New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

Note: Tonight I have noticed that my list of goals doesn't seem to be shrinking any even as I complete some of my goals… I'm adding them as quickly as I can complete them! First was to pick up MoSh and do some training with Vegeta, who has said I can use my WILD's for other things and try to train in a DILD, but I don't trust my DILD's to be consistent enough to make sure I get any training in. This training session was a lot like others, so I won't go into extreme detail, just to put we did some speed trials to continue increasing our speed, then trained with swords against each other, together against one stronger opponent, and together against a large number of opponents. Vegeta said both of us are showing a lot of improvement in a short period of time. Other goals included the continuing attempt at a shared DDO dream, finding Xildron, and the next task of the year which is showing humans how to make fire. My WILD was taken up with Vegeta, the rest of the night was fragmented, but here it is…

*Xildron*
I was lucid and I was working on my goal to find Xildron. I don't remember the beginning of this dream nor how I became lucid, and that really isn't important to the part of the dream I remember, anyway. I was in the break room at my school surrounded by other students. Dennis was bugging me. He was saying something about opening interdimensional portals in games. I told him I could open a real interdimensional portal, but he didn't seem to believe me. I really didn't care. Nick was saying there are only two dimensions to work with and he had already seen both of them. I also ignored Nick as I focused my mind on finding Xildron. I focused on the description Walms had given me about Xildron… I focused on both the description of the human Xildron had been changed into at the same time as I focused on the dragon he was supposed to be. I realized I didn't even know for sure what kind of energy he used, dark or light… I had been assuming Xildron used dark like Walms, but then again everyone knows what three words make up the word assume… ass-you-me. I focused more on the description and the situation than on the energy form since I wasn't sure. I was only vaguely aware of Dennis and Nick bugging me and asking what I was doing, I heard someone say I looked constipated… and finally a portal opened. That left the people around me all stunned. I ignored their stupid reactions and went into the portal, hoping to find Xildron on the other side of it. I exited the portal and had a look around. I barely got a chance to register that there was a red sky before I was hit in the face with a huge blast of energy that pushed me back through the portal. Witchblade formed instantly to protect me, but I was still pushed back into the break room of my school where both Dennis and Nick had been peering into my portal after me… and of course I crashed into both of them with intense force, slamming them through the next wall… and they had no Witchblade to protect them. I stood up and saw Dennis and Nick were sprawled at weird angles on the floor, they looked dead. My only thought was, "What the fuck was that?!"

*I Have a Gambling Problem*
I was supposed to go to school. I didn't feel like going. I had some extra time, and I wanted to do something else. The last thing I wanted to do was show up early for a class I hated. My ethics class was where I was supposed to be going, and it was the last place I wanted to go. I stopped at an arcade, thinking maybe there was a video game in there that might distract me for a bit and get me relaxed before I had to go to that horrible class. The arcade was huge, rows and rows of arcade games, all making beeps, buzzes, other strange noises, and loud music. I walked down the aisle and saw numerous games that I really wanted to play, but there was only one problem… the games were all so expensive! I had some money, but I didn't have nearly enough to get any significant play out of any of the games. Maybe one play and then I would be flat broke. I continued wandering through the arcade, feeling more annoyed rather than more relaxed as I had intended, and then I found a slot machine. Weird… I looked at a few of the units and noticed something weird about one of them. The cover to the wheels where the symbols showed up was cracked. It was just possible to get something in there… I was able to push a pencil through and move the wheels with the eraser part… and select what symbols appeared. Hmmm… I put some money in and pulled the lever. The colorful symbols flashed by on the wheels until they finally stopped, with a spot where I knew I had won nothing. I moved one of the wheels by one symbol so that I would at least win something. Money came out into the tray; it had accepted the new position as the final position even though I had cheated! I looked around and did that a few more times. Each time I did it I managed to win a small amount. I didn't want to get greedy with this since I was cheating, but it seemed they were also cheating by charging such outrageous prices for their games. I collected my quarters and then I stopped… I hadn't even thought about there possibly being video cameras there… what if I had been seen? Might security guards be coming for me even now? Shit! I practically ran down the aisles and between the game consoles and out into the parking lot, half surprised that I made it all the way. I got in my car and left, expecting to be followed at any minute…

*Down With the Sickness II*
I was at my new job, which strangely enough, was at a lab doing research work even though my education is in computer operations and game design. That didn't seem strange to me in the dream, though. It seemed completely normal. I was looking through a microscope, watching a virus… the virus was on the viewing slide with some blood cells.

Small pieces of the virus kept breaking off, and then those pieces touched another cell, that cell became a viral cell. That meant it spread very fast, and in almost no time at all it had consumed every single healthy cell on the slide. There were people who had this virus. My goal was to help find an antidote… a vaccine… something that could save those who were sick and prevent more people from becoming sick. It was one nasty bug, I had also discovered it is easily transmitted from person to person, or to other animals, through the air… it was airborne… and just inhaling a single cell could prove fatal since it reproduced so quickly. This virus was so easily passed from one person or animal to another that merely having the virus land on your skin can prove fatal since the virus immediately attacks the skin cells… I put on a biohazard suit and went into a treatment room where there were people with various stages of the disease, we were trying different treatments that looked promising, but nothing had worked. I returned to the lab after checking on the patients. When I took off my biohazard suite, I found there was a hole in the suit… right over the left elbow… there was no way I could have not been exposed. I looked at my arm, I was sure that was where the infection would start… and there was nothing to be done for it. I went to the sink and scrubbed the area with anti-viral soap… but I was sure that wouldn't help, my cells were already being infected, it was just a matter of time before I would die… or maybe not! My first thought was to just give up, but that wasn't going to happen. No chance. I would resist this sickness through sheer strength of will! I was not going to die!

Note: These are some dreams where I don't remember the entire thing from beginning to end, these are basically fragments that I remember.

*Damned Templars!*
I was in my front yard and I was lucid, though I don't know how I became lucid, I just was. I remembered the goal I had was to locate Xildron so I could try to heal him and change him back to his dragon form. The portal I opened was directed to locate Xildron, it took a few minutes, but it finally opened and I went into it. Everything was going normally until there appeared to be some kind of explosion right in the middle of my wormhole, and I was thrown out of it and onto a gray dusty surface like that of the moon. I immediately jumped up and looked around to see where I had landed. It didn't look like Earth's moon at all, there was a bright blue star shining in the sky, and I could see a giant ringed planet that the moon was orbiting around. Another thing I saw was that I was completely surrounded by Templars, several of them were chuckling at me, a few others looked annoyed, a couple of them looked like they were scared… Those assholes had interrupted my search for Xildron!

I was really too pissed off at them to think about what their reason for stopping me was, whether it was deliberately to keep me from reaching Xildron or if it was not related to that search. The Templars moved to attack me, and I attacked them at the same time, forming Witchblade into a sword and cutting the first couple that came at me clean in half. The ones who had been laughing were no longer amused, the ones who looked pissed were attacking me more aggressively, and the ones who had appeared afraid had actually turned around and run for it. I took care of the ones attacking me with a blast of flames that tracked in on each one of them. The Templars were all consumed in flames, tendrils from Witchblade reached out and grabbed the ones running away, wrapping around them and crushing them to death. Those stupid Templars always get in the way at the wrong time!

*So Very Angry*
Alicia and I were walking through the swap meet looking at the various things that were for sale there. Most everything I saw there was junk, something I wouldn't take home even if the seller paid me to take it. The reflection of sunlight off of metal drew my attention into a jewelry shop. Alicia followed me as I went inside to browse the items that were for sale within. Trash. That's what they were selling, shelves and shelves of trash, plastic rings, candy necklaces, kid's jewelry that was so obviously fake that it wasn't even funny. So what was it that had drawn my attention from so far away? Just then, I saw the sunlight reflecting off of a piece of jewelry on a display near the outside of the seller's stall. I went over and looked at what turned out to be a bracelet with beautiful blue stones around it. There was a second silver bracelet there that looked like a southwestern design. I thought I might want one of those. I wanted to browse a bit more. I looked around the rest of the booth, then came back to choose a bracelet, the blue one. Both were gone. I asked where they had gone. Alicia said she had bought them. Both of them?! She said yes. I got pissed, I was yelling at her and saying she had taken everything worth buying in the store. She said it wasn't everything… I asked the shop owner if they had any more decent jewelry. She said no. I yelled at Alicia some more about taking all of it, I was pissed… I yelled at her a lot more, told her she should give me one of the bracelets since I had found them first, hand over the blue one, you bitch! You selfish bitch! Alicia turned and left the store in tears, leaving me thinking I had been too hard on her over a small issue and wondering why I had gotten so angry.

*Don't Brush Your Hair With a Toothbrush!*
I was in an apartment with a man, I don't know who he was. I had the idea it was a temporary arrangement due to some natural disaster. I watched him get up one morning and go into his bathroom. He didn't close the door because he wasn't using the toilet. I saw he was grooming himself. He shaved most of his beard off, leaving only sideburns there. Didn't he know those were out of style? It didn't really matter. I wasn't the fashion police… The man made a strange face of frustration as he tried to get his sideburns to lie down properly and was totally unsuccessful, the more he messed with them the more they wanted to stand up. Finally he got a smirk on his face. He took his toothbrush from a drawer, wet it, and began brushing his sideburns with his toothbrush… um… yuck… I wondered why he was doing that, although it became quickly clear that the attempt was a success. He smirked as he made the hair lie down exactly how he wanted it to. He then proceeded to brush his teeth with the same toothbrush… definite yuck. I left to the kitchen to make some breakfast. A short time later, the man came out and asked if I could please fix him eggs, since I do such a good job. He smiled broadly… and all of his teeth were covered in rot… yuck! I told the man he shouldn't brush his hair with a toothbrush unless he wanted the lice to eat his teeth.

