memorable

2017, 04-17

Garden of the Moon

I am flying through space in my Fire Valkyrie. I am heading for the moon. Right now I am not really thinking about anything special, I am finding the flight through space rather relaxing. Everything seems so peaceful up here. I fly through space and I see the moon up ahead. I fly in and then I fly low over the surface of the moon, looking for any reason why I might be here. As I fly over the surface of the moon I spot a tower in the distance. I approach the tower and I see there is a landing bay near the top of the tower, so I fly into the landing bay. I get out of my ship and look around the landing bay. Nothing looks damaged, but it has a strangely abandoned feel. I head for the doors into the main part of the tower. The doors slide open and I get into the elevator. The elevator goes down quickly, though I notice a few strange noises that I’m not exactly sure if it’s supposed to be making. Soon the doors slide open and I am in the room at the bottom of the tower. I cross over and open the doors to the outside. There is no need for an airlock since the area outside is inside the biodome and is an Earth atmosphere.

I look around the area outside the tower and I am looking at a completely unfamiliar place. It looks like I am in what used to be a beautiful garden, though now it looks like it has been dead for years. At first I don’t recognize anything around the tower, but then I see a bench next to an empty pond that has fish bones on the bottom. I remember the koi pond that used to be here, with the colorful fish in the crystal clear water surrounded by the beautiful garden, flowers and trees. I remembered sitting on the bench on numerous occasions, watching the fish in the water. That gets me feeling a bit sad, thinking of friends from the past, some who said they would always be there and were as brothers and sisters to me, but now they’ve turned away for whatever reasons I do not know and I will probably never know. But then there are the ones who are still around, who have stayed through good times and bad…

So now I’ve ended up with a strange mix of feelings and I decide to just set it all out with a bit of music. I find that I have an ocarina hanging on a cord around my neck that is similar to the ocarina in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I take the ocarina out and I start playing whatever comes to mind. I’m not playing any tune in particular, I’m just letting the music flow. As I am playing I see the area filling with a golden light that’s emanating from my ocarina as I play. Everything the golden light touches is bought to life. Green things start growing again, leaves sprout on the trees, flowers bloom bright and colorful… I am not really paying much attention to what is going on around me, I have gotten caught up in the music I am playing so I just continue.

I play on for a while longer and focus on certain things I remember. The koi pond with the plants and trees around it and the bench sitting beside it, a stream cascading into the pond comes back to life and fills it, complete with fish. The healing hot springs come to life, with steaming water bubbling from openings in the rock at the bottom and the pools quickly fill with the hot water. I am remembering a special tree that was planted by a friend I no longer have contact with, but I’m not wanting the tree to disappear. It is lifeless and dead when I first find it, but then it comes back to life so quickly and bares its “fruit” which take the form of various types of fresh breads nestled in leaf wrappings to keep them fresh and warm. And there is another tree that I don’t remember as well, but it is also lifeless and dead when I find it, but as the golden energy surrounds the tree it is returned to life and sprouts many purple colored leaves that look more like flowers to me, it is very beautiful. I stop playing for now, though I know there is a lot that still has to be restored. I don’t get the chance to do that, however, as everything around me fades to black and I wake up.

2017, 04-07

Enter Lothlorien

I am in a place I don’t recognize. I look around, trying to figure out where I am. I see I am very close to the foot of some tall mountains, I am in a rocky area at the foothills of the mountains. Not sure where to go, I follow the sound of a flowing river or stream. I go a little way before I find the source of the sound. The river is little more than a creek here, bubbling out of the rocks and flowing and cascading away down the foothills. I start following the stream to see where it leads. I make note of how nice a day it is for taking a walk outside. I kick myself for not bringing my phone alone, I could be getting distance on my Pokemon Go app even if there aren’t any pokemon in such a remote area.

I have not gone far before there is a flash of white light in front of me. I stop and do a double take because there are now two men standing where there was no one just seconds before. I recognize both of them right away. One of them is MoSh, and the other one is Q from Star Trek. I am surprised to see either of them here, since MoSh lives in a different country than I do and Q doesn’t exist in our world at all. When I think about that I realize this area doesn’t look like any place around my home, which is in the middle of a desert. Q smiles and even chuckles a bit. He says it’s amazing how slow the mind tends to conclude that it is dreaming. He tells me to do a reality check. I hesitate, my mind really is working rather slowly though I’m not sure why that might be. Finally I pinch my nose to do a reality check and I find I can breathe just fine even with my nose pinched. So I become lucid and then I announce to Q that I am dreaming. Q says he knows that, he’s the one who told me to do a reality check. He says the rest of the fellowship should arrive momentarily, and he was going to disappear. He then tells both MoSh and me to make sure and remember that we’re dreaming. MoSh gets down on the ground and is looking at his hand strangely. I ask what he’s doing and he says time dilation. I’m really not sure what he is talking about. I am thinking about asking Q about time dilation but when I look back I see Q has vanished.

I look over at MoSh and see he is still focused on his hand. I wait for a bit and soon a group of people come along. I recognize them from the Lord of the Rings books / movies. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Merry, Pippin, Sam, Frodo. It appears Aragorn is leading them. He does a double take when he sees me and says he thought I’d disappeared again. He says we have to hurry on our way because there will be orcs swarming from that mountain after us once it gets dark. He asks who my friend is, pointing at MoSh. I give him a name that must satisfy him, but I can’t remember what name I gave. Aragorn hurries past and tells us we had better keep up. MoSh gets up and watches Aragorn and the others pass by. I notice Frodo is hanging back a bit. I ask if he is ok. He looks like he is in pain. He says he is ok, just got the wind knocked out of him by an orc spear back there. I tell him I can help, and I focus some healing energy through him. He seems to feel better and continues at a quicker pace.

We have continued quite a while when we come to a river. Legolas is saying the river is the Nimrodel and can wash away weariness when one bathes their feet in the water. He says we will have to wade across it because there are no bridges, but it is shallow. So everyone wades across the river. It is starting to get dark out, even now dusk is settling into night. Legolas is singing a song about the Nimrodel now, but I don’t pay much attention to the words, the melody is nice. Legolas says we’d best sleep in the trees and jumps for a branch. Someone is in the tree, however, and gives him a command in a different language. I somehow understand the language, the tree dweller commanded Legolas to drop back to the ground and wait there… Legolas tells everyone else to stay still and not move. I wait for a bit and finally some elves drop from the trees. They do not seem hostile, however, just cautious.

Even as Legolas and the other elves are discussing whether or not our group can pass into Lothlorien there is a lot of noise around us and we are under attack. Aragorn expresses surprise that the orcs could have caught up so quickly, and draws his sword to fight. Legolas fires arrows and drops a few orcs before they even reach us. It suddenly occurs to me that I was going to make sure MoSh has a Witchblade. I don’t see one on his wrist so I reach into an inner pocket of my Assassin’s robes and I find a Witchblade there. I take it out and toss it to MoSh after getting his attention. He catches it and puts it on. It forms into armor and a sword as the attacking orcs get closer. The orcs are now close enough to engage in melee combat. I form my right arm into an Alex Mercer blade and then I engage the orcs in battle. My Alex Mercer blade carves through attacking orcs as fast as they can come on and attack. I’m being attacked from all directions so I use a spin attack like Link from Legend of Zelda, slicing several orcs open across the middle. I look around just in time to see MoSh remove the head of an attacking orc. Before long all of the attacking orcs have been destroyed.

After the battle is over I see some of the elves set about disposing of the orc bodies. One of the elves is over talking to Legolas, from what I can tell they are discussing whether we will be allowed to enter into Lothlorien. They finally decide that we can enter, but will have to be blindfolded. I look over and I see MoSh looking up at the trees and wandering around a bit. He says this place is beautiful and then takes off flying, much to the amazement of the fellowship and the elves. One of the elves asks me where MoSh is going. I tell the elf not to worry about where MoSh is going, he won’t cause any harm. The elf says that’s not for me to decide. I tell him that if fighting by their side to defeat the orcs isn’t proof of friendship, what is? He looks like he will say something else but then he doesn’t. I realize I still have my blade arm active and I shift it back to my normal arm. The elf says we’d best get into the trees to rest for the night, they have platforms prepared for just such use. The people in the fellowship start climbing up rope ladders that are hanging down from the trees. The elf asks if MoSh will be returning. I tell him I don’t know for sure, but I rather doubt it. And I don’t think I’ll be around for much longer, either. He asks where I would go when there are surely more orcs out there on the hunt. I tell him I can only be there in a dream, so I might be waking up at any time. He says no, that while Lothlorien may look like a place only to be found in dreams, it is most definitely real. Before I can clarify what I mean, however, everything fades to black and I wake up.

2017, 04-06

Escape From Moria

I am in a dark place. A very dark place. It is so dark that I literally can’t see my hand in front of my face. The night vision feature of my Penticon computer chip implant activates and now I can see around me, though everything has a strange greenish tint from the night vision. I am in a long underground passage that looks like it was built rather than a natural cave. It looks like a mine shaft. I follow it for a while and soon find it opens into a huge hall that is supported by many huge pillars. I am able to see the main hall with my night vision, but I see there is a dim light coming through a passage off to my left. I head down that passage to see if I can find out where I am and why I’m there. The source of the light is from a door on the right.

I go through the door and stop short when I see an elf pointing an arrow at me. It’s Legolas, and he lowers his bow when he sees me. He says I have a bad habit of sneaking up on people. I tell him I wasn’t trying to sneak. Boromir looks puzzled and says he thought I got trapped outside Moria after the lake monster destroyed the doors. Sam looks upset and says he thought I was going to see Bill safely to Rivendell. Gandalf has been focusing his attention on an old book, but he looks up and sees me. He is standing beside a large slab of stone that looks like it might be a tomb, the book is lying open. He closes up the book and gives it to a dwarf, Gimli. He also wants to know how I got past the destroyed western gate. He then says I can tell them later, for now he has a feeling we had better all get moving out of there. He says to go back to the main hall and then exit through the eastern passage.

But before anyone can move towards the western exit there is the sound of drums from all around. Legolas, who has gone back to watching the passage, calls to the others that they are coming. I reflexively ask who. Gimili says we cannot get out. Aragorn says to close and bar both doors. Boromir is beside the western door and he says it’s no good, the door is broken and wouldn’t budge if we had our own troll to push. Gandalf fires an energy blast down the hall outside and illuminates many orcs in the light as the orc in front gets a hole blasted through it. Gandalf tells everyone to run through the other door, there’s too many to fight. I don’t figure I have to listen to Gandalf, so I go out into the halls to stall the orcs and give the fellowship a better chance to get away. I form my right arm into an Alex Mercer blade, charged with light energy so it is giving off a light that I can see the enemies by. The orcs fire arrows at me, but I knock them aside with my Alex Mercer blade. That doesn’t deter them, however, they are advancing down the hallway. The group of orcs parts and makes way for a troll coming through their ranks. The troll is practically filling up the entire passageway all by itself. I’m not sure how easy it will be to take on a troll in such a closed area, but remember talking to MoSh about the Ranma ½ anime series. I think of a technique used by Ryoga Hibiki called Bakusai Tenketsu, which shatters inanimate objects such as stones… so I use it on the supports of the passage to each side, causing the aging structure to collapse around and on top of the orcs and troll.

