Uncategorized

Not What We Were Looking For
I am with MoSh in his inner world, and I am lucid. I think for a bit and soon I am able to remember what MoSh was wanting to do with this dream, he wanted to talk to Erik's guide and find out what's going on with his guides. I ask him if he knows where Erik's guide is, he says he should be able to find him. So we look around a bit until we finally decide I should open a portal and track him down. We go through the portal to another place. It's in the middle of a desert, I look around for some sign of someone else being there. I see no one at first. All I see is a dust devil approaching us, it looks like a quite large one. I am watching the dust devil as it comes right up next to MoSh and me. I am ready to cover my eyes and face if it passes over us, but it stops there and spins in place for a bit before it disperses to reveal there is a man in the middle of it. I recognize the man as don Juan from the Castenada books I have read. He is smoking something, and I have the feeling it isn't a cigarette. MoSh says that's not Erik's guide. I tell MoSh I'd noticed that, I can try the portal again. Don Juan seems to want to talk to MoSh, however, and he is ignoring me for the time being. Don Juan tells MoSh that when one is lost, it does no good to follow the sun… for it will have you forever going around in circles. MoSh says he isn't lost. He says when the blind tries to talk to a wall they will get no response. Um… duh… walls don't tend to talk. MoSh just looks at him. He said MoSh has been expecting the blind to describe what they can see, and getting nonsense for a response. Ask a fool what to do, a foolish response is what you will get. I am feeling really silly for some reason. I am giving don Juan bunny ears from behind… doing it by drawing the ears in the air using energy. Don Juan looks over at me and says it seems everyone has a bit of foolishness in them.

Brother Lost
I am in my own house with my mother and my brother, everyone is getting ready to eat a meal. For breakfast, my mother has fixed pancakes and sausage, but I am mainly focused on my brother. I had thought he was dead, it must have been a dream, but I had been so certain I had lost him. I go over and hug him like I haven't seen him for such a long time. He seems surprised by this showing of affection, but he hugs me back. It occurs to me that maybe losing him was real and this is the dream… I don't want to believe that. I step away from my brother, I think I might cry. I am afraid to do a reality check this time, most likely I realize somewhere inside that I am dreaming right now. I finally convince myself to do a reality check, and I find that I am dreaming. Normally this is an exciting revelation, but right now it is one of the most depressing things ever… and my depression wakes me up.

Mouse War Games
I am in a solar power plant, I am walking underneath the giant solar panels. I am really happy to see there is a solar power plant in operation, it is producing power for a large portion of a city nearby. I find a door to one of the administrative offices, and even though I know I shouldn't be going in there, I go in anyway. I want to see what is going on in there. Inside the room, I am a bit surprised not to see anyone around. There are administrative supplies and furniture around, desks, computers, office equipment. I go over to one of the computers and look at it. It is all set up for work and has MS Word open on the screen with half a document on it. It looks like everyone was in the middle of a work day when they just got up and walked off the job or maybe were beamed out by aliens. I look around the room, my mind has now moved on to the idea of jacking something cool from the room, what I am really hoping to find is a solar power cell of some kind, maybe a solar charging battery… Instead, when I open one of the closets, I find a flight of stairs. I follow the stairs down a short ways. I hear something in a crack near the stairs, I look and I see mice in there with tiny guns. Paint guns, they are playing games. One of them shoots, and a bunch of others get mad. One of them says that using a spark ignition is forbidden, not because it's unfair, but because it might ignite the gas fumes and kill them all. The one mouse apologizes and switches weapons.

Dirty Little Secret
I am in an underground chamber underneath a solar power plant, I am looking around the areas down there because I am curious what they have that makes the solar plant work. There are lots of small rooms around, most of them have no people in them, I wonder where everyone is. It seems the plant is completely abandoned. I hear machinery up ahead and I follow that sound, I open a door and find I am looking into a room with massive turbines in it, this is where the power is actually generated. I look around at the turbines as they chug along and produce energy. There are now a few people around, but they aren't paying any attention to me. I figure they are thinking I work there, and will keep thinking that as long as I act as if I belong there. I keep looking around until I find a room that turns my ideas about the plant completely around… there is a room that is filled with a huge coal burning electrical generator. It makes me wonder if there is really any solar power being produced at all. I look at a couple of computers that indicate where the power is coming from. Most of the energy is coming from the fossil fuels, only a tiny amount is actually coming from the solar panels. What a crock of shit! I download copies of the data from the computer, I am certain that this is a scam going on. Everyone thinks they are using clean solar energy but instead the power is coming from fossil fuels. One of the employees comes into the room and asks me what I am doing there. I tell him I am leaving. He says I can't take that data with me, I get past him and run all the way back to the surface. I am surprised I don't get tired as I expected to. I consider doing a RC, but I am much more focused on getting away from the person who is after me. When I get to the surface I weave between the solar panels to stay out of direct sight of the man behind me. I think that more than one of them is after me now. They might have guns. I get out of the solar plant and head to a news station, the quickest way to be safe is to make this information public.

Dimensional Portal: Epic Fail
I am walking through a city, I am not sure where I am going. I think about that for a couple minutes, then I remember what I was doing in the previous dream… right… I'm dreaming. I am lucid, and taking some important data to a news station to make sure a fraudulent solar power plant is exposed. I find the news station and hand over a copy of the data, then I head to the authorities and give them a copy of the data… I go to the library and upload a copy of the data to the internet… I want to make sure this is widely known. Ok, that is taken care of, now I can go out and do something interesting, just need a portal. I am flying into the sky and I focus on opening a portal, nothing happens. I try again, nothing happens. Damn… I wonder why it failed. I look around to see what is going on, maybe I can do something right around there I see a farm, and I fly over there and land. I see someone messing around a large piece of farming equipment, a harvester of some kind. That man is sabotaging it! I wonder why. A farmer comes out and gets onto the plow shortly after the saboteur leaves. I consider going after the saboteur, but instead I stay. The plow runs smoothly for a bit and then locks up. The man is thrown out, and the entire plow is tipping over on top of him. I am lucid, so I step right in and catch the plow with little effort. This shocks the farmer, but he is grateful that I saved his life. I describe the saboteur and it turns out the farmer knows the asshole.

Look At Your Hands
I am just outside some buildings, it is a downtown area and the buildings are part of a shopping plaza. There are lots of people going through the buildings with their things, shopping and having a good time. For some reason it doesn't feel like I belong here, a bit of lucidity is still lingering from the previous dream. I look at my hands for a RC. They look totally normal. I look a bit longer, and they are still totally normal. I curse silently to myself as I remember that the hand RC never works for me. I pinch my nose and I can still breathe. Yup, still dreaming. I feel it is almost time to wake up, but I'd rather not awaken yet. I focus on the dream itself, not thinking about the waking world, and it stabilizes. I fly up over the shopping plaza, getting some strange looks as I do that. I wonder what I want to do with the dream. I look down into an alley behind the shopping plaza. Four muggers are holding a man and a woman at gunpoint. One of the muggers is talking about how the woman is a fine piece of ass and he's going to ride her all the way. I land between the couple and the muggers. They are briefly surprised by my landing, but then they threaten me. I tell them to leave before I take their weapons and shove them up their asses and then fire. One of them laughs. Another one shoots me. I feel a slight pressure, nothing more. I look down and see a hole in my shirt. I say that was really annoying, this is my favorite shirt. They are stunned again. I form my arm into an Alex Mercer style blade and run it through the guy who shot me. One of the others runs for his life. The other two shoot me some more, I don't even notice if I get hit. I cut them in half in one slice from my blade. The man and woman I saved seem as scared of me as they were of the muggers. This doesn't bother me, I find it amusing. I look at them cowering away from me and I tell them that isn't a very nice way to say thank you for saving them… The woman stammers a thank you, the man is still speechless.

Nightmare Changes
I am in a strange place, I look around to see where I am. It is a wide open plane that looks pretty desolate, the sky is a strange color of orange with some strange wispy clouds floating around up there. It is a strange looking place, but for some reason this doesn't make me lucid.

So I search around for a while to see if I can figure out what's going on. I soon find a couple of people in the vast area. One of them is familiar to me, my first thought is that it is Nomad. He is there with someone else, I somehow know that one is a dream demon. Nomad and the dream demon are exchanging heated words. The dream demon is laughing at Nomad, saying he can never die. Nomad doesn't take the dream demon seriously, he says he knows the dream demon can't die, so how about if the dream demon has no ability to stay together and suddenly exists everywhere but is unable to do anything… eternal pain. The dream demon looks shocked at that idea, seems to be afraid of it. He says please don't do that… then he starts changing form repeatedly into an array of twisted and deformed forms, and he is doing it really quickly. I hear the demon say he won't let it happen, then he self destructs, exploding in a blinding flash of light. When the light fades everything else has changed, too.

Now we are in a bright green and sunny place that looks like paradise. Something still seems wrong. I search around and find one of the shadows of a tree is much darker than others. I approach the shadow and it comes to life, this is the dream demon. Witchblade forms into a sword and I cut the thing in half before it can attack me, though it is about to do so. After the dream demon is gone everything around me fades to black.

