- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Shamiko from The Demon Girl Next Door is also in play, so this will definitely not be the last dreamwalking we'll be seeing in quest.
Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)
Shamiko from The Demon Girl Next Door is also in play, so this will definitely not be the last dreamwalking we'll be seeing in quest.
Almech_Alfarion
(Unverified Paradox)
- Location
- Roaming the Void of the Space between Spaces
Don't forget the clothes with far too many zippers and belt buckles to be practical.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
J
Dream powers, man…it doesn't take a well established Sailor Moon lore fiend of fic writer who has played in dream spaces before to see this delightful crossover Bunny Witch and her familiar are eventually on a ships in the night passing if not full on collision course for Elysion & maybe Helios down the line.
I wonder… @Lunaryon @Silverking have either of you delved into the 3.5 D&D Manual of the Planes before?
Dream powers, man…it doesn't take a well established Sailor Moon lore fiend of fic writer who has played in dream spaces before to see this delightful crossover Bunny Witch and her familiar are eventually on a ships in the night passing if not full on collision course for Elysion & maybe Helios down the line.
I wonder… @Lunaryon @Silverking have either of you delved into the 3.5 D&D Manual of the Planes before?
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Ehh, his Dream Drop outfit isn't too bad on that front. It's probably one of his better looks, actually.
Grue
滅亡迅雷
- Location
- -
On the other hand, he's the version that's accompanied by a horde of dead kids.
(KH's definitely not contributing anything beyond faces and references given the cosmology'd be a headache, but I'm not sure what dream stuff's already present other than the aforementioned SM stuff. 'Gear's delving into the mind trended more to punching the trauma in the face rather than the boundary between dreams and reality, mind and matter.)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Neat. Getting big Lucid Dream skill vibes from Silverking's side story.
Brazil Omake: First Contact
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Brazil Omake: First Contact
"But there's so many lights and colors," Coco said, nervously looking around. "What if we miss something?"
"Don't worry; the spell makes it very obvious when something doesn't belong. It could be an ugly gargoyle in the tunnel of love, or a sluggish cart in the go-kart track, or-"
"Or that tower coming out of the spooky graveyard house!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lorena looked over at a nearby haunted house and sighed. This haunted house had obviously undergone some recent remodeling, what with the three-story brass and silver tower up against the right side of the building. One of those towers, only smaller. "Or... that. That's a great example, Coco. Good catch."
"Should... should we check it out?"
"Hmm." Lorena thought about it for a moment. "I... think that tower is properly integrated into the haunted house. See the cobwebs and climbing vines all around it? They match the aesthetic. I- and a few other dreamwalkers- have checked spots like that before. There doesn't seem to be anything magically wrong with those dreams. We might all be missing something, but it wouldn't be the first time a new disaster in the waking world got sort of echoed in people's dreams, without anything unnatural making it happen. The Towers are something that a lot of regular people have been having nightmares about, after all."
"…Aww. That's sad. Have the Peacekeepers figured out how to get rid of them yet?"
"I haven't heard anything yet. I hope they figure something out soon." Lorena straightened herself and tried to put on a brave face. "But anyway, good job spotting that tower, Coco. That's just the kind of thing we need to do. Now, come on, we've got the rest of the Park to explore."
***Several Minutes Later***
Lorena turned her head to get a look at Coco out of the corner of her eye, and smiled. The bunny was riding on her shoulder, eating a pawful of cotton candy. They hadn't found anything out of place yet, but Lorena had enjoyed taking Coco on some of the lower-intensity rides like the carousel and the flying swings.
"So, if this place is a map to all the dream bubbles, is Ruan's dream somewhere in here?" Coco asked.
"Oh, I'm sure it's around here somewhere. But if we wanted to find his dream bubble in particular, I'd want to use a different divination spell for that. The amusement park trades detail and specificity for breadth and getting a look at things more easily. The only way for any one dream to stand out is if it's not matching its surroundings."
"Does the amusement park connect to all the dreams in Rio?"
Lorena thought for a moment. "Good question. I'm not really sure how to check. There are millions and millions of people in Rio. And some people don't dream very often, or don't dream at all. And... well, just because Rio is where we fell asleep, doesn't mean it's the only place we can get at now. Distance doesn't matter much, maybe not at all, in the Sea of Dreams. If you've made a close connection with someone, or have the right kind of souvenir, you can get to dreamers all around the world. Dreamers in Mexico, France, Russia-"
Coco interrupted, then, in a tone as sharp and sudden as Lorena could ever remember her using. "What about dreamers on the Moon?"
"What?" Lorena looked at her familiar, a bit puzzled.
"You said that the Sea of Dreams connects to everyone. Would it connect to dreamers on the Moon?"
"…Coco, I'm pretty sure that there are no dreamers on the Moon. It's a barren rock in space, nobody lives there."
"…Has anyone checked?"