*Down With the Sickness*
I was in my bedroom getting ready to go to school. I rolled out of bed and went to the other room. I had my breakfast as usual, heated up a frozen egg, cheese, and sausage muffin, then went around and hugged on each of my cats. They were all soft, cuddly, and sweet as usual. There was nothing going on that even vaguely indicated this was not a completely normal day. That is everything was normal until I went into the bathroom to take care of doing my hair for the day. I noticed it looked strangely out of place, not like it normally does first thing in the morning. My hair is short, so there is usually very little to be done with it to make it look good enough for my liking. This time it was all hanging at weird angles… Oh, well. I would have to wet it down before I could brush it properly. I splashed water on my face and head, then started brushing my hair. Huge chunks of the hair were coming out on the brush! This continued until the entire crown of my head was bald, completely bald. The rest of the hair seemed firmly attached, but the crown of my head was bald! I tried hopelessly for a comb-over like some men try to get away with, then I looked at my scalp to see it was red and irritated, covered with strange soars. I could only stare at that and wonder over and over, "What is wrong with my body?" I was clearly quite sick, I didn't want anyone to notice, but I was sure I would have to see a doctor about this one.

Note: My goals for the night included going on a Voyager dream with MoSh and Asuka, trying to find Robo on the planet he painted. I also have the continuing goals of having a shared DDO dream with Tigress and completing some tasks of the year, and locating Xildron, who is currently a human but he is supposed to be a dragon… Since tonight was a night off of training with Vegeta, I was able to get straight to my other goals starting with my WILD…

Since my first goal was to pick up MoSh and Asuka, that was my first stop… in MoSh's inner world. The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of my portal was that MoSh's house had not changed. For the first time since his house got destroyed I had perceived it as the same for two visits in a row. We did discover that Asuka had been manipulating the house, changing it to various forms in an attempt to get MoSh to be lucid, but that apparently proved to be an epic fail. Asuka said now the house would remain constant. I was heading for the front door when both MoSh and Asuka appeared on the deck over the front door; they both jumped straight down, no need for stairs there, and MoSh said he was ready to get going. I opened a portal to the tower on the moon.

The three of us stepped through the portal and into the landing bay in the moon tower. I suggested to MoSh that we would get a friendlier greeting when we met Voyager if we used his Delta Flier as opposed to my Fire Valkyrie or just teleporting there, but there was one stop I wanted to make on the way. MoSh asked where. I said I just wanted to complete a task of the year by doing a small jaunt through time to see the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Since all we were supposed to do is watch the event, it would be an easy one to complete. MoSh seemed a little hesitant, saying his lucids are sometimes rather short as it is and he wanted to be sure he was still with us when we reached Voyager. I said not to worry about that, just tell me if he was about to wake up and I could dilate time, or he could go for it again. Either way, the dream would be extended. He hesitated a bit longer and finally said it was ok. The three of us got into MoSh's Delta Flier, launched from the tower, and flew through a portal I opened to get us to the proper point in time.

The sight of the Earth from space was, as usual, a magnificent sight. The continents were nothing like I am used to seeing them today, though. All of the continents were merged into one huge continent, known as Pangea. I could just imagine the dinosaurs roaming on the huge continent down there through the thick forests and savannas and… that was when I noticed the asteroid approaching. It was really quite close to the planet, moving through space at a quick pace.

The asteroid plunged through the atmosphere of the Earth and created a huge explosion on the surface that seemed to make a hole in the atmosphere itself, sending a wall of dust and debris up in all directions from the point of impact. My first thought would have been to destroy the asteroid before it hit the planet, but the spectacle of the impact was really something, too. We lingered only a short time longer before I opened a portal and we flew through it into the Delta Quadrant, into the area of space where we would find Voyager.

MoSh was piloting the ship while Asuka and I were seated behind him; his scanner showed the location of Voyager. Flying in the direction of Voyager, it wasn't long before we had contact from the starship. On the view screen I could see Captain Janeway clearly, along with some other people that looked familiar but I don't remember their names because it's been too long since I have watched Voyager regularly. I did recognize 7 of 9 beside Janeway… MoSh seemed to recognize them all. After a short talk he had permission to land, and flew the Delta Flier right into the landing bay of Voyager.

From the landing bay the three of us were shown the way to meet up with Janeway and some others. I remembered my goal of getting to the planet Robo described, so now the goal would be to get Voyager to that planet, which would mean convincing Janeway to go there. There was something Q had told me… something that would definitely get Janeway to agree to the side trip to Robo's planet. I checked my pentegan computer and found Q had programmed in the location of a wormhole that led from the location of Robo's planet to a spot a good deal closer to Earth. Q had emphasized that it was not a good idea to send Voyager directly home, there were still encounters on the way that they would need to make, but going that far would be a big step along the journey without bypassing any important events. As I had expected, when I first mentioned needing to go to that planet, Janeway said they didn't have enough resources to make that detour, but when I showed her a display of the wormhole, she and the others were quick to agree that making the detour and then using the wormhole would cut significant time off of their journey. Janeway ordered the ship be redirected to the planet Robo had described.

The journey to the planet Robo described was a short one when we traveled via interdimensional portal, which we passed off to Janeway as just another wormhole that would get us to where I needed to be a bit sooner. We emerged from the worm hole right near a planet with a surface that was extremely volcanically active. We got into orbit around the planet; Janeway contacted me and let me know we had arrived at the planet I had requested. I had been hanging out with MoSh and Asuka as they toured throughout the ship, but at that point I said things would go much more quickly if we could scan the planet for life before I went down to look. There was a man with us at the time; he looked at me as if I was completely insane. Tuvoc was also there in the area searching the planet surface for possible life forms would be illogical due to the fact the atmosphere was comprised of 5.7% water vapor, 58.1% carbon dioxide, 28.8% sulfur dioxide, 3.6% hydrogen, and 3.8% carbon monoxide with trace amounts of other compounds with no measurable oxygen at all… no known form of life can exist on such a world. Um… ok… he could have just said that the atmosphere was toxic without giving me a chemical breakdown… 7 of 9 announced that the Borg had assimilated a race of beings who could survive on such a planet… great… and irrelevant. I told them if they were to just search for signs of life I was sure they would be surprised.

Sure enough, a scan of the planet revealed a single life form on one side of the planet, species appeared to be human, and he was definitely on the surface of the planet. Everyone was saying how impossible that was, there was no possible way a human could survive under such conditions… I told the others that it seemed we had found the person I was looking for, so I was heading down to the planet surface. I told MoSh if he and Asuka wanted to stay on Voyager, that was fine. MoSh said they would wait on Voyager, then he said good luck on finding Robo. A man in the crew asked MoSh if he was really going to just let his friend beam down to a toxic planet. MoSh said sure, why not? Someone else said they could not beam me down to the planet, because that was the same as committing suicide. I agreed that he didn't have to beam me down, I could go down by myself. With that, I teleported myself out of the ship and down to the place where Voyager's sensors had detected life.

Volcanoes erupted around me in a spectacular display of exploding magma and billows of smoke rising into the air. The light on the planet surface was dim and had a red tint to it due to the thick reddish clouds that filled the sky. Of course I wasn't having any difficulty breathing, but I did have to admit that the atmosphere of the planet stank. It smelled like sulfur and smoke… not a pleasant odor at all. I ignored the smell of the air as I scanned the area for life energy. I followed the energy signature when I found it, following the signal down into a crevice and around to a flat area of the planet where I found there was someone standing there. I asked the person if he was Robo… he turned around and looked at me strangely. I asked him if he was lucid, did he realize that this was a dream? He paused a bit more, then smiled and called me Raven. He said to look around, the planet really did exist, it was real. He painted it and now it was real. He said he had created a world. As I got closer to him I noticed he had shortish dark hair, blue colored clothing, a cybernetic arm and one of his legs also appeared to be cybernetic. He said he could only imagine what else he could create… I asked him if he was going to remember this dream so we could confirm it as shared. He said sure, how could he forget this… poof. He disappeared. Oh, well. All I could do was teleport back to Voyager and hope that was really Robo and that he really remembered.

With that, I teleported back up to Voyager, appearing right in the middle of the bridge much to the surprise of everyone there. Janeway looked surprised that I had survived that visit, but didn't question that, she asked if I had found what I was looking for. I said I didn't know for sure, but there was nothing more to be done here. One of the crew members said the life form that had existed on the planet was now gone. Several people looked at me accusingly as if they thought I had gone down there just to kill the only living thing on the planet. I said not to worry, I hadn't killed anyone, the other person had just woken… um… teleported elsewhere. But there was no other ship, someone protested. No problem, he didn't need a ship. So now for my end of the deal, to get Voyager a good distance farther along in their journey home. When I telepathically contacted him, Q opened that wormhole. Voyager flew through the wormhole and almost instantly came out the other side where there was no planet in sight. A few scans confirmed that they were, indeed, much closer to their final destination than they had been just moments before. I was going to ask where MoSh and Asuka had gone off to when everything faded and I woke.

Note: Tonight's goals included further training with Vegeta, to which MoSh wanted to come… I wanted to search for Xildron, about whom I learned from another dreamer. Now that I have a bit more information about him I wanted to try to search for him. I also have the continuing goals of completing the tasks of the year, sharing a DDO dream with Tigress where both of us remember, and trying to get more healing dreams in like I used to… of course this can be done in conjunction with other goals… With my goals in mind, I slipped into a WILD…

As I entered my WILD I took a few minutes to look around. I found myself in MoSh's inner world looking at MoSh's house which was, once again, completely different than when I last saw it. I took only a couple minutes to look at MoSh's brand new house, who is it that keeps giving him new houses all of the time, anyway, before going up to the door and knocking. The door opened and MoSh greeted me as he came out onto the porch. When he said to open a portal, however, I stopped him there and said he really needed to take a look at his own house from the outside. He asked why, he wouldn't remember it anyway. I said it is possible that he would remember the house… I was going to hope he would, anyway.

MoSh followed me out onto the grass in front of his house where a black dog ran over to greet us looking happy. I turned MoSh around and pointed at his house. It looked a lot like this picture except the front porch was larger as was the deck above it, and there were curved bay windows on either side of the front door. Asuka was on the deck over the front entry area, calling down to MoSh and waving to him; she called out a hello to me, as well. MoSh turned around and surveyed the house, paused to pet the dog, surveyed the house again, then turned to me. He said it is nice, asked what the big deal was. I told him it wasn't the same house as it had been on past days. He seemed to brush that idea off and said of course it was the same house, houses don't just up and change of their own accord, do they? I opened a portal to the area outside of Vegeta's house after figuring I wasn't going to get anything else out of MoSh.

