New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I woke up from the previous dream and got out of bed, I had to go use the bathroom. I left my bedroom, went to the bathroom, and took care of business there before heading back to my room. A few days ago I got some letter stickers that I used to spell out "QUESTION REALITY" on the inside of my bedroom door. Those letters were not there when I had left my room, but they were there on the outside of my bedroom door as I was going back into my room. I pinched my nose, did the RC, and found I was dreaming. I became lucid.

Ok, now what was my first goal… to meet MoSh and find out about Romano! I used the door across my bedroom door and turned it into a portal to MoSh's inner world. I stepped through the door into the area outside MoSh's house, so I went right over to the house and knocked on the door, I wanted to be sure I got there and cloaked myself before Romano showed up, but I also wanted MoSh to know I was there. MoSh showed up, he opened the door and asked what was up, I told him why I was there, and he laughed a bit, then he said I was too late. Too late? I'd missed it? How could I have missed it already? I told him I had come right there as soon as I had become lucid… MoSh said Romano had already come and gone, so I had missed it… then he disappeared, apparently he had woken up.

Um… ok… that had not been expected… did I have another goal? I was pretty sure that I had more goals, but I was a bit unsure after the previous epic fail on reaching my goal… yeah. I remembered that the next goal involved meeting Nomad on the moon, we were going to talk to dolphins, which seemed unusual, but sounded interesting, so I opened a portal to the moon, to the biodome. When I got to the other side of the portal, Nomad was already there, he looked at me and smiled, then said we were going to go see the dolphins, at which point he jumped through a portal that had formed in the ground. I jumped through the portal after him and found we were falling from the sky into the ocean, I transformed into a mermaid as I dived into the water, Nomad also fell into the water, but I didn't see if he transformed.

Nomad and I swam for a short ways under the water until I spotted some dolphins, they were swimming around and playing with each other, then a couple of them came over when they spotted us. I noticed Nomad's form for the first time, he was part jaguar, and the first thing that came to mind was that he was a catfish… I started laughing, which drew weird looks from everyone, but I didn't mind. The dolphins, Nomad, and I were all communicating telepathically, Nomad asked if there was any hope for our world and those that live there, one of the dolphins clearly spoke above the others, she said there is always hope, as long as there is life there is hope. I was thinking to myself that yeah, there might be hope for the rest of the world once humans have all killed each other off… One of the dolphins said that all of that hatred is not good, he said to purge my heart of hatred. She said she had heard the saying that money is at the root of all evil, but it is not, it is hatred that is at the root of all evil.

I paused, then I asked if they didn't hate humans for destroying so much of the ocean, they responded that as a species, humans are young, like children, and when a young child pulls the tail of a dog, not understanding the harm they do, that child has to be taught, not hated. The dolphins were talking about how the purpose of living through this life was to learn and to teach, learn from those who know more and to teach those who know less, and thus exchange knowledge and allow everyone involved to advance to the next level. She said it is this knowledge that we all get to keep and take with us to the next world, the knowledge and the energy we create, whether it be positive or negative, is what we are, not these bodies. She said for an example, cats and dogs are working towards teaching humans about unconditional love, the dolphins had spent a lot of time watching humans and interacting with some, and were willing to both teach and learn, though they had found very few humans who were yet ready to learn what they have to teach. She said some other species were learning in the company of humans to care for other species, a mother tiger adopting piglets as her cubs, foxes befriending hound dogs, birds befriending cats, animals that are normally predators developing friendships with those who are usually their prey… She said that as with teaching any child, patience is needed.

I looked over to see what Nomad was doing, he was not there, I wondered where he had gone off to. Had he left with other dolphins? Had he woken up? Was there really any way to know for sure? I looked back to the dolphins I was speaking with, and I could tell they were smiling, they headed for the surface, got a breath of air, then came back down and floated in front of me again. She said that was enough of being serious… life is too short to be serious all the time… let's play! She swam off, grabbed a fish and ate it, then moved in strange patterns and pushed what seemed like a ball of denser water through the water at me. I caught it and threw it back, the dolphin batted it back with her tail, I used my mermaid tail to bat it to another dolphin, and we played with the ball of water for a while, it was fun to be in the ocean and playing with the dolphins. I continued having fun in that manner until I woke up.

Note: I started off this night with three major goals, the first was to meet up with MoSh and see if I am able to be with him when he meets up with Romano, the second was to meet up with Nomad and go into the oceans to communicate with dolphins, and the third was to go through time and view a dream Walms had where it seemed that some insane version of me was attacking him for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, I was not successful in entering my WILD upon falling asleep, which made remembering my goals in the dream state considerably harder than it would have been had I been able to use my WILD.

As I was heading to class at ITT Tech I was convinced that there was something I was supposed to be doing, someone I was supposed to meet with, but I couldn't think what I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to meet with someone or even who I was supposed to meet with! That was driving me nuts that I couldn't think of what I was supposed to be doing and who I was supposed to be meeting! I was so distracted by it that I drove right past ITT Tech… well, that was easy enough to fix, I would just have to make a U turn and head back to the school. There was a lot of traffic coming from the other direction, so I wouldn't be able to make a U turn, so instead I waited for a brief break in traffic and turned left into a neighborhood. I was going to just turn around and head back to the main street, but there was a concrete median in the middle of the road and I couldn't get to the other side to head back. So I continued driving down the street looking for some way to complete my U turn, some way to turn left and then head back in the direction I had just come from.

So I kept on driving along the winding road, there was no way I was going to make it to class on time now, so now not only would I end up defaulting on whatever it was I had agreed to do with whoever it was I was forgetting I would also be late for or miss my class. This was not going well at all. At least I had a pleasant drive, though, through a curvy road lined with nice houses and a lot of trees, it looked like a very nice neighborhood to live in. I came around a curve and drove up an incline towards some nice homes at the top of the hill. There was no longer a median in the center, but I had ceased caring about turning around and heading back to school. One of the houses at the top of the hill looked strikingly familiar, though I couldn't place where I had seen it before nor could I think of how I might have seen it before since I had never been down that road. I pulled up next to the house, going slowly as I tried to think of where I had seen the place before and what it might mean, when a man came out of the house and looked right at me… great… now he was going to think I was some kind of crazy person casing the joint or something…

I moved to drive away from the house, but right as I pushed on the gas my engine died even though there had not been any signs of trouble just seconds before. The man was coming over to the car now, I was wondering if he realized I was having problems or if he thought I was a nutter, I figured I could tell him I had slowed down because my engine was making noises and then it stalled. At least I would have a good excuse for having stopped right in front of his house. He came over to my car and peered in through the driver side window, smiling in a friendly manner, it was a young man who looked to be in his 20's, he had short dark hair and a nice smile and I found myself staring into his beautiful brown eyes… He asked me what I was doing, and I realized it was rude to stare at his eyes or any other part of him, and I said I was just having car problems… He looked at me strangely and asked what I was doing using a car for anyway when I normally just use portals.

The man paused, then he said what I needed to be doing was cloaking myself so Romano wouldn't see me if he was to come tonight. Romano? Who in the world was Romano? Was Romano the person I was supposed to meet? It didn't sound like it, since this man was saying I should be hidden… or cloaked… how was I supposed to be cloaked? I must have been giving him a puzzled look because he asked me what was wrong with me, get out of the car and get cloaked, Romano might be arriving at any moment, and he wanted it to look like he was alone here… I was still confused… He asked me if I really had no clue as to what was going on, he asked me if I wasn't lucid, didn't I realize this was a dream? A dream? This is a dream? The man said yes, it was a dream, so hurry up and cloak myself, Romano might be there at any minute, I still didn't know who Romano was, but I was realizing who this man was… it was MoSh… and this was a dream, so I would be able to cloak myself. I got out of the car and focused on making my energy invisible, then I focused on Of Wolf and Man and changed into a cat, a black house cat… I did that and hid my energy.

Now I followed MoSh back to the house, I was a little kitty trotting along behind him, he seemed a bit impatient and acted as if there was something that wasn't going well at all. I was going to ask him what was wrong, but all that came out was a meow. I rubbed around his legs and purred, purrs are supposed to soothe anxiety, and it seemed like he had too much anxiety right now, he absent mindedly reached down and scratched me behind the ears, so I purred louder. I saw a dog entering the room,

a big dog I didn't recognize, MoSh reached down and scooped me up into his arms and started petting me, I continued to purr. The big dog came over in our direction, and sat down in front of MoSh, he was looking at me strangely, then at MoSh. I thought I heard voices, telepathic communication? Between MoSh and the dog? Was the dog Romano? Maybe… I was trying to tune into the communication and hear the voices when everything faded to black and I woke… it seemed I woke awfully suddenly…

I was in my bedroom thinking I should be cleaning out the cat pans when I heard a cat heaving like she was about to throw up, most likely coughing up a hairball. I waited until the cat sounded like she was done, and then I left the room to find the mess. Midna ran past me to my bedroom, I figured it was her that had coughed up a hairball. I followed the path she had come from and I saw something on top of the entertainment center. At least it should be easy to clean since it wasn't on the carpet. I got a step stool to climb up and look, there was a HUGE pile of vomit there, it was right on the back edge of the entertainment center, it looked too large to have been made by a single cat… It also looked like some of the mess had dropped off the back of the entertainment center. I climbed up on the top of the entertainment center, which is about three feet wide and made of solid wood, and peeked down behind it… to find another HUGE pile of vomit down behind it. Seriously?! How could all of that come out of a single cat? It seemed impossible to even imagine! And now I would have to clean it all up… yuck… I got some paper towels and came back, the towels proved to be excessively absorbent, and only a couple of them absorbed the vomit on top of the entertainment center… I was throwing that away when my mom said it was time to go, so hurry up. I followed her out to the car, very willing to not mess around with the second pile of vomit.

My mom drove us to a friend's house, I know they were friends, but I don't know them IWL, so I have no idea who they actually were. We were there for dinner, but it wasn't quite ready, so I looked around the house and the yard surrounding it. This was a new house, this was a house warming party for the people we were visiting. It was a very nice house with a pool in a very large back yard, very nice interior, several nice bedrooms, definitely very nice. There were also several kitties wandering around. I had to try for a while before I finally caught up with one and managed to pet it, I managed to pet a cute little tabby that purred as I stroked it. My mother finally found me and asked if I would help with the final preparations for dinner, which included peeling a few potatoes, I did that as I stared out the back window at the pool, which looked very inviting. Shortly after I finished that, dinner was ready, not sure how the potatoes got done so fast, but dinner was good… a pot roast with lots of fresh veggies that actually tasted really good (I don't normally like veggies much) and some fresh rolls. Dessert was even better! A huge sheet cake was brought out, it was a white cake with white chocolate frosting, and it was delicious! They passes out large slices of the cake, and I enjoyed every bite of mine, though I ended up wanting more. I wasn't going to be seen taking more, or ask for more, because I didn't want to seem like a pig, but I was wishing for more of it just the same.

