memorable

Note: My first goal for the night was to go to MoSh's inner world to see if there was anything wrong in there due to some strange sexually explicit dreams he had the night before, consisting of transvestites and a series of lesbian orgies… After that, I just saw the movie Shrek Forever After and I saw the main characters riding on the back of a large red dragon, that made me want to ride a dragon, so that was the plan for after that. With these things in mind, I fell asleep, but I was not successful in my WILD. These dreams are kind of chained together as best as I could since this is also the night my waterbed sprung a slow leak, so I woke up several times to find I was wet… I had to take care of that situation before I could get back to sleep.

I woke up in bed… but I wasn't in bed, I was in water about half a foot deep, which was not a good sign since I sleep on a waterbed. I sat up, I was soaked, my waterbed mattress was flat beneath me, and there was about half a foot of water contained within the plastic liner around the bed frame. What had once been my bed was now a small wading pool in my bedroom… Damn, I hadn't figured I would get this wet! It was just a slow leak! Cursing my luck, I climbed out of the bed (pool) and I was dripping all over the floor, I was heading to my bathroom to get a towel and dry myself off with. I came out of my bedroom and I was not in my house… I was in a college dormitory, which is also odd since I have never lived in a college dormitory in my life, and there were people all standing around talking, no one seeming to notice the fact I was dripping all over the place. This didn't strike me as odd enough to do a RC, though. I was thinking I need to get in the habit of doing RC's more often, so I thought entering the hall was a good place so whenever I start a dream in my room I will do an RC when I leave. I did a nose pinch RC and found I was dreaming.

Now that I was lucid I had to remember what my goals for the night were so I could get going on them. As I was thinking about that, at first the goals were eluding me, but I finally got onto the right train of thought and remembered what I wanted to do. Ride a dragon! But that wasn't the first goal, the first goal was to investigate MoSh's inner world for any sign of problems. So I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world and went through it.

I stepped out of the portal onto the green grass in front of MoSh's house, which looked completely normal as far as I could see. I went to the front door and knocked, Asuka opened the door and had a plate of cookies in her hands, she offered me cookies as I entered the house looking for MoSh. I took two cookies and looked around the house until I finally found MoSh in one of the bedrooms working on a computer there. I focused on scanning the area to see if there was any sign of unstable dark energy, but the only source of dark energy I could find was me, and that dark energy was stable and contained. I checked closer, looking for any sign of various types of negative energies, as well as for light energy that was not stable, since that can be as bad as unstable dark energy. Nothing. Everything around MoSh's house looked completely normal, and when I expanded my scan to reach the outer areas of his inner world, everything looked normal there, too. I got MoSh's attention and told him I didn't see anything wrong in his inner world, he said to check again, I said I already had checked several times. He pointed out that there had been transvestites and lesbians having orgies in his house the night before, I told him I didn't know what to tell him about that, but there was nothing going on right now. I told him if there was anything else going on, I would be back to check again, but for now, how about we go get on a some dragons and fly?

MoSh was agreeable to that, and he went to get the kids. There were four kids there, I suck at telling age, but there was a girl who appeared around 14, a girl looking about 7, a boy that looked to be about 5, and one more boy who appeared to be the youngest looked to be about 3. Asuka picked the youngest up, and all of them followed me through a portal to my inner world, to a wide meadow near the edge of a cliff where there was plenty of room for dragons to take off. Right now, however, the field was full of playful pokémon, which clearly took everyone by surprise since they had been expecting dragons. I had been planning on bringing someone… Pablo! I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world and went through it, only to find Pablo climbing a tree in his inner world, I called to him and asked if he wouldn't rather be riding a dragon than climbing a tree… he jumped down from a very high branch, landed squarely on his feet, and then came through the portal. Now I saw Nomad was there, he was looking around for dragons, too. He said if we were short on dragons, he could transform into a dragon and carry someone on his back. I motioned to all of the pokémon and said we were by no means short on dragons. Additionally, there were a few dragons showing up now, those dragons included Vegeta's huge dragon, looks extremely mean and I wouldn't recommend anyone other than Vegeta try to ride him, and my own dragon, who looks like a bigger and meaner charizard with golden scales instead of red and orange, though he is nowhere near the size of Vegeta's dragon.

Vegeta came over closer to MoSh, his gigantic dragon right there with him, somehow in spite of the dragon's size he was moving very silently, so when MoSh turned around to see Vegeta the dragon was practically on top of him which clearly alarmed MoSh. MoSh stared at the dragon briefly before turning and heading quickly over closer to my golden charizard, saying he would stick with that size.

Vegeta looked at MoSh, then at the huge dragon behind him, and said the only reason MoSh would want to ride that dragon would be if MoSh was suicidal. MoSh said he didn't want to be anywhere near Vegeta's dragon. Vegeta told him to cut that out, the dragon is a sweetie as long as you don't try to ride 'im. Vegeta told MoSh to feed his dragon something and they could be best friends. MoSh fed something to the dragon, who seemed quite pleased with that, and nuzzled MoSh looking for more. Of course when that big a dragon nuzzles you, it is likely that you fall over… which MoSh did.

Now it was time to take off. All over the place, pokémon began changing into dragons, starting with my pikachu, my first pikachu, who turned into a huge blue dragon surrounded by electric sparks. A vulpix transformed into a huge black dragon for Pablo, I saw Tigress getting onto my flaming golden dragon, MoSh, the kids, and Asuka were on a rather long white dragon, I didn't even see what pokémon transformed to form that one… Soon we were all on dragons, there were more people there than I remembered having… I was thinking that there were an awful lot of people I don't know inside my inner world, making me a bit uncomfortable, but then again, Vegeta was also with us.

We rode the dragons on a bit of a tour of the wild areas of my inner world, the castle that was designed after the Castle of Lions off of Voltron with the unused mech lion replicas perched on their towers, I looked at the black lion and remembered my ex boyfriend James used to pilot that one… no more, I didn't really want to think about my ex… We flew the dragons low over an ocean, and then through a portal out of my inner world. I wasn't sure where we were going, I didn't really care where we were going right now. I was just enjoying the sensation of flight. Somewhere in this area my memory of the dream fades, though I'm not sure if I woke up or if I stopped remembering.

Note: I actually did wake several times in this dream, then I fell back asleep and focused and got back into it, and I was able to do it! This was actually a quite successful chain of dreams, now if I could just do this kind of chaining when I'm not being awakened by a wet bed!

Note: My first goal for the night, the one I used my WILD for, was to go meet MoSh and then we were going to go back and view a dream he had a while back where he was speaking to don Juan. In this dream don Juan had told MoSh he had a message for me, but I would have to find him first, and the instructions for finding him were in that dream if I could get them. Other goals are the same as other nights. I fell asleep with my light / sound machine and slipped into an unusually vivid WILD…

I was in MoSh's inner world. I surveyed my surroundings and saw everything looked like it always does, nothing seemed out of place. Sometimes it is difficult to keep the beginnings of these dreams separate since the dreams where I go to get MoSh before doing anything else are starting to merge together in my mind. I found MoSh, and we went through a portal back to my inner world.