MoSh and I stepped out of the portal to find we were face to face with Vegeta, who had apparently been there waiting for us. I asked how long he had been waiting; I didn't really want to train with a cranky Vegeta who had been waiting too long… He said that of course he had just come out when he felt our energy approaching. He had returned a short time ago from Walms' place, where he had found Walms this time, though he was not convinced Walms had been up to his usual standard of lucidity. I commented to him that if Walms was dreaming, there was somewhere around a 95% chance he was lucid. But apparently Vegeta didn't want to take any time up with discussing how lucid or non-lucid Walms might have been… he was ready to get straight to business. He had us do some speed tests. I watched MoSh fly through them at such speeds I could hardly see him move at all, I was sure I was nowhere near that fast. Vegeta came over to me and looked at me as if he had just heard that thought. He said that to begin with, I am not in competition with MoSh… and second, if I could see myself move I would see pretty much the same thing, so stop focusing on MoSh and focus on my own training.

The next part of the training was with both Vegeta and Serena as we moved onto swords. This part of the training involved using swords only, not to be supplemented by any powers or aids, so that immediately ruled out the using of my Witchblade sword, which was a bit disappointing. Instead, Serena brought out a pair of swords that were identical to each other, handing one of them to MoSh and one of them to me as she arrived. She then proceeded to demonstrate her skill on a fighting dummy, executing some flashy moves I have never seen before, but it looked like she hadn't even touched the dummy. It looked like she hadn't touched the dummy, that is, until she was done and the dummy turned to pieces almost as small as dust. Having demonstrated her speed and skill, we moved on to training on various sword techniques with Serena and Vegeta's help. The training included some fighting more dummies, some sparring between MoSh and myself; I changed one of the dummies into Dennis before hacking it to bits, but Vegeta seemed to think that was more of a distraction than a motivation. With Vegeta's time dilation we got a good training session in.

After tossing and turning for what seemed like forever I finally sat up in bed, rubbing my tired eyes. Why was I unable to fall asleep? Normally I don't have any difficulty falling asleep, but this was clearly going to be one of those nights where I wasn't going to heading back into my dreams. Considering that I'd made plans to go back to find Dragor and finish the task of healing him. Well, that obviously wasn't going to happen tonight unless I managed to find a way to get back to sleep soon. Feeling kind of hungry, I left my room and went to the kitchen without turning on any lights. What I found in the refrigerator made me start drooling…

it was a chocolate cake! It looked like one of the most delicious chocolate cakes I have ever seen, dark chocolate cake with chocolate icing and slivers of dark chocolate on top of the cake, a ring of strawberries around the edge of the cake. Being hungry, I figured no one would notice if there was an extra sliver of the cake missing… I cut myself a thick slice of cake and happily ate it. Only then did I realize the slice of cake I had taken was extremely obvious to anyone who took even a fleeting look at it. I was trying to figure out some way to cover my tracks when it occurred to me that I could possibly be dreaming. I did a RC and discovered that this was definitely the case. Since I was in a dream anyway, I went back to the refrigerator and ate the rest of the cake.

Feeling like a pig now, I thought about my other goals for the night. Oh, yeah! I wanted to find Dragor and try again to heal him. With the intent to locate him, I focused on opening a portal and went through it. I stepped from the portal to find myself beside a very familiar looking cave; it was the same cave where I had found Dragor the first time! I hadn't thought there was a chance Dragor would be in the same place as I had found him before… Well, since I had been there before I knew exactly where I needed to go. When I reached the large chamber in at the end of the entry passage I found the same three people there. This time, however, Dragor was walking in front of the other two who were sitting in some big chairs. It was obvious that Dragor was angry at his two companions, he was pacing back and forth and telling them they had better get off their asses and do what he told them before he got really angry. The other two seemed a bit nervous over the threat, but not enough to actually do much… that is they didn't seem to want to do much until they looked behind Dragor and saw me. When he saw the other two staring over at me, Dragor also turned to see I was there.

This time it was immediately apparent that none of them wanted to waste time on idle chat. The three of them attacked me on sight, firing large blasts of energy at me. Witchblade formed immediately and protected me from the power of the blast, the force of it propelled me back through the passage and out the mouth of the cave. I landed there and looked back into the cave where I saw the three of them coming, Dragor in the lead. I waited for them to approach me as I considered my options for getting Dragor on his own. There was a blur of motion as the two guys with Dragor split to my right and left and attacked me from those directions. Now was the chance… I opened a portal directly behind Dragor and charged directly at him, right into his lightning attack and tackled him right through the portal…

The portal I had opened led to an isolated location; a dead world not far from the planet I had been on when I found Dragor. I hadn't specified where the portal should go, I had just directed the type of location I had needed the portal to lead, and I had wanted it to lead somewhere that a big fight between Dragor and me would not hurt anyone else. I surveyed the surrounding area. The landscape that surrounded us was completely devoid of life. Dragor stood glaring at me, the only thing I could see in his eyes was pure hate. And yet I knew that somewhere inside of him there was a spark, a chance for his heart to be healed, a chance for him to be set free of this hate and to live his life how he chose. But he was not going to make healing him easy, it was obvious that he was going to fight it every step of the way, holding onto is hatred in the same manner a drug addict will hold onto their drugs even though those drugs are killing them. He said if I wanted to play, this would be the last game of my life.

All I saw was a blur of motion as Dragor came directly at me in a full on attack. My training with Vegeta must be doing some good, as I reflexively jumped into the air and avoided Dragor's attack, coming down on his back with a hard kick that sent him head first into the dirt where he dug a trench with his face. That didn't even phase him, though, as he did a flip back onto his feet, turning to face me at the same time. He had a smirk on his face. He said he was glad this wasn't going to be as easy as he had thought it would be with me being a mere human. He moved his hands as if he was doing a Final Flash like Vegeta on Dragonball Z, instead of an energy blast, however, a blast of lightning came out of his hands. I used Whiplash to deflect the bolts back at their source. After reflecting back in the opposite direction, however, the bolt of lightning split into two separate bolts, circled around, and hit me from behind, the result was I was knocked over and was sparking all over. Dragor, apparently thinking the attack had done more than it actually had, was laughing at me and asked if I wanted to change my mind about fighting him since he really saw no advantage to destroying an opponent as weak as me.

Ok… it was time to stop being on the defensive and go on the offensive. I had the idea that since I had attempted to heal him he would expect light energy attacks and know how to block them. I thought maybe he wouldn't expect the dark energy techniques I have modeled after Alex Mercer on Prototype…

I had the song Phantom Lord by Metallica playing, but more because it helps me get more energy than because I was using it to focus a spell. I selected Alex Mercer's spike attack, sending dark energy into the ground to have it erupt right under Dracor in the form of razor spikes. Dragor responded instantly, jumping into the air, clear of the spikes while laughing. A bit more dark energy… and a blast of dark energy lightning came from the tip of each of the spikes, centered in on Dragor. Apparently he wasn't ready for that one, as he failed to get out of the way as the dark energy lightning wrapped around him and pulled him into the ground hard as the spikes retracted. So now Dragor was even more pissed off and on his back in the middle of a small crater.

But I also saw that the dark energy inside Dragor was beginning to become more unstable as he had tried to absorb some of the energy in the lightning attack I had just hit him with. With it being unstable, there would be a better chance to draw some of it out. So I switched from Phantom Lord to Silver and Cold by AFI (Your sins in to me, my beautiful one…). The effect of this healing song was to pull quantities of dark energy directly out of Dragor and into me. Even that wasn't as easy as it sounds… he was more than willing to relinquish some of his energy, in the form of flame attacks, sending waves of black flames in my direction. I had to redirect my healing spell, place it in conjunction with Fuel by Metallica (Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire!", to absorb all of the dark energy as it came in my direction. I was focusing on The Curse by Disturbed to try to stabilize all of that dark energy as it came it, but it was looking like it might be too much energy to stabilize all at once.

No matter how unstable my energy might be getting, Dragor's was much more unstable because he was pissed off. He erupted into a massive blast of fire powered by dark energy. The entire area around him burst into flames, flames reaching high into the sky and scorching the ground around them, burning into the surface of the planet itself to make a large crater there. I could hear Dragor inside the flames laughing maniacally, saying that there was no way he could be defeated by one as pathetic as a mere human, his full power would crush me like a gnat… he continued yelling and laughing, sounding like nothing short of a complete lunatic. The flames around him blasted into an even brighter blast which was nearly blinding to look into. Witchblade was protecting me from the force of the flames as I focused on absorbing some more of the energy…

This wasn't getting anywhere… but it did appear he was expending a large amount of his energy into all of those flames. So maybe I might have some success in using a healing spell at this point. So I focused on using the song Touch My Heart off of the Devil Hunter Yohko soundtrack. The song started playing, and the first thing I noticed was something I'm not used to seeing… it was forming a sphere of light energy around me that was blocking out the dark energy flames. I was able to approach Dragor much more easily than I had expected with the dark energy being blocked out by the sphere of light. When I got close enough to Dragor I was able to move on to the next part of the spell; a pillar of blue and white energy erupted around Dragor,

which clearly got him even more pissed off or maybe it was actually hurting him, because I could hear loud roars from within the energy pillar that I couldn't tell if they were of rage, pain, or both. The pillar of light burned bright until it had burned off all of the dark energy flames and left nothing but a huge charred crater with an unconscious Dragor in the middle of it.

I went over to Dragor, he was alive, though he looked quite disoriented from the entire ordeal. I had some unstable dark energy inside of me… so I was focusing on The Curse by Disturbed (Defying the curse that has taken hold, never surrender, I'll never be overcome!) to stabilize the dark energy inside of me. I had gotten it mostly stabilized when Dragor got up and looked at me strangely, still looking very disoriented. The song spell to use now was Of Wolf and Man (I feel I change, back to a better day… Hair stands on the back of my neck… In wildness is the preservation of the world, so seek the wolf in thyself! Shape shift nose to the wind, shape shift feeling I've been, move swift all senses clean, earth's gift, back to the meaning of wolf and man!) to change Dragor back to his true form, which is that of a blue dragon.

Dragor now had the form of a huge dragon, three heads, shining scales that looked like they were made out of brushed steel, breathing bolts of lighting, roaring so loud that the surrounding mountains were shaking with the sound. The entire dragon was sparking, an electric dragon, it was an awesome sight to see. The dragon finally calmed down and looked directly at me with its middle head, now the dragon had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen…

Dragor made a snorting sound in my direction before flapping his massive wings and taking flight into the sky and disappearing through a portal that appeared there. He had just disappeared from sight when everything around me faded and I woke.

