New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I was at home sitting on the couch in my living room. I was drawing up something for my school project. Concept art. I didn't like how it was turning out at all. I decided to take a break. On a hunch I did a RC… and found out I was dreaming! Awesome, a spontaneous RC leading to lucidity!

Now that I was lucid, I decided to do something with the dream. I went out on the front porch and jumped off, flying for a short distance before landing, I took off again and flew some more. I was trying to think where I wanted to go. I would just let my subconscious guide me to where I need to be. I tried to open a portal… nothing. I did an additional RC to be sure I was dreaming. I was. Hmmm… maybe I did need a destination. I wondered where I could go. I thought I would drop in on MoSh. We didn't have anything planned, but I could still drop in. I tried again to open a portal. Nothing. Damn… this was getting annoying… I landed on the ground to think for a few minutes. I found myself confirming that I was in a dream state by pinching my nose and breathing. Still dreaming, still lucid… So what was going on?! I decided to go to the moon. I focused on opening a portal to the biodome. I focused as much as I could… nothing. Wow… this could really suck.

I went back into the house to think a bit. I did another RC just to be sure I really was in the dream state… and I found out I was definitely dreaming. So why couldn't I open a portal? I could fly… I got another idea. I went to a closed door to my bedroom. I stood there beside the door and visualized it as leading to the biocome, picturing the green trees and grass around the koi pond. When I got the vision as clear as I could I opened the door… fail. All I saw on the other side of the door was my own messy room. Crap!

I went back outside as I tried to think of what else to try. I wondered if this could be another Templar trick… the Templars had nullified my powers again somehow… did that mean they were lurking in the area with some horrible torture all prepared for me? I looked around quickly but I didn't see anyone. I was alone in the desert. I pushed thoughts of the Templars out of my mind. Getting paranoid would do no good. I looked into the sky and I saw the moon up there.

Ok… so I would just fly to the moon. That seems like the hard way to get there, but if it was the only way I'd make it, I would definitely try.

I took off flying again. I flew towards the moon, straight up… but I couldn't really get anywhere… I could hover and fly a bit, but I couldn't get very far off of the ground. Wtf? Damn! This was so frustrating! I kept trying to fly until the frustration of it all finally woke me up.

I was on what looked like a movie set. It was made to look like the interior of a Star Trek shuttle, or at least that's what I thought it looked like at the time. I was there with a man. I don't remember who he was. I was talking to the man about various Star Trek episodes. We were talking about an episode where there had been a traitor aboard the ship and that traitor had caused a lot of trouble, including the death of one of the crew. I was thinking of a part of the show where the guards should have spotted the traitor before he even got on the ship, but for some reason they had completely missed the obvious signs. The man and I were discussing various ways the traitor could have been stopped, various times that the guards should have caught the traitor, and a few plot holes that we found. The man laughed and said he liked figuring out how the story might have been different if things had been done differently.

I walked through the set of the Star Trek ship and up to the main control panel. It was somewhere around here that I realized that this was no simple movie set… this ship was real! This would be a fully functional ship! I found I seriously wanted to jack that ship. I told the man I was with that I was going to jack the ship. He asked if I wouldn't get in trouble. I said only if I was caught… which I wouldn't be. I sat down at one of the navigation chairs and looked at the controls. Um… I didn't really have any idea on how to work the controls. After I sat there looking retarded for a bit, the man sat at the other control station. He pushed a few buttons and the ship powered up. I said I didn't know he could operate a Star Trek ship! He said he has seen so many Star Trek episodes that he can. He maneuvered the ship up, turned it around, blasted a hole in the wall, and then flew through it. We were off to the skies, off to explore the stars!

Or maybe not… the ship couldn't do anything more than hover! Lame! And it hovered until we were surrounded by cops at a dock. There were water ships there. And we had no choice but to land. I cursed my luck that the ship I jacked had to be a piece of crap. The man said he had told me I would be caught… I pulled a Gibbs on him. The cops came into the ship and said we were to get out immediately. We both climbed off of the ship. But we weren't getting arrested! The cops said we were needed for a top secret operation. Awesome! The cop said if we could figure out how to operate the Star Trek ship so easily, then they had need of us. My heart dropped. I hadn't figured out anything. It had all been my friend. The man with me put his hand on my shoulder and whispered. He said not to worry… just bluff my way through it. He said he would be sure I learned what I needed to know if I didn't figure it out on my own. After all, I was the one with the nerve to jack a space ship in the first place, so I was partly responsible for us ending up here.

The man and I both got on one of the sea ships there. We were separated, but not by far. We were just on opposite ends of the deck near the bow. I could still see him, and he could see me. Someone said something about preparing us for ocean travel. For some reason that preparation involved hosing us down with a fire hose… Wtf? We were both sprayed with water until we were thoroughly and completely drenched. I had no idea what that had to do with anything… it seemed really strange to me. I wanted to ask someone why we had to be wet. But there was no one paying any attention to me. I looked off the ship and saw nothing but ocean. Where had the land gone so fast? We had been docked just minutes ago. I looked everywhere, thinking we might have turned… no sign of land. Weird… I was looking for the land when I woke.

Note: I started off with a couple of goals for the night. My first one was to go with MoSh to the Grand Canyon and find a city that is supposed to be hidden there.

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

The Grand Canyon in Arizona has a underground city whose dreaming entrance is a large cave guarded by a tornado/ally. Those who get inside have found their dreaming greatly enhanced including myself. I would strongly suggest you find this place. Research it and you will find there is reports of this city in folklore.

The other goal I had for the night was to do the TotM cloning task by multiplying myself. I was not successful in inducing a WILD, however.

I woke up in bed. I rolled over and opened my eyes. I didn't feel sleepy. It looked like this was going to be one of those times when I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Crap… that doesn't happen to me very often, and it seems like it just happened… but now again? I got out of bed and figured I'd get a drink and hope I was wrong. I walked out of my room and into a hall that is much longer than my waking life house. That was odd… odd enough to trigger a RC. I discovered that I was dreaming.

I stopped to think about my goals for the night. My first goal was to meet up with MoSh and head for the city that is supposedly hidden in the Grand Canyon. So I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through it…

I entered MoSh's inner world where I often do, right in front of his house. Everything there was bright and sunny. It was a nice day in MoSh's inner world. I walked up to the front door and knocked on it. The door opened soon, and I went inside. It was nice inside, too. I was glad to see it was bright and pleasant instead of dark and creepy as I have seen it so many times before. Asuka was just coming into the room. She said MoSh had told her I would be over. She had some cookies with her and she handed me a couple. They were chocolate cookies with dark chocolate and white chocolate chips in it… yum… MoSh came out shortly later. I asked him if he was lucid. He said sure. I asked if he would remember this dream. He said no. I told him that wasn't good… do a RC… this is a dream. He said he already knew he was dreaming. I said then he should remember the dream. But for now we would go. I opened a portal to the Grand Canyon. A portal opened and both MoSh and I went through…

MoSh and I were now standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon… and it was quite a view. I have seen it a couple of times, but it has been a long time and its beauty still amazed me. MoSh stood there looking at the canyon for a while. I told him we had better get going if we were going to find the cave before one of us woke up. I took MoSh by the hand and jumped off the edge of the canyon wall. We both flew down into the canyon. I wasn't sure where to find the entrance to this hidden city. I remembered Lonewolf saying something about tornados guarding the entrance… so a wind elemental. But hadn't he also said the tornado was an ally? But an ally to who? An ally to peaceful visitors? An ally to the people who used to live in the city? I wasn't really sure what that meant…

MoSh and I flew low in the canyon for a while. I looked at the sides of the canyon. I didn't see any signs of wind elementals or of suspicious caves. I wondered if we were even going the right direction. I landed on the ground and looked around for a bit. This really stank… where would I go now? I looked over at MoSh. He was over by the river. I went over to see MoSh. MoSh was skipping rocks. I tried to get his attention. He looked over at me and said hello. I asked if he was still lucid. He said sure. I didn't think he was acting like himself. But I was still confused on how to find this city. And about who this wind elemental ally was... or had I read it wrong? Tornado alley? Lots of tornados? Wait a minute… there's no tornado alley in the Grand Canyon! That wouldn't make any sense! I was running out of ideas… the canyon is a huge place. I wasn't going find the cave by looking around like that. I had to use a different approach.

I went over to MoSh and told him I was going to try something different. I took hold of both of MoSh's hands and focused on teleportation. It isn't my strong point, but I wasn't sure how else to track the cave down. So I focused on teleportation, also focusing on taking MoSh with me. I focused on what I wanted to find even though I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for. I focused on it, and for a bit it seemed like nothing was going to happen. MoSh was giving me a strange look as I was holding both of his hands. He gave me a strange smile. Then the teleportation worked. The scene around MoSh and me completely shifted.

MoSh and I were floating over water… and I had not realized we would be floating. We both dropped into the water with a splash. Both of us came to the surface. I floated out of the water and into the air, MoSh followed me. We were now looking directly at a cave in the canyon wall. We floated over to the cave and landed right in the entrance. It was dark inside the cave. I wondered how far back into the canyon wall it went.

MoSh and I followed the passage back into the passage. It got dark rather quickly. I summoned a light and we continued going back farther. The passage also seemed to be slanted down. I saw writing on the sides of the passage that looked like ancient hieroglyphics. The passage finally ended in a circular room. More passages led off in all directions. There were beautiful carvings, statues, other assorted artifacts. I looked at one of the statues. It looked more like an Egyptian artifact than what I had expected.