I go back through the door into the room with the tomb and I see no one is left there. The far door has also collapsed even though I didn’t do my Bakusai Tenketsu anywhere near it. I assume I must have accidently caused the collapse, however. There were apparently some orcs on the near side of the collapse in the outer passage because now they come into the room and attack me without seeming to realize there is nowhere to go in here. I use my Alex Mercer blade arm to fight back. Only a few orcs got through so it doesn’t take long to cut them down. My next thought is that I have no idea how I’m supposed to get myself out of here with the outside passage blocked and the other door also blocked. Maybe I could find a way through the collapse? I start looking around the collapsed door to see if I can find a way. There aren’t any openings large enough for anything bigger than an ant to go through. As I pointlessly try to fit into a small opening, however, I find I am getting smaller and smaller… until I fit through! I hurry along the dark passage and stairs beyond by using night vision once again, and I seem to be my normal size again. Somehow I seem to have changed size without being consciously aware of how I did it. I wonder if I will be able to do it again if I choose to…

I finally enter a huge hall at the end of a passage. The hall is lit by a red light coming from a giant crack halfway through the room. Fire is coming from that crack. In the other direction I see a long and narrow bridge. On top of the bridge I see something ugly like a demon of some kind and Gandalf. I can hear Gandalf speaking loud and clear, "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass." I see Aragorn and Boromir coming up behind Gandalf as he strikes the bridge, causing a wall of white flame to erupt and the bridge to break under the demon’s feet. I know what is about to happen and I take off at a sprint to reach the bridge in time. The bridge collapses underneath the demon, and it plunges into the depths. I am reaching the edge of the bridge as the demon sends its whip up to snare Gandalf, he is hanging on the edge as I jump the gap and dive to grab his arm… I barely get hold of his hand. He gives me a strangely calm look and says to me to just let go, this is not the end. I can’t hold on with only having his hand and the weight of the demon pulling down, and he slips away, yelling louder to everyone to, “Fly, you fools!”

I’m about to jump right off the bridge and go after Gandalf and the demon, but the next thing I know strong arms are pulling me away from the edge, a man says not to be foolish, Gandalf is beyond our aid now. I look and Aragorn is pulling me away from the edge. The bridge is crumbling, if I hold Aragorn up he might fall, too… not acceptable. So I follow him the rest of the way over the bridge and we get off just in time. Aragorn calls to the others that he will lead them now, and we must start by following Gandalf’s final command, we must get out of here! So there really isn’t any option now but to follow the others down a passage and then into the final chamber. I see the door to the outside on the far side of the room, the light shining brightly through. There are more orcs barring our way to get there. Aragorn and Boromir charge right in and kill several orcs, Legolas hits a few more with well aimed arrows. I reform my Alex Mercer blade (it had changed back to a normal arm) and use it to cut down a couple more orcs. The rest run away in fear. We all pass through the door and onto a rocky landscape under the bright sun.

We move quickly away from the entrance, making sure to get beyond the range of bows and arrows before taking a pause. I look around, everyone is sad, some are openly crying. I just kept thinking I should have saved Gandalf, I should have saved him. Apparently I said that aloud, because Aragorn says I did everything I could, we all did. He said this was what he feared from the start, alas but he spoke true. Gimili blames one of the mountains, shaking his fist at it, saying only if Caradhras had been less cruel. I look around again and I see Sam has a cut on his head. I don’t know where he got that, but I can heal it… I go over to Sam and focus healing energy on the injury and it closes up quickly. I’m not sure if he even notices, he is currently lost in his grief. I look around, but no one else looks injured. Aragorn says if I’m willing to stay around, they could use the extra help now. I tell him I can’t stay constantly, but I’ll be back if I’m needed. Everything around me fades to black and I wake up.

2017, 04-03

Entrance to Khazad-Dûm

I am in a strange place I do not recognize. I look around to try to get some idea of where I am. There are tall mountains off to my left and I am in what appear to be the foothills. The foothills are rocky and there is a somewhat broken path winding through the rocks and hills. I follow that path for a short while, not making any attempt to stay quiet since I don’t notice anyone in the area. I do a double take when I reach the top of a ridge and find myself face to face with a man aiming a bow and arrow at me… or rather an elf. I stop where I am and look, recognizing the elf as Legolas from the Lord of the Rings. I wonder if the rest of the fellowship is somewhere in the area, and think they’re probably sleeping and it was Legolas’ turn to be on watch. He doesn’t fire his arrow, he says I don’t look like a servant of the enemy, although some of the most foul creatures can make themselves appear fair if need be. I spread my hands out to indicate I’m not armed and I don’t want to fight. I say my name is Raven Knight, and I was just wandering out here. I would only seek to help him and his companions if I can. He seems unconvinced, and asks how he is to know I’m telling the truth. I’m not really sure what proof I can offer, so I figure I will depart and just watch from afar in case they need help.

I notice the sun is setting and it is now dusk. The wind starts blowing, blowing and howling. Then I realize the howling isn’t the wind. Legolas goes over to a sheltered spot and wakes someone, telling that person that the wolves are on the hunt again. Aragorn gets up and does a double take at seeing me. He asks who I am. Legolas tells him I have claimed to be a wanderer, but there’s no time to check, the enemy is nearly upon us. I figure that’s why I was brought here. Aragorn wakes the others and everyone gets together in a circle facing outward for easier defense. Someone in the middle is trying to strike a fire. The wolves, or rather wargs, arrive… and they have orcs on their backs! The orcs and wargs surround the group on the hill, though they’re clearly ready to put up quite a fight. Now is the time I can prove I am here to help, by fighting off some orcs. So I form my right arm into an Alex Mercer blade and start picking orcs and wargs off from the outside of the circle. My blade slices right through their orc hide. The fight doesn’t last for long, soon the orcs want to retreat, but the company doesn’t want to allow that if it is possible to prevent it because they may alert other enemies as to where they are. I take down one fleeing orc with an Alex Mercer tendril, Legolas fires an arrow and takes out another fleeing orc… and that is all of them.

Since I have been fighting on their side, Gandalf indicates I should follow them to a safer place. He says there will be more enemies very soon, unless by chance that was all that they sent. I follow them down a dark path, following the light of the moon, and soon we reach a pool near the mountain. We go around it and Gandalf says the entrance to Moria has to be around here somewhere. After a brief pause, he does something to the stone wall and glowing writing appears in the light of the moon. He says that while he’s figuring out how to open the door everyone should leave behind what baggage they don’t need and each take a portion of the pony’s baggage and turn the pony loose. Sam is very upset about that, saying that is no different than killing the pony, who he calls Bill. Gandalf says he’s sorry, but there’s no choice. He says there are places in Moria that Bill won’t be able to pass, and that’s assuming Sam could even drag the pony into the dark underground place. Sam is crying. I go over to Sam as the others are removing the pony’s burden, and suggest my solution. I tell him I will escort the pony back to Rivendell, make sure Bill makes it safely. And there Bill will await Sam’s return. Sam looks at me and asks how I intend to make it back with the wargs and orcs on the hunt. I tell him that is my problem, but I don’t think it will be a problem. However Bill will be waiting for him, so Sam will have to be sure to make it back, too.

Gandalf laughs and says this riddle was too easy, he was making it harder than it should’ve been. The writing on the wall tells what the password is, it’s just “friend” in the Elvish language. He speaks the word and then the doors swing open. And at that moment tentacles reach from the dark pool and grab at Frodo. Bill gets scared and runs away, heading around the pool and for open ground. Sam seems undecided on what to do, I tell him I will make sure Bill is safe. Sam cuts the tentacle holding Frodo’s leg with his knife, which is a good size sword for him. Gandalf calls to everyone to get inside, and they all crowd through the door before the tentacled monster slams the doors shut and then starts ripping the place down. The others are safe for now, so I follow after Bill. The lake monster doesn’t seem to have any interest in either Bill or me, it seems it was after only Frodo. I walk a ways with Bill, but I realize it will take far too long to return him to Rivendell the normal way. So the Metallica song “Through the Never” comes to mind, and I use it to open a portal. I lead a hesitant Bill through the portal and on the other side I see Elrond’s house in the distance, lights glimmering in the moonlit night. Bill will be fine now. Everything around me fades to black and I wake up.

2017, 03-27

Ambush at the Ford

I am outside on a road that runs through a thick forest. It is a very beautiful forest, and the day is a pleasant one. I don’t really think much about how I came to be here, I just walk down the road at a leisurely pace. As I am walking down the road I notice that it is starting to get darker. At first I am thinking it has merely reached the end of the day, and the sun is setting. I walk for a while before I reach an area clear enough that I can see the sun in the sky, and I see it is still high up and shining brightly. But for some reason the light of the sun doesn’t seem to be reaching the ground. It’s as if there is some large invisible barrier keeping much of the light away, as well as much of the warmth. The air around me is growing colder as I proceed. I think this is really strange, but I don’t let it stop me. I am now being pulled forward by a feeling I need to get somewhere quickly, before it is too late.

After walking for a short while I hear the flow of water up ahead. I hurry along and reach an area that is more open as it approaches a river. The river flows over the road, but it looks like this is a river ford, a place where the water is shallow and I could wade across if I need to. I notice that in spite of the road coming into the open air, the darkness is deepening rather than dissipating. I look up and I see the sun, but much of the light is not making it to the ground. I hear the sound of someone approaching and I look. I see a man approaching me, watching me suspiciously. He asks who I am and where am I going. I don’t exactly know the answer to where am I going, so I decide to give my name, Raven Knight, and I say I’m going wherever this road may lead me. I think he is about to ask another question when he looks alarmed and turns to look back down the road. He then says if I am not in league with the enemy then I had better get out of sight.