Note: My goals tonight included training with Vegeta if he wasn't otherwise occupied playing around with Walms before going to find the dragon man, I'm going to call him Dragor for the purposes of this record, I found a few days ago that needed to be healed. He had been hanging around with two other individuals which Q has described as the worst kind of evil… but as evil as they are, they are even more lazy than they are evil… so when left on their own, they just get drunk a lot, talk about death and destruction, and occasionally bully someone who has annoyed them. So technically I don't have to fight them if I can get Dragor separated from them so I can deal with him on his own. Keeping my goals in mind I fell asleep and slipped into a WILD…

This time I remembered right away that I was going to pick up MoSh before going to see Vegeta for training. But I also remembered that there was a chance Vegeta would not even be there when we arrived. So before going to pick up MoSh I would go make sure our sensei was there to do the training. I opened a portal to Vegeta's house and stepped through it only to see Vegeta was right there waiting for me. He asked me if I wasn't going to bring MoSh this time. I said I had come by to make sure Vegeta was there just in case he had gone off to find Walms, as there was no need to bring MoSh here if there was no one here to train us. Vegeta said he had gone to find Walms, who had told him he was busy with something else and then disappeared. Since Vegeta was there, I opened a portal to go find MoSh.

I stepped through the portal into MoSh's inner world to find his house had once again changed dramatically, in fact this was the most dramatic change yet. I was not looking at a house now, but an actual castle! The houses on either side of MoSh's house had been pushed aside to make room for the larger structure of MoSh's castle, causing them to look rather cramped on both sides. MoSh came out of the castle, greeting me as he came over to me. Pointing at the castle, I asked MoSh what was up with the castle, was he now a king? Should I be addressing him as 'your royal highness' now that he was living in a castle? MoSh didn't say anything, he just stood there and gave me a really weird look. Maybe it was just my perception of his home that was getting screwed up and the actual home wasn't changing at all.

Vegeta was waiting for us when MoSh and I came through the portal back into my inner world. He didn't waste any time with getting on with the training. As has been happening, my memories of the actual training are rather sketchy. What I can tell you is that Vegeta used his time dilation and caused the training session to go on for a considerable length of time before I finally woke up after only about an hour of sleep.

Note: Tonight I really don't remember anything other than some fragments. My WILD successfully went to another training session with Vegeta, although the one difference here was that MoSh came with me. There were also a few other fragments, but they seemed pretty nonsensical and they were also non-lucid, but here is what I remember.

*Vegeta's Class*
My WILD started with me in my inner world. Instead of going directly to Vegeta's class, however, I opened a portal and stepped through into MoSh's inner world where I found myself looking at yet another unfamiliar house.

I wondered if the house really keeps changing or if my perception of it is screwed up for some reason. I paused to look at the different house for only a short time before going up to the front door and knocking on it. I surveyed the surrounding area while waiting for MoSh or Asuka to come to the door, noting that the rest of the area seemed to remain mostly consistent from one visit to the next one. The door opened and MoSh came out, he appeared ready to go. The big question was whether or not he was lucid and if he would remember any of this dream. Looking at the house one more time, I asked MoSh why his house kept changing. MoSh gave me a strange look as if he thought I was completely mental. I decided not to pursue the matter any further and opened a portal to my inner world just outside of Vegeta and Serena's house. Vegeta approached MoSh and me as soon as we exited the portal, seeming to survey both of us as we entered. He took a closer look at MoSh before saying we should get to training, he knew the exact thing MoSh needed to work on. As I have indicated, I don't remember the training itself very clearly, which Vegeta doesn't seem to see as a problem.

*Computer Fish*
I was at a computer store browsing various laptops that were on display. It wasn't myself that I was looking at laptops for, I was looking at the laptops for a friend, though I no longer remember the name of the friend. I poked around at a few laptops that I didn't think could be used for much more than paperweights, they were just too old and slow to be used for anything worthwhile. Even the internet would run at a snail's pace on one of those. I wondered why the computer store I was in even bothered keeping those old dinosaurs on display at all. After searching for what seemed like forever I finally found one computer hidden in the back corner that looked like it was at least somewhat decent. I knew the friend I was shopping for didn't need a top of the line model, but he did want to be able to surf the internet at a decent rate and maybe have a couple other applications running at the same time without crashing the whole system. The computer was password protected, so I started entering guesses until a salesperson came over and gave me the correct code. But now the computer was stuck at a fish screen saver…

The screen saver was teeming with fish of all colors and sizes; I quickly became distracted from my computer shopping as I manipulated the screen saver to produce more and more outrageous fish on the screen. The salesperson came back and said the computer was for serious customers only and asked me to leave. I knew how to modify the screen saver now, so I thought I could continue playing with it on my home computer.


*Indestructible*
I was walking with my friend Alicia down a dark and creepy alley. A light on the back of a building flickered and went out as Alicia and I passed it; I couldn't help but wonder what we were coming this way for at all. The alley way wasn't really much of a shortcut, shaving only a very short distance off of our trip, and it was very creepy.

We were near the end of the alley when several big thugs stepped out of the shadows and boxed Alicia and me in. Alicia was hiding behind me and whimpering, clearly afraid of what the goons might have in mind. The dim light from the moon reflected off of a blade that one of the men was holding up to show us. He said if we handed over all of our money and jewelry then no one would get hurt. One of the other goons stepped forward and accepted Alicia's purse as she willingly handed it over. Checking my pockets, I realized I didn't have any money or any valuables at all on me. My purse was at home on my bed where I had forgotten to pick it up before leaving to meet Alicia at the park. When I told the thugs this, however, they didn't seem to believe me. The look on the face of the goon in front of me could have curdled milk as he came forward and said he would have either my money or my blood. When I told him I didn't have any money he motioned to the other goons who grabbed my arms while he drove his blade into my stomach all the way up to the hilt. I reflexively doubled over in anticipation of pain, but the pain didn't come. The thug did a double take at the confused look I gave him and stabbed me several more times. No pain, no weakness, no nothing. I started laughing at the man, asking him if that was really the best he could do. He stabbed me in the chest several times, then proceeded to stab his buddy on my right as if thinking somehow the knife wasn't working properly. His buddy fell over, bleeding with a shocked look on his face, bleeding out right in front of us. A look of terror crossed the thug's face as he turned his back and ran down the alley screaming like a little girl, leaving his other buddy still looking perplexed.

Note: I once again used my WILD to do some more training with Vegeta. My goals after that included finding the dragon man I epic failed to heal the last time I saw him. A party is going on at MoSh's, where there will no doubt be lots of people, drinks, food, some colorful art, and a lot of fun. Pablo needed a ride, so I picked him up on the way to MoSh's house. I planned on stopping by Walms' world, too, as I have yet to meet his kid, also named Walms, who is part feline, or so I've heard. After waking up from the training dream, I used my iPod without the light / sound machine to slip into another WILD…

When I entered my WILD I was in my kitchen. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I opened the fridge and rummaged through it until I found a thick slice of chocolate cake… my favorite. I was effectively distracted by eating the chocolate cake, and it wasn't until I was just about finished that I remembered I was supposed to be doing something. I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world and went through it into a beautiful forest.

There was a gentle breeze blowing through the trees as I stepped out of the portal. I took a moment to enjoy the songs of the birds and the smell of the trees. Fresh air is something there isn't nearly enough of in my home dimension. I focused on completing the task of locating Pablo. As if my decision to look for Pablo was a cue, a bunny hopped through an open area between a couple of trees followed closely by a fox. There was no doubt in my mind that the fox was Pablo.

So it looked like I would have to chase him down since he didn't seem to be lucid. No problem there, I transformed into a bobcat and pursued the fox into the forest bushes. In the form of a bobcat I found my senses of smell and hearing were greatly enhanced. I followed the sounds and the scent of the fox as it chased the bunny through the trees. When I was close enough to Pablo, I leapt forward and pounced on him, causing both of us to tumble over each other on the grassy forest floor. The sight of a fox and a bobcat playfully rolling around must have been a cute one.

I transformed back into my human form and asked Pablo if he was lucid. He just looked at me with big brown fox eyes and a look on his face that made it impossible to resist petting him. He made a soft purring sound when I scratched him behind the ears. I said I didn't know if he was lucid or not, but I would take him to the party at MoSh's as I had promised. I scooped the fox up into my arms as I opened another portal. At the last minute I remembered my intention to go see Walms and his kid Walms, so I redirected the portal to Walms' inner world. I carried Pablo through the portal.

Now I found that I was in yet another beautiful forest, though it felt significantly different from the one I had just left. The same breeze was blowing, I could smell the same fresh air; the difference wasn't something tangible, just a feeling I got. I uses a telepathic scan to search the area for Walms. I didn't see any trace of him there. I wondered if maybe he had already gone to MoSh's party. Perhaps he had spent as long as he wanted to waste here waiting for me and had decided to move on. That was ok, though, as I could meet Walms Jr. just as easily after the party as before it. Still cradling a soft and cuddly fox in my arms, I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world.

The first thing I noticed upon arriving at MoSh's inner world was that his house looked significantly different than I remembered it from earlier dreams. It was so much larger… before it had been a nice home, but pretty normal looking. The house that stood before me now looked more like a hotel than a single family home. For a brief instant I wondered if I was in the right place at all. I went to the door of the house and knocked. The door opened and MoSh welcomed me into the house. I set Pablo down as I looked around the room. I asked MoSh when he had moved into a mansion. MoSh stopped, turned and looked at me, asking me what I was talking about. I said his house looked completely different than it had on my last visit. MoSh looked around the house and said it was exactly the same as it had been. I looked around as well, absolutely certain that I had never seen MoSh's house like this before. It didn't seem to matter that I convince MoSh of that, however, I figured he was probably just not lucid. MoSh was smiling, he pointed out where there were snacks, drinks, and said the murals were down a specific hall. He said he had other guests to tend to. MoSh disappeared into a bustling crowd of people, most of whom I didn't recognize. Were they real people? Or just illusionary dream characters created to inhabit MoSh's inner world? For all of them to be real people would make this one of the largest shared dream in history.