I hadn't really been sure what I was expecting, but I think I was expecting something related to native American culture. I looked at some of the artifacts there and then we just kind of chose a passage at random and headed down it. I had no idea where it went or if we might get completely lost, but it didn't really matter since we were dreaming. I looked at some hieroglyphics on the wall. I wished I knew what some of it meant, but none of it means anything to me MoSh and I explored the caverns for a while longer until I realized he was gone. I figured he had woken up. It wasn't very long after that when I woke up.

I was outside my house. I looked around and saw the desert around me. Nothing looked out of place, it looked the same as my waking life. I was hot due to the fact it is the desert and it is summer. I wanted to go back inside where it would be cool. I walked back over to the house and tried to go inside. The front door was locked. Wtf? Why was I locked out of the house. I went around to the back side of the house and found the two doors on the back of the house were also locked. Damn! I tried to think where we keep the emergency key hidden, in case one of us needs to get inside and has no keys. I couldn't remember. I looked around, under rocks, under pots, everywhere I could think of that the key might be hidden. No key. Damn… my mother must have taken the key in.

So by now I was really hot. I wanted to get somewhere cooler. I really needed to cool off. I went to the front yard where there is a small pond with a few fish in it. I found it was dry. There was no water in it, and several dead fish were on the bottom. The plastic bottom of the pond was cracked and splitting as if it had been empty for years. I walked away from the dry pond and over to the gate at the end of our driveway. The gate was lying on the ground. I walked down the road a ways. Sooooo hot… I saw some trees all together that gave a nice amount of shade. That would have to do. I went over to the trees. I could feel cool air coming from under the trees. I got down under the tree. The foliage was so thick that I couldn't see through it, but there was a small hole through the plants. I crawled into that hole to immerse myself in the coolness. The hole went on forever… this was weird… and it got me curious as to where it could lead… I kept crawling and emerged in another place where it was dark. Night time? And I wasn't in a desert… I stood up and did a RC… I was dreaming!

I walked across the meadow for a ways until I reached a small rocky hill. I looked up into the rocky area. I was getting a weird feeling about the area. I had the feeling I was being watched. I looked around a bit, looking mostly towards the rocky hills because they provided so many places to hide.

I was scanning the hills when I heard movement behind me. I turned quickly, activating my Witchblade sword in case I was attacked. I paused once I was turned around and then put my Witchblade sword away. I was being followed, but I was being followed by MoSh, not an enemy. MoSh said it looked like I was still mad at him. I looked around a bit more… the bad feeling hadn't left me just because I had identified MoSh. I responded to him in a quiet tone, saying I wasn't particularly upset right now… but this place was giving me the creeps. He asked if the Templars had been attacking me again. I said the Templars were all dead. That was where my negative energy had gone. At least they're useful for something…

It looked like MoSh was about to say something else, but he never got the chance. Someone apparently thought it was necessary to prove me wrong about all the Templars being dead… There was movement in the rocks. Templars emerged from the rocks. There were about 20 of them… not many at all. This would be easy. I formed my Witchblade sword and attacked them. They attacked. Some of them had weapons that looked like futuristic laser weapons, others had swords. I attacked them. Cut through one and ran my sword through another. I saw Templars attacking MoSh… I also saw him kicking the shit out of them. This fight was over quickly. The Templars were lying around us, dead. The bodies quickly disappeared as they woke up.

"Ok…" I said to MoSh, "Now all of the Templars are dead,"

MoSh was going to say something again. I felt the dream slipping away. I tried to focus on dilating time. I told MoSh I was about to wake up… but I would try dilation… but I never even got a chance to get focused before everything faded and I woke.

Note: I fell asleep this night with my energy in a very unstable state due to some problems I had during the evening. When I say unstable, I mean unstable to the point where I was not able to finish my evening class in school… I had to tell the instructor I wasn't feeling well and then leave early. While I had managed to calm down some by the time I went to bed, I was still very unstable. A large portion of my negative energy was directed at the Templars who have given me nightmares on the previous two nights… so my main plan was to kick Templar ass. I had this plan in mind when I fell asleep, but I was not successful in entering my WILD. Fortunately, my intentions were strong enough that I still ended up where I wanted to be…

I was in my room. I was in bed. I rolled over and thought about the events of the previous evening. I was a nice mixture of pissed off and depressed, basically quite unstable. I was thinking that was why I was being unable to sleep. I sat up in bed and stroked the kitty beside me. She purred. I got out of bed to use the bathroom. I thought I should try to stay in the habit of doing an RC when I wake up or get up in the night… even if I don't think I've been asleep… I did a nose-pinch RC and found that I was dreaming. I became fully lucid.

I thought about what I wanted to do… I was feeling pissed off… and I wanted someone to take that out on. Templars! They were the origin of my current problems, so I would take it all out on Templars! I had told them that continuing to disturb my dreams and turn them into them nightmares would result in serious consequences. Now it was time to deliver on those consequences. I focused on opening a portal to find a Templar base, I would go straight to them and have a kill fest right there in their base. The portal opened and I went through it.

I was now in a Templar base. There were Templars wandering around. They all were going about their own business. At first no one noticed me. Those were the bastards who had turned my past two nights' dreams into nightmares… they were the cause of the instability and the situation that had led to an argument between a friend and mine who had told me that he no longer wants to be my friend… I walked over to the Templar closest to me as the others moved out of sight. I could feel unstable dark energy inside of me… my energy had been unstable all evening, and now I could finally do something about it! I grabbed the Templar by the throat and slammed him against the wall. He let out a surprised 'glurk' but could not speak to alert the others. I squeezed his throat until I felt something get crushed, then I let him down. He grabbed his neck and was choking… he couldn't breathe… he coughed up blood, collapsed, and died.

One dead Templar was not nearly enough. Time to start killing them in larger numbers. I went into a room with two Templars there. A big guard and another who looked more like a scientist. I used Master of Puppets on the guard, and made him beat the other Templar to death. I then made him grab a scissors from a desk and imbed it into his own throat, followed by using the scissors to cut the wound larger. He pierced his own jugular vein and bled out . I continued through the base. I met several Templars in the halls. I stabbed each of them with my hidden blade before they realized I didn't belong there. I looked into a large control room. There were 15 Templars in there at control stations. I let a tendril of Witchblade out, it went through the room and pierced the throats of each Templar. The instant I retracted the tendril, the blood flowed freely and they all died.

As I continued on my way, I tried to think of a creative way to kill the next Templar… I found a lone Templar in the hall. He stopped and looked at me. I used Damage, Inc. to set him on fire. The Templar was quickly engulfed in flames. In a blind panic, he ran into another room with a number of Templars in it. He wanted someone to help him, but all he ended up accomplishing was to set several more of the Templars on fire… now there were five Templars panicking in the room, engulfed in flames and screaming in pain. That didn't last long; they all collapsed, dead. I killed the next few Templars I met with my Witchblade sword. Electrocuted a few with lightning. Crushed several more with gravity. And each Templar I killed was immensely satisfying. My unstable energy was simmering down to an icy rage.

It was around here that I thought I was waking up… but I wasn't finished getting my payback against these Templar assholes! I focused on Allura's method of time dilation and the dream stabilized.

I made my way down into a dungeon. That looked like the kind of place where they would carry out their tortures. There were hooks on the walls from which lanterns were hanging. I used telekinesis and lifted a Templar up, impaling him on a hook through his abdomen. He was still alive when I left him, coughing up blood as he tried to call for help. The next several Templars I came across met the same fate as the first one, hung from those iron lantern hooks. I found three more Templars near an open dungeon cell door. A couple of big guards and a smaller one. I could hear them talking, I could hear them clearly.

"Ok… when she gets here," the one said to the others, "You grab her like last time. All you have to do is chain her up in this room, and we'll let the rats do the rest." He laughed.

I was standing right beside the three Templars now, between the two larger guards while the smaller man was facing away from me, looking at a door. "So…" I said, "What's the plan here?"

"Weren't you listening at all?" the Templar said with some frustration, "You two grab Raven, chain her up in the dungeon, and then we watch the rats eat her alive! Now get it…" the Templar had been turning around, and was now facing me. There was a big guy on either side of me. "There she is right now! Grab her, you idiots!"

Each of the big Templars grabbed one of my arms and held on tight. I didn't even try to pull free. Time to activate Witchblade. Nothing happened. The smaller Templar held up a remote and laughed. He said the dampening field was up, so I could forget my little tricks. I told him it was their loss. Using Witchblade would have brought them to a much quicker death than the alternative… The smaller Templar told the other two to put me in the cell; the rats are hungry. He laughed again. I focused on controlling dark energy into tendrils. The tendrils wove from each of my arms and wrapped around the arms of the big guys beside me. At first they didn't seem to notice. Then both of them started screaming and let go of me… or they tried to let go. Each of them had a black tendril boring its way into their arm. Each attempt to pull free resulted in more pain.

The third Templar just stood there and stared at us for a bit, muttering something about the dampening field he had mentioned before. He pulled out a sword and was apparently intent on just killing me so I would wake up and be away from them. A third dark energy tendril snaked out of where my 3rd eye would be and wrapped around the sword. The Templar dropped the sword and turned to run down the hall. The tendril was faster, and it bored its way into the Templar's back. Armor was nothing to the dark energy tendril. All three of the Templars were now screaming in pain. Their screams brought more Templars to see what was happening. The tendrils that attached me to the three separated, and I was able to direct those tendrils and more at the arriving Templars. Most of them didn't have a chance to react… a couple tried to cut the tendrils with swords, but that was completely ineffective. So soon all of the Templars in the room, the three I had found there plus 12 who had come to check it out, were writhing on the ground in pain.

