Occurred night of October 8th, 2020
I was investigating some sort of facility in another earth. My main task was to extract someone. I know there was some energetic activity happening in there. The only equipment I had was the sword on my back.
The facility was reminiscent of a YMCA, though it also had a clear school and housing component. It clearly had a school component but it seemed like that was secondary or part of its main purpose. The “students” or whatever they were, were largely troubled, seemingly criminally inclined. In a sense the place reminded me of a jail, or juvenile detention because of how they acted. Many of them, if not all were either late teens or young adults. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember seeing anyone who I thought could’ve been older than 30, except among the staff, though there were a couple that got close. The facility had above ground components, but it seemed like the bulk of it was located underground. The students seemed to have limited, controlled access to upper levels, though they did technically have access. There were many heavily armed guards everywhere carrying what looked like carbines and submachine guns and some form of body armour.
The first thing I did was talk to the staff ion the main office though I don’t remember exactly what I told them. But in general they seemed to recognize who I was and what I was doing there, they may have called me themselves but I don’t remember clearly. The staff were getting more ansy about their situation, as it seemed that the students were getting increasingly hostile and confrontational, though they hadn’t yet become openly violent. Some of this if not all of it appeared to be due to whatever was happening to them within the facility. Whatever education, or other activities they were subjected to. Some sort of social experiments, I’m not really sure at this point.
As I investigated the facility I learned that four of the students had developed magical abilities due to their shared interest in the occult. And interest that had sprung from whatever else they’d been subjected to at the facility. The “culture” you could say. It was in a sense a natural evolution of the mainstream of the place, though incredibly fringe. Their abilities were unknown to the staff and seemingly the other students as well. I mainly remember figuring it out initially through being able to directly sense their much higher energy levels. The rest came through some semi covert conversations with them and those around them. They were all friends, and they were the source of the disturbances I could feel. They also seemed to be involved in something a lot deeper in the facility and were at least partially responsible for the increasing mental instability of the other students via their abilities.
The administrative staff were getting more and more concerned about the deteriorating situation, though things were stable for the moment. The students vastly outnumbered them, and even with their firepower it was conceivable that the students could trap them and kill them. And such a possibility was starting to seem plausible the way things were going. I could feel the growing tension just from being anywhere near any of the people roaming the halls. At some point I found the person I was meant to extract. It was a girl who also came from the outside like me. She’d decided to live here even though things were terrible, because she’d hoped to be a good influence on the students. She had incredibly light brown hair, It almost looked like she was going grey. She also had higher energy, though I did remember hers feeling different that the group of fours. To put it simply, hers was lighter and “nicer”. I remember stumbling across her almost by accident in a hallway filled with lockers and a few other people. She seemed to recognize who I was and why I was there. I think she’d asked me if it was time for her to leave.
My poking around (and potentially fighting one member of the group of four though I can’t remember for sure) was noticed by one of the group of four. A girl who I’d learned was either the defacto leader of the group or at least a member that stood out among them. She in particular seemed like she was involved in far darker things, or at least might be. I’d learned this from her friend, Luth, a black, or perhaps indian, british boy. He had confided something about her and how he had been concerned about her. I don’t remember the girl’s name unfortunately, so we’ll call her Ellen as that sounds closest to what I can remember. She was a pretty standard caucasian brunette with long hair past her shoulders, a white t-shirt and blue jeans. Ellen asked to set up a meeting with me to go to the gym on the first floor at a time when no one else would be around so we could talk privately. I took my VIP to the main office and told her to wait there for me, saying I’d be back in a little bit and then we’d leave.
I remember noting that Ellen wasn’t actually supposed to be allowed to go to the gym at the time set, but her and her group largely flaunted the rules of the facility and were either getting away with it or allowed to do so due to their apparent control of things and/or abilities. I went there and sort of expected a trap but was also surprised at her sheer immediate hostility.