After watching MoSh disappear into the crowd I turned towards the drink stand and went over there. Tall ears were visible over the rest of the crowd. I got closer to get a better look, and while I still didn't get a really good look, I could see someone was dressed as a giant bunny. That was no doubt Nomad. Chuckling to myself over the bunny costume, I went over and grabbed a strawberry cooler from an ice chest. Taking a drink of the sweet liquid, I headed towards the hall where MoSh had indicated there was a mural.

While the main room was practically packed with people, the hall with the mural had very few people in it. Pablo, still in the form of a cute little fox, was sitting on the ground observing the mural in a very interested manner. I looked at the paintings on the wall. They were very nicely done, different parts of the mural depicted various people I know, including me, in various scenes. There were action scenes, scenes of us having fun together, scenes with just one or two of us, scenes with all of us… The scenes lined up to form a sort of story progressing over time. The first scenes depicted Nomad, MoSh, and I followed by ones where Asuka was added. A bit later Tigress and Silver joined the group; Pablo and Loaf made appearances throughout the scenes. It was a bit closer to the end that I saw a figure surrounded by a dark aura, and I saw that was Walms. Some of the later scenes also depicted me with a dark aura surrounding me as well. The scenes also depicted many of the enemies that all of us have faced. I picked up the cute little fox in the hall and started petting him as I held him in my arms. Pablo started purring again as I was absent mindedly stroking. I was still petting the fox when everything faded around me and I woke.

I rolled over and got out of bed. The darkness in the room made it impossible to even see my own hand in front of my face. How could it be that dark? I got out of bed and groped my way through the darkness. The room seemed to go on forever. Far beyond where my bedroom door should have been I was still going. This was clearly not normal. I decided to do a RC, and found out that I was dreaming.

I summoned a light so I could see the room I was in. Surprisingly enough, the room turned out to be my bedroom. I wondered how I had been walking forever and still not have left my room. That didn't really matter any longer. I looked around the room, trying to remember my goals. The book from the Akashic Records was sitting on my dresser. I remembered my encounter with the evil sorcerer that seemed to live inside the book. He had said he was bound to the book, and had shown clear hatred for all living things and a definite desire to get out of the book. He had said in no uncertain terms that if he had not been bound to the book he would have wanted to kill me on sight just for having light energy in me. I had not seen a single thing about him that I liked. Anything he could possibly have to teach wasn't something I wanted to learn. So instead of returning to the book I wanted to lock it back up and send it back where it came from, or even better, to a place it would never be found.

I picked the book up off of the dresser and lied it down on my bed. It seemed completely harmless now. There was no sign of the evil contained within. Nothing on the book that could betray that it was anything other than an ordinary antique book. I had a thought in the back of my mind that maybe finding the evil sorcerer had nothing to do with the book… maybe an evil entity had seen me trying to use the book and had teleported me elsewhere to try to use me. Maybe if I was to open the book now there wouldn't be any problem with getting the information out of it. Maybe… maybe… maybe… No… that was way too many maybes. Something about that book intended to get me to go into it again, no doubt the power of that damned sorcerer. No way could he be trusted.

The locks on the book hung open. They looked simple enough to seal again. I tried to lock the book closed. It wouldn't stay. I would fasten the lock just to have it come open again on its own. Why was that happening? That seemed like a bad sign, like the thing inside had already started the process of getting itself out. I wasn't sure how powerful that sorcerer was, but there was no way that having him get out could be considered a good thing. I tried a few more times to make the book stay sealed closed. Those ideas included different energy flows, including the one that had caused it to open and the inverse of the one that had caused it to open. Nothing worked. Maybe I would have to ask someone about this. I thought it seemed really retarded that I had opened the book and now I couldn't lock it again. I knew it would be a stupid move to go back into the book and end up releasing the sorcerer, but had I already done something incredibly stupid? If I had, then I would have to set it right. No two ways about it. That meant finding out a spell that would seal the sorcerer back into the book or into something similar or destroy the sorcerer or heal him on the off chance he had a spark somewhere in there… But maybe it wasn't down to that yet.

Not wanting to leave the book alone for some reason, I telepathically contacted Q. I told Q what the current problem was. Q responded by saying that since Sephiroth is part dark energy, I should contact Sephiroth. Q said Sephiroth would have a better understanding of the dark energy at work inside the book. So I telepathically contacted Sephiroth. I repeated to Sephiroth what the problem with the book was. Sephiroth said he would be right there. And sure enough, only a second or so had passed before Sephiroth appeared in my room. Sephiroth came over beside me on my bed and sat down, picking the book up and taking a look at it. Sephiroth turned the book over in his hands a few times, seeming a bit puzzled. He examined the lock closely, latching it closed only to have it come open again. I asked him if he knew what was wrong. He indicated to me to be quiet, looked at the book some more, then finally said that this lock would need a specific flow of energy to seal it, just as it had needed a specific flow of energy to open it. Sephiroth examined the book a bit more and then latched the lock closed. This time it stayed locked.

Sephiroth got up from my bed, looked at the book a bit longer, then he set the book down on my dresser. I asked him if he wasn't going to take it with him. He said not yet. He said he wasn't sure that book was supposed to be in the Akashic Records to begin with. I said I thought every book ever written was in there. Sephiroth shook his head. He said every piece of knowledge is kept there, but not every book ever written or created. Information on dark energy could surely be found there, including information on how to use it and control it. But if this book was created to house and imprison an evil entity, it surely was not intended to be in the Akashic Records. He said he was going to find out more about the book before deciding what to do with it. He added that since the book had not been bothered in my room so far, it seemed best not to move it. There would be a lot of evil forces that would love to get their hands on that book, either to claim its knowledge or even to release the sorcerer. And that would not be a good thing. I waited there a few more minutes, spent some time with Sephiroth. After spending some time with Sephiroth, I felt the dream slipping. I didn't even try to stop it. I had gotten to be very relaxed while I was with Sephiroth. So now everything in the dream faded to black and I woke.

When we got back to MoSh's inner world, I noticed the dream seemed to be ending. Time to dilate time. I told MoSh I wanted to do something more with him if he didn't mind. He said that was cool. I figured that might not even matter… if he wasn't going to remember me. Either way, I decided to dilate time. I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, dilating time to the point where one hour in waking life equaled four hours of dream time.

I asked MoSh what he wanted to do. He said he didn't have anything specific in mind, so he would help me with one of my goals. The nature of my goals eluded me at the time… Since I couldn't focus on something specific to aim for, I focused on opening a portal to take MoSh and me somewhere we needed to be. The portal opened. MoSh followed me through…

Once we were on the other side, I had a look around. I saw a familiar face… I focused on placing the name… Lonewolf! So why had my portal brought MoSh and me to see Lonewolf? There were a couple of women there with Lonewolf. I didn't recognize them. I looked around to take in the situation. I realized there was a battle going on. There were zombies attacking. I figured that was why I was there. There were a couple of other people right there with Lonewolf, but I didn't recognize them. I headed towards the area where the main advancement of zombies seemed to be coming from. There were so many of them… I wondered how it had happened that these zombies were attacking Lonewolf and his friends… I looked into the hoard of zombies. There were also some other things out there that appeared to be demons. I still didn't understand why they would be attacking Lonewolf, but it didn't really matter. They were attacking but that was about to stop.

MoSh and I were now outside the main gate of what looked like an ancient fortress. MoSh changed into his naga form and flew off. I thought a few extra of me would be a benefit. I used the song Divide by Disturbed to multiply myself. I multiplied myself until there were 256 of me. I considered going on to 512, but I decided against it. The battle raged on. All of the copies of me attacked the enemies with Witchblade swords, some of the Witchblade swords were charged with light energy lightning which made them even more effective against zombies and demons. I had the idea one of my copies was using a fire weapon of some kind… I didn't have time to contemplate why just one of my doubles was using fire… I saw areas of the hoard bathed in green flames. That was no doubt MoSh's doing…

It seemed that the hoard of enemies knew no end. Cut through endless numbers of them and more just came to replace those. I followed the direction that the zombies and demons seemed to be coming from. I fought my way through the hoard of enemies, past several of my clones, I spotted some more green flames off to my left… I happened to think that a big fight should involve more people… I looked around the hoards of zombies. There were lots of me fighting through there. I also did see a few other people. Sephiroth was a short distance to my right, I spotted Link off to the left… I wondered who else was there. I continued tracking the zombies back until I found where they were coming from. I found that the zombies and demons were coming through a portal as if it was a tunnel, and they seemed to just keep coming. To fix this situation I would have to close the portal.

There were endless numbers of enemies coming out of the portal… it would be hard to close as long as that was going on. So my answer to that was to power up a large energy blast, using Dragonball Z as my archetype. I powered up a Final Flash of light energy and then fired it directly into the portal. It fired directly through the portal, incinerating zombies and demons as it went. I couldn't see what it hit at the other end, but there was a huge explosion that set the entire portal unstable. The portal itself exploded in a blast of energy that incinerated all of the nearby zombies and demons. The portal collapsed in on itself, finally leaving nothing behind but some dispersing light. I was now standing in a large empty space. I looked around and saw what was left of the zombie and demon hoard moving away from my location. I wondered if the enemies had even noticed that their portal was destroyed and there would be no more reinforcements…

So I went back into the fray and continued helping the others fight. My copies were starting to disperse a bit too far, and that was getting disoriented. A couple of my copies were in a swamp like area… which was not consistent with my current location. I wondered where those copies had managed to get themselves… The fight continued for a while longer, but now there was a definite end to it all. Finally there were only a few of the enemies left. Before the last one fell, however, I lost the dream and woke.

Note: Several plans for this evening. First I did more training with Vegeta. Did a quick run through of the previously completed challenges, and then moved on to the maze. My reaction time is improving greatly just from the nightly training. Vegeta says if I keep this up, I will be moving and reacting so quickly that my enemy will have trouble keeping track of me. Who needs to teleport when you move as fast as that? Vegeta's time dilation allowed me to get a few hours training into less than an hour of waking life time. I am finding my memories of the training aren't as clear as they were in the beginning… Vegeta says that's fine, don't worry about it. The training needs to become instinctive, so remembering it is not important. Next I wanted to heal MoSh after he had been having some pains last night, followed by one more healing on S to make sure she is ok. And I still want to have a shared DDO dream with Tigress where we both remember it well. Still working on that one. I have decided not to go back into the Book of the Abyss again. I didn't like that sorcerer I found in there. I didn't like his attitude, I didn't like the feeling I got from him, I didn't like the fact he slipped disturbing images in with the images showing different fighting techniques, I didn't like the fact he had put down the fact that Walms restores nature by using dark energy… I didn't like anything about him. My first WILD went to training with Vegeta, this starts with my second dream.

