New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

Note: I had a goal tonight of meeting up with MoSh, checking on and doing a healing spell on Asuka, who has been absent from his dreams lately. After that MoSh wanted to go view an event from a Carlos Castaneda book where Castaneda was watching don Genaro do something interesting near a waterfall… I'm not sure what, but MoSh said that to see the full extent of it I would have to look at his energy, not just his body. So we have tried to do this before and met with an epic fail, so we're going to try it again. I used my light / sound machine to meditate. I fell asleep and successfully slipped into a WILD…

*Execution*
Ok… I immediately noticed something was off… I was actually over someone's shoulder and being carried… wtf? Was this some kind of attack on MoSh's inner world? Because that was where I was supposed to be… I tried to ask the person carrying me who the fuck he was, but I found I couldn't speak… my mouth was full of a foul tasting fabric… yuck… I went to take it out of my mouth, but I found my hands were bound tightly behind my back. Ok… this was annoying. I tried to activate Witchblade to cut through my bonds… nothing happened. This was really starting to piss me off. I was going to try something else when the man carrying me slung me off of his back and stood me on my feet, which I also found were tightly bound. I looked at the jerk who had been carrying me and did a double take… it was a fucking Templar.

I tried to curse at him, momentarily forgetting my mouth was full of foul tasting cloth… apparently curious as to what I would say, the Templar removed the cloth. After a couple of spits to try to get rid of the taste, I did curse at the Templar. I told him if he didn't want a personal tour of Hell then he had better get those bonds off of me immediately. He just laughed. He said I was the one who would be going to Hell… He said he was glad I was awake for my sentence, although he was sure I would have awakened as it was being carried out. No one could sleep through that.

Ok, this guy was dense, so I would have to show him a thing or two… his armor was metal, so the first thing I thought of was to use Battery on him. Nothing happened. I repeated myself, "Battery!" Still nothing happened. The Templar laughed. He said I should know perfectly well that stuff doesn't work in waking life. I told him that this was a dream. He said the drugs must have gotten me quite confused… but I had already been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. He said I had seemed to lose my senses when the method of my execution was announced… but he was glad to see I was fully lucid and able to experience every moment of it. I said of course I was lucid, it was a lucid dream. He said I could tell myself that all I wanted, it wouldn't change a thing. He pushed me to the side, I fell to the ground since my hands and feet were still tightly bound. I looked up and saw the Templar opening the doors of an old medieval execution device known as an iron maiden.

At first I wasn't really sure what to say… was this madman really intending to use that thing? He picked me back up by the ropes on my arms and carried me over to the device, setting me between the open doors. He laughed and said this was going to be fun. I had no thought that I could be actually killed here… I knew it was a dream… I told him if he even thought about trying to use that thing on me I would see him in the dark realm where I would have a front row seat to watch the cruelest demon I could find slowly burn the flesh from his bones. He just laughed again and started swinging the doors closed. I told him I had been leaving them alone because they hadn't been bothering me, but doing something like that would mean all bets are off. So unless he wanted to know… While I was threatening, he had continued swinging the doors slowly closed. The spikes on the doors were poking me, and pushing me back a bit into the spikes on the back of the device. He laughed when my words got cut off, then with one final hard shove, he pushed the doors completely closed.

The first reaction I had was that I couldn't believe he'd actually had the balls to do that… and of course his balls are something I would cheerfully relieve him of… That thought only had an instant in my mind before I was hit with a wave of excruciating pain, feeling each and every spike as it was rammed through my body… it was immediately the worse physical pain I have ever felt… and then to top it off, they had piped in some kind of loud screaming that sounded a bit like an enraged banshee who was also in pain. But this was a dream… why was I feeling so much physical pain in a dream? That damn screaming was too loud for me to think… and then I realized the one screaming was me… apparently an unconscious reaction to the excruciating pain… With an enormous effort of will, I forced myself to close my mouth and think… I just had to wake up. So I focused on waking up. Wake up… wake up… wake up… nothing happened. I tried to move a bit to wake myself up, but the attempt at movement only redoubled the excruciating pain I was in by shifting my position on the spikes… And still I did not wake up. Why could I not awaken? I also noticed I was no longer silent. I hadn't started screaming again, I was just emitting low groaning sounds of pain that sounded like the expression of someone in the deepest pits of despair. I could hear laughter outside… the Templar was enjoying this.