Lorena found herself grinning, not in amusement, but in not even being sure what to say to such a fanciful idea. "Well, there are telescopes, and the Russians sent space probes and the Americans even sent astronauts to the moon. If there were people living there, they'd have noticed."
"Hmmm. I don't know... Were any of the probes and astronauts dream mages? Or did they just walk around a little and take a look and go 'nope, nobody here?' Could somebody be... hiding?"
"Coco, why on Earth would you think anyone was hiding in the moon?"
"Just asking..." Coco trailed off, uncertainly. "It's just... a feeling. I thought maybe we could double-check."
"And how would you go about doing that?"
Coco pointed up at the sky. "Well, I see the Moon right up there. And we can fly. Why couldn't we go see for ourselves?"
Lorena followed the line of Coco's pointing paw... huh. The illusion of the amusement park always, every time, incorporated the colorful, chaotic night sky of the Sea of Dreams. But... trying to think about it, to concentrate on it, Lorena couldn't remember if it always included the Moon, or only sometimes. Or... maybe even never before, now that she thought about it. She never came here just to look at the sky.
Maybe a lot of people were dreaming about the Moon this evening? But no, the park would just classify a lot of dreams like that into a ride, into part of itself. Something very strange would have to be happening for a dream to show up as anything other than just a ride, as a completely separate image.
Or maybe the Moon in the sky was just a separate background projection, part of the illusion itself, like the ground under her feet, or most of the garbage cans. Maybe there was nothing up there except a false image, like the projections on the dome of a planetarium.
Lorena weighed the image of the Moon against the night sky, weighed it against all her education and knowledge and deductions. And it all added up to "I don't know."
What it came down to, in the end, was that the night was young and warm, and she felt like trying something new. And she certainly didn't feel like making Coco feel scolded for wanting to try something new herself.
"You know what? Sure, let's go and see what happens. Ready to practice using your plates again?"
Coco nodded, manifested a plate, and hopped onto it from Lorena's shoulder. Lorena floated into the sky, and Coco began climbing an ascending staircase of plates. The moon drew closer and closer at first, growing bigger in the sky than it ever appeared in real life… until it drew close enough for proper depth perception, and Lorena realized just how close they'd gotten.
Close to the flat image of the moon, a circle no wider than Lorena was tall, hanging in the sky.
Lorena sighed and waved her hand in the air next to the moon image, which rippled gently. "That's what I thought. This is just the edge of the illusion. I think this is just part of the scenery, not something that relates to the actual Moon. Sorry, Coco."
Coco, though, stared fixedly at the image of the moon in front of them. She seemed almost hypnotized. "But… no, it's right there. If we just went a little… bit… more…"
Coco suddenly leapt through the center of the image, leaving behind a pattern of ripples little more dramatic than those Lorena had caused with her hand.
"Coco? Coco, where are you going?" Lorena flitted after the white rabbit, plunging into the image of the Moon- which must be an entryway of some kind for Coco to have passed through so easily. Despite realizing this, Lorena was quite surprised to feel the pulling sensation associated with the amusement park leading her to an influenced dream. Bubbles rushed past her as she soared through the Sea, faster than she'd ever traversed it before, for minutes that rushed past like seconds but somehow seemed to carry the weight of hours. Finally, she came to a stop, barely aware of her surroundings after such a swift and unrelenting journey.
"Coco, you can't just go running off… like…" Lorena looked up in shock. "What in the world is this!?"
An ordinary deep sleeper's dream bubble was about a meter and a half in diameter- usually a little less. A lucid dreamer's bubble would be larger, often as much as two meters across.
This, this was clearly a dream bubble, but it was... it was huge. As big as a building. Maybe bigger. She was floating so close to it that when she looked to her left and right, it blocked out nearly half the sky of the Sea of Dreams. There was curvature, it was still a bubble of some kind, but... She felt like an ant, crawling across the surface of a beachball.
Coco, awestruck, turned on her plate to look at Lorena. "Lorena, this thing is soooo big. This must be a lucid dreamer's bubble, right? You said those were bigger."
Lorena floated a little closer to the bubble. "Bigger, yes, but nothing like this. I've never seen one this big before. I'm not sure whether to report it to the Peacekeepers, or just leave it alone..." She felt confused, and worried. If there was a dream this big somewhere that could be easily accessed from the dreamscape around Rio, if this was something that had been there for years, surely someone would have already known about it and told her. Did that mean this was new? Or had she somehow traveled a long way from Rio, literally or in dream terms, in a way that no one else she knew had done?
Then she stopped pondering and looked around, realizing- "Coco? Coco, where did you go? Wait!"
"[Knock-knock!]"
Before Lorena could do more than begin to flit forward to scoop Coco up, the spell was already cast. A tiny, very familiar blue ball of light zipped from Coco's paw to the surface of the super-bubble.