I got out of bed and looked at the clock. The clock said it was 1:30 in the afternoon! Oh, shit! I'd intended to be up by about 10:30! I threw on my clothes and ran out of my bedroom… and into a dark room. Wtf? My bedroom door closed behind me, leaving me in total darkness. I groped around in the darkness until I felt a wall. The wall felt like panels of cold steel. This made absolutely no sense. I followed the wall to the side until I found a corner, then I followed that wall. I could hear my footsteps echoing off of the steel floor. Why couldn't I see anything? I needed light. So far this felt like being in a strange dream where nothing was right… a dream? Maybe I was dreaming… I did a RC and confirmed that fact. I became lucid.

I formed a ball of light in my hand so I would be able to see. The light reflected off of the metal surfaces of the room. The sound of my footsteps echoed. I thought about my dream goals. I wanted to go meet MoSh to take care of a couple of things. So I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through it.

I found MoSh waiting on the other side of the portal. MoSh asked if I was ready to go. I said I would be ready as soon as I did a healing on MoSh for the pains he had experienced the previous night. MoSh agreed to that, so we went into his house and into one of the bedrooms. MoSh lied down on the bed and I focused on the song Voices from the Macross Plus soundtrack. Golden energy formed and flowed through MoSh as the song played through. After that was done I opened a portal to go find S. The portal opened easily and I went through, followed by MoSh.

The portal exited into a familiar scene of a church with a small graveyard beside it. Things didn't look as dark or dreary as I remembered it. It looked like a pleasant little church. Like in the photo, except it was night out. In the graveyard I saw a woman. She was beside one of the graves with some flowers. She set the flowers beside the grave and then looked over at MoSh and me. It was S. She looked over at us, she had a strange look on her face. She was the reason why I was there. I headed over to S. When I got closer to S I saw she was looking past me at MoSh. She said something about the bitch bringing her mutt mate. So apparently she was not happy to see us…

I approached S, completely ignoring her comments. I did an energy scan of her. She was contaminated by dark energy. I could take that out… I briefly remembered things going bad the last time I tried that with her… should I try it again? Yes… I knew how to be more careful. I used Silver and Cold to draw dark energy out of S. MoSh used a healing spell, putting light energy into S. This time I watched the energy I was drawing out to make sure I wasn't trying to absorb any sentient entities. I drew the dark energy out, MoSh replaced it, and I didn't see any sign of a sentient entity. The process went smoothly. When the process was over, the area looked even brighter. It actually looked quite nice. I opened a portal back to MoSh's inner world.

When we got back to MoSh's inner world, I noticed the dream seemed to be ending. Time to dilate time. I told MoSh I wanted to do something more with him if he didn't mind. He said that was cool. I figured that might not even matter… if he wasn't going to remember me. Either way, I decided to dilate time. I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, dilating time to the point where one hour in waking life equaled four hours of dream time.

Note: The dream state completely changed plots here, so I will separate the next part into a separate dream.

I woke up and sat up in my bed. I couldn't see anything in my dark room. I got out of bed and headed for the door. I tripped over something furry… with a loud hiss, the cat ran out the door. Crap… I hadn't intended to step on a kitty… I followed the running cat and found her in the living room. I turned on the light so I could see the kitty better. A cute little tortoiseshell kitty jumped into one of the chairs and curled up to go to sleep. I did a double take at seeing that. The tortoiseshell cat could be no other than my beloved Amber…

but Amber got too old and sick, we had to have her put to sleep over 3 years ago. Yet there she was, curled up on the chair and sleeping. I approached the kitty, a bit afraid she would disappear and prove to have been just an illusion. I stroked her soft fur. She no longer appeared angry from being kicked, she started purring loudly. Amber always had such a loud purr. I scooped the kitty into my arms and hugged her close to me. Nothing could make me let go of that kitty… never again. I hugged my purring kitty close to me. It was a dream come true to have her back. Wait… no… what if all of this really was just a dream… a dream that would disappear before I knew it was gone… then Amber would disappear with the dream… no, I didn't want to lose her again, my beautiful Amber... I did an RC… Definitely a dream. I held Amber close to me, I felt like I would cry…

Amber started to wiggle. She wanted to go. I set her on the floor and she rubbed around my legs a few times before going into the other room where the cat food is. I could hear her eating in there. It seemed so unfair that I had to lose her again… Now to get my mind off of that and onto one of my dream goals. Open and read some of the contents of that locked book I found in the Akashic Records. I went into my bedroom and found the book on my dresser. I took the book and lied it on the bed. I undid the lock, the lock opened easily. I had already figured out the lock earlier, though I no longer remembered how the lock had opened. I opened the book to the beginning and looked inside. The pages felt like parchment under my hands. There was such detail on the book for a dream… such beautiful detail. I admired the leather cover and the pages inside right down to the fact they were completely blank. I flipped through some more pages in the book. Blank, blank, blank… I couldn't find a single line of text or a single picture in the entire book! So how could that help me with anything? Completely annoyed, I slammed the book closed. This sucked. All that trouble to get into the book for absolutely nothing. So I would do something else during this dream. There was still time left… and I hadn't yet dilated time, so I could make it even longer. So what would I do next?

When I reached the door I got a strong feeling that I should turn around and go back to the book. Something about the book pulled at my mind, insisted that I return. I walked back over to the bed and sat down. I had a very strong feeling guiding me to pick up the book and open it again. But how could a blank book help me any? It couldn't help. The insistent feeling continued. The urging, the pull. This feeling could not be denied. I had to open the book. I lied the book on my bed again and opened it up to some random point in the middle. The blank pages stared back at me as if taunting me with their mystery. I reached out and touched the page of the book, felt the parchment. The parchment felt like liquid now… like it wasn't quite solid. My hand sank into the liquid, and then I felt myself falling… falling… and everything faded to black before a whole new location came into view…

I surveyed my new surroundings. I floated down to what looked like a stone platform floating in the middle of an endless abyss… weird place. Purple clouds or something filled the abyss, but that only made it look emptier. The large stone platform floated in the abyss without any obvious means of support. I floated down and landed gently on the large stone platform. I looked across the platform, which looked to be about the size of a few football fields… not a small place. A figure stood at the far side of the platform. I could not tell who he was. I moved closer to the figure, the figure did not respond to my presence at all. The figure could have been a statue if it wasn't for the subtle movements I noticed as he shifted his position. I approached slowly.

"Get on with it, will you?" the man said, "Do I look like I have all night? Come over here and tell me what you are doing with a book about dark energy. You don't look like a dark energy being… I see way too much of that disgusting light stuff in you. So tell me what you're after and make it quick, I have little patience for those of your kind."

"Those of my kind?" I asked.

"Light entities," the man responded in an irritated manner, "If I had not been bound to this book you would already be dead, fool. Now either tell me what you want here or go away!"

So he didn't like light energy. I wondered what he would think of Walms. I saw the man looking at me with an intense star that made it look like he could peer right into my mind.

"I have seen this person you are referring to as Walms…" the man said with obvious disdain, "I can see much of what goes on in the worlds, I just can't participate. I saw your Walms using dark energy to restore a forest." He scoffed, "There are those who don't realize dark energy is not meant to create life, it is meant to destroy life. Using dark energy to plant flowers… such a waste. Now, for the last time, why are you here?!"

I pushed thoughts of Walms out of my mind, and focused on creating a mental shield to keep this guy out of my thoughts. I saw the annoyance on his face when I did that. I told the man that I wanted to control the dark energy. When I said that, he seemed to be a bit more interested. He said most of my kind only seek to destroy dark energy, and all who use it. I told him I was no longer that blind, dark energy can't be destroyed, if it did that would destroy the balance of the reality. He snorted at that. He said if I want to use dark energy I would have to get rid of that light crap I have right now. I said no, I would have both. He looked a bit surprised, but got an interesting smirk.

"So you seek to live in both the dark and the light at the same time? You would dwell in the world of twilight?" the man was asking me, "Not just anyone can control both the dark and the light simultaneously. Mostly one has to select between the two, at least for their primary energy. Choose either dark or light." He looked at me as if evaluating something about me. His gaze was so intense I could feel him probing over me… I reinforced my mental shield to be sure he could not see my thoughts again. "But yes, it looks like you might just be able to do it… as long as the process doesn't drive you mad."

"I will control both," I said, trying to sound confident. I had the feeling it would be an error to display any form of weakness to this man. I asked him who he was.

"I am the darkness," he said, "I am the destroyer of worlds, I am the bringer of night. My name would mean nothing to you, though, human. If I was free right now I would rend your soul from your worthless carcass and devour it whole… you would be forever imprisoned within me, where you would experience an eternity in hell." He chuckled as if thinking of a pleasant thing. "But alas, it is not to be. I have been bound to this book and am now forced into servitude to fools like you. Teaching you how to use dark energy. There's still some fun to be had when fools who think they can control it are instead consumed by it, but not nearly enough. So if you seek my knowledge, come over here. I find some things about you amusing, but my patience for you is running thin."

I wondered if I should trust this person. Who knows what he might try if I got too close. I eyed him from my current position, wondering what the best action would be.

"Oh, for the hate of…" he said in a very impatient voice, "This cursed book won't allow me to directly harm anyone. And if I had wanted to kill you, you would have been dead long before you got even that close. Now get over here or go away. I'm not going to say that again. I might not be able to harm you, but I can refuse you my services."

