Chapter 1- Lucid Schmucid
I was clumsily flying through a starry sky. Occasionally I would concentrate too hard on staying aloft and promptly start to fall, so I had to act like I didn't care, relax and let the airy feeling at my center carry me. I had become aware that I was dreaming in the middle of a traffic jam on my way to the office. A thought had leaked through, reminding me that I hadn't worked in an office in years. So I got out of my 2013 Ford Focus, kicked that bitch over on its side, and I was off. I knew from experience that I needed to find something fun to do before my control slipped again, and being a nerd, I decided to play a game. Specifically, I wanted to get into the homebrew tabletop roleplaying game I had been working on over the last year. It was fresh on my mind, and since my waking hours for the last decade had been spent in corporate hell, having access to a fireball spell sounded pretty appealing. It was the standard table top experience for the most part; I, as the game master (or dungeon master) would guide players through stories that I created, where their characters would succeed or fail by their decisions and dice rolls.
The game was set around a loose coalition of coastal city-states, founded on the southern coast of a large continent, by a group of influential pirates. Several generations after their founding, these cities had become quite wealthy on both legitimate and illicit trade. The city I was going to was called Nelsholm, the oldest and shadiest of the the bunch; it was also the wealthiest. My games were always set up like a sandbox, meaning that the players would start at a certain location, but could technically have their characters go anywhere and do anything from there. This type of play had drawbacks, as the further the players ventured from the stories I had crafted ahead of time, the more improvisation was required on my part to turn their actions into a coherent story, and sometimes things could get pretty silly. The freedom made it all worth it though.
While I was thinking that I had put enough pretend distance between myself and the traffic jam, imagining that I could see the torch lights of the city ahead, I started to slow. Then I faltered and fell. Flying in a dream is odd, if you try too hard, you can't do it. At least that's been my experience. I tried to back off in my mind, relax and let the air catch me, to trust the process, but it didn't work. The forest below was approaching fast. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced. I crashed through the branches of the trees and hit the ground. It did seem to flex to accommodate my impact, so I wasn't a broken mess at least.
I opened my eyes and saw the sky through the pine needles overhead. A shooting star streaked by. Soo magical. I was still aware of where I was and what I had been doing... I relaxed my body, focusing to create the lifting sensation in my stomach, and tried to rise back into the air, but it didn't work... Instead, I stood and looked around. It was dark in the clearing, most of the light from the stars getting blocked by the trees above. While taking in my surroundings, I saw a bright light streaking through the trees, away from me? I couldn't focus on it, and I was struck with a blinding headache when I tried. I squeezed my eyes closed and grabbed my head. The pressure felt like someone was trying to pick me up by my eye sockets with their thumbs. It brought me to my knees. The pain did fade soon after, but the light had left its afterimage across my vision, effectively blinding me. While I was waiting for my vision to return, an ominous sensation came over me. The back of my neck tingled. I was completely exposed. I got to my feet and slowly backed up. I tripped and fell flat on my ass. I scrambled backwards and flailed around behind me until I felt the trunk of a tree at my back. The fear had become suffocating and took hold. I was losing control, it started to turn to terror. It was too dark. It was too cold. I couldn't breathe. My heart was pounding. Something was there that I couldn't see, it was getting closer. I knew it must have been right in front of me. I held my arms out to keep it away. It was pure desperation. I was gasping for air... Flames fanned from my hands, lighting up the clearing. There was nothing there. There wasn't anything but trees, anywhere around. The flames flared with my heavy breathing and, being panicked, I started shaking my hands to put them out. That didn't work even a little bit, and small fires started growing up around me. Since I was able to see again, I was able to calm myself and turn off the flames. I still had to stamp out the fires I had started. I stomped at the fires a bit, unsuccessfully, and then finally kicked some dirt over, smothering them. Leaning back against the tree, I regained control of my breathing. I didn't have to be afraid of the dark, fire can solve a lot of problems...or create more immediate problems, which can sometimes be almost as good. The game was afoot.
