I Walk in Dreams -- An Esoteric Journey Quest

You don't hesitate for a second. "Sure," you say. "I'd love to go on an adventure with you. The dreaming-realm is beautiful and fascinating, and I'm always happy to see more of it."

The Golden Prince's face lights up, looking for all the world like an actual little boy who has been cruelly cooped up all day and has just been told that an outing to the park lies in his future. "Hurrah!" he says. Not hooray; hurrah. "Well, if you want to see more of it, shall we go flying? There's no view like the view from above."

Uh. What? "That sounds good," you say cautiously. "However, I should mention that I can't fly."

His face falls, and like knives piercing your heart you feel the shame of being the person to deprive the Golden Prince of his joy. "You can't? Have you tried?"

You shake your head. "When I first started wise-dreaming and learned the basics of air magic, I gave it a shot. They say to practice by a lake, so that when you crash you just get wet instead of hurt. It's good advice." Everyone tries, you've been assured. It doesn't work. Oh, there are stories of great prodigies who soar through the air like dragonflies. But those would be people who reached the very pinnacle of human aerokinesis, and none of the dreamers you met in the lowlands had ever actually seen it for themselves, just heard stories or read about it in books. Which makes sense, since magi of such skill and power would not be in the lowlands with the people who haven't so much set a foot on the Ascent.

(You realize with a jolt that where you are on the Ascent, you might run into magi of that caliber. It's a bizarre feeling, to consider such a master your spiritual peer.)

The Golden Prince looks thoughtful for a moment, and then his expression brightens. Literally: his eyes are more radiant than they were. "I know!" He turns away from you, towards the campfire (and now that you're close, there's something strange-looking about it), leans down, and before you can do more than reach out an arm in mute protest he grabs the fire in one hand and swings it up and over his shoulders. Your eyes adjust: it wasn't a campfire at all, there was no fuel being burned. It was just the fire itself, now being worn like a cloak, which had been dropped in a pile on the rock the way a child might discard his jacket on the floor instead of putting it away neatly. He lets it settle, then takes hold of the edge and starts picking at it before looking back to you. "Here!" he says, holding out his hand, on which rests five flaming feathers. "Wear these, and then we can fly together!"

You accept them cautiously, barely suppressing a wince at expected pain -- but though you can feel their heat, they don't burn you or your possessions, and the heat doesn't actually hurt. Your nerves are just reporting the experience of "this is very hot," wholly decoupled from the experience of pain. It's bizarre, but you table the incredulity for later while you run the quills of the feathers through the buttonholes of your shirt. You undoubtedly look ridiculous, but the Golden Prince is clearly impatient waiting for you to be ready, so you're not going to take more time on it. "Got it. So, how do I-"

The fire on the Prince's back spreads into a pair of tremendous flaming wings, and with a single beat like the gust of a sirocco, he's rocketing into the air. You gape for a second. Now, how are you supposed to-

Oh, that's how, you think as you feel a matching set sprout from your back, and with a flex of your will you follow after him.

---

You and the Golden Prince fly together for what feels like hours.

(The analytical part of your mind, which never quite turns off, is absolutely flummoxed by the fact that his magic not only gave you the capability to fly, but the capability to control your flight. Even the great masters from apocryphal stories needed practice, and here you are zipping around like it's nothing. This is utterly beyond anything you've heard of a human practitioner doing, and he did it with casual ease upon a moment's thought. More indication, if you needed it, that the appearance of a human child is deceptive and this is in truth one of the great powers of the dream which has decided to bless you for reasons of its own.)

(Unless it isn't a deception at all, but a truth being simultaneously hidden and revealed. Food to think over later, but you've been noticing a lot of that sort of thing in the dreaming-realm.)

You marvel at the land stretched out below you, so like what you saw from the Shrine of Celestial Winds and nonetheless made incredibly different by the lack of any land under your feet. You race the Golden Prince from landmark to landmark, twirl around each other in a burning helix, and perform all sorts of insane maneuvers. You divebomb an omen vulture that you can't swear is "yours" but, since it would be very funny if it were, you choose to believe that its squawk of startlement before you veered off a collision course was familiar.

One thing you don't do is break through the cloud cover above you. The Golden Prince avoids it, keeping a lower altitude ceiling without comment, and you follow his lead. The last thing you'd want to do is spoil this incredible experience by giving some offense -- or, worse, disrupting whatever magic is keeping you safely alight. But, alas, all good things must come to an end, and this is no exception. You sense it as the feathers go out, one by one. When the last one starts feeling like it wants to dim, you catch the Golden Prince's attention and gesture to the mesa beneath you, then begin to descend. Once you've landed, stumbling as you regain your land legs after impossibly maneuverable and effortless flight, he joins you, far more gracefully. "Do you have to go?" he asks, not quite pouting as he does.