I went over to the Templar who had been telling the big stupid ones the plan. He was grimacing in pain and clutching his abdomen. I kicked him there and lifted him up. I told him I knew he would wake up soon, but for his sake he had better have learned a valuable lesson… don't fuck with me. And don't go back to fucking with any of my friends, either. Harm one of them and the results will be the same, maybe worse. Get the picture? He cursed at me. I slammed him against the wall and said if he was still failing to get it, there's a lot more trouble where this came from. So stay away from me, stay away from my friends, or there would be consequences. I dropped him on the ground where he continued to writhe in pain. I wasn't sure what the dark energy tendrils were doing… or maybe I was… they were eating the Templars alive from the inside out. Well, they had intended for me to be eaten alive, so their plan backfired.

I went into the dungeon cell and looked around. Chains and shackles on the floor clearly meant to chain a prisoner so they couldn't move… cages with horribly underfed rats inside them; add animal cruelty to the list of Templar offenses… I felt my dark energy. It still felt like an icy rage… I was glad the Templars were in pain. But not the animals… they had done nothing. I opened the cages. The rats weren't in such bad condition that they couldn't make a run for it when given the chance. They ran for the cell door and out it. I heard more screams from the Templars. I glanced out and saw some of the rats were on various Templars. The Templars seemed nearly immobilized with pain from the dark energy tendrils… and now there were rats on them. A rat chewing on a Templar's ear, a rat chewing on a Templar's cheek, a rat chewing on a Templar's nose… The rats would be fed… but it was fresh Templar on the menu… I shut the cell door and was waiting to wake up. Now I was alone in the dark room with nothing but the background sounds of Templar pain.

I was waiting in the dark room to wake up. The icy rage inside me made the Templars' dying gasps of pain sound like wonderful music… then there was silence. Ok… now to wake up? Maybe that dampening field was still there and I would have to leave here by normal means and then wake up… I formed a fireball in my hand… my abilities seemed to be working fine.

"Raven!" came a voice from behind me. Wtf? Who had found me here? I turned and looked behind me, I saw MoSh was in the room with me. The icy rage I had felt inside had been starting to subside… but suddenly it surged back again, almost as strong as it had ever been. Now it was MoSh's turn… I would see him writhing on the ground in pain… I would… wait… no… I turned my gaze back to the blank dark stone wall. Watching Templars suffer… ok. But not MoSh… no. I focused on that blank stone wall and on The Curse by Disturbed, must stabilize the dark energy. It'd had its fun with the Templars… and that's all it was going to get. MoSh was saying something about dark energy and an attack. I said that telling me to stay out of his dreams doesn't make a whole lot of sense if he is just going to come into mine. He said he needed my help to stop the dark energy something… I said if there was a dark energy threat, get Walms or Tigress… and if it was simply an extremely powerful threat of any kind, get Vegeta… but don't stay here. My energy is currently about as stable as nitroglycerin… well shaken nitroglycerin, and could blow at any moment. And it was getting very unstable… it hadn't been very unstable earlier because I had been working with it to eliminate Templars, but now I was actively fighting it… and that was creating instability.

That was it… I wouldn't be able to keep it inside any longer. I turned back towards MoSh… who took a step back when he saw how crazed I probably looked… I opened a vortex portal right next to MoSh that led back to his inner world, used telekinesis to push him through, closed it behind him and then BOOM! There was an explosion… and then I was no longer standing in a Templar base… now I was standing in a crater… um… ok… I hadn't realized the explosion would be quite that bad… although the icy rage was completely gone now. Completely vented off against the Templars. I looked around the crater… I didn't think a single Templar could have survived… which brought me to a chuckle. But I felt stable. Finally it felt completely under control. Now that control was restored everything faded and I woke.

Note: I fell asleep with very little in the way of goals tonight… MoSh had said he was going to come over to do a healing on me, although I told him I felt ok. But then a little extra positive energy never hurts anything, so I figured if he wanted to do it, we could share some positive energy, most likely with Basara involved since he usually shows up whenever someone mentions the idea of healing. Unfortunately I was not successful in entering my WILD this night.

I was in a clearing in a forest. I could see there were buildings around, it looked like a small town was hidden amongst the trees. I wondered where I was. I didn't even consider the idea I might be dreaming. I noticed that there were quite a few people around, and then I noticed they were Templars. What the fuck was I doing in a Templar base? I figured I didn't want to be there, so I went to leave. That was when I noticed there was a big guy on either side of me holding onto me tightly. Their grip was like iron, and I could not make them budge to get free. I was a prisoner of the Templars… that couldn't be good.

I heard another Templar say they were ready. One of the big guys holding me forced me to the ground so that I was lying on my stomach with my face in the dirt. I felt someone lie a long wooden pole on my back, and I was quickly bound tightly to that pole. When the large Templars moved away from me I couldn't move at all except to turn my head and look around a bit. They turned me over onto my back and ripped my clothes off… I called them a bunch of fucking perverts. I was now naked and tied to a metal pole… I could hear people around me laughing and jeering.

The Templars then stood the pole up and I realized I was bound approximately in the middle. I saw they had a fire ring in the middle of the clearing, a rather large one. It was long and fairly narrow, there was a rotisserie stand on each end of the fire circle, and a pan sitting on top of the wood that looked like it was there to catch the juices of roasting meat. It looked a lot like the picture here, except the pan was on permanent metal legs and the fire pit and pan looked long enough to accommodate a very large piece of meat… or a person…

It was about then that I realized what they might be planning to do. Since I believed that was my waking life, this resulted in a feeling of ice cold fear at the pit of my stomach… I fought against my bonds, desperate to get away now, to avoid what it seemed they had planned. The bonds were too tight… I couldn't budge them even a millimeter. And my worst fear was confirmed when they carried the pole I was on over to the fire pit and placed it where the spit of the rotisserie would go with me hanging on it, looking down into the black pan. There was a quantity of grease in the pan, which was hardened right now. I was noticing every little detail… a fly stuck in the grease and trying to get free, but it was no more able to move than I was. Templars preparing to light the fire. This couldn't really be happening. I think I might have done a reality check if I could have even moved in order to do one… I found I kept repeating the word 'no' over and over, and I was ashamed of the fear I heard in my voice.

Then I said there must be some agreement we could reach that would allow me to get out of this. A couple of them laughed. But one of them said there was. He said if I could present one of my friends to take my place, they would gladly roast up my friend instead of me and I would be free to go. One of my friends? He said yes. Any of them would do. Either Nomad or MoSh would be their first choices… but if I presented them one of the others I have shared dreams with it would be sufficient, too. Markus, Tigress, or even Loaf… someone laughed that they could have toast… just choose one and teleport them here and I would be free to go while my friend was executed in my place. I told them they had to be kidding… there was no way I would betray a friend like that… I knew perfectly well I could never live with betraying a friend in that way, so in spite of my fear I told them to go fuck themselves. The Templar said it was my choice, and told the other one to go ahead and light the fire under the pan.

I didn't really notice anything at first. Then the pan was heated and it was getting a bit uncomfortable as the heat was rising off of the pan and into my face. The heat continued to increase, an intense and dry heat that made it feel almost like I was on fire. How long could this last? Wouldn't I get heat stroke and pass out from that heat before long? They let the fire die down a bit and the heat faded to a lower but continuous agony. For some reason it seemed to be imperative that I make no sound to let them know the pain I was in, so I kept my mouth tightly closed so I would not let an involuntary cry or moan or pain escape. I saw as the grease below me melted and the fly was consumed by the heating grease, killed. Another thought I was having was that the heat would burn through the ropes that bound me to the spit… then I could get free… but they were thick and sturdy ropes that didn't seem to be suffering from the exposure at all. A Templar came over and looked at me, then he poked something on my leg with a long fork, causing a sharp and excruciating pain… somehow I knew he had just popped a heat blister… that area of my leg was now in much more pain than the rest of me, and other parts of my body felt like they were beginning to blister, I could actually see a few blisters starting to form on my breasts… When would I finally get heat stroke and pass out?!

Another short while… and several more popped blisters later… a Templar came back over. I was expecting another popped blister… but instead he had a cup, which he used to scoop some of the now sizzling grease out of the pan. He proceeded to pour the sizzling grease all over my back… where it burned unbelievably hot. The Templar poured a couple more cups of blazing hot grease on my back, laughing when I was unable to contain a cry of pain… these assholes were basting me! And even after he walked away, the grease on my back was continuing to cause an unbelievably intense agony… it seemed I would surely pass out, but somehow I didn't… even though I wished I would, prayed that I would pass out or die from heat stroke… Instead I just hung there in agony, all hope seemed lost…

"Raven!" I heard a familiar voice and forced my head to turn, although that caused heat dried skin to crack and bleed, bringing with that another wave of pain… I someone standing off to my left a ways, and a portal opened behind him. My sight was fuzzy… I wasn't sure who it was… He continued talking. "It's time for… what the FUCK?!" Apparently he had taken a look around for the first time since arriving and noticed things were not as they should be. I wanted to call out to the man for help, but my throat was too dry and cracked to speak… and all that came out was a small squeak… As I have stated, my mind was really foggy from the heat and the pain, but I heard some cursing, a demand to release me, and then a fight. I saw movement to my right and the man who had just arrived shoved one of the Templar's faces into the hot grease in the pan below me. When the Templar's face came out it was covered with blisters and the Templar was screaming in pain. I heard more fighting, some Templars screaming about something… a loud hissing sound like an angry cat or snake… and then silence.