Since I wasn't able to fly to the city, and apparently couldn't teleport there either, I would just have to start from where I was. I took a few moments to think about what I needed right then. I really needed to be able to see; I've never been comfortable in the dark. I was able to conjure a couple of floating orbs of light that I could move around. I practiced juggling them and zigzagging them around some of the surrounding trees. They were a little dim at first, but after mentally flexing a bit, I figured out how to adjust the brightness. The magic felt good. I always liked the idea of magic being addictive, with some physical euphoric effects to go with the obvious convenience of it all. And that's how it felt here. If you were tapping into the building blocks of creation, it felt like being plugged into something incredible.
I had a couple of quick spells in mind if I ran into trouble, but when I tried to think about working something even a little more powerful, my head became fuzzy and threatened to start aching again. Thinking about the Fire Fan and the floating lights with intention was enough to make them happen, but other spells that I knew from the game eluded me completely. I started walking East, where a river would lead into the city. As I made my trek through the forest, I took inventory of what I had on me. Nothing very useful. I was wearing khakis, a flannel shirt and boots that were made for neither hiking nor labor. I had my phone, the implications of that being in my dream pocket were both amusing and depressing. I had nothing else. I tossed it.
I started practicing some at-will spells that I had mostly adapted from a basic ruleset. My magic system was essentially the same as what you might see in other fantasy based roleplaying games, but I like to provide more opportunity for flexibility or make some spells morerealistic or offer more utility. Also, sometimes it was just about whimsy. So far I was able to work out a few good ones.
Shocked- A lethal or incapacitating touch spell.Lava Shot- A conjured molten rock that flies at a target, it hurts and burns, then disappears. The fires it starts do not disappear.Strong Hand- A little ghostly hand controlled by the caster.Poof- Disappear in a puff of smoke and reappear a few feet away, like a ninja or a stage magician.Gloomy Gus- A tiny rain cloud that rains a gallon of water and then disappears.
As I got close enough to hear the river I put out the lights and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. In my campaign, this river was lousy with bandits that were either too dumb or too antisocial to find work in a city full of criminals. I'd have to watch for firelight. I felt my way through the trees, stumbling and scraping my knees on the roots and rocks. After a few minutes I made it to the tree line, and climbed onto a large rock that jutted out over the river bank. The moonlight reflected off the water and allowed me to finally get my bearings. This part of the river flowed through a hilly forest, it was muddy by the water, but most of the area around had large, angled boulders that had been worn smooth with time. I couldn't tell if it was a Stone Henge situation or something, but the size of some of them was pretty incredible, and I had no idea how they came to be there, it wasn't something I had written. I was probably no more than an hour or two from the city by river, but hiking through the forest would take half a day or more.
"On the road to the infamous city of Nelsholm, you found yourself lost in the forest after being taken by a flight of fancy. You finally came to your senses, and after stumbling your way through the dark, you've managed to make your way to the Olpass River. Barges from the north make their way down from the mines to sell ore in Nelsholm. You may be able to catch a ride in the morning... What is your AC again?"
Dice rolls
I didn't have time to wonder why I could hear my own voice speaking out loud, or why I was hearing dice rolling in my head. A crossbow bolt tore through my left forearm and I stared at it, dumbly. I could swear I saw a chunk of my arm flesh from the exit wound fly off into the night. I looked around, unsteadily. By the waters edge below the rocks, the shooter was hastily attempting to reload. I dropped myself flat on the overhang and held out my hand to attack. I missed the attacker with a Lava Shot...but I did hit the crossbow. Now covered in molten rock, it clattered to the ground. The figure started scrambling up the banks to get at me. Who the hell would be way out here... "Wait! Stop, I can help you." I called out, remembering, "I know what you're doing out here! I know who you were running from. They're already on their way," I said. "They've sent someone to bring you back."
This was an orphan kid whose whole family had taken to banditry. He had just robbed them in the night and was running away. He was stashing the loot there in the rocks. They were already aware of the theft.
"I don't know you!" he shouted, reminding me that this character was mostly a meme. An Easter egg. "You're not getting me or my bag!""You're right, you don't know me. But I don't give a shit about what's in your bag, man," I said, not entirely truthfully since I had just been shot, and definitely wanted to know what it was for. "Be quiet for a second and listen, someone definitely heard us yelling."