Déjà Vu
I am in a room watching a television display, there is a sequence of action going on there. The scene is a fancy dinner, there is a man at the head of the table, I know he is a notorious terrorist, responsible for the deaths of thousands. He is making a toast to a plan he has going on that will kill thousands more, he says no one will ever forget or underestimate the Crimson Knights again. I see myself at the table eating, I pick up my glass of wine and toast the asshole's health… then I add that I hope he enjoyed it before throwing two daggers at the same time. Both of the daggers strike lethal points on the asshole, one in the heart, one right in the jugular. He collapses onto the table and then falls to the side onto the floor, pulling a large amount of things onto the floor with him. Then the scene shifts, and now I really am at the table, I really am at the dinner. Everyone is talking and eating, I see some chocolate treats and I eat a couple. The terrorist leader gets up and proposes his toast. After he gets up and begins his toast, everyone else is toasting his good health. I have the daggers, but can I really throw them effectively? I know I can, because I already saw myself do it! I get up and make the comment I saw myself make on the video, then I throw the daggers, and he collapses just like in the video. Everyone is in shock, staring between me and the man who just collapsed, so I take advantage of the confusion to make my exit. I head to the nearest window, we are on what appears to be the third floor. I grab hold of some fancy curtains, and jump out the window, the curtains gradually unravel until I land on the ground, rather hard, but not too bad. I am making my exit from the area when I wake.

Déjà Vu Vu
I am at what looks like a festival of some kind, there are lots of people who seem to be very happy and celebrating something. I'm not sure what they are celebrating, but I also think this is not that important. There is someone there with me, I think it is Altaïr. We are looking for some people that we know are looking to kill someone, we are trying to make sure the killing doesn't happen. I see some people walking around, but there aren't very many that seem to stand out at all. And the ones that do don't stand out in any suspicious way. I know who we are looking for, and those are not the right people. I finally spot the targets, there are a few men in red and black robes, those are the killers. There are three of them, I need to make sure they don't see me, because they will surely recognize me just as easily as I recognize them. I find Altaïr and I tell him I have found the targets. Now the two of us follow the enemies until they are in an isolated space where no one will notice what happens. It turns out they also knew we were there, now they're looking to eliminate us just as we are looking to get rid of them. They seem unaware that we know them, however, and we still manage to take them by surprise and get each of them with a quick strike. We move the bodies to a place where they won't be found for a long while before leaving the scene and merging back in with the crowd.


Assassinate the Assassin
I am in a hotel with Altaïr, and we are looking for a specific room. I am looking at Altaïr for quite a few minutes before this finally seems odd enough to make me do a reality check. I discover I am dreaming. I look around the hotel and think about different goals. The only goal that comes to mind is the task for the LPTC that involves killing the person that killed Martin Luther King. I realize I have absolutely no memory of how this event really took place, I really am not sure how to make the task work. Since I don't know how the task is supposed to happen, I decide to go with my best estimation. I wonder if that will make a difference on whether or not it counts for the LPTC task. Well, either way, I can do the task this way. I make my way through the hotel looking for the killer, I come to one of the rooms and I see a man in the halls with a gun. He is also moving like he doesn't want to be seen. I move quietly up behind the man and get him from behind with my hidden blade. He falls to the ground, dead. I see there is another man breaking into a room. I have to get there in time to stop him from killing MLK, but it turns out I didn't need to worry. Altaïr is right behind him and takes him out before he can go anywhere. I look into the room the man was breaking into and I see that MLK is in the room coming in off of a balcony, he is looking at Altaïr and me with a strange look. I'm not sure what to say at this point, I finally tell him to keep believing, perhaps one day everyone will truly be seen as equal.


Blood in the Water
I am at what looks like an amazing water park of some kind, it is a huge place, there are so many pools and waterfalls and rivers flowing around. There are many plants and flowers, it is definitely beautiful. But there are also killers roaming in the group, and I know they have to be stopped. There is someone else there with me, he is familiar to me… MoSh? I'm not sure if it is MoSh or not, just as I wasn't sure earlier if it was Nomad. But he is there helping me track down the killers in the water park. I know who I'm looking for, though I am thinking blending in at a water park and still having my hidden blade would be rather difficult. But it isn't… my hidden blade collapses into the size of a bracelet, which is my Witchblade, though I don't think of this at the time. MoSh is there with me, and we head off in separate directions. I know the killers when I see them, I'm not sure how I know this, but I am certain of it. I see there are certain people at the water park who are not there to have fun. I spot one, go casually over behind him, knife him with my hidden blade, then I walk casually away before he even collapses. I hear people behind me responding to the man's collapse, but I don't look back. I just keep going. I find another one in the men's locker room, he is the only one there. He looks over at me and seems to assume I followed him in there because I think he's hot… he is sooooo not hot. But I play along until I'm close enough to take him down. I go back outside and now I see MoSh, who is on the other side of the pool with his arm around a man like they're buddies. MoSh helps the man sit down in a chair and then leaves. It will be a while before anyone notices the man is actually dead. I see one of the killers is about to attack his target. There is no time to get over there before it's too late. I grab a knife from a table, it seems to be a knife used to cut steak, though it seems awfully big even for that… It is perfect for my needs, though. I pick up the knife and throw it at the man, it gets imbedded in the man's chest, killing him before he can attack his target.


Killer Movies
I am outside of a movie theater with my mother, waiting in line to get a ticket for a movie. We get to the front of the line and she buys tickets for us to two different movies, but then she says we won't actually be going to the movies at all. The man in the box office seems to think we are nuts, but he doesn't care. My mother goes to one of the movies, I separate from her and go to the other. I have a job to do in there. I am lured to the concessions stand by the smell of fresh popcorn. I order some popcorn, momentarily distracted from my mission, and the woman behind the counter hands me a big bag of popcorn. I pay her and walk away, looking at the popcorn, dripping with butter… movie theater popcorn with loads of butter… yum… I am heading for the theater and munching on popcorn, then I start wondering how many points I'll have to count for this… probably a lot. I decide it doesn't matter, what I have to do in the theater is much more important. I head into the movie theater and search the seats until I find the person I am looking for. I know who he is. He is a serial killer, but there isn't enough evidence to arrest him. Now there he is enjoying the movie just like everyone else, and his after-movie activity probably involves torturing some woman to death. His MO… to tie the woman up and see how many times he can stab her with a pen knife and not kill her, because he seems to find it very rewarding to watch them bleed out. He takes his time, carefully planning out each stab, he seems to find each one like an intense sexual experience… I have the images of him making his kills playing out in my mind, talk about TMI, this was definitely TMI. The woman has long curly blonde hair, looks to be in her early 20's, the man is sitting on top of her, she is tied to the bed… he is caressing her with the blade and then suddenly plunges the blade in to her shoulder. She tries to scream but can't because she is gagged, though she is crying. I sit down in the seat directly behind the killer. An image of the man sinking his knife into the woman's abdomen… another muffled scream. Just to be sure, I tap the man on the shoulder and ask for the time. He curses at me and tells me to go have sexual relations with myself. The killer sinking his knife into the woman's thigh and cutting slowly, more muffled screams. Damn! I don't need to see this! The man is the killer. I use my hidden blade and kill him instantly. I leave him sitting in the seat at the movie, no one will know he's dead until I'm long gone.

I am in bed, it's not my waterbed, so I know I'm dreaming. I open my eyes and see the curtains around my bed, so I even know which Hogwarts I'm at. I find my trunk at the foot of my bed, so I'm able to dress before I get out of bed. Things are going according to schedule, just like most of the other days I have spent at the Hogwarts where I am a student… I go down to the great hall, eat breakfast, then I head for classes. It is during the lunch break that things get a bit odd, the first thing I notice is Harry and Hermione huddled together talking about something urgent. I get closer and I hear they are talking about Ron, Harry is holding a piece of parchment in his one hand and is repeatedly referencing it. I figure it won't look odd for a Slytherin to be rude, so I go over and snatch the paper right out of Harry's hand, he turns around with a surprised, "Hey!" I scan the parchment quickly, it says Harry is to come alone to the old Riddle house and trade himself for Ron or they will send Ron back to Hogwarts… piece by piece. It says Harry has 24 hours to show up at the Riddle house, or he would be receiving an owl soon, and that owl would be carrying one of Ron's fingers. "These people are sure sick fucks, aren't they?" I comment. I hand the parchment back to Harry and walk away, leaving both of them confused. As I am leaving, however, I tell Harry not to do anything, Ron will be back before the end of class today. Harry is still trying to ask questions, but I hurry through the halls to get somewhere no one will see me.

I get out of the castle, then I am thinking of the best way to get into the Riddle house and come back with Ron. Well, why not give them what they want? And then make them sorry they did… I transform into Harry Potter and summon a Firebolt broom, then I take to the sky and head for where I feel the Riddle house is. I get bored flying like that, so I open a portal to get much closer. I fly over to the house on my broom, coming in for a landing in front of the house, right out in the open, so they would think they had gotten their way. A couple death eaters come out the front, so I demand they release Ron immediately. They say not so fast, they say they will take me to him. We enter a room that looks like a cellar, though the way they have it set up, it is more of a dungeon or a torture chamber. Ron is chained to a table, none other than Bellatrix Lestrange is standing over him… I blurt out that she's supposed to be in Azkaban, she sneers at me and said she obviously escaped, Lucius isn't the only one with powerful friends to help him escape Azkaban… she then mutters a couple of expletives regarding the little bitch who left her in Azkaban… I tell them to release Ron immediately, Bellatrix says she doesn't think so, she'd love to see his parents' faces when they start receiving pieces of their precious son. Ron says I shouldn't have come, but of course he thinks I am Harry. I tell Bellatrix I will give her one more chance to release Ron before I take her and leave her someplace that makes Azkaban look like a relaxing vacation getaway. She looks at me as most people look down at a small child boasting of abilities they don't have. I tell her I am being completely serious. She says I should fuck off, she'd kill me herself, but the Dark Lord wants that pleasure. I ask her if Voldemort has her check his colon while she has her face up his ass. She says I just cost Ron one of his fingers and moves towards Ron.