The man from the portal returned. He took the spit I was tied to away from the flame and started untying me. Every time he touched me it was excruciating, but I did my best not to let him know that because I knew he was just trying to help. Once I was free I found I couldn't even stand on my own… my legs were about like spaghetti… The man supported me, holding on to me as gently as he could… I heard him say he would get me healed up as good as new. He could heal IWL? Wow… I wondered if there was any possible way I could get him to teach me to do that… but even if he couldn't, he had already done so much by getting me free of the Templars. He lied me down in a soft area of grass. Even as soft as it was, each blade of grass was like a steel blade cutting in to me… I once again did not let him know how much it hurt. He was trying so hard to be careful.

The man sat down near me. I could hear him playing a guitar. I could feel healing energy come from that guitar. Soothing healing energy… it felt like a soothing healing salve had been applied to my entire body, and it felt wonderful. I tried to open my eyes and see who it was that had saved me… but I was so tired. Completely worn out. But he was playing a guitar to create a healing effect. I only know two people who do that. Basara and MoSh. And I couldn't see Basara shoving a Templar's face into burning grease under any circumstances, unless he had seen what they were doing and completely snapped, so I was assuming it was MoSh… I tried to ask the man if he was MoSh… "You… MoSh?" He didn't really answer that, he just told me to rest… when I fell asleep here I would wake up and be safe in bed. Safe in bed? Was this really just a nightmare? I let myself relax and slip into sleep. I could find out for sure later if it was MoSh who had come to find me. I fell asleep and woke up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: This is a dream that happened back on the 15th of the month, and I would swear I had journaled and posted this dream, but I couldn't find any trace of it. No copy on Dreamviews, no copy on Mortal Mist, no copy on my personal laptop… somehow it disappeared completely. There were quite a few similarities with Nomad's version of the dream, as well as some differences, so here is my version of the dream where Nomad, me, and several other dreamers went to help a friend of his with a dream demon.

I was in the biodome on the moon, and I was lucid. I was sitting there watching the koi. The pretty fish were swimming around in the pool. The sunlight was reflecting off of their shiny scales and off of the surface of the water. It was really very pretty. I was sitting there watching the fish when someone approached behind me. I turned to look and saw it was Nomad. I remembered that he had a friend with a dream demon giving her nightmares, an older woman. I asked if he was there so we could go help his friend… he said yes. I thought for a bit… I was thinking someone else had said they wanted to come help with this… but who? I was lucid, and yet my mind wasn't fully clear. But of course my mind isn't completely clear IWL, so why would I expect 100% clarity in my dreams? Nomad opened a portal and both of us went through…

On the other side we were in someone's bedroom. There was a woman sleeping in the bed with a… um… an ugly thing sitting on top of her, looked like it was holding her down to the bed. But she wasn't reacting to the thing's presence… the thing was the size of a large human, looked demonic, and appeared to be absorbing some kind of energy from the woman. I didn't know what the thing was doing to her, but I could easily tell it wasn't good… Nomad transformed into a big cat… a solid black jaguar…

In that form he attacked the dream demon on top of the woman, hitting it across the face with one enormous paw, claws fully extended. The force of the blow knocked the demon off of the woman and onto the ground, practically turning the thing's head around on its neck… The thing got back up and used its hands to forcibly turned its head back toward the front with a rather sickening cracking noise. It started laughing at Nomad. It didn't seem to be paying any attention to me at all… I wasn't going to have that. I transformed into a big cat, a black panther… which looked mostly like Nomad except the spots were vaguely visible on his coat where as mine was a black as midnight…

I pounced on the back of the demon, drawing the demon's dark energy out of it and into me. Nomad had changed into an Assassin dressed in solid black robes, he drove his hidden blade right into the demon's head. The demon collapsed, seemed to be calling out to someone, but then it was completely out of energy and faded to nothing.

I was about to ask Nomad what the demon had been calling to when there was a portal opening… and a bunch of Templars coming through? On brooms like a Halloween witch would use? I was briefly doing a double take at that… A group of Templars coming to aid a demon and pretending to be Halloween witches at the same time… um… One of them was talking to Nomad, seemed to be annoying him. I went to another one and asked what the fuck he was doing. He said he was working for witches or something. I then asked the first question I had thought upon seeing them riding in like that…

"So tell me…" I said, "Did you really learn everything you know about witches from Halloween ghost stories and the Harry Potter series? Do you really think witches ride brooms in the night? If so, where's your black cat? Or was your goal just to come here and look completely retarded? Which you've accomplished very well… And why the fuck are you working with…"

"FUCK YOU!!!" I was interrupted by one of the loudest expletives I have ever heard… I looked over and saw Nomad chuckling next to a Templar who was poking at his ear as if he could not hear a thing, which after that expletive, he probably couldn't… Nomad yelled something completely incomprehensible at the other Templars… no doubt completing the process of making the one right next to him totally deaf… Nomad turned back into a black cat and attacked some of the Templars near him…

"Oh… There's your black cat!" I said, "And he's pissed…" Nomad tore a few Templars apart with his claws and teeth, I opened a vortex portal that pulled them all in and deposited them… I wasn't sure what was a good place… somewhere far away… on the moon Titan.

I don't know why I thought of Titan, but that was where I sent them… After the Templars were gone, Nomad and I did healing spells on Alexis. She seemed to wake up a bit, and Nomad was talking to her. I'm not sure what he was saying to her, but she seemed to be getting agitated by it, but soon calmed back down and went back to sleep. It looked like she would be ok. Nomad started talking about getting pulled into a dream… I told him he was already in a dream. He said he meant into another dream. I wasn't really sure what he was talking about… was he about to wake up or just switch dreamscapes? I told him to focus on something and stabilize the dream… but it was no good… Nomad disappeared… and then I woke.

**************************************************

Note: This was actually two separate dreams for me, but I am putting them together since they are both back dated dreams and belong together as one.

I was on the moon in the biodome again. I was lucid. I remembered Nomad disappearing from the last dream… I wondered if he was ok. I focused on finding him. A portal opened. I looked through into a black void… wtf? Nomad was floating in the blackness all by himself, yelling expletives at absolutely no one… I wondered if he was on dream drugs again… I called out to him, then threw him a tendril of Witchblade to pull him through my portal and into the biodome. He looked around. I asked if he was ok. He said Alexis was still in danger, we had to go back. I asked what was bothering her now… he said more dark things… he had seen them. I wondered if he had or if that was dream drugs… better check on her. Better look and find nothing than not look and have her attacked.

I was about to focus on a portal to get back to Alexis when another portal opened. Tigress came in. She looked at me, and changed into a paladin. She asked if I was up for a DDO dream. I told her I was going to help Nomad with his friend first. She asked what was going on there. I said Nomad had said his friend was being attacked. She pulled out a sword and said killing stuff there was fine, just another DDO quest. Um… ok… I went to open the portal again, but this time MoSh appeared. He asked why no one had come to get him. MoSh! That was who I was supposed to go get before Nomad and I went to help Alexis! I apologized to MoSh, saying my mind hadn't been clear enough to think of it… Now Nomad opened a portal, and we all went through it.

On the other side Nomad and I were on the edge of a forest looking at a rather creepy castle. I wondered why Alexis would have this creepy place in her inner world… maybe there was still a dream demon or other dark entity harassing her… We went inside the castle and looked around. Alexis looked kind of creepy, too. She was dressed all in black and had horns… she looked like a demon! She was smiling, however, and didn't look hostile. She was still smiling at us when something weird came through a portal and tackled her, and before I could even identify what it was, the two of them fell through another portal… with Nomad right behind them. The portal closed before the rest of us could get there… I had to focus on a portal to follow Nomad…

I went through the portal, MoSh and Tigress with me. On the other side we were on a desolate plane. There was an outcropping of rock over a deep canyon. There was a woman… Alexis… huddled beside a big ugly thing there. The ugly thing was growling and snarling down at her, looming over her.

I must have been in a feline mood, because I now changed back into the big panther I had been in the previous dream and tackled the demon thing off of her. We were now plunging through the air into the canyon, the thing was biting at me as we fell, I was sucking its energy out… I saw a bunch more dark creatures, those looked like shadow demons of some kind, coming from somewhere and attacking Alexis. Nomad was protecting her with a shield, Tigress was consuming the dark things, MoSh was blasting them with green flames from his naga form… Some of them were still getting through to Nomad… why wasn't he getting Alexis out of there? There was no need to be here in this dark world except to protect Alexis… and once she was safe, we could all make our exit. That was the last I noticed before hitting the ground of the canyon, I landed on top of the creature I was fighting…

The creature was stunned a bit, but then it attacked me again. The shadow creatures were coming after me now, but they never got to me… Tigress and MoSh intercepted the entire hoard of them, so I still just had the one big ugly thing to deal with. I pounced on the thing one more time and tore at its neck with my razor claws, drawing some more dark energy out… wow… this was a lot of dark energy… the thing was no longer moving. I changed back to my normal form and flew back out of the canyon. Alexis and Nomad were gone. Tigress and MoSh were still there, though most of the smaller shadow creatures had either fled or been destroyed. I opened a portal so the three of us could get back to the biodome. MoSh and Tigress went through. The big ugly thing grabbed at me from behind. I threw a blast of lightning made from light energy right in its face, then went through the portal and closed it behind me.

Tigress asked me what took me so long. I said I had found an old friend to play with a bit more. This was the first chance I had gotten, so I focused on The Curse by Disturbed to stabilize all the dark energy I had just absorbed… Tigress, still a paladin, sheathed her sword. She said she had told me this would do fine for a DDO quest… I told her I wished they had quests like that in DDO! That would be awesome. She said it would be hard. Yeah, but hard and AWESOME! Everything faded around me and I woke.