"Coco, what are you doing!? We don't know whose dream this is, it could be dangerous-"
Quite suddenly, all within no more than a few seconds, the smooth surface of the bubble began to gain shape, then texture, then color, forming the shape of a great stone gateway, closed by a massive door of elaborately inlaid and bejeweled metal. A thin fan of red light emerged from a sparkling crystal in the center of the door, sweeping quickly up and down as though to observe or measure the girl and rabbit. The voice that followed the scan was light and feminine in timbre, but nonetheless faintly robotic.
"⌇⟟☌⋏⏃⏁⎍⍀⟒ ⍀⟒☊⍜☌⋏⟟⋉⟒⎅: ⎅⟒⋏⌇ ⍜⎎ ⏁⊑⟒ ⏚⟒⏃⌇⏁⌇. ⋏⍜ ⊑⍜⌇⏁⟟⌰⟒ ⋔⟒⋔⟒⏁⟟☊⌇ ⎅⟒⏁⟒☊⏁⟒⎅. ⌿⌰⟒⏃⌇⟒ ⌇⏁⏃⏁⟒ ⋏⏃⋔⟒ ⏃⋏⎅ ⍀⟒⌿⍀⟒⌇⟒⋏⏁⏃⏁⟟⎐⟒ ⌿⍜⌰⟟⏁⊬."
Lorena was frozen. "…I'm sorry; I don't understand. We didn't mean to disturb you-"
A door made a strange series of sounds, then fell silent for a time. Afterwards, the voice continued, this time in Portuguese. "Language synchronized. Please state name and representative polity."
"…Lorena Oliveira. From… Brazil?"
"Sign-in recorded. Processing… Rejoice! Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty is available to hold court today. Please stand by."
"Wait, Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty? What-"
The stone gate suddenly burst open, with a strong suction that pulled the pair into darkness-
Lorena opened her eyes to find herself holding Coco in her arms. She stood, a bit shakily, as if still half-floating, in a large, very airy room with high ceilings and wide windows. The windows gave her a view of the night sky over a great ocean- there was something funny about the horizon, but there were more important things to think of.
Because this wasn't just a room with a view. Near the far wall, there were two thrones, made of white metal decorated in the same style as the door had been. One was slightly more ornate, and more centered. Behind the thrones, a waterfall flowed- flowed in impossible silence.
The silent water, the peculiar absent weight, the... tightness of the horizon... Surely, this must still be somewhere in dream.
Which meant. Which meant.
Lorena started to hyperventilate.
Coco hopped from one plate to another that she'd conjured almost directly alongside the first, then to a third that brought her close enough to Lorena to lean up against her. "Lorena, what's wrong? Everything here is so pretty..."
Lorena forced herself to answer clearly. For Coco's sake.
"Coco, I… I know that this has all been very exciting for you, and that you were excited to see everything that dreamwalking has to offer. But there are dangers out here, Coco. Dangers that even I can't handle easily. Or maybe at all. Even the figments of a regular deep sleeper can confuse or overwhelm an intruder. And lucid dreamers can craft all kinds of traps for anyone who comes inside their dream. I don't know who this person is. I don't know if she'll be our friend or not. Now, I have some training in dream combat. But thinking about the size of this dream bubble, this 'Sublime Majesty' is probably a WAY better dream mage than I am. And even if she's just as good at it as can be, then she must have been working on this Crafted Space for… well, for longer than I've been alive, at least. And that means she has lots of ways to hurt people she doesn't like."
Coco's ears drooped. "…Did... did I knock on a baddie's door?"
Lorena reminded herself to try to stay composed. Again, for Coco's sake, if nothing else. "You… knocked on a stranger's door, and that coin can land either way. We'll just have to do our best, be polite, and hope that 'Her Majesty' is in a good mood."
"Lorena, what's a Majesty? And who does it belong to?"
"I... hm. It's a… term that kings and queens use to refer to themselves. I think 'Her Majesty' is what you call a queen, but it might be 'Her Royal Highness," or something else. I never really studied any of those rules, and I think it depends... but I never heard of a 'celestial' or 'sublime' majesty. That... means that whoever this is, probably gets a lot of ideas from places I don't know about. Either very old, or very... different." Lorena racked her brains, trying to remember anything that might be a reference to those titles. Could they have gone through a door to some part of Faerieland, somehow? That was usually more of a problem in Europe, but... uh-oh. Let's see, Winter Court, Spring Court, Summer Court-
Coco touched her cheek again. She was pointing out the window with her other paw. "Lorena? I think we might be on the Moon."
Given what could happen to people who were trying to remember faerie etiquette from lessons three years ago in a hurry and who got it wrong, Lorena felt she had the right to be a little frustrated by that. "Are you still on that? Look, Coco, I'm pretty sure that there aren't any oceans on the Moon, let alone a big palace or whatever this is."
"Sorry. I was just thinking... if we're not on the Moon, then how come the Earth's up in the sky?"
And then, at last, Lorena looked up, following the line of Coco's paw again, as she had in the amusement park.