I am still wondering what enemy he is referring to when I hear a couple cries of alarm. A couple of small people, I immediately think they are hobbits, come from a spot by the side of the road that they had apparently thought to be hidden. I hear another voice back there warning someone to stay away from his master or… or… he trails of, apparently not sure how to finish that threat. Aragorn starts in that direction, one of the hobbits says the dark riders have come upon them from behind! I immediately know that is where I need to be. I run as fast as I can, right past Aragorn and to the place the two hobbits came out of. Sure enough, there is a dark cloaked figure on a black horse towering over a hobbit who is lying on the ground looking injured. A second hobbit is standing between the fallen hobbit and the towering dark rider, holding a sword, and shaking with fear, but unwilling to abandon his friend. I hurry forward, calling out to get the monster’s attention. I don’t think it’s working, but then I am finally able to get between the dark rider and the fallen hobbot, who I am now assuming is Frodo. The protective one muct be Sam. I tell Sam he had better get Frodo out of here, Aragorn is out on the road and will help. Sam looks like he wants to ask questions but instead he helps Frodo up and they make very slow progress out towards Aragorn. Aragorn is out there saying we have to get to the ford, the dark riders won’t cross. I form my right arm into an Alex Mercer blade, and I charge it with light energy. When he sees this, the dark rider backs off a bit then turns and leaves. I have a feeling he is not retreating.

I head back out onto the road thinking I can help the hobbits and Aragorn. They are making their way towards the river ford, Aragorn is calling out, asking where the pony went off to… then says it’s no matter, the pony could never outrun the dark riders. The dark riders are approaching the ford, I see five of them coming from down the road. Aragorn says there is no choice, he will have to fight them to delay them while the hobbits escape. The hobbits clearly think this idea is insane, there’s no way Aragorn can face the riders alone. I come out and say he will not be facing them alone. In fact, he should help the hobbits get away, in case the rest of the riders ambush them as they try to escape. Aragorn says he doesn’t know who I am, but… he trails off as he sees my right arm transformed into a glowing white blade, then seems unsure of what to say except something about me being a witch. I tell him no, I’m no witch, but the dark riders cannot face this light energy.

But before anyone can consider escape it is too late, there are now five of the dark riders on one side of us and another four dark riders between us and the river ford. There is no choice but to fight. Aragorn pulls out a sword to fight, so I use Battery by Metallica to call a bolt of lightning and charge his sword with light energy. I still have my Alex Mercer blade arm charged with light energy. Now I focus on the song Old Friend by Disturbed as I attack the dark riders with my glowing blade. “Hear me now, feel my blade! There is no more time for apologies! Malevolent emotions take hold of me! Are you ready to begin your trip to the other side? Death is an old friend of mine! Aragorn and I attack the dark riders, and the fact we are attacking them with light energy has clearly taken them by surprise. Their demonic horses rear up in fear of the light. But I’m not interested in the horses, I’m after the wraith riding on the horse’s back! I jump up and swipe with my blade, splitting the black robes in half and eliciting a horrible shriek. I hear another shriek from the one Aragorn attacks. Then I hear one of them laughing.

I turn and Aragorn turns at the same time and one of the ring wraiths has snuck up from behind on foot and is holding Frodo by a foot. He is laughing manically, and says we have lost. I tell him not to count his rings before they’re won. He seems in a mood to gloat rather than take his prize and run, and he says if we even try to approach him we will get Frodo back piece by piece. I feign that I am striking the ground in frustration… and I unleash Alex Mercer tendrils into the ground. The tendrils, also charged with light energy like my blade, erupt right underneath the ring wraith holding Frodo. They blast right through the ring wraith, eliciting another horrible shriek. The ring wraith disappears into nothing more than a black robe, dropping Frodo. One of the tendrils gently wraps around Frodo and lowers him safely to the ground before I withdraw them. Upon seeing that, the other ring wraiths flee.

Aragorn looks at me strangely, but is more concerned about Frodo. We both go over to check on Frodo. He definitely is not looking well, it seems being in such close proximity to the ring wraith has only accelerated his sickness. He is phasing between solid and semi-transparant right now, and he looks to be in pain. I transform my blade back to normal and then focus on the song Voices from the Macross Plus soundtrack to use it as a healing song. Golden energy gathers around Frodo, and at the same time I notice that the sunshine is once again reaching the ground. The healing energy flows into Frodo, and he immediately looks better. He opens his eyes, and is no longer phasing in and out. He remains solid now. He is looking at me strangely as I finish the song. He says something about me being a fair elf maiden. I say no, I am no elf maiden, just a healer doing what I can to help. I tell Aragorn that I sense there is still a piece of the evil blade inside Frodo, but Elrond of Rivendell has the skill to heal that. I don’t try to remove it myself, because even now I feel I am about to wake up. Aragorn still wants to know who I am. I tell him if there is need, I will be back, and maybe we can talk more then. Everything fades to black and I wake up.

It has been forever since I have posted dreams here, so here goes...

2017, 03-21
Beaches and Dark Matters
I am on a beach, which is where I am after visualizing the beach in my hypnosis audio program. I look around on the beach and see there are a few other people there, but none of them are very close to me. I wander down the beach to see if I can identify where I am. In spite of being on the beach from my hypnosis program, it seems perfectly natural and I don’t even consider doing a reality check. I walk down the beach and I see a sand castle. It is a very nice sand castle that looks like someone put quite a bit of work into it. I am admiring the sand castle when I notice that someone is approaching me from the other end of the beach. There is a woman heading straight for me as if she has been looking for me. I try to think if I know her from somewhere, but my mind is a bit hazy. She is a Japanese woman, a very pretty one wearing a very pretty kimono. I can’t think of any Japanese people that I know, however.

I look at the sand castle for a bit longer and the woman comes over to me. She smiles and then greets me by my name, Raven. I do a double take at that, because even if I don’t remember her, she clearly remembers me. She comes over to me and looks around the beach before bringing her attention back to me. She says it is a beautiful place, and then asks me if I am aware that I am dreaming. I tell her no, this is just a hypnotic audio program I listen to when I fall asleep at night, it’s supposed to help me become lucid when I do dream. She says then let it work, do a reality check. I am about to do that when I hear someone else is approaching. I turn to look and in the distance I see what looks like a shadow moving towards the woman and me on the beach. Of course that drives any thought of a reality check right out of my mind as I am trying to figure out what that could be. As it gets closer I realize there is a person at the center of that dark cloud, which looks to be an aura of dark energy. I see a man in the center of it, but I don’t recognize who he is. He stops when he notices me and just stares for a bit, an unreadable expression on his face. He also calls me by my name, Raven, and says I should mind my own business. I am wondering how all these people seem to know me when I don’t know who they are. I turn to look at the woman and ask if she knows this man who just arrived, but the woman is gone. I ask the man who he is, and he chuckles. He says I’m not even lucid. I look at the dark energy aura around the man, and it seems to be turbulent and unstable. But I know a way to fix that. He says he won’t fight me when I’m not lucid. He turns to walk away, but I know that can’t happen here. He mentioned being lucid, but my mind is occupied with things other than dreams.

I catch up with him as he is walking away and I tell him he doesn’t have to fight, just listen to my song. He says if I insist, then turns around and throws a ball of dark energy at me. I reflexively use the Metallica song “Whiplash” to bat the blast away as I focus more on the song I need, which is called “Iron” by Within Temptation. “Left in the darkness, here on your own, woke up a memory feeding the pain. You cannot deny it, there's nothing to say, it's all that you need to fight every day.” He gets mad, asks if that is the best I can do? Back to trying to convert him to light? It’s not going to happen. I say no one is trying to convert anyone, this is sparking a dark fire. “Oh damn, the war is coming! Oh damn, you feel you want it! Oh damn, just bring it on today!” He has been attacking me, my Witchblade has formed armor to block the attacks. The attacks are interrupted when a circle of purple dark energy flame erupts around the man. “You can't live without the fire, it's the heat that makes you strong, 'cause you're born to live and fight it all the way! You can't hide what lies inside you, it's the only thing you've known, so embrace it now, and never walk away! Don't walk away!” The song continues, creating more dark energy flames. After the song ends I see the man is looking at me strangely. It looks like he is about to say something, but then he disappears without a trace. I wonder if the song worked, I’m not even sure how I can tell if it worked. I look around to see if the woman has come back since the man left, but I am now alone. Everything fades to black and I wake up.

Note: Tigress, MoSh, and I have all planned on a shared dream this night. Since Tigress and I have yet to both remember a Harry Potter dream, we're going to take another shot at the dreams where we're at the sorting, but this time MoSh wants in on it. He says he is going to see if Asuka wants to come, too. Since I have been having problems with my WILD's, my light / sound machine took a crap so there went my preferred technique to enter a WILD, I have asked Q to make sure everyone makes it to Hogwarts ok. Even if I'm not lucid, I will still be there, but I won't be as able to go fetch anyone else who hasn't made it there on their own.

I am in a room that looks very familiar by now, considering I have been in there a couple of times already, and I have a strange sense of de-ja-vu. I know I have been here before, doing this exact same thing. I look at the walls of the circular room, the tapestries look familiar, the large wooden door on one side of the room… I can tell everything that is about to happen… such as I know a woman that looks like Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter series is about to step through that door and start talking to us. I can tell what she is going to say, well most of it, anyway… in the version I am 'remembering' I hadn't really been listening to her very closely… The feeling that is going along with this is really strange, it seems like I am in some kind of surreal world even though everything looks very normal… at least for the interior of a castle. I hear the door open and McGonagall, she doesn't just look like McGonagall, she IS McGonagall, enters the room. I look around, feeling almost like I might be stoned… I'm not sure how I would know that since I've never been stoned in my life… "What the fuck?" I say, more to myself than anyone else, "This is fucking crazy…" I note that I am also dropping more expletives than I normally do…

"Watch your language!" McGonagall says, this is the first thing out of her mouth, "You have all been given the opportunity to attend this school, at no cost to you, to earn your education in witchcraft and wizardry… I would expect a little more respect than to have the first words out of your class be ones like that!" After making her dislike of cursing abundantly clear, she changes the subject and starts talking about the things we will be learning there in Hogwarts, it sounds like a lot of cool stuff, the kind of things I can only do in a dream right now. Wait a minute… a dream? I am reluctant to do a RC, I don't want to be dreaming, I think it would be awesome to be able to learn magic on this plane… but I do the nose pinch RC, and discover I am dreaming.

"Shit!" I let the expletive out without even thinking, I am just disappointed at the fact this isn't real. My expletive makes McGonagall stop mid-sentence to address it. She has seen who had cursed this time, she is looking directly at me. She says if I am put in her house, I will have to clean up that language or I will be finding a lot of trouble. I brush that off with a, "Pfft," I already know I am not going to be in her house. A voice off to my left says, "Is she fucking serious? You have got to be fucking kidding me!" McGonagall seems more than a little annoyed at the fact more people are cursing now, but she continues with what she has to say rather than getting distracted back to the subject of cursing.

