Carabas

Transitioning from a scene where I'd been holding a sword, thinking about the danger of carrying a sword without a sheath, fully aware this wasn't about literal swords.

Three siblings meet on a road after a long time apart. One of the brothers is wearing armor and leading a small group of people fighting for some cause in his name; there's less than a hundred of them. The other brother and sister have just appeared hovering in the air, having traveled a vast distance in moments. The brother, I think of as a young version of myself; he's dressed in black, and says nothing throughout the scene, and there's a bloody vertical line over his heart, which I associate both with the heartless motif and with the sword in the previous scene. The sister is dressed in vibrant green, and I think of her as a witch. I'm thinking how much they've all changed since the last time they saw each other.

The brother with the small army asks his sister if he could move like they do. She says he could, but he'd have to start wearing higher collars. It's a reference to the scar over the other brother's heart, who looks uncomfortable at the mention; the implication of her words is that this isn't something to enter into casually.

I'm looking at the army traveling with him, and thinking about how much they've changed as well; I remember them with paint on their faces, thinking of them then as closer to a family rather than a lord and his followers, and I'm thinking that they've lost their identity, changing to suit the land they're traveling through. I'm thinking they were better off before they took up this cause.

I watch the magician enter a building. Unusually, he's dressed in modern clothing and wearing round glasses with very thick lenses, and I make a point of remembering to write that detail down after I wake up. As I'm thinking about it, I wonder what dream interpretation would make of those glasses. The assumption here is that interpretation is the wrong way to go about it and will lead to mistaken conclusions.

When he returns, he's ridiculously tall and wearing armor I associate with the temple of Mythal - less about Mythal, more about the temple - which is also unusual but in the opposite direction from before; the mental association is that he's dropped a disguise I'm used to seeing, though this one isn't exactly not a disguise. He asks me about various things I don't remember, and I answer as if I'm providing a status report. He's troubled by my responses.

He tells me to wait for the sparrow. There's a sense that this is a reference to folklore or a fairy tale.

A man flies into a church in a hurry, and runs across an old friend he hasn't seen for a long time. He's excited to see his friend's still alive, but concerned to see he's not wearing his armor - he's in jeans and a t-shirt, and there's a sense that this means he's rejected a role, walked away from something. And there's a small scar by the corner of his mouth, that's new.

Unfortunately, there's no time to talk, he's running from something - he asks his friend for help, and his friend agrees, opening a portal for him. As he's about to pass through it, however, a group of people fly into the room, wearing armor like the kind his old friend used to have, shouting for him to stop - they're acting like both the portal and his old friend are a threat. From my 3rd person perspective's location, I can't see where that portal would lead.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm fighting someone, but I've stolen his weapons and made them my own - his cloud of mist, his glowing light. I feel a snap. I'm surprised to find he dies as easily as anyone else without his toys. Three of us who'd been fighting him together drive off, leaving someone behind to clean up.

I apologize to the man driving the car, someone I've been with for years now. That whole situation had been my fault - I'm saying I couldn't just follow instructions when I should have, and "Let it get too loud." He says, "And then it didn't anymore."

A woman's landing a griffon. People come to meet her, and as she talks to one of them she's going to her bag and attending to her armor, getting out gloves and a helmet that weren't practical to wear while she was riding. She's talking about the things that need doing, acknowledging that some of them might be impossible at a small outpost like this, without the easy access to resources you get in the cities. And there's an animal strapped to the back of the griffon, restrained to keep it from hurting itself during the ride, in need of medical attention. They're next to the stables, but the griffon's too large for that - once everything's unloaded, it curls up on the ground like a cat, beside a tall fence.

That woman and the man she'd been talking to are walking past me into a circle of armed enemies. Someone in the crowd says, "It is the corruption against the corruption." They sound surprised. I'm ostensibly on the crowd's side, but I arranged to bring these two here tonight, and I expect them to kill the man who leads this little group, currently sitting on a kind of throne. Although I say nothing, I see him watching me and I can tell he understands my intention - or more likely he's imagining some grand paranoid plan; but my plan here is very straightforward, just his death. I'm aware he and I are a minor nuisance for these people I've brought here, just something to be dealt with on their way to something else - I have a vague association with the moon - not at all the grand schemes he's been imagining.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a city and taking the opportunity to meet with an old friend who was reassigned here recently, a promotion. She works in a form of law enforcement. She's talking about the changes on the island where we last saw each other, talking about the ongoing conflict there. She says the forest has been burned down, so they'll have no more place to hide. There's no more way to get past the patrols skating over the water - I have a mental image of a ring, a platform floating on the water, encircling the whole island, with the port itself as the only opening.

She describes all this as if they're good things. Time was, she'd be helping me get my people out of places like that. She's met the man who leads the people in that forest - his people aren't mine, but their situation is nearly identical. But I'm thinking, I shouldn't be surprised - the last time she helped me, something happened that frightened her. It's why she stopped working with me. My people weren't at fault, but I'm not surprised that she'd take that fear out on them. But listening to her now, talking as if my people should be locked up, it's like she's forgotten I'm one of them.

