Nephanim
Life-Bringer

I'd like to apologize for disappearing again. I've popped in a few times over the past week, but I haven't been posting or keeping up with any of the programs I'm involved with. Basically, my recall has gotten wonky. All of my dreams recently end the same way, but I haven't been able to take advantage of this for purposes of lucidity. As far as I can tell, I'm waking up immediately when I hear the noise.

On top of that, it's taking me longer to get to sleep, and I'm not able to stay asleep as long. It's probably due to stress, thinking about other things, the usual assortment of life-related factors. I'm not really sure.

I just wanted to explain that in case someone from IOSDP or Dreamwalkers wonders where I went. On the subject of DVASA, my mind's just not there right now. The gradual disconnection of my dream life from waking has become a much greater focus than preparing for the upcoming mission to project to the moon. Maybe I'll get lucky and succeed in projecting this month, who knows?

Good luck, everyone, and happy dreaming.

I was at some kind of performance. I understood that the members of my IPRO team had all selected songs to describe themselves. They were performing them on stage in front of the rest of the team. Amar and I walked down to the front of the auditorium to find a couple of free seats. Autumn showed up and sat down next to me. For some reason, a number of people brought props from the Sword of Truth series or dedicated their songs to Richard Rahl. I wasn’t sure why this kept happening, but it was amusing. I clapped when I saw each of them refer to the series. Two people trying to walk past each other in the aisle got stuck, and I suggested folding their props in half so they could squeeze by, but neither of them did it.

A dog of some kind put its head in Autumn’s lap. When I tried to pet it, its eyes turned red. It snarled viciously at me. She explained that it had a poor first impression of me… I tried to ignore it, but now that I had angered it, the dog started lashing out at me. It ended up pushing me to the ground, and I barely kept it from tearing my face apart. I was puzzled when the animal suddenly gave up and trotted away. While the performances continued, I feared that Limia would ask me to sing something… I had missed the day when we picked our songs, so I hadn’t rehearsed anything. If I had to, I could always sing Happy Birthday to the audience. The list of music I knew by heart was pitifully short and consisted mostly of children’s songs.

I was in my dorm room. It seemed that the world was going to collapse, destroying the souls of everyone in it. The only way to save them was to take them to another world entirely. Although I don’t recall doing it, I knew I had created a portal for them in my room to take them to Nyre. It was the safest place I could offer them. People ran through the portal in desperation. As I explained it to Autumn, we could save everyone who wasn’t actively dreaming up the “waking” world. In the end, it would only be as stable as the dreams of the last person dreaming it – probably not stable at all. Autumn was clearly worried that I would try to save everyone from the world’s collapse. I ran into the room connected to mine and warned everyone there that time was running out. They had a matter of minutes to escape. I checked the bathroom and found a little girl being attacked by shadow creatures. They pinned her to the wall.

Drawing Apheri in a swift motion, I tore through the shadow beings and banished them from our world. The little girl threw her arms around me on the verge of tears. I reassured her and brought her back to my room where the portal awaited. With Autumn’s help, I convinced her to go through to Nyre. The other portals I’d created around the world were allowing billions of people to escape the crumbling world, but the number of people I expected to die with Earth was still enormous. Some of them refused to believe it was happening.

“I have to try to save them,” I told Autumn. She grabbed my arm.

“You don’t have time,” she replied. “Four minutes won’t be enough.” I almost argued, but when I thought about it, I realized she was right. I would die with the rest of them if I stayed here too long, and then what would become of Nyre? Perhaps it would collapse just like Earth. I gave in and joined her in stepping through the gray-blue rift.

The dream jumped. Autumn and I sat on the back of a riding lawn mower with my grandpa. After coming to Nyre, he found an enormous plantation and built a house. It seemed like a lot of land for him to take care of… He was living his dream, so he didn’t mind the work. We accompanied him back to his house before going our separate ways. Autumn and I wanted to find the people we saved in Illinois. I also wanted to make sure no one had found Nocturn Isle. I couldn’t trust Earth’s society with Symphony. Autumn didn’t want to drive, so I agreed to it. A light snowstorm blew in as we departed.

