hadriel_logs | All I Have To Do Is Dream (OTA)

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All I Have To Do Is Dream (OTA)

Who: Ushahin and you!
What: Ushahin goes dreamwalking and decides to manipulate Hadriel's residents for fun.
Where: All in the minds of those in Hadriel.
When: September 11th
Warnings: Possible violent or gory imagery depending on character dreams.

With the latest influx of new residents into Hadriel, Ushahin felt it was a good time to go dreamwalking. He'd done so many times before, almost every night in fact. But tonight, he wasn't seeking to simply pass through the dreams of Hadriel's residents, leaving them to slumber on without a trace of his presence. He wanted to weave the dreams with all the skills of a spider. And like a spider, there was always the chance that he would devour those he found whole.

He went from dream to dream, looking for ones that would hold his interest. There he rested, a figure invisible to all but minds with powers like his. He waited in the shadows for the opportune moment to gather the dream around it and then change it, for better or for worse. There was a good reason his name had been synonymous with that of the boogeyman in Urulat. Tonight, a few lucky residents would have some of the best dreams of their lives. But in exchange, a few more unfortunate residents were going to be visited by their worst nightmares.

[OOC: If you haven't already done so already, it might be a good idea to fill out his permissions form if you're tagging in!]

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Somewhere off in his dreams...

Sato is standing in line at airport security, surrounded by nameless, faceless people. The conveyor belt slides in each person's carry-on luggage one after another, the X-ray machine inspected by equally nameless and faceless security personnel. But Sato isn't worried; there's nothing suspicious in his bag. He knows that someone is bringing the tools he needs through another route.

But when he looks up at the ceiling, there's no sign of Okuyama's black ghost and the bag it was supposed to be carrying. No, nothing but the roof of a cave, with pixelated spiders crawling along silken strands and bats flying far overhead. He knows he's here to catch a plane, but past the neat rows of seating and the large glass windows of the waiting area, there's no tarmac, only the ruined city of Hadriel. For some reason the pixelly bats and spiders of Spelunker are there too, moving at a glorious full 60 frames per second.

But this is a dream, and dreams don't have to make sense. So he waits his turn patiently, moving up along with the line, one step at a time. He has a plane to catch, after all.

Sandor was often plagued by nightmares. It was the reason he opted to drink so much, hoping for a dreamless sleep. But whether his luck ran out or whether he hadn't drank nearly enough that night, he found himself dreaming of fire. The flames rose high and hot, and he stared at them, paralyzed by his fear. This was only the beginning.

Sandor Clegane was a large man, but the other man in his dream was far larger. His brother Gregor, also known as the Mountain for his size and impenetrable strength. In this dream, he had no chance to fight. His brother grabbed him by a fistful of hair and pressed his face down into the fire. Sandor screamed in pain as he felt the ghost of the agony from his childhood -- as the flesh melted and burnt away and the charred scent filled his nostrils, making him cough and sputter.

Ah, one of those nonsense dreams. It was a common enough occurrence not for Ushahin to hesitate more than moment before diving right in. What a strange place Sato came from if this was what he dreamed about.

It's far too quiet in here. Time to change all that. Drawing on his experiences in Hadriel, he summons several of the horrible monsters that have plagued the city in his time here. Skulltulas, stalkers, and deathclaws appear, creeping out from the fuzzy corners of the dream edges where it stops. They start to stalk those faceless outlines of the people waiting with Sato. None of them seem to notice until a stalker pounces onto one of them, dragging them off. Then panic ensues.

Ushahin stood nearby, his face curiously impassive as he watched Sandor's torment. So that was how the other man had ended up with the scarred face. He could feel everything as the dream unfolded: not just the images before his face, but the emotions that went with it. The pain, the terror, it was all familiar in the eeriest fashion. His own nightmares were very much of the same, minus the fire and adding in a stoning. People were cruel. That was the first lesson he'd learned.

He pulled the threads of the dream around him, letting the fire build up. He saw glimpses of memory and the scene began to morph and change. A battlefield ringed in green fire, men dying all around, and the screams of agony of those burning from the flames around them. Ushahin liked this. Oh yes he did. It was glorious.

Do skeletons dream of undead sheep?