Note: This was a night of particularly low recall. I was not successful in my WILD, and I didn't really remember anything for the night until someone mentioned scorpions and that brought back memories of the following dream. So here is my single dream for the night…

I was in a desert location. I wasn't lucid, but for some reason my first thought was of graboids from Tremors, and that led to thoughts of getting eaten by one… which didn't make a lot of sense at all. I pushed the thought out of my mind and looked around, not sure how I had gotten where I currently was. Great. I was lost. I was thinking I had taken a walk from my house and gotten completely lost, even though that has never happened. I usually have a really good sense of direction. I walked for a while. I saw some buildings in the distance. Not too far off. They looked like makeshift buildings made from scrap metal. I wondered if there was even anyone there. I wondered if the buildings were at least located on a main road where I could get my bearings… The entire situation seemed so weird that even though I didn't do a RC, I gained a low level of lucidity…

I went over to the buildings and looked around. At first I didn't see any sign of anyone there, but then I heard people. So I had found someone. I wondered if they would know which way to the main road. I would have preferred to avoid them, but I saw no sign of a main road anywhere. The people were cheering and yelling, sounded like quite a party. But I also heard disappointed groans… I wondered what was going on. I followed the sound and looked out into a fenced area. In the middle of the fenced area there was a crowd of people gathered around something I couldn't see. They were the ones cheering and groaning. I saw money being exchanged. Most likely those who were cheering had won a bet, those groaning had lost a bet. There was a wide variety of people there, men and women, old and young, though there were no children, so I didn't see any problem with approaching them. When I got into the open, a woman spotted me and eagerly invited me over.

"Come on over and join the fun!" she said, "Don't worry if you don't have any money… not everyone is here to place bets. Some of us are just here to enjoy the action." She seemed very friendly and welcoming, so I went over and joined the crowd to see what was going on. She indicated what looked like a miniature boxing ring. It was empty now. She said the next match was about to start. A path through the crowd cleared, and a couple men brought through cages. A rather attractive man with brown hair, and a bald one who had scars on his bald head. They put the cages in the ring and opened the doors with remote controls, then they removed the cages after the occupants of the cages had left. I did a double take… they were scorpions! Not normal small scorpions, but huge ones! Each scorpion was about the size of a Chihuahua! Both the scorpions seemed quite lazy and proceeded to lounge in different parts of the ring. Whatever action these people had expected wasn't going to happen.

The men who had placed the scorpions in the ring didn't seem too pleased. They pulled out cattle prods and started shocking the scorpions, apparently trying to piss them off. Wtf? The scorpions were making loud squealing noises that sounded like pain… I asked no one in particular what those assholes thought they were doing. The woman who had invited me over apparently completely misunderstood my statement and said the shocks would get the critters to fight. People around me were starting to cheer and call out. I didn't like it, not at all. After a couple more shocks the scorpions did lash out at each other, being unable to get to their tormentors, who continued to prod the scorpions to urge them to keep fighting. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd near the attractive man. I grabbed the prod from him. He asked what the fuck I was doing. I asked him how the fuck he would like getting prodded… I poked him with the cattle prod. He jumped back at getting shocked. He grabbed at the cattle prod, but only succeeded in getting himself poked again. He was now cursing fluently at me. A couple men behind me grabbed my arms and the other man took the cattle prod back and proceeded to poke me with it a couple times. It didn't hurt, I just felt a tingly sensation… which wasn't unpleasant. He turned his attention back to the scorpions.

The two men behind me were still holding my arms. I told the man with the cattle prod to stop doing that. The woman who had invited me over told me to relax, they don't feel pain like humans do… and they're just big bugs, so who cares, anyway? I was annoyed at her. I told her they are still living things. One of the men holding me said he had heard of animal rights activists, but bug rights activists? That was a new one on him… Everyone laughed and the two men pulled me out of the crowd and shoved me away, telling me to go cry over bugs somewhere else. Right after that, some of the people cheered and the others groaned, The two men carried the cages out. One was happy and praising his scorpion, while the other was cursing at his bug and saying he would have it chopped into food for his other scorpions.

I followed the men, and they went into the same building. I slipped in before the door closed behind them and locked. It was oppressively hot in there. They put the cages in stacks and then went back outside. People outside were talking loudly and laughing. I heard them laughing at my expense, about how I had opposed abusing scorpions… There were stacks of cages. There were scorpions in all of them. I looked at the two just brought back. Injured scorpions, one near death. I healed them, told them I was there to help so don't go and sting me, then let them out. They quickly headed towards the door. I opened the door and let them out into the desert. I left the door open and opened the other cages, staying clear to avoid being stung. They all headed out to the desert. Some of them headed over towards the group of people. Their laughter turned into screams as they saw the scorpions were loose. There was also a lot of cursing. I looked out and saw people running off into the desert, a few of them trying to fend off scorpions with cattle prods… people getting stung. I wondered if I should feel bad for the people getting attacked… but I found that my 'give-a-damn' was thoroughly busted.

I waited until the place was clear of scorpions, just to be sure they didn't mistake me for one of the people there to watch the fights, then I came out. There were a few people lying on the ground. Most weren't moving. A couple were writhing… they looked very sick… must be the venom. Maybe my 'give-a-damn' wasn't completely busted, since I found it rather disturbing when one of the women crawled over towards me, reached out towards me, "Please… help… me…" and then vomited blood before dying… um… maybe I should've stayed in the building… The other people around me who had been still moving were now also dead. There were dead people and blood everywhere, and I could hear people screaming in the desert at random intervals… were they still being attacked? And it was a bit disturbing… I didn't try to resist it when I felt that I was going to wake up.

I felt my dream slipping, too, so I did the time dilation trick I learned from Allura, causing the dream to stabilize. Good… at least that seemed somewhat consistent… So my next goal was to go see MoSh… I focused on opening a portal… I opened a portal and went through it into MoSh's inner world…

I stepped out into MoSh's inner world and looked around for MoSh. I looked at his house which was where I have come to expect to see it. I instinctively knew it was his, but it didn't seem to look the same. It was hard to describe the differences… and it wasn't negative in any way, everything was still very nice, it was just a bit different. I didn't have to go over to the door, MoSh came out to me. He asked if I was ready to go view the scene with Castaneda. I said sure, but I did need to be sure of where we were going. MoSh said that was no problem, he would get us there. I could open the portal, and he would guide it. I said that was fine with me, and then I opened a portal, focusing on letting MoSh guide it. When it opened, both MoSh and I went through…

On the other side we were in a desert. I looked around the desert. The sun was bright and hot. I was a bit surprised at the surroundings. I told MoSh I thought there was supposed to be a waterfall or something… MoSh said there was. I said I didn't see any water anywhere near us… He looked perplexed. He said we must have ended up in the wrong place. I told him we could just try again. I was going to focus on another portal when the ground started to shake. Some big things erupted out of the ground. They looked like the graboid creatures from the movie Tremors… and there were two of them.

What the fuck? MoSh looked up at them, and they completely distracted me from opening a portal. One of them tried to grab me in its enormous mouth, apparently thinking I would make a good snack. I formed Witchblade into a sword and attacked it back, getting up on top of its back by flying. MoSh had changed into his naga form and was attacking the other one. This thing didn't have a head to cut off… but it also didn't appreciate being stabbed with a sword that increased in length to be long enough to go all of the way through it. The thing took off at full speed across the desert with me on its back, holding on to the sword to keep from being thrown off. I pulled the sword out and jumped off of the graboid, hitting the ground and rolling before returning to MoSh.

I didn't see the other graboid, but I didn't know where it had gone. MoSh was in his human form again. I asked if he was ready to stop playing with giant underground worms and go do our viewing. He said yes. I was about to open a portal when I saw something around MoSh's feet… a smaller graboid?!

It wrapped around MoSh's foot, but I just cut it off . A couple more of them reached out of the ground for us, but MoSh and I quickly took care of them. Now MoSh was looking at something behind me. I wondered what. He wasn't saying anything, he was just pointing. I turned around to look behind me and I saw the granddaddy of all graboids was rearing up and towering over us… that thing was about twice the size of the other ones, and it was pissed off.

It was towering over us about as big as the tower at the biodome… which is quite tall… I was considering what action would be best to deal with this… most likely to just open a portal and leave it be, after all, this was the graboids' home, not ours… when someone appeared… and he created some kind of spinning disc blades from the air, cutting the graboid down… He asked if we were ok, MoSh was staring at him like he thought it was an alien from space. I looked closer and thought I recognized him… but I couldn't place it… I thanked him for helping, then he disappeared.

MoSh wanted to know what the fuck that was. I said I wasn't sure, but I thought I had recognized that guy… I said let's go before we draw the attention of every single graboid on the planet. I opened a portal and we went through it… we ended up back in MoSh's inner world. Ok… let's try that again. I focused on opening a portal, trying to remember what MoSh had told me the location was like. I remembered a waterfall… but that was all I remembered! Dammit! A portal opened, MoSh and I went through it.