That... that was the Earth, or something much like it. It hung there like something from a globe at school, big and blue and streaked with white and four times the size of the full moon she was used to. She tilted her head. Yes, there was Brazil, and the rest of the Americas, and Europe and the nose of Africa just poking around from the side- and... an extra continent in the Atlantic? It wasn't that big, maybe about the size of Peru or Mexico, she guessed. But it was definitely out of place.
"No, no... well... maybe, in a way. But there's something off about all this." Lorena stopped, trying to imagine what could possibly be happening. She'd heard rumors that some mages would put themselves into deep, deep trances, working magic to sustain their bodies almost indefinitely. That one thing a mage might do in that position was to focus all their power and concentration on a crafted space. But that being so disconnected from reality would eventually drive the magician mad, replacing all the stable memory and calculation that normally went into a constructed dream with layer after layer of malleable imagination. A realm like that, made from a mage's delusion and insanity, could be formidable, could be vast, could be terrifying... but an intruding mage could use the supersaturated imagination around them to mold and divert any threats in the crafted space, buying time to escape.
The thought of a mad sorceress this powerful was even more terrifying than what she'd already thought of, but-
She cast a quick spell on her glasses, trying to determine the composition of the dream around her, hoping there would be some kind of weak point, a way out-
Memory. Boundless memory, painstakingly etched memory, interwoven with calculation to a degree that Lorena had never seen before. But the marvelous complexities of mind and word that went into this place were just an armature, a scaffolding, barely there unless you went specifically looking for it. No, this was a place truly made of memory, like something concrete in more than one sense of the word, reinforced with something far stronger than steel. The room was memory, the thrones were memory, the ocean out the windows was memory. The Earth… well, the Earth was simply a background image. But the image itself was unmistakably memory. The air was memory. She couldn't remember a single place in the entire Sea of Dreams, ever, even once, where the air was made of memory.
And that realization, that the very breath in her lungs came from "Her Majesty's" memories, broke Lorena's concentration, and her spell with it. All of this, this edifice, was memory and a little calculation. Granted, the calculation would seem like a lot next to, say, her own crafted space, but the memory was so much more than that. Could anything human have memory like this-
And then that same robotic voice from earlier spoke to her. It sounded gentle, mild, coming from just in front of Lorena, but somehow Lorena knew that it would sound exactly the same no matter where in the room she'd been standing, filling all that wide space from no clear point of origin.
"Presenting Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty, High Queen of All Touched By Light, First Among the Stars, Supreme Chancellor of the Lunar Academies, Guardian of Humanity, Supreme Magistrate of Law,「Chakravartin」 , the Aeon Incarnate, Selene."
Light flashed by the thrones. By the time Lorena had focused her eyes back onto them, the woman who could only be 'Her Majesty' was already there. She sat the central throne with the ease of perfect familiarity, and something about the throne's proportions fit her perfectly, as though it was made for her and her alone.
The queen was pale and slender. Her dress, adorned with a bow at her chest, was gleaming white, which matched her hair, done up in long twin tails that fell past the armrests of her throne. Her face... her face... it was ageless. That face contained an implied scoff at the idea of submitting to anything as undignified as aging, but it was not young. The very notion of youth had been forgotten ages ago.
There was a golden crescent moon on the queen's brow. It wasn't drawn or tattooed; it just somehow belonged there. It was something as natural as her own skin, or perhaps more natural. And her eyes... Lorena's brain froze, when she met those eyes.
Selene's eyes were a color Lorena might call grey. She might... if they were not keen, piercing, unfathomable. If she couldn't feel them looking right through her mind, heart, and spirit like a searchlight piercing a thin curtain of wispy smoke. If they were not, so clearly, the windows of a soul so accustomed to wielding every form of power that they had long since become something very much like a sculpture, or a great instrument, or a weapon. A thing of metal, not of softness.
Standing before the throne, the only word Lorena could imagine for the queen's eyes was 'silver.'
And...
And Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty looked rather displeased.
Finally, an involuntary blink broke Lorena's eye contact with the ruler of this dream. That freed her mind far enough that she could at least draw breath, could partly recover from her hypnotized state. Partly.
She had the sinking feeling that things were about to get a lot more complicated.
"But there's so many lights and colors," Coco said, nervously looking around. "What if we miss something?"
"Don't worry; the spell makes it very obvious when something doesn't belong. It could be an ugly gargoyle in the tunnel of love, or a sluggish cart in the go-kart track, or-"
"Or that tower coming out of the spooky graveyard house!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lorena looked over at a nearby haunted house and sighed. This haunted house had obviously undergone some recent remodeling, what with the three-story brass and silver tower up against the right side of the building. One of those towers, only smaller. "Or... that. That's a great example, Coco. Good catch."
"Should... should we check it out?"