I'm wading through icy water, tracking someone down. It's dark, the water looks black, and there's this mist in the air, I can't see very far. There's bodies floating in the water, wrapped in cloth. There's another man here with me, he calls me by the name of Logan. I'm focused on the dampness in the air - it caused problems earlier when we couldn't get a fire to catch.

Thinking about fire makes me see another time, standing in a large stone hall, standing off to the left of the woman presiding over some ceremony, having to remain still throughout her speech, wearing armor, uncomfortable. There were rows of people arranged in front of us, and as she called each of them up she'd hand them a lit candle, symbolic, but I was looking at those candles and thinking of them as never enough to hold off the chill.

Back in the icy water, we've found the person we were looking for in a little area surrounded by bare trees. He's standing off to one side and watching an old woman perform some kind of ceremony, something like a funeral for the old ruler here - I have a vague impression of something strung up among the trees, either the last ruler's bones themselves or at least something representing them. She knows who we are. She tells me that just because I've killed the old ruler, that doesn't make this place mine. The territory is passed down through the blood, and there's still someone with the elf blood to inherit it - the man we've been tracking down. He's not related to the old ruler, and he's more human than anything else, as is she, but that doesn't matter; this territory will remain in the hands of his people, not mine.

The man in question objects to this - this is a situation being forced on him. He tells me he's sorry. The guy who'd tracked him down with me makes some sarcastic comment, telling him to quit the humble act; but I believe him, this isn't something he'd wanted. Nonetheless, the old woman's in the right; there's nothing I can do here, we've lost. I tell him it's all right. It's only when I speak and hear the tone in my voice that I (the dreamer side of me) realize he and I (the character side of me) had been sleeping together; we're most likely going to have to end that now.

The old woman resumes her ceremony, now involving him. It doesn't take long, just a few words. There's a wreath of pale yellow flowers which he accepts from her; as soon as the ceremony's done he drops it and it falls apart in the water. I'm thinking of the moment I first met him, when he'd been locked up in a cell.

A woman and I have been tracking some thieves who stole the animals that her people raise - creatures like elephants but smaller, and with a sort of moss-like fur that grows on their backs and the top of their heads. Now the trail I've been leading her through ends at a beach. We're too late. Their ship is gone. But I'm able to pick up a mental impression of it and relay it to her - the tigers that they stole are in cages, but those other creatures have already been killed. The thieves only wanted their pelts. She sits down in the sand and starts to cry.

As we make our way back the way we came, over a mountain path, I'm attacked by some creature - it happens fairly often in this region and I take care of it easily, hitting it over the head with my staff and expecting it to run off again. She'd been hanging back before, but when she sees this she comes rushing over, though I don't think of that as necessary; she starts beating the creature, far beyond what's necessary. I stand back and watch.

I'm a demon - the long sharp teeth and writhing cloud of darkness make it hard to miss - but as we make our way down the other side of the mountain, I'm watching her and thinking that the people who tell stories about today will take one look at her and assume that two demons came down from this mountain.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm traveling through a dream with her, but at the moment we've come across an image of myself in the distant past, before I became a demon. I'd been speaking to a man dressed in armor standing in front of a sacred building, and that past version of me is saying something to the effect of, yes, I'd very much like to learn more about our people. It had been a rare opportunity - it was rare enough to meet another of my kind at all, but this was far beyond that, I'd jumped at the chance. I watch that past version of me follow the man in armor into the building.

This isn't what I brought her here to show her, it's just one of my memories intruding on the dream. I intend to continue down the road we're on, to take her to our actual goal here - but she wants to see more of this memory. So that's what we do. We follow that past version of me into the building.

Inside we're in a stone corridor; there's no sign of that past version of me or the man in armor. While the outside of the building had looked the way it had when it was new, the inside is a ruin from much later in my memories. But there's a few objects out of place, things that had been looted by the time it got to this point. I kneel down before one of them, a mirror made of bronze. I say to her, "It's a gate-"

An elephant is making a request of a king or a god, and saying "I am only a lowly guardsman." As he says this, I see him kneeling on a battlefield, wearing armor.

Next to the elephant, there's a man speaking with a woman from the opposing army, each with their own soldiers behind them. The woman goes by the name or title Amah. She's very beautiful and very prideful, smiling and casually resting her elbow on the shoulder of the man next to her, her servant. This is the second time they're meeting like this. The first time, she made some demand or threat which was fulfilled. This time, her servant announces that she's come to 'kill your wives' or something similar, something about causing the deaths of women at least. He says something flowery about those she's killed in the past, and how the great sympathy she has for these women is the reason she does not permit them to speak her real name. Amah says, "It would murder me. I could not stand it." She's still smiling as she says it.

She suddenly slumps forward and falls to the ground. The man she'd been speaking to has simply whispered her name.