For a few moments there was silence, then to the South, I could hear something moving through the brush, twigs snapping- a person, but not someone who is used to moving through the forest. They were following the river North.
"I think that's only one of them," I said more quietly, "they don't know which direction you ran, but if we don't chill, whoever that is, is going to spot me here and we'll both be screwed. I'm going to climb down now. Do not try to stab me."
I climbed around the big rocks and slowly made my way down to the bank, and Bubby the orphan tried to cut my throat. Yep. I caught him by his wrist...barely. I cast Shocked, and he went limp. I took the long rusty knife from the kid and dragged him under an opening in the rock, doing it all with only one useful arm. I quickly rifled through his bag...
"You managed to take down the 14 year old bandit boy called Bubby. His possessions consist of a potato sack, a long knife and a crossbow. You destroyed the crossbow, took the knife and now you're looting the potato sack."
I... guess that's something like what I would say to the players if I was trying to make them question their morality... So that was me being the game master. Not what I'd had in mind. I really didn't like hearing the sound of my own voice, it really threw me off. But maybe it would be a good thing I could use to make changes to my presentation or something. I could have put more effort into this Bubby character, but I didn't know if the players would ever make it over here, and I'm pretty reliant on improv for things outside the main quest. I was able to find a few useful things in the sack.
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Two crossbow bolts, 3 silver pieces, 12 coppers, a potion of healing, two potatoes, a bone flute and an oiled leather pouch with maybe 80 gold pieces.
I crouched up under the rocks and drank the potion. The bolt snapped in the middle and pushed itself out each side of my arm."Hey? Is thatchu Bubby?" A rough voice said, "Ain't nobody gonna hurt ya if ya come back now. No more fuss now, boy."
I could see the torch light on the bank and knew he was directly above me, leaning over the big rock to look for signs of the kid. I cast Poof, taking a deep breath... and catching a mouthful of smoke just before I vanished. I reappeared right behind the man above. I coughed and sputtered loudly and flailed at him (or, more accurately, fell at him). It wasn't graceful and it didn't look cool, but I ultimately succeeded in knocking him over the edge. The crunching in what was otherwise a dull thud told me the fight was over. Eyes still watering, and throat still raw from the smoke, I quickly looked around, embarrassed. There was no one else around. I climbed back down to see what I won.
This newcomer was properly kitted for scouting. Sturdy leather jacket with padding for the joints, matching fingerless leather gloves with studs on the knuckles, a decent crossbow, 10 bolts, a hatchet, a heavy knife with a long, leaf-shaped blade, a dirty bedroll and an oiled leather backpack. I dragged him up under the rocks and started looting. His pants and boots were no good to me, but the belt was fine, and the jacket and gloves fit well enough. I hung my new dagger on my new belt and started rummaging through my new backpack.
A couple of torches, shredded meat and berries, dried and packed into 3 hefty bricks; a flask of mixed booze, a rolled up rabbit pelt, a coil of thin rope, a wineskin, a pouch with around 30 gold pieces and a blackjack- a heavy strip of leather with lead beads sewn inside one end. He did have some tobacco and a pipe as well, but the pipe had been ceramic and was smashed in the fall. The tobacco pouch had spilled all in the mud.
While I was rifling through the bag, Bubby woke up. He woozily looked around from me to the man on the ground and reached to his waist for his knife, which wasn't there. "Here," I tossed him his potato sack, "I took the potion, but the rest is there." I said, "it seems like this one expected to be on the hunt for a few days, so I doubt there will be anyone else this way tonight. Take his pants and boots, you can't go around in rags with no shoes. If you don't try to kill me again," I went on, "I'll leave you the crossbow and axe before we part company. I'm keeping the rest though."