"Hmm." Lorena thought about it for a moment. "I... think that tower is properly integrated into the haunted house. See the cobwebs and climbing vines all around it? They match the aesthetic. I- and a few other dreamwalkers- have checked spots like that before. There doesn't seem to be anything magically wrong with those dreams. We might all be missing something, but it wouldn't be the first time a new disaster in the waking world got sort of echoed in people's dreams, without anything unnatural making it happen. The Towers are something that a lot of regular people have been having nightmares about, after all."
"…Aww. That's sad. Have the Peacekeepers figured out how to get rid of them yet?"
"I haven't heard anything yet. I hope they figure something out soon." Lorena straightened herself and tried to put on a brave face. "But anyway, good job spotting that tower, Coco. That's just the kind of thing we need to do. Now, come on, we've got the rest of the Park to explore."
***Several Minutes Later***
Lorena turned her head to get a look at Coco out of the corner of her eye, and smiled. The bunny was riding on her shoulder, eating a pawful of cotton candy. They hadn't found anything out of place yet, but Lorena had enjoyed taking Coco on some of the lower-intensity rides like the carousel and the flying swings.
"So, if this place is a map to all the dream bubbles, is Ruan's dream somewhere in here?" Coco asked.
"Oh, I'm sure it's around here somewhere. But if we wanted to find his dream bubble in particular, I'd want to use a different divination spell for that. The amusement park trades detail and specificity for breadth and getting a look at things more easily. The only way for any one dream to stand out is if it's not matching its surroundings."
"Does the amusement park connect to all the dreams in Rio?"
Lorena thought for a moment. "Good question. I'm not really sure how to check. There are millions and millions of people in Rio. And some people don't dream very often, or don't dream at all. And... well, just because Rio is where we fell asleep, doesn't mean it's the only place we can get at now. Distance doesn't matter much, maybe not at all, in the Sea of Dreams. If you've made a close connection with someone, or have the right kind of souvenir, you can get to dreamers all around the world. Dreamers in Mexico, France, Russia-"
Coco interrupted, then, in a tone as sharp and sudden as Lorena could ever remember her using. "What about dreamers on the Moon?"
"What?" Lorena looked at her familiar, a bit puzzled.
"You said that the Sea of Dreams connects to everyone. Would it connect to dreamers on the Moon?"
"…Coco, I'm pretty sure that there are no dreamers on the Moon. It's a barren rock in space, nobody lives there."
"…Has anyone checked?"
Lorena found herself grinning, not in amusement, but in not even being sure what to say to such a fanciful idea. "Well, there are telescopes, and the Russians sent space probes and the Americans even sent astronauts to the moon. If there were people living there, they'd have noticed."
"Hmmm. I don't know... Were any of the probes and astronauts dream mages? Or did they just walk around a little and take a look and go 'nope, nobody here?' Could somebody be... hiding?"
"Coco, why on Earth would you think anyone was hiding in the moon?"
"Just asking..." Coco trailed off, uncertainly. "It's just... a feeling. I thought maybe we could double-check."
"And how would you go about doing that?"
Coco pointed up at the sky. "Well, I see the Moon right up there. And we can fly. Why couldn't we go see for ourselves?"
Lorena followed the line of Coco's pointing paw... huh. The illusion of the amusement park always, every time, incorporated the colorful, chaotic night sky of the Sea of Dreams. But... trying to think about it, to concentrate on it, Lorena couldn't remember if it always included the Moon, or only sometimes. Or... maybe even never before, now that she thought about it. She never came here just to look at the sky.
Maybe a lot of people were dreaming about the Moon this evening? But no, the park would just classify a lot of dreams like that into a ride, into part of itself. Something very strange would have to be happening for a dream to show up as anything other than just a ride, as a completely separate image.
Or maybe the Moon in the sky was just a separate background projection, part of the illusion itself, like the ground under her feet, or most of the garbage cans. Maybe there was nothing up there except a false image, like the projections on the dome of a planetarium.
Lorena weighed the image of the Moon against the night sky, weighed it against all her education and knowledge and deductions. And it all added up to "I don't know."
What it came down to, in the end, was that the night was young and warm, and she felt like trying something new. And she certainly didn't feel like making Coco feel scolded for wanting to try something new herself.
"You know what? Sure, let's go and see what happens. Ready to practice using your plates again?"
Coco nodded, manifested a plate, and hopped onto it from Lorena's shoulder. Lorena floated into the sky, and Coco began climbing an ascending staircase of plates. The moon drew closer and closer at first, growing bigger in the sky than it ever appeared in real life… until it drew close enough for proper depth perception, and Lorena realized just how close they'd gotten.
Close to the flat image of the moon, a circle no wider than Lorena was tall, hanging in the sky.
Lorena sighed and waved her hand in the air next to the moon image, which rippled gently. "That's what I thought. This is just the edge of the illusion. I think this is just part of the scenery, not something that relates to the actual Moon. Sorry, Coco."