"I'm afraid so," you say, collecting the four exinguished and one guttering feathers and offering them back to him. "The magic you gave me to fly is running out, and I need to keep up my Ascent. But thank you very much; I've never flown like this before, and I'll never forget it."

"You're welcome!" he chirps. "Thank you for coming on an adventure with me, Ash. It's more fun with a friend, and it's sad when you don't have anyone to share your adventures with."

"Yeah," you say, nodding, before you do a double take. "Wait, do you-"

He vanishes in a puff of smokeless fire. Fucking greater dream-entities, you grumble to yourself, but you can't help but smile as you pick your way across the mesa, your spirits lighter and your mind awhirl.

---

FOUR OF PENTACLES

Not having wings anymore sucks.

You huff and puff as you make your way across the rocky and uneven terrain. You've had to backtrack several times when your initial approaches turned up without a viable path, and every time just sapped more energy, not to mention morale. Not for the first time tonight, you think about the degree to which your physical fitness is reflected in your dream-self. Is it a true mapping of one to one, where you have a real spiritual analogue of your actual body, or is it just based on what you expect? Or, if you were sufficiently good at altering your unconscious expectations via doublethink or similar cognitive nonsense, could you arrive in the dreaming-realm as an incarnation of strength and endurance, regardless of what your waking reality is like? Marshaling arguments in favor of one hypothesis or the other is a more pleasant use of your attention than what you're doing, so you let that divert you for a while until you are interrupted by a very welcome noise: running water.

You orient yourself, moving back and forth and listening carefully, until you're confident that you've triangulated a bearing and approximate distance. Then you circle around, finding a traversable route that will lead you in that direction, more or less, and repeat the process until you lay eyes on a large mountain pool, fed by water cascading from above and running off down the slope in a brisk stream, the other side from where you came. There's even flowers sprouting around it, and a little island in the center...

Your steps slow as you notice that all the flowers are lotuses, and that the "island" is a granite slab of a size fit for an adult to lie down on, and you realize where you are.

The Ascent is grindingly tiring. All dreams are tiring. One seldom gets the chance to get any real rest while exploring the higher realms. What are you going to do -- sleep while you're asleep?

That is precisely what you can do, if you lie upon the Bier of Lotuses. Simply wade into the water, lie upon the stone, close your eyes, and: sleep. Dream of a world beyond this dreaming-world, stranger still. It is supposed to be very refreshing, and perhaps instructive. But occultists speak of the Bier of Lotuses in wary tones. Is the other-dreaming-realm a truer dream, or just a dazzling falsehood, and how could you know the difference? When you slumber in a place of such power, how sure can you be that you will be the same when you awaken?

You consider your options, weariness and wariness at war with one another, curiosity and caution the same.

[] Take a breath, and move on: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend 1 Willpower: Add this card to your Pneuma and reveal the top card of the Ascent Deck. If it is a Two, Three, Four, or Five, Lose the winner of the [ANTE] vote from your Pneuma, or gain a Supernal Experience if it is anything else. Then shuffle the revealed card into the Ascent Deck.

[][ANTE] Write-in a card from your Pneuma
Remember that you can ante the Four itself.

[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.

---

Decks and Resources: Character Sheet
Night-specific information: 2/max 6 Explorations

By now you are comfortable enough with matters supernal that you think you don't have a lot to fear from the Bier's dreams -- even if it hasn't been that long, in absolute time, since you began your Ascent, a lot has happened and you've learned a great deal, so much so that you do not think yourself easily unmoored from reality. There's a risk, but not a tremendous one. And the prospect of dreaming impossible dreams is an enticing one.

No, the problem is time. Time and focus. What laws govern the Ascent are vague, but all the writers are in agreement: you cannot embrace everything. You must remain hungry for the highest heights, if you wish to reach them: a novice may freely drink in the experiences of the dreaming-realm, allowing it to shape their unformed soul, but too much and your Ascent will inevitably stagnate and stall out. What constitutes "too much" varies by the aspirant. You don't think you're in terribly dire straits, but you don't know what you'll encounter. That's the rub; the greater powers of the dream are powerful existences who leave their marks upon dreamers, and you have climbed higher and higher into their dwelling-places. You have much to learn from them... but you also have no choice but to learn from them. And so the lesser stations of the dream, like this one... must, regretfully, be passed over.