I follow the sound of the most recent expletives and I find Tigress standing in the group of people watching in the direction of McGonagall, though McGonagall isn't actually visible right now. She says no one is going to tell her what she can and can't fucking say. I greet her, and she recognizes me, she says she had been looking for me, and is glad I made it in time. McGonagall has opened the door and people are filing through it now, Tigress and I are near the end of the line, and I see two more familiar faces. MoSh and Asuka are also there. They come over and file into the room behind us, there are only a few stragglers left to follow in after them. We all line up in the front of the great hall waiting for the sorting, and since Tigress, MoSh, Asuka, and I were some of the last ones in, we are now near the front of the line to be sorted. I notice something surprising… Vegeta is sitting at the table with the instructors… is Vegeta a teacher here? I had no idea he might be interested in teaching at Hogwarts again…

Note: In a previous series of Harry Potter dreams, before I was journaling online, Vegeta was there as a part-time instructor teaching the students martial arts, energy control, and other abilities that are not reliant on wands, so they could more easily defend themselves against the allies of Voldermort.

The sorting goes pretty much as I had expected, the sense of de-ja-vu continues, but at least now I know why. A couple students I don't recognize are sorted out to Hufflepuff and Gryffindor… then it is MoSh's turn, I hear him say he doesn't want to be put in Slytherin, but thinks he might be because he turns into a snake… I comment that where you go isn't based on what transformations you're capable of… He says he knows that, and goes over to put the hat on. After a hesitation, the hat finally assigns him to Gryffindor. MoSh looks very relieved as he goes to the table, and Asuka is right behind him… McGonagall calls to her to stop, she hasn't been sorted yet, she pauses, points at MoSh, then reluctantly comes back and puts on the hat. It assigns her to Gryffindor, and she runs over to the table to grab a seat next to MoSh. Tigress watches that and then it is her turn to get sorted into a house, she goes over and puts the hat on… it assigns her to Ravenclaw. Wait… is that different than past dreams or the same? I can't be sure of that, I also have a memory of her being sorted into Gryffindor, but I am not sure what happened in the neighboring worlds… McGonagall snaps me out of my confused thoughts, telling me it is my turn to be sorted. I go over and put the hat on… it is getting redundant, but I arrange to be in Slytherin yet again… and it complies. I am thinking at this rate I am never going to get the chance to be healing anyone even if I am in Slytherin…

I head down to the Slytherin table and have a seat in an area that is mostly clear, the closest person is several seats away from me. I think it might make me look anti-social, but I really don't want to deal with a bunch of people I don't know right now, so I really don't care. The rest of the sorting is boring… I am paying very little attention to the proceedings when I notice someone sitting right beside me. My first thought is to get annoyed, there are plenty of empty seats without having to sit right beside me… I look and see it is Draco beside me, he has an expression on that I don't see on him very often… a smile! Like in this photo of Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy in the movies! I had intended to tell him to leave me alone, but I am a bit surprised at seeing him sitting there smiling at me and I hesitate on telling him to go away… then I realize that we're in the same house, so we're going to be around each other… and if I'm going to heal his heart, I will have to be around him at some point… So I don't say anything. Crabb and Goyle are immediately behind Draco, and they go to sit down on the other side of him. Draco tells them to go away, there isn't enough room for them here… Goyle says there are plenty of seats, indicating the stretch of about six seats between Draco and the next person. Draco just repeats that there isn't room for them, telling them to go sit somewhere else. Crabb barely gets out a, "But…" when Draco, losing a bit of his smile, just says, "Go!" Crabb and Goyle slink off looking dejected and find seats a bit farther down the row.

Draco puts his smile back on and turns back to me, saying now that the rude interruption is over… He pauses for a bit, then apparently decides I'm not going to say anything, so he goes ahead. He introduces himself, saying his name is Draco Malfoy, he adds that I have no doubt heard of the Malfoys… I lie and say I have never heard the name Malfoy before, nor the name Draco, so if he is thinking we have met before, I'm certain we have not. Draco seems a bit taken aback by that, apparently thinking everyone has heard of the Malfoys. He is about to say something when the Gryffindor table erupts in cheers, Harry Potter has just been assigned to Gryffindor, they're over there cheering, "We got Potter! We got Potter!" Draco acts disgusted at that, asking if I can believe the way they're acting over Potter. He looks back at me, not smiling, and says something about me knowing of Harry Potter and not the Malfoys, saying that is because Potter is always stealing the spotlight for himself… I decide to maintain objectivity as much as possible, not to befriend or antagonize Draco any more than necessary, so I say I have no clue who this Harry Potter person is, either. Draco looks at me, surprised again, so I add that if he must know, the place I come from is very far away, so I am not familiar with the well known people of their area… the only Potter I know is a Martha Potter, a really rude girl from my muggle high school who used to spend far too much of her time coming up with insulting things to call me.

Dumbledore spends some time talking in front of the group, he is talking about the Tri-School Wizard Tournament, which is a variant of the Tri-Wizard Tournament from the books, and two people, one woman and one man, would be selected from each house to participate in a series of challenges. Anyone failing to complete a challenge would be eliminated from the tournament. If everyone finishes, whoever finishes last is eliminated from the tournament. This is continued until they have found their winner. There would be two other schools visiting us, and they would also have their participants, so whoever gets picked should go out there and make Hogwarts look good. He then adds that Vegeta is, indeed, teaching there. He says Vegeta is teaching a class about non-magical defenses, in case anyone gets caught without a wand, it is important to know how to defend one's self. Draco mutters something about not wanting to fight like a stupid muggle, I tell him I know Vegeta, and using his techniques, he could kick the ass of any witch or wizard in existence. Vegeta has power like Draco would never believe. He can see I am being serious, he looks at Vegeta again, this time seeming to think a bit more about him.

Food appears, but I find I don't have much of an appetite. Draco is smiling again, now that he is sure I'm not a Harry Potter fan, then says welcome to Hogwarts, he will be glad to show me around. He eats a bit, then I ask him how he can show me around since this is his first year here, too. He puffs himself up like he thinks he's some kind of a peacock or something, and announces that his father, Lucious Malfoy, is on the governing board here, so I have been here many times with him. I know everything around here. He is smiling bigger now, apparently thinking that would impress me somehow, but I am not impressed. I just give a nonchalant, "Cool," as a response. He says he didn't catch my name. I hesitate, but then I tell him my name is Raven Knight. He repeats the name Raven a time or two, maybe trying to be sure he remembered it, and now dessert appeared. My lost appetite came back, as I saw all sorts of chocolate! Now I started eating, chocolate cakes, chocolate pies, chocolate candy, chocolate ice cream… Some delicious chocolate candies with a creamy white chocolate under dark chocolate and then a crunchy chocolate center…

Draco is watching me make a pig of myself, though he doesn't seem to mind, he looks like he is zoned out into a trance or something. The remainder of the food disappears… bummer, no more of the candies. Everyone is getting up to head to the dorms. Crabb and Goyle come rushing over to Draco, apparently not thinking anything of the fact they had just been brushed off earlier… Draco has a plate full of the candies I had been pigging out on, Goyle reaches for them, but Draco pulls them away. "These aren't for you," he snaps at Goyle, "You can go get your own. Now get on down to the Slytherin dorms, I'll meet you there later." Crabb tries to snatch a candy, but Draco won't let him have any, either. Draco holds the plate out towards me, he says he saved me some of the candies I liked so well. I tell him I have had enough, though I am afraid I might be drooling a bit which would definitely give me away… Draco smiles and then somehow turns the plate into a bag, tied closed at the top, and he hands that to me. He says I can keep it for later, then. He says he will show me where our dorms are, I'm not sure how to get away from him right now… I feel like I might wake up, which is not good when I am right next to Draco… I tell him what I really need is a bathroom. He shows me where one is. I tell him I really think I might be a while… too much chocolate… so don't wait, I would find my way to the dorms and see him later. He hesitates, seeming disappointed, but finally leaves. I go into the bathroom and wake.

I was in a strange town, I didn't have any idea how I had gotten there but that fact didn't occur to me at the time. The town looked like something I would expect to see in an RPG or fantasy movie. I was dressed in the white robes of an Assassin's Creed Assassin' which was a good thing since the sun was shining very hotly and the white robes helped keep the direct heat off. That certainly didn't make things comfortable, however, so I was looking for a public place to get in to so I could cool off a bit, I ended up going into a tavern of some kind, though I didn't notice the name.

The inside of the tavern was quite a bit darker than the bright exterior, so it took my eyes a couple minutes to adjust so I could see clearly. There were lots of people in the place, all talking amongst themselves, making it impossible to determine what any one person was saying. I walked farther into the tavern, I noticed that there were quite a few people looking at me, I wasn't sure why that might be, so I ignored them and went over to the bar and ordered a beer. I wasn't sure why I ordered a beer, I don't even like beer, but I opened it Nd took a drink. It was better than I expected. The bar tender asked if there was anything else I needed, I thanked him and said the beer was it for now... I asked how much I owed him, he said I owed him nothing, I thought that was odd, but I stepped away from the bar.

I was feeling like a character in a video game, which was how I looked, so I thought I should find a quest to go on. This was a tavern, there should be some kind of quest available in here... So I wandered around the tavern a bit, eavesdropping on some conversations to see if there was anyone who sounded like they needed help. I wasn't hearing anything interesting at first... A man was speaking lovingly to a woman, telling her not to worry, his wife would never find them there... A woman getting quite angry, talking to her friend about how she wanted to kill her cheating husband, a couple of women were kissing as lovers... None of this really got my attention, these were all personal matters, so I continued looking. I was starting to worry that I might become obvious when something caught my attention, someone was talking about their daughter having been kidnapped. I sat down at a table close enough to listen in on their conversation.

The mother and father were both talking to a rather creepy looking guy, the mother and father looked like pretty well-off individuals, more so than most of the people in the tavern. The creepy guy, on the other hand, looked like he had crawled out of the city dump, or more likely the rats had thrown him out for being too disgusting. As I listened, I found out that the couple's daughter, 15 years old, had ben kidnapped and would most likely be sacrificed to some nasty called a spider demon. At the mention of a sacrafice, the parents looked horrified. The creepy guy seemed to savor that reaction... Then he continued to say the girl would be alive for a good week yet, since that was the gestation period for the little ones. Apparently there were many spiders controlled by this spider demon, and they would feed on the girl for the entire time while making sure to keep her alive, they would lay their eggs in her, when the eggs hatch in several days, the little ones atr hungry. But no worries, the girl would make a ready food supply, if she was lucky she would be too delirious to feel the excruciating pain as the little ones ate her alive from the inside. By now the mother was in tears... The father was begging the guy to tell them where the girl was being held, offering to pay any amount, but the man said he just wanted to be sure the couple would know their daughter would be dying a very slow and painful death. He walked out, leaving the parents too stunned to react.