I figure it's time for a nice show, I focus on the song Prayer by Disturbed, like I did when giving a nightmare previously, but instead of transporting Bellatrix to another location, I blend it with Master of Puppets to make it entirely a mental nightmare… "You don't believe I can send you to your own personal hell?" I ask, "Another nightmare about to come true will manifest right now, bring to life everything that you fear…" She doesn't seem to be paying any attention to me anymore, she is beside Ron, who I think might have soiled himself, she moves to carry out her threat, to cut him, but then she stops short. She stars at Ron with a look of shocked amazement, asks how he is doing that… how is he doing what? She takes a couple steps back, and then screams, I wonder what nightmare she is now witnessing? Whatever it is, I know it is her worst fear… She backs away frantically, trips over something on the floor, and falls on her ass. One of the other death eaters asks if she is ok, she looks at him and tells him to stay away from her, stay back! The two death eaters are looking at each other, clearly perplexed. Bellatrix is still holding the knife she was going to cut Ron with, now she threatens the other two death eaters with it… she pulls out her wand and threatens them with that, too. She is babbling incoherently… While the death eaters are occupied with her, I go over and free Ron. Ron is asking me what is going on with Bellatrix, I tell him she is having a really nasty nightmare, Ron says she is awake, I say that doesn't matter with a nightmare this intense… now let's get out of here. One of the death eaters looks like he is going to try to stop us, but Bellatrix cries out as he approaches us… "NOOOOO!!! I won't let you betray me!!!" then she runs up behind him and stabs him in the back with her large knife. He falls over, she continues to stab him over and over and over again, laughing like a maniac. The other death eater tries to use a stun spell on her, she sluffs it off and charges him with the knife, covered in blood, he ends up using a death curse on her, at which point she drops dead.

I am already at the exit with Ron, the death eater is still in shock from Bellatrix's behavior, and so is Ron… he keeps repeating, "Bloody hell… bloody hell…" over and over again, I tell him we have to go now and I lead him to the exit, up and out of the Riddle house. I hand Ron the Firebolt I used to get there on, he asks what I will use, so I summon a second Firebolt, I'll use this one, of course! We take to the sky before the one remaining death eater down there even becomes visible at the door to the Riddle house. Ok, well now I am in the air and away from the Riddle house, and I don't really care if Ron sees what I can do, so I change form back into Raven Knight. Bad choice, Ron almost falls off of his broom, I reach out and steady him, I remark I thought he knew how to fly a broom. He responds with yet another repetition of, "Bloody hell!" I say that is getting rather redundant. You have made it abundantly clear that Hell is, indeed, a bloody place. Ron finally stops repeating himself, but that doesn't mean there is much of an improvement in his speech… "Why did you… how did you… why would you… but you're from… that means…" I tell him if he manages a complete sentence I might actually understand him. He finally settles on asking how I did that, I tell him it's a simple shape shifting spell I learned elsewhere. He asks why I helped him… I ask why not? If he thinks what house we're in at Hogwarts makes a difference, then he has a lot to learn. I stun him back into silence by opening a portal back to the Hogwarts area. I find Harry and Hermione, out in the grounds now, still debating what they should do about Ron when we land there, I indicate Ron, and announce not only did I get him back by the end of class, he is back by the end of lunch! Now top that! I leave the three of them there, heading off back into the castle.

I have a FA in my bed at Hogwarts, the one where I am a student, and I realize it almost right away. I do a quick RC to confirm the fact I am dreaming before dressing and coming out into the dorm room with the other three girls I share a room with. Andie looks over at me and asks if I have heard what happened to Umbridge… I say no, I haven't. She says Umbridge was kicked right out of Hogwarts, sent to St. Mungo's. I ask why this happened, she says Umbridge was found with You Know Who's name written clearly on her forehead, flashing in neon colors! Without thinking about it, I say, "You mean Voldemort?" Everyone in the room is shocked that I said the name, so I briefly apologize, saying there is nothing strange about saying a name where I come from… She says that no one says You Know Who's true name, but anyway, Umbridge was wandering around the streets of Hogwarts with that written on her forehead, scaring the shit out of so many of the students and even several of the teachers. Umbridge had claimed she didn't know the writing said that, she thought the writing only announced that she was an UGLY CUNT… and that's supposed to be better somehow?

So the group of us go down to the main common room and then we all head down to the great hall for some breakfast. Dumbledore is there, and he makes an announcement about the next challenge in the Tri-School Tournament. He says things are going to be switched up a bit, the different houses will be swapping participants for this challenge alone. He says that the purpose of this is to encourage the people from different houses to get along with each other better, or at least to learn to tolerate each other enough to work together. He says each participant will be given an envelope that will say who our temporary teammate would be, and we should meet up with our partner and go over strategy for getting the task done… or at least to work out any major differences so we would not be fighting amongst ourselves when the challenge comes around. McGonagall comes down the aisles and hands Draco and me envelopes and then immediately moves on. Draco looks at his envelope briefly and says this is a bunch of shit, he doesn't want to work with a loser from one of the other houses. He opens his envelope and then is clearly not happy with what it says… he throws the paper down in front of me and asks if I can believe they expect him to work with Potter? I look at the paper and see that it says "HARRY POTTER" on it. I look at my paper, and I see that it says "HERMIONE GRANGER, ROBERT ******" on it. I'll be working with MoSh! Yay! I am quite happy with the situation, though right now Draco is bitching all over the place, so I am actually quite glad when breakfast ends and I have an excuse to avoid Draco's bitching for a while.

So now I head out into the halls, following after MoSh, because I want to meet up with him and talk to him for a while. I catch up with him when he is with Hermione, Harry, and Ron. Apparently Ron had decided to speak up again after spending quite some time not speaking to anyone. He bitching about not wanting Hermione and MoSh and Harry to all be working with those rotten Slytherins… Hermione is getting mad at him for talking that way… Harry is bitching about having to work with Draco… MoSh says everything will work out fine, he trusts me, and Hermione can also. Harry says that makes them both better off than he is. MoSh says nothing is going to happen with Harry, either, he says I have had more than enough time to get through to him. Harry asks what MoSh is talking about, MoSh asks if Harry hadn't noticed there hadn't been nearly as much trouble with Draco as there had been in the past, well, that was due to my influence. Harry says MoSh is nuts if he thinks that will make any difference, so great, this next challenge is going to be a disaster… MoSh says he trusts me to make sure nothing happens, Ron says it will be lucky if Harry comes out of it alive. Hermione tells Ron to shut up, there's no need to think that way. She says Draco might be a jerk, but he's not going to try to get anyone killed. Ron says of course he will, he's a death eater, so of course he'd be willing to get someone killed. Look what his father did, after all… his father who is still out there somewhere, having somehow managed to escape from Azkaban, which no one has ever done before… he says they should just lock every Slytherin up in Azkaban right now and save themselves a lot of trouble. Everyone gets mad at him, and he ends up saying fine, if they all want to be out in a dangerous challenge with Slytherins waiting to stab them in the back… he doesn't care. Ron storms off down the hall. Harry looks at MoSh and asks if he really thinks Draco will behave differently. MoSh says yes, he does, besides… Ron was definitely overacting by saying someone would be killed. He said the worst to happen would be Draco would make Harry look like a complete idiot.

I finally join the group, though I feel like I shouldn't have been eavesdropping, and MoSh welcomes me there. We talk a bit about possible strategies for the challenge, I say I am really glad to be working with MoSh. Harry is bitching about having to work with Draco, but not because he thinks Draco is out to kill anyone, just because he figures Draco will be exceedingly annoying and they won't have a chance of doing well in the challenge if they have to work together. I tell Harry that I'll see if I can get Draco to behave himself, after all, it's just for one challenge after all… it's not like the two of them have to be best friends forever. Harry says that's not going to happen. I am about to say something else when a girl I don't recognize comes over to us, she is eyeing MoSh very closely. I wonder where Asuka is, and I am thinking Asuka wouldn't like the way this woman is eyeing MoSh. She looks him over as if appraising him, I am wondering what she is doing. I ask her what she is doing, but she just ignores me completely. After examining MoSh head to foot for a bit longer, she says we all need healing… healing for what? She says we need a healing hug, I am still not sure what she is talking about… then she starts pulling everyone into a group hug. I go into the hug, trying to see if I can tell anything about her through her energy. I don't see anything hostile about her energy, but the entire situation seems really strange. I hear her whispering something to MoSh about meeting alone with him… um… Asuka definitely wouldn't like this… Speaking of Asuka, where is she? I think maybe I should find Asuka. So I pull free of the group hug and head down the hall and around a corner where I open a portal while focusing on getting to Asuka.

On the other side of the portal I am in MoSh's inner world, I look around, and everything looks completely normal. I look around in the house a bit and I finally find Asuka in a garden out back tending to some beautiful flowers. She seems surprised to see me there, I ask if everything is ok. She says yes, everything is fine, why do I ask? I said I was just surprised she wasn't at Hogwarts with MoSh, she says she had been with the Teshnon masters, they had wanted her there to train. And after that she wanted to be here in the garden with her flowers, after all she was supposed to get some meditation in. I scan her energy to make sure it looks ok, to make sure it's really Asuka… it definitely is Asuka, and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong. I say ok, I was just a bit concerned since it seems she is always getting attacked by someone, so I am glad everything is ok. She smiles at me, and I think she is saying something, but I wake up.

