New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

2017, 08-28

Game of Dreams – Cats and Monsters

Arya: I am playing a game of virtual reality Assassins Creed, or that's what I think of it as. The current mission is to catch cats. There are a lot of stray cat some various kinds around, and I'm supposed to catch them. The place that I’m at looks kind of like a Medieval castle. There are a lot of outside courtyards, towers, buildings, and it's almost like a maze. I am chasing the final cat. I have taken all of the other cats to see my teacher, and now I am chasing the final cat. A mean looking Tom cat. I have him cornered. I get hissed at. He tries to dart past me, but I am faster. I catch the cat, pick him up in my arms as he struggling and yowling and hissing. I gave him a kiss right on his fuzzy face. He does not appreciate it. There are some people that have found me. There are two guards, a stern looking woman, a little boy, and a young girl who asks what I am doing to the cat. Maybe I have wandered into an area where I shouldn’t be. I tell the truth, or part of it. I say I am cuddling the cat. I let the cat go and he takes off, pausing to give me one more hiss as he goes.

From how they speak to me, these people think I am just a random beggar child. I take advantage of that, and make a break for it. With some tricky moves, I get past the guards and knock the boy down as I am trying to get away. I jump over him and run down the pathway. I hear the guards closing in behind me, so I jump up and grab a windowsill and pull myself in through the window. They cannot follow. I think there may be another way they can follow, so I keep going. I run through courtyards, upstairs, downstairs, and in through a window into a really dark cellar. I am completely lost by now. There are skulls here in the cellar, I see them as my eyes adjust the dark. The skulls are huge and menacing. I have a brief flash of fear when I first see them, but then I remind myself they're already dead. They can't hurt me. But I do need to get out of here.

I go out the door in the far side of the room, and it's even darker in the hall. I make feel my way down the hall until I hear voices. I see a light coming out of a hole in the ground. There's a stairway there that leads deep beneath the castle. Two men come out of the hole, and I make sure I'm flat against the wall so they won't see me. They are talking. One of them is a really fat guy and I think I know who he is. I don’t recognize the other. The fat guy wants to stall for time before there is a war. The other tells him to just speed things up, he should be able to, he is a wizard. They start talking about a murder. I hear them talk about the Kings Hand dying... that’s my father! They want to kill my father. They head off down the hall, missing me completely, now talking about what sounds like slave children. I need to find a way out, so I follow them. I stay too far back to hear their voices. Eventually I lose them completely. I keep following the tunnel, and it turns into a sewer. I'm wading in sewage when I finally find my way to the outside. I stink worse than anything I can think of. So I take off my clothes and try to wash up in the river near the exit. I don't want to alert everyone 10 miles away that I'm coming. I am swimming when I wake.