I wondered if those horrible things the man had said were true, he also seemed the type to make up a horrible series of lies just to watch the parents' despair and pain... But if there was any chance that was true, I had to check it out, and I had been looking for a quest... So I followed the man from the tavern and onto the street, somehow it had become night while I had been in the tavern, and even stranger was the fact my Assassin's robes had turned black. They were adjusting to keep me hidden in any situation, which I thought was pretty cool. I saw the man moving down the street at a quick pace, he definitely knew where he was heading, and I followed him. I wanted to stay close enough not to lose him and still far enough back that he wouldn't spot me, although my robes kept me well hidden so there wasn't really any threat of that. I followed him for quite a while, he clearly knew where he was going, though I had no clue. He left the town and made his way through the darkness as if he had been there many times before, he had no trouble navigating the narrow trails through the rocky landscape with little to no difficulty while there were a couple places where I nearly face planted due to tripping on a rock I hadn't seen. The man disappeared into a small cave, glancing around to be sure no one was following him before disappearing inside. I noticed that he looked directly at me but gave no indication that he had seen me at all.

I followed him into the inky darkness of the cave, at which point he finally revealed that he could not see in total darkness by lighting a torch to see by. Of course that made it really easy to follow him through what seemed to be an endless maze of caves branching off in every direction. He finally entered a cavern that was illuminated by torches, that was his final destination. I entered the room to find a scene from a horror movie, there was a girl in there who looked like she was about 15 years old, she was naked and bound to the side of the cavern with what looked like wads of spider webs. That wasn't the worst part of it, either. The worst part of the scene was that there were small spiders crawling all over her, it looked like they were biting her, and there were red welts all over her body where she had been previously bitten, and she was hanging limply from her bonds and crying. When the man entered the room, the girl looked up at him, still crying, she said she wanted to go home, please help her... The man looked at her and laughed, he said he was going to help himself to her, that's what he was going to do, and as he said that he pulled his pants down, I was grateful that I couldn't see what he pulled out. The girl saw it, however, and was repeating over and over, "No… no… no…" and "Don't… don't… don't…" through her tears. That dirty, rotten, filthy piece of shit!

This would stop now. The girl fell silent as I walked up behind the asshole, she was looking at me with wide eyes… I figured it probably looked to her like I had just materialized out of nowhere. Time to take out the trash… but not too fast… that filthy asshole… his sickening chuckles fell silent as I ran my hidden blade into him. He turned towards me before I could even remove the hidden blade, which resulted in the wound getting torn even bigger… He opened his mouth to curse, but all that came out was blood, he fell down to his knees and coughed up blood again, then fell onto his side and twitched there for a short time before coughing up blood one final time and then being still. I noticed the girl was staring at me with wide eyes, I wondered if I had made a mistake by letting her see what I had just done, well there was nothing to be done for it now. What I had to do was get her out of there.

I remembered that in dreams I am able to control insects and spiders, so I ordered the spiders on the girl to get off of her, and I was surprised when they actually obeyed. I was actually considering doing a reality check but I was distracted when someone entered the room, this was a big and ugly guy… I remembered the freak saying there was someone he called the Spider Demon. Well, this guy was definitely ugly, but he didn't look like a demon to me. He proved that he truly was able to control the spiders, however, when he summoned all of the spiders in the room to gather around him. I'm not sure what had happened before I had arrived, but the sight of the ugly demon wanna-be set the girl off on some uncontrollable screaming, I wondered what sick things that asshole had already done… He ordered the spiders to attack me, I hadn't had a chance to cut the girl free yet, the asshole was laughing insanely. The spiders seemed to hesitate, but then started moving towards me, but I told them to turn around and attack the asshole. They immediately turned around and surrounded the asshole, completely ignoring his commands now, and then swarmed over him as he yelled his commands at them to attack me, not him. His yelling soon became muffled as the spiders filled his mouth with web, and they completely bound him in web, he fell to the ground, futilely struggling, looking like a big worm trying to break out of a cocoon of spider web, only his nose and eyes were still visible. His muffled cries of anger changed to cries of pain…

I pulled my attention from the "Spider Demon" and cut the girl free of the spider webs, then carried her out of the cavern. I'm not sure how I managed to find my way through the maze of dark passages, but I somehow did and emerged with the girl into the night. She was still crying, still naked in the night… I took off my robe and wrapped it around her, which left me wearing a non-descript shirt and pair of pants. There were so many spider bites all over her, I thought that since I could control the spiders IWL, maybe I could now use my healing powers IWL… so I focused on healing the girl's wounds, golden energy formed and flowed through her, wiping the bite marks away as if they were nothing more than spots of dirt on her skin, the energy also served to calm her down and relax her, she stopped crying, and now she just looked tired, completely exhausted… so I ended up carrying her all the way back to the town, I was surprised that at no point during that hike did I become tired nor did the girl start feeling heavy. I didn't really consider why that might be. I went down the main street in the town and went directly to the tavern, I wasn't sure if the parents would still be there, but that was a good place to start looking for them.

The first time I'd walked into the tavern quite a few of the people in the room had turned to look at me. When I walked in carrying the girl wrapped in my robes, everyone in the room turned to look at me. I scanned the crowd, searching for the parents of the girl I was holding, and I spotted them over in the far corner talking to a man who appeared to be an adventurer or a mercenary of some kind, I figured the parents were looking everywhere, desperate for someone to help them find their daughter. Now they were looking at me along with everyone else. I didn't really know what to say, so I just carried the girl over to the couple, at which point I pulled a fold of robe away from the girl's face, revealing her to her parents. The two of them were beside themselves with relief, the girl had been sleeping in my arms, but now she woke up. I set her on her feet, her parents embraced her, the three of them hugging and crying tears of relief and saying a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand due to the fact they were crying tears of joy. Excellent. Another sappy happy ending, though I wasn't sure why that was the way I was thinking of it… I turned to leave the tavern, to leave the happy family to their celebration, but the mother grabbed me, she was saying she didn't know how to thank me enough, she didn't know how to repay me, I just said I hadn't done it for payment. Both parents were expressing their gratitude now, the father took off his cloak and wrapped it around the girl before handing me my robes back. He said they looked like an exceptional garment… I felt like I was going to wake up, so I told them I had to go, there were places I had to be. I turned and left the tavern quickly… as soon as I stepped out the door and around the corner I woke.

Note: It seems someone has come and kidnapped Asuka yet again, I'm not sure why that keeps happening or even how it keeps happening. There is supposed to be a shield around MoSh's inner world, but it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of good when it comes to protecting Asuka… I'm not sure exactly where the problems are originating, enemies might be getting to Asuka while she's outside of his inner world, but they keep doing it, and this is getting old. So that was my first goal for tonight's dream, to locate and bring Asuka back, also to do some healing on both her and MoSh. I fell asleep with my light / sound machine on and was successful in slipping in to a WILD…

I was inside MoSh's inner world, which is where I intended to be. I didn't pause, I just walked over to the closest house, which was MoSh's house, and I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I thought that was strange, there is always someone there, was there something else wrong? I was hoping there wasn't something more going on than I already knew about… I opened the door and went inside, once I was inside I saw Data coming down the stairs. There were kids there with him, several kids, Data said he would have come sooner but he kind of had his hands full right now. I told him I was looking for MoSh, we were going to go out and find Asuka. Data said MoSh wasn't dreaming at this time, so he couldn't help me there. I asked if he knew when MoSh might be entering the dream state, Data said he wasn't sure, it could be any time now, or it could be a while. I thought maybe I should go ahead and find Asuka on my own since I wasn't sure where he was right now. So I focused on opening a portal to locate Asuka, and after focusing for a bit, a portal opened and I went through.

On the other side of the portal I was in a weird place, it was night time there and it looked like a dock area, a warehouse district in some random town, and I somehow knew exactly where I needed to go, so I went towards one of the warehouses. There was nothing about that warehouse that looked any different than the other ones, but I somehow knew that was where I was heading. As I approached the warehouse some thugs came out and approached me, they looked like petty thugs, I knew right away that they weren't the brains behind this. There's no way they could be the brains behind anything… One of them walked over to me and tried to talk like a gangster, he told me I had better just turn around and go the other direction. One of the others said if the pretty girl wanted to join the party, she should be welcomed, he was licking his lips avidly as if he was looking at a particularly choice cut of meat. I told them I was here to get Asuka, so they had better just get the fuck out of my way. The one who had met me said that wasn't right, he said there was supposed to be a dude looking for Asuka… not a chick… he told me to go away and get the dude, because this wasn't how it was supposed to work. I told them I would give them one more chance to get out of my way, but then they were going to find themselves getting hurt. The one in front said those were big words for a little girl… I'd had enough of these idiots, so I formed Witchblade into a sword and kicked all of their asses, I instinctively knew that killing these idiots would be no loss to anyone… and then I went through the main door into the warehouse.

Once I was inside the warehouse, I looked around and saw that it was completely empty, or almost completely empty. There were some catwalks around the room at the second level, and I could see there was a small office area over there, and the rest of the room was completely empty except for a couple of crates in one area of the room. Those crates stuck out very clearly, they weren't directly in a corner, they were sitting right out in the middle of the floor, so I went to investigate that first. There were a couple more thugs around the back of the crates, I quickly dispatched one of them, but I had the idea the other one didn't really want to be there, he had kind of been tricked, so I threatened him, he was already shitting his pants after seeing me cut the first guy down with no hesitation, so he was not going to hesitate when he saw the chance to escape with his life. I walked back into an area between two of the crates and I saw a trap door in the floor, it was pretty hard to see, I thought it would have been better for them to not have anything hiding it than it was hidden behind those obvious crates. I opened the trap door and descended down into the darkness.

The trap door led to some underground passages, there were several of them, so I had to focus on finding Asuka again to determine which of the passages I should take. I followed the passage as it descended into the ground a bit farther, and then there was a single door at the end of the passage. The door wasn't even locked, so I opened it and went into the room beyond. Asuka was there, she was singing, in spite of her surroundings that looked like a dismal dungeon I might be able to include in my video game… There were rats scurrying on the ground, the room was damp and the walls were dripping, there was the smell of mold and decay, a skeleton hung on one of the walls, and the room was illuminated only by a single burning torch. I went over to Asuka, who was staring at a particularly disgusting patch on the wall and singing to it… I looked closer and saw a partially decayed, maggot infested rat corpse stuffed into a crack there, yuck! I touched Asuka on the shoulder, she turned towards me as if she was startled, then she said hello, greeting me just as she would always greet me. She handed me a rock with some blobs of goop on it, said I should eat as many cookies as I want. Blech!