To get my mind off of cake, I went to the back yard and looked around, several fluffy white bunnies ran for it when I stepped out, and I thought I would dip my feet in the pool even if I couldn't swim. I was sitting on the edge of the pool when an older woman came out with a large chunk of cake. She complained that a fly had landed on it and she dumped it in the pool before going back inside. A fly had touched it… um… that wasn't enough to stop me, and apparently the fact it would be soggy wasn't enough to stop me, either. I reached into the water and pulled the cake out, and amazingly enough it was not soggy. My answer for that was that the frosting was thick enough to keep the water out. I was eating the cake, staying to one side so no one would see me eating the cake. It was just as delicious as my first slice. My mother came out just as I finished the cake, saying it was time to go home. As we passed the cake, there was a lot left, I grabbed a third piece and took it with me. My mom said I was making a pig of myself… then she also grabbed a piece of cake for the road.

Back home my mother and I were going to watch a movie, a horror movie called 'The Doll' was on the instant movies through NetFlix, the puke behind the entertainment center had been completely forgotten. As the movie started, I saw it starred David Caruso, who plays Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami. Which was weird since his name wasn't on the cast list. It wasn't until here that I did a random RC. The RC revealed that I was dreaming! I definitely hadn't expected that one, I did another RC, and then I was finally lucid. But what would I have time to do now?

Ok, maybe a task of the year from Dreamviews? I thought I would try the one where the goal is to see how the pyramids in Egypt were built, so I focused on opening a portal to get there, and it finally opened. My mother told me to hurry back or I would miss the whole movie, then the portal closed behind me. I was now in the deserts of Egypt, I looked around to see if I was there in the proper time period, and it looked like I was. I went over to a giant pyramid that looked like it was under construction. I saw groups of people pushing the huge blocks up the ramps to get them into their proper positions at the top of the part that was completed. I found that to be quite disappointing, I had been hoping to find something interesting. This was just the typical mundane explanation of how it was done.

I decided to look at it closer, anyway, since I had come all the way through time to see this. As I got closer I saw that the people moving the blocks up the ramp didn't look like they were straining at all, I got even closer and saw they were moving the blocks with ease, even going uphill. I saw some people preparing another huge block to go up the ramps, and I got a closer look, they had black stones that they were working with, somehow they were attaching them to the bottom of the large block… the large block was sitting up on smaller blocks, allowing the people to get to the underneath side of the huge block… I also saw that the ramps going up the pyramid were covered with black stone, there was also a railing about a foot high along the edge of the ramps. I saw some people coming down a narrower ramp from the back side of the pyramid, they were pushing containers of the black stones back down from the top.

I spent a bit of time figuring out what was happening there when one of the people in charge apparently thought I should be working, not watching. So I helped move one of the huge stones all the way up the pyramid, it was very easy, and I realized how it worked as I did that… it was all done with magnets! Each of the huge stones were being kept floating a couple of inches off the ramp by a magnetic field between the stones on the bottom of the block and those on the ramp. They must have been angled just right, because the block didn't tend to slide back down the ramp. The railing along the ramp was to keep the block from being pushed right off the edge, which since there was no friction that would have been very easy to do. The block slid easily up to the top, where the stones were removed from under the huge block and it was slid into place. It was very heavy to slide into place, but that was such a small move compared to the entire path from the bottom… magnetic fields. I wondered if that idea had ever been thought of before… most likely. I was looking at the block we had just placed when I woke.

Notes: After successfully recalling a couple of nonsensical non-lucid dreams last night, I had a positive outlook for remembering more dreams this night… and I did! A few weird non-lucids, a couple of lucids… compared to my recall of late, my recall last night was downright epic! I am sooooo happy I seem to have broken my dry spell! On a side note, when I was about to go to bed, I checked my kitties' food dish to be sure they had food for the night. I found they did… but it was covered with ants! I was very annoyed at that, since I had to stay up long enough to clean up the ants before I could go to bed, and I think that influenced a couple of my unpleasant non-lucid dreams. I had some good recall last night, but when I fell asleep, I was not successful in slipping into my WILD…

FA - I rolled over in bed, not realizing that I was in a dream, and I felt I had a lot of itches all over my body. I tried to scratch a couple places, I didn't want to have to get up and wake myself up… I remembered cleaning up ants from my cats' food dish before bed, and I thought how strange it is that after seeing ants I often get the sensation that there are ants crawling on me even if there are not. Scratching wasn't working… and I thought I felt something. I reached for my lamp to turn on the light and see if there might be a few ants in my bed, which was really going to piss me off since now I would have to change my bed in the middle of night… The light came on and revealed that my bed, and I, was covered with ants! Hundreds of them, no, thousands of them! My first response was to get up, and try to brush them off, it wasn't working, I went to call for my mom to help and I got a mouth full of ants, I spat them out and finally did call out for my mom… and that woke me up.

FA - Wow… that had been a disturbing dream… I was still feeling the ants on me from my dream, crawling all over me. I sat up and turned on the lamp by my bed… no ants, thankfully. I sat there and thought about the dream I had just had, I heard something on the floor beside my bed. It sounded weird, but I figured it was most likely one of my cats down there doing something, most likely getting into something that she shouldn't be. I looked down to see which cat it was and stop the cat from doing something she shouldn't be… what I saw was the bloody carcass of a cat that was teeming with ants! The bloody cat moved, looking up at me and giving off a pained meow, as I was paralyzed by the sickening horror of what was happening to my poor kitty… A scream welled up in my throat and burst out, which woke me up.

FA - That was too much… I had to go check on my kitties! My poor kitties! I sat up quickly in bed, disturbing and chasing my one cat, Midna from the room. I saw a dark form of her as she ran from the room, well, at least she was ok, but I wanted to see my other two cats before I could go back to sleep. I left my room and went into my game room, my black cat, Shadow, met me at the door with a meow. I scooped her into my arms and cuddled her for a bit, then I left that room, looking to find Princess, my fluffy white cat. She wasn't in the living room or the kitchen, she was most likely in my mom's room sleeping with my mom… I didn't want to disturb my mother, but I couldn't go back to sleep without seeing that Princess was ok… I carefully opened the door to my mother's room, allowing just a small amount of light in, since Princess is white I would see her easily… I saw that the bed was moving, the whole bed was moving, it was nothing but a mound of ants! Ants! Why so many fucking ants?! Just like in my dream… wait… dream… I did a nose pinch RC and found out I was dreaming… just a dream… whew.

So I set the mound of ants on fire and burned them away without touching my mom or the two dogs and one cat on the bed… my mom looked over at me and sleepily asked me to turn up the air conditioner, she was hot. I said sure, then closed the door and moved away. Hmmm… enough playing with DC ants, my DC mom, DC dogs, and DC cats. What was my first goal? I remembered that my first goal was to go meet up with MoSh, we had wanted to see if Asuka knows anything about the enemies who most recently attacked her, to see if there was any connection between the attacks that happened earlier and the most recent attack, it seems like there are too many attacks for it to be random. So I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through…

On the other side of the portal I found I was outside of MoSh's house in his inner world, MoSh was outside in his yard with a large black dog, I headed towards him and the dog. As I approached MoSh, however, the dog disappeared, MoSh looked a bit disappointed, though he didn't look like he was upset at me. I was hoping I hadn't interrupted anything important. MoSh said he was glad I was there, he gave me a big hug, I was a bit surprised, but I hugged him back and we went into the house. Asuka was inside the house, and we went into the living room, and there was a comfortable place to talk. MoSh wanted to know if Asuka knew the people who came after her the most recent time, she said no, she didn't know them, in fact, she didn't know any of the people who had come after her the first time they had done it… except those who had stolen her flame… and of course if they were trying it for a second or third time, of course she had recognized them. I asked her why, since she has been training with Vegeta and Tuvok, why she hadn't been doing more to defend herself… she said she thought I already knew that, she didn't want to lose control. I said I thought Tuvok and Vegeta had been helping her with that. She seemed a bit irritated about me asking that… She said she wasn't certain she could keep control.

Asuka added that someone had been trying to nab her off of Voyager one of the times she was there with Tuvok… but Q had interfered with that. I asked if Q had said who the asshole was. She said the guy had been hired by someone, but he hadn't known anything about whoever had hired him, just that he was going to get paid well and he was supposed to infiltrate Voyager to get someone. Great… more mysterious enemies. I was thinking it might still be a good idea to open a portal and try to track down and see if there might be any commonality that connects the various assholes who have gone after Asuka. I was about to say something about that and open a portal when everything faded and I woke.

Note: My recall has been bad lately, so my goal for this night was primarily get some of my recall back. I remember dreams better when I had a goal in mind, so my goals for tonight were to heal Asuka, MoSh said she needed healing after being in trouble recently, and also I had planned on playing a game with two other dreamers who will remain nameless because I want to see if they remember the dream. So I fell asleep using my light / sound machine, I had these goals in mind, but I only kept part of my lucidity as I slipped into a WILD… Unfortunately, I still had no recall, I had to channel this dream through my guide, Q

I was in a beautiful place. I looked around and realized I was in a beautiful forest clearing where there was a pond there, and I could see many colorful fish swimming around in the pond. Something in the back of my mind said I was dreaming right now, but I didn't really pay much attention to that voice since I was busy looking around at all the beauty of my environment. I went over to the edge of the pond and stood there watching the water and the fish for a short time, the fish were very colorful and beautiful. They looked like koi, though there were fish colored like no koi I have ever seen before. In addition to the usual oranges, reds, golds, yellows, and whites, there were also numerous blues, purples, greens, and blacks. The variety of colors in the fish was amazing, I was staring at the fish and not paying much attention to my surroundings when I realized there was someone behind me. I turned to look and I was so surprised at what I saw that I took an involuntary step backwards… and fell right into the pond, causing the colorful fish to scatter in every direction. Soaking wet, I looked up at the figure who had startled me.

I was now looking at a demon, there was really no other description that would do for this guy… he was a demon. He was very large, had bat wings folded behind him, horns on his head that curved to a point that looked quite sharp, dark colored skin with a bluish tint, a hole in his chest that looked like a gateway to Hell itself, and a big, goofy grin on his face revealed razor sharp teeth… I was doing a double take at seeing a big goofy grin on such a creature, it didn't seem to fit at all, but it was clearly there. Wait a minute… I knew that goofy grin! This was no demon standing there grinning at me, it was Nomad. I climbed out of the fish pond, dripping wet, I felt something cold and slimy in my shirt… I pulled out a fish that had been flopping around in there and threw it into the pond, and I shot Nomad what I hoped was an exacerbated look. He chuckled a bit and then said he had scared me. I said the more accurate word is startled, but that did succeed in getting me wet. Nomad blew a wall of flames around me, the fire felt warm instead of hot, and it effectively dried me off.