MoSh and I were back on the desert planet. Ok… I hadn't been completely sure of where I was going, but I had absolutely not focused on coming here again… I looked around, wondering if I could find any reason why we were here again! There were more graboids. I didn't really want to fight more graboids… I had drawn the conclusion this was their world, and we were the intruders, so I thought avoiding them would be best. I got MoSh's attention as the graboid attacked us, also apparently thinking we looked like a tasty morsel. I pulled MoSh out of the way. The graboid turned and was coming at us again… then it got nailed with a bunch of ice spears, and it disappeared. Wtf? I looked around and saw the same guy I had seen before, giving us a dirty look. I focused on recognizing him… Walms! I did know him! I was about to say something to him when he asked why we had been attacked. I was going to say we looked too much like graboid snack food when the scene around us shifted…

MoSh was getting quite frustrated. He was upset that we hadn't ended up viewing the Castaneda scene we had been aiming for. I wondered what kept getting in the way. I wondered where Walms had gone… or rather where we had gone. I wondered if whoever had teleported us had also teleported Walms… I looked around, wondering if there were any graboids here… then Walms was there with us. Ok, well at least he was in the same place. He came over closer to us and proceeded to give me some dark energy… um… I didn't really need any dark energy, but ok… He put dark energy in MoSh…

"Hey!" I said to him, "What did you do that…" and then he was gone, "for… um… Never mind." I went over to MoSh and focused on taking the dark energy out of MoSh, replacing it with light. Why had Walms attacked MoSh? That didn't make any sense… I thought MoSh and Walms had been friends since quite a while before I started talking to / sharing dreams with Walms… MoSh looked a bit disoriented. He asked what that had been. I told him he'd gotten dark energy, I had taken it out. It felt like the dream was slipping again. I remembered that last time I had been unable to do a second time dilation, so this time I didn't even try. I told MoSh I was waking up. I opened a portal back to his inner world. We went through it. MoSh said maybe he could dilate time… I told him I had already done that in this dream, and last time it hadn't worked twice… He said he was going to try anyway. I don't know if it worked for him or not because I woke.

Note: My goals to begin with my WILD were to go check on Tigress… she thought there might be something strange around her somewhere, then go see MoSh, he wanted to go view a section of a Castaneda book having something to do with Castaneda and a waterfall and manipulating one's energy body IWL. We tried doing this before, but it didn't seem to work, and after hearing the part about manipulating one's energy body IWL, I was even more interested in trying it again. I had these goals in mind as I fell asleep and slipped into a WILD…

I was in a different place. I looked around and decided it looked like ancient Rome. I didn't recognize the exact location, but I figured this was where I would find Tigress. I started exploring the area. It wasn't too long before I found Tigress. She looked like she had been waiting for me. I went over to her and asked how she was doing. She pointed down the street to a narrow space between two buildings. She said they had gone over there. I asked what had gone over there. She said it was bugs. Bugs? I said there was a shit load of bugs around there. She said they were dark energy bugs, and they had been spinning fucking dark energy webs. Spiders? No, not spiders, but they were spinning webs… She said it was about time I had gotten there… she had thought she would have to clean the entire place up all by herself.

I went over towards the place Tigress had indicated. I looked down the passage between the buildings. There were indeed bugs down there. They were large bugs. Each bug was about the size of a house cat! They were spinning a sort of thing that maybe could be called a web, they were creating thick ropes of a strange and disgusting sticky black substance. They were hanging those rope type webs all over the place. And the stuff stank. It smelled like a decaying corpse that had been tossed into the filthiest sewer ever and left there to marinate for a while… the smell alone almost made me ill. I ignored the stench and focused on the bugs. The walls of the alley were covered with the black goop. When covered with goop the walls seemed to come to life and move… not normal… I focused on the song Fuel by Metallica, which is a song I normally use to absorb energy… and now I used it to absorb the dark energy. Using that song I was able to pull all of the dark energy from the alley and from the bugs.

So for the rest of this dream, Tigress and I searched the rest of the area and got rid of more of the intruding bug things. During the times while I was searching I could not help but notice that the dream was very vivid. If I hadn't been lucid, it would have been really easy for me to think I had somehow traveled back in time to be in Rome… it all looked so vivid and detailed… not like a dream at all. After searching the place for a while, I came back and met Tigress near one particular house that seemed to be lost in a mist. Tigress said that was ok, it was supposed to be like that. I said fine, and I thought I had found all of the strange bugs and black goop on my end of the search area. I definitely had enough dark energy for a while. Tigress said I wasn't the only one. She laughed a bit. I told Tigress I had other plans, but if she wanted to do a DDO dream now, those other plans could wait. She said yay, we could finally do a DDO dream! And this time she was going to remember… she disappeared. Crap. That always seems to happen when things get good.

I felt my dream slipping, too, so I did the time dilation trick I learned from Allura, causing the dream to stabilize. Good… at least that seemed somewhat consistent… So my next goal was to go see MoSh… I focused on opening a portal… I opened a portal and went through it into MoSh's inner world…

Note: Since the main topic of the dream changes here, I am going to post the next part in a separate post even though it is technically a continuation of the same dream. So this dream ends with a (to be continued…)

Note: Here are a couple of non-lucid fragments I remember from the rest of the night… they really don't make a lot of sense at all and sound rather retarded, but I have been posting everything, so here they are:

*Archery Competition*
I was in my house. I was practicing archery right there in the house. There were targets hung on the wall and there were several other people there with me, also practicing their archery skills. I was doing pretty well, hitting the target on most of my shots. I fired a few more and then realized I was out of arrows… crap. I asked someone to get me more arrows, and he came back with crap. He said he couldn't find any arrows, so he had found a bunch of junk. He handed me several pencils, a couple of knitting hooks, and an awkwardly shaped stick… um… I wasn't sure how I was supposed to practice archery with that. I put a knitting needle in my bow and fired. Of course it wasn't easily aimed. The knitting needle embedded itself in the head of another archer. He reached back and pulled it out. He looked irritatedly at me and said I should watch what I was doing before I hurt someone. A thick pus was oozing from his head wound, but he didn't notice or didn't care… Somehow I found some arrows to shoot and went back to practicing with arrows. Maybe shooting knitting needles had thrown me off, because my first arrow missed the mark majorly and stuck into our flat screen TV! I went over and pulled it out, needless to say there was a hole. I found the missing pieces and was trying to put it back together like a puzzle… would the cracks be noticed? Probably… then I would have to pay to have it replaced. Damn… I don't have that kind of money!

*Parking Maze*
I was in a data center like in the hospitals where I used to work. In the dream, I still held a job there. I was getting off work now. I left the office and met James, my ex boyfriend, outside the office. In the dream I guess he wasn't my ex… we headed down the hall and to the elevator. This was the beginning of the weirdness… the elevator didn't go down, only up. We went up about five floors, then we had to find another elevator that would take us to the parking level. What a pain. We got to the parking garage. That, too, was confusing. I knew I had parked on the 3rd level of the parking garage, but I couldn't find stairs that led there. James and I looked endlessly. We were getting mad at each other for being lost. He said I can never find the right path… I told him we had been following his directions. He didn't have a response, and we finally found my car. Now to get out… which proved to be even harder. The parking structure was a maze of up and down ramps, dead ends, and loops that were easy to get stuck in. James said it would be quicker for him to walk. I told him to get out and do so, then. He didn't want to get out. I finally found the exit from the parking garage, but there was a giant sinkhole blocking the road. I knew there was another exit, but we would have to find that one… which promised to be a huge pain in the ass…

*Grand Theft Yu-Gi-Oh*
I was in my car driving down the road. It was a bright sunny day, and there was not much traffic. I had time to kill before I could go home. I didn't want to get home before my mother expected me. If I did, she would have me doing chores or cleaning or doing some kind of manual labor. I didn't want to do that. I saw a collector's card shop and decided to go in. I parked and went inside. There were so many different kinds of collectable cards. Many of them were from CCG (collectable card games) such as Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering, etc. There were cards from sets I had never heard of. I saw a few sample cards… and it looked like a deck with those would be unstoppable. All cards were guaranteed to be tournament legal (at least until they became more widely known and might be banned), extremely rare, and neigh impossible to lose with. They were also extremely expensive. I wanted them. I thought I could go to the next Yu-Gi-Oh tournament and wipe the floor with my ex boyfriend, who sometimes plays in those tournaments. I thought I could at least kick ass in the tournaments. I started slipping packs of the cards into my purse. I took quite a few, though I don't know how many. I walked out of the store. The owner of the store was trying to stop me. I was sure he had seen me steal the cards. I reached for my keys to leave… I couldn't find them. Damn! Of all the luck. They were probably buried under stolen Yu-Gi-Oh cards. The shop owner caught up with me. I was definitely busted. He handed me my keys and said I had left those inside. I thanked him, and made a note to myself that after I won a couple of tournaments I would be sure and bring money back here for that shop since the owner had been so nice.

"There's no time!" the man insisted, "The Ascendentae will answer all your questions, but you have to come with me! It is no longer safe here!" The man opened a portal and I followed him through…

On the other side of the portal I was in what looked like a temple. I felt the dream was slipping. I was about to wake up, but I wasn't done there… so I didn't want the dream to end yet. I repeated what I had done last night, using Allura's method to dilate time. I focused on the 12 hour clock, then morphed it into a 24 hour clock… then to a 48 hour clock… and I felt the dream stabilize. I looked around again. The man who had come to help me with the goons was standing there looking at me strangely.

"Come," he said to me, "The Ascendantae awaits." He turned and walked away.

I followed the man as he walked through the halls. He knocked on a large door at the end of the hall. Someone on the other side said we should enter. The man I was with opened the door and we both went into the room. There was a man sitting on the other side of a desk looking at us as we entered. The man referred to the man who had brought me as Salus, and said he could go now. Salus turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

I'd had a million questions I'd been wanting to ask, but now I didn't seem to be able to manage any of them. The man behind the desk, the Ascendantae, stood up and came around the desk. He looked at me closely as if evaluating me or something… I didn't like that much. Something about him reminded me of Sean Connery…

I wanted to ask what he was looking at, but he started speaking before I got a chance to. He said Salus had already told him about finding me. He said Salus had also told him about the everto finding me. He said that was not a good sign. He said that if the everto had started looking for their… then he trailed off. He paused and then said he was sure I wanted some answers. He said all the answers I wanted awaited me at the end of the negotium.

