A tale told by Tarja of her… their recent travels.
“The
other day I again experienced a waking dream. I was at Gabriel’s when I
fell asleep for the night and next thing I knew was in the woods with
Tuilli, Kyram, and Eoin of the Oaken Guard. It was not as a normal
dream, it was again very real. We fought nightmares through the woods,
many more this time than the last. We ran through the trees, sun pouring
down through this time instead of rain; it was warm. Again there were
locked chests throughout with riddles that we needed to solve to open
the chests. In some we found gold, in others beads as we journeyed
along. We also found a larger chest, the riddle to open it was a
combination of the riddles from the others, unfortunately we could not
crack this riddle quickly and moved on.
As
before we came across odd challenges, first we were given words by
strange dream spirits that we then had to act out for each other to
guess… Did you know that Leviathan was once called Feast of Rhiassa? I
didn’t until then. After we defeated that challenge the spirits vanished
into mist and we continued on, running up and down hills, crossing logs
over a river, continuing to unlock chests and fight strange nightmares.
Eventually
we came to our next challenge. For some reason we were handed an orange
and told we had to pass the orange to each other without using our
hands or arms in any way and then place it in an open chest at the end…
This was quite a sight to behold I’m sure. I tried to hold it in my
teeth but instead ripped a chunk of peel and flesh out of the orange and
caused it to roll away. After this we went with a plan Tuilli had. This
reminded him of a challenge him and his son had done at Hogwarts, so
they showed us how it was done. Tucking the orange up under our chins we
then passed it to each other, chin to chin, and finally after a couple
of tries made it in.
Leaving
this challenge a dark shroud of nightmare energy began to chase us as
we quickly ducked down a small, hidden side path full of hills, ruts and
rocks in an attempt to lose it. Which we eventually succeeded. As we
continued on into yet another challenge.
A
member of our team was given an item that when they threw it would
activate into a dangerous spell, to touch it would kill us. We had to
use various tools around us to get this spell through the woods and into
a container to safely hold it. Alas though we spent about 10 minutes
trying with all our might, and laughing at Tuilli as he held my marn by
its scabbard attempting to use the shield to knock the spell into the
open chest the spirits who set the challenge and the spell ball and
chest vanished before we were successful.
We
returned to our journey through the woods, continuing to fight off our
nightmares when eventually another challenge appeared before us. This
time there were three blindfolds, a chest full of different colored
balls, and an empty chest a distance away. The dream spirits explained
that we were to blindfold ourselves and throw the balls into the empty
chest, but any red ball that entered the chest and we would lose points.
To succeed and earn a bead from them we needed 10 points. Tuilli stood
behind the empty chest, calling to us non-stop while those of us who
were blindfolded aimed in the direction of his voice. He told us when we
had a red ball and to throw it away or when to aim for the chest. We
quickly got the 10 points we needed but the dream spirits let us
continue as they laughed at us for a while before finally vanishing,
leaving us with another bead.
Again
we continued our journey, as the dream sun moved across the sky. When
again another challenge appeared, though this was to be the last. We
were by the river as the spirits appeared before us, an empty chest on
one side of the river and a sling and a small pile of balls on the
other. It was explained that we must get three balls across the river
using the sling and into the empty chest. Tuilli ran about with the
chest, bouncing and juggling the balls as he caught them while Kyram
mastered the art of the sling. Quickly we impressed the spirits as we
completed the challenge faster than they expected and gave us our bead
before again vanishing into mist.
We
continued on a short while longer, chatting as the sun went down in the
dream sky. The last thing I remember before waking was dream Tuilli
telling me to return home as I have not been since Feast of Creathorne.
So that is where I return to now"