Not particularly, no. He's having a familiar dream, formless and shapeless, filled with arcane shapes with meanings known only to him. A skeletal figure lingers on the fringes of an intemerate darkness, hardly discernible from the surrounding void but for the dark lines running down the bleached whiteness of its skull, the bony hands that drift in front of it in disembodied sweeps.

There are holes in its palms. And it is full of something - dark.

Darker than you can imagine.

No, darker.

Darker.

Sans doesn't do anything but watch it, hands buried in pockets, eyesockets glittering with a swirl of unspeakable emotion.

" DO NOT MAKE THIS MORE DIFFICULT THAN IT IS

," says the thing there, the thing in the shape of a man, but he does not say it in any conventional manner. The very nature of the words is difficult to understand, to conceptualize.

Sans watches, unblinking.

"No one's makin' anything difficult, Doc," he says. He sounds tired. Resigned. "You ain't even here."

The plan's off.

Admittedly he can't quite remember the plan in his dream, but there had been a plan of some kind.

He pushes through the crowd, looking for something he can use. The security people don't have guns, and there's nothing dangerous in his bag. There has to be something around here he can use, he thinks, breaking from the crowd and down a corridor. Or an air marshal. Something or someone useful.

Sans' dreams are a familiar landscape that Ushahin is used to. He likes the skeleton's mind, with so much more beneath the surface than the monster would ever let on. He slips into this dream easily, the way one dives into a still, cool pond.

He listens intently to the figure, so strange and dark, but the words escape him. It's like he's just moments away from understanding or maybe he understood already but didn't quite grasp the meaning.

He appears right next to Sans. "What is this?" Whether he's referring to the thing in front of him or the dream itself is anyone's guess.

A deathclaw and skulltula break from the horde of monsters that's now decimating the hapless group of people. They follow Sato, not too fast now. Dreams where the monsters get you too soon are no fun. The chase must be drawn out so that the victim can fully experience the terror, the looming threat that they know is coming and cannot escape.

Still, Ushahin is not without his sense of fun. He creates a room at the end of the hallway. 'Confiscated Items' the sign reads. Just beyond lies a room filled with various items, including several different weapons for use.

She is in a white, hexagonal marble hall, furnished in black leather and furs. There are pillars arranged around the central well, and some of these have people chained to them: beautiful silver-eyed girls and boys with high cheekbones. Bianca herself reclines on the couch that is, in the way of dreams, obscurely occupying the same space as the TARDIS central console. Her scarlet dress and lips, and the peacock-feather mask of the young man whose leash she holds in one hand, are the only blots of colour in the stark black-and-white room. Someone invisible plays a smoked-caramel swirl of saxophone music.

Bianca smiles thinly to see Ushahin.

"An unexpected guest. Do help yourself to a drink, dearheart."

There is a winged, mouthless girl at his elbow, a tray of champagne glasses in her hand.

And along came a spider.

Maybe that's a false analogy. He's got real complicated feelings about Ushahin, just as a general rule, but he ain't exactly well-versed on the subject of psychics and whatever myriad issues come along with it. All he knows is that someone with a special power, well, they've kinda got that obligation to use it, don't they?

"Nothing of consequence," says Sans, and that's a real funny joke, real funny. He'd laugh, but the apparition is still there. Watching, waiting. Judging.

Not judging, not really. Figments of imagination based on people who never existed can't judge. They can't have feelings regarding one thing or another.

"Definitely nothing you should go pokin' with a big metaphorical stick," he adds, the words heavy with a latent warning. "For your own sake."

The only problem being that terror isn't one of the emotions running through Sato's head right now. Thrill, yes, the kind of excitement that would spark a rush of adrenaline if he wasn't actually asleep. But he's sure of himself to the point of arrogance; they can't kill him, after all, and he doesn't care if he gets hurt. The issue is more finding something to kill them with.

Bursting through the door, he grabs the first gun he can find, shoves that in the waistband of his pants, grabs a second gun, and turns right back around to face the impending danger head-on, using the door frame as cover to take few shots at the skulltula.