MoSh and I emerged from the portal into the living room of my house, the first thing I saw was a cat running when we appeared suddenly. The cat, Amber, peeked around a corner as if to see if it was safe to come out, and seeing it was MoSh and me, she came back out right away. I booted up the laptop that was sitting on the couch and logged into the dream journal program right away. I searched through the list of MoSh's dreams and found the correct one, which was labeled "Don Juan At My Picnic Table," and clicked on that one. Everything was working smoothly as the hologram started up and we were transported to a virtual recreation of MoSh's dream.

I looked around the area, nothing was remarkable, what I was looking at was a park of some kind with a picnic table there, MoSh was sitting on one side of the picnic table with what appeared to be an Indian shaman sitting across from him. The present day MoSh and I got closer so we could hear what was being said. I actually sat on the left side of the MoSh at the picnic table, and the present day MoSh was beside me, and there was a dark specter floating over the shaman… wtf? There was no dark specter… the day was bright and sunny, a great day for a picnic, and there was no sign of anything creepy… except for the dark fog seeping out of the… gopher hole?! That wasn't dark fog… it was a cute little gopher baring it's razor sharp fangs as it tore the head off of a small lizard and swallowed the thing whole… um… ok… my mind was running away from me a bit here… I focused my attention on the shaman, who I knew right away was don Juan, and listened to him and MoSh talking to each other.

Don Juan was talking to MoSh about getting a message to me regarding how to find him, when don Juan said that he took a glance to MoSh's left, directly at me, as if he was looking at me. But that couldn't be, this was a hologram, it wasn't even like we'd traveled through time to view it in person. Don Juan's gaze strayed to the present day MoSh and then returned to the MoSh he was speaking with. MoSh said something about me not having the power to reach don Juan, but don Juan said it has nothing to do with power, what I was lacking was the belief in myself, I have too much doubt about myself to find him, which I thought was odd since I was now sitting across from him… I snickered, which somehow seemed to get his attention again… don Juan looked at me for a bit longer this time, I had the distinct feeling I was actually being watched, so I silenced myself, I wasn't here to interfere, after all… but I wasn't here at all! I put my attention back on don Juan right as a large black form with huge razor teeth reared up behind don Juan and was preparing to bite his head off, or that's what it appeared to be… I instinctive stood up and yelled at don Juan to look out, and right at that time don Juan leaned over to pick something up from the ground… the creature's teeth clamped down on nothing and the thing dissipated into the air like smoke.

After that, the other MoSh was still not paying any attention to me, the present MoSh was looking at me strangely, and don Juan also seemed to be watching me… was this not just a hologram? Were we actually there? I didn't have any answers to those questions for certain, but it definitely looked like don Juan was responding to my actions… so now I just straight out asked don Juan if he could see me, was he actually looking at me like it appeared he was looking at me. He didn't say anything, but he focused his gaze right into my eyes briefly before looking back at the past version of MoSh. So he was seeing me! I had no doubt in my mind of that now, somehow he was seeing me, which would indicate this was not just a hologram.

So the dream went on this way, the past MoSh and don Juan spoke a bit more, don Juan said something about telling me things then I could write them down… at the same time as I was seeing don Juan and MoSh talking in a park I was seeing someplace much more disturbing, a dark and dreary place with strange mutant creatures crawling through the shadows, often coming out and feeding on one another… I couldn't hide a look of 'yuck' when a smaller creature jumped on a larger one, tore into the stomach of the larger one, ate the soft tissue within, then ran off leaving the larger creature still alive, but inevitably dying an unpleasant death, and making the most horrible noises as it died… this caused me to not hear all of what don Juan and MoSh were saying to each other, but don Juan seemed to find my reactions interesting, as he looked over in my direction several times. Smaller ant like mutants, mouse sized ants, came out and began eating the creature before it had finished its slow demise, creating the loudest and most horrible cries of pain yet…

Once the pathetic creature was dead I was able to return my attention to MoSh and don Juan, the latter of the two was looking back at me… I saw movement off to my left and looked over just in time to see MoSh disappear from the picnic bench, that must be where he woke up, and now there was something else there… sort of a version of MoSh, but it had razor sharp fangs and teeth, talons on his hands, and the eyes of a goat… meaning his pupils were horizontal and square shaped, looked really kind of creepy. That version of MoSh hissed at me like a snake and then made to bite me with his sharp fangs, I held him back from biting me, and then he disappeared just as the normal MoSh had done. I looked over at the present day MoSh, and he was looking over at don Juan… hadn't he seen what had just happened? Hadn't he seen the really creepy version of himself? I was getting the idea he hadn't, which seemed really strange that he could have missed it…

Don Juan was looking directly at me now, no longer trying for the illusion that he couldn't see me, it was obvious to anyone looking that he was looking right at me… both of him were looking right at me… There appeared to be two of him, one lying barely beneath the surface of the other, creating a somewhat blurred image of him… I wondered if there was another don Juan within the inner don Juan… I looked closer and could see there indeed was, and another… and another… and another… and then I stopped looking deeper because it was starting to give me a headache… like looking into infinity. I felt like the dream was going to slip away from me, but that was the last thing I wanted to do… I looked away from the many dimensional don Juan and looked at my own hands, trying to stabilize my dream, and I did a double take… I had talons?! Or at least one version of my hands had talons… another had long red fingernails, another looked normal but had blue skin… ok, enough of seeing all of this, to stabilize the dream… I closed my eyes and used the time dilation method Allura showed me, and as I dilated time the dream stabilized.

With the dream stabilized, I looked back up at don Juan, I asked what the message was that he had for me. He said nothing for a short time, and then, "The fact that you are here proves you already understand the message." I was sitting there looking at him with what was no doubt a blank look, the different versions of don Juan were responding differently, one was snickering, one had no expression, one was frowning, one was outright laughing his ass off, one was shaking his head, one was nodding, one was… ok… that was too many don Juans again… I was getting disoriented. He asked exactly what I thought I was seeing, I figured he meant the fact I was seeing many versions of the same thing, so that's what I answered, that it was different versions of the same things from multiple planes of existence. He said I was only seeing a few of the many ways that things are, but let's see if I was really seeing anything at all…

Before I could put meaning to that, however, the scene around me changed. I surveyed my new surroundings and saw I was standing in a forest clearing (barren desert landscape) where there was one person there beside myself. That person looked like an Indian shaman (weird crazy old man) with long white hair hanging down to about the middle of his back (sticking out in every possible direction) and an old wizened face (with wild colored paint all over it)… I was seeing two versions of this person at the same time…

Version One:
I was in a barren desert landscape with very little sign of life anywhere, and the crazy looking shaman was staring at me with an insane look in his eyes. I focused on him for a bit, not sure what I was supposed to do about this situation, he attacked me with a wind spell, he formed a tornado and basically sent it at me. I jumped out of the way and flew over to the other side of the crazy shaman, looking at him to see what the best course of action was… and his spark was something I couldn't miss, so I would heal him. The song I thought I needed to use was Touch My Heart, so I focused on that while evading another wind attack, this one had wind blasts compressed so tightly that they were like spears, the song played through and golden energy flowed through the shaman, I had directed the spell to match the shaman's own energy. The song finished playing, the shaman looked normal now, he nodded at me and was gone.