I said my first goal for the night was to heal Asuka, as MoSh had indicated she was in need of healing. So I figured the first thing to do would be to go get Asuka. Nomad said he would help with the healing, and while I went to get Asuka, he would bring back a couple more healers. I said that would be great as I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through it. On the other side I found MoSh and Asuka were outside, near the street. MoSh was looking upset, Asuka was hanging off the arm of a big muscle bound guy that looked like he had the IQ of a rock, or maybe that assessment was insulting to the rock. Scanning everyone there, I could see the man was a DC, and not a real person… so that confirmed my assessment of a low IQ.

I heard Asuka talking to MoSh, and she was being a bitch. I heard her saying that maybe Mr. Muscle, she referred to him as Kyle, could protect her, because MoSh was continuing to have an epic fail at that one… She told MoSh she'd had enough of hanging around with a loser like him… she looked over and saw me for the first time… then she added that if MoSh wanted a gf, he should get together with me, and referred to me as another loser. She said she didn't know who was the bigger loser, MoSh or me. I told her it's not the sign of a winner to hang around with a guy that created his muscles with an air pump. She looked perplexed, so I elaborated by saying Kyle's muscles were fake, they were inflatable, put on just to impress girls. Kyle began flexing his muscles when I mentioned them, trying to show off how big they were. I went over to him and poked a needle in his right bicep muscle… and it popped! Since it was a DC, my intent had been able to influence it and make it so his muscles really were inflatable. I popped a few more of Kyle's fake muscles, he shrunk down to a scrawny little nerd with a whiny voice and really thick glasses that were held together with packing tape, he ran away from Asuka, calling to his mommy, saying the mean lady had hurt his feelings… of course he was a DC and not a real person, so I wasn't concerned with his feelings.

Asuka stood and watched Kyle disappear from sight, then she looked back at me, then at MoSh, she said if I like the dud so much I could have him. She told MoSh he had better accept that, because even though I am a complete loser, MoSh would never do any better. I told Asuka she needed healing, I opened a portal back to the biodome, MoSh and I pulled Asuka through the portal. On the other side we met up with Nomad, some angel, Basara, and a fox. The fox was already in the air, having jumped for my arms, and I reflexively caught him. I was now holding a cute fox! I hugged the soft fur and stroked the fox as all of us went over to the healing glen part of the biodome. When we got there, everyone went to healing spells, the glen filled with golden energy. The cute fox jumped from my arms and jumped into Asuka's arms where he started purring, the purr itself seemed to be generating golden energy, the rest of us were also doing healing spells. The golden energy was flowing through all of us, and it was very relaxing. We continued doing our healing spells until I got so relaxed that I finally woke.

Note: The final presentation is done and over, so the only thing to do for now was to try to get my dream control and recall back So with every intention of recalling dreams tonight, no special plans except to relax a bit after working so hard, and an attempt to WILD, I fell asleep with my light / sound machine on. Unfortunately I was unable to get into my WILD…

I was on a beach, it was nearly sunset, and the only sounds I could hear were the sounds of the waves hitting the shore, the cries of seagulls in the distance, and the sound of a gentle wind blowing in off of the ocean. The scene was very relaxing, which felt good. Even though I didn't realize I was dreaming, I still felt a need for relaxation and rest, so I sat down on the warm sand and stared out over the waves and into the colorful sky with the reds and oranges of the sunset, it was beautiful. I'm not sure how long I sat there and relaxed before I sensed that I was not alone there, there was someone else on the beach with me. I knew I wouldn't necessarily have the beach to myself for long, but I did want to see who I was sharing it with, if it was someone hot… someone creepy… someone with a dog… a psychotic looking clown… yes, that thought did enter my mind… What I did see when I turned around was an older man, he didn't look threatening or psychotic, he was by himself, he looked like an American Indian, and he was gazing off into the sunset just as I was. So I turned my attention from the man and back to the waves, birds, and the sunset.

I now sensed that the Indian man was right behind me, I could feel his gaze as he was looking right at me, and this caused me to turn around again. He was, indeed, staring at me now, and he had a disapproving look on his face. My first thought was that I was trespassing on a private beach, that would definitely explain why there weren't any other people there. He probably wanted me to leave. I felt a mixture of foolishness for wandering onto private property and annoyance at having to leave since I clearly wasn't hurting anything, but I got up, brushed sand off my pants, apologized to the man for trespassing on his beach, and started to walk away. He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, he said he did not own the beach, no one owned the beach. Whew, that was good, so there was really nothing wrong with me being there. The man pointed out to the sea, asking if I saw something wrong. I said no, since I had been staring and not seeing anything wrong. He told me to look again, more closely. I did. The sun was hanging over the ocean, the sky was bright reds and oranges, fading to deep purple and blue overhead, and the waves flowed steadily out to sea… huh? The waves were weird… wrong somehow… I looked closer, and the water seemed to be emerging from the sand itself and flowing out to sea… that wasn't normal, so I did a RC and found I was dreaming…

I looked back at the man now, he said it was about time I became lucid, I found the way he said it to be a bit annoying, but he had made me lucid so I brushed it off. I asked him who he was, he said I should already know that now that I was lucid, unless of course I was completely blind, he said I should look at him and actually see who he was. I was getting a bit more impatient with his attitude, but I still didn't respond to that, resisting an impulse to call him an ass… there couldn't be any benefit to that. I looked at the man, focusing on seeing his energy this time, and I finally decided I was looking at don Juan, but there was something about his energy that was a bit off… right as I thought his energy was off, the frequency conformed to what I thought it should be, he said now I could see him. He pointed back out at the ocean and asked what I saw there… I saw dolphins swimming out in the ocean, so I watched them for a bit and told don Juan about the dolphins I saw even thought I thought he should be able to see them for himself.

I was watching the dolphins still when don Juan slipped a cold glass into my hand, I looked at it and it was full of a drink of some kind, he said to drink it… I sniffed the stuff, wondering what it could be, maybe I'd get my penticon implant to do a spectral analysis on the stuff before drinking it, that way I could be sure it wasn't dangerous… then that felt a bit dumb, I was in a dream, I could eat a cyanide and arsenic sandwich with cobra venom on it and a glass of bleach to wash it down, and it wouldn't be dangerous. It would be disgusting, but not dangerous… besides, I didn't remember any time where don Juan had seemed hostile, so I took a sip of the drink. It was actually pretty good, sweet and fruity, so I drank a bit more and looked back out over the ocean to see if the dolphins were still there.

The red sun was just about gone beneath the surface of the waves, and the full moon was rising a bit to the right of the sun… wtf? How could the moon be rising from the same direction the sun was setting? I rubbed my eyes, looked again, and the sun was rising now, and the moon was setting. Um… ok… well, it was a dream after all… so anything is possible in a dream, the laws of physics are not applicable here. I was absent mindedly drinking the juice when I noticed I felt strange, a bit light headed… wait a minute… the world was spinning, I was losing the dream! Damn! I focused on the moon and willed the dream to stabilize, I wasn't ready to wake up… The sun turned into a giant pacman with fangs and tore a large mouthful out of the moon, red color that looked like blood came out of the torn moon and added even brighter reds to the sky, and it caused the ocean itself to look like it was on fire. The sun ate the rest of the moon in one bite, then hundreds of stars fell from the sky and ate the sun until there was nothing left but a dark night sky filled with stars, although some of those stars were notably fatter than the others. I was just staring at that in silence until I finally muttered a, "What the FUCK was that all about?"

I took another drink and stared at the night sky for a bit longer, waiting for anything else odd to happen, and I felt something bite my lip. I looked in the glass and saw there was not much of the drink left, and there were weird worm things with lots of teeth squirming on the bottom of the glass, looking up at me and snarling, jumping to get to me to bite, one of them was hanging off of my face. I removed the worm, put it back in the glass, and felt like vomiting at the idea I might have actually swallowed one of those things… as I said, things like that won't hurt me in a dream, but it can still be extremely disgusting. I felt light headed and nauseated, what the fuck? I had been poisoned after all, though this guy hadn't seemed hostile in any way, I had been poisoned, I looked over where I knew don Juan was and I saw a clown… a weird clown with so many razor sharp fangs, blood dripping from his fangs… what the FUCK? I thought I was on a beach with don Juan, not Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's It! The clown was grinning at me in a very evil manner, which was weird since the energy I sensed from the clown was still not hostile, maybe a bit amused, but not hostile. My penticon implant spoke to me, saying the foreign substance had been identified and was being neutralized… I closed my eyes and waited until the computer said the neutralization was complete… then I opened my eyes and looked around.

It was dark out now, there were stars in the sky, no sign of the moon, there was a faint red glow on the horizon, dolphins were playing in the ocean as the waves rolled in from the ocean instead of out to the ocean… and don Juan was standing beside me, not Pennywise the Clown, although he did look amused. I realized I was still holding the glass that had the juice in it, but when I looked it was just a bit of juice left, no worms or anything inside it. Hmmm… it seemed I was the butt of some kind of joke here… I took a deep breath and looked over at don Juan, I asked him what the point of that had been, because if it was a poison, he should know I can't be poisoned in the dream state… He looked into my eyes and got a strange look on his face. I had no doubt in my mind that the drink had been poisoned… my penticon said the drink would be safe now, since the substance to neutralize the poison was already in my system. Don Juan was still staring… I commented it's rude to stare… I then commented that the fruit drink was good, asked if he had any more of it… he said sure, and filled my glass from a flask, so I drank down the poison then deliberately smirked… then accidently burped… a long, loud, and embarrassing one that smelled like fruit… I said, "Excuse me," out of habit.