I went over to the dark sorcerer. He violently and suddenly took hold of my right wrist with his left hand, and my left wrist with his right hand. It felt like his grip could break my bones. But any pain I might have felt was instantly numbed by a surge of icy cold energy. Like dry ice. The cold flowed through my body in a massive rush. I felt instantly both drained and energized. Images filled my mind, images of various moves that looked like Alex Mercer from Prototype… the form changing, the consuming, the tendrils, the spikes coming from the ground, the sword, the claws… and some things I didn't remember seeing at all… becoming a dark vapor, fusing with an enemy to take control of them, creating raging black flames, calling forth darklings that would do my bidding, absorbing dark energy from any source, including the darklings I had just summoned… The flurry of images passed through my mind so fast I didn't even catch all of them. The images of using dark energy powers were interspersed with disturbing images of violence, torture, and death. I didn't see all of those, either, but I saw images of a child impaled on a spike, crying and writhing in pain, darklings coming out and eating the child alive, seeming to feed more on the cries of pain than on the flesh… I knew I had missed quite a few images, both of the torture and of the powers, but then the images stopped. The dark sorcerer pushed me away from him, my legs buckled and I fell to the ground.

"Maybe I was wrong," the sorcerer laughed, "If you can't even handle that, you haven't got a chance of handling dark energy. Don't expect to be able to use those powers on your own yet… that's assuming you saw any of them… and return here in 24 hours time… if you have the backbone to take another step into darkness." I stood up, facing the dark sorcerer. I didn't want to show any sign of weakness. "Now be gone, human. We have no further business to discuss here tonight." With a flick of his hand, an invisible force sent me flying up into the air. I passed through the surface of the book and crashed into the wall of my own bedroom. Ok… that was weird… I wondered if it was wise to return there again… or if this was all a trick.

Note: Tonight I wanted to do some more training with Vegeta. Vegeta has said if I really want to improve, I need to come train on a regular basis. I'll just have to see if I can keep my motivation up. So I won't go into detail on the training today, but I will just say that we did a bit more practice on what we did last night and then moved on and did the one with the drones… which I had thought was something Vegeta made up, but I have been told that is also from the Ranma 1/2 series… except in the series it was actual bees that Ranma caught, here they are small robot drones. This makes sense… Vegeta really likes the series Ranma 1/2… Next, I planned to track down someone who needs their heart healed. Inside, I am a healer... and I think it has been having a negative effect that I haven't been doing that kind of healing much lately. I also wanted to take a closer look at the locked book. I successfully slipped into a WILD…

My bedroom was dark when I woke up. I rolled over and got ready to go back to sleep. But first a reality check. I discovered this was a dream! I got out of bed as I became fully lucid…

I thought about my next goal. I used my first dream training with Vegeta, in which he once again did some amazing time dilation. Several hours of training fit into only about an hour of waking life time. Maybe even less than an hour. It takes a little time to actually fall asleep and get into the dream state even with the aid of meditation… Now I wanted to track down someone who needs to have their heart healed, to have their inner flame restored. First I asked myself who I wanted to try to locate. I remembered an individual referred to as Xildron, who I found out about from another dreamer. It seems that Xildron used to be a dragon, but got in a fight that ended in his death… and then some idiot resurrected Xildron as a human, which didn't make him very happy. It seems his energy is also unstable creating hostile behavior… I want to find him to stabilize that energy (the way I now see healing someone's heart) then he will be as he was meant to be. I'm not sure if I have enough information to track him… so instead I just tracked down the situation, which would no doubt lead me to someone who needed healing. So with that goal in mind, I opened a portal. I focused on allowing my tracking ability guide the portal to somewhere that my abilities would be needed. A portal opened and I went through it…

On the other side of the portal I found myself in a forest. It was a beautiful place. I walked through the forest for a while. The forest was filled with the sounds of singing birds and a gentle breeze blew through my hair. I wondered if my portal had gotten me anywhere near a situation like the one with Xildron… I didn't see anything that looked right. I decided it didn't really matter. Q keeps telling me I can't heal everyone, so I just have to focus on the ones I can find. So now I just needed to find the individual in the area who needed to have their heart healed. I walked through the forest for a while longer, just enjoying the setting. The forest slowly thinned out as I reached a rocky area at the base of a mountain. A cave opened into the mountain side. I approached the cave. Maybe the person I was looking for was in there. I wondered who might be living inside a cave. I entered the cave, making sure to remain silent as not to disturb anyone.

It started getting darker as I progressed farther into the cave. I adjusted my vision as the darkness became too deep to see well. The cave descended farther back, past a couple of passages leading off to the side. I stayed with the main passage. I finally reached the end of the passage, which was a large chamber. The flicker of torches illuminated the chamber. There were three individuals there. There was one on the left who had reddish skin, which looked like they might be scales, black hair that was basically a long mohawk, that went halfway down his back. The hair flowed down between two horns that were curved and had nasty looking points. He had ratty looking blue jeans on. The person on the right was dressed in black robes. I could not see anything of the thing's face or any other part of his body. Just glowing eyes… and those were glowing with a silvery light. The third man in the middle had normal caucasian skin, long hair that was a really light blonde or maybe silver, and he was decked out in nasty looking armor. The armor looked a lot like the armor in this picture, without the head piece and the lion insignias on the chest weren't lions… they were dragons. The colors may have also been different… I can't remember the exact color of the armor. All three of them appeared to be glaring at me, although it was hard to tell about the one in the dark robes…

I completely ignored the fact I was being glared at as I scanned each of them for a possible spark. The two on the outside didn't have any spark, or at least none that I could see… The man in the center had a spark… I could see that for certain. The man in the center needed to be healed, but I didn't see anything that could be done for the other two. I knew immediately that the other two were going to cause trouble for me when I tried to heal the third one. Now I walked farther into the room until I was right in the center of the chamber. Up until now no one had said anything, all three of them had continued to stare at me. Finally the one in the middle spoke. He spoke in a low growling voice. He asked me who I thought I was, and what did I mean by intruding in their lair. I said I had come to see him. He laughed a laugh that was completely without mirth. He said he had no business to discuss with the likes of me. He said I had made a fatal mistake by coming here, because now I could not be allowed to leave. I found myself under attack.

A massive blast of flames came from the demonic man on the left at the same time as the ground was cracking open beneath my feet, an attack coming from the cloaked figure on the right. I jumped into the air with quick reflexes I didn't realize I had. I found I was flying into the air, the chamber was much higher than I had thought. I flew through a large hole that led all of the way to the surface and out into the open sky. The three people from the cave followed me out. Three attacks came at once… fire, lightning, and ice. I spun quickly and did 3 rapid Whiplash spells, sending the fire at the ice, the lightning at the fire, and the ice at the lightning. That didn't interfere with them for long… All three of them came at me all at once. I made a dive to the ground, falling like a rock and then pulling to a quick stop as I landed. Three massive energy attacks were right behind me. Witchblade formed armor over me at the last possible second before the attacks hit. There was a huge explosion that forced me down into the ground. I felt an immense force pushing me down, it lasted for a short time, and then it stopped. When I finally extracted myself from the ground I saw the blasts had left me in the middle of a large crater… I could hear the three men laughing up above, saying that foolish human should have known better than to intrude. Time to try something else.

As the three of them were laughing, I flew up from the middle of the crater fully covered in my Witchblade armor. I used the spell song Crush 'Em by Megadeth. I hit the demonic entity with a blast of gravity that forced him back into the mountain, forming a crater there. "Heads I win, tails you lose! Out of my way I'm coming through! Roll the dice don't think twice, and we crush! Crush 'em! Now we lay you down to rest, you'll never be more than second best! Step inside you're in for a ride, and we crush, crush 'em!" The gravity had him pinned to the mountain. I heard him cursing loudly about how he intended to burn the flesh from my bones slowly for that. Almost in the same move, I hit the cloaked figure with a blast of gravity which forced him into the ground, forming another crater right next to the crater made when I hit the ground. More cursing. More threats of torture and death. Meh… I've heard it all before, been through some of it. I heard them saying this would not hold them! It didn't need to hold them long, just for a bit while I used a healing spell on the third one. One more blast of gravity would have to hold the third one while I did the healing spell. I had the song Crush 'Em going in the back of my mind to keep the gravity fields supplied with energy. I could hear the song playing in my mind, or maybe in the physical area around me. I couldn't tell if the others could hear it or not.

The third man cursed fluently at me. I ignored his threats, too. I focused on the healing song Devour by Disturbed. "I will devour you, take all the pain away. I cannot stay my hand, from reaching out so that I can empower you. For all eternity. It seems to ease my mind, to know that you've brought meaning to my life." That was going just fine until the other two were breaking free. I tried to divert more energy to holding them, but that interrupted my healing spell… and the action proved to be too little and too late. They were both free now. They attacked me and I avoided their attacks, there was an explosion of flames and some energy behind me. The third man, the one I had come to heal, was right in front of me now. He grabbed me by the front of Witchblade. I looked into his eyes and did a scan. I found an image of a dragon there… A bluish green dragon with beautiful scales and wings, like this picture, but the dragon had three heads…

The man spoke in a low and angry growl. He said he didn't know who the fuck I was or where I had come from, but now I was going to… He stopped short as he noticed my telepathic scan. He roared at me to get the fuck out of his head. A portal opened and he threw me through it before I realized what he was doing… I hadn't been expecting that move, I had figured he would try to kill me… As I felt myself falling through the portal to an unknown destination I woke.

I was in a strange place. I looked around to see where I was. I was in a strange city. I looked around and I saw that I was in a space between two buildings. I looked out on the street and saw this city appeared to be populated by orcs. They were moving quickly from building to building, talking to each other only briefly before moving on. I saw that there seemed to be a lot of orcs near one building. I wondered what was happening over there. I wondered how the orcs would react if a human was suddenly found among them. I hesitated for a few minutes due to that, but for some reason I felt ok about going out onto the street, into the open. I felt ok about it, as if doing that would not put me in any danger. I stepped out onto the street and headed for the building where all of the activity seemed to be taking place.

As I walked across the street I noticed that the orcs were noticing my presence. They were turning to look, appearing very curious about me. None of them seemed hostile, though. They just seemed curious. I reached the building where all the activity was with no interference. When I got there I saw that the orcs were rushing in and out of the building. None of them were paying much attention to me. I looked into the building. There were orcs in beds everywhere. They looked to be in various stages of injury, They were all being tended to by doctors or healers… When I got in there, one of the orcs came over and quickly ushered me outside. She followed me off to the side of the door. She said the hospital was very busy, so unless I needed medical help, could provide aid, or needed aid, please stay out of the way. I asked what was going on. She smiled, then she turned and walked away.

