New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

2018, 05-15

The Dark Tower – Blaine is a Pain

I am in a green meadow near a stream. There is a deer here, she is drinking from the stream. I see there is a monorail track not far away. Then I know what is about to happen. I see the light from Blaine the Mono speeding along the track so I teleport over to the deer and form a shield around us. Blaine speeds past in a blur, stirring up a lot of debris in his wake. The sonic boom that comes after he passes is almost deafening. The deer I am protecting is scared but unharmed so I release her and she runs off. But I’m supposed to be on Blaine! I run parallel to the track and then jump up and fly. I focus energy into it and fly like the characters on Dragonball Z, speeding along the track to catch up with Blaine. I fly right next to Blaine for a bit, matching his speed but unsure of how to get in. I finally figure I should just phase through the wall of Blaine, so I try to focus on that… I manage to phase through the wall and then I make a spectacularly unimpressive crash into what looks like a piano, coming to a stop with a loud BRANG noise.

My sudden arrival has surprised everyone on the train except for MoSh, who is just looking over at me. Everyone else is wanting to know how I was flying, how was I flying as fast as Blaine, how did I get inside from out there. Blaine says I am rude for coming in uninvited. He also says I am rude for collecting all the toxic gas back in Ludd. I tell him I wasn’t being rude, I was simply solving his riddle… figuring a way to stop the toxic gas and still get on board to be with my friends. I never meant it to be rude. Good riddle, by the way. I was barely able to solve it. Blaine seems to accept my treating the situation as a riddle and is more than happy to take credit and praise for setting the riddle up. So having appeased Blaine for my unexpected arrival the riddling continues.

Roland is telling riddles one after another, and Blaine is answering each of them instantly, with no hesitation. Susanna and Jake seem to find that very disheartening, but Eddie looks like he has zoned off into another dimension. This appears to have annoyed Susanna, who looks like she’s about to bring Eddie back with an elbow to the ribs but thinks better of it when Roland shakes his head slightly while looking at her. MoSh says he has some riddles he could contribute. I know some, too. I can’t remember specific riddles, just that Roland, MoSh, and I took turns giving out riddles for a while but we weren’t having any luck in stumping Blaine. I am thinking Blaine is cheating with his vast databanks, maybe I should hack in and break the connection and see how many riddles he can solve then… Blaine says we are almost out of time, we are almost to the end of the line.

But now Eddie seems to be coming back to us and it looks like he is about to crack up laughing. He starts telling his silly joke / riddles, and that is clearly pissing Blaine off. He tells a dead baby joke, I’m not even sure if that really qualifies as a riddle since logic gets nowhere with it… but Blaine takes it as a riddle and refuses to answer. Roland says if Blaine is going to cry off then we win and he has to keep his promise. He gets mad and sounds like he’s having a tantrum more appropriate to a spoiled 3 year old. MoSh adds in a couple nonsensical riddles, and Eddie adds another… and now the only response from Blaine is a bunch of nonsensical sounds, quote fragments, and random words that make no sense at all. My next response is, “Cool… you broke his brain!” The entire system crashes, the lights go out, the engines shut down. But we might still crash. I tell everyone to gather around me and I’ll make a shield to protect us all. I form a force field around us, Roland is apologizing to Eddie, and then we crash. Once we’re stopped an emergency escape hatch in the ceiling pops open. Roland is asking if everyone is ok. I lower the force field but then I wake up.