Don Juan asked if I could sense all the different way things are… he said I should be doing it effortlessly now, but… he seemed a bit puzzled… He said I have already done it in dreams, I have seen many worlds at once in the dream state… he indicated the ocean, I saw don Juan standing in front of the ocean (a gunslinger at the edge of a desert) (an old hic at the edge of a swamp) (a fire elemental beside an ocean of lava) (and Indian shaman at a fire at the edge of a thick forest) (a desolate ocean bed with a vampire in front of it) (a massive storm that was blowing with intense force, no sign of don Juan or anyone else) (a battlefield with many dead and dying soldiers lying everywhere, one not far from me was screaming as a vulture was eating him while he still lived as a soldier beside me pointed and laughed) (a field of colorful flowers and a country man standing beside me) (a vast level area of land with an army of Goa'uld marching across it, Teal'c was beside me) There were so many different versions I wasn't able to focus enough to take action in any of them, it was quite disorienting…

Then I heard don Juan speaking to me, focused on that, and pulled myself back into one world, seeing one place, one time… The beach was completely dark now, illuminated only by the dim glow of the stars, my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could see don Juan was still there, and he was speaking. He said I have the ability to see into many worlds at once when in the dream state, and with practice, to take a different action in each one of those worlds, so why hadn't I yet tried to exist in even two worlds simultaneously while awake? I said it was because I would never believe it or trust it to be real. He asked why not, I said I would have no way of being certain I was having an effect on another world or just pulling fictional shit out of my ass. He said I have to learn not to question what my own senses tell me, be they physical senses or other senses, it is completely normal for a nagual to see many planes and interact with them simultaneously… ok, there's your problem… I am not a nagual, if you want to talk to a nagual, maybe I could bring MoSh to this dream… He said he will find MoSh on his own when it is time, but now he was telling me to use the powers I have IWL… I said I have no powers IWL. He said I do have powers there, he said my friend thinks he is full of shit, so was I saying I agree with that, was I also saying he was full of shit? I wondered how he was so sure I have a friend who thinks he is full of shit… he said he wasn't blind, and that is fine if she wants to think that, she will find her own path. So, did my opinion match hers? That he was full of shit? I wasn't sure what to say, I didn't want to be rude and say yes, he's full of shit, but I know I have no powers IWL… so I said nothing.

After waiting for a short time, don Juan said again to use my powers IWL, I repeated I have no power IWL, to me we were both starting to sound like broken records, repeating over and over and over… I was getting impatient. I said of course I have no powers IWL, that's why they locked me into the trash hole of a dimension where I am now imprisoned. I'm not sure why I said someone sealed me in my home dimension… he said the prison couldn't be secure if I was there, on that beach, with him right now… I said apparently there is a breach that allows for dream travels… but on the physical plane, any powers I had have been sealed. He asked who had sealed my powers. I said I didn't know, maybe the Templars? He laughed, said not even close. He said the only one who had sealed my powers in my waking world was me, sealed it with doubt and disbelief, self doubt and refusal to believe in myself, because without those two things nothing will ever be possible. Or, of course, if I prefer to think he is full of shit, then go ask someone else and they will say the same things using different words. I really wasn't sure what to say right now, but I didn't have a chance to say anything before the dream faded and I woke.

Note: This is the last week before my final project at school, so my lucid dreams came to a screeching halt as did my recall, these are some of the last dreams I recall before the date of the project presentation.

I was in a car with Tigress, she was driving, and I was staring out the window at the stores we were passing. We turned into a parking lot, I knew it was the parking lot for Toys R Us, but it wasn't like any parking lot I have ever seen, it had hills all over it. The parking places were all on steep hills going either up or down, it was impossible to see the store from where we were looking for parking places. Tigress turned to park in an empty parking place, and stopped just in time to avoid a black SUV who decided to pull all the way through from the next aisle to our row. With a brief expletive, Tigress pulled back into the main aisle and continued looking for a parking place until she finally saw another one. We pulled all the way into the empty parking place, at the same time a yellow pickup pulled into the place across from us, but I noticed there was no room for me to get out. Tigress backed up to straighten out in the parking place, and as soon as she backed up, the yellow pickup truck pulled forward and took our place! What an asshole! There were more expletives from Tigress now as she backed up and looked for another place, finally finding one and managing to park in this one before anyone stole it.

Tigress and I went into the Toys R Us store, I immediately looked around for electronic keyboards, I knew exactly what I was looking for. There was a small kiosk in the back of the store that had a sign announcing they had quality used merchandise for low prices, I thought it was strange that Toys R Us allowed them to set up there, but I figured it didn't really matter if they had what I wanted. I went back towards their booth, and as I was approaching, I saw an awesome looking electronic keyboard on one of their shelves.

I saw a price tag under the keyboard that said $298.95, and I thought that for that kind of keyboard it was an amazingly low price. Of course it was used, but if most of it still worked, I definitely wanted to get that keyboard. I looked over at Tigress and pointed at the keyboard, then I looked back at the keyboard. I must have misread the price… it was $756.95… shit. There was no way I could afford that, no matter how cool the keyboard was. I was going to have to pass it to get to the Toys R Us instrument aisle, and as I got closer I saw I had yet again misread the price… it was only $75.95… WOW! But then I looked, and the keyboard was different, now it was a cheap looking piece of crap that looked like it didn't even have different sound choices… There was no way I was even going to pay $75.95 for that thing which wouldn't do what I needed it to do anyway, so I followed Tigress farther into Toys R Us.

Tigress and I looked around the store a bit longer until we realized it was late and we had to get to class, so we had to leave without finding any more keyboards. We drove to school, it was similar to ITT Tech, but it was in a different place, and I realized Tigress and both had two classes, but only one was together. We went to our separate classes, they were boring, so Tigress and I were chatting on Skype… until suddenly she stopped responding. I wondered if she was mad at me about something… I didn't know what I could have said. There was a short break, during which I could not find Tigress, and then the class we had together. Upon arriving at that class, Tigress sat on the opposite side of the room, which I thought confirmed she was mad since there was an open seat right beside me. We spent the first part of that class reviewing for a final exam, though I didn't pay much attention to that since I was wondering why Tigress might be mad at me.

There was another short break, then back to the same class, now to take the exam. I returned to class, and it looked like Tigress was going to avoid me again, but then she dragged a desk closer to me, pushed another desk out of the way, and sat beside me after all. Apparently she had just preferred the desk she brought for some reason. I asked if she was mad at me, she said no, there was someone she'd had to talk to over there. The instructor passed out the tests and we began. I found I had no pen or pencil, the instructor wouldn't let me ask Tigress for one… I finally found a marker, so I was trying to do the test in marker. Between the fact I didn't study and the marker was rather messy I was making a huge mess of the test answer sheet, and it was getting really frustrating. The instructor said we had ten minutes left, I was on the verge of a panic. I told her I needed more time, I told her I've been having a lot of problems with depression and the test was harder for me because of it, so can't we make an exception? She said no, she didn't care if I was fighting with depression, the test was due in… eight minutes now. I was so angry that my hand clenched hard enough to break the marker and spill ink all over the answer sheet, Tigress was saying something in a soothing tone, apparently trying to calm me down, but I would not be calmed.

"Why do you have to be such a fucking bitch?" I yelled at the instructor, causing the other students to look up in surprise, "Well fuck this test! And fuck this class! And fuck you, you fucking bitch! Fuck you!" The instructor had only enough time to look over at me with a shocked look on her face before I woke.

Tigress then said there was more fun to be had, she said if these guys liked forced fighting so much, let's see how they do. She said she proposed a tournament, they would be fighting for their lives, and she chuckled evilly. I felt like I was losing the dream, I tried Allura's time dilation, and since it was technically a new dream I was able to stabilize the dream so it would continue…

Since Tigress seemed to know where she wanted to go, neither Nomad nor I interfered when she summoned up a stargate and used a small remote to dial up a destination. The stargate opened, I commented it was cool, and then we went through it. On the other side we were in a neighborhood that was actually rather nice. Tigress said there were still gangs in the area, just that these ones have more expensive toys… and purebred fighting dogs. That made me mad that they were using dogs like that, and it made me want to kick someone's ass. Tigress said she had other plans, though, it would start with the rescuing of the dogs and then continue to the fun part. The area was clearly divided by a river running through town, as were the territories of the two gangs.

The gang members weren't making any effort to keep a low profile, either. They displayed their colors proudly, driving through the street in tricked out cars blasting their music everywhere. I spotted one of them that looked like he was in charge, and went right up to him and asked if he was the one in charge around here. He asked what if he was, I said I had some product I was interested in unloading, but only to the guy in charge, I didn't want to deal with someone too low on the pecking order to make any decisions. He eyed me suspiciously, then apparently decided that he wasn't in any danger from a girl, and came with me. He said he would have to see my product first. I saw he had a gun tucked into his waistband of his jeans that he was fingering.

I led him back into an alley, he looked around and said the product had better be really impressive or he was going to put a slug in me right here. I said there was no product. He looked at me like he thought I was nuts, he called me a filthy cunt, and fired his gun at me. The bullet hit me right in the chest… and right in the Witchblade as it instantly formed, he did a double take at the fact the gun had proven useless. I walked right over to him and consumed him before he realized what was happening. Now having his form, I returned to the car and his buddies, I leaned on the door and peered inside, one of them, Johnny, asked what had just happened. I said that bitch had been playing games with me, so I'd plugged her. I told them to go ahead and go, I had to take care of things, make sure the right person was blamed for this killing. They drove off, though they looked a bit confused about the whole situation.

Tigress and Nomad came over to me, they both said they could recognize my energy, I said I wasn't hiding it. I said I knew where their kennel was, so we could go take their dogs. All three of us went to the kennel, there were a few gang members there but none of them questioned anything much since I looked like Marko and I said the others were new to the area, new initiates. One of them told me that the dogs for noobs were in the kennel on the right. Nomad said he wanted a really mean one. We went into the kennel, and while Tigress and Nomad teleported pit bulls and other assorted dogs back to my inner world I spray painted the tags of the opposing gang all over the kennel so it would look like their rivals had been there and taken the dogs. We even left a taunting note, issuing a challenge to take place on the main bridge between the two neighborhoods.

So now we just had to repeat that process on the other side of the river, and it went just as smoothly over there, even smoother… because when one of the higher ups of that gang saw me he came to challenge me himself, so it was easy to consume him. Finding their kennel and stealing their dogs went easily, and now we left another challenge letter and there was nothing to be done but wait at the bridge. I was scanning activity on both sides of the river, and soon some centralized movement formed. There was a growing group of people heading towards the bridge, the gangs were gathering together on both sides and approaching the meeting place, no doubt all very pissed off at the other gang and looking for some serious revenge. It wasn't long before they started arriving. I took my normal form, as I didn't want to be identified as being with either of the two gangs, and they met in the middle with murderous intent.

The one group, called themselves the Black Flames, asked the other group, calling themselves Blood Dragons, where their dogs were. The leader of the Black Flames, Jack, said he had no idea how they had gotten the dogs, but the Blood Dragons had better return them or it was going to get ugly. Stefan, the leader of the Blood Dragons, said they hadn't stolen the Black Flames' worthless mutts, and he wanted the Blood Dragons' dogs back immediately. Everyone there was getting both confused and angry, not sure who was telling the truth since both groups were adamantly denying involvement in the dog theft while just as adamantly accusing the other group. I stepped out between the groups, they looked at me as if I was mad, I asked if they had considered that neither of their gangs were responsible for the disappearance of the dogs. Jack asked what I was talking about, talk before dying, Stefan agreed, it was most likely the first time they had ever agreed on anything… Nomad said they were mistaken by blaming each other, Tigress said yeah, it was us who had stolen the dogs, and those dogs were now somewhere safe from the abuse they had been subjected to. Stefan said he knew an animal rights activist when he saw one, now we would be dog food for those poor innocent puppy dogs. Tigress said she had the perfect idea now, and we were all teleported…

To the middle of a Roman type coliseum where gladiators of old fought epic battles to prove who was the strongest and the most skilled in the land. Now the coliseum was full of assholes and the three of us, we teleported to the best seat in the place which would be reserved for royalty. All of the gangsters down below were really confused and disoriented, they were looking around. So now Tigress got up and told all of them the rules. They would fight to the death, and the one survivor would be allowed to leave the coliseum alive. They didn't have any problems fighting, so they fought. Black Flames vs. Blood Dragons, there was a lot of violence, knives cutting, guns shooting, fists flying, any weapons they had on them for the fight at the bridge were being used here. After a brief but brutal fight, there were seven Blood Dragons left, including Stefan.

