New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

2017, 04-14

War

I am in the living room with my mother and we are watching the news on television. The current story is talking about how Donald Trump has ordered another bombing of one place or another, I can’t seem to hear what country or target he was bombing this time, but things on the news look rather stressed. There are scenes of explosions and destruction in places I don’t recognize. My mom is saying that if he keeps this up we’re going to find our own homes under attack one of these days. She says that possibility probably isn’t even on Trump’s radar, and if it is, she’s pretty sure he doesn’t give a fuck. I do a double take at my mom, as she doesn’t usually drop the ‘F’ bomb. She acts as if it is a completely normal occurrence and is still focused on the news. I am considering doing a reality check but I am distracted by noise outside.

I go over to the window and look outside. The covered deck seems to be missing and I can see the sky from the front door, and there are numerous planes flying overhead. I wonder what they’re here for as I watch them fly away to the south. I watch for a bit and I am about to turn away when I see an explosion in the distance. I wonder if they targeted the air force base on the south side of town. I star in disbelief as there are more explosions and now there are defending planes in the sky and more explosions in the sky. I see there are more planes flying over our house. They are intercepted there and start having a dog fight. A burning plane flies very low over our house, in the process of crashing. I know this explosion will be big, and I dive behind the kitchen island for a little extra cover. I also call to my mom to hit the dirt. There is an explosion outside that rips off half the house and sends a blast of hot air around the island, but I am safe there. I can’t believe a plane just crashed in our yard! I wonder if the plane belongs to friendly forces or enemies. I am thinking about checking if anyone got out, but instead everything fades and I wake up.

Note: I fell asleep having plans to meet with Tigress again, to go do something different tonight. So as I fell asleep with my light / sound machine on and I slipped into a WILD… This time, I was focused enough that when the dream started I was already in the landing area of the biodome tower.

I looked around the landing area of the biodome tower. All of our ships were there, and there were a couple extra vehicles there. One was a hover bike, the other one was a robot mech… the bike was blue and the mech was green, both of them looked pretty cool. The robot mech was Tigress' and the hover bike was mine, we each went to our own vehicle. Tigress did something over there with hers, a few things seemed to change slightly before she got inside it. I got on my bike and we both launched out of the tower into space where we found a portal, which had been opened by Q so we could easily get where we needed to go.

Tigress and I emerged from the portal over a desolate place, there was a dry wind blowing over a parched landscape… it looked like the middle of a vast desert with no sign of even a cactus. Just by looking at the scene it was impossible to tell what had created the desolation, but I remembered Q saying it had been caused by a massive war that had nearly destroyed the entire planet. For a short time we flew over the desolate landscape, I did see that there were occasional ruins that looked like they might have once been buildings of some kind, though it was hard to tell what they had once been. For the most part the only thing that was there to be seen was wastelands extending into the distance.

After we had flown for a while I finally saw something up ahead, as we got closer to the place I could tell it was a small area of green in the middle of the desolate wasteland. We got closer and saw there were some simple buildings there and some densely packed trees as well. The small oasis was partially sheltered from the dry winds and dust storms by a small mountain, although it wasn't completely protected. We got closer and I saw the larger trees were being used to shelter and protect smaller trees as they were getting started. There was an irrigation system coming out of the mountain where apparently they had been able to find a water source to help support their little community. I wanted to get a closer look at the place, so Tigress and I flew in towards the oasis.

It was then that I saw a cloud of dust approaching the oasis from another direction, and I realized I had been completely forgetting about the attack Q had warned us about. Raiders were attacking the city, trying to take some valuable power cells from them to use for their own needs instead of wasting it on restoring life to the planet. Apparently they were either too short sighted or just too stupid to realize that once all of the energy cells ran out they would be shit out of luck. So instead of heading directly towards the oasis, Tigress and I diverted our path to intercept the raiders cloud of dust. They weren't even trying to go unnoticed, they clearly were completely confident they had the upper hand over anything that could defend the oasis. They were wrong.

When we intercepted the raiders, they didn't even bother trying to communicate, they just attacked on sight, though I heard some of them saying the restorationists must have more energy cells hidden away than anyone had realized if they were able to send actual mechs out to meet them. Others said there were only two mechs, though, so it's not like they had been able to mount a serious defense. A few of the raider mechs, which only amounted to some hover craft that couldn't fly very high and a bunch of motorcycles that were equipped with weapons, broke away from the group to intercept us. Apparently they thought that would be enough, there were only four of the hover craft breaking away from the group. One of the raiders on the craft intercepting us called to the others to capture as many restorationists as possible, keeping as many of them alive as possible… they needed an extra food source, and the meat would keep better if the cattle was still alive. The four attacked Tigress and me while the others tried to continue to the oasis.

They soon found out that leaving such a few of them to fight us wasn't a good plan when we blasted through the four of them before they even got a shot off, then we flew up and cut off the rest of the group. Now that they realized they would not get rid of us so easily, a battle broke out right there and they had apparently decided they needed to deal with us first before heading to the oasis. Since my hover bike was able to fly and theirs only hover while some of them were even ground vehicles, I was flying circles around them and blasting them from every direction. I could see Tigress wasn't even bothering to avoid their attacks, which were doing absolutely nothing to her mech, and she was blasting many of them, too, as well as crushing some of them beneath her feet. While there were a lot of raiders, none of them were particularly powerful. Just because I wanted to do it, I transformed my mech into robot mode and continued blasting the enemies. I saw Tigress' had shifted into the shape of a wolf and she was tearing enemies apart with razor sharp metal fangs, blasting them with eye lasers, and firing missiles from the claws. Cool transformation!

The battle continued for a short time longer, but soon there were no raiders left at all, we had gotten even the few who had tried to escape, I had the idea if they got back to their base they would return with more. We landed near the oasis and got out to look around the place. The people at the oasis were clearly grateful with us for stopping the raiders, but they also seemed a bit wary of strangers. We looked around their oasis for a while, and it turned out they had taken many different kinds of plants and animals into a mountain shelter, which was also where they were getting the water from, to protect the biodiversity of the planet when it was hit with what they knew would be a devastating attack. But even they had been underestimating the total damage it would do, they had not thought they would have to start over planting the very first tree and nursing it to growing just a little so it could take root in the hostile environment…

I wandered around the oasis for a while, looking at the trees and grass which looked like it was all taking root very well especially considering the conditions. The irrigation system was a series of small canals branching off in different directions to access the entire oasis, there were some small animals drinking from it as it poured out of the ends of the canals at the roots of the larger trees. It really was beautiful, but it could use some help… I took out my ocarina and started playing a nice tune, as I was playing the music, the plants seemed to perk up and grow, I could see them visibly growing and getting greener. Around the edge of the oasis I could see the green area expanding out into the desert, grasses were sprouting out of the parched ground, saplings began growing into small trees, a spring bubbled up from the dry ground and quickly filled in a small depression in the desert to make a small pond, plants grew on the bottom of the pond and around the pond… more trees sprouted as well… Some of the people from the oasis had followed me out there, and they were clearly amazed at the effect of the music. I soon felt like I was going to wake up, so I told the people that what I had done should help them get things started… and maybe I would be back to do more. They seemed rather speechless… they were still staring at me when I woke.