pointing out we had no idea where it might lead, he said it didn't matter since we were dreaming and could not be hurt. I felt movement under my Assassin's robes, which I was finally able to take the time to notice I had the Assassin's robes on, and I realized Pablo had burrowed down under the robes to where he apparently felt safe… or as safe as possible. All of the others were dressed in Assassin's robes, too. Altaïr commented that not all of them were dreamers, Angel, Spike, and himself were not dreaming… but at the same time he didn't really have any objections to exploring someplace new… he did that all the time. What's the worst that could happen? MoSh said death, Altaïr said no, death is not the worst thing that can happen, some things are much worse than death. Spike said he couldn't die since he was already dead. Nomad had already made up his mind and jumped into the sinkhole, I figured I had better follow him, and everyone else apparently decided to follow the both of us.

The sand was flowing through a hole at the bottom and into a cave underneath, I grabbed onto a ledge with a tendril of Witchblade… and felt claws digging into my stomach as Pablo grabbed onto me with his claws… then some weight hanging off of me as Altaïr had grabbed hold of me… Spike flew over the hole in the ground and landed on solid ground at the opening of a cave. Altaïr jumped to that ledge and also climbed out, Angel floated over there, Nomad and MoSh both flew over and Witchblade pulled me up with the tendril. So now we were all in the entrance of a cave watching sand fall past us just outside the cave… it seemed the sand must eventually stop, there couldn't be an infinite amount of sand… but the only way for us to go was forward.

I took a couple minutes to disengage Pablo's claws from my stomach… ow… and then I set the fox down, he immediately changed into a state that was half human and half fox, looking something like Fox McCloud from the Starfox games. He looked over at me and said he was sorry about the thing with the claws, it had just been an instinctive reaction, I told him not to worry about it as I quickly healed the stinging cuts in my stomach. So the group of us started walking down the passage, through the dark caves, we couldn't see much. We groped along a bit longer, I heard Angel up ahead saying something was hers… it sounded like Gollum talking about the ring of doom, I almost expected her to demand someone give her back her precious. Wtf? I also heard Nomad curse… something was going on around us, I needed to see what. I adjusted my eyesight to see in the dark… I did that a bit too soon, because a blindingly bright light extended from Nomad as he tried to light the area, I couldn't see anything! I heard a commotion all around us, sounded like a lot of bats, he had probably stirred up some sleeping bats… way to go… I finally got my sight back, and the bats weren't running for a darker part of the cave, they were viciously attacking us… scratching and biting… something was odd about their energy. Their energy was off because they weren't typical bats, they were vampire bats… and I don't mean the kind of bat that drinks a small amount of blood and moves on, I meant the type of bat some types of vampire are able to transform into… Nomad formed a shield around all of us just as I was about to use Enter Sandman, I told him to drop it long enough to do the spell… he looked at me strangely, then dropped it, and I activated the spell… the whirlwind of dark and light energy pulled a lot of the bats into it, burning them as it did, and the others headed off in different directions through small passages in the cave.

So now all of us were in the cave alone, we were actually in a small chamber rather than just another extent of cave, and there were many exits from the chamber. The only problem was that most of the exits were much too small for us to fit through, at least too small to fit through in our current forms. Someone asked what had been with those bats… I said those weren't bats, they were vampires, we had somehow wandered into a vampire lair. There were four passages that we were able to fit through. One of those was where we had come from, the other three were new and unexplored. MoSh and Spike went left, Nomad and Angel went right, Altaïr, Pablo, and I went straight. We traveled for a short distance before emerging into a huge chamber, there were platforms hanging precariously over molten magma, it looked like it was a volcano… if it erupted, those platforms were history… but for now it looked like a bad platformer game. There was a man on the highest platform, he was dressed in a dark cloak and completely covered, he was mouthing off about how we had made a big mistake to disturb him… but he had been expecting us.

This is the first time I really noticed that I was alone… Pablo and Altaïr were gone, probably they sensed the hostility in this creature just as I did, and they were getting into a good position to respond to an attack. I saw Nomad and Angel emerge from a cave and onto a platform to my right, Spike and MoSh emerged on my left… all roads lead to this hell hole… The cloaked figure turned around and faced us, he seemed to be looking mostly at me since I was in the middle, and he said he was assuming we had come to get our friend back… he indicated a cage hanging over the tallest platform, there was a man in the cage who looked an awful lot like Spike… but that was impossible, Spike was right here… I looked to my left to reassure myself Spike was still there with MoSh, which he was. I figured the one in the cage must be a twinner… The cloaked figure continued to say he would be glad to let our friend go, after we defeated him. So it was going to be a fight! His loss… or very soon it would be his loss… Nomad wanted to know who the fuck he was, and he just said he was known as Death.

So the fight started then, Death appeared to be made entirely of bats… he grew in size and then released a cloud of bats from his cloak, more bats than could possibly have fit in that cloak, and they all attacked us. I used Enter Sandman again, creating another whirlwind to destroy the bats closest to us… and then they all turned back to their master, re-joining him. I saw Altaïr and Pablo were right behind Death, each of them had a hidden blade stuck into Death's back… He was pissed and in pain, trying to reach back for them, but not getting anywhere… Now everyone there combined out attacks. MoSh was a naga, breathing green flames on the asshole right as Pablo and Altaïr jumped clear… Angel fired a white arrow, Nomad threw something that looked like a spear, Spike popped up right in front of him, which clearly caused him quite a surprise to see Spike healthy and free, and sucked the energy out of him… and then he collapsed and turned to dust. As the dust blew away I could hear Death's voice saying he would never die… for Death is immortal.

I flew over to the cage that the other Spike was in and forced the lock open, then I flew in and landed beside Spike, he looked horrible. He was battered and beaten horribly, parts of his flesh were hanging off in loose chunks… yuck… he looked deader than undead… I got beside him and spoke his name, he weakly looked up at me and managed a small smile. He called me Buffy, and said he knew I would come… the Vampire King had said I wouldn't, he had said no one would care what happened, but he had known all along that I would come. I didn't see the point in arguing that I wasn't Buffy… he needed blood, that much was clear, and a lot more healing than that could do… I commented to Spike that he needed to feed, he said nah… he wasn't hungry… he was being sarcastic… I told him to bite me, and take some of my blood. He said no, with the state he was in he wasn't certain he could stop himself before he took too much. I told him not to worry about that, it was complicated and I would explain later, but I wasn't the Buffy he knows, and there is no way he can kill me here. He looked at me blankly. I repeated to him to not be stubborn, to go ahead and bite me, dammit, and drink some of my blood. He finally did. If I had been a normal human, I think it probably would have killed me… but I also think he could have stopped. He paused a time or two to check on me, and only took more when he realized it had not had any ill effect on me. He finally stopped, he looked some better, but he was still in desperate need of healing. Everyone was there with me now, and I opened a portal to the healing glen…

On the other side we were in the healing glen, I heard the sound of the Crystal Golem approaching, shaking the ground as he approached. He wouldn't be sneaking up on anyone… I called out to him that we'd been in a big fight, and needed his healing! Nomad prepared his weapon… um… why was he going to threaten the Crystal Golem? I told Nomad there was no need to fight here… I thought maybe he had lost lucidity. The Crystal Golem said he would heal Spike… He applied some herbs, did some energy work, and then he and Nomad headed off to do something… 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.

To be continued…