Stefan said they had won, so let them out now. I said no, it wasn't over until there was only one survivor. They didn't want to fight each other. So we turned up the heat, literally. Now the Blood Dragons down there were bitching about the heat, about how it was unbearable, they were also getting cranky due to the heat. Really cranky… until a fight broke out, some of them still wanted to work together, others wanted to fight, a couple thought they were going to die due to the heat soon. Stefan tried to break up a fight between two of them, but was cranky himself… he got carried away and killed one of them, now they all got into a free-for-all, it ended when Stefan had the last of his pals pinned to the ground, he had a knife at the other guy's throat… The guy was pleading, "Don't do it, it's me, Richard, your brother!" Stefan said only one of them could leave, and he buried the knife in Richard's neck, Richard died with a last gurgling breath. Stefan stood up and looked at us, he was a bit cut and bruised, covered in blood that was mostly not his, and he said he was the winner, let him out. Tigress said of course. I didn't want to, Tigress said we had to keep our word… An exit opened and Stefan limped through it. All I heard was Stefan's screaming, and that was cut off by a bunch of barking and growling and snarling, I barely heard Tigress beside me, "Just beware of the dogs…" She laughed.

Back at the door Stefan had left through, several pit bulls came into the arena. Tigress said they had wanted a little payback. She said they were ready to go join all of the other dogs now. I wondered how many dogs total we had brought home tonight… it seemed like a lot of them. I was thinking that as everything faded and I woke.

Tigress pointed in one direction and said they were over there, but then she vanished… I felt like I might wake up, so I focused, I used another time dilation… that time I felt really disoriented, I almost lost the dream, but finally it stabilized and I was able to continue…

Or at least I thought I had it stable. As soon as I started walking towards the direction Tigress had pointed, I felt dizzy again… like I was going to wake up. I never have gotten a second time dilation to work, except one time I had tried Walms' method… so I focused on my hand on the wall and counted, trying to focus on extending each minute… but it wasn't successful, I lost focus on the dream and was just focused on counting, and I woke up having spoken the number ten aloud.

I sat up in bed, thinking it sucked that my second time dilation had failed, hopefully I would be able to get back into the dream again to meet up with Nomad. I got out of bed and went to use the rest room, and I almost tripped over something on my floor… something furry. A cat? No, it was much too big for a cat, it was definitely a dog, but what was one of our dogs doing in my room when they always sleep with my mother? I reluctantly turned the light on to see which dog it was, and I saw it was none of our dogs… it was a pit bull! We don't have a pit bull in our house, so I did a RC and found out I was, after all, still dreaming. I had to get back to where I was before so I could meet up with Nomad, and maybe Tigress would be back. I didn't see Tigress anywhere around there, but I did see Nomad. He said he had been waiting for me, he had one of the assholes, but the idiot was refusing to talk, he said he would make him talk. I knew a faster way, so I just consumed the asshole… and what an asshole he was… he had been in the habit of feeding his pit bulls small dogs and cats he found as strays or even a couple he stole from neighbors, he thought making the dog kill its food would make it more blood thirsty… He was the second in command in the gang calling themselves the Night Fangs, so he knew everyone in the gang… sweet… so now I also knew.

So now we transformed, I had figured on that since Nomad likes to use transformation spells, into werewolves, or more like were-pit bulls, and we went hunting. I telepathically told Nomad where the assholes were hiding, and we went after them. There was one of them making a drug deal on the corner, they were giving drugs to a guy who was clearly an addict, and he stared at us, we were basically two really big and vicious looking pit bull dogs, in a stunned stupor, which made it very easy to rip him apart. The drug addict also just stared dumbly, but he wasn't the target, so we left him to whatever he was doing. I think I saw him picking through the clothes on the body, probably looking for any more drugs he could find… or money… or both.

There was one walking with his buddy down a street heading home, from something I didn't even want to think about, they were confronted with two giant vicious pit bulls as well as one normal but pissed off pit bull. We got one of them quickly, but let the other one run away a bit and chased after him, there were two pit bulls with us now, we chased him until we cornered him in a dead end alley, where he tried to hide in a dumpster. While that was exactly where the trash belonged, he wasn't going to get away that easily. We opened the dumpster and saw him in there cowering, the smell was foul, smelled like rotten food and urine, he had pissed his pants. Nomad tore his head off.

Another three thugs were sending their dogs to attack a couple of smaller kids, scaring them, they had the smaller kids cornered and were threatening to let the dogs go to tear them apart for being on their turf… The kids were cowering from the assholes at first, but then they saw us behind the assholes and switched their gaze to us. The three assholes wanted to know why they no longer had the kids' attention… and they finally looked. I tore one open with my razor sharp claws, Nomad bit one in half, and the guys' own dogs pounced on the third one… the kids made a run for it, clearly terrified of our forms and not knowing that we weren't there to attack them. Nomad and I were now two giant vicious pit bull dogs heading down the street with six normal pit bulls following us. I knew where the next guy lived, and there were several dogs being held in cages in his basement. He was "training" them to be mean, so when a new member joined the gang they would already have a fighting dog for them.

The house looked like a normal small home, nothing about it gave hint of the cruelty that went on within its walls, but Nomad and I knew. One of us went to the front door, the other to the back door, I was at the front. We broke the doors down at the same time, to make sure the asshole didn't try to escape. That wasn't really needed, as he was in the basement with the dogs and would be cornered there. The guy's parents were terrified, the mother screamed, the father pissed his pants, but we ignored them and went down to the basement. The asshole was prodding a dog with a cattle prod, electrocuting it repeatedly, which pissed me off. Apparently Nomad and I thought the same thing… summoned cattle prods, cornered the asshole, and proceeded to shock him repeatedly until he passed out, then gutted him and left him there to bleed to death. There were five dogs in the basement, we took all five with us. The parents were down there now, I wondered if they had been allowing this to happen, but telepathic scans showed they didn't realize what their son had been doing with the dogs, they weren't evil, just completely retarded… most likely in denial. Nomad and I left the house with nine pit bulls in tow.

There were five more gang members spread throughout the area, and each one basically went the same, they were terrified when they saw Nomad and me, they tried to run, tried to hide, pissed their pants, maybe shit themselves, maybe begged for their lives, maybe cursed fluently… Every one met a bloody end, an end that was fitting of the violent and cruel way they had been treating their dogs… if anything, they were getting off too easily. We left the house of the last one, and Tigress appeared. She looked at Nomad and me, we changed to our normal forms. She asked if there were some left for her. We had to tell her they were all dead. She said we should have saved her some. She then said there was more fun to be had, she said if these guys liked forced fighting so much, let's see how they do. She said she proposed a tournament, they would be fighting for their lives, and she chuckled evilly. I felt like I was losing the dream, I tried Allura's time dilation, and since it was technically a new dream I was able to stabilize the dream so it would continue…

I spent some time petting each dog, healing the ones who had injuries, but I was sure I would wake up soon. I wasn't ready, so I used Allura's time dilation method, there was still more to do here, but I will continue that in the next dream…

So there I was in an alley of an unknown city, surrounded by an 11 dog pack of pit bulls, each of whom had been traumatized by the world of dog fighting, each of whom I had used telepathy to soothe them and convince them to trust me, each of whom had pent up pain they were struggling to control within them. They were used to that pain and tension, and they had always been forced to release it on each other even if they didn't want to, but maybe this time they could release that pain and rage on an appropriate target, on those who had hurt them in the first place… or someone like the ones who had hurt them since their cruel masters were all dead. I accessed the memories of the people I had consumed to find out that there were two other rival gangs in the near area, both of which were into dog fighting. In the area there were the Devil Dogs (whom I had just consumed), the Hellhounds, and the Mad Dogs. I thought those were ridiculous names considering that they were into dog fighting…

So I headed out onto the streets, looking for one of the other two gangs, I was heading into Mad Dog territory, 11 dogs following after me… when I ran into Tigress. Tigress had her own pack of pit bulls following her. She said she had eliminated one of the gangs, calling themselves the Mad Dogs, and those were their dogs that were following her. I said that just left the Hellhounds, since I had taken care of the Devil Dogs and claimed their dogs. We both had the same idea. Set off a challenge to the Hellhounds to meet somewhere that they could be trapped inside and hunted at leisure. Since I already looked like one of the Devil Dogs, I figured I would drop off the challenge, that would make it look legitimate. So I took the biggest, meanest looking dog with me and went into Hellhound territory. I could sense the feelings in the dog by my side, he didn't want to fight, he would rather be curled up in a comfortable place getting a belly rub…

I didn't get very far into Hellhound territory before I was met by a couple of guys who were trying too hard to be tough, which made them look more retarded than cool. Still trying to look cool, they walked over to me and said I had a lot of balls coming into Hellhound territory… too bad for me that I wouldn't be leaving. I told them I wasn't there to fight, I was there with a challenge, from the Devil Dogs to the Hellhounds, unless they were too cowardly to accept the challenge… They said no way, the Hellhounds aren't afraid of anything. I said if they are as tough as they pretend they are, meet us at the old warehouse by the pier, I got the idea of the warehouse from the memories of one of the Devil Dog members, meet us there in half an hour… it also seemed like that should be enough time for them to gather there. The one guy said that was a challenge I was going to regret. We parted ways, with me heading back to Devil Dog territory. I met up with Tigress and told her what I had set up, the warehouse consisted of a maze of crates and stuff, perfect for hunting the assholes down in.

When Tigress and I got to the warehouse, the Hellhounds were already there. Tigress took all of the dogs around to the back entrance and let them inside, the place truly was a maze. One of the Hellhounds, who appeared to be the leader, asked me where the rest of us were, or if they had all chickened out. I said they were already inside the warehouse, of course. So unless they were all cowards, get inside and let the challenge begin. The leader wanted to know what was going on, I said the challenge was simple. If they aren't afraid, we were waiting for them somewhere in the maze, with only our dogs to fight with, so follow us in if they dared… I went into the warehouse, and after some discussion about being seen as cowards, the Hellhounds followed me in all except for a couple that stood guard at the door.