Version Two:
I was in the forest clearing, there was an Indian shaman looking at me with a calm expression on his face, he also had an evil glint in his eyes. I wondered if he was up to something, I thought there was something strange about his aura, it seemed ice cold. I heard him chuckle, and then there was an explosion of activity as animals charged from every direction attacking me, they seemed to be under the shaman's control. They were innocent animals, I didn't want to hurt them, so I took to the sky to avoid an assortment of birds dive bombed me from the sky, to free the animals I would have to deal with the shaman quickly. I searched him, I figured I would find the spark, but I saw nothing… could that be? I looked a little deeper, still nothing, I looked as much as I could… I was attacked more, and I had still seen no sign of a spark in this man. Since I could see nothing to heal in there I just went for straight defending myself… He was attacking me with a staff that had a blade on each end as the animals continued attacking me from behind, I saw no choice but to counter attack with my Witchblade sword, and I ended up killing him. Once he was dead, the animals dispersed, then I saw a ghost rise from the body and both were gone.

Ok… now things looked normal again, what had that been all about? I was going to say something to don Juan, who was there in front of me again, but I didn't get a chance to before everything changed again. I was inside a room now, that looked like the interior of an old type building that might have been used by native Americans… There was yet another shaman standing in front of me, he had long braided gray hair (long black hair pulled back into a pony tail) (I couldn't see his hair because of a hood over his head)… I was seeing three versions of things now…

Version One:
I was looking at the shaman with long gray hair that was in braids on both sides of his face. He attacked me with fire, forming a fireball in each hand and throwing it at me. I countered the fire with a blast of ice, to extinguish the flames so the place wouldn't burn to the ground with us in it… though this man was attacking me, he had a spark… so I would heal him. A ring of fire formed around the man, expanding to burn all in its path including me… I focused on the song Touch My heart, which felt right for this situation, and the healing energy flowed through the man. He nodded, then disappeared.

Version Two:
The shaman had long black hair that was pulled back into a pony tail, his eyes were creepily red and looked a bit crazed… He was attacking me with ice, throwing icicles at me like spears, I shattered them with my Witchblade sword while checking this guy for a spark, which I saw burning inside him, so I focused on the healing spell that felt right, and that one was the song Frozen by Madonna. The song played and golden energy flowed through the shaman, having the intended effect. This shaman also nodded his head and then disappeared.

Version Three
I was facing a shaman with blood red robes on, his face was mostly concealed within the red hood, but I could see his eyes, and they were burning like they had fire in them… it sounded like he was growling from inside the hood. I'm not sure if it was real or imagined, but I thought I saw fangs inside the hood, the light glinted off his fangs… He was attacking me with dark energy, it looked like his base energy was dark energy, he was throwing balls of dark energy at me. I deflected the energy balls back at him and he absorbed them back into himself. Now I could clearly hear he was laughing at me… I was about to start fighting him, but no… he also had a spark… I needed another healing spell… I focused on the one that seemed right for the situation, and that one was Until It Sleeps by Metallica. The song played through, and the healing took its effect as in the previous two situations. My Until It Sleeps spell was using dark energy, which was clearly the shaman's base energy, and the spell had automatically matched that energy. The stable dark energy flowed through the shaman, bring about the healing effect. Once healed, the shaman removed his hood, nodded his head, then disappeared.

I was now back in the park with the present day MoSh and the don Juan from his dream. MoSh was looking at me strangely, I wondered if I had been gone very long, I wondered if it had even been noticeable that I had been gone… I looked over at don Juan, I was going to say something, but I didn't get a chance before five spirits appeared, the five from the shamans I had encountered, they were all standing in a circle around don Juan. One by one, the shaman spirits merged into each other until there was just one left, and he was no longer a spirit, he looked very solid. And don Juan seemed to know this man, it looked like they were friends. I wondered who this new man was, I wondered how he (they?) had known don Juan. The other man turned around and disappeared into thin air as he walked away, and then don Juan turned back to me. I was wondering what the message had been, I asked him… he said that if I was to examine the events of this dream more closely that the message hidden within would become clear to me. He said now it was time for me to wake up, I had been doing a lot of dreaming in just a single hour of sleep… just an hour? I wondered if that was possible, and then I woke and found I truly had only been sleeping for an hour…

I woke from the previous dream and rolled over in bed. I had to go pee… damn. I didn't want to take the time for that, I'd just had a dream and I needed to take notes on it before I forgot anything. I sat up and grabbed my dream book, using my cell phone as a light, I took a couple rapid notes. Blake, moon bus, you're dreaming, bullshit. Ok… hopefully that would be enough there. I got up to go use the bathroom, patting the cute little kitty on my bed as I made my way around the bed in the dark. It seemed darker than normal. I opened the bedroom door to head for the bathroom… and there was someone standing there! I jumped about three feet, very surprised to see someone there at the door. I tripped over some crap on the ground and fell backwards onto my bed, great… there's an intruder and I fall backward onto my ass… not a good start. The guy in my doorway didn't hesitate at all, he seemed to be in a hurry. He called me Raven, said something about being in a hurry… the cat on my bed meowed… the man seemed to be staring at me for a bit, then he reached out and grabbed hold of me and pulled me through a portal. My first reaction might have been to resist, but in spite of the greeting, I wasn't sensing hostility, so I didn't resist.

The man and I emerged from the portal in a desolate place, the only visible life in the area were a group of individuals right around me, one of whom was the man who had grabbed me. I looked at the others, one of them was a beautiful white dragon… that one caught my attention so much that I didn't really notice the others as well as I could have… the dragon was pure white and so beautiful that she almost seemed to be glowing with light energy. I was staring at her, I had the feeling it was a female, when the man who brought me there said I was dreaming, do a reality check, and choose a better form unless I intended to meet Xildron as a cat… I finally recognized the man I was talking to, it was Walms, and apparently this had something to do with healing Xildron, so I would be using a healing spell on… wait a minute… hat he just said something about meeting Xildron as a cat? Who was he calling a cat? I looked down at my own hands… um… paws? Wtf? I was, indeed, a cat… not a panther… a kitty cat… so I transformed into my Assassin form, not needing to do a reality check to realize this was a dream. Walms said something to a couple of the others and then he was gone.

