A tale of the dreaming, as told by Tarja Brekke....
Recently I
found myself traveling with a small group of companions; my clan
patriarch Tuilli who is unfortunately still not in true possession of
his memories, Illumier Soft from Mayerling with his interesting magics,
and might I say, slightly pompous attitude, Nhadala with her healer's
touch, and one who appeared human in most aspects but for his cat like
ears, clawed pawlike hands, and slitted cats eyes who goes by the name
Neko, when the strangest thing happened. One night when we went to
sleep, I found in a strange dream like world with these same people.
As
we traveled through this world, you could certainly tell right away
that it was not going to be a pleasant dream. The dream sky was overcast
and dreary, with rain that while only in a dream, certainly felt so
real. In my dream we found ourselves armed and armored for combat and I
kept constantly facing down my worst mareritt… how you say… bad dream…
night terror… in combat. Small hordes of foul unformed creatures of
darkness would appear to fight us, behind them I saw it, the black death
that destroyed much of my world before I came here. Dying in the dream
did not wake me up, nor did this dream black death appear to be nothing
other than a memory, and my own mareritt. I recall only that I died this
dream death many times, and eventually awoke from it at some point
later in this dream day and we would continue to travel through this
land.
As
I traveled through these dream woods, my friends with me, we
encountered small locked chests scattered throughout the trees, filled
with beads. Taking a bead from each we managed to open we put them with a
dream web that was found in the possession of my dream's Illumier Soft.
It appeared that there must have been others in this land, for some of
he chests had been opened before we got there and had what was in
removed.
At
various times certain dream keepers appeared to us with challenges we
were meant to face. As I find to be often true with my dreams, these
tasks made no sense, but we would complete them; things like flipping
over a piece of canvas while standing on it, and getting rid of a barrel
of harmful refuse without coming to close. These tasks would come and
then vanish as soon as they were complete, leaving me to continue to
wander through this dream land with my dream companions. Together we
traveled, balancing across logs on rivers, and slipping through the
woods, continuing to fight off the dark dreams and collect beads.
As
it began to come to night in the dream, it became dawn in the real
world, where I awoke to relate my tale to my friends of this strange
dream. Only to discover that we each had a dream where we were in the
same dream land, facing off their own mareritt. Tuilli spoke of his, of
seeing Sir Sean dancing around a fire in dancing girl clothing. Soft
spoke of Tuilli just eternally walking around passing foul smelling gas.
It appeared that the only differences in what we remembered where in
what form the mareritt appeared, otherwise our memories were exactly the
same.
We
then looked into Soft's box that he always carries with him, only to
discover that he still had the dream web and the beads. We went and
found others who spoke of a similar experience with small groups of
their friends as well. Never more than five to a group. Some spoke of
seeing foul deformed versions of those they knew, except speaking only
in howls and attacking them, others of strange creatures which attacked,
some even of death itself coming for them with foul demons of Hel.
I do not know what these dreams and portents mean for the future, I shall have to seek a wise one of the gods to find out.