So now there were a total of 12 gang members with dogs in the maze, as well as the dogs Tigress and I had taken from the other gangs, wandering around in the warehouse. Tigress and I split up, and one by one, we teleported the dogs with the gang members to safety so they wouldn't be in danger of being forced to fight. That led to much confusion among the Hellhounds, wondering if the Devil Dogs might be cheating by taking out their dogs before facing the Hellhounds themselves, so they were getting angrier as time went by and more of them found themselves without dogs. Then came the violence. Tigress and I didn't really have to do much, as I said, the dogs had pent up aggression, rage, and pain that they would be best off releasing at the right targets. So we were on top of the huge crates, mostly keeping an eye on things to be sure the dogs didn't get in danger during the fights. Mostly the dogs were pretty smart, they would gang up on one of the Hellhounds and strike so quickly that the asshole didn't have a chance to draw a gun or other weapon. One case a woman got a gun out and aimed at a dog, so I used TK to take the gun from her before she could shoot the dog. The dog went for the jugular, tearing it open and spraying blood everywhere. The dog, a male, lifted his leg and peed on the corpse. I couldn't stifle a snicker.

I could hear all the screaming around me, screaming from the people, snarling and barking of dogs, but the sound was fading as time went on… there were fewer and fewer screams as there were fewer and fewer remaining Hellhounds. I wondered if Tigress was killing any of them or if she was letting the dogs do it all. The only ones I was thinking about were the ones at the entrance, so I went back to the entrance and pulled an Ezio… I formed a hidden blade on each arm and knifed them both at the same time before they even noticed I was there… a double assassination… sweet. They fell to the ground, and their dogs just sat there looking at me as if they didn't really give a shit, which considering how they'd been treated, they probably didn't. A short bit later Tigress came from the other side of the warehouse, already outside, with a large pack of dogs following her. She said there had been a couple of assholes guarding the back door, probably looking to catch any Devil Dogs trying to escape, but they were dead now. The pack of dogs around us had grown considerably, Tigress said maybe we should take these guys home, I agreed that Angelina could take care of them best. So I opened a portal to my inner world and we sent all of the dogs through to Angelina.

Tigress asked if I wanted to find some more, I said sure, and Nomad had said he was going to join us sometime… she said that was cool, but Nomad could find me when he was ready, she knew where there were more assholes. She teleported both of us to another place, though it didn't look much different than the last one. If you've seen one crappy area of town, you've seen them all… Tigress pointed in one direction and said they were over there, but then she vanished… I felt like I might wake up, so I focused, I used another time dilation… that time I felt really disoriented, I almost lost the dream, but finally it stabilized and I was able to continue…

Note: I found out from Tigress that there are some gangs that are running dog fighting rings, which involves all of the abuse, cruelty, and violence of any other dog fighting ring. The goal I had in mind was to kick their asses so they would never be able to abuse another dog again. I had this in mind as I slipped into a WILD.

I was in a city, it looked like the bad part of town, there was graffiti all over the walls and a lot of the buildings were in disrepair. I went looking around, I remembered why I was there. There must be some gang members somewhere in the area. I headed down an alley near my location, the alley seemed to be between two abandoned buildings. There was a door on the left, and a young man standing in front of the door. There was a pit bull dog sitting beside the man, the dog had a large chain around its neck. As soon as he heard me approaching, the dog started barking loudly and pulling at his chain, trying to get to me, the young man with him was urging him to attack me. He unchained the dog, and it came over and jumped on me, I telepathically spoke to the dog and told him I was a friend. The dog, though he looked like he was going to bite my face off, instead he licked my face in a big, sloppy dog kiss. I pushed the dog off of me, he sat there and looked at me with such a cute doggy look on his face… it made me want to pet him, which I did. I commented to the man there that he had such a cute dog. He was annoyed, though, he said his dog was supposed to be mean, he was supposed to be bad, strong! He came over and kicked the dog hard. That pissed me off. I told him he had just made a big mistake. He laughed at me, he said there was nothing I could do about it. I was about to zap him with a bolt of lightning, but I got an idea to find out where the others… and all the dogs… the method Alex Mercer used to find out something from his enemies… which is to consume them, so I absorbed the asshole completely, he barely got off a shocked scream before it was done.

Ok, so now I had the memories of the asshole, many of which made me rather nauseated, and I also knew where there were several more of the gang members, as well as where some of the dogs were locked in cages, cages much too small for that size a dog… I also had the form of the asshole I had just consumed, it was working just like it had in Prototype. I went into the abandoned building where there were three more dogs locked up in one room, and a couple more gang members there. One of them greeted me by the asshole's name, which was apparently Butch, and he gave me a high five, but then asked what was wrong with me… I said there was nothing wrong with me, but there was about to be something wrong with him… so I consumed him, and released the three dogs from their cages. With a total of four dogs, I found the third gang member in the building, he ended up facing the same fate as the other two assholes. From the third one I had discovered a valuable piece of information, the rest of the gang members were meeting in an abandoned lot to train their dogs… in other words, they were meeting there to force the dogs to fight. Well, it wasn't going to happen. I went directly to the site, where there were several more guys there and two girls, all of them had dogs and were near a fighting ring. There was a lot of talk about whose dog was stronger, who would win, bets being placed.

One of them looked over at me, called me Markus, and asked me what I was doing with Butch's and Craig's dogs? I said Butch and Craig didn't mind me taking them. He looked at me suspiciously, I glanced around to be sure no one was looking, and consumed him. One of the girls looked over at me, did a quick double take, and then came over. She asked what Wyatt had been doing with those extra dogs, she asked where Wyatt had gone without the dogs… well, never mind. She always had thought Wyatt was rather creepy. She was apparently this asshole's girlfriend, she got close and tried to kiss me, so I consumed her, and no one seemed to notice. One of the other guys came over and looked puzzled, he asked where Chris had gone. I told him Chris had gone to find Wyatt, who had shown up with like four dogs… The guy said he had never trusted that Wyatt… He told me we had better go find Wyatt before he did something stupid. I followed this guy around a corner… consumed him. Then the others in the group there, although it didn't go entirely unnoticed, the last two guys tried to escape and I had to pull them back with tendrils… from what these people knew, there were two more left who were selling drugs on the corner of fifth and main. I went directly there, there was one of them on the corner in a large coat, he told me to hold on, he was selling as well as he could. I told him I wasn't going to complain about that… after dealing with him, I found the last member of the gang in the alley nearby, he had a knife at the neck of a young woman and his pants down, he was in the middle of raping her! He never even saw me before I consumed him… the woman he was attacking was staring at me with wide eyes, then she ran down the alley as if I was about to attack her.

I was now in the alley, looking like an asshole, surrounded by a total of 11 dogs, most of them were pit bulls, though there were a couple of mutts that I didn't recognize the breed. I had telepathically spoken with all of them, and they were all looking at me with the tails wagging… I spent some time petting each dog, healing the ones who had injuries, but I was sure I would wake up soon. I wasn't ready, so I used Allura's time dilation method, there was still more to do here, but I will continue that in the next dream…

I was at the mall with Tigress and Silver, we were there just wandering around and looking at the various shops to see if there was anything interesting to be found. We wandered around the mall for a while, taking a look in various stores to include computer and video game stores, an arts and crafts store, and a book store, and then we were walking past a store with musical instruments. I wanted to go in there to look around, so the three of us went inside.

I wandered around the instruments for a bit, noting some nice instruments, flutes, guitars, violins, and some instruments I didn't even vaguely recognize… I finally found the area where they were selling electronic keyboards, and I started browsing them. They had some very nice ones, and I was wondering if there was any way I could afford one so I could make music for games. My reasoning in the dream was that the keyboard I have is not capable of playing chords, but that is not actually true… it plugs directly into a computer and plays chords just fine as long as I have the memory buffer set properly to balance between speed and quality… but that wasn't what I was thinking in the dream as I browsed the keyboards.

While I was browsing the keyboards, Tigress had gone a short distance away with Silver and they were looking at ocarinas and talking about various things, I couldn't hear much of what they were saying. A sales man came over and asked if he could help me, I said I was looking for an electronic keyboard but I am on a tight budget… was there anything he could recommend? He began giving his sales pitch, saying they had three very economical models, which were very nice considering the price. He said they had the features that are only found on the high end models at other stores… He showed me the models, the cheapest one was $298, the next one up was $315, and the highest of their economical models was $355. I haven't priced electronic keyboards recently, so I wasn't even sure if that was a good value or if he was trying to rip me off… for some reason I felt sure he wasn't trying to scam me.

I asked about memory cards for easy transfer of the songs from the keyboard to my computer. He showed me the memory card slot on the middle model, said all three had it, but the memory card slot was a shape and size I have never seen, apparently they took a proprietary type of card that the company no doubt price gouged on… I said no, I didn't want to deal with odd shaped memory cards. He said that is understandable, which is why he actually recommended the high speed USB cable to connect the keyboard to a computer. He took down a $16 cable that had a USB connection on one end and a coaxial connection on the other end, that didn't look like a high speed connection to me… I told him I'd think about the cable, I wouldn't be in that much of a rush to transfer the data from the keyboard to my computer.

I was looking at the three keyboards again, trying to think how long it would get me to pay it off if I was to charge it to my credit card. While thinking about it I started playing on one of them, I was playing a song that sounded vaguely familiar. I was thinking it was a song I had heard in a dream with MoSh, and MoSh would be glad I could remember it well enough to play it. But I would have to get the keyboard… and there was plenty of room on my credit card… This is not safe thinking for me, as I have been known to get in over my head in credit card debt… I got out of that problem and don't want to go back there. But if I could just pay it off within a couple months… I was running numbers through my mind as to how much I could pay each month… well, I would definitely have to stick with the cheapest model.

I started playing the song on the lowest price model, it sounded just as good as on the other two, until I came to the left end of the keyboard… the few keys at the end of the keyboard looked like they had been chewed on?! Those keys didn't work, and I saw there was a large dog lying not far from the keyboard, I was sure that was the dog that had been chewing on the keys. The salesman came back over and asked if I had made a decision, I said I would have to get the cheapest one, but it had been chewed on… he looked at it and laughed. He said not to worry, I wasn't buying the display model, which they let the dog chew on so she wouldn't chew on random customers. I noticed the dog was now chewing on a violin…

I was debating whether or not to get the keyboard, Tigress was there beside me. She asked me if I was sure I could afford to do that, she said it would be cool to get a new one, but it wouldn't be so cool if it got me in trouble financially. For some reason I couldn't help but notice the fact that when my ex boyfriend, James, had been with me and I had wanted to buy something expensive, he had encouraged me to go ahead and do it, but Tigress was cautioning me to be careful about it. I looked at the partially chewed on keyboard, lost in indecision on what to do about it, and that's what I was still doing when I woke.