I remembered reading a couple of articles, from when I was doing some research on torture devices I could put in a dungeon for a video game I am designing, about a person shut inside an iron maiden living for as long as a couple of days. How long had I already been in there? Not long, I didn't think… this was a dream. That meant I would wake up. But how long would that take? This was a dream… that also meant I should have my powers. Why weren't they working? Maybe something was blocking them… I just needed to focus to overcome that block… As I was trying to focus, I unintentionally shifted my body again… another wave of unbelievable pain… an involuntary cry of pain and despair… a laugh from the Templar outside… broken focus. A simple ability, like telekinesis… I focused on opening the doors to the iron maiden. That would either result in my being free or in my dream body bleeding to death and me waking up. At that point either alternative was an acceptable result. Nothing happened. I was going to try to focus better when the floor literally dropped from beneath my feet. But of course I was pinned on the spikes and could not fall… instead I was hanging on the spikes now… and what I had thought was the worst possible physical pain got about ten times worse…

After hanging there with my mind clouded by pain for what felt like forever, the floor closed again and I was once again standing on something solid. Apparently that was something they would do for periodic amusement. I could now hear at least two or three Templars outside laughing. One kept saying to do it again. Another said they had to wait… set a pace for the pain, deliver it all at once, what do they do for fun then? For fun?! For fucking FUN?! Those fucking sick bastards, what kind of mind does a person have to have to think putting someone in a device like this is fun?! Rage and dark energy were boiling up within me… and I let it. The dark energy brought a feeling of cold numbness, which blocked out most of the pain. It was not stable dark energy, and I didn't care. I let it be unstable, let it expand and fill me until it was bursting out of me like an explosion… and then there actually was an explosion…

The resultant explosion that blew the iron maiden into three separate pieces… blasted the two doors off to the front, and threw the back half against the wall behind me. One of three Templars got slammed with a door to the iron maiden… it had flipped around in the explosion and he was now impaled on the spikes of the door. Another Templar was staring at me… and kept repeating two words… Oh, shit… oh, shit… oh, shit… He disappeared, abandoning his partners like the coward he was. I was currently pissed and full of unstable dark energy. I used telekinesis to lift the free Templar and slam him into the back half of the iron maiden, impaling him on the spikes there. Must have hit a vital organ or two, because he died quickly. I noticed the one pinned under the door was still moving. I went over and looked at him. His face was contorted by pain and terror. I wondered what I looked like that would instill such a fear response… as if that was a request, I saw a brief 3rd person view of myself… I looked like Sorceress Edea from Final Fantasy VIII (the form usually called the Queen of Night), but in addition to looking like a dark sorceress, I looked dementedly pissed off…

ok… it was a bit disturbing, or it would have been if I hadn't been bursting with unstable dark energy. I stepped on the door under which the terrified Templar was pinned... forcing the spikes further into him, and eliciting a cry of pain and a plea for mercy. I had no urge to be merciful… I gave one more shove down on the door and then walked away as the Templar was grimacing in pain and trying in vain to lift the heavy iron door off of himself.

I walked over to the dungeon door… and did absolutely nothing, but the door blasted off of its hinges apparently of its own accord. I left the dungeon into the main Templar base, throwing dark energy spears at the Templars, randomly impaling them and pinning them to the wall. Some died quickly, others cried out in pain as they hung there dying a much slower death. I got to the center of the base, or what looked like the center, and unleashed an Immortal Fire of pure unstable dark energy, a wall of black flames burst out from me, incinerating everything in its path. I was feeling a bit disoriented… and the scene around me shifted.

*Visions of Castaneda*
Now I was in MoSh's inner world where I had intended to go in the first place. My dark energy had been drained off in the Templar base, and I just felt drained rather than homicidal. I collapsed to my knees in the yard in front of MoSh's house, taking deep breaths and trying to calm myself down. I noticed all my wounds had somehow healed, probably from the intense energy flow… The door to the house flew open and MoSh came running out with Asuka right behind him. MoSh got over to me and was worriedly asking if I was ok… what had happened? I wasn't able to answer right away, which seemed to worry him even more… but finally I was able to tell him I would be ok. Data was there… and he opened a portal. MoSh picked me up… I was trying to tell him I could walk just fine… and carried me through the portal, Asuka followed, and we were in the healing glen. Basara also showed up, and we did a mutual healing, with the crystal golem putting in extra healing energy. My dark energy was stable again, completely controlled.