"At the end of the what?" I asked, having no idea what this negotium could be. He said it was a simple task. All I would have to do was go to the end of a passage and retrieve a book. A special book that, if I was who they believed me to be, would be able to retrieve. And I was the only one who could retrieve it. That all sounded really strange to me… The man pulled a hidden lever on the desk. A section of the floor slid aside and there was a stairway down into darkness below. The Ascendantae said that the answers awaited at the end of that passage. I looked down the passage into the darkness. I wondered what might await down there… I wasn't sure what I was going to do… but I figured I would not know what was going on if I didn't go down there.

I was about to go down the stairs when the door to the office was flung open. There were a bunch of people in the door… Templars! Wtf? My full lucidity came rushing back to me as I let myself get out of character… There weren't supposed to be Templars attacking here… the Ascendantae was also perplexed. Of course he was a DC I had made for the game… But he was programmed to respond. He went over towards the Templars. He demanded to know the meaning of this intrusion. I told him those were the everto, so he might want to go down the passage himself to escape. He didn't leave, instead he pulled out a rather fancy looking glowing sword and attacked the Templars. One of the Templars hit him with a blast of energy, and since he was a DC that wasn't even intended to fight, the Ascendentae disappeared. I was prepared to fight the Templars now. I was more focused on them, so the dream set I had created fell apart around me. It turned out I was now on the moon.

One of the Templars came towards me and seemed pleased to see me… wtf? He came over and shook my hand with one of his hands and said it was good to have me on their side. What? I asked him if he was on crack… He looked at me strangely and then laughed. He tried to lead me back to the others as a friend would do. I pushed his hand off of me. I asked what he wanted, intruding on my dream… He said it was time that we got down to business. I said I didn't have any business with him… He said if I could just convince MoSh to join us… I repeated that there is no 'us' going on here… He looked at me strangely. He said the joke had gotten old. I said I wasn't joking about anything. These guys really thought I would be working with them!

I asked him what would make him think I had joined their side. He said I had clearly accepted the dark energy… I told him that doesn't mean anything… unless the goals of controlling people by force that and the rest of the Templars were aiming for had drastically changed there was no way I would ever be helping them with it. He looked at me strangely. He didn't seem to be getting the point. I told him to go away and let me finish my dream in peace. The one who had been talking to me looked over at the other Templars. He didn't seem to know what to say now. I told him we had found a good balance… they don't interfere with my dreams, and I don't kick their asses on sight. So unless there was something else that didn't involve me joining them, please go away and let me finish my dream. The Templar closest to me grabbed my arm and said I would be going with him. I said no, I would not, so he would have one more chance to just leave in peace… Instead he tried to pull me with him. I shook him off and opened a vortex portal that dumped all of them someplace around Pluto…

I went to focus on restoring my dream world and continuing my video game development dream. Before I even had a chance to get the dream realm reformed, however, there was another visitor. This one attacked me on sight, throwing spears of light down at me. There were explosions all around me as I jumped out of the way of the attack, getting quite annoyed at my dream being interrupted yet again. I looked to get a closer look at the attacker, and I saw he looked like an angel of some kind… he didn't even pause in his attack, though, throwing another wave of glowing spears in my direction. I used Whiplash and sent the energy spears right back at him. He avoided the attack and landed on the ground not far from me. I asked him what he thought he was doing. He said he does not talk to demons. He continued attacking me. A whirlwind of golden light erupted around me, mixed with fire. This guy was really annoying… This attack was easily countered with a small wave of dark energy that neutralized the attack. The angel was already throwing more light spears at me, I jumped out of the way and hit him with a bolt of lightning by using Battery. Electricity didn't seem to hurt him… I tried a bolt of lightning made of dark energy… that did hurt him. It knocked him backwards. I told him he should get a better definition of what a demon is before attacking random people, then used a vortex portal to send him where I had sent the Templars. Maybe all of them would have some fun together.

Ok… now finally to get back to my video game dream… But the dream was slipping again. I focused on doing another time dilation. The clock with the 12 hours, changing into the clock with 24 hours, changing into the clock with 48 hours… but it didn't seem to be helping this time. The dream slipped away and I woke.

Note: This is officially my 3rd WILD in a row! I can now safely say my dry spell is over! I didn't have any particular goals for tonight, so I ended up not focused on much of anything as I used my light / sound machine to meditate as I fell asleep, and I slipped into a WILD…

I was in my own room still. I almost didn't recognize that I had passed from my waking self into a dream state. I got up and left the room, heading outside. It was daylight outside, so that was one key difference between the house in my inner world and the one in my waking life. I was lucid and dreaming. I wondered what I might do. I thought for a bit, and then I thought I might be thinking about it too much… I didn't want to lose the dream before it had even begun. After a bit more thought I remembered that Tigress and I are working on a project for our capstone in school, one big project that is supposed to demonstrate what we have learned in the past couple of years. That game started right at the U of A, so I would go there to start the walkthrough of the game. It would be much faster to fly than to walk, or even drive, so I took flight and headed in the direction I knew the U of A was located in.

I landed on the street I have designated to be the setting of the beginning of the game Tigress and I are making. I focused for a bit, I closed my eyes and focused on manipulating the dream scene. I was in my own inner world, so this was not a difficult task. When I opened my eyes the area looked just like I had imagined the setting of the game would look. So now it was time to start playing. The street behind me, which was to the south, was blocked by road construction. There were holes and warning cones set around, and there was random construction equipment also blocking the way. That left one way for me to go. I headed to the north. I remembered there was supposed to be a hidden area off to the east, through a small opening in a fence. I went to that.

The opening in the fence was there. I slipped through the opening and went down the alley behind the fence. There was a tall fence blocking access to a parking lot which would be out of bounds if the player were to go there, and there was a turn to the north shortly before the parking lot dead end. This was also a dead end, but there was a crate down there. The crate looked abandoned, next to a dumpster. I went to check it out. There was some stuff in the crate. When I looked in it, strangely enough I found there were some energy drinks in it. Many of the cans were broken open, which was probably why the crate had been discarded… but I found a couple that were intact. I slipped those into my backpack. This was the first time I really noticed I had a backpack on, but it made sense since I was a college student and I would need to carry stuff… Now that I had found the hidden items, I returned to the main street and continued walking around.

A bit farther to the north on the main street there was more construction. That effectively sealed off this section of road. There was nowhere for me to go from there. So I had to turn around and head back. I knew where I needed to go to trigger the next part of the game, I just wanted to look around a bit more. I had seen all there was to see here, however. I went over to the bus stop near the center of the section of the street, right across the street from the hidden passage through the fence. When I got there it triggered the next phase of the game.

The sky, which had been bright and blue, seemed to darken even though there were no clouds. Everything around me seemed to get darker, actually. There had been birds singing, but now those went silent. In fact, all of the ambient noises I had been hearing were now gone. The sounds of birds singing, of the wind in the trees, of traffic in the distance… now it was as quiet as the grave. And this area was beginning to look quite creepy. I felt a chill run down my back consistent with what the character might be feeling. I saw, or maybe sensed is a better word, movement behind me. I turned quickly and saw a robed man standing there with a sinister grin on his face.

"Did you really think we wouldn't find you?" he asked, "Well you were wrong. We have eyes and ears everywhere. You should have known it was just a matter of time. You'll be coming with me, now. Or, of course, if you resist we could do this the hard way…"

"Who the hell are you?" I asked the strange man, "And what are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere with you!" I had an instinctive knowledge that if I went with him it would mean big trouble.

"I thought you might say that," the man said, "That is disappointing. It is unfortunate, but when you weren't willing to cooperate, my men were forced to kill you." He made a gesture to the trees off to my right, which were now enshrouded in a strange fog, giving the area the same kind of creepy atmosphere I had seen in Silent Hill video games… Shapes moved in the fog and then emerged. There were four men in black hooded robes. They quickly surrounded me, cracking their knuckles.

"When the deed is done," the first man said to the four around me, "make sure you take anything of value off of her. This will look like a simple mugging where multiple assailants robbed this poor young college student, brutally beating her to death in the process. And you must make absolutely certain that she is beaten to DEATH. There will be no repeat of your last failure."

I had let myself get into character, so now I felt definite fear for my life. These four goons weren't small men by any stretch, they had me surrounded, they had orders to beat me to death, and they looked quite eager to carry out those orders. I looked around quickly to see if there was anyone around that might help me… but there was no one there… at least no one I could see through the fog… maybe I could slip between them and escape? That was my only chance… The space between two of them was slightly larger than the space between the others, so I made a quick break for that. I never had a chance of making it. One of the goons grabbed me suddenly and violently pulled my arms behind my back, holding them there. Apparently the idea was that one would hold me while the others did the beating. I tried to pull free of the man behind me, but he was too strong… there was nothing I could do…

"This is gonna be fun," the goon directly in front of me said as he approached me. All I could do was pray the end came swiftly… but no. As the man pulled his right arm back to throw the first punch, I found myself reacting on instinct somehow. Moving my body in such a way as to gain leverage, I bent over and flipped the man behind me over my head and threw him into the one in front of me. Both of them went tumbling to the ground. My first thought was still on escaping… so I tried to run for it again. One of the other two men grabbed my arm as I tried to get away. Acting completely on instinct, I turned around and kneed him in the crotch really hard. He doubled over in pain, grabbing his aching privates. I brought my elbow down hard at the base of his skull, knocking him instantly out cold. I turned and intercepted another of the men coming at me. There was another one coming at me from the other direction. I took advantage of the situation and grabbed their heads, slamming their two heads together. Both of them were out cold. The last man was more hesitant to approach me. But he finally did… and he met up with my foot to his face. I did a roundhouse kick just like I have seen Chuck Norris do countless times, but I had never imagined myself doing one… Not only did I do it, I did it well. My foot made contact with his face with surprising force, knocking him back onto the ground, also out cold.