Ok… so what now? I looked around at the others there with me, none of them looked familiar to me, but they were clearly my allies now. I scanned the area for Xildron, and I found he was really quite close, he soon came into view, he was a dragon, and what a dragon! I can't really describe him, but here goes… I might be able to come up with a pic for later… he was a large dragon, shiny black scales that looked like flawless impenetrable armor, huge wings that looked like they were made up of many faceted jet black gems, four arms that ended in huge razor sharp talons, and heads… one, two, three, four, five… no more time to admire the dragon, he was attacking. I took flight and evaded the initial attack, as did everyone there with me, I remembered that I wasn't really here to help with the fight, I was here to focus my energy on the healing while the others took care of the attacks, so I just evaded the attacks and saved my energy to use on the healing spells I would use when the time felt right. Right now if I used a healing spell I knew he would just block it, and it would be a waste of energy. I could see the others had erected a force field of some kind around all of us, maybe to keep Xildron from leaving? Maybe also to keep enemies outside the force field from coming in, it appeared Xildron really did have an army out there trying to get inside to give him backup…

So I was staying out of the way as the fight was going on, which seemed like kind of a waste not to be helping in some way, but I didn't want to deplete my energy fighting when I would probably need it to heal Xildron. So instead of attacking Xildron, I used my first healing spell, I focused on Silver and Cold by AFI, and its effect of drawing some of the unstable dark energy off of Xildron into myself. I was getting large amounts of the dark energy now, it certainly wouldn't deplete my energy, I would have more than ever, and I was focused on stabilizing the energy as I received it. At first I thought Xildron was going to respond to my energy drain, but he was quickly occupied by attacks from the others. Unstable dark energy was something Xildron had an abundance of, and I was well into a third rendition of Silver and Cold before it started to become too much dark energy that I was absorbing, I would have to get rid of some of it somehow because I was having trouble keeping up with stabilizing it all. I couldn't safely do that here, though, because while my allies, Walms' kids, could absorb and use the dark energy, Xildron could also absorb it back into himself which would be counterproductive to the healing process. I absorbed more of his energy until it was at the point where I couldn't control any more, and then I did a quick portal, focused on locating a Templar base. The portal opened…

I emerged from the portal right over a Templar base, I could see the Templars below me going about whatever no good business they were currently up to, but I didn't take the time to watch the Templars for long. Instead, I just released a massive blast of the unstable dark energy on the Templar base, focusing it out as a blast of black flames that took the form of a huge fireball. The fireball descended on the surprised Templars, and before they even had a chance to fully register what was happening, there was a massive explosion of dark energy and their base was left as nothing more than a large crater in the ground. I wasn't sure if any of them had escaped, but if they had, they were surely looking at the crater gong, "What the hell was that?!" I had no time to survey the destruction of the Templars, I went right through the portal back to Xildron, which I hadn't even bothered closing when I had first arrived.

The fight was still going on when I got back, and it made me wonder if anyone had noticed I had disappeared for a bit there. I closed the portal and went back to draining excess unstable dark energy off of Xildron, the less energy he had to fight the others, the better. Since I had vented a large portion, I was once again having no difficulty stabilizing the dark energy as I received it. Xildron seemed to finally be weakening, the attacks of the others were getting through much more often now. It looked like they were trying to restrain Xildron, most likely so he would be unable to block the healing energy so easily. I saw the beautiful white dragon again, flying in towards Xildron, she was using some light energy to try to bind the huge black dragon. The others moved in and managed to immobilize Xildron, but it didn't look like they would have him immobilized for long, I got a telepathic message to heal him already, the message was from a woman, she said she didn't know how long they could hold him.

Ok… need a healing spell… but Xildron's base energy is dark energy, so the spell would have to just stabilize his dark energy, not purge it out, if anything it would be helpful to purge out any incompatible light energy for now… The first song I thought of was Touch My Heart off of the Devil Hunter Yohko soundtrack, but that normally uses light energy… so what if it normally uses light energy? Feed dark energy into the spell, it would use dark energy. All of those thoughts flew through my head in just a second or two, then I was focused on the song Touch My Heart and also on feeding dark energy into it. The song was playing loudly in the desolate land, spirals of energy erupted around Xildron… he tried one more time to get loose from the others before the spell had him surrounded in healing energy, and I saw one of Walms' kids, a male in a human form (I don't have them straight, so I'm unsure of this one's name), was hit by a blast of energy and knocked out of their formation, he was slammed to the ground where he made a large crater. I focused as much stable dark energy into the spell as I could do, and that energy, a dark flow of energy that looked like the normal golden healing energy with the one exception that it was dark instead of light flowed into Xildron. It looked at first like he was going to try to block it, but maybe he saw it was energy he wanted, or maybe he just didn't have the energy left to resist, but the healing energy got through.

The healing song was over now, and the others I had been fighting with were standing around Xildron, who was still an impressive looking dragon even though he looked a bit worn out. I looked to see if I could find the one who had been nailed by Xildron during the healing, but I couldn't see him. I wondered if he had been forced to leave before the fight was completely over. I also wondered where Walms might be, he would surely want to know that the healing spell on Xildron had been completed, though there would be no way of knowing for sure that it had worked until Xildron recovered at least some of his energy. He seemed calm now, but he might just be tired… The feeling I had was that the healing energy had done its job and Xildron would be ok now. I didn't have a chance to even try to check to see what effect the healing might have had on Xildron, this was the point when I woke.

Note: It turned out that some really nasty things happened to Asuka during the time she was with L, she was in serious need of healing. That was my first priority, to go help MoSh with healing Asuka. I figured I would definitely take Basara with me… I had my first goal in mind when I fell asleep, but I was not successful in entering a WILD. I'm not even sure how I became lucid in this dream… it just kind of happened gradually, so gradually that I'm not exactly sure when I became fully lucid…

I was in the front yard of my house, and I noticed it was cloudy. I wanted to go for a walk, and the clouds made it much nicer to walk than when it is fully sunny. I left the house and went to the gate, realized I had forgotten the remote to the gate, so I climbed over it instead of going back into the house to get the remote. I walked down the dirt road and up to the main street where I turned left. I followed the road for a while until I reached the new housing development that has been going in recently. I'd never seen the houses up close, so I turned into the housing area and figured I would take a look around. It was nothing remarkable, all the houses were basically cookie cutter homes that all looked the same. Or mostly the same, there were about three different models repeated over and over and over… Then I went up a hill and found a house that looked different. The first thing that came to mind was MoSh's house in his inner world. But how could I be seeing that here? It looked so much like MoSh's place that I went to the door and knocked. Much to my amazement, MoSh answered.

"Oh, good… you're here," MoSh said as he hurried me into the house and closed the door behind me, "Asuka really needs help… I'm not sure what else to do for her except for try to heal her. The things I'd like to do to that bastard…"

I told MoSh he could do whatever he wanted to L, or I could do it and he could read about it in detail, or we could both do it together and he could read about it in detail… or he could probably get Walms to have some fun with L then read about it when Walms posted his DJ… or… MoSh interrupted me at this point, saying we should focus on Asuka for now, L could be made to pay later. I remembered that Basara would be able to help with healing Asuka so I focused on opening a portal to find Basara, the portal opened and Basara came through as if he had been expecting me. Somewhere in here must be where I became fully lucid, but it was the end of a gradual process so I'm not completely sure when it happened.

