I dreamed of this nightmarish skinwalker spirit expunging the soul of this poor man, white light bursting from their eyes, ears, nose and mouth. The creature wore his skin like a sock puppet, blood and ash leaking forth, moving without regard for normal human joints. I then woke up; however, I did not wake up in the bed I went to sleep in. I was in my old apartment in Beijing, and at once knew something was wrong. My front door was splintered open, and with my mind I shut my bedroom door and locked it. The gap under my door was large enough, such that the skin could slide through and begin filling with the skinwalker. Remembering DF when my fort was attacked by reanimated skins, I let loose laughter fell and roar, setting upon the skinwalker with a blue moonlight axe. With each blow I burnt and severed the zombie skin, taking good care not to damage my floorboard. When the entire skin was at last defeated, I summoned a large sheet of warded metal to cover up the gap, barricading the door. I set a large circle of wards to protect my whole room to give me time to process what had just occurred.
Feeling braver from the victory, I sought to gather more information. I removed the sheet and unlocked the door, which at once flung open, forcing me to backstep. The skinwalker's meat essence had remained outside, and now the thing flung itself at me. It was bisected by a single strike of the axe, yet the upper half with its bloodied arms and head continued sailing onwards like a vehement missile. With no time to pull up my axe, I cut at it with my shortsword, with the rest of it burning away in the warded zone. I considered moving out of my room, however I could tell that there were more skinwalkers waiting in ambush on the staircase. Closing my door and reapplying the locks and blockade, I moved cautiously to my window to gaze out. Remaining unseen, I saw on the street level that the meat and skin had started to take over the city, and the skies were forming dark clouds. I gathered what I could and opened up a gate, even as the creatures started breaking through my ward. I made it through my gate and closed it, just before a nuclear explosion tore through the other side.
My new surroundings were bright, green and blue. I saw mediterranean sands and pebbles everywhere, and with my spear in hand I ran after the nearest person I could see, a figure who was a distant object atop a coastal cliff. They ran away from me, and realising how hostile I must've seemed, I put away my spear. Following the trail of the person I found myself in a village, where everyone spoke ancient Greek. I lamented that I had forgotten all the Greek I knew, and even the Latin, and so did my best to masquerade as Hermes or Nemo by doing a few tricks like walking on light or summoning objects from nothing. This helped me to communicate intent even without either of us understanding our respective languages. They fed me and gave me wine, and when I slept I had terrible dreams of the future. When I awoke I realised I was in the past, and that I had the chance to make changes to try and stop the future from being overcome by those things. I also left a note and reminder to any of my colleague administrators to update the wiki of changes to try and resolve this end and rendezvous should there be any administrators in a nearby timeline.
Making my way along the coast of asia minor, where a goat herder guided me through to the even remoter past, I happened upon the mightiest Kingdom upon the Euphrates. The King of Kings resided there, full of monuments to his vainglory. I stormed past his guards with my radiant spear and laughed at him for twenty minutes straight, because he thought his little town of 10,000 people was the best thing ever. I told him his little town wouldn't even populate a single borough back where I was from, but of course he didn't understand anything I said, besides the vicious laughter. He, his queen, his slaves, his guards all stared in disbelief at what was transpiring, until the King decided to apprehend me. The bravest of his guard cautiously approached me, so I shone great light and skedaddled in the confusion. I watched him remotely, only intervening whenever he had to make a ruling on some matter of court, there not yet being a codified system of law. Any time I thought he made a bad call, I would intervene. The first time, he was ruling on a custody battle over the ownership of a slave family; I was sitting amidst the benches of courtiers. I started screaming angrily through a megaphone whilst shining incandescent white, before disappearing in a flash. This unnerved the King, who didn't get the right message, as he still awarded the slaves to their deceased master's wife, instead of setting them free. So I continued to pester him; showing up screaming and incandescent at any inopportune moment. Whilst having sex, whilst going to the loo, whilst eating, until he was jumping at shadows. During a particularly harsh famine, the King elected to give his grain seed to his townspeople, so they could have seed to resow next year's harvest. In response to this decision I went fishing, and showed up in his court giving him loads of fish, all without screaming or glowing. The King responded well to the carrot approach, and the people enjoyed having food, so all in all this worked out well. Through constant encouragement eventually the King settled on a decent enough moral code of law.
I missed the King's funeral as I went straight to his son's time in order to ensure he kept up the family tradition of sagacious and wise adjudication. When I showed up one of his assassin's shot me in the fucking back with a bow and arrow. His son doubted my divinity, claiming me to be nothing more than a trickster. To his credit he was completely correct, but my god what a hubristic arsehole he was being. His assassin's arrow pierced my clothing and hit my right lung, mortally wounding me. I managed to escape and contact me on another timeline, bargaining with a younger me to take on my responsibilities before I expired. My perspective changed to the other timeline version of me, who was me except lacking the memories of his dealings with the first King, and an arrow through his lung.
I checked the weather forecast, waiting months for a particularly stormy day. The people meanwhile thought I was dead (kinda was), and wondered what would happen next. Over time normalcy however, returned to the town, until the stormy day arrived. I used a giant trick of light and smoke to appear as if I was an asbestos-red skinned giant, yelling at the top of my lungs as the storm wreaked havoc, with booming thunder, tumultuous rain and forking strikes of lightning as my punctuation. When the whole sky is blue-black in the midst of day, you know something's wrong. Still lacking any common language, I point an oversized holographic finger at the King, whose men try in vain to slay a projected image to no effect. The people of the town took this image to heart, and tore the King to pieces. I actually felt I had severely underestimated how ominous and overawing the image was, and felt I had seriously fucked up because the city was in riot, with Dagonites and Urquains killing each other in the street. Thinking how I could possibly unfuck the mess I had made of things, I looked for someone who seemed neutral and level-headed, finding a carpet-weaver who was calm amidst the storm and was trying to stop the fighting.
As dramatically as my human skill made possible, I clapped my hands together in time with the thunder, and shone a spotlight on the carpet weaver. I then took someone else's golden scepter and gave it to the carpet-weaver as some sort of symbol of divine office, something that just exudes a generic sense of office. The people listen to this sparkly carpet weaver and begin rebuilding the clusterfuck, only I find out later that the nile Kingdom is invading because they stole the King's sceptre. So I go over to the Nile Kingdom where I find out there was one of my fellow administrators, however the trail to finding them goes red when I discover they accidentally edited themselves out of existence. My dream ends right around the time when I try to restore their existence by figuring out what changes they made to the Nile Kingdom that undid them
Author
Topic: The Dream Thread (Read 610576 times)