I told Asuka I was there to take her home, so let's get out of there. I was actually surprised how easy this seemed to be, but if this was going to be an easy one, I would gladly take that. I took Asuka's arm and went to lead her out the door, but she pulled away from me and said no, she would not go. I said we had to go, MoSh would be waiting for her. She said the name 'MoSh' as if it had a foul taste to it, then said she was never going back to him again, she was free now and she was going to stay that way. I did a double take, I said I wasn't sure why she was saying those things, but I had the feeling we had to get out of there now before something else happened. She said she didn't want to go anywhere near MoSh… I didn't want to argue with her here and now, so I said fine, we would go to my inner world. She finally said ok, then I led Asuka out of the underground dungeon, through the warehouse, and outside before opening a portal and going through it to my inner world.

I stepped out of the portal into my inner world, but I saw that I was alone, Asuka was not there. Wtf? How had I lost Asuka on the way here? I should have known that it wouldn't work that easily to get her back, I had better go find her again, so I opened the portal to track her down. I went through the new portal to the area outside the warehouse… the same goons were in front of the warehouse, the same ones I had killed… I killed them again without even waiting to hear them bitch that I wasn't MoSh. Inside, the warehouse was the same, I killed the one thug and told the other to get lost, went down underground and found a reluctant Asuka in the dungeon. Everything had been exactly the same, which I found to be really annoying. This time I went ahead and used the song Liberate by Disturbed, and that effectively freed her of whatever illusions had her trapped in here. She looked around and saw how disgusting things were, then said she wanted to go home… to MoSh? Of course to MoSh, she said, was something wrong with MoSh? Had they done something to him, too? Asuka looked very worried now, she asked what about the kids? What about… I interrupted her and said the kids had been fine with Data, and I had no reason to think MoSh was in danger. So let's get back home. I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world, and holding tightly to Asuka's arm, I led her through the portal… and she was gone before I reached the other side. Damn!

Ok, it seemed there was something there to keep me from bringing Asuka back, and I would have to find a way to counteract that before I would be able to effectively rescue her this time. I focused on opening the portal again, I focused harder on it this time, I was thinking maybe I was only finding an illusion of Asuka that was there to distract me, so I had to try harder to find the real Asuka. So I ignored the first portal that opened, in fact I let it close, and I kept focusing on going beyond opening that portal, on finding Asuka… and finally a portal opened, though that one was considerably harder to keep stable. I was finally able to keep it stable long enough to go into the portal. The only problem was that once I was in the portal it completely fell apart, branching off in several different directions, all at once, creating a really divergent dream… I found myself functioning on several planes all at once, it felt quite confusing, though I have experienced similar feelings in other multiple-plane dreams. For this dream, I will record the events to keep things as easy to understand as possible.

Earth
So I stepped out of the portal into a medieval looking dungeon, and there were strange orc guards all around, and they immediately. They didn't even take the time to ask any questions or give a warning, they immediately came and attacked me, they all had clubs with spikes on them, I formed Witchblade into armor and a sword and engaged them in battle. They didn't seem to have a huge level of intelligence, and I dispatched them without much difficulty, then I was able to search the dungeon. I found the doors were locked, but after searching one of the dead orcs I found that they had keys. I began unlocking the dungeons, most of them were empty, one of them had a prisoner in it that was hanging from a chain in the middle of the room, he asked me to help him, please help him… so I unlocked his chains and said he was free to go, but he would have to find his own way out because I had to find someone else. He attacked me, grabbing a piece of scrap metal and trying to stab me with it, I ended up killing him with Witchblade, that was gratitude. I set him free and he attacks… lame. I found Asuka in a dungeon cell, used Liberate by Disturbed to free her from the illusions, and took her back to the healing glen, which seemed like the best choice at the time.

Water
I stepped through the portal and found I was under water, there was a bubble on the bottom of the ocean where I saw Asuka going about her business as if nothing was wrong, most definitely lost in another illusion. As I approached the bubble, I realized I was under attack by some reptilian enemies like some I might see in DDO, the sahuagin, and they attacked me with spears. I had to use Witchblade in combination with the same techniques I use to fly with energy to out maneuver the sahuagin and take them all out before I was able to head towards the bubble that Asuka was inside. I phased through the bubble and fell to the ground, there was no water in the bubble and I hadn't really considered that, but Asuka looked over at me as if she found my face plant to be quite amusing. I used Liberate to free her from the illusion, then opened a portal to the healing glen.

Fire
I exited the portal in a long passage, the passage had a faint red glow in it and it was very hot there, I already knew what I would find at the end of the passage. The end of the passage opened onto a huge open chamber which was actually the inside of an active volcano, the boiling lava down below looked quite agitated. On an island in the lava I saw Asuka going about her usual business. I flew out over the lava and realized there were several dragons heading towards me, breathing fire in my direction, but I didn't really want to take the time to fight several dragons at once… I counted five dragons coming at me… so instead, I swooped in, grabbed Asuka, and flew through a portal to the healing glen, taking a very shocked Asuka with me. The portal closed behind me in the face of the attacking dragons, a small burst of fire got through as the portal closed. Now that I was back to the healing glen I used Liberate to free Asuka's mind.

Wind
I stepped through the portal and found myself at a high altitude, I fell a short distance before I caught myself and flew. I was then able to take a look around, there were many floating islands in the area, one of them had Asuka on it, trapped in an illusion, and there were bird people circling the island to keep her from getting off of it even though she wasn't making any move to try to leave. I figured they were there to keep someone from coming to rescue her. There were a bunch of the bird people, all of them had staff weapons, and as they saw me, they all turned and started firing energy bolts from their staffs. There were so many of them I didn't really want to fight them all, so I chose to dive in at high speeds and grab Asuka, carrying her through a portal to the healing glen, where I used Liberate to free her mind.

Nightmare #1
I exited the portals into several nightmares at once, too. A normal looking living room in a normal looking house where MoSh was being tortured while Asuka was tied up and being forced to watch, some big ugly guy had MoSh tied up on the couch and he was working with a clippers of some kind, right now he was clipping off part of one of MoSh's fingers, he screamed in pain, Asuka screamed at him to stop that… Using Liberate destroyed the entire illusion, and it turned out both MoSh and the big ugly guy were fake, I was able to take Asuka to the healing glen.

Nightmare #2
In another one MoSh was facing her at the door to their house, he had a suitcase full of crap that was partially sticking out, and he shoved that at Asuka as he yelled at her with mean, mean, words! Asuka was crying, MoSh was saying he wished he had never met her. I used Liberate and destroyed that illusion, then took Asuka to the healing glen.

Nightmare #3
In the living room of MoSh's house, MoSh was tied up again and Asuka was standing there with a machete, and there was a big guy there, big and ugly, with a gun. He told Asuka she had to kill MoSh, Asuka said no that she couldn't. The man said she could either kill him and make it quick and relatively painless, or he would start killing MoSh slowly and painfully and Asuka could watch, it was up to her. She was crying, saying she couldn't do it, so the big guy shot MoSh in his right foot, drawing a scream of pain, making Asuka cry more. Liberate broke through this nightmare, at which point I took her through to the healing glen.

Nightmare #4
I exited the portal into a green meadow with some really beautiful trees, grass, and flowers. It was very peaceful there, looking around I realized it was a cemetery filled with very well tended grave sites, most of them had colorful flowers on them. I wandered through the grave sites until I spotted Asuka, she was dressed in black and crying, she was standing in front of a line of coffins, it seemed that not only one of her family had died, everyone in her family had died. I went over to her and saw there were more coffins than just her family, there was one that said MoSh, one for each kid, one said Nomad, one said Raven, and there were more, it appeared that there was a coffin for each person in her life right now. When I got closer to her I saw she was crying and muttering that something was all her fault, I touched her and she jumped, saying she thought I was dead… I destroyed the illusion with Liberate and took her through to the healing glen.

The Final Asuka
After completing all of those dream segments at the same time, I found I was in the healing glen with a bunch of Asukas, each Asuka was semi-translucent, I had the idea there was one more Asuka to go get, so I opened one more portal to go retrieve Asuka. I went through this portal, which I thought would be the final portal, and found myself once again outside of the warehouse that I had first found myself in front of… with the same thugs waiting for me and complaining that I wasn't MoSh. So I repeated myself one more time… killed the thugs outside, killed one of the inside thugs while the other ran away, went to the dungeon, found Asuka, Liberate to set her mind free, then took her back to the healing glen and the other Asukas.

When I got back to the healing glen, all of the Asukas merged back to one, and now she no longer looked semi-translucent. As if there was some cue for it to happen, MoSh came through a portal into the healing glen, I wasn't sure where he had come from, if he had opened his own portal or if someone had sent him through, but it didn't really matter. Asuka ran over to MoSh, throwing her arms around him, she said she had thought she would go mad with being in so many places at once… MoSh hugged her, and now there were other people there with us. I focused on using a healing spell on the both of them, I used Touch My Heart, and then I used Voices from the Macross Plus soundtrack to focus healing on MoSh's chest area, on his physical heart, due to chest pains I was worried about, possibly muscle pains, but the heart itself is a muscle… I continued the healing spells, and when they were over, everything around me faded to black and I woke.

So now I was facing this huge dragon, I had no idea what its intentions might be, but I felt like I was losing the dream, like I was going to wake up. No way! There was no way I was going to let myself wake up now that I was face to face with this amazing creature! Refusing to lose the dream, I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and by doing this I managed to stabilize the dream, which I will continue in the next post.

The huge dragon stood before me, and I was struck dumb… , "Wow… you are absolutely AWESOME!" I said to the dragon, "Absolutely AMAZING!" That sounded like a foolish thing to say to a dragon that looked like it might be about to toast me like a marshmallow, but I was unable to contain it. The dragon eyed me strangely, it was either growling or snarling or speaking in a language I have never heard. It finally paused and then spoke in English, it asked me if I thought I could hide forever. That statement confused me, I had not realized there was a dragon looking for me, so I hadn't been hiding at all. I asked him what he was talking about, he said I already knew that, so now there was only one thing left to do… prepare to defend myself. I told the dragon I had no interest in fighting him, his only response was to say the only alternative to fighting was to die. With that, the dragon flapped his immense wings and soared off into the sky.