12/24/10 Battle At Hogwarts
Note: Plans for this night included going to a Harry Potter world with MoSh, the idea is to find out more about the next challenge. Then there is also a Harry Potter challenge posted at a thread I just found out about on DV referred to as the Lucidity Power Trials Club. The goal of the challenge is to fight death eaters off while Harry kills Voldemort, using only Harry Potter spells and a wand. Those are the primary goals, though I might end up doing more. For the first challenge, I fall asleep using my light / sound machine, and I successfully slip into a WILD…

I enter the Harry Potter world a short distance from the Hogwarts castle, at first I'm not sure what to do, I remember the challenge requires the use of a wand which I don't have. Well, then first I will have to obtain a wand. I am in the forest, and I see there are a few people in there with me, one of them is a death eater who seems to be totally occupied with sneaking up on a centaur who is firing arrows out of the forest into a fight. Well, the death eater would have a wand, which is what I need, so I look around and pick up a large rock and sneak up behind the death eater. He is crouched down, taking aim at a centaur, when I bring the rock down on his head… hard. He is knocked out, maybe killed, I'm not sure, but I grab his wand and head towards the fight. I got that issue taken care of.

So I am heading towards the fight when I come across the first death eater in my way, he apparently thinks I am nothing to be worried about. He is laughing, he says he bets he can kill me before I can even get a spell off. I look around, trying to come up with something at least a little creative, and I spot a sizable broken branch lying in the grass not far past the death eater. I tell him he doesn't scare me, I can take him down with an accio spell. This clearly amuses him, he says he doesn't have time for my games. Ok, neither do I. "Avada…" he starts, but I get mine off faster, it's shorter. "Accio!" I say, pointing the wand at the tree limb behind him… the branch comes straight to me… and it doesn't bother trying to go around the death eater, it punches a hole right through him, so his spell comes out as more of, "Avada Kad-glurgh!" The bloody branch lands at my feet at the same time as the dying death eater collapses to the ground. Well, that may have been amusing, but there are so many more death eaters to kill, and nowhere near enough branches to run through all of them… so I take a minute to think, it would be a lot easier if I could fly… but since it's Harry Potter spells only, I use the wand to summon a Firebolt with accio. I am getting a bit impatient for the broom to come, but finally a broom comes down out of the sky and hovers in front of me. I wonder where it came from, but I figure it doesn't really matter. I get on the broom and fly into the sky.

I am flying over the majority of the fighting, there are actually very few people on brooms, I see a lot from up there. I see there are giants out there, but they are still some distance off, so I am not worried about those now. I fly in low over a group of death eaters approaching the castle, and I figure this is my chance, I just need to nail them with a bit of lightning, I have almost used my Battery spell… when I remind myself that I have to use a Harry Potter spell… damn… that is actually getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass… but that is the challenge of it. Ok, I need a spell, how about fire? I use the incendio spell from the Harry Potter spells, which is used to start a fire. But I have considerably more energy available to me than the average Harry Potter witch or wizard, so I am able to use the spell to generate fireballs coming from the tip of my wand, and I use those as I swoop in over the death eaters, dropping the fireballs as bombs right into the middle of the crowd. There are explosions, some of the death eaters are thrown clear, others are set on fire. Some of the death eaters that have caught on fire are panicking, and they run wildly and end up setting the robes of other death eaters alight… and soon there are many death eaters, all of them on fire and running in panic.

I pull my broom up and head around for another approach, when I see there is someone up on top of the astronomy tower. The roof of the tower has been completely destroyed, so now the top floor is exposed to the elements, and clearly visible from my position in the sky. I see several death eaters closing in around one person, so I fly in closer to get a better look. I see there are several death eaters surrounding Draco Malfoy, I can hear them saying something about Draco not supporting the dark lord, they seem pissed that Draco or maybe one of the other Malfoys hadn't been following orders. So I come in on my broom, I quickly help Draco onto the back of the broom, then fly away from the tower with curses flying after us. I use the protego spell to reflect their spells back at them, one of the death eaters ends up casting an avada kadevra on himself… there are now three of them left on top of the tower. I use wingardium leviosa and lift a broken section of the astronomy tower up into the air… with the death eaters on it. Looking around, I see a hostile giant getting a bit too close for comfort, so I drop the large chunk of the astronomy tower and the death eaters on top of the giant. The giant is knocked senseless, the death eaters plunge to their deaths… I fly over near the edge of the fight area where I find Lucius and Narcissa trying to sneak around the outskirts of the battle and get closer to the castle. I land in front of them and let Draco off of my broom, much to the relief of his parents. The Malfoys all together again, and they look happy to see each other. I don't have the time to sit around and watch the reunion, so I head back towards the school.

It looks like the death eaters are getting into the castle now, so I decide I had better get inside to make sure everything is taken care of in there. I go inside and find numerous witches and wizards exchanging spells and curses, the effect makes it look like a futuristic laser battle with the blasts of light shooting across the room. Most of the action is going on in the great hall, so I head in that direction. There are three death eaters in my way, I use a confundus spell on them, they get quite disoriented, and start blasting spells and curses at each other. I continue through the room into the great hall, where there are a lot more witches and wizards fighting, but one of them stands out to me… I see Bellatrix Lestrange… and I want her… dead. I call out her name, getting her attention, and I throw a couple of chairs at her by using wingardium leviosa, it is enough to get her attention. She comes over towards me, saying I will pay for attacking her, I say I'm not going to just attack her, I'm going to kill her. She laughs at that, saying there is no way a pathetic no one like me is going to be able to kill her.

So Bellatrix clearly doesn't take me seriously, so I decide maybe I need to do something to prove this is very serious, so I use the spell reducto, which is meant to blast solid objects, I use the spell on the floor right at Bellatrix's feet. The spell blasts the floor, and the force of it sends Bellatrix flying backwards into the wall, she looks quite surprised. She immediately goes to cast a curse at me, I use another reducto spell, this time on the wall right behind her. She only gets a small bit of her spell off, "Cruci…" BOOM! The wall explodes, making Bellatrix face plant in the part of the floor I blew up with my first reducto spell. She gets to her feet and is glaring at me with pure hate, she throws another curse, or she tries to, but I interrupt her spell with another reducto spell, on the ceiling. "Avada ka…" CRASH! A large section of the roof crashes down on top of Bellatrix. She is cursing fluently now, although she is using the kind of curses that aren't magical… I use wingardium leviosa on a marble statue and float it right over Bellatrix's head. "That does it," she is yelling now, "I'm going to make you wish…" she looks up at the statue… "that's not even possible…" And then she dives to get out from under it before it falls. But the goal isn't to smash her, I use the reducto spell one more time and blast the statue into pieces, many of which land on top of Bellatrix since the blast radius is larger than the statue itself. I wait for the dust to clear, I see a lot of action going on in the other side of the room. It seems everyone else is gathered around watching something, is that where Harry and Voldemort are having it out? I don't care about that, he is fine on his own. There is movement in the rubble as Bellatrix is trying to dig her way out of the rubble. I wait long enough for her to stand up, glaring around. Bellatrix seems pretty speechless, and pretty much in pain, though she is doing whatever she can to keep that from showing. I move around Bellatrix, I have to aim this properly, and so I get to the correct position. Bellatrix has re-learned a word, and that word is "you." "You… you…" now she is repeating it, "you… you…" Now if I have aimed this properly… I use the accio spell on a spear baring knight behind Bellatrix at the same time as I put a final reducto spell at the rubble at her feet. The blast of the rubble sends her backwards as the knight statue moves forward, resulting in the spear getting run through Bellatrix's mid section. She is now hanging off the spear, impaled on the spear… the spear breaks off of the statue… somehow still standing… "But there's no way… no one could… it's impossible… who are you?" and then she collapses, dead. I hear other people celebrating Voldemort's death, but that isn't important to me, I'm about to wake up anyway.

Burnout: Library Escape
I am at a library, looking at some books there. I notice that some of the stuff here is for sale, it seems it is a store of some kind merged with the library. I find a pink purse with some adorable kitties all over it, so I take a closer look at it, and I am thinking it could be the perfect gift to give Alicia for Christmas. It has so many pockets, just like she likes it best, so I am really considering picking it up. Then I see the price, it is $140, and there is no way I can afford that, but how can it be so expensive? It's just a purse, it doesn't look like a name brand, and the main point is I don't have that kind of money. I am disappointed, but I walk away from the purse and head towards the front of the library. I also see quite a few books, but it seems like the really cool looking ones, the ones that look like antique leather bound books, are all for sale instead of being available to be checked out. Well, that isn't really surprising considering the condition they would probably come back in if they came back at all. So I continue looking through the library / store, and I soon find an exit where I didn't realize there was one, one of the windows is actually a door that slides open when approached. I go out through that door, and then back in, noting that I don't have to pass by the security scanners to get between the library and the parking lot. So I want one of the antique books, one in specific, and the purse for Alicia, so I pick up both the book and the purse, and I try to carry it casually over to the hidden door and then out. I am sure someone is going to catch me, in a real situation I would be caught, but here I am able to walk away with the stuff. I reach my car, but the remote keyless entry isn’t unlocking the red neon… the car next to it keeps beeping and flashing the lights. This finally is strange enough that I do a RC and find out I'm dreaming.