Basara and I followed MoSh into the bedroom where Asuka was hiding. And she really was hiding. She was in a corner of the room trying to disappear into the wall, she had her knees pulled up to her chest and her face was hidden as if she thought no one would see her if she couldn't see them. MoSh went over to Asuka and touched her on the shoulder, I noticed a very concerned look on Basara's face. Asuka responded right away to MoSh, she reached for him and immediately put her arms around him as if she was drowning in the ocean and he was her life preserver. Basara didn't need to be told what had to be done, he summoned a guitar and began playing a song that I recognized from the Macross 7 soundtrack, the song entitled Love Will Save Your Heart. I focused on the healing song along with Basara, thought it looked like MoSh was having problems getting to his guitar with Asuka clinging to him as she was… As the song was playing golden energy filled the room, giving everything in the room a golden shine that came just from the energy. When the song ended, there was no pause in the music as Basara moved seamlessly on to My Soul For You from the same soundtrack. Asuka had let go of MoSh by now and was sitting on the bed staring off into space, which meant MoSh could also add to the healing energy in the room. As this song ended, all three of us were contributing to one more song that I recognized from the Macross 7 soundtrack but I don't remember the title of it… the title was probably in Japanese.

There was still healing energy filling the room, although some of it looked now to be blues and whites instead of the usual golden energy, this energy seemed very relaxing, however, and it brought a warm sensation of comfort and safety, of love and caring… I continued focusing on the song Basara was using at the time, he had changed songs again. Asuka was still sitting on the bed, though she seemed to be paying attention to the three of us now as if we were giving her a private concert, which I suppose we were. The blue and white energy was centering in on Asuka and flowing around her in a manner that made it look like she was glowing… she looked more like an angel than anything, though she didn't actually have the wings… The music and the energy were so relaxing I thought I might fall asleep in the middle of the healing process… Basara played through one more song, I also don't remember the name of this one, and then the music stopped. There was still a bright glow about Asuka as the light energy was still surrounding her and flowing through her. I looked closer at her and saw she actually had a small smile on her face. Basara looked at Asuka and smiled himself, he said it looked good. He said he didn't know if that one time would be enough for her to get past what had happened, but he had to say one thing for her, she seems stronger than she looks. Now that the music had stopped Asuka lied down on the bed and fell asleep, though her sleep looked peaceful and relaxed. I told Basara that if she needed more healing, then she would have it. Basara agreed with that before opening a portal and going through it.

MoSh kissed Asuka ash she slept and then left the room, clearly meaning for me to follow him. I followed him into the next room where he had some pictures lying face down on a desk. He picked one of them up and looked at it only briefly before turning it face down on top of the others so that none of them were visible. He said that he needed to make sure Kanmuri knew how important it was to keep L away from Asuka. I opened a portal to get to L's inner world and the two of us went through.

MoSh and I exited the portal in the area of L's inner world where we usually seem to arrive. I wondered if it would be possible to enter at a different location if I needed to for some reason, this was the only place I could remember arriving. For this time, however, that location was just fine. I spotted Kanmuri not too far away from us, she was looking over at the guest house with a strange look on her face as if the building held some kind of unfathomable mystery. She saw us arrive there and said L was in the guest house again, she said she didn't know what he was doing in there, but she didn't think he had anyone in there with him, she was sure he hadn't gone after Asuka again… MoSh said Asuka was safe at home, but there was something he wanted to show Kanmuri. She asked what that was, looking at the pictures in MoSh's hands, which he gave to her.

Kanmuri stared at the first picture as if unable to comprehend exactly what she was seeing, then she looked at the next one and the third one before dropping the pictures on the ground. She had a look of total shock on her face, seemed unable to find any words appropriate for the situation. She said she never thought that would happen… she admitted she hadn't known L for long, but that was just so… so… and again words seemed to fail her. MoSh said that the things that had happened in those pictures showed clearly why Kanmuri has to make absolutely certain L doesn't get anywhere near Asuka again. Kanmuri stared at MoSh in stunned disbelief, again she didn't seem to know what to say, but that didn't last long…

"You don't actually expect me to stay here with that… that monster, do you?" she asked incredulously, "I've stayed here until now, and I was going to try to make sure he didn't go off and kidnap Asuka again, but that was before I knew he was a total psychopath! I'm out of here!"

"Then who is going to keep L away from Asuka if you don't stay?" MoSh asked.

Kanmuri was silent for a bit again, then she got mad, "So you expect me to stay here no matter what might happen?" she yelled right in MoSh's face, "So it's completely ok with you if I get tortured and gang raped and maybe even killed as long as your precious Asuka is safe? Well, guess what? I'm not going to stay around here as an outlet for that bastard's twisted fantasies! That was the only deal breaker, I don't care if he's a jerk, I don't care that he apparently hasn't even got the capacity to care about anyone, but I will not stay here and be abused!"

"You were supposed to keep L from hurting Asuka!" MoSh said, apparently getting upset himself, "You said you would do this, so you can't go and leave now!"

Kanmuri was so pissed off she was momentarily unable to speak, it also looked like she might cry, from rage? Sadness? It was more rage that she was expressing. "You are… you are…" Kanmuri finally found her voice, though she didn't seem to know what words to use, "You are such an ASSHOLE! If those things had happened to me, it wouldn't matter to you at all, would it? Well it's not happening!" She did something and then dropped a nasty expletive. She was muttering something about not even being able to open a fucking portal to get out of this hell hole. I asked where she was looking to go, I figured it wouldn't do any good to try to keep her here against her will. She said she wanted to go somewhere that she wouldn't be gang raped by a bunch of mindless drones and the king of all assholes… um… my inner world qualified for that… so I opened a portal to my inner world. MoSh told Kanmuri she couldn't just leave, she flipped him the bird and said watch her, she was already gone. She went through the portal to my inner world, and about the same time I woke.

Note: Tonight I fell asleep with some very ambitious goals including checking to see if L will leave Asuka alone if she goes out, dream view a dream MoSh had quite a while ago where he was speaking with don Juan, sharing a DDO dream with Tigress, finding and doing another healing spell on Xildron, tasks of the year… the list of my goals just seems to go on and on… I fell asleep with my light / sound machine and successfully slipped into a WILD…

I found myself in a very familiar setting standing in the front yard of MoSh's house in his inner world. I went right up to the door without any hesitation, I wanted to get going on my goals. I knocked on the door and MoSh answered it. He was smiling when he saw me and he opened the door to let me in. When I looked around the room I saw Asuka sitting in the living room watching something on television. I walked over to Asuka and looked to see what she was watching, there was nothing actually on the television and I wondered why Asuka was staring at a blank screen. As if on cue, Asuka got up and came over to me, she said she was ready to go out and see that L had gotten the picture that he needs to leave her alone. I asked her where she wanted to go this time, it really should be somewhere she would be likely to go on her own. She said she knew of a mountain spring that was very relaxing. She said it was a place where she hoped to take MoSh someday so they could relax there and have some time to themselves. She said she was waiting until he started remembering her more consistently, though. After fusing with Asuka by using the fusion amulet she opened a portal and we went through it as one person.

The other side of the portal was a beautiful place. There was a crystal clear pool of water with colorful flowers growing on the surface of the water, numerous lily pads dotted the surface of the water as well. Colorful butterflies were flitting around near the shores of the pool, and there were even some butterflies out on the lily pads farther out in the pool.