Coco, though, stared fixedly at the image of the moon in front of them. She seemed almost hypnotized. "But… no, it's right there. If we just went a little… bit… more…"
Coco suddenly leapt through the center of the image, leaving behind a pattern of ripples little more dramatic than those Lorena had caused with her hand.
"Coco? Coco, where are you going?" Lorena flitted after the white rabbit, plunging into the image of the Moon- which must be an entryway of some kind for Coco to have passed through so easily. Despite realizing this, Lorena was quite surprised to feel the pulling sensation associated with the amusement park leading her to an influenced dream. Bubbles rushed past her as she soared through the Sea, faster than she'd ever traversed it before, for minutes that rushed past like seconds but somehow seemed to carry the weight of hours. Finally, she came to a stop, barely aware of her surroundings after such a swift and unrelenting journey.
"Coco, you can't just go running off… like…" Lorena looked up in shock. "What in the world is this!?"
An ordinary deep sleeper's dream bubble was about a meter and a half in diameter- usually a little less. A lucid dreamer's bubble would be larger, often as much as two meters across.
This, this was clearly a dream bubble, but it was... it was huge. As big as a building. Maybe bigger. She was floating so close to it that when she looked to her left and right, it blocked out nearly half the sky of the Sea of Dreams. There was curvature, it was still a bubble of some kind, but... She felt like an ant, crawling across the surface of a beachball.
Coco, awestruck, turned on her plate to look at Lorena. "Lorena, this thing is soooo big. This must be a lucid dreamer's bubble, right? You said those were bigger."
Lorena floated a little closer to the bubble. "Bigger, yes, but nothing like this. I've never seen one this big before. I'm not sure whether to report it to the Peacekeepers, or just leave it alone..." She felt confused, and worried. If there was a dream this big somewhere that could be easily accessed from the dreamscape around Rio, if this was something that had been there for years, surely someone would have already known about it and told her. Did that mean this was new? Or had she somehow traveled a long way from Rio, literally or in dream terms, in a way that no one else she knew had done?
Then she stopped pondering and looked around, realizing- "Coco? Coco, where did you go? Wait!"
"[Knock-knock!]"
Before Lorena could do more than begin to flit forward to scoop Coco up, the spell was already cast. A tiny, very familiar blue ball of light zipped from Coco's paw to the surface of the super-bubble.
"Coco, what are you doing!? We don't know whose dream this is, it could be dangerous-"
Quite suddenly, all within no more than a few seconds, the smooth surface of the bubble began to gain shape, then texture, then color, forming the shape of a great stone gateway, closed by a massive door of elaborately inlaid and bejeweled metal. A thin fan of red light emerged from a sparkling crystal in the center of the door, sweeping quickly up and down as though to observe or measure the girl and rabbit. The voice that followed the scan was light and feminine in timbre, but nonetheless faintly robotic.
"⌇⟟☌⋏⏃⏁⎍⍀⟒ ⍀⟒☊⍜☌⋏⟟⋉⟒⎅: ⎅⟒⋏⌇ ⍜⎎ ⏁⊑⟒ ⏚⟒⏃⌇⏁⌇. ⋏⍜ ⊑⍜⌇⏁⟟⌰⟒ ⋔⟒⋔⟒⏁⟟☊⌇ ⎅⟒⏁⟒☊⏁⟒⎅. ⌿⌰⟒⏃⌇⟒ ⌇⏁⏃⏁⟒ ⋏⏃⋔⟒ ⏃⋏⎅ ⍀⟒⌿⍀⟒⌇⟒⋏⏁⏃⏁⟟⎐⟒ ⌿⍜⌰⟟⏁⊬."
Lorena was frozen. "…I'm sorry; I don't understand. We didn't mean to disturb you-"
A door made a strange series of sounds, then fell silent for a time. Afterwards, the voice continued, this time in Portuguese. "Language synchronized. Please state name and representative polity."
"…Lorena Oliveira. From… Brazil?"
"Sign-in recorded. Processing… Rejoice! Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty is available to hold court today. Please stand by."
"Wait, Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty? What-"
The stone gate suddenly burst open, with a strong suction that pulled the pair into darkness-
Lorena opened her eyes to find herself holding Coco in her arms. She stood, a bit shakily, as if still half-floating, in a large, very airy room with high ceilings and wide windows. The windows gave her a view of the night sky over a great ocean- there was something funny about the horizon, but there were more important things to think of.
Because this wasn't just a room with a view. Near the far wall, there were two thrones, made of white metal decorated in the same style as the door had been. One was slightly more ornate, and more centered. Behind the thrones, a waterfall flowed- flowed in impossible silence.
The silent water, the peculiar absent weight, the... tightness of the horizon... Surely, this must still be somewhere in dream.
Which meant. Which meant.
Lorena started to hyperventilate.
Coco hopped from one plate to another that she'd conjured almost directly alongside the first, then to a third that brought her close enough to Lorena to lean up against her. "Lorena, what's wrong? Everything here is so pretty..."