So now I get into the red car that my keys fit, it's a red sporty car, I'm not sure what the make and model are, but it's a small and cool looking car. I get in and drive out of the parking lot, the car has a nice bit of pickup, especially considering the size of it, so I floor it and I am driving down the street at high speeds. Since this is a dream, my car can go through any other vehicle on the road… so I decide I want to drive as if I was in the video game Burnout! I floor the car down the street into some traffic, and my car does prove to be able to plow right through other cars, even cars that are much larger than my car is… and that is fun. I see some thick traffic, where most of the cars are stopped due to the congestion, and I decide it's time to get out there and "check traffic" which is where the player takes their car and crashes through every other vehicle on the road, knocking them out of the way. I do that now, and clear a path down the road with ease, then I find myself driving out onto a pier, so I stop and get out. Enough of the Burnout game for now, so I go to the end of the pier where I see several people there. I get closer, and I see there are quite a few men together, one of them has his hands tied behind his back, and they are holding him over a tank of boiling water. One of them, looks like a judge, says he has sentenced the criminal to death by boiling, he would now be drowned in boiling water. I ask what he did, the judge says the man insulted the judge, and that is punishable by death. That seems retarded to me, but I act crazy and say I have always wanted to do that. So the executioner laughs and says I can go ahead. I go over to the man who has been sentenced, I use a small knife in my hand to cut the ropes, then I push him into the water. He swims for shore. The judge is pissed, he comes over to me and is cursing fluently. I shove the judge's face into the boiling water briefly, then I pull his face out. His face is red, with some minor burns, but I tell him he should behave unless he wants a longer dip. This is where I start thinking I shouldn't be wasting time playing with these DCs, I have goals I need to accomplish! Except right as I think that, I wake up.

Venomous Poison
I am in the Slytherin dorm, I have just sat up, getting out of bed. Andie, Shanara, and Marie are all there, they seem a bit concerned as to if I am ok or not, I say I am fine, I don't understand what they think might be wrong with me. Andie says that must have been some nasty curse that had been placed on me, to have me acting so irrationally yesterday afternoon… I think for a minute, then it comes back to me, I had gone running out between MoSh and Draco, trying to break up what I thought was an actual fight, only to find out MoSh had simply challenged Draco to a duel, Draco had accepted the challenge, and they had been in the middle of that duel when I came charging in out of nowhere to break it up. There had been no need to interfere at all, but that's with hindsight being 20/20. Now I walk over to the window and look out, it is on ground level so I can't see very far, and I know the common room itself is actually underground. I tell them that I acted really stupidly, so hopefully I could just forget it as soon as possible. Andie says it wasn't my fault since I had been cursed or poisoned, so I wasn't thinking straight at the time. She said anyone should be able to understand that, especially MoSh, who had himself been cursed or poisoned a couple of times. Shanara says she thought they had caught the person responsible for the poisonings… she thought they had found Lucius Malfoy had been doing it… Marie says Lucius was probably trying to eliminate the competition so his own son would have an easier time winning the tournament… Shanara continues to ask the question if Lucius wasn't really the one responsible, or is there someone else poisoning students?

I go downstairs into the main common room, where everyone is around talking and making their final preparations to get their day going, some people are just talking, others are scribbling the last minute homework on pieces of parchment, Crabb and Goyle are copying off of one piece of parchment to their own papers… I glance as I go by and see the one they're copying off of is Draco's paper… and even though they are copying, I wonder if their paper will even be legible enough to get a decent grade… I am getting ready to leave the room and head down to breakfast when I hear Draco saying he is going to find out who cursed me, I am wondering why it even matters to him at all. A couple of Slytherin boys start pointing and making fun of Draco, saying his girlfriend has brainwashed him into being a wimp and a loser… Draco tells them that with him on his worst day and them at their best, he could still take both of them on at the same time and make them sorry. He asks if they are ready to back up their words with actions. Neither of them speaks, Draco says that's what he thought, then he says maybe my friend MoSh should put as much effort into discovering who cursed me as he had been in getting his father kicked out… he still seemed annoyed about that, but didn’t stay on the subject any longer than to suggest MoSh find out who else is poisoning and cursing students at Hogwarts. I figure I could try to explain to Draco that I hadn't been cursed or poisoned, I had been non-lucid, but trying to explain that would probably just end up with me getting an extended stay at St. Mungo's. So I follow him as he leaves the dorms, we are all heading to the great hall for breakfast.

Note: Tonight is the first challenge of the tournament at Hogwarts, so this is my main plan, to go participate in the event. MoSh is coming for that, of course, so we will see how the first challenge goes. For now we will be working in teams for each house, so that means I will be working with Draco, MoSh will be working with Harry and Hermione. There are two other schools visiting, and each of them have four houses, two contestants from each house, also working as teams this time. I'm not sure how many challenges will be done as teams before it's everyone for themselves. That was my only goal, so I focused on that as I slipped into a WILD…

I am in bed, in my bed at Hogwarts. I am immediately aware of that by the feel of the bed, and the sounds going on around me, it seems everyone else is already up and moving around but I have been sleeping in. I get out of bed and dressed, then open the curtains to see what is going on out there. The other girls are talking to each other, and they seem happy to see me, all of them asking how I am doing, if I am nervous about the challenge, Marie says I am lucky to be able to ditch classes today, Shanara says she can't wait to find out more about the challenge, Andie says she knows Draco and I can win… I am not really sure what they are talking about, but I figure I will find out in due time, so for now I just go with it. As the four of us go down to the common room, my mind is clearing up, the last of my sleepiness is passing, I think it is odd that I am sleepy after waking up in a lucid dream… When we get down to the common room I see Draco there, it looks like he has been waiting for me, my memory is completely clear now. I remember that the first challenge of the Tri-School Wizard Tournament is today, and I will be doing it with Draco since we are from the same house. Draco has a strange look on his face, but he greets me ok, and says all of the contestants are to meet near the Quidditch field… that was something I hadn't thought of at the school yet… Quidditch! Is there not going to be Quidditch teams this year? Maybe the season just hasn't started yet… So after going to the great hall to get some breakfast, Draco and I go out by the Quidditch field.

When Draco and I reach the Quidditch field I see that McGonagall is there, and she is waiting for the contestants to gather. Several of them I recognize, others I don't, though. Viktor Krum is there, he doesn't look to bright, but that could be decieving… One of them I recognize as Fleur Delacour, Hermione is there looking nervously up at the castle, I recognize some of the others as fellow Hogwarts students and the others I am assuming are from the other schools. MoSh shows up, it seems he has appeared from nowhere, Hermione is glad to see him, she asks him where Harry is, he is running late. MoSh said maybe Harry is still getting his flu shot. Hermione gives MoSh a strange look, says she hasn't heard anything about a flu shot, but she doesn't take the thought any further as Harry shows up at this point. Finally everyone has gathered, Hermione is asking Harry where he has been, but Harry doesn't have a chance to answer before McGonagall starts talking. She says we have the morning to make any finally plans, but we should be made aware that no items can be taken into the maze. She says no wands can be used during the challenge. She adds that any items found on the course can be used, some of them may have magical properties, but we would have to know what to do with it, of course. She points at an amulet one of the students from another school is wearing, and says she sees it has magical properties, so she will have to leave it behind. She points at my Witchblade bracelet and says the same goes for that. It seems both of us are reluctant to give our items up, McGonagall is a bit impatient, she says she will make sure nothing happens to either of them, and they will be waiting for us at the other end of the challenge course. I finally give her my Witchblade, figuring I can summon it back if needed, and the other girl hands over her amulet. McGonagall tells us to meet back by the Quidditch field at noon, lunch would be provided, then we would start at 12:30 sharp. So don't be late, she looks at Harry when she says that last part.

On this map: MoSh, Harry, and Hermione are the red line, Draco and I are the green line.

So Draco and I look over the map one more time to plan out our course, we are not allowed to have the map in the challenge, so we will have to memorize the path we want to take, and we meet back at the Quidditch field right on time. Everyone else is there on time, too, so the challenge begins on time. For a short distance it seems everyone is going in the same direction, but finally we split up and head in our own ways. Draco and I are following the green path on this map, while MoSh, Harry, and Hermione are on the red path. The map shows a lot, so I will just hit the important parts. The first darker green area on the map is a vine covered region, as Draco and I pass through there, we collect some long pieces of vine that look strong, and take them with us. That way when we reach the ravine, I am able to tie a stone to the end of the vine and then throw it over the ravine. The ravine isn't really that wide, but it is really deep. The rock proves unnecessary, though, the vine has a magical property and it plants itself right where it lands. Placing the other end of the vine on this side makes the vine plant itself here, too, and the vine across the ravine goes tight. I tell Draco we can just use the vine to cross… he doesn't seem to like it much… I take a second vine and throw it over, using a rock just so I can aim better… and a little TK helps… so I land this one on a slightly higher spot, place the second end… then once more, now the three vines form a triangle, a bridge, with two vines to hold onto and a third to walk on. Draco is looking at the bridge not far along the ravine, and says we could just use that… I point out that someone else is already there, and there are small specks bombarding them, apparently the enemies Draco's father had warned him about, warning him against taking what appeared to be the easy route. I wonder if that's MoSh, Harry, and Hermione… I see there are three of them, and I am sure Hermione would not want to cross anywhere but at the bridge since she is scared of heights. Draco and I use my vine bridge and cross, heading into the forest on the other side.