The one first man to arrive, who was clearly the leader, was not pleased. He was glaring at the four men on the ground. One of them was regaining consciousness… The leader went over to the one goon regaining consciousness and helped him to his feet.

"You have failed me for the last time," the leader said to the goon. He pulled out a knife he'd had hidden in his robes and stabbed the goon in the gut. The look of shock on the goon's face turned to one of pain as the leader slowly and deliberately twisted the knife. He pulled the knife out, letting the goon fall to the ground, bleeding and clutching the wound. I got ready for the leader to attack me now… but he didn't. Instead he motioned and four more goons came out, these ones were armed. They had nunchucks that had blades on one end of them…

"So it won't look like a typical mugging…" the leader said, "I don't care! Kill her!"

I was wondering how my newly discovered martial arts skills would match up against these guys… I would soon find out. They were surrounding me again, but now someone else arrived. This man was dressed somewhat different than the others, and he was apparently on his own. He threw a sword to me. I hesitated and was about to ask a question.

"There's no time for questions," he said, "Just fight!" I had no choice but to fight. And now I was discovering that I had instinctive skills with the sword, too. My skills with the sword proved to be more than the enemies could stand up to. Between the new arrival and me, we quickly took care of things. But this time I hadn't just knocked the enemies out… I had killed them. After the fight was over, I was staring at the dead men, more than a bit disturbed by how easily it had come to me to kill them… I had never killed anyone in my life, and now I had killed two of them… but I'd had no choice… I noticed that the fog had lifted, and the place was no longer creepy… except for the dead people.

"Come on," the man who had helped me said, "We have to get out of here!"

"What the fuck is going on?!" I asked.

"There's no time," he said, "Malum just left… he will surely be back with more everto… we have to get out of here!"

"Malum?" I asked, confused, "Everto? What the…"

"There's no time!" the man insisted, "The Ascendentae will answer all your questions, but you have to come with me! It is no longer safe here!" The man opened a portal and I followed him through… (to be continued)

Note: Tonight I was successful in my WILD for the second night in a row! I send a big out to Mzzkc from the Dreamviews lucid dreaming site! One more in a row, and I think I can officially call my dry spell over! So my goals today started out with stopping into MoSh's inner world and seeing how Asuka is doing, MoSh has said she was still sick. The level of light energy may be too high and could be negatively affecting Asuka. So the goal there was to restore balance… I meditated with my light / sound machine and slipped into a WILD…

I was inside MoSh's inner world. It was very bright and sunny there. It seemed a bit too bright… I went over to the house and knocked, MoSh let me in. I went inside and looked around. It was almost as bright inside as it had been outside. I wondered where Asuka was. I asked MoSh how she was doing. MoSh said she was not feeling well, so she was in bed… resting. He said she didn't seem to be able to sleep, but she was resting. I followed MoSh to find Asuka in a bedroom on the second floor.

Asuka was lying in bed, looking a bit ill. She was quite pale, and she also looked like she wanted to get up. She said she had to get up and do something. MoSh asked how she was feeling. She seemed to get angry suddenly and said she was fine, it was positive energy and thus you can never have too much of it, so MoSh should stop giving her a hard time about it. She picked up a light energy shard off of the table beside her bed. She said there was no way anyone who used dark energy was going to get anywhere near her now, or anywhere near MoSh's inner world for that matter. She looked over and saw me. She told me to get out of there before that shit I've been trying to use gets out and contaminates MoSh's inner world. She said if I am going to play with shit, I should do it somewhere that is not in MoSh's inner world. I wanted to get her to be rational… but that wasn't looking likely…

Ok… the entire place was over-saturated with light energy. I wondered what to do about that… most of my spells are focused on eliminating excess dark energy, not to eliminate excess light energy… since that's not an issue I have come across as far as I remember… Well, the first thing seemed to be to remove some of the sources of light energy. And there were lots of those. I went around MoSh's house and gathered up a lot of the sources of light energy. I was thinking I had taken a lot of them out previously, and now there were so many more… I wondered if Asuka was still collecting them or if she'd had a stash hidden away somewhere in MoSh's inner world… I wasn't sure. I collected most of the sources of light energy and telepathically contacted Q to take them back to where they were needed. Not only did Asuka gathering so many light energy sources cause there to be too much light energy in MoSh's inner world, it could be setting the locations she took the energy sources from out of balance. Q appeared, and he took the sources of light energy and disappeared.

Now I looked around and there was still an excessive amount of light energy in there. It would take quite a while for all of that to disperse… I thought one of the quickest ways to lower the level of light energy would be to neutralize some of it… and that could be done with a bit of dark energy? Letting the two mix in a controlled manner, the two should neutralize each other… I didn't want to let a bunch of dark energy out into MoSh's inner world, though… I ran a small test. I created a small ball of dark energy in my hand and held it out. It disappeared as quickly as an ice cube melting in the July sun in southern Arizona… it just melted away. So the neutralizing could work… and as long as I was careful about it… so I created some more of the energy balls and let them melt away in the brightness of the excessive light energy… slowly it started to have an effect, making the overly brightness of the area fade back towards normal. I kept doing that until the lighting in the area both outside and inside the house was just slightly brighter than I am used to seeing it. A little extra light energy wouldn't hurt anything.

I went back to where Asuka was. She seemed to be glowing with light energy. I did a scan of her energy. Her energy aura was practically blinding… It looked like an energy level more appropriate for Q, who is a being made entirely of light energy. This was not natural for Asuka. Asuka had calmed down and was sitting on the couch in the living room now. I asked how she was feeling. She said not too great… she said she kind of felt like she was on fire. I said it might help if she was to expend some of her light energy… use it on something. Anything. She said she couldn't. She said she couldn't focus it, none of it wanted to cooperate. There had to be some way to get rid of it… The same way as I had neutralized the excess light energy in the surrounding environment? Maybe… but I didn't want to hurt Asuka by accident… But how else? I told Asuka I was going to try to help her. She said ok. I took hold of her hand and let a small amount of dark energy go into her… She immediately got upset at that, trying to pull away and throwing out a few choice words at me… MoSh was looking at me, seeming unsure of what to do… Asuka was still fighting me, struggling to get away, yelling at MoSh to help her, I had clearly gone mad… I kept a close watch on her energy, constantly scanning… the dark energy wasn't getting very far… it was being neutralized almost instantly as it went in… Asuka slowly began to resist less, she seemed tired. I kept scanning and adding tiny amounts of dark energy until her aura was about the brightness it was supposed to be, perhaps a bit brighter.

In spite of having plenty of energy, Asuka looked really tired. I figured it was basically a crash after having been wired on light energy. I scanned her very closely and saw no sign of dark energy inside her… she was clean. MoSh asked if Asuka was ok… he asked what I had done to her… I said I had just neutralized the excess light energy in her, and she would probably rest for a while since there had been a sudden decrease in her energy level. I told him she would need a bit of time to re-adjust to having her normal energy level, sort of like when a person feels neutral, gets high, then comes back down to neutral, after coming back down to neutral that can feel kind of crappy until they get re-adjusted. I said to say Asuka had been high was an understatement… she had been so high she would have been floating in some other galaxy… but she looked like she would be ok now.

MoSh helped Asuka back upstairs to the bedroom and into bed. He came back down shortly. He seemed a bit annoyed. He said Asuka had told him I had been infecting her with dark energy. He asked if I might have been doing that by accident while trying to stabilize her energy, because he had been under the impression I was in control of that. I hesitated, then just told the truth about how I had neutralized the excess light energy in her… He did not seem too thrilled about that… he asked if there was any chance she would be infected with the stuff… I said no, she had been so high on light energy that any dark energy had been immediately neutralized. I said I had scanned her when I was done, and there had not been any trace of dark energy left in her, only light, and her light energy was just slightly above what it normally was because I didn't want to take a chance on leaving it too low. MoSh stood there looking at me for a couple more minutes. He didn't seem to know what to think of that method of healing… Apparently he finally decided to accept it, because he changed the subject.

MoSh now said that we could go view a section of a Carlos Castaneda book where Carlos was talking to don Juan… we had agreed to that as a goal on the night before… but I felt the dream was going to end soon. I told MoSh that. MoSh said it was a good chance to use time dilation. I wondered what type to use… I wondered what would happen if both of us used it… what if we dilated time in different ways… like he set it to 4 dream hours for each hour IWL and I did it for 2 dream hours.. that seemed like it could cause a problem… but what if one of use used it and the other didn't… would it work for both of us? Or would he be going at 4 dream hours for each hour IWL while I was still on a one to one relation… I was confusing myself… MoSh was already using time dilation… He had his hand on the ground and was focusing on that at the same time as he was counting, he was apparently using Walms' method. I would just have to see what happened…

Note: I am sure the dream continued after here, but it continued with a high degree of disorientation on my part, maybe partly due to the difference in time dilation… so I'm sure the dream continued, but all of my memories from that point on were too vague to post.