He's surprised that Bianca even notices him. Most never do as he travels from dream to dream. He appears like smoke taking on a solid shape. He's wearing clothes from his home: a forest-green cloak, dark tunic, and grey undershirt. He draws up a chair made from the dreamstuff: it's a large, squashy, leather affair, something he's grown fond of in his time in Hadriel. Then he picks up a glass of champagne with his good right hand.

"This scene reminds me of someone from home." The Sorceress Lilias, who had been fond of pretty things, pretty people, and her vanity. She had collected her pretty ones, binding them to her until she lost interest and released them. "She's dead now." As was everyone else he had known. Such was his life.

Ushahin likewise has complicated feelings regarding Sans. He's not quite a friend, but they're no longer at the adversarial stage they were when he had first arrived here. He does enjoy the skeleton's company. He wouldn't keep invading his thoughts if he didn't.

"I have been told that many times before and have yet to heed the advice," Ushahin replies. It's the truth. Last time he failed to do so, it had nearly killed him when he went inside a dragon's vast mind, but still he refuses to stay put inside his own head.

"Who is that?" He gestures towards the dark apparition, unwilling to approach it or manipulate the dream just yet. There is something about the figure that gives him, in layman's terms, the willies. He doesn't like the feeling he gets off of it, but at the same time, he's fascinated as to what the figure means to Sans.

He can feel Sato's emotions, the excitement he feels towards the apparitions coming towards him. But lacking is any sort of fear or terror. Curious, very curious indeed. This man has a very cool, detached mind. There's more than there appears to be beneath the smiling surface.

The skulltula skitters away from the shots, up onto the wall, and then onto the ceiling. It attempts to cross the threshold that way as the deathclaw reaches out with an enormous paw, attempting to drag Sato from the safety of the doorway. Ushahin watches this all with the rapt attention most people give to a favorite movie. After all, this is one of the few forms of entertainment that he has going on.

Sounds to Sans like that's the quickest way to get yourself killed, but maybe Ushahin's thrown that kinda caution to the winds. At some point you just reach a certain threshold, and you stop worrying about what might be the thing that kills ya, 'cause there's just way too many damn options. And who's got time for all that boring concern, anyway? Worryin' about stuff just makes it harder to find time for naps.

He looks to Ushahin, his eyesockets hollow and dark, his grin stretching wider and wider with an edge approaching intimidation.

"Nobody."

Now he hates trottin' out the old 8-bit Operator, especially on someone he thinks might eventually be able to settle on the same page as him for once. It's showin' his hand a little too soon, one might say. But, heh, he's not got a lot to lose at this point, does he?

The lights flare back to life, and his smile eases up some.

"Real hard to look at, ain't it? Suppose that's what happens when you look at someone who ain't all there."

Evading the grasping hand with a quick duck to the side, Sato beats a hasty retreat back behind the counter. With his aim firmly centred on the doorway, he keeps firing on the monsters, empties the magazine, and switches to the second gun without hesitation.

So often the smile is just there to soothe the people around him, to seem friendly. But there's times where that smile is real, and this is one of them. Right now? He's the star of his own action monster movie, and even though he's been fighting monsters in the caverns off and on for the last month... it hasn't lost its charm yet or reached the point of boredom yet. It's still great fun.

The smell of flowers is almost overbearing.

It's a field of nothing but golden flowers as far as the eye can see. Perfect weather to just sit around and observe the secrecy too. Sun is shining, birds are singing. The kind of peaceful dreams that would be easy to wreck if there weren't a few things off about it already.

All of the flowers are coated with a fine layer of dust. The sun is pretty much just a decoration. It's cold in this field. More importantly there's a large, purple door that's seen better days in the dead center. Almost looks like someone took a knife to it. It's open slightly. Apparently the dreamer was going on ahead. But it's not like Ushahin can't follow.

Why couldn't he ever have creative dreams? The type that weren't simply reliving his past? Sandor might have lamented this if he wasn't wrapped up on the moment -- the shift of the dream away from his brother toward the battle at Blackwater Bay. The wildfire was a horrifying sight to relive. Even as he stood safely on the shore, men cam running toward him in a blaze of flame.

Sandor froze until they got hit by an arrow and dropped to the ground before he simply walked away. "This isn't right. This isn't bloody right. I shouldn't be here again." Someone descended on him with a sword and he fought them off, driving his weapon through the man's chest.