It really was a very peaceful scene. I could see why Asuka would want to spend some time alone there with MoSh. I just let Asuka go where she wanted to go since she knew this place and liked it, and she waded into the water a bit. The water was very pleasant, and there were small fish tickling my feet. We spent quite a bit of time there wandering around the place, exploring all the hidden areas to find what wonders might be found there. We spent so much time there that I was beginning to wonder if the dream was going to end without L showing up… that would be a good sign that he had learned something from the last time he had kidnapped Asuka. After spending a bit longer there, Asuka said she was ready to go home… but first she wanted to go into the water in her own body, because the water here is so wonderfully refreshing and she couldn't feel it as well when fused with someone else. So we separated right there. Asuka swam out into the water still in her kimono which floated out beside her in an ethereal way. She sank beneath the surface of the water.

I had turned away from Asuka for only a short time to take a closer look at some of the beautiful flowers, to go over to them and smell them. The flowers were beautifully fragrant, and their fragrance was also very relaxing. I was smelling the flower when I heard some sounds from behind me. I turned around just in time to see there was a pair of tendrils were reaching through a portal and wrapped around Asuka, pulling her towards the portal. Wtf? I chased after her as she disappeared through the portal, jumping out over the pool of water and reaching to grab hold of Asuka's leg as she was disappearing through the portal. Then the portal was gone. I was yelling at an empty sky to give Asuka back right now, you yellow bellied bastard. My first thought was that L had come after Asuka again, well he would pay for that… I focused on opening a portal to follow Asuka to wherever she had been taken, then I flew through the portal ready to kick the ass of whoever I found on the other side.

I emerged from the portal in a world that looked like it was entirely made up of crystal formations. There was a sun shining brightly in the sky and rainbows were reflecting off of many of the crystal formations that made up the landscape. It was really a very beautiful place that I wouldn't have minded visiting if I hadn't been following after Asuka… Things being as they were, however, I didn't take time to notice the beauty of the place. I looked around for any sign of Asuka having had been through there recently. The fact was that I didn't see any sign of human life anywhere let alone Asuka… some very shiny butterflies were flitting around the crystal formations just as the ones near the mountain spring had been flitting around the flowers there. I called out to Asuka a couple of times, scanned for any trace of her, and I found nothing. I was in the wrong place! I wasn't sure how I had managed to get to the wrong place, but I tried the portal again.

I exited this portal to find myself about five feet in the air over a pool of rancid water. I wasn't ready to be in the air, so I fell right into the disgusting water which reminded me of sewer water. It was disgusting! It smelled bad, it was covered with a thick layer of slime, although the area around it didn't look contaminated or anything. It was just a typical stagnant pool of water. I paid about as much attention to the foul water as I had to the beautiful crystals, I flew back out of the pool and scanned the area for Asuka, for any trace of Asuka. Once again I could not find any sign that Asuka was there or that she had ever been there, at least not recently. Whoever had taken Asuka, I was on a wild goose chase, somehow they were making it so my portals weren't getting me to her! I was getting pissed at ending in the wrong places. I landed on dry land, felt like I was going to wake up when I didn't want to, so I dilated time. Something was keeping me from tracking down Asuka, and the first person on my list of suspects was still L, so instead of focusing my portal to follow Asuka I focused it on going to L's inner world. There was a bit of resistance when I tried opening the portal but it was nothing I couldn't easily overcome.

This time when I exited the portal I was in L's inner world, near his pool where I usually appear. I scanned the area for Asuka again, and I knew right away I had found the place she had been taken. I approached the house to see if they were in there, Asuka's energy frequency was still around the place from her last visit so it was a bit harder to tell which signals were more recent. When I headed for the house, however, Kanmuri came from around the corner of the house and pointed towards a building I hadn't noticed before. She said if I was looking for Asuka, L had taken her in there and insisted on being left alone, and when she had just peeked in out of curiosity L had gotten so pissed off at her… she said she didn't know what was going on in there. That was clearly where I had to go next, though.

I followed a path to the building which appeared to be a guest house, and though the path was very pleasant and beautiful with trees and flowers around it, now it seemed like a path descending into a nightmare. I didn't want anyone to see my approach so I used the song Of Wolf and Man by Metallica to change my form into a small blue bird since there were many similar birds around the area. I flew over to the guest house and landed on a window sill. I looked in through the window and I saw both Asuka and L, and I immediately wanted to kill L slowly and painfully. Asuka was sitting on a couch with no restraints or anything to keep her from leaving, but she was staring off into space with a blank expression on her face. She was also quite bruised and she was crying.

L was sitting beside her with his arm around her, had he been the one who had beaten her? He had wanted to take Asuka with him so he could beat her? Or had he done that out of anger over the torturing she (I) had given him last night? An unforeseen backlash of that tactic, making L want to get revenge for the pain she (I) had put him through.

I no longer cared about being unnoticed, instead I changed back to my normal form, my Assassin form, and kicked the front door of the guest house open, it slammed open with a loud crash that made L jump about three feet in surprise. Asuka didn't respond. I used telekinesis to slam L against the wall hard enough to put cracks in it, I asked him what the fuck he had done to Asuka, why was she like that, what had happened. He sniffed the air and said someone sure stank… I said it was him who stank even though I was pretty sure he was referring to the stink of the rancid water that was still on me. I demanded again to know what he had done to Asuka. He said he had just been playing games with her, those games that she seemed to like so well, it seemed she didn't like them anymore. He was laughing the whole time he said that, so I pounded the laughter out of him by slamming him around the room some more using telekinesis and I ended up slamming him right through one of the interior walls into the bathroom where I made sure his face landed in the toilet, actually he hit the toilet hard enough to crack the bowl… the icing on the cake was when raw sewage backed up from the pipe below and washed over L…

I looked over at Asuka, who had still not responded to anything that had happened. She seemed to have not noticed L getting thrown around the room, she hadn't noticed me yelling at him, she hadn't noticed him going through the wall or getting covered with sewage… I went over to Asuka, who didn't respond to my presence, but when I went to help her stand up she was very compliant to that. I focused on healing her injuries, I would do more healing on her once I had her somewhere safe. If she would snap out of this strange trance for anyone, that person would be MoSh. I opened a portal to get to MoSh's inner world and led Asuka through it.

I carefully helped Asuka out of the portal into the front yard of MoSh's house. I led her up to the front door with ease, she was offering no resistance, but she was also not reacting to the change in location. What the fuck had that asshole done to her to make her this unresponsive? We reached the front door and I opened it to find MoSh was right inside, he had been about to open the door. He asked what had happened, what was wrong with Asuka, who had done that to her, what had they done to her… I said I didn't know what had been done to her, but it was L who had done it. I told MoSh that L had shown up and kidnapped Asuka to take her… MoSh interrupted, asking how could I just let L have Asuka? I continued to tell MoSh that she had been taken, I had tracked her down to L's inner world and when I got to her she had been like this, worse in fact, it looked like L had been beating her. MoSh said something about a picture being real, and it had happened because I had let L take Asuka… what picture? He took Asuka into his arms and said something about so many men… so many men? I had only seen L… I told MoSh that Asuka needed healing, and he said any fool could see that. I said I would help him heal her, but he just glared over at me, he said Asuka didn't need any more of my help, I had clearly 'helped' her more than enough. He said they didn't need that kind of help. He slammed the door before I could say anything else.