Lorena forced herself to answer clearly. For Coco's sake.
"Coco, I… I know that this has all been very exciting for you, and that you were excited to see everything that dreamwalking has to offer. But there are dangers out here, Coco. Dangers that even I can't handle easily. Or maybe at all. Even the figments of a regular deep sleeper can confuse or overwhelm an intruder. And lucid dreamers can craft all kinds of traps for anyone who comes inside their dream. I don't know who this person is. I don't know if she'll be our friend or not. Now, I have some training in dream combat. But thinking about the size of this dream bubble, this 'Sublime Majesty' is probably a WAY better dream mage than I am. And even if she's just as good at it as can be, then she must have been working on this Crafted Space for… well, for longer than I've been alive, at least. And that means she has lots of ways to hurt people she doesn't like."
Coco's ears drooped. "…Did... did I knock on a baddie's door?"
Lorena reminded herself to try to stay composed. Again, for Coco's sake, if nothing else. "You… knocked on a stranger's door, and that coin can land either way. We'll just have to do our best, be polite, and hope that 'Her Majesty' is in a good mood."
"Lorena, what's a Majesty? And who does it belong to?"
"I... hm. It's a… term that kings and queens use to refer to themselves. I think 'Her Majesty' is what you call a queen, but it might be 'Her Royal Highness," or something else. I never really studied any of those rules, and I think it depends... but I never heard of a 'celestial' or 'sublime' majesty. That... means that whoever this is, probably gets a lot of ideas from places I don't know about. Either very old, or very... different." Lorena racked her brains, trying to remember anything that might be a reference to those titles. Could they have gone through a door to some part of Faerieland, somehow? That was usually more of a problem in Europe, but... uh-oh. Let's see, Winter Court, Spring Court, Summer Court-
Coco touched her cheek again. She was pointing out the window with her other paw. "Lorena? I think we might be on the Moon."
Given what could happen to people who were trying to remember faerie etiquette from lessons three years ago in a hurry and who got it wrong, Lorena felt she had the right to be a little frustrated by that. "Are you still on that? Look, Coco, I'm pretty sure that there aren't any oceans on the Moon, let alone a big palace or whatever this is."
"Sorry. I was just thinking... if we're not on the Moon, then how come the Earth's up in the sky?"
And then, at last, Lorena looked up, following the line of Coco's paw again, as she had in the amusement park.
That... that was the Earth, or something much like it. It hung there like something from a globe at school, big and blue and streaked with white and four times the size of the full moon she was used to. She tilted her head. Yes, there was Brazil, and the rest of the Americas, and Europe and the nose of Africa just poking around from the side- and... an extra continent in the Atlantic? It wasn't that big, maybe about the size of Peru or Mexico, she guessed. But it was definitely out of place.
"No, no... well... maybe, in a way. But there's something off about all this." Lorena stopped, trying to imagine what could possibly be happening. She'd heard rumors that some mages would put themselves into deep, deep trances, working magic to sustain their bodies almost indefinitely. That one thing a mage might do in that position was to focus all their power and concentration on a crafted space. But that being so disconnected from reality would eventually drive the magician mad, replacing all the stable memory and calculation that normally went into a constructed dream with layer after layer of malleable imagination. A realm like that, made from a mage's delusion and insanity, could be formidable, could be vast, could be terrifying... but an intruding mage could use the supersaturated imagination around them to mold and divert any threats in the crafted space, buying time to escape.
The thought of a mad sorceress this powerful was even more terrifying than what she'd already thought of, but-
She cast a quick spell on her glasses, trying to determine the composition of the dream around her, hoping there would be some kind of weak point, a way out-
Memory. Boundless memory, painstakingly etched memory, interwoven with calculation to a degree that Lorena had never seen before. But the marvelous complexities of mind and word that went into this place were just an armature, a scaffolding, barely there unless you went specifically looking for it. No, this was a place truly made of memory, like something concrete in more than one sense of the word, reinforced with something far stronger than steel. The room was memory, the thrones were memory, the ocean out the windows was memory. The Earth… well, the Earth was simply a background image. But the image itself was unmistakably memory. The air was memory. She couldn't remember a single place in the entire Sea of Dreams, ever, even once, where the air was made of memory.
And that realization, that the very breath in her lungs came from "Her Majesty's" memories, broke Lorena's concentration, and her spell with it. All of this, this edifice, was memory and a little calculation. Granted, the calculation would seem like a lot next to, say, her own crafted space, but the memory was so much more than that. Could anything human have memory like this-
And then that same robotic voice from earlier spoke to her. It sounded gentle, mild, coming from just in front of Lorena, but somehow Lorena knew that it would sound exactly the same no matter where in the room she'd been standing, filling all that wide space from no clear point of origin.