The forest is deliberately made confusing, but we don't get lost. We soon reach the other side of the forest where there is a large rock there, I am thinking up there is a good spot to survey the land from. Harry, MoSh, and Hermione show up right after us, Draco makes some remark to Harry about being behind already, it's a good thing he and I are nice enough to let them catch up… after all, we don't want it to be too easy. I tell him to leave me out of that. Harry says he is surprised Draco made it this far, and adds that he and I probably cheated by using magic to get to the rock first. I look over at Harry, but all that comes out of my mouth is, "Excuse you?" While they are getting into that, MoSh is climbing the rock to get a view of the area. I join MoSh in the climbing of the rock, not wanting to deal with Draco and Harry arguing, MoSh and I vent about our partners… MoSh says Harry thinks he knows everything, I say Draco is about as mature as a two year old… We are almost to the top when a monkey about the size of a human jumps from one of the trees and grabs at MoSh. MoSh throws the monkey back to the ground, where it lands right between Harry and Draco, effectively breaking their argument up. The monkey gets up and looks around at us, but MoSh isn't done with him yet. MoSh jumps off of the rock, grabs the monkey, and slams him into a tree… then slams him into the ground a few more times, stomps on him for good measure, then throws him up into the sky and over the forest where it disappears from sight. Harry, Hermione, Draco, and I are now all staring at MoSh, not entirely sure of what to say, apparently that monkey had really pissed MoSh off… MoSh starts climbing the rock again, Harry comes up behind him and grabs his shirt to get his attention. "Are you…" Harry starts, then MoSh jumps on Harry and slams him into a tree. I am asking MoSh why he is attacking his own teammate, it makes no sense, is he ok? I jump off the rock and help Hermione pull MoSh off of Harry, Draco is laughing his ass off, saying if they keep that up, there's no way they will win… Gryffindor will be the first house out of the running. Hermione tells Draco to shut up, MoSh has stopped trying to attack Harry, but now he feels like he has a fever… he is sick? Hermione shoots up emergency sparks with her wand… we have them in case of emergency but are not permitted to use them… and soon a couple of people swoop down on brooms, they carry both Harry and MoSh off. Hermione says she wants to stay and finish the challenge, there's no way she's letting Slytherin come in first… then she looks at me, and says she means no offense to me.

We leave the rock and head in different directions, Hermione heads off to the east, Draco and I are heading west. We come to the river we had been told about, and it is rapids, but they don't look too bad. I use the last of my vines to tie together some wood that Draco and I collect, and make it into a raft… surprisingly, it floats. Yay! Draco and I use the raft to ride the rapids and take the shortcut by steering off onto the right fork in the river. Not only have we avoided having to do the extra climbing to get past some small mountains, but we are moving much faster than we would be if we were on foot. As the river veers back off to the west we pull our raft over to the shore, where Draco and I get out. We follow a path that leads up to some steep sheer mountains, there is a steep and difficult path that goes over the mountain, and there is a longer but easy path that goes around the mountain… or there is a tunnel that passes through the mountain, and an easier path that goes over. Draco and I choose the tunnel that goes through the mountain, it is well hidden, but Draco had it marked on his map, and we remember where it is. So with that little extra short cut we get through the mountain and out the other side first. The two of us are greeted with an array of cheering and booing… rude people booing… shortly later, Hermione shows up, and stares at us, she says she doesn't know how we managed to get there first. She seems very out of breath, close to collapsing, but Draco and I are hardly winded after walking the mostly level path through the mountain.

There are judges there, all of the members of the judge's panel, I see Umbridge there, she is glaring over at us, she accuses Hermione of cheating since there is no way one person could have made it through. I ask another of the judges how MoSh and Harry are, I am told that the two of them are going to be fine, Harry just had some bruises, MoSh seems to have the flu, he was most likely a bit delirious when he attacked Harry. I ask how MoSh could have the flu… The woman I am speaking to says she doesn't know, but Madam Palmphrey will be more than able to get them both back to full health. I feel like I am going to wake up soon, so I tell the others that I am going to the hospital wing to check on MoSh, then I leave. If I make it to the Hospital wing, then I am not remembering it now, because this is where my memories end.

I am in a place I don't recognize… or wait a minute… it does look a bit familiar. It is a circular room that looks like the interior of a castle, with ornate arches across the domed ceiling and colorful tapestries hanging on the stone walls. There is a large wooden door on one side of the room, from beyond which I can hear a lot of talking, it sounds like a party going on in there. But I'm in a castle! I have to get photos! I look for my camera, I can't find it… ok… I look for my phone, for my iPod Touch. Both not there. I know they should be in my purse, but I don't see my purse around! Did I really leave my purse somewhere without taking at least one of those things out? I must have… in response to that discovery I drop a loud expletive, "Ah, SHIT!" The circular room has quite a few people in it, and quite a few of them stop talking and turn towards me as I drop that loud expletive. I also hadn't realized that someone had come into the room from beyond the wooden doors, I have been too busy looking for cameras and phones and iPods. A woman over by the door said loudly that whoever had said that would need to watch their language when in her house. I mutter, "What the fuck?" a bit louder than I intend to, and the woman says that one isn't acceptable, either.

Now I am wondering who the prude is, so I make my way through the people to where I can see. I hear another woman off to my left say, "She's got to be fucking kidding…" and apparently the woman heard that, too, as she responded and said she was absolutely not kidding. What the heads of the other houses allow is up to them, but she would not have such vulgarity in her house. In her house? Well, what difference would that make? It's not like I'm going to be moving in with her, or at least I don't think I will be… I notice the person who cursed after I did, and I recognize her right away, it's Tigress! I walk over to Tigress and say hello, she also says hello, and now the woman up front is continuing and talking about some other stuff, but I'm not listening. Tigress is bitching about the woman, about her view on cursing, she says McGonagall can't be serious… this is a school, not a church, and if she wants to fucking curse she will fucking curse and there's nothing they can fucking do about it. These expletives go unnoticed, as the woman is talking. I am about to say something when it registers to me that she just said McGonagall… I comment about Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter series, and Tigress said of course it is her, she's always the one. I finally complete my search for a place where I can see the woman, and sure enough, it is Professor McGonagall… I do a double take at that. Tigress asks who I expected to see there…

Whatever McGonagall has been saying, she is done now, and opens the door so all of us can file through the door into a large room that has been decorated for a party. There are large tables with a lot of people sitting at them, everyone there looks like they recently graduated high school, so this place must be a college of some kind, though Professor McGonagall indicated we were at Hogwarts. Apparently the idea of being at Hogwarts is not a strange thing to me, as it doesn't trigger a reality check. I figure J.K. Rowling must have just fudged in her stories a bit to avoid things being too close of a match. (Ok, I know everyone rationalizes in dreams, but give me a break!) McGonagall lines us all up in front of the room to begin the sorting process, which is done with the sorting hat just like in the Harry Potter books… I see several people I know get sorted into their appropriate houses. Tigress gets sorted into Ravenclaw, and I find myself wondering if they are doing it on purpose to annoy McGonagall when one of the guys there stands up and adds a loud, "FUCK YEAH!" to the cheering. I am up next, and for the same reasons as the last Harry Potter dream, I get the hat to place me in Slytherin. That way I will be closest to those needing healing. I go over to the appropriate table and sit down in an open area, not paying much attention to the people welcoming me over. I can tell some of them are genuinely giving me a friendly welcome, but I feel a lot of negative energy as well. This is definitely where I need to be.

I am sitting there for a bit longer until someone sits beside me. I look to my right and see Crabb sit down, then Draco sits down between Crabb and me… Goyle is behind me, he tells me to move, I tell him to fuck off. Crabb is snickering, Goyle says I am in his seat… I tell him again to fuck off unless he wants to try to take my seat, which if he does want to do that, go ahead. It could prove to be entertaining. Goyle doesn't seem to know how to follow through to get his seat, he looks dumbly at Draco, who tells him to go find some other seat, the food is the same everywhere. Goyle stammers the word, "But…" for a bit before Draco tells him to go find a seat, adding that Goyle is making himself look even stupider than normal. Finally Goyle wanders off to some other place. There is food, there is a lot of it, but I really don't feel much like eating… at least not until dessert breaks me out of my brooding. There is chocolate involved! I have the idea I won't have any problem with getting fat or other things, so I rather make a pig of myself. There are a few people staring at me, but I really don't care. The chocolate is delicious, chocolate cakes, chocolate puddings, chocolate ice cream that didn't seem to be melting… a couple chocolate things I have never seen before…

After the meal is done and a few announcements have been made by Dumbledore, everyone is splitting off to go to their respective houses. I find Tigress as we are exiting the dining hall, and she says she'll see me around. I agree with her, we wave to each other, and head our own ways. We make our way down into the dungeon, which is where the dorm is. I am surprised that when we get to the dorm itself there are a bunch of adults waiting there, they are dropping off some things for students, kind of like the day at college when parents or other family members will help the students move into their new quarters. I notice Lucious Malfoy is talking to Draco, and I stand there watching them for a couple minutes. Then I hear talking from behind me, I look and see a man talking to Crabb, he is talking as if he is very angry about something, so I wonder what is up. I listen in on that for a while longer. The man, who I am thinking is Crabb's father, is telling Crabb to at least try to avoid being a total embarrassment this year. Crabb doesn't respond to that, and his father now says that he should know that is impossible, since everything Crabb does is an embarrassment… he turns to walk away from Crabb and walks right into me. I tell him the only embarrassing thing I see is him. He doesn't need any help embarrassing himself, he just has to come out in public. He says I should show some respect. I tell him if he can show me someone worthy of respect I will show some. He gives me a dirty look, Crabb says he really is an embarrassment, I tell him his dad is just compensating for his inadequacies in other areas. Crabb looks at me dumbly, his dad glares at me, and then storms out of the room. Crabb looks rather awkward, he says he doesn't need someone else to take care of his father. I ask who said I was doing it for him? Obviously his dad needed to be told off, so I did it. Nothing more to say.