I paused, I wanted to go inside and try to explain things to MoSh, but he was right… I was supposed to have been protecting Asuka, not just letting L walk off with her to do whatever he wanted to her… if I'd just been more careful she wouldn't have gotten taken, L wouldn't have done whatever it was he did to her… Maybe I should send Basara back over to do some healing on Asuka, who clearly needed it. How was she doing now that she was with MoSh? I walked around to the side of the house and peeked in through a window to see if I could find the two of them. First I saw Asuka's clothes tossed carelessly aside in the room. Then I saw Asuka was sitting naked in a corner of the room and I could see MoSh trying to get her to come out. Asuka wasn't responding to him, she had her knees pulled up to her chest, making herself as small as possible, and she was crying. That was because of what L had done to her, whatever he had done it must have been pretty awful to leave her in such a state. Seeing her like that made me want to hurt L, and hurt him bad, really bad.

So now it was time for L to pay, and the price was high. I opened a portal back to L's inner world and went through it looking to draw some blood. Kanmuri was standing near my portal when I got there, I asked her where L was, where was that foul piece of shit hiding, because I had some business to discuss with him… Kanmuri asked what was going on, she asked what had been wrong with Asuka when I had brought her out from the guest house? She had figured L was in there trying to coax Asuka into bed with him and probably epic failing at that, he wouldn't have hurt her, would he? I scanned the area for L and found him in the main house, I headed straight for him with Kanmuri following after me. She wouldn't shut up. L didn't hurt Asuka, did he? She said she knows he can be an ass sometimes, but she couldn't see him actually doing anything to hurt Asuka… he's too crazy about her… I told Kanmuri, focusing a bit too much of my anger on her, that I didn't know what L had done to Asuka, but he had definitely hurt her, and he'd hurt her bad. Kanmuri stopped and had a shocked look on her face as she watched me go into the house.

I found L in the living room kicked back on the couch as if nothing was wrong in the world, and that just pissed me off more. He looked up at me and smiled, he said it was so nice to see me again. He said if I wanted him all to myself, he could have said so instead of coming in and stealing Asuka. That was it, I was much too pissed off for words. All I could feel inside was unstable dark energy, but I didn't make any effort to control it, I just let it do what it wanted. The shadows in one corner of the room came to life as a swarm of scarab beetles each the size of a golf ball.

I used telekinesis to hold L still long enough for the bugs to get on him. The scarabs didn't stay still long enough for L to get them off, they immediately burrowed their way into L's skin, tunneling through his flesh as he was screaming in pain. I could see the moving bumps of the scarabs underneath L's skin, and he was apparently desparate to get rid of them as he tore through his own skin to get to one of the scarabs and pull it out. He threw the bug on the floor and stomped on it. So he had gotten rid of one of about ten bugs that were now tunneling through his flesh… several of which were in places he could not hope to reach. He was yelling at me or someone else to get those things out of him, get them OUT! While L was writhing on the floor in pain I was kicking him as hard as I could, anything to make him pay for what he had done… I'm not sure how long he was writhing and trying to reach the scarabs under his skin, how long I was kicking him before he was finally still, there was blood coming out of his mouth… and finally I woke, not really wanting to remember the events of this dream…

Note: For the past several nights I have wanted to view the dream Walms said I had where I fought Xildron. So far I have not had any luck doing this, or at least not any luck recalling it. This night was different, though, I do recall viewing the dream and it was, indeed, an epic dream.

I was in my own living room sitting in the seat on the couch I always use typing away on my laptop. I was working on a homework assignment, but I needed to draw something… I wanted to get my drawing done on the computer, but I wasn't sure how to go about that. I was trying to draw with the mouse in a graphic program that looked sort of like MS Paint but had more features, like a stripped down version of Photoshop… I wasn't getting anything done at all. I sat there and pondered for a bit longer until I had an idea. I clicked on the screen and I got a popup saying I should buy medication to make my penis bigger… um… no need for that. I closed it and got two more popups… One for Viagra and one for breast implants… closed them. There were immediately more popups… 5 of them. First came, "Discover great sex!" The second said, "Run your own business from home!" The third said, "Erectile dysfunction is a thing of the past!" The next one said, "Are you suffering from ED?" Finally came, "Make your penis two times larger!" I was about to close those when I saw that with the order they had appeared, one on top of the others, only the first letter of each title was visible… D-R-E-A-M! My computer was trying to tell me something! I was dreaming? I did a RC and became lucid.

Ok… this was cool. I was in a lucid. Now to remember my goals. The first goal I remembered was to view the dream Walms told me about where I fought Xildron. I already had my computer on, so this would be easy. I logged onto my dream records on my computer and searched for the Xildron dream. Having found it, I double clicked it and selected to view the holo-record. This was going to be cool! The hologram played, I saw the dream from the perspective I had when I was dreaming it… the only thing was that it was a recording, so even if I thought I had made a dumb move, I was unable to do anything but watch the events unfold. Since I knew nothing serious had gone wrong, I relaxed and went with the flow of the dream.

At the beginning of the dream I was wanting to find Xildron, and I also remembered that Pablo had said maybe he could help with the tracking. I wasn't sure if that was true, but there is nothing to be lost by trying it that way at least once, so I opened a portal to Pablo's inner world. I stepped into a forest and found myself pounced on by a cute fox that clearly wanted to play. I called him Pablo and said I was there because he had said he could help me find Xildron, which was something I definitely wanted to do. The fox looked at me for a bit as if not understanding what I had said, then he looked disappointed, then he turned into his human form. He said I didn't seem to want to have any fun. I told him if he wanted, I could come back in a future dream for fun, but right now I wanted to find Xildron. I focused on opening a portal, directing the portal to track down Xildron as best as I could. It looked like Pablo was also focusing on something, though I couldn't tell on what. Finally a portal opened. I remembered being hit in the face by an energy blast last time I had tried to track Xildron, so I directed the portal a short distance away so I could get through it without being seen immediately. I thanked Pablo, told him he might want to stay there in his inner world for his own safety, while he couldn't be hurt in a dream, that didn't necessarily make it fun to get blasted to dust.

I went through the portal and emerged on what looked like a moon of some kind. I could see a planet in the sky, the planet looked similar to Earth but it had a ring around it. I looked around on the surface of the moon and wondered if Xildron was there. I scanned for energy sources and spotted one, so I followed the energy. I found someone in one of the large craters, I wasn't sure what he was doing, so I got closer to him to see if he was the one I was looking for. He physically matched the description Walms had given me. When I got a bit closer he turned suddenly and fired a blast of flames at me, apparently attacking before he could even know who was behind him. I used Whiplash to send the blast back at him, he absorbed the energy back and sent it back at me again. I formed Witchblade into armor to protect myself from the blast… or I tried to do that, but nothing happened. I looked at my wrist and saw there was no bracelet there, the bracelet that is my Witchblade was missing. How could it be missing when I never take it off? The blast of flames was strong enough to send me flying clear off of the moon and into space, in the direction of the planet with the man following after me.