If I remember correctly she demanded to know who I was and why I was in their facility. Then generally went on a tirade about how she owned the place and there wasn’t anything I or anyone could do about it. She’d apparently summoned, or was in the process of summoning a powerful demon who would make sure of that. It didn’t take long before it turned into a fight. I know one of her abilities was to summon these maggot like creatures, about the size of a medium dog, white and very fat with rolls kinda like a grub. Presumably the demon she talked about was an extension of this ability. She could summon about ten of them at once from what I recall. I know that I had at least some access to my ranged magic and in particular had the ability to generate the blue “crystal” that is effectively my signature ability. Though I remember using more standard beams and bolts at points as well. I don’t remember the fight lasting all that long though I do remember it being pretty intense.
The main image I remember was her laying on a pile of her dead maggots while my crystal was dissolving around them. Having been used to impale them. She was still unconcerned and laughing, claiming that the demon would free her or save her or something and that it didn’t matter what we did. If I remember correctly it may have been that her death would trigger the final part of the summoning. She believed that “he” would resurrect her or something, or that she’d be resurrected as part of the corruption he would spread by his presence. Literally a sort of infection into the land itself, though not like a fungus or anything like that, more of a planar conversion. Luth had come in at some point, and though I remember him being very angry with me fighting her he quickly came over to my side when he learned what Ellen had been up to with this demon summoning. He asked her how she could do that, and said that things were never supposed to go this far, the occult stuff was only supposed to be a bit of fun. He felt betrayed by her in a sense and agreed to help me stop the demon. Either stop the summoning, or kill it if it was already out.
His ability, which he referred to as “Luthein” which I thought was just a play on his name, was a more advanced form of the maggot summoning. He’d specialized into it, unlike Ellen, who’d had a more diverse and subsequently powerful set of abilities. He could control about 20-25 of them and was capable of seeing through their eyes. However he said he had a trick where he was able to double the amount he could summon though there was some cost in control that wasn’t made clear. With a flame of orange and red energy wreathing his body, he summoned a good 50-60 of them and sent them off towards the basement while we followed as close behind as we could. The plan being that if they ran into the demon, they would immediately swarm and devour it with their overwhelming numbers. Or at the very least damage it enough to make it easy for me to finish off.
The grubs were very fast, but I was able to keep track of them via energy sense. We followed down a couple sets of stairs and opened a door on another level into a central staircase which one guard was guarding, he seemed very freaked out by the maggots had refrained from doing anything to them as they’d opened the door and poured down the stairs. By this point I’d already started sensing the demons energy far below us. And pretty much as soon as we opened the door we could hear the echoing screams of people who were very clearly being torn apart by it. There may have also been bits of gunfire but I don’t remember clearly. It normally takes quite a bit to shake me at this point, but I really gotta be honest, this definitely did. Nonetheless we started down the stairs.
I could feel some humanoid thing crawling up the stairs on its stomach a few levels below us. It definitely wasn’t human, it felt very lanky, with elongated fingers and perhaps claws. I could also feel Luth’s maggots pour over it and kill it. Luth reported as much somewhat gleefully. Could feel that the demon had an energy large field around it that more or less spread darkness. It probably extended a good 30 meters in a sphere. Which felt like it was meant both to obscure its location, but was also for pure intimidation. And to be honest it was sort of working. Most disturbing to me however was that I could feel that the amount of energy it was putting out was roughly equivalent to mine, if not a little more. And on top of that, the “image” of the demon was flickering oddly. Though the energy level wasn’t flickering. So It didn’t seem like the field was suppressing how much energy it was putting out or anything like that, but I didn’t know what to make of it and that really bothered me.
Then, when we got down the first set of stairs, to the platform between floors, the lights in the stairwell suddenly went out. It wasn’t the demons aura, it was an electrical failure of some sort. Luth’s maggots were right on top of the creature, and I could feel them popping like bubble wrap as soon as they got near it. Luth froze. It was at this point that I decided it was time to fucking leave. I didn’t have access to all my magic, and I didn’t have full confidence in what I did have. I could feel this thing slowly making its way up the stairs towards us, but I wasn’t confident in being able to fight this thing, in the dark, on energy sense alone. I had limited mobility in the stairwell, and limited range of motion. And I didn’t even know what this thing could really do.
