52 Vhalar 719
Location: Emea
Morning
The Untold wasn’t exactly a vacation. For all it did to let Abra cross Idalos in a short timeframe it came with a toll. It was a mysterious and random place that had many strange effects and features. Abra had yet to ever meet anyone else in the Untold. Sometimes he could see flashes of what looked like dreams but he rarely picked an opportunity to cross into them when he was travelling. The truth was that as soon as he realized how unpredictable Emea could be it was fear that kept him from being the dreamwalker that he truly could be.
“Push through it,” he told himself as the temperature switched from icy cold to steamy hot. He was dressed in his winter clothes and had to quickly remove his ¬¬¬¬coats only for it to chill back down a few minutes later. To anyone that tried to make light of crossing through the Untold, he had a few words for them. Just thinking about how many times he came to the Untold and found that he wasn’t able to get to his destination was enough to drive him to annoyance.
“All this just to get back to Viden,” he scoffed. It wasn’t worth it anymore. He closed his eyes and focused on creating a portal. Not a Rupturing portal, but one that would let him traverse into a dreamscape. Which dreamscape didn’t matter, so long as he could make it out of this volatile environment. His plan was to enter the Untold from a different angle and perhaps avoid the most annoying parts of the trip.
The dream he entered was one of a wonderful festival of flowers. The flowers were all dead, but that didn’t stop someone from handing him a bouquet and greeting him. “You look like you’ve come from far away,” a boy said with a smile. “most who wander here don’t bring a coat, lucky you Come lets play.”
“I don’t have the time, sorry.” He tried to walk away but the boy grabbed him by his pant leg and pulled him with an absolute force that was stronger than anything that could possibly be natural. Abra exerted his full strength against the pull but it didn’t budge the boy even one bit. This was precisely what he hated about going into other people’s dreamscapes. He was at the mercy of the strangeness of Emea. IN his own he was a god. It was boring, but relatively safe from many of the dangers that a lucid dreamer might experience.
Abra was pulled for about five minutes all the way to a group of skeletons. “You can wait here for more friends.” The skeletons were all laying on the ground and looked very dead.
“How long have they been waiting?” Abra asked curiously.
“A couple arcs. We don’t get many visitors. Oh you dropped your flowers. I’ll go get you some more.”
If he was just to wait here then eventually he could make a break for it. Unfortunately for him, he had crossed here with his real body so waking up to escape wasn’t an option. The boy walked over to some dead flowers and brought them back to Abra. “Keep a hold of these flowers. If you don’t the monster will come and get you. See, you can put them in your hair like this.”
Nothing about this dream looked appealing. Still, he was bound by its rules. He stuffed the flowers into his hair and hoped for the best. “Tell me about this monster. How big is it and what can it do?”
“It’s a nasty creature. It’s always out there watching. It loves the flower festival so we keep it from ending. If you lose your flowers and it sees you it’ll punish you. We had guards once in our town but they couldn’t do anything to it. It passed through arrows like they were nothing. We think we can try to beat it again, but we need more friends. Sadly our friends haven’t been sticking around very long.” The boy kicked a skull and it rolled a few feet.
“You’re pretty strong,” Abra said, “why can’t you kill the monster?”
“Because you see, I AM THE MONSTER.” The boy’s face mutated into a giant tooth filled sucker and his arms elongated into giant tentacles. It started doing a sea monster equivalent of a laugh while Abra leapt away. That person from before, the one who was handing out flowers… that was his best guess as to what the exit of the dream was. He sprinted away from the monster while it finished transforming.
It slid across the ground and kept stride with its next meal. It seemed to lack the ability to talk anymore but Abra could tell it was enjoying the fun of chasing him. Little did the monster know that Abra had an out. He sprinted to the flower distributor and slashed with his hand to cross back out of the dream. He leapt with all his ability and cleared the portal, save for his right foot. The monster latched onto his foot and tried to drag Abra back through the small opening through which he had escaped. The incredible strength of the boy was still there so Abra had quite the time trying to break free. He could feel a mucous filled pair of monster lips feeling his boot which gave him just enough liquid to just barely slip free.
“Why does every sweet and innocent little boy have to end up being some deranged monster,” he asked the vast Untold. Though he had gone out the same way he came in he was in a completely different area of the Untold. He didn’t know what had pulled him free but his hands were tingling. “Thanks, whoever you are,” he shouted. He had to calm himself down now and think of what to do. He was all for heading back to his Brand at his home in Melrath now. Except he was really close to the VIden one which would be good since he could get some rest.
“You’re welcome, hehe,” said a voice that caught him offguard. It was a little girl’s voice and when he looked around he found a tiny tunawa sized person flying above his head. “For saving you I only have one request.”
“What’s that?” Abra asked.
“I can tell you’re a mage by how much energy flows within you. There’s a village in Idalos that needs help and a mage might make all the difference. You see, there’s this group of dreamers that I look over and I love to visit them in their dreams. They have the most wonderous imaginations that I’ve ever seen. But now they’re dark and gloomy.
“If that will settle this debt then the least I can do is try. Take me there and I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s just it. You were in one of them just now. Since you’ve agreed, better luck this time.” The tiny creature pushed him back into the dreamscape where Abra went tumbling back into the dead flower festival. He saw the boy who looked innocent as ever again. His eyes lit up when he saw that Abra was back.
“Not this time,” Abra said. He cut through Emea and hopped right out of it and into Idalos. The reason he didn’t pick this method of escape last time was because popping up in someone’s house was dangerous. At least if he went back to the Untold he could know what to expect. The monster knew that its prey could escape and sent its tentacles out to Abra. It grabbed him and immediately started constricting his body.
“The fairy sent me. The fairy sent me” Abra shouted as the air was squeezed from him.
The monster released its hold on him immediately. “The fairy sent you? You can help?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. I’m so hungry but the fairy has always helped me. You can go.” The monster turned back into a boy and upon a second inspection Abra could see that he really was starving. None of this made sense, but this was Emea after all.
“I hope that when we meet again you won’t be hungry at all,” Abra said. He crossed through the dreamscape and took his first step into Idalos.
He saw the shimmering connection to the dreamscape close behind him when he arrived at the dreamer’s bed. He was in a small cabin with only one inhabitant. It was a teenage boy who had to be the dreamer. Abra looked outside and saw that he was in a village that had about fifteen cabins. He had no clue where in Idalos he was or what these people’s problems with, but he was going to give them a helping hand in the morning. The first sun was just barely creeping over the horizon, so he left the home and waited outside the cabin for people to start waking up.
"Abra", "NPC"