I turned around to head back to the moon, but the man, who I had decided very well might be Xildron, was blocking my way with a wall of flames. Apparently he wasn't going to cooperate with a healing spell, I would have to get rid of some of his energy first, so I focused on the song Enter Sandman. The spirals of dark and light energy formed around Xildron, creating a large explosion contained in the center. There was another explosion around Xildron that cancelled out the explosion from Enter Sandman… I tried the more powerful version of Enter Sandman, which involves inserting a tiny piece of antimatter type energy in the center of the explosion, about the size of a grain of sand, but none the less it is enough to intensify the explosion formed there. So now the spirals of light and dark energy formed, I threw the grain of antimatter energy into the center of the exchange… normally I would get antimatter energy from Witchblade so I'm not really sure where I got the energy… and there was a much larger explosion.

This explosion clearly had an effect on Xildron, it pissed him off. He absorbed both the dark and the light energy from the Enter Sandman spell and came out of the explosion, tackling me and we shot through space towards the planet. It was clearly a live planet, I didn't want to fight on a live planet, so I opened a portal in our path that would take us to a place where it would be safe to fight without having to think about possible collateral damage.

Xildron and I fell out of the portal onto a barren planet, in a huge canyon with some impressive rock formations but no sign of life. It was too bad that we might destroy the rock formations, but at least there was no life on the planet that could get caught up in our fight. Now that there was no other living thing in the area I switched tactics to use Crush 'Em by Megadeth since apparently Xildron would absorb either dark or light energy, Crush 'Em creates a gravity based attack. The first wave of gravity pushed Xildron into a large crater, which seemed to surprised him a bit although it didn't seem to hurt him much. He was instantly came at me again, I sent another pair of gravity blasts at him… the first one pushed him against the canyon wall, the second one was from above and pushed him down into a large crater. He was going to come at me again, but I kept the waves of gravity coming… "Now I lay you down to rest, you'll never be more than second best, step inside, you're in for a ride, and we crush, crush 'em!" After a large number of the gravity blasts had pounded him into a rather deep crater I looked in and it seemed he was a bit disoriented. Maybe now would be a good chance for a healing spell…

I got closer to where Xildron was, he was just getting up and glared over at me, but by now I had already started the healing song I had chosen which was Silver and Cold by AFI. The song was having the effect of pulling off some of his unstable dark energy and replacing it with stable dark energy since I was certain his base energy type was dark. It looked like he was about to attack me when the stable energy started being returned to him, and then he stopped with a really puzzled look on his face. Did that mean it was working? It must mean it was working, he had definitely noticed something in the energy that was returning to him. I continued with the song, focusing a bit on stabilizing the dark energy I was absorbing, and the song was just about over when Xildron got a pissed off look on his face. He came directly in front of me and glared directly into my eyes, the healing spell had not done enough… there was still a lot of hate in there… he said he would know that energy anywhere. He said my mission to kill him would fail, he would send me back to the fool who had sent me… send me back in pieces. He grabbed hold of my left arm and powered up a blast of energy he had aimed at my face.

Ok, so apparently he still wanted to fight more and I was still up a creek without a Witchblade, so I decided to go the other way and use the dark energy to follow the Alex Mercer (from the game Prototype) archetypes I have developed in my mind… I used the dark energy and formed my right arm into Mercer's sword blade. I cut at his arm that was holding on to me, and he quickly released me when he was cut by the blade. So now we engaged in an intense and fast paced battle where he was using an array of physical and energy attacks and I was using the full arsenal of Alex Mercer attacks as well the armor Alex Mercer used in Prototype, the armor was hopefully going to replace the missing Witchblade armor. During this battle, however, neither of us seemed to be able to get the upper hand. I was glad I have been speed training with Vegeta or I probably couldn't have kept up! While I was mentally thanking Vegeta I must have let my guard down just a bit because I got hit by a large blast of energy and knocked into the wall, closely followed by Xildron, who was now demanding to know why… I felt Xildron probing my mind and I quickly blocked him out, but he had gotten a small piece of information… Xildron wanted to know why Walms had sent me to do his dirty work instead of coming to face Xildron himself. He called Walms a coward and said he would have to teach dear old dad a lesson.

Xildron was hesitating, apparently wanting some answers out of me which I had no intention of giving. I barely noticed that my energy was getting a bit unstable from the unstable energy I had absorbed from Xildron and from the fighting with so much dark energy that I'm not completely used to… Xildron was demanding that I say something… so I did, but it wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Suddenly, the unreal silence was broken by a lament, a lament coming up from the deepest darkest abyss…" He asked what the fuck I was talking about, clearly confused by that seemingly random statement, "And from the seven gates of the dark fortress, the dead come back to life to face you… this is Hell!" Xildron gave me a look of anger and frustration, not expecting the effect of the spell he had willingly given me time to set up without interference… "Immortal fire, now rise, light my heart, light my way through the darkness, a guardian of space and time!"

A massive wall of energy erupted around Xildron and me, which took him by surprise. I guided the energy on a path to center in on Xildron, but it wasn't entirely stable… there was both dark and light energy in the wall of flames, they were mixing with each other and becoming even more unstable… instead of centering in on Xildron, the flames concentrated in the area all around Xildron, which included where I was, I had just been blasted by my own energy attack, how lame is that? I tried to get out of the path of my own immortal fire spell, I ended up right in front of Xildron. He said he would send me back to his father in pieces, my mission had failed. A portal opened behind me and Xildron absorbed some of the immortal fire energy and used it to push me through the portal, which closed behind me.

I was now in the air over a green forest, although I felt more like passing out than flying, It is extremely draining to release a large amount of energy and then get nailed by that same attack. I flew for a bit, and then felt that I was falling, but someone grabbed hold of me and took me in for a landing. I looked to see who it was and I saw it was Walms. Xildron had said he was going to send me to Walms, and he had done just that. I wondered how much energy Xildron had left, had he been able to absorb all of what I had put into the immortal fire spell? Was he still strong and ready to go or was he also about to pass out after that fight? I had no way of knowing.

I was trying to tell Walms that Xildron was coming and he was pissed, but I didn't seem able to make Walms hear me. He looked rather pissed off… was he mad at me? For starting a fight with Xildron? Whether he was mad at me or not, he was healing me, I could feel the icy cold of his stable dark energy flowing through me, I felt some better from that. I told him to be careful, Xildron was pissed. I saw no one had followed me through into Walms' world, there was a kid there… maybe Xildron wasn't in any condition to come through and get pissed at Walms right now. Maybe the fight had taken more out of him than he had let on. No matter what the reason, he had not followed me through the portal. Walms was saying something I couldn't understand, but then I was teleported and found I was in my own bed. I was still tired, I thought I had just woken up. I should take notes on the Xildron fight, but I couldn't find the energy to sit up and write the stuff down, so instead I just fell back asleep again. By the time I woke in the morning I had completely forgotten the dream.

The hologram viewing ended when I woke up, and I was on my couch with my computer. I was thinking it had been foolish to use an immortal fire when my energy was that unstable, of course that would lead to a highly unstable immortal fire spell which would be nearly impossible to control properly. Maybe if I put it together with Crush 'Em the gravity could pull the full force of the immortal fire to one target with more accuracy… maybe if I… but I didn't have time to ponder other ideas before I woke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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