"Carlos Castaneda," I said to MoSh, "Let's go watch him." MoSh looked surprised. He said no, we didn't have to do that tonight. He said I should get my rest. I felt the dream slipping, too… but for some reason I thought it would be a worst case scenario to let this entire dream be wasted on being tortured by and subsequently killing stupid Templars. I wanted to do something productive. I told him I was ok and I wanted to do it now. I focused on time dilation to stabilize the dream, turning one hour of IWL time into four hours of dream time… I asked for the book… then I remembered it was called 'A Separate Reality' by Carlos Castaneda. I summoned the book. I opened it and skimmed for the word waterfall or don Genaro. Found mention of don Genaro, so I transported MoSh and myself to my room in my inner world and got my laptop. I loaded the book into my laptop through a scanner and then activated the holographic viewing system… I was wondering if it would work… the new scene took shape around us. We could now watch the events in the book… and see the events of the book instead of looking like snack food to a bunch of hungry graboids.

I looked around and saw the target of our viewing. Castaneda, don Juan, and a couple other guys were sitting in a line on a row of rocks that they were using as chairs. They were all staring at a waterfall. The waterfall was quite beautiful, but I didn't see that the beauty of the waterfall alone would command their full attention for that long… I looked over at the waterfall. There was an older man climbing a trail beside the waterfall. It looked like a difficult trail, but the man looked like he was in much better shape than his age might indicate. For the most part he was sure footed about his ascent to the top of the falls where he disappeared from sight.

MoSh touched me on the shoulder and asked if I was sure I was ok… he said it looked like something pretty serious had happened to me. I said I was ok now. He hesitated, then said since we were here, we might as well do it right. He said to point at don Genaro with my pinky when he came back into view. I didn't say anything about that not being my method of energy scanning… I knew what he meant, that was really all that was necessary. The man, apparently don Genaro, appeared by the edge of the waterfall at the top.

I focused on seeing his energy, not just his body. At first I just saw a bright aura, he had strong energy… but also pure and stable. No corruption there, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I watched him for a bit, then his energy field seemed to change its shape, he was clearly manipulating his energy. I watched from next to MoSh as he used tendrils of energy like ropes to help him get to a small stone in the middle of the falls… and then to an even smaller one… somehow without getting swept away. He wouldn't be swept away, he had his energy tendrils to hold on to. He stayed on the second stone for a while, positioning his energy tendrils just right, removing them from the first rock and anchoring them to the far bank of the river… And then he used them to pull himself over to the far bank where he landed with cat-like grace on all fours. He paused there and pulled his energy tendrils back into himself, then finally stood up and looked down at his audience. All four men were staring wide eyed. Don Genaro now momentarily glowed brightly, expanding his energy field in a bright and colorful aura that looked like it might be visible from space… before disappearing from sight on the other side of the waterfall.

It started raining now. The four men who had been sitting got up. I could hear Castaneda talking plaintively to don Juan who was responding as one might to a child who is complaining too much… responding in a tone that sounded like a reprimand… but I couldn't hear what they were saying. And I also had the feeling it didn't matter what they were saying. MoSh and I had been there to see don Genaro's show, not to find out what Carlos Castaneda was complaining to don Juan about… MoSh asked what I had seen. I told him what I had seen, don Genaro using his energy tendrils to help him get across the flowing waterfall without falling off. He commented that it seems I had seen it. I said yeah, I have been able to see energy in the dream state for quite some time… though I didn't remember seeing someone use the energy in that manner before… MoSh said that when Castaneda and don Juan had first watched this, it had been in the physical plane of our own home world… and then Castaneda had written about his experiences, although Castaneda had not been able to see what don Genaro had done at that point. Castaneda had looked, but had not been able to see. That didn't seem odd since most people on our physical plane aren't able to see energy…

The hologram shut down at that point, apparently MoSh and I had seen everything we were going to see. MoSh said don Genaro had been manipulating his energy body on the physical plane of our world. I said yeah, that was pretty cool. I saw MoSh and I were back in my inner world again. I went over to the couch and sat down. MoSh was walking around looking at things. I could feel myself about to wake up again. I told MoSh that I was about to wake up, and time dilation seemed like too much effort to try again when it has never worked the second time anyway. MoSh was saying something else to me when everything faded and I woke.