I was playing on WMBRO. The character rankings indicated that there were four level 194 players. I observed that one of them was a thief, and another was a novice. I couldn’t imagine how such a thing was possible. There were at least two new game masters who announced random things while I walked around on my character. Autumn voiced her suspicions that these high level characters belonged to the game masters. How else would they have leveled so quickly?

I wandered into a dungeon that combined elements of the Toy Factory with Glastheim. An abysmal knight and at least thirty other monsters attacked me in a swarm, but I was able to destroy them with ease. I sensed that I was using the wrong arrows, though, so I wanted a chance to switch them… Unfortunately, the monsters just kept coming, and I intended to pick up the items dropped by the abysmal knight first. It died, but so did fifteen other things standing in the same spot, so distinguishing the abysmal knight’s loot from everything else was impossible. The items disappeared before I even made it over there. After I killed all of the monsters on-screen, a game master teleported to me. He apologized for any latency and explained that the server was under maintenance. I didn’t care at all about that… The only problem I had with the server at the moment was the mysterious appearance of so many high level characters without the capacity to level quickly. I walked past the game master without speaking to him. Further into the dungeon, I found the other new game master standing idle. I didn’t speak to him, either.

I was at my dorm with Autumn. My roommate was a former quarterback for his high school's football team, but as he explained later, he got sick of tiring himself out on the field. He invited a girl over from Japan. She was originally from America. The girl had long, slightly curly, black hair. She was really proud of the fact that she was on a game show in Japan. Basically, competitors fought and raced each other on a variety of stages in order to prove their skill. I realized she was talking about a game show I had participated in recently. We each had a white handheld device which allowed us to connect to the game course. We synchronized for a quick practice round. Her avatar on the game show was similar to her actual appearance, but she wore a schoolgirl outfit and star pins in her hair. I took the form of Igarashi Ganta for some reason. For the first round, we appeared on a circular platform in the middle of a pool. The objective was to push the other person off the platform. When the fight began, the girl charged at me. One of her star pins flew off her head and struck me in the heart. I never knew that magic was allowed on the game show; my dad had forced me into participating, and no one told me the rules in English. Anyway, I stumbled backward, and it didn't take long for her to shove me into the water.

"Moonbeam is victorious!" the announcer screamed. I popped out of the game world for a moment, stunned.

"Wow, you're good," I commented.

"I'm one of the best," she answered without leaving the game world. I heard her voice through my console. "Shooting Star Moonbeam." I watched her standing on the platform in awe. When she smiled at me and pointed at the next stage, I reconnected.

I found myself on an obstacle course. I had to climb over a massive cube made of stone, run down a slippery slope while keeping my footing so I could jump over the pit of spikes that came right after, jump across logs sticking vertically out of the water, and finally run across a bridge before a flame on a fuse could burn it down. Moonbeam sent me a heart through the chat interface.

"Good luck!" she said. With the sound of a pistol firing, the second round began. I struggled just getting over the stone block. By the time I made it to the other side, Moonbeam was already on her way over the spike pit. I began to catch up, however. I completed the log obstacle in half her time, so we were speeding down the bridges on each side of the course at roughly the same time. She still came out ahead.

"Moonbeam wins again! She's on fire!" the announcer cried. The bridge erupted in flames behind me.

"That's enough for now," she said, disconnecting. I followed suit.

The dream jumped. Wanting to improve my skills, I helped Autumn join the game show roster. We connected to the game world and set up a system to rapidly strengthen our avatars. Basically, the avatars collected experience and leveled up like in a roleplaying game. There were porcupine monsters that shot out their spines and regenerated them in the game world. Each of the spines gave a little bit of experience. I bought thirty porcupines from a merchant and put them in a room with us. Autumn and I did our best to destroy all of the spines as they shot toward us, and we quickly gained levels. I was already level 121 when we started. By the time I reached level 139, one of the system administrators appeared and destroyed my porcupines. He accused me of cheating because it was too easy for us to level this way. Without considering anything I had to say, he took away the levels we'd gained - plus one more each. I decided this wasn't worth it and disconnected.