I was standing there in the clearing looking up at where the dragon had disappeared from sight when I saw something moving in the sky. It was just a speck at first, but that speck rapidly grew in size until the dragon was filling half the sky, the force of the wind from his wings created tornados all around that were trying to pull me into them, once the tornados were going, he added a breath of fire to each of them which made each of them from a tornado of wind into whirlwinds of flames…

All of the fire tornados were centering in on me, setting everything in their path ablaze… which I found particularly annoying since it was such a beautiful forest… I used the song Trapped Under Ice to generate a blizzard of ice and snow which quickly extinguished the flames and crushed out the tornados, also extinguishing the flames the fire tornados had started in random places throughout the meadow. The dragon was coming in for another attack, I wasn't sure why he was so set on fighting, but I told him if he insisted on a fight he would have one, but not here, it would take place somewhere that there wouldn't be so much collateral damage. I opened a large portal with that in mind and went through it, the dragon right behind me. I wasn't sure if he had heard me and agreed with me or was just following me because I was leaving, and it really didn't matter.

On the other side of the portal I found the dragon and I were in a desolate place that looked like the surface of an asteroid or a small lifeless planet, there was no breathable atmosphere to speak of, but that didn't seem to bother the dragon one bit. The pull of gravity was also greatly reduced on the strange planet. The change of location didn't seem to have any effect on the dragon at all, he was apparently too focused on me to the point that he wasn't aware of where we had gone or just didn't care. The portal closed behind us, and he just continued his attack as if nothing had happened.

The dragon came charging from the black sky, this time breathing a breath that was composed of lightning, Witchblade formed immediately and I jumped into the sky to avoid the majority of the blast. Witchblade formed into a sword and absorbed the rest of the electricity and became charged with it, sparking brightly. Having absorbed the lightning into my sword, I moved around to counter-attack… if the dragon wanted a fight that badly, I would give him one… and there was a huge fireball right behind the blast of lightning that pushed me down into the planet surface, into my own personal crater. Witchblade armor absorbed the force of the hit so I wasn't hurt, but the attack surprised me just the same.

Before the explosion even cleared I was up and in the sky, using energy powered flight like they use in Dragonball Z, using some of the speed Vegeta has been teaching me to control, such that I was up and onto the back of the dragon in an instant… only to find out there was no opening to attack. The dragon's sparkling armor scales were the very image of perfection, or so it appeared, fitting together to create as tight a seal as if they were just one solid piece. The dragon did a full flip and flew up into the dark sky with me on his back, there really wasn't much to hang on to there with the smooth scales, however, so I dropped back down to the planet surface. There were several eruptions from the ground around me, it was pretty clear this dragon had an affinity for tornado formations, but this time it was a water tornado, a water spout formed from water that seemed to come from underneath the surface of the planet.

There were five of the waterspouts, I used Battery and added a bolt of lightning to each one, electrifying them before using Whiplash to send them right back at the dragon that had created them. The electrified waterspouts surrounded the dragon now, sparking and exploding all around him until he used a massive flame tornado to burn off the water and thus leave no easy conduit for the electricity. The dragon himself was still sparking a bit as he glared down at me from his towering height as if unsure how I had managed to turn his own attack back on him.

I still wanted to know why the dragon was attacking me in the first place, so I tried again to ask what was the reason behind this attack. Before I could get more than the words, "Why are…" out, however, he was on the offensive again, this time attacking me with yet another whirlwind, this one was an ice tornado, filled with extremely sharp and fast moving shards of ice that were exploding violently against my Witchblade armor, one particularly large shard was heading for me and I sliced through it with my Witchblade sword. I used the song Phantom Lord to call forth a wall of fire that surrounded me and melted away all of the ice before it actually reached me, effectively adding a large quantity of steam to the dead planet's thin atmosphere. The dragon seemed to be getting more and more pissed off that his attacks weren't getting through to hit me, and immediately followed the ice attack with a fire attack. I used the cover of the fire and smoke to teleport to a spot behind the dragon and try to strike from there, but he was too fast for that. Apparently he sensed me back there and brought his huge tail around, using it as a spiked mace to send me to the ground again, though the attack was still largely ineffective since he hit Witchblade again.

Ok, this was getting nowhere… the dragon couldn't harm me, I couldn't harm him, so maybe I would have to try something else. If I was going to try to strike the dragon from behind, I would still need a way to slow him down, but on this planet he was even faster than he would normally be due to the decreased gravity allowing him to… gravity. That was a definite possibility… I used the song Crush 'Em by Megadeth and hit the dragon with a massive ball of gravity, sending him out of the sky and into a large crater in the planet, the size of the crater made me wonder if the planet would be able to hold itself together by the time we were done there… well, at least there was no life on it, my penticon computer had scanned and confirmed the absence of any life form even as small as a bacteria. The dragon glared up at me from the crater he was now lying on his back in… and then I saw the spot where I would have to strike, this seemed a bit too much like Smaug in the Hobbit with the one missing armored scale on his chest, but I could clearly see there was a spot there that wasn't covered with the shimmering armor.

He blasted a fire tornado surrounded by lightning at me, I used another gravity attack that effectively pulled the fire and lightning attack right back down to the dragon, creating a huge explosion and forcing his crater a bit deeper than before. The dragon issued a loud roar, but it sounded more like rage and anger than pain, so I figured the attack wasn't really making any progress towards hurting him or weakening him even. This was getting on my nerves to have been attacked for no reason at all when I had been having a nice peaceful dream, I took the opportunity to teleport right in close to the dragon, right to the spot where the missing scale was… Even as I drove my Witchblade sword into that spot, the dragon was sending another whirlwind of electricity and ice at me, I flew down the center of that whirlwind with my Witchblade sword and hit the mark where the missing scale was, driving the sword all of the way in.

This time when the dragon roared, I could tell it was even more pissed off than ever, but it was also in some pain, so apparently I had finally made an effective attack. I pulled the Witchblade sword out and jumped back out of the dragon's reach just before he tried to cut me in two with his razor sharp claws, he was laughing now even though he was bleeding from his chest, he was saying there was no way something that minor would kill one such as him. I was still wanting to know why he was attacking me, so I asked what the attack had been for in the first place. He said I already know that, and I would not escape judgment this easily. It seemed the blood loss was weakening him more than he cared to admit, he said he would be back to get his revenge, and next time he wouldn't be so easily defeated. I was getting really annoyed that he wouldn't tell me what this was all about, so I tried doing a telepathic scan to find out what he was thinking… I got a glimpse of many dragons flying through the sky over a planet covered with beautiful forests, but that was all I saw before I woke.

I was in the living room watching the television, it was a show about fat people and ways to lose weight. I watched it a bit more and I realized it was a Dr. Phil show, he was talking about the importance of exercise in losing weight, I was feeling particularly fat right then, but I didn't want to exercise… Dr. Phil kept talking about the various things that could happen to overweight people, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks, strokes… endless amounts of problems that can come from being overweight. I was thinking I really should get out and exercise, so maybe I would take a walk, I certainly didn't have the patience to listen to Dr. Phil any longer.

I went outside and started walking, the weather wasn't as hot as I had expected it to be, so I thought this walk might actually end up being a decent length one. The main road near my house is under heavy construction, so I didn't think it would be very pleasant to walk there right now, so I decided to look in other directions. I headed down a path I had never noticed before and I soon found the landscape changing around me, I was slowly leaving the desert landscape and entering a forest of trees. That seemed really odd… odd enough for me to do a RC, which revealed I was dreaming!

So now that I realized I was dreaming, I stopped to think of my goals for the night… at first I couldn't think of any of them, but I finally thought of the one from Mortal Mist where the goal was to explore a forest and note all of the details of the season long with the animals, weather, and other details. That would be a nice relaxing dream to have right now, so I thought I would do that. I walked through the trees, looking at the place and making note of all of the details I could, the trees were beautiful, the leaves were blowing in a gentle breeze, all of them were changing color to various shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and teal… um… blue, purple, and teal? Well, that didn't matter, this was a dream forest after all… I wondered if there are places where the leaves really do turn to shades of blue and purple, then I thought of course there are! I'm in one!

I continued walking through the forest, making note of and enjoying every detail I could take in, the feel of the cool breeze on my skin, the smell of the trees… it smelled like it might rain soon… I listened to the birds singing in the trees, the crunch of the fallen leaves on the ground as I walked through them, I caught glimpses of small animals running around in the trees, several squirrels, a couple of bunnies. One of the squirrels was quite brave, it ran right up in front of me to grab a fallen nut and then ran back to the trees and disappeared into its branches, I figured the squirrel was storing food for the winter. I saw more movement in the trees, and this time a fox emerged, cute! The fox was definitely brave, the fox came trotting right over to me and looked at me as if he expected me to pet him. Wait a minute… that fox could be none other than Pablo!

I sat down in the fallen leaves and stroked Pablo, the dream had become so vivid as I focused on every detail, the fox's fur was so silky and soft as I pet him. Pablo was a red tailed fox with a white chest, red fur on most of his body, dark brown feet, a long fluffy tail, most of the tail was red like the rest of Pablo, but the tip of the tail was pure white. What I noticed most that I couldn't get over was how soft the fur was, as soft as petting a cat, it was too soft to resist putting my arms around him and giving him a hug, burying my face in that soft fur. I saw movement near a tree and I looked, there was an animal I didn't recognize digging a hole in the ground near the base of the tree, I figured that would be a den, I wondered if that might harm the tree to dig right there… Pablo changed from an adult red tail fox to a fox cub so I could scoop him into my arms and continue walking, such a cute fox cub… I carried Pablo farther down the trail until I found a stream flowing across the path, the sound of the stream was so clear, the water was also clear, I could see some small fish swimming around in it. There were rocks positioned perfectly for crossing the stream, things were so clear that I could clearly see the difference between the dry rock and the wet rock that was being splashed by the stream.

I had to do a RC again, because I thought I would soon forget I was dreaming if I didn't remind myself, so I re-confirmed that I was dreaming before crossing the stream… and then the fox disappeared from my arms! I was momentarily alarmed, then I realized Pablo had probably just woken up, so I got down on my knees by the stream and splashed some of the cool water on my face, and it felt wonderful. I sat there for a bit longer, letting myself take in the details of the blue sky which I could see between the trees on either side of the stream, and there were some fluffy white clouds drifting across the sky… nothing looked like rain, I wondered why it smelled like rain… I got up and headed back into the forest, watching the birds flying around as if they were in a hurry to get something important done. I was walking down the path, getting close to forgetting it was a dream, when a huge shadow fell over the forest, a huge dark shadow. I also heard a loud "THWUMP… THWUMP…" sound from overhead and felt a rush of strong wind blowing down from above. This wind felt a bit chilly, and many of the colorful leaves that had been hanging on to the trees now fell off and blew around in the hurricane type winds. I looked up just in time to see a huge winged creature fly overhead, creating the wind as it flapped its massive wings.

