The Dream War

By John Page

“Watch out!” I yell to the person underneath me. The person isn’t paying attention to me, probably because they don’t have a face.

I had been flying underneath a bridge and didn’t see the person till I almost hit them. I just manage to miss them and keep myself in the air.
The person looks up at me and says, “There is no way you are flying. You are doing something to look like you are doing so. What are you trying to pull?”

I am confused by that as clearly I am flying. I mean I am floating about ten feet up in the air. This is not odd as this is a dream. This is my dream and in dreams you can do whatever you want. What is a figment of my mind going to doubt me? However the faceless figure’s comment seems to be draining my power. I struggle to regain my flight but other faceless figures come up and repeat the doubt. They scowl at me and I can feel the doubt coming off them. With this doubt I fall completely and hit the ground hard.

The noise of my fall attracts others. Dozens of faceless beings come up from all over the street. They are wearing dozens of different outfits and are all different sizes, yet all have the same general attitude in how the stand and talk. I was at an intersection of dream worlds and clearly my fall is attracting dozens of worlds with of faceless beings.

My legs are filled with fire. They break against the ground. My legs are gone from underneath my knee. I feel blood start to leave me and so I start to chant a healing spell. The faceless beings surround me and keep doubting my power. This dream is quickly becoming a nightmare. I feel the power weakening and I hurl a blast of force at them to make them go away. That blast rips through the group and breaks the bridge in two.

While the blast destroys dozens of them, the others just keep doubting me. The bridge returns to what it was before. Seeing that I will be surrounded I try to call up a door. The door starts to appear but it vanishes as the first man says,

“Why are you gesturing? Nothing is there?”

I feel dread as I know something is deeply wrong. This is not how any dream has gone before. Before I can do anything else the faceless beings grab me and drag me away. After an agonizing period of time we reach wherever they are taking me. It is an elaborate mixture of tunnels, buildings and ramps.

I should know this place, but I am not sure what it is. It is a jumble of hundreds of different places that I have seen in my other life.

I am a dream seeker. I journey to within my mind in order to find the truth of others. Within each person is a secret place. Within this place is a key to great power. With this power I can shape both the dream and the real life. The clarity of dream can help me understand the real world. Yet, what is causing this to happen to me.

I force myself to try one more time to escape from these beings. I try to call some kind of power. As I try to do so, the faceless beings force the power from me. I grow desperate.

They drag me within the building. We pass dozens of elaborate rooms. Something is off as much of the interior is filled with scenes I do not recognize. This is not from my memories or imagination, where are these images from? It seems like it is someone else’s. Perhaps someone else has infiltrated my dreams. Is this some attempt to steal my power?

I am thrown into a cell. The cell is created from a mix of a twisted version of my old room and a haunted house. This is familiar but not helpful. I try to walk around the room. I am flung from corner to corner. I feel weird as I feel reality break.

I wake up. Something is off. I should be in my bed. Indeed I am still in the cell. Clearly I am not truly awake.

I am trapped within what I hope is my own mind. If it is someone else’s mind then I am in great danger. What horrors could lurk in the mind of my foe?

I sit and try to focus. I feel my power returning as I am the only being around. My self-will is helping me overcome this weakness. I use this power to heal my body of injury. I stand up and start to look around the cell.

There is no door or window. I send my mind out to see what I can find any way to get out. I scan the walls, the floor and the ceiling. Nothing is apparent.

I feel an urge of panic and the world starts to turn red. My breathing turns shallow and I feel sick. Something is strangling me. I feel helpless and terrified. The fear makes me revert to a younger self. What’s happening to me?

As my world becomes red I feel a surge of anger. I will not let someone defeat me. I need to return to my real life. To help myself I think of my family. The love I have for them becomes a nimbus of energy. With this energy I shake off the sense of doom and return to my true self.

The room still is empty but my recovery gives me an idea. I shape a tunnel. The tunnel reaches outside the cell. I feel a void but I shape something for me to escape into. Something tries to stop me and the tunnel starts to shrink.

Seeing my chance start to disappear I turn myself into a hamster and run into the tunnel. I rush to a recreation of my old school. I shape it into a maze of the impossible. It is an unorthodox idea and might throw off my foe.

I am almost at the school. It’s so close that my memories give it life. Friends and events fill the halls. A place I know will give me the advantage. My foe will be thrown off by an unfamiliar territory.

I leave the tunnel and ran as fast I can. My hamster body is swift and I don’t want to stop. The students ignore me and go on within the memories. I look for a place to hide. I see a classroom I often go to Room 3991, the room that was a homeroom, classroom and club area for me. I open the door and start to move. As I step into my history classroom the school vanishes.