The dream jumped. Autumn and I were working on building some kind of giant truck for a performance downtown. It had to be ten times the size of a normal cargo truck. We connected huge steel boxes on lifts while the other people worked on the exterior. It wasn't very hard, but we had to make sure everything was aligned properly while maximizing the size of the cargo chamber. When we were satisfied with it, we had the guy controlling the lift let us out at the front of the chamber. We were done working for the day. Autumn decided to go home and take a nap, but I wanted to eat dinner before leaving, so we parted ways. I grabbed some food and sat down by myself.

Before long, my roommate and Moonbeam joined me. My roommate told stories about working in the union and his high school football days. I just sipped apple juice and kept to myself. He got up at one point to grab seconds, and Moonbeam asked something about dreams. I didn't quite catch it. My roommate came back before I could clarify what she meant. I was a little more interested at this point, and my roommate was interfering... So I put laxatives in his cake and waited patiently. He excused himself when his face paled.

"Be honest," asked Moonbeam, "did you do that to him?" We walked over to the drink machine. I couldn't decide whether I wanted more apple juice, water, or some kind of soda. I decided apple juice was probably best. "Get soda if you didn't do it!"

"Well, I'm not going to lie," I laughed. I filled up my glass with juice. I filled up a glass for Moonbeam, too, but she already had her own. We walked around to the other side of the cafeteria and found strawberries growing in a miniature garden. When Moonbeam pointed them out, I snatched one right out of the garden. It wasn't fully ready for consumption, but it was delicious nonetheless. One of the cafeteria workers got mad at me for eating the strawberries. She took us over to a giant watermelon tree. For some reason, the melon grew into slices, and it was enormous! She pulled down a watermelon slice the size of my body and asked Moonbeam if she wanted any.

"Use your fingers," the worker instructed. Moonbeam took a handful and stuffed it in her mouth. She smiled at me. We continued out of the cafeteria. On the way back to my dorm building, we started free running. I was sliding down railings on my shoes, running across walls, and jumping over anything in my path until I landed in front of a red robot with a computer monitor for a head. The screen said Minahpen - Nephanim backwards. Moonbeam's excitement with our free running dwindled.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It's me from another world," I explained. "Stand back." A rift opened, sucking all three of us in. We landed on a deserted street in what looked like New York City. Most of the buildings were in ruin, and the sky was gray with storm clouds. I was surprised to find my roommate standing behind the robot. "Did you do this?" I asked him.

"Who else would have?" he laughed. "This is payback for what you did to me." I didn't feel any remorse. The robot charged at me and began singing a song. The appropriate background track played throughout the dreamscape. I caught the robot's fist and leaped backward, skidding past Moonbeam. Heeding my advice, she finally took refuge on the sidewalk. I made distance between me and my other self as soon as possible and summoned Axis' gauntlets to my hands. This wasn't a job for Apheri... I wanted to punch myself into the ground.

Lyrics appeared in my field of vision. I stared at the yellow-framed bubble letters in disbelief.

"You want me to sing?" I laughed. Every word I missed made my robot opponent stronger. I sighed and swallowed to clear my throat. The words were in Japanese, so I was even less confident about singing them, but I knew I could do it. As my robot self sprinted forward again, I brought back my fist, charging up my punch with power. I released it just as my portion of the song ended and my robot self reached the limit of my range. He tumbled backward, rolling on the ground until he crashed into a rusty car parked in the road. Moonbeam cheered and applauded me.

"Way to go, Nephanim!" she shouted with her hands cupped around her mouth. I felt strangely empowered. This was my element. I didn't understand why, but I was more powerful than I ever imagined. I clenched my fists and charged after my robot self. Spears of blue light struck the street, but I was too fast for them to hit me. I leaped into the air just before I reached the car and punched the robot in his monitor just as he started to get up. The rusty car slid backward from his second impact.

I woke up halfway, and for a time, I was lying in bed while standing on the deserted street. I turned to look at Moonbeam.

"This is... a dream," I realized. I could feel my body in bed, but I hadn't left the dream yet. "Moonbeam!" I shouted. "I'll see you again!" She and I shared a smile as I fully awakened.