"Presenting Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty, High Queen of All Touched By Light, First Among the Stars, Supreme Chancellor of the Lunar Academies, Guardian of Humanity, Supreme Magistrate of Law,
Light flashed by the thrones. By the time Lorena had focused her eyes back onto them, the woman who could only be 'Her Majesty' was already there. She sat the central throne with the ease of perfect familiarity, and something about the throne's proportions fit her perfectly, as though it was made for her and her alone.
The queen was pale and slender. Her dress, adorned with a bow at her chest, was gleaming white, which matched her hair, done up in long twin tails that fell past the armrests of her throne. Her face... her face... it was ageless. That face contained an implied scoff at the idea of submitting to anything as undignified as aging, but it was not young. The very notion of youth had been forgotten ages ago.
There was a golden crescent moon on the queen's brow. It wasn't drawn or tattooed; it just somehow belonged there. It was something as natural as her own skin, or perhaps more natural. And her eyes... Lorena's brain froze, when she met those eyes.
Selene's eyes were a color Lorena might call grey. She might... if they were not keen, piercing, unfathomable. If she couldn't feel them looking right through her mind, heart, and spirit like a searchlight piercing a thin curtain of wispy smoke. If they were not, so clearly, the windows of a soul so accustomed to wielding every form of power that they had long since become something very much like a sculpture, or a great instrument, or a weapon. A thing of metal, not of softness.
Standing before the throne, the only word Lorena could imagine for the queen's eyes was 'silver.'
And...
And Her Sublime and Celestial Majesty looked rather displeased.
Finally, an involuntary blink broke Lorena's eye contact with the ruler of this dream. That freed her mind far enough that she could at least draw breath, could partly recover from her hypnotized state. Partly.
She had the sinking feeling that things were about to get a lot more complicated.
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Now tell her she's an acolyte of your daughter because she accepted the moon rabbit! 😆
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh my. The sleeping memory of the queen I did not see this coming. Was a tiny bit miffed at the fake out at the start but this is an even bigger fire Lorena and Coco have jumped into, though a less cruel one at the very least.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"What are you doing with one of my bunnies?"
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
One imagines he could have avoided the fakeout by gluing Chapters 2 and 3 together... but in that case, all the exposition about and exploration of the dream world would have seemed kind of unimportant compared to the reveal at the end of the very long chapter, I think.
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jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Oh boy, Lorena and Coco have gone down the rabbit hole in a big way.
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
And worst of all, they have NO context whatsoever about who they are meeting, or how this Queen could possibly relate to current events.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
When in doubt, follow rules for interacting with Fae. Apologize profusely, offer to leave and never darken the individuals door again, while not giving your name and/or making any statements that could be taken as promises and/or deals.
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Fortunately, Selene is usually pretty benevolent and reasonable unless she has a really good reason to be angry.
Just hope that no dream-date with Kore got interrupted! Maybe that's why she's a bit annoyed...
But hey, Lorena is at least likely to get some useful info!
Just hope that no dream-date with Kore got interrupted! Maybe that's why she's a bit annoyed...
But hey, Lorena is at least likely to get some useful info!
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Unfortunately, Lorena already gave her name.
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Though, based on some of the hints we've had about Coco, there may already be a mild punishment lined up for Lorena.
[Now that I've explained exactly what you signed up for with that moon rabbit, get back down there and start Champion-ing properly. Most teenage girls in situations similar to yours can manage at least one demon per month, but I expect more along the lines of one per week.]
[Now that I've explained exactly what you signed up for with that moon rabbit, get back down there and start Champion-ing properly. Most teenage girls in situations similar to yours can manage at least one demon per month, but I expect more along the lines of one per week.]
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Point. Oh well, Selene doens't tend to be that nasty about things.
She wakes up with a transformation item beside her and a pair of white rabbit ears on her head?
SuperBigMac
My titles: MacTheEditor; SuperiorPosterior
- Location
- Untitled States of Disarray
- Pronouns
- N/A
Lorena, Cure Moon! Only somewhat related tangentially to Sailor Moon and Cure Twilight!
I'm still waiting for her to run into Helios.
Almech_Alfarion
(Unverified Paradox)
- Location
- Roaming the Void of the Space between Spaces
Reminds that Selene is a centuries to millennia old head of state, and that there is one instance in particular that has been mentioned where she got particularly nasty. Granted, the people she had unspeakable things done to were terrorists claiming to act in Smaragdi's name (He was able to convince her that he wasn't involved, but was still banished to Earth as part of his punishment), but let us not assume that Selene was all smiles and royal balls in her time?
SuperBigMac
My titles: MacTheEditor; SuperiorPosterior
- Location
- Untitled States of Disarray
- Pronouns
- N/A
That's what the phrase tends to be means. She can be nasty, but we've not really seen an instance of her acting that way towards those that didn't deserve it.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Sure but in the grand scheme of things Lorena/Coco haven't done that much wrong. Yes, she probably doesn't appreciate them knocking on her dream's 'walls', but at the same time that gatekeeper thing kind of sucked them in without so much as a 'by your leave'.