I think for some reason Nomad wanted to fight the Crystal Golem… whatever. I stayed with Spike and contributed my healing energy to his recovery.

I stayed by Spike's side for a while, I had the idea I was going to wake up. Well, this time would no doubt mean I was waking up for real since I have never succeeded in doing two time dilations in one dream before. But hell, there was nothing to lose by trying it again… I wondered exactly how long I could spend in just one dream doing time dilations over and over before I reached the limits of the laws of physics and could go no farther… I wondered if there was a limit other than my own abilities… would trying to dilate time too much create problems? So I focused on using Allura's method of time dilation again. That wasn't working… if anything it seemed to be causing the dream to go more unstable, which was the same thing that had happened last time I had tried to dilate time for a second time in a single dream.

Ok, I would give it one more shot… I put my right hand on the ground and tried to focus on it… my hand looked blurry, I wasn't able to focus on that… so I turned and focused on Spike… he was part of the dream… I could see the rest of the dreamscape… ok, that part was good. Now what, count? Yeah, the next part was to count and focus on each count extending time, I wasn't sure if I would get that right or not, and focusing on everything at once was getting a bit disorienting, which was making the dream slip more. I forced myself to resume my focus, then count, 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… Spike, the healing glen, this minute in waking life stretching out to allow for more minutes of dream to fit into it… 6… 7… 8… 9… 10. I was still crouched on the ground, I could vaguely sense my physical body in bed as I tried to hold onto the dream. I stood up in the glen, trying to get my dream body in a position as different from my physical body as possible… I didn't want to sense my physical body… I heard a voice, please tell me it isn't a waking voice… that some asshole was about to wake me up…

But it was the Crystal Golem, he was coming back to check on Spike, he asked if I was ok, he said I didn't look well. My attention was redirected at the Crystal Golem, and the dream stabilized as I was distracted from the sensation of my physical body. I wasn't sure if that counted as successfully using Walms' method of time dilation or not, since I had been sure I was about to lose the dream until the Crystal Golem had directed my attention back into it… The Crystal Golem was saying Spike would be fine now, but he could not truly be safe until we went back and defeated the Vampire King once and for all. The Vampire King? He had called himself Death… but I really didn't care what the asshole called himself, he would not be going after Spike again. Nomad was with the Crystal Golem, he said he was ready to kick some ass. Our Spike said he would teach that bastard what he could really do. Pablo seemed somewhat hesitant to come, I don't think he liked the idea of fighting Death (which was still how I was thinking of him) again. So this time the Crystal Golem opened a portal and those of us who wanted to fight went through…

On the other side we were in the desert again, I looked around to see who was with us, I saw Nomad, Altaïr, Spike, and Angel with me… where had MoSh gone? Had he woken up? As if reading what I was thinking and knowing who I was looking for, Nomad said MoSh had woken up while we were back in the glen. Damn… that was one fewer people to fight this Vampire King who calls himself Death… I noticed that the midday sun was shining brightly on the land, making everything almost blindingly bright, would that have any effect on Death? If he was actually a vampire, it seemed like it would… but I realized it didn't when the ground shook and he came flying out of it like a bullet, landing on the sand in front of us looking as evil as ever, he was laughing at how we were looking at him, he said of course the sun didn't hurt him, he was Death… the king of the vampires. I said I wasn't amazed that the sun didn't hurt him… what I was amazed at was that I had just discovered a life form that can exist and function without the presence of a brain! That clearly pissed him off a bit, and now more bats poured out of the darkness below and flew right into Death, into his cloak, becoming part of him… there was no doubt about it, this guy was made of bats! As the bats continued to add themselves to him, his power level was increasing and he was also physically growing until he was about 20 feet tall, blood dripping from his fangs, eyes glowing red… um… I wondered if he had actually put any effort into his powers or if he just wanted to look scary.

So the fight started. He unleashed hoards of the bats now, from inside his cloak, they were all glowing with dark energy auras, and those auras made me think of something… Walms might want to kick this guy's ass! So I telepathically tried to contact Walms, I was hoping it wouldn't wake him up as my telepathy has done in the past, I was trying to be careful with it… As I was focusing on contacting Walms, the enemy had grown to about double his original size… more bats had been flooding from the ground and adding themselves to his mass, so now he was about 40 feet tall… I felt a contact of some kind, had I gotten through to Walms? Hopefully I had… I told him that there was an epic fight just starting where I was, so if he wanted in on it, get out here, and there was some yummy dark energy in it for him… the response I felt I was getting was confusion, and a response sounding like, "Who the hell are you?" That took me by surprise, I thought he would have recognized my energy since we've shared several dreams, but whatever… I identified myself as Raven Knight and said there were snacks in the form of dark energy covered bats… and one really big guy that was creating the smaller snacks, he could be dinner. Walms seemed to be about to give me a response… then I lost all contact… he had woken up. Damn! Of course after the confused response I had gotten I was wondering if I had actually gotten through to Walms at all…

So I turned my attention back to Death, he had picked Spike up in one hand and was laughing at him, it seemed he thought none of us could be a considerable threat to him… there were thousands of bats attacking us, so I summoned a natural enemy of the bat… there were large insects in the area that were a lot like praying mantises, and they came and attacked the bats in huge numbers. Nomad had also done a summoning, and a huge flock of black birds dove from the sky and attacked the bats… there was a battle raging in the sky, the other creatures of the desert were just as anxious to banish Death as we were, I'd contacted the insects but I was not exerting any control over them… they were attacking completely of their own free will. Angel was creating walls of white fire that were incinerating the bats on contact, Death was still over there laughing because we were so busy with the bats that we hadn't even gotten close to him…

Well, it was time to change that. The birds and insects were keeping most of the bats busy now, Death was holding Spike up for everyone to see and saying he was just going to have to crush our friend like the gnat he was. That was much easier said than done, however. Out of nowhere Altaïr came from above and literally cut the hand that was holding Spike clean off. Spike, of course, got free easily and jumped up and onto Death's back, quickly striking at the exposed target, tearing into Death's neck and drawing his energy right out. Death was roaring incoherently in pain and rage, trying to reach back and grab Spike… if he was weakened, he would be opened to attack… so I called scarabs, flesh eating beetles, from the ground to cover Death, consuming the flesh right off of him, Nomad was bathing Death in flames at the same time. The scarabs didn't seem to notice the flames, their carapaces were protecting them while Death was being burned. When the scarabs were finished and the flames passed, there was nothing left of Death than a charred skeleton… but he still would not die! He just kept yelling maniacally that he was Death, the Vampire King, and nothing could kill him! He could never die!

Death was trying to crush whoever was at his feet, we all got clear of him, Angel was firing some kind of white light directly into Death's eyes which seemed to be both hurting and blinding him at the same time. While she was doing that a couple of Nomad's ravens swooped down and plucked the eyeballs from their sockets… yuck… and dropped them into the sand, where Death proceeded to step on his own eyes by accident… also yuck… Nomad was blasting Death with what looked like acid, it was smoking and dissolving the bones on contact, Death was screaming something incoherent again… maybe I could hurry his demise along.

There were tiny worms in the desert… worms that fed on the bones of animals that had died in the desert, so I called some of them, basically ringing the dinner bell for them. They came out and burrowed into Death's heel bone, Nomad was giving me a strange look, I said they would infect and consume the bones. Nomad turned into a huge dog and was gnawing on one of Death's bones, an arm bone, while it was still attached. Nomad tore the bone off and ran off a ways and buried it, he seemed to be finding this to be an amusing game.

I saw the signs of the worms spreading out from the place where they had entered, causing a spider web network of cracks to form throughout Death's entire bone structure. The bones crumbled as the bones were consumed, I could understand some of what Death was saying, he was saying this wasn't possible, he was immortal, he was Death, he was the Vampire King… and then he turned to dust and blew away on the desert wind.

There was movement around us, there were still some bats around. We didn't attack them, I figured they were without a leader now and would just return to the safety of the caves. But they were not doing that, instead they gathered around Spike, changed to their vampire forms, and bowed to Spike. They were all hailing him as Spike, the Vampire King. I wasn't sure what had happened, but one of the vampires answered Nomad who also seemed a bit confused. One of the vampires, an attractive female, came over and said the old Vampire King was dead… and the one to have most recently drank of his blood was Spike, so that meant the crown would be passed on to Spike for his part in the demise of the Vampire King Death. The vampires seemed quite pleased to see the last of Death... I looked at Spike, surrounded by his worshippers… he looked a bit awkward there, but wasn't showing it much… He told them they could stop bowing, the sun did seem to be draining their energy, so Spike told them to get back down below before they all burned up.

Spike came over to me and commented that his being the Vampire King was certainly unexpected… he then added that he had already chosen his queen. He kissed me. I felt the dream slipping again. I'm not sure how long I could extend a dream for, but this time I didn't fight it, I was kissing Spike as I woke.

I had said something about checking back on MoSh to see if he wanted to go on an adventure, but I figured I could accomplished another task of the month for Mortal Mist in the process. I would go through a mirror to get back to the biodome!

So with the goal of going through a mirror to get back into the biodome, and thus back to MoSh, I summoned a mirror right in front of Pablo and myself. The mirror was a full body mirror, oval in shape, and it was sitting up off of the ground on a stand. It would easily make a large enough portal for Pablo and me to go through. I am not very familiar with using mirrors for travel, so I tried a couple of times… I tried touching the mirror… it was solid. I then focused on making the surface of the mirror fluid, picturing it as if it weren't solid but instead was the perfectly still surface of a pool of water, so when it was touched it would ripple. I visualized that clearly in my mind and then reached out and touched the mirror again. I got the ripples I was looking for. So now I just had to set the destination. I focused on the portal leading to the hot springs in the biodome. As I was focusing, the mirror changed from a still reflective surface to an actual portal in the mirror… I thought that looked really cool, a wormhole starting at the mirror… so I picked up the Pablo fox, held him close against my body so we wouldn't possibly get separated, and stepped through the mirror into the wormhole.