You do spend some time here, refreshing yourself with the waters of the pool and admiring the lotus flowers that festoon the bier. But nothing deeper than that. Nothing to leave marks on the soul, for good or for ill. Just a short break from your travels, of the sort you might take while hiking a wholly mundane trail. Were it not for the bizarre vistas you look upon as your weary legs dangle from a ledge, or the too-close horizon, or the lack of sun or moon in the sky, this could easily be taking place in the waking world.

But it's not, and you have places to be. So, with one last longing and curious glance, you depart.

---

PAGE OF PENTACLES

If only departing involved more climbing. You hadn't thought you would think that, not when your calves had seemed to be surgically removed and replaced with ovoids of suffering, but you look back on that wistfully, now. No matter what you do, it seems like all your paths lead down.

The Ascent is not entirely literal and it is not monotonic, you remind yourself. Proceeding downward for a while doesn't mean you're regressing, or even that you aren't progressing. Still, after the heights of accomplishment and, uh, literal heights you experienced earlier tonight, it's aggravating, like an unscratchable itch. You fume quietly as you make your way carefully down the mountain you're on and into the valley the traversable terrain seems to be guiding you to.

At least it's pretty down here, you think to yourself. The mountain had been rocky and its vegetation scrubby, where it had any: this valley is lush and cool, with grass underfoot, patches of wildflowers sprinkled around, and trees of all sorts dotting the landscape. In fact...

You sniff the air. Yes, that's definitely the unmistakeable odor of uncultivated fruit trees -- fruit that has ripened, fallen of its own accord, and begun to rot. Your nose isn't sensitive enough to pick up on the exact direction, of course, but luckily it doesn't need to be: the smell has been growing more noticeable as you've walked, so you're going approximately the right way and you can just keep an eye out. And, indeed, you do eventually spot what is clearly an orchard and make your way towards it. You've had some dream-fruit in the lowlands before -- well, these lands are pretty low, so maybe it will be similarly delicious.

Apparently someone else had the same idea, because there's a young man sitting under one of the trees. An apple rests in his hand, and cores litter the ground around him. He's not eating it, though -- he's looking around, seeming kind of dazed. "Hello there!" you hail him. "You all right there? These fruits aren't intoxicating or anything, are they?" The risks of consuming dream-food and drinking dream-spirits are overexaggerated, but they're not nothing.

He swivels his head, looking you up and down in a manner that makes you think of someone taking in the sight of a strange animal. "Oh, there's a person now. I'm doing just fine, my good..." he squints. "...person?" You've gotten that sort of thing before, and you find it rather affirming every time it does; however, his followup is a new one in your experience. "No, this is awkward and confusing," he mutters to himself. "Let's try this again." He waves his hand in a peculiar gesture -- almost like he's swiping away on a touchscreen. But... at you.

"Uh," you say cautiously. "Are you sending me away?" If this is a stupefaction of some kind from dream-fruit, it's the strangest kind you've ever heard of.

"Yes, obviously," he says. "I'd rather be having a different conversation that I started better, so I'm trying to stop dreaming of you and dream of someone else."

"...I don't know where you learned your art from," you reply, "but that's all kinds of not how anything works. Just because you're dreaming of me doesn't mean I'm not real."

"...Yes it does?" he says, climbing to his feet. "That's kind of what those words mean. I'll say this for you, though, you're the most backchatty dream I think I've ever had."

A few things click in rapid succession.

He's not drugged. He's confused. Merciful Heaven, he's completely ignorant.

Somehow, a natively incredibly talented dreamer has begun wise-dreaming without intending to or knowing how. Is he on the Ascent by accident? Or did the dreaming-realm just put him in your path, which is why you had to descend into a valley first? Are you being fucked with? Is he being fucked with? What is going on?

You don't have answers to any of that. But you'll need to have an answer to the question of how you interact with this bewildering young man.

[] Move on, saying only a few words in passing, or nothing at all: Gain this card as an Aura.
[] Spend one Willpower, joining the dreamer in enjoying the delights of this place: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Experience.
[] Spend one Supernal Insight or Aura of the suit of Wands, providing a crash course in basic occultism: Add this card to your Pneuma. Gain one Supernal Insight.

[][ASCENT] Keep exploring.
[][ASCENT] Wake up, ending the Night.

---

Decks and Resources: Character Sheet
Night-specific information: 3/max 6 Explorations, Pentacles Aura

• In which our character's internal monologue is influenced by the thread discussion. Everybody was focused on preserving Willpower, so Ash is too.
• ALL FOUR PAGES BY NIGHT FIVE good heavens y'all.
• Just imagine: if you'd picked "from no one at all" back in chargen, you could have been like this guy! Wouldn't that have been fun?