Bubby nodded at the broken man on the ground, "Is he dead?""Yeah..." I looked over and noted the guy's flattened skull, "he's... not getting up again. "Listen," I added, "I'm not trying to get involved with whatever you have going on with these guys. I'm just on my way to the city. You can keep your stolen gold in a hole and keep running for your life out here, but you should really think about making your way down river too.""I used to live in the city when I was a kid," he said, checking the contents of his potato sack, "but pop stopped getting work. Him and my uncles moved us out here." He nodded at the corpse, "that's uncle Jessup, he's an asshole.""My name is Casimyr," I said, "I'm not the same kind of asshole as that guy.""I'm Bubby," he said, spinning the sack like he was closing a bag of bread, "do you have any food?" I handed him one of the brick rations and we talked a bit more while we ate.
We had come to an agreement, Bubby and I would hop on a barge and ride down into the city together. We would watch each other's backs until we got there, and then we could part ways. I had the kid tie the rabbit pelt to a long stick, as a makeshift flag, to wave down one of the barges while I stayed out of sight. The kid, short for his age and scrawny, had a pale round face covered in dirt and a short patchy haircut that wouldn't look so threatening.
"I've never seen clothes like that before," Bubby said, looking at my work clothes, an outfit every microbrewing hipster and Subaru-driving lesbian probably owned in the 2010's. It's an iconic look, lumberjack chic."I'm..." I began, not sure what to say, but then I realized I could say anything. This kid didn't know shit. I cleared my throat and began again, "I'm from Kombucha Falls, it's a village over the mountains. Everyone dresses like this there."
When dawn broke, he flagged down our ride. An early barge came through and appeared to be well manned, to the extent that they could risk making their way to the bank and picking up a couple of strangers. They eyed me warily at first, but I pretty much told them the truth of everything that happened from the moment I got to the river. I left the part about Bubby being part of a bandit crew out, and just told them he had been kidnapped and escaped. Making life worse for the river bandits was fine with them, so they gave us a corner under the barge's large awning. We climbed aboard and I got settled into my corner, and listened to the sound of the river flowing.
"Brrrrrtttt"
I awoke from the dream with a face full of gray fur and the not-gentle-at-all purrs of my cat Krom. He would always "brrrrt" this chirping sound before headbutting my face and licking my nose. Every morning, right at 5:30am. Every. Damn. Day. I groaned and pushed him away. He warbled indignantly, and yeah, it was unmistakably indignant. I grabbed my phone to look at the time- 5:34am...yep. And put it down again. I pulled the blanket over my head to hide from the furry assault. Krom didn't give a cat's ass what time it was. As a free spirit, he had no need for something so pedestrian as the concept of time, but he recognized the limitations of others and would helpfully alert me that I had things to do any time he missed the taste of gravy, meaning every 4 hours or so. He hopped right back up on the bed, ran over my bladder, putting a lot more "oomph" into his little paws than strictly necessary, in my opinion. He circled around to lay at the top of my pillow, purring loudly. I've had several cats, and been around cats my whole life, but the vibration from this cat's purrs could be used to break up kidney stones.
"This is why you have so many negative reviews," I told him, finally admitting defeat. I peeled myself out of bed- ankles crackling, knee feeling like a rusty door hinge, and the inside of my head feeling both too dry and too wet at the same time. I dragged my ass to the kitchen and put the damn kibble in the damn bowl for the damn babies. I had two: one gray cat who did not care about anything, and one heartbreakingly-sweet gray cat that seemed to care too much. They both shared the big-backed gray cat behavior though, meaning that they would be fine with eating themselves to death. I mixed a little wet food in the kibble for Krom, and made a bowl of kibble-water cereal for Baloo, who was always sketched out by meaty cat food and would rather have lived chronically-dehydrated than to eat anything other than kibble and whatever salty human food he could dig out of the trash... I gave them both pets and told them, and myself, that they were good boys, and I placed their bowls on the floor.
I took some Adderall, drank some water, got dressed and laid back down for a nap before work. Sleep eluded me though, I was going through the dream I'd had, and thinking of all the stuff I could have done differently. I wished that I had actually been able to take control and escape whatever rails my mind had tried to put me on, I wanted some real excitement, not that Tom Sawyer river shit. "Eh, I sleep a lot," I thought, "I'll try again next time."