The ride through the wormhole was a rather wild one, like going on a really intense roller coaster… only much faster than any roller coaster I have ever experienced. The wormhole seemed awfully long considering that the distance between the surface of the moon and the biodome isn't that far… It seemed to me that in that case it was senseless to use a wormhole since it seemed to be taking much longer than just teleporting there or using a normal portal. But whatever, I wasn't in a huge hurry, and the ride was rather fun… or at least I thought it was fun… the fox in my arms looked a little nauseated… and then we finally came out the other side of the portal… and fell down over a desert, I landed on the back of a horse… wtf? I was on Stardust's back, Pablo was clinging to me, no doubt as surprised by this turn of events as I was. I looked around and saw I wasn't alone, Nomad was with us… so was Angel… and MoSh… and Altaïr… Spike… they were also riding horses… and we were being chased by Templars also on horses… what the hell was going on here? I had set a portal to go to the biodome and now I was here…

Ok, while I wasn't sure what was going on or how I had ended up here, it was pretty clear that I would have to fight the Templars… I rode over closer to MoSh and asked him what was going on, had Nomad found him in the biodome? Were Asuka and the kids ok? He gave me a strange look, but I didn't have time to think about that, Templars were shooting arrows at us. I moved away from MoSh and started throwing fireballs at the Templars. Nomad was throwing white blasts of energy, MoSh was throwing what looked like small daggers that were sparking with a green light… We were doing that, then suddenly Angel jumped from her horse, pulled out a couple of short swords, and proceeded to hop from horse to horse, killing the Templar on the back of each horse before moving on. She soon got back to the rest of us and got back on her horse, which had continued running the whole time. I used Battery and called down lightning to strike as many Templars as possible, taking them out while leaving their mounts unharmed. I didn't want to hurt the horses… We rode farther across the desert until we came to an enormous sink hole… we got off our horses to investigate. The horses were getting fatigued, well Stardust wasn't, but the others just had normal horses… I looked and saw the Templars' horses had continued following us even though they had no riders. I focused on teleporting them… not sure where, but I could see that it had lots of green grass and plentiful water… it looked like paradise for horses. All of the horses disappeared, including Stardust.

Nomad was looking down into the sinkhole with obvious interest, he said he wanted to jump in it. I asked why, pointing out we had no idea where it might lead, he said it didn't matter since we were dreaming and could not be hurt. I felt movement under my Assassin's robes, which I was finally able to take the time to notice I had the Assassin's robes on, and I realized Pablo had burrowed down under the robes to where he apparently felt safe… or as safe as possible. All of the others were dressed in Assassin's robes, too. Altaïr commented that not all of them were dreamers, Angel, Spike, and himself were not dreaming… but at the same time he didn't really have any objections to exploring someplace new… he did that all the time. What's the worst that could happen? MoSh said death, Altaïr said no, death is not the worst thing that can happen, some things are much worse than death. Spike said he couldn't die since he was already dead. Nomad had already made up his mind and jumped into the sinkhole, I figured I had better follow him, and everyone else apparently decided to follow the both of us.

The sand was flowing through a hole at the bottom and into a cave underneath, I grabbed onto a ledge with a tendril of Witchblade… and felt claws digging into my stomach as Pablo grabbed onto me with his claws… then some weight hanging off of me as Altaïr had grabbed hold of me… Spike flew over the hole in the ground and landed on solid ground at the opening of a cave. Altaïr jumped to that ledge and also climbed out, Angel floated over there, Nomad and MoSh both flew over and Witchblade pulled me up with the tendril. So now we were all in the entrance of a cave watching sand fall past us just outside the cave… it seemed the sand must eventually stop, there couldn't be an infinite amount of sand… but the only way for us to go was forward.

I took a couple minutes to disengage Pablo's claws from my stomach… ow… and then I set the fox down, he immediately changed into a state that was half human and half fox, looking something like Fox McCloud from the Starfox games. He looked over at me and said he was sorry about the thing with the claws, it had just been an instinctive reaction, I told him not to worry about it as I quickly healed the stinging cuts in my stomach. So the group of us started walking down the passage, through the dark caves, we couldn't see much. We groped along a bit longer, I heard Angel up ahead saying something was hers… it sounded like Gollum talking about the ring of doom, I almost expected her to demand someone give her back her precious. Wtf? I also heard Nomad curse… something was going on around us, I needed to see what. I adjusted my eyesight to see in the dark… I did that a bit too soon, because a blindingly bright light extended from Nomad as he tried to light the area, I couldn't see anything! I heard a commotion all around us, sounded like a lot of bats, he had probably stirred up some sleeping bats… way to go… I finally got my sight back, and the bats weren't running for a darker part of the cave, they were viciously attacking us… scratching and biting… something was odd about their energy. Their energy was off because they weren't typical bats, they were vampire bats… and I don't mean the kind of bat that drinks a small amount of blood and moves on, I meant the type of bat some types of vampire are able to transform into… Nomad formed a shield around all of us just as I was about to use Enter Sandman, I told him to drop it long enough to do the spell… he looked at me strangely, then dropped it, and I activated the spell… the whirlwind of dark and light energy pulled a lot of the bats into it, burning them as it did, and the others headed off in different directions through small passages in the cave.

So now all of us were in the cave alone, we were actually in a small chamber rather than just another extent of cave, and there were many exits from the chamber. The only problem was that most of the exits were much too small for us to fit through, at least too small to fit through in our current forms. Someone asked what had been with those bats… I said those weren't bats, they were vampires, we had somehow wandered into a vampire lair. There were four passages that we were able to fit through. One of those was where we had come from, the other three were new and unexplored. MoSh and Spike went left, Nomad and Angel went right, Altaïr, Pablo, and I went straight. We traveled for a short distance before emerging into a huge chamber, there were platforms hanging precariously over molten magma, it looked like it was a volcano… if it erupted, those platforms were history… but for now it looked like a bad platformer game. There was a man on the highest platform, he was dressed in a dark cloak and completely covered, he was mouthing off about how we had made a big mistake to disturb him… but he had been expecting us.

This is the first time I really noticed that I was alone… Pablo and Altaïr were gone, probably they sensed the hostility in this creature just as I did, and they were getting into a good position to respond to an attack. I saw Nomad and Angel emerge from a cave and onto a platform to my right, Spike and MoSh emerged on my left… all roads lead to this hell hole… The cloaked figure turned around and faced us, he seemed to be looking mostly at me since I was in the middle, and he said he was assuming we had come to get our friend back… he indicated a cage hanging over the tallest platform, there was a man in the cage who looked an awful lot like Spike… but that was impossible, Spike was right here… I looked to my left to reassure myself Spike was still there with MoSh, which he was. I figured the one in the cage must be a twinner… The cloaked figure continued to say he would be glad to let our friend go, after we defeated him. So it was going to be a fight! His loss… or very soon it would be his loss… Nomad wanted to know who the fuck he was, and he just said he was known as Death.

So the fight started then, Death appeared to be made entirely of bats… he grew in size and then released a cloud of bats from his cloak, more bats than could possibly have fit in that cloak, and they all attacked us. I used Enter Sandman again, creating another whirlwind to destroy the bats closest to us… and then they all turned back to their master, re-joining him. I saw Altaïr and Pablo were right behind Death, each of them had a hidden blade stuck into Death's back… He was pissed and in pain, trying to reach back for them, but not getting anywhere… Now everyone there combined out attacks. MoSh was a naga, breathing green flames on the asshole right as Pablo and Altaïr jumped clear… Angel fired a white arrow, Nomad threw something that looked like a spear, Spike popped up right in front of him, which clearly caused him quite a surprise to see Spike healthy and free, and sucked the energy out of him… and then he collapsed and turned to dust. As the dust blew away I could hear Death's voice saying he would never die… for Death is immortal.

I flew over to the cage that the other Spike was in and forced the lock open, then I flew in and landed beside Spike, he looked horrible. He was battered and beaten horribly, parts of his flesh were hanging off in loose chunks… yuck… he looked deader than undead… I got beside him and spoke his name, he weakly looked up at me and managed a small smile. He called me Buffy, and said he knew I would come… the Vampire King had said I wouldn't, he had said no one would care what happened, but he had known all along that I would come. I didn't see the point in arguing that I wasn't Buffy… he needed blood, that much was clear, and a lot more healing than that could do… I commented to Spike that he needed to feed, he said nah… he wasn't hungry… he was being sarcastic… I told him to bite me, and take some of my blood. He said no, with the state he was in he wasn't certain he could stop himself before he took too much. I told him not to worry about that, it was complicated and I would explain later, but I wasn't the Buffy he knows, and there is no way he can kill me here. He looked at me blankly. I repeated to him to not be stubborn, to go ahead and bite me, dammit, and drink some of my blood. He finally did. If I had been a normal human, I think it probably would have killed me… but I also think he could have stopped. He paused a time or two to check on me, and only took more when he realized it had not had any ill effect on me. He finally stopped, he looked some better, but he was still in desperate need of healing. Everyone was there with me now, and I opened a portal to the healing glen…

On the other side we were in the healing glen, I heard the sound of the Crystal Golem approaching, shaking the ground as he approached. He wouldn't be sneaking up on anyone… I called out to him that we'd been in a big fight, and needed his healing! Nomad prepared his weapon… um… why was he going to threaten the Crystal Golem? I told Nomad there was no need to fight here… I thought maybe he had lost lucidity. The Crystal Golem said he would heal Spike… He applied some herbs, did some energy work, and then he and Nomad headed off to do something… I think for some reason Nomad wanted to fight the Crystal Golem… whatever. I stayed with Spike and contributed my healing energy to his recovery.

To be continued…

I finally decided that just outside the biodome, on the moon itself, would be a good place for a storm, so that's where I headed…

So I carried Pablo a bit farther through the biodome and then I leaned over and set him down. He gave me a look that said he really didn't want me to leave him behind, so I told him where I was going and what I was going to do, and if he wanted to come watch the show, that was fine with me. He jumped back into my arms, so I took that as an obvious 'yes' to going with me. I opened a portal and went through it to the surface of the moon. I didn't see anything around, just the gray surface of the moon, and the earth was hanging in the sky like a very colorful moon. I set Pablo down on the moon surface and decided to get busy with the thunder storm.

So now I focused on the song Battery. That summoned a bolt of lightning from the sky. Since there weren't multiple targets, however, there was only one large bolt of lightning. One bolt of lightning does not a thunder storm make… So I focused on Battery again, this time I focused on going through the entire song which is something I haven't had to do for a long time… I no longer need the song to do a bolt of lightning. So as the song played through, the moonscape was filled with many bolts of lightning. The sky was lit up with all of the electrical flashes. I know that in space there would not actually be any sound, but I could hear the thunder roll across the landscape. The thunder started rolling across the landscape in time to the music, it made quite an interesting light show in my opinion. And there was a red fox beside me watching the whole thing.

After the song ended, the lightning faded away and clouds that had somehow formed over the moon also dispersed into the nothingness of space. I stood there looking into the sky, gazing into the stars that seemed to go on forever, and I took a deep breath of the non-air of the non-atmosphere of the moon… The fox beside me decided he'd had enough of being ignored and he jumped back into my arms. I stood there and stroked the fox for a bit longer, then I felt the dream slipping away… time for a time dilation. I used Allura's form of time dilation and stabilized the dream. I had said something about checking back on MoSh to see if he wanted to go on an adventure, but I figured I could accomplished another task of the month for Mortal Mist in the process. I would go through a mirror to get back to the biodome!

To be continued…