Crabb disappears into the boys part of the dorms, and the parents are starting to leave, I notice Lucious looking at me strangely as he goes to leave the room. I wonder what is he looking at? I turn to go to the women's side of the dorms, but I can still feel him looking at me. I look back towards Lucious, and see he is still looking at me, but as soon as I turn he also turns and leaves the room through the hidden entrance to the dorms. I am still wondering what that means, or maybe it doesn't mean anything… most likely it doesn't mean anything. I am starting to feel a bit disoriented, and I think I must be tired, it has been a long day, so I go into the girls side of the dorms and find a bed that has my name on it, "Raven Knight," in a room with three other beds. I am getting really tired, so I lie down and fall asleep almost immediately… and when I fall asleep in the bed there, I wake up in my own bed.

Note: I am so busy with school papers and such right now, between classes and homework and work and dreams and… and… so busy. So I am going to be recording this dream in as short a version as possible without leaving out any important details.

I slipped into a WILD and found myself in MoSh's inner world. I wondered what was to be done first, I remembered MoSh had said Asuka needed healing, so that was what I was there to do. I didn't see any of them there, I didn't see MoSh or Asuka, so I opened a portal to track them down. The portal opened quickly and I went through it. The portal led to the healing glen, or that's what it looked like at the time. MoSh was there, as well as Kaomea… I could tell Asuka was merged with Kaomea. I wondered if that was a good idea for Kaomea to be merged with Asuka since MoSh had said Asuka was infected with something. I figured we would heal them merged the same way as we would heal them separated. MoSh said there were dream demons in them, so I figured that was a good place to start. I focused on the song "Come Out and Play" by the Offspring, focusing primarily on the line about keeping 'em separated, and focused on reaching in and pulling a dream demon out. I got one! It was quite easy to do, and I pulled the thing out. It attacked me immediately, but I hit it with a bolt of light energy lightning, and that destroyed the demon quicker than I had expected. It hadn't been that powerful, so why had it been having so much of an effect?

I looked around the area now, and I realized that while I had been focusing on the spell, the entire glen had changed. It was no longer a beautiful and pleasant place. It was downright creepy, there was a thick mist on the ground, the sky had gone dark like smoke, there was a foul odor around, and the plants around us seemed to have withered away just in the past few minutes. I looked back at Kaomea… there was still more there, more dream demons? How many could there be in there at once? I used the "Come Out and Play" spell again and pulled out another dream demon, then another… and another… and another… And while I was doing that, MoSh was doing it as well, I saw him pull out several dream demons, though I didn't note any details of how he had done that. There were so many that I opened a vortex portal to pull them all into a parallel dimension. Then I thought maybe the vortex could pull the dream demons right out of Kaomea, pulling them straight into the parallel dimension… so I combined the "Come Out and Play" spell with the vortex portal and started streaming dream demons right out of Kaomea… and they just kept coming! What the HELL?! There was no way there could be that many all in the same place… what was going on here? I had no idea, but it seemed to continue forever until the flow finally ended. I closed the vortex portal, sealing all of the dream demons, or whatever they were, in the void between realities.

I looked over at Kaomea, and she was still merged with Asuka, I wanted to be able to get them both apart, too. I wasn't sure if they might be stuck due to having had all those things in there with them, so I used "Come Out and Play" one more time… and Asuka came out, looking relieved to be separated. There was still something inside of Kaomea… another demon? How was that even possible? I wondered if there might be some kind of portal in her that was going to keep an endless supply of demons coming into her, piling them in just as fast as MoSh and I could get them out… MoSh and I were able to de-fuse the final demon fairly easily… but it wasn't a demon at all! It was a woman, I didn't recognize her, but I knew it was another dreamer, that energy was around her. I didn't have a lot of time to figure out who she was, however, she took off and immediately disappeared through a portal, MoSh was hot on her tail, and then the portal closed behind both of them. Asuka and Kaomea were both watching after MoSh as if they also weren't sure what was going on. This is where the dream ended.

Note: Tonight was composed of fragments which I will post here. Actually, I'm sure there was more to each of these dreams, but those are parts that I am not able to remember at this point. So here are the fragments:

Under My Skin
I was in the lab / sick bay in the biodome tower with Tigress and Janet, I couldn't remember how I had gotten there, but somehow I was lucid. I looked around, I saw Tigress talking to Janet for a bit, so I just waited. I remembered Tigress saying she wanted Janet to check us both out to see if we might have any parasites inside us. She came over to me and said Janet had given her a clean bill of health, so there was no need for her to stay here any longer. I wondered where she might be going so fast, didn't she want to stick around and maybe do something after Janet checked me out? Janet told me to lie down on the sick bay bed and she would check me out. I did that, and I couldn't see what she was doing, I was lying on my stomach, but she was talking about some rather disgusting leech type things that she was removing. I wondered if Tigress was waiting for me… I saw someone out of the corner of my eye, I looked and I saw Nomad. He said there were parasites on me, he was sure he had sensed those there. Janet said there sure were, but she was almost done getting them all off. Nomad asked if she had gotten the ones off of Tigress, too. Janet said Tigress hadn't had any parasites on her, though she had checked for them. Nomad seemed to think that was odd, but he didn't say anything.

Mistaken Identity
I was in my room and lucid, I remembered I had a goal of locating Walms and restoring his flame, which he had told me was out. I knew from how he had acted that it wasn't completely out, but I thought maybe he could use a bit of help getting it strong again after encountering some strange energy that had apparently damaged it. He said he had been staying away from everyone until the flame was restored so he wouldn't look to pointlessly hurt anyone (if the flame had been out that wouldn't have mattered) so I might have problems finding him. I focused on locating Walms, he said his energy would be different, so I wasn't really sure what I would trace. So I just focused on what I know about Walms from talking to him and sharing a few dreams in the past, using a song spell for tracking… and thought it took a bit more energy, a portal finally opened, so I went through. I exited the portal into a forest area, looked consistent with somewhere I might find Walms. I looked around, not sure where I might find Walms, but then I spotted someone over beside a particularly large tree. I went over to him and looked at him closely, I couldn't see much in the way of energy there, well that fit… I had expected that Walms would be hiding his energy pretty well. I called the person Walms and said hello, I said I was there to restore his flame, and I was sure I hadn't been followed. I got a blank look as a response, so I thought maybe he wasn't lucid… I told him he was dreaming, I added that I was Raven Knight. He continued to give me the same blank look as if I was speaking in a foreign language… damn… I wondered if there were times that Walms was non-lucid that he didn't remember English… "Yo estoy Raven Knight," I stumbled in Spanish, "Estoy aquí para restaurar el fuego interior ... Walms? Estás soñando, ya sabes ..." That same blank look that was beginning to get quite frustrating… "How cute…" a voice said from my right, "She doesn't recognize me…" I turned to my right really fast, just in time to see someone vanish… Walms?! Then who was I talking to? The person I had been talking to said something that made absolutely no sense… um… I went over to the place the person had vanished… that was Walms, no doubt… "Wait a sec!" I called, even though he was long gone. I focused on opening a portal to follow him, but my memory ends here.

Templar Party
I was in what I thought of as my house, but it wasn't like my waking life home. The inside of it was very similar, but there was a huge deck out back where there were a lot of people having a party, there was music, food, a swimming pool, and everyone was having lots of fun. But somehow I knew the guests were all Templars… I was also thinking my mom had no idea who she had invited over. I tried to tell her, but she wasn't listening. She went outside to take care of the guests, but I stayed in my room. I was able to look out my window at the partiers outside. I didn't want them to see me, so I was staying low and just peeking over my window sill to see them out there. My mom looked frustrated, then she came inside and found me spying on the party. She said she didn't care if I stayed long, but it was rude of me to not show up and at least say hi to our guests. I said I couldn't do that, those were all Templars, and they would surly know that I was aligned with the Assassins… She told me not to be silly, they wouldn't know that unless I went out with a sign that said, "GO ASSASSINS" or something dumb like that. She said she wanted to see me outside in 15 minutes, and that was final. With that she left the room. I knew for sure that the Templars would recognize me, so I had to get out of there. I went out of the back door and headed for the gate, trying to hurry before I was seen… epic fail. I hadn't made it halfway to the gate before my mom spotted me and brought everyone's attention to me. The Templars looked over at me, I could tell by the way they looked that they knew I was with the Assassins… My mom, oblivious to everything, was cheerfully introducing us, which is not actually like her normal behavior at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: I had a whole one night WILD streak… lame. I didn't succeed in a WILD tonight, and my goals were pretty much the same as last night. I have a list of goals I am working on, tonight was to be focused on sharing a DDO dream with Tigress and unlocking the book from the Akashic Records, and viewing a dream MoSh had where he told me don Juan left a message for me if I can find it. Hmmm… one out of three ain't all that good!

I was in bed. I sat up and looked at the clock. It wasn't on. Damn… power outage. Now I would have to reset the clock and the alarm… fortunately there wasn't anything I particularly had to get up for the next morning. I lied back down on my pillow, but then my pillow squirmed from underneath my head, hissed at me, then jumped down and left the room. Oops… that was a cat… and apparently she didn't appreciate being used as a pillow. I sat back up, thinking I should do a RC before going back to sleep. My RC revealed that I was dreaming.

Ok. My first goal was to have a DDO dream with Tigress. To do that I would first find Tigress. I focused on locating her and opened a portal. A portal opened, I went through it. On the other side of the portal I was in a strange place. It looked like a dungeon of some kind. Was Tigress already in the DDO dream? Because this definitely looked like a possible DDO dream… I looked around to see if there was anyone else there with me. I wasn't alone. There was a man and a woman there with me. I looked at them… Tigress and MoSh. I said hello to both of them and gave each of them a hug. We were all together in a DDO dream!

Ok. I wasn't sure what the goal was, and neither was anyone else it seemed, so the first thing to do was to just explore the dungeon. The three of us began looking through the dungeon. There were enemies there. We came across a group of kobolds.