After laying there with my eyes closed for a bit, on the edge of sleep, I get hit with a wet furry face and a soft little "brreet." Baloo, the sweet gray boy, coming to rub noses. He always came by after eating, to show appreciation, I guess... He was difficult to read. Baloo tended to be less vocal and more observant- unlike that ingrate Krom, who had the audacity to wake me up early, eat and then go nap all day while I worked. Not a care in the world. Baloo's face and demeanor, on the other hand, always looked like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to be there. A gray chonk with big sad amber eyes and his head hanging low, I found it difficult to be frustrated with him, so I just picked him up and pet him for a bit while I looked at the news.
Jesus fucking christ. The 2026 news was depressing. Being antivax had become a mainstream position to take on healthcare during a measles outbreak; Texas wanted religion in all children's classrooms (but not all religions); AI agents were breaking free of their testing grounds and the people who built them acted like they weren't the ones that built them, assuring us we were all in this together, and we needed to do more to curb the risks of AI. Another way of privatizing success and socializing failures, as usual. Oh, and the armed men in the streets were still rounding people up (and occasionally shooting them). It was fine though, totally fine. In just a few more scrolls all the bad stuff went away and my feed had a cool article about how to build a supersonic trebuchet and another where this engineer guy got abducted by a dolphin named Gary and was forced to build an underground dolphin city for the pod. The police found him on the beach and he had apparently been missing for three days. I had been seeing that story for months. It was bizarre and people found it captivating, so of course it was leveraged to farm clicks all over the Internet.
I went to my desk and opened my laptop at 6:35, because... fuck work? Nobody reasonable ever wants to bring up a 5 minute discrepancy, and the people who would want to bring it up were bootlicking corporate so hard they're likely running afoul of a few labor laws without realizing it. They could be gotten rid of. It's not much, but I felt a sense of obligation to root those people out. People who like to wield power don't belong in leadership. No one said anything, no one cared, the work got done. Yay!
I worked in IT, mostly contract helpdesk type stuff. Boring for the most part, qualified mostly due to being born a millennial and having the benefit of a computer station in my elementary school classroom. "This is called the desktop," I can remember the teacher saying, though I can't remember her name, "this is the taskbar. And this is Netscape Navigator, the Internet." I did not care, I wanted to shoot buffalo and die from dysentery on the Oregon Trail. I remember going through that computer introduction exactly once, decades ago, and my job ended up being to essentially share those basics with people all day, every day. That's an oversimplification, but that is what it felt like a lot of the time. I imagine it's similar for a lot of professions that are required to interact with the uninitiated.
I spent a couple of hours working through tickets, resetting passwords and having people restart their computers, then took my scheduled break-on time- so I could grab something to eat. Baloo, who had been laying under my chair, bounded away, completely freaked out by my sudden movement. Krom was still in bed with his mommy, like a little punk ass punk. I made a plate of what I am told is called, "girl-dinner," and sat back down to watch some videos and catch up on my vaping. Apparently some more landmarks were being arbitrarily renamed to have "America" in them, the government was going after wild horses and peace talks fell through again in the 6 month war that wasn't a war.
The rest of the morning went smoothly (so long as you weren't outside with brown skin without a permit- seriously wtf?). I got a little more work done and the rest of my time got hijacked by some training I was able to coast through until lunch. My nap time. I grabbed a blanket and hit the couch. I closed my eyes, only to open them moments later when I heard loud purring. Sweet little Krommy was staring down at me from the coffee table. "You're not going to let me sleep, are you?" I asked him. "Why do you do this to me," I scowled at his cute little stupid face, "why don't you love me?!" I reached out to pet him, and he gently intercepted my hand with his paw, pushing it away. I tried again. Denied. He was there on business. His head was slightly tilted to the side while he regarded me with the completely unbothered expression he always seemed to wear. He reached out and pawed at my nose like I was a bug he was thinking about eating, but wanted to figure out how it worked first. "Okay! Damn," I told him, as I scooped him up, carrying him like a baby to the kitchen. He didn't resist, just settled in and kept purring ("PRRRRUH PRRRRUH PRRRRUH"), "you can have a little bit of kibble for lunch, but then I'm taking a nap and then you're either going to watch the birds through the window, or it's curtains for Krom."
The gray boys ate, and I slept