I still wanted to know what was going on. I wondered who could tell me something about what was happening. While I didn't feel any hostility, I did feel an intense sense of urgency. I walked down the street towards someone who looked like they were in charge. Just as I was getting close to him, however, another orc came running up. This one was female. She said there was another attack force approaching. The male orc looked very disturbed by that. He said they didn't have any more warriors to send. He said most of them were too badly injured from the last attack… and those who weren't injured were completely exhausted. There was no way they could handle another attack… This sounded like a possible DDO quest. I would have to find out more. At thinking of it as a DDO quest, I stopped for a moment… DDO? Tigress does RC's when playing DDO… so I would do that, too. I did a RC and found out I was dreaming. But my goal was still the same. Find out what was going on.

I asked who was attacking. The woman looked at me strangely. She said the trolls, of course… I asked what she meant. She asked if I had just dropped from the sky… the troll army, they were attacking again. She said I had gotten myself into the wrong place… there was no way their defenses could handle another attack. I asked how many trolls. She said there appeared to be well over a thousand trolls… their biggest assault yet… And then there were the traitors who had fled the city to join with the enemy. She said hope was lost. I said no, it wasn't. I told her I would just have to intercept them. She said there was no way I could do that alone. I told her not to worry, there was an army ready to move in. An army? She asked an army of how many? I thought for a bit… I said definitely 256, I was expecting it would be 512, maybe as many as 1024. She asked if I didn't know how large my own army was. I said it depended on how many they had managed to gather up. She said maybe they should save themselves and run. She said full grown orcs couldn't match strength with a troll… and no offense, but an orc is much stronger than a human.

The orc that looked like he was in charge interrupted the woman. He said if the humans wanted to go out and get themselves killed in battle, then that is to be commended. It is much better to be killed in battle than to live in fear. The woman said that it is also foolish to go into a battle when you know you can't win. The leader said it was, in the end, up to the humans what they wanted to do. He said if my army of humans could hold the attacking hoards off just long enough for them to get the injured, the very young, and the very old to safety they would be extremely grateful and would make sure my army and I were well rewarded. He added that if we were in need of supplies… armor, weapons, rations, their resources would be at our disposal. It is well known that orc armor and weapons are among the best, although humans probably would have little use for orc rations… except for the mead… I told him not to worry, we were already well equipped. I asked where the trolls approached from. He said the south. I said perfect, we would have no problems intercepting them. With that I headed for the gate to the city.

I took flight, much to the surprise of the orcs around me, and flew over the gate and headed south. There were, indeed, hoards of trolls. I saw some orcs mixed in with them. I landed in front of the hoard. I landed near the one who appeared to be the general. I walked right over to him. I asked him if there was any possibility of them turning around and going home so things wouldn't have to get ugly. He and several others around him laughed. He said this stupid human amused him… so if I wanted to live, he was going to give me to the count of 10 to get out of his sight.

"All the way to 10?" I asked mockingly, "I'm impressed. I didn't realize trolls could count that high." The general glared at me and said I was no longer amusing him. I told him if he turned his forces around and left immediately, no one would get hurt. He said I would be wishing no one had been hurt. He took out his sword and tried to run me through. His sword hit my Witchblade armor, which formed instantly. The troll was quite surprised by that. I said if he was surprised by that, wait until he got a load of what was coming up next. I was about to focus on my multiplication spell when I saw there was another human there with me. It was Tigress. She asked what was going on. I motioned towards the army of trolls and orcs. I said if she wanted to help, just go ahead and kill something. In fact, kill lots of somethings. The trolls laughed some more. I guess the idea of Tigress killing lots of them was very amusing to them. Tigress multiplied. There was a paladin version of herself in shining armor with a large glowing sword… a rogue version of herself which was a halfling and had a dagger dripping with poison… and a fighter version of herself which was a warforged and was carrying two nasty looking swords… and that was in addition to her normal self.

So now I focused on the song Divide by Disturbed. 2… 4… 8… 16… 32… 64… 128… 256… That's where I normally stop. I saw that all of Tigress had dispersed into the enemy army, killing as she went through them. I thought I saw the pally split into two pallies, so Tigress wasn't done dividing, either. So even as the trolls attacked all of my clones, I continued multiplying… I wanted to push the limit. Another split… 512 of me. Every part of my mind seemed to be consumed by a different part of the fight. Cutting down a troll here, running my Witchblade sword through an orc there… There were still so many more trolls than there were of us… Should I keep dividing? I wasn't sure what would happen… I decided I had better not chance it until I knew for sure 512 would work well… So the fight continued. Having 512 of me was rather disorienting, but since all of us were focused on the same task, that made it easier. All of us were utilizing our Witchblade swords to cut down trolls and orcs wherever we found them.

Then I noticed something… one of the orcs had put his sword through one of my clones! His sword had managed to penetrate her Witchblade… I wondered how that was possible. Had dividing the Witchblade that many times made it less effective? My Witchblade spoke to me in my mind, saying the others were not as strong due to the dividing… but the original me still had a fully effective Witchblade. I felt the energy from the clone return to me. Ok… 511 of me… The fight was intense, and disorienting as I tried to direct each of my clones at the same time. A couple more clones went down, but that was nowhere near the number of trolls to fall. Soon the field was littered with dead trolls and also some fallen orc traitors. Only Tigress and I were left… there were 64 Tigresses and 486 of me.

Tigress looked around at all of the Ravens standing around her. She asked if I could have made any more of me. I said yeah, I thought I could have, but I stayed with 512 for now. The next step up from 256. Both of us absorbed our clones back into ourselves and surveyed the area. Nothing but death. Tigress started an intense fire. She said many of the bodies would burn, and create fertilizer for the earth… and the ones that don't burn will feed the scavengers of the wilderness. I looked at the burning carcasses and thought that was the first time those trolls and orcs would ever be useful to anyone. I was looking at the flames when I woke.

Note: I downloaded a new sound file, Yoga Nidra, which is a meditation track meant to aid in lucid dreaming. I used it for the first time tonight to aid in getting into my WILD. My goals tonight included doing the TotM by multiplying myself, and also some training. I have been feeling like I need to train due to having lost a fight to another DV member way too easily… and I also want alternative abilities that aren't power based in case I get attacked by Templars again and my powers don't work. So with those goals in mind, I used the new meditation sound along with my light / sound machine and slipped into a WILD…

I was in a green meadow near a house. I recognized the place as the house where Vegeta and Serena live. I walked towards the house. I saw Vegeta was off to the right. He came over to meet me. He asked if I was finally ready to accept training. He said that a fighter who will only train themselves has a fool for a student. He said he knew this for a fact because he used to be like that, and it was only when he started accepting help from others that he was able to boost his power level to what it is now. He powered up, creating a bright field of energy around him. It was a powerful energy field, and yet I knew that this energy was a mere fraction of his true power… and a small fraction at that. To prove that fact, Vegeta powered up a bit more. His energy field was casting a bluish white glow over the meadow. I still knew that what I was seeing was still a small fraction of Vegeta's true power.

Vegeta paused, and then he continued. . He looked me over as if sizing me up. He nodded a couple of times. He said he didn't see why I would have a problem with my skills and power level, but if I did and wanted to do something about it, it was time to train, and he was the one to train me He said that he has already seen I have a good power level and good skills in battle. He said the first thing I should work on is my speed. After all, an opponent who cannot hit you cannot defeat you. And after making your opponent miss is a good time to move around for a counter attack before the opponent even knows what hit them. He asked if I was ready for some serious training. Only serious training produces serious results. He asked if I was ready to commit to this… I said I would do my best. He said that's not good enough. I have to be committed to the training, coming in dreams w henever I get the chance, training when on my own… There is no, "I'll do my best," there is only "Yes, I will succeed!" or "No." If the answer is no, we are done. If yes, let's get started. I said yes. He insisted I say, "Yes, I will succeed!" and put confidence into it. Saying that made me believe I could do it.

So Vegeta and I started training. He told me to block all of his punches. He came over to me and did a Kachu Tenshin Amaguuriken as done by Ranma Saotome on the anime / manga Ranma 1/2. I blocked a couple of the punches, but Vegeta was as fast as lightning… I didn't block nearly all of them.

When that round was over, Vegeta looked at me again and said speed is definitely a place where I need improvement. He said to follow him and we would train for speed in the same manner Ranma Saotome trained… So Vegeta set up several different scenarios. The first one was right off of the Ranma 1/2 series… catching a number of fish from a tank and moving them to another tank… and the fish were piranha…

and the goal was to do it fast enough not to be bitten. The second task was also off of Ranma 1/2… the goal was to pluck a number of chestnuts out of a blazing fire without getting burned.

Then he came up with a few ideas of his own. A bunch of small flying drones in a swarm around me, they were basically drone bees. He said to grab them all out of the air, get them fast enough that I don't get stung. He said this exercise would require both speed and accuracy. Then there was the maze… a path of twists and turns with obstacles that would pop up at the last moment… and the goal was to speed through the maze as fast as possible without hitting any of the obstacles or the walls. He said that was for speed and reaction time. And don't start thinking the obstacles would be in the same place each time, because they wouldn't. It is necessary to expect the unexpected and be ready to act accordingly. His last one was a combination of the other two of his… fly through the maze and pluck the drones out of the air as I went. The goal was to capture all the drones and complete the course without hitting obstacles or walls. He added that just in case it needed to be said, I was to do all of these tasks without relying on my powers… except for in the maze, where I could use flight.

So I started working on those tasks. He had me starting on the piranha and chestnuts ones. I had done it for a short while when I felt the dream slipping. I said I would dilate time. He said not to. He said he would take care of the time dilation, I should focus on my exercises. So I continued. The dream stabilized. Vegeta continued watching me do the tasks, occasionally intervening to give me advice on picking up my speed. It seemed like I was training like that for a long time, and I could clearly see improvement even after that short time of training. Vegeta also said he had noticed a definite increase in my speed. He said if I kept that speed up for the beginning of our next session, the fish and the chestnuts were too easy for me… time to move on to the drones, then the maze, then both. And this time when everything faded, I woke.

Note: It felt like I had been in the dream state for a very long time. I am not good at judging how long, but several hours at least. When I woke up, I looked at my clock and saw I had only been asleep for an hour. Vegeta sure knows his time dilation!