I start to fall into an endless void. The void is filled with faceless figures laughing and pointing at me. I am unfazed by this attack. I instead use my will to escape. As I fall I transform into a moose with wings.

The oddness of my choice breaks my foe’s attack. The figure’s disappear into mist and the void turns into a blue sky.
I project one of my dream worlds onto the void. I near the ground. I brace my body and start to glide. The sky is constantly changing but is pleasant. I am still keen to get away but I have a plan.

I see a place of safety and dive down. With this I land on a hill. The hill is surrounded by scrubland and a forest. It is a composite of many places. I summon a train and a subway line appears over the hill. I step on the train and it races off. I feel my foe’s influence grow weak as I move away. I resume my true self and the train fills with books. They are stories by written and pure imagination.

I pick up a red book with a hawk on it. This is a book of courage and honor. I let my eyes wander it’s pages. As I read I see the tales of warriors. As I visualize them, they appear with me. By the time the train reaches it’s destination I have a small army.

We get off the train and march into a theme park. We move among the rides of dozens of different worlds. As I see them I transform them into fortress of steel and rides.

I plan my attack. It’s the foe’s turn to be weak. I grin with excitement.

I walk into the air and overlook my chosen terrain. I see areas that are possibly weak and I adjust the buildings to fix that issue. After a few minutes I see a saw of faceless figures rush at the park.

While the tide of doubt seems strong I reply with a roar of will. I send my army into my foe.

The battle is one that is fantastical, both my foe and I are experienced dreamers and our armies show that. Mine come from my ideals of heroes while my foe is surely drawing upon their darkness nightmares. The contrast is shocking. The faceless figures have lost all sense of normalcy. Horns, wings, tentacles and other similar things spring randomly from the figures.

As the two armies clash I look for my counterpart. I fly over the battle. Whenever I can I send waves of force into the battle. I feel a rush of power as I advance. Bloodlust feels me. I want to punish the faceless figures. My humiliation and fear lends power to me. I decide to land and fight. I fight with blasts of force. I destroy hundreds of the figures before I realize my mistake. My anger has blinded me to my mistake.

I see a massive thing enter the battle. The tallest building barely reaches halfway up the fiend. It stomps the ground and whole world shakes. It looks like a giant spider but I can tell this is the other dreamer. The faceless figures are simply fragments of this force. The sheer willpower needed to sustain an army and a form of like that in another’s dream is frightening.

I feel my army lose heart at the sight of it. The sky is blocked by its sheer size. Realizing what I must do I race toward it and changed into a great ape of equal size. A transformation like this will cost me energy in the future but I need to stop the other dreamer.

The spider rushes to me. It shoots a blast of some dark web at before it can trap me I change into a small bird. I fly through a hole of the web and resume the ape form. The web hits part of my army and they disappear in a sizzle of acid.

I punch the spider as hard as I can. The spider is thrown backwards. It tries to stop its fall and the ground scream from the force. Before the thing can recover I hurl punch after punch at it. While in the real world there would probably be blood in the dream there is only the marks on my blows. As I keep up the barrage I feel the world change around me. The spider summons a great rain. The rain falls impossibly fast and soon the water is over my ankles. I ignore this and keep punching the spider.

Eventually I slip in the now waist high water. Taking the opportunity the spider bites me. I feel horrific pain. I start to feel dizzy. I force myself into a form of a great shark and drive into the water. The spider keeps trying to strike me as I weave in and out of the way.
I keep this up for what could have been hours or a few seconds. Eventually I hear my foe’s breathing grow labored. The strain of battle is eating away at them. Sensing my chance I bite on of the spider’s legs and rip it off. The foe roars in pain and a torrent of blood spills out. I am stunned that blood is unleashed. That must mean I really hurt them for them to unconsciously mimic the real world. As the spider falls I transform into a great ocean beast. I shall the spider whole and transform the world into a small cave. I become a dragon and wrap the foe in a deadly embrace.

The foe turns into a humanoid figure like one it’s minions. I demand to know who they are and why are they attacking me. The foe says nothing and I grow angry. I unleash a blast of firing to burn away their disguise. I burn through five layers when I finally see the foe. They are human as I thought. I brush away the layers of ash and see them. I am shocked. It can’t be who I am looking at! Why, why, why!

The dream is now a nightmare. I feel sick and I need to leave. I conjure up a door and drag my foe/my friend with me. I would try to wake them up but we are far too deep into dreams for to be safe. I need to fix this.

The dream ends.