I formed Witchblade into a sword and fought them in the manner I would fight them in a true Dungeons and Dragons game. Tigress also had a sword, MoSh was just beating the shit out of them… A bit farther along the dungeon we found a group of orcs. We quickly dispatched of them, as well. They had been guarding a door. Unfortunately the door was locked, and none of the orcs had the key… so we headed in the other direction. A few more battles with kobolds… this was proving to be quite a fun dream… and then we found an encampment of kobolds. There were quite a few of them, and we covered each others' backs as we took them all out. The sheer number of kobolds in the room made this a bit more of a challenge than the previous fights. A couple of them seemed stronger than the average kobold, too. When we finished, there was a chest in the back of the room. All of us went to the chest and opened it. There was an array of treasures in the chest, gems and gold, and there was a cool looking sword. Tigress looked at her own blade, which was charged with elemental fire energy, and kept it. I looked at my blade, Witchblade, and I kept that. I handed the sword to MoSh since he didn't have one. We gathered the gems and treasure, the last item in the chest was a key, Tigress grabbed the key and then we left the room through the same path we had entered it through.

The three of us made our way through the passages back towards the locked door. Most of the passages were empty, but there was a hidden door that had opened. Kobolds were swarming out of it to ambush us as we tried to return to the locked door. MoSh, Tigress, and I all engaged the kobolds in battle and we were victorious. Dead kobolds now littered the ground. The three of us continued until we found the room with the locked door, which was still littered with the bodies of fallen orcs. I thought about the fact they disappear in DDO, but apparently not here. Tigress had the key and she unlocked the door. We all went through it.

On the other side of the door we were in a larger chamber. There were distracted orcs in the room. I wondered what they were doing… Tigress snuck up on one and killed it with one strike. That alerted the others. We got into another battle. We fought our way through the orc infested chamber and over to a narrow passage out the other side.

The orcs didn't seem to stop coming. Kill one, three more came in. Once we were all in the passage, we slammed shut a stone door and barred it from the other side. Good. I could hear orcs pounding on the door, but it was holding up to their pounding quite well. They wouldn't be following us down this passage.

The narrow passage was dark and ominous. It was creepy. There were spider webs on the sides of the passage, and that just made it look even creepier. The three of us finally reached the end of the passage. We were now in the largest chamber yet. There was a path around the chamber about halfway up the wall, and ladders led down to the bottom of the chamber. Tigress swapped her sword for a flame bow. She said she would cover us from above, because this looked like a trap. MoSh and I climbed down into the pit… and sure enough, it was a trap. The far wall of the chamber collapsed, and a giant spider came into the room. It was HUGE. And it looked pissed. A bunch of smaller spiders also came. By small I mean about the size of a German Shepherd… compared to the big one which was about the size of an elephant… We got into a fight with the spiders.

I fought my way through a lot of the spiders. MoSh apparently decided he didn't want to mess with the blade and changed into a large winged cobra. Tigress was up on the ledge, and she was proving to be deadly accurate with her arrows. One arrow pierced the head of each of the dog sized spiders she aimed at, and that made the spider burst into flames. She had cleared my way to the big spider. I went in quickly, aiming for one of its legs. The spider shot web at me. I cut through the web and then through its front right leg. The leg was hanging on by skin. Tigress fired a couple of arrows into the big spider. There were poofs of flame where the arrows hit, but it didn't kill the spider. The spider turned and fired web at Tigress. She dodged to the side of the web. While the spider was distracted, MoSh bathed it in green flames. The whole spider was flaming. I was attacked by some dog-sized spiders. I ran them through with my sword. A stream of web was aimed for Tigress. I intercepted it and cut it down. Tigress nailed two dog-sized spiders trying to jump on me from behind. MoSh had bitten the huge spider… yuck… I didn't envy MoSh. Enough playing around with this boss. I jumped to a pile of crates, to a taller pile of crates, and onto the spider's back. I ran Witchblade right into the spider's head. As the spider turned, one of Tigress' arrows went in to one of the spider's eyes and disappeared completely. Whether due to the poison, the sword in the brain, or the flaming arrow through the eye and into the brain, the spider finally collapsed and burned into a pile of ashes.

MoSh turned back to normal. Tigress came down to join us. There was a chest in the middle of the room where the spider had fallen. We went there to open it. We all opened the chest together and looked in. There was a treasure inside it. There was also a strange blue orb. I wondered about the orb. Did it have magical properties? I picked up the orb to look at it. There were words written deep within the orb. I looked closely to see what was written there. The words said, "This is a dream." Wtf? Oh, well… this was a dream DDO level… what else had I expected. I passed the orb around and everyone had a good laugh about it before I woke.

Note: For the first time in a long time I was successful in getting into a WILD! My first goal for this night was to go see MoSh and check out a dream he had a few nights ago where someone invaded his inner world. I figured we could just use the hologram viewing I did with my one dream. My other goals were the same list as I have had for a while now. I fell asleep with my light / sound machine and slipped into a WILD…

I was in MoSh's inner world. I looked around and saw I was in the front yard of his house. That is a common place for me to appear. I also noticed I had my backpack on. That, on the other hand, is not normal. I remembered the idea of using the hologram dream viewer to look back on his dream, so the fact I had my backpack made sense since I usually carry my laptop in the backpack.

I went to the front door and knocked. Asuka opened the door and said hello. I said hello to her, and asked where MoSh was. She said he wasn't in right now… he was training. Training? I wondered where he was doing that… I asked Asuka. She said he was training down the street a bit. He hadn't gone far. I thanked Asuka and headed down the street in the direction she had indicated. I saw there were people in a park at the end of the street. The park was a nice place, and the people were in a clear spot. I couldn't see them very well, but it looked like they were fighting. Of course… Asuka had said MoSh was training down there. I wondered who it was that was training him. I got closer and watched from the street, watching MoSh and the other person face off. I recognized the other person. It was Walms. I remembered MoSh had asked Walms to stop by and help him train. That must be what they were in the middle of.

I stood there watching the two of them train. I sensed there was someone there with me. I turned to look and saw another man there. He was watching MoSh and Walms fight. He asked what I was just standing there for, MoSh was being attacked! He said that had to stop! He started to move towards them, but I stopped him by grabbing his arm. He turned back towards me and seemed quite annoyed. He asked if I wasn't going to help MoSh. I told him MoSh didn't need any help… he and Walms were just training. He said he could tell a real attack when he saw one, and that was it. I told him to relax… MoSh's opponent was Walms. The two of them were training, and MoSh was in absolutely no danger. The man I was with seemed unwilling to accept that, and then Walms disappeared. He must have woken up.

MoSh came over beside me. He assumed the same thing, that Walms had woken up. I told MoSh I was there so we could view his dream from a couple days back when his inner world had been attacked. He said sure. We went to a picnic table and sat down. I took my laptop from my backpack and put it on the table. I opened it up and it was booted instantly, once again to the menu of dreams. I saw my own dreams listed on there. I used the mouse and moved up a directory so it was listing various users' dreams. I clicked on the one labeled 'Man of Shred' and the dream list opened again, but this time it was MoSh's dreams that were listed. I went through those until I found the one entitled 'Weird,' I clicked on that one. The computer screen popped up with the video player, I clicked play, and the hologram once again surrounded me, surrounding MoSh along with me.

So now MoSh and I were in the holographic representation of his dream. I saw MoSh talking to some woman. This didn't look like the right dream to me… MoSh was talking to her about her husband, who was missing. MoSh spent some time looking for the man, and then went into a cave and found the man trapped behind a cave in. MoSh moved some stones aside and set the man free. The man seemed very grateful, and the woman was grateful to MoSh for bringing her husband back safely. MoSh seemed pleased. Then he seemed to be waking up. Just before he disappeared, I saw the culprit who had attacked MoSh's inner world. L was behind a tree near MoSh and the woman. The woman saw L and was going to say something to MoSh, but before she could L had changed into a weird light specter and fused with MoSh… then both of them were gone. What the fuck is it with MoSh getting fused with specters?!

The hologram paused, the message 'Weird, Pt. 2" appeared on the screen, and then the hologram resumed. Now MoSh and I were viewing MoSh's inner world. MoSh was in the living room with Asuka. As soon as we got there to watch the dream, the light specter that L had transformed into separated from MoSh. He went directly at Asuka, saying he was there to rescue her and take her to paradise. She said that if he was in it, there was no way it could be called paradise. L reached out for her, but MoSh wasn't going to have any of that. He pulled L away from Asuka and threw him across the room into a corner. L looked annoyed, but he didn't attack back. Instead, he changed into a black cloud and was gone. MoSh was left groping around in the cloud looking for some way to get his bearings. The MoSh beside me was getting pissed. He said L just needs to leave Asuka alone. Asuka didn't want to go with him, and she never would. I said I was sure that was true, but it looks like L just can't accept that he has been rejected. Too much ego, most likely. I told MoSh that now we knew it was L that had attacked Asuka, and we knew how he had gotten inside. The shield needs to be modified to not let anyone fused with MoSh in, or anyone fused with anyone, actually. MoSh agreed with that, and the hologram ended.

MoSh said he was still worried about Asuka. I said Asuka should be fine… MoSh said she had been acting strange last night, so he wanted to be sure. I said ok, let's go check then. MoSh and I went back to his house. He said she was in the living room. We went into the living room. Asuka was sitting there. MoSh asked me if she looked ok. I looked at her, looking for any sign of dark energy. I didn't see any dark energy… but I figured healing will never hurt, so we could go ahead and do it. MoSh and I did healing spells, and the room filled up with golden energy. That energy was very relaxing. It flowed through me until everything faded and I woke.