The animal had flown farther along the path, so I followed the path faster, I really wanted to see what that thing had been. I knew it was a dream, so I had no fear that I would be in danger from it. I finally exited the thick part of the forest into a large clearing, a meadow, and I spotted several deer running past me and disappearing into the shelter of the forest. Whatever that thing was, the animals were scared of it, and maybe with good reason. I looked up and I could hardly believe my eyes… it was a dragon! A huge dragon, it flew over the meadow, swooped around in a large arc, and then returned to the meadow. It flapped its massive wings to slow down and land, the force of the wind almost knocked me over, and finally it landed and roared a deafening sound. Wow! The dream was so vivid and now I was meeting a dragon! Awesome! I had barely found a bit of voice to my awe, "Wow… you are absolutely AWESOME!" I said to the dragon, "Absolutely AMAZING!" I stood there taking in the details of the dragon, his size… he was huge… his scales, they were of various colors of greens and browns, but all of them glistened in the sunlight like gems… he had claws like spears on each of his limbs, teeth, huge white teeth, and his wings! He really could make a hurricane with those wings! I was sure of it!

So now I was facing this huge dragon, I had no idea what its intentions might be, but I felt like I was losing the dream, like I was going to wake up. No way! There was no way I was going to let myself wake up now that I was face to face with this amazing creature! Refusing to lose the dream, I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and by doing this I managed to stabilize the dream, which I will continue in the next post.

To be continued…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued…

There was an aged Indian shaman here wearing a hat and looking at me with a very intense gaze, I wondered who that was and why he was here while Tigress didn't seem to be. Since the man seemed so focused on me, I walked over towards him… I recognized his energy. Somehow, instead of ending up in Tigress' dream, I had ended up locating don Juan…

I surveyed my surroundings a bit more, searching for any sign of why I had ended up here instead of where I had intended to go. Don Juan was silently watching me as if he was expecting something interesting to happen, such as me growing wings and suddenly flying away, I figured I could make that happen, but I wanted to know what was going on here. So I went over closer to don Juan and asked him if he knew why I was there, I had not intended to be there. He asked if I wanted to be elsewhere, I said yes, I had dream goals I was completing that included meeting Tigress for a shared dream since we're still working on a confirmed one. He said I didn't need to be anywhere else, I needed to be right here, right now, to stretch my mind outward into the other realms because a mind that is not stretched will collapse in on itself. I was most likely giving him a blank look, since I didn't know where all of that had come from or what the purpose was, then he said I obviously wouldn't see it until it was right in front of me, so here it is.

The scene around me shifted completely to something a bit disorienting, but I focused and was able to get my bearings… I will try to relate it as clearly as possible. There were now four separate scenes going on around me all at the same time, all different… two of the scenes were similar to each other, the other two were also similar to each other, but the two pairs were vastly different. I was now standing at the entrance to a small village (the entrance to a grave yard) (the entrance to a volcanic cave) (the entrance to a park) where I was looking at Callisto from the Xena series (Demona from the Gargoyles series) (a demonic looking Callisto) (a zombie Demona) with an army of raiders (zombies) (demonic entities) (more zombies) following them. Now that I think the complexity of these parallel events is conveyed sufficiently, I will split the four separate dreams out…

*Callisto's Party*
I was at the entrance to a village like those found in RPG's. I was looking out of the village at the road leading into town, it looked like the main road going into town and through the village. This road was now blocked by a woman warrior and a group of ruffians that looked like a street gang decked out in leather and spikes. Now, for people reading this dream that didn't know already, Callisto is the first person I ever used my soul healing on, that was when I was just discovering the ability. Callisto had been driven insane by the violent deaths of her family and at this point is filled with nothing but anger, hate, and a lust for revenge.

So I knew what to do about this. Callisto ordered her goons to attack the town, and leave no one alive… or maybe leave one alive to tell everyone that she would keep killing until Xena showed herself. The raiders moved towards the village, I formed my Witchblade sword and attacked the raiders. My Witchblade armor blocked their attacks, my Witchblade sword cut through their armor, and with the speed I got training with Vegeta I was fast enough to keep them all out of the village.

When all of the thugs were dead, Callisto was still in the road looking exasperated. She said she should have known better than to think anyone Aries could dig up would have any skill, all of them losing to one woman, who did I think I am, Xena? She moved in and attacked me, saying she was clearly going to have to do everything herself. I fought back in defensive mode, just blocking her attacks and not attacking her in return. I focused on the song Until It Sleeps by Metallica, which I use to put hatred and anger and a need for revenge to rest. The song played through and had a visible calming effect on Callisto, she no longer looked as crazy as she had just moments ago… She looked a bit disoriented, which is normal for someone who has just had their heart healed, then she looked at me strangely and said she had been wasting her time chasing Xena when she should be following up the rumor that her sister still lived. She mounted a horse I hadn't noticed until now and rode away.

*Demona's Hoard*
I was at the entrance to a graveyard that was filled with zombies, more zombies were clawing their way out of the graves, all of them were filthy and decaying. Only one person there was still alive, and that person was Demona from the animated series Gargoyles.

The zombies were gathering around Demona as if waiting for orders of some kind, she indicated the gate to the graveyard where I was standing and told the zombies to spread their curse until the whole of humanity had been destroyed. The first thing I thought of was that it was good she was only after people… but that wasn't even the point. The point was she was filled with anger and hate, and she needed to have her heart healed just as her twinners had needed when I was finding them long ago. I had to fight my way through the zombie hoard to get to Demona, but zombies have never given me much trouble, and I used my Witchblade sword to cut through them all until the zombies were dead… again… and I was facing Demona. So now I focused on Until It sleeps, which is the song I always used to use on Demona's twinners when I found them, evading Demona's attacks as I used the song spell. When it was finished, Demona looked visibly calmer and somewhat disoriented. Without a word she took to the sky and disappeared from sight. Though she hadn't said anything I was confident her heart was now free from hate.

*Aries' Army*
I was at the entrance to a large cave that was illuminated with a strange red light, and it was filled with people who looked sort of like humans but not quite. Something was off about them, that was it… they all had pale gray skin and glowing red eyes, they all looked possessed. They were also all stamping their feet and growling and snarling in a menacing fashion, they were clearly ready to go and just needed to be given the sign to move out. A woman emerged from the middle of the group, it was Callisto off of the Xena series, but there was something wrong with her, too. She didn't just look crazy, she looked totally demonic with glowing red eyes, actual horns protruding from her head, although those were small, and a fiery aura around her, she indicated to the demonic army to go forth and burn everything to the ground, let no living thing remain, this world would be hers now, and she would remake it in her own design, but one exception… bring Xena back alive, she had special plans for Xena, then she laughed an evil sounding laugh.

Since these people all looked possessed, the first healing song I thought of was Liberate by Disturbed, although I have never actually used that spell on Callisto that I could remember. So as I was standing in the cave entrance, completely confusing the possessed warriors as to who would be stupid enough to do that, I focused on Liberate. The song played, and I focused on defending myself as the possessed warriors were trying to kill me. I didn't want to fight them if they were being controlled against their will… The spell had its intended effect, the possessed soldiers stopped attacking me and looked disoriented. Due to certain parts of the Liberate song, "All the hate in your heart will be leaving you blind!" and "To take away all the hatred that darkens the light in your eye!" it also had the effect of cleansing the hate and anger from Callisto's heart. This spell didn't go unnoticed, however. There was a flash of fire and Aries appeared, looking the way he looked on the Xena television show, and he looked angry. He was looking around the room, asked the warriors what they thought they were doing, get to battle! A few of them seemed energized by the thought of going to battle, most of them said there was no reason to wage war. Aries said they should wage war because he commands it, but there was apparently enough of the healing energy still in them that they could not be controlled so easily.

Aries rolled his eyes with obvious annoyance and then said they should kill the bitch, pointing at me, he added that if they needed a reason why he had a large bag of gold to go to whoever got my head first. Most of the warriors left, some of them attacked me, so I figured they were fair game since they were acting off their own greed this time. I quickly dispatched them with my Witchblade sword, Callisto killed a couple of them, too. Now Callisto was mad at Aries, angry at him for using her and tricking her, Aries just said that he knows she likes to be used and abused. Callisto said she would not allow Aries to use her any longer. Aries said then both Callisto and I would die. He said we should know better than to fuck with a god. I said I didn't see how anyone so pathetic could pass for a god, but whatever. Aries was using dark energy, as was to be expected, and it wasn't very stable, which was also to be expected. So the plan would be to hit him with light energy. He was throwing fire with his hands, I used my own fire spell, but used pure light energy on it. The light energy surrounded Aries, clearly draining his energy. When it was done he was pissed but also looked quite weakened. Then a small imp appeared in a burst of fire beside Aries, trying to get his attention, Aries asked what in an annoyed voice that made the imp flinch. I couldn't hear much of what the imp said, but it had something to do with Hades… Aries then told Callisto and me that we were lucky, he had pressing matters to attend to, but our time would come and we would be begging for mercy. Aries and the imp both vanished in a blast of fire.

*The Zombie Queen*
I was now at the entrance to a park at night, there were dim street lights illuminating small areas of the park just enough that I could see movement. I used my ocular Borg implant to enhance my vision so I could see well in the dark and then I realized the park was crawling with zombies! So it was time for a zombie hunt. That sounded good to me, so I formed my Witchblade sword and headed into the park taking down zombies one and two at a time as I came across them. I was making my way through the park, feeling out the distinct energy of the zombies and eliminating them, when I came across a particularly strange zombie… this zombie wasn't a human zombie, it was a gargoyle zombie, particularly Demona! WTF? I didn't see how a gargoyle could become a zombie. Was there any way I could fix this? Now that she was already a zombie? I didn't see any way… and while I was thinking about it she was attacking me. I saw no option but to fight back, and I ended up killing her. After that I went through the rest of the park and hunted down the remaining zombies, at least some of which still thought they were hunting me…

*Back to don Juan*
Now I was back in the desert with don Juan, he was giving me an odd look, I asked him if any of those had even been real… he said of course they were real, they were other planes of existence as I well know, so stop playing dumb since I wasn't even doing a very good job at it. He said I had stretched my mind into four different worlds simultaneously, keep it up and this will be possible IWL. I couldn't stop the spurt of laughter before it got out, oops… I hadn't actually intended to laugh in his face… he didn't look annoyed, he just looked at me as if waiting for an explanation of what I had found amusing. I told him that before he wastes any more time on me, he might want to know I can't do shit IWL, so if that was the goal it was pointless. He just shook his head and said I already have power in my waking life, and so does my friend MoSh, all we have to do is allow ourselves to use it, which is the goal of expanding one's mind. He said I am already seeing beings on the shadow plane, getting visions from other planes, how long would I deny the evidence given to me by my own senses? I don't know if the question was rhetorical or not, but I woke before I could answer.