"I need a goddamn drink."

Edited 2016-09-17 15:41 (UTC)

The scene morphed again as Sandor found himself in a tavern. He was seated at a table and all around him were men that should have been dead. Each one had terrible wounds done to him. There was one with his chest split nearly in two from a sword blow, there was another who had an arrow sticking out of his eye. Dead men walking. If there was something familiar about them, it was because Ushahin had selected each of them from Sandor's memory. They were all men he'd killed. A bartender came over, flames licking at his face to reveal bits of the skull beneath his flesh. He set down a drink dark as old blood in front of the Hound.

"Svartblod," Ushahin said, suddenly there at the table with any flash or puff of smoke. One moment he wasn't, and the next, he simply was, speaking as calmly as if he hadn't been toying with the man's mind for some time now. "Made from the fermented blood of sheep that drank from a river tainted with the blood of a god. If it could put a Fjeltroll under, it will do the same to you."

Ushahin stopped feeling fear of being killed some time ago. That's what comes when a person lives for too long. A sort of passive weariness has settled in his bones, deep as the ache of his poorly knit self. He's had so many close calls and come through them all just fine. Why should this be any different?

If Sans' little display is supposed to put a little bit of fear into Ushahin's mind, it doesn't work. This is the dreamland and he is the one in charge here. As if to reassure himself of that fact, he pulls the threads of the dream around him, ready to change it in the blink of an eye.

"I feel like you might mean that in the most literal sense," Ushahin remarks dryly.

Sans shrugs, turning away from the barely-perceptible silhouette.

"Don't matter much," he says evenly, his vocal control perfect. "Most people dream of nonsense, don't they? If you looked for patterns in everything, you'd lose your mind."

This he knows from experience. The early days were fraught with inconsistencies as he struggled to catch hold of the anomaly, pin down its motives, its interests, anything. It had fluttered out from between his phalanges every time, slipping free from his grasping hands until he could come to the conclusion that stuck.

That there wasn't a scrap of rhyme or reason to what they did.

They simply did it because they could.

The skulltula takes the brunt of the fire as it scurries towards Sato's hiding spot. It's down two legs, then two more, and finally falls to the ground. Unable to use its agility, it soon falls to the gunfire. That leaves just the deathclaw to deal with.

It roars out its rage and forces itself through the small doorway, hunching down to end up in the room with Sato. Here, the advantage of size and strength are diminished, but still present. It rips the counter right out of the ground and tosses it to the side, leaving Sato without cover. Then it reaches out again with a long-armed paw, seeking to grab the man by the leg.

Ushahin watches it all. This is getting good. If only he had something to eat. He conjures up some chips out of nothing and begins to much on them.

"I've already done that," he says. But he did believe that there were patterns in everything around him, even if he couldn't yet understand them all. Someday, he'd catch sight of the bigger picture, the one that Calanthrag the dragon had shown to him. It wasn't something that could be seen all at once, no. Only bits and pieces until they started to form a whole.

"Why dream of such things? Surely you have happier places you could be while you sleep than this." He's seen some of them in the skeleton's head during his frequent naps, the strange monsters from Underground and the places that Sans had frequently visited.

All right, fair enough. Sans sets off into the dark emptiness encircling the pair of them, not caring if he's got no direction, not caring where it might take them, not caring if Ushahin can warp the dream at his say-so. It gives him a sense of purpose. An illusion of a goal.

If that ain't the most perfect metaphor for his life...

"Not like I particularly pick what I dream about," Sans rumbles, amused despite himself. "The average individual doesn't have that fine a control over their own mind, no matter how zen they are about it."

It's quiet in this one's mind. Almost a little too quiet for Ushahin's taste. He sneezes upon arriving in it. He'd liven things up, but it appears they've already left this area of their dream. Most unusual is that the dreamscape remains instead of dissolving as they usually do when a person moves from one area of their dream to the next.

Well, there's nothing to do but follow after. He pulls at the door, but it seems to resist him. It takes having to forcefully pull it open by using his powers upon it for him to finally be allowed through. Now, just where is this all leading him to?

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All I Have To Do Is Dream (OTA)

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[let me put my arms around your head]

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