I went back up the stairs towards the light coming from the windows of the doors to that floor which only barely illuminated down to the platform, Telling Luth to follow. But he didn’t, he just stood there in a daze and mumbled something that I don’t remember now, I think it was about how his maggots were dying. I called to him to come along again, saying we needed to go, but he just kept standing there. Eventually he did slowly start to walk up the stairs still in a daze. I remember him getting angry at me about something I said about the demon, I think maybe something about how we needed to reposition so we could fight it, and he basically said that he thought he idea that we could win against “Demonic mecha Hitler” was insane. I could feel that thing still making its way towards us, only a couple levels beneath us now, and I was not about to let myself get caught by it. So I left Luth behind to either die or hurry the fuck up at his own pace. The guard outside these doors was still just standing there, I can’t remember what he said but he seemed pretty freaked out for good reason upon hearing what was going on. I don’t remember him following us.
I headed back upstairs a different way, still faintly feeling the demon coming, and made my way to the main staff offices. Apparently the whole facility was in an uproar. The students had all gone sort of “morally insane” and had decided it’d be fun if they all dressed up as their favourite serial killers. None of which I recognized but that’s the information I got. They also had pretty much all gathered on the first floor, outside the main office in the large hallway leading to the main entrance. They weren’t violent but they were certainly more than flaunting every rule of the facility and the staff were freaking out about what to do, they were a hair away from just opening fire on them but were barely holding back fearing that doing so would just trigger a stampede of a couple hundred people to overrun them as the students seemed unhinged enough to actually do that right now. The staff were blissfully ignorant of the demon slowly making its way towards all of them. Ironically, as I looked at the dozen plus heavily armed men I calculated that they might actually have enough firepower to kill the demon, or at the very least slow it down a bit, if they all mag dumped into it all at once and were insanely lucky. Though I doubted they would be. Luth finally walked in, still mostly in a daze. I tried telling him again that we needed to go but he just muttered something about how “it didn’t even matter” and that “they just got swept up in the tide”. Probably talking about his maggots, which by this point were definitely all dead. I didn’t think of it at the time, but he’d probably seen a lot more than just the demon through his maggot’s eyes.
I was anxiously looking towards the two ways into the office from the lower levels, just waiting for the demon to emerge from one of them because I couldn’t really tell where it was exactly and in hindsight I probably should’ve paid way more attention to that detail. But after trying to coax Luth one more time to follow me unsuccessfully I decided I didn’t have time for this shit and grabbed my VIP by the wrist and dragged her towards the crowd of students. She protested but only a little. I stuck close to the left wall, covered in large windows, holding out my sword defensively as I shimmied past everyone dragging the girl along. They didn’t seem to care about me and mostly wanted to stay far enough away as not to get accidentally cut or stabbed. One group were dressed as some serial killer of that world, all had shaved head, glasses and a lime green hoodie with white trim. They also all curled their upper lips on the side in a way that I’m assuming this guy famously did, whoever they were. I know the slightly fatter guy looked the most like the real person. As I moved past the crowd I thought about how the crowd might actually try attacking the demon in their state, but they’d all die in the process.
Me and the girl got outside to the parking lot in the shopping plaza this facility apparently sat in. it was a bright sunny day and everything was so incredibly normal, peaceful and mundane it was almost disorienting compared to what I’d just been through inside. My intention, quite frankly, was to open a gate and leave this world to whatever fate was about to befall it. The girl protested this and asked me not to just leave them. And that she had stayed because she was hoping she could be a good influence on them and that if I left she wouldn’t join me. I told her that I have been through this sort of thing multiple times already and I wasn’t about to deliberately put myself through it again for the sake of people who I have no obligation to help or connection with. I told her that if she wanted to stay she by all means could, but I was leaving and lifted off to start flying away.
She sort of paused for a moment and started talking again, more calmly. I wish I could remember exactly what she said. But in general she sympathized with how I was feeling and mentioned something about [REDACTED] and how they might perceive this. Though it wasn’t a threat, not really anyways, I think she was saying that they would also probably be sympathetic. Which was something that very much caught my attention. She finished with a warning that, although this is how I feel, I may not be able to just leave, because I’d be in conflict with myself, there might be a part of me that couldn’t let go so easily, or something to that effect. At which point I woke up, technically having been undecided about whether I really wanted to leave or not. But really, knowing that the existence of that thing and what it was doing would piss me off and that I’d inevitably just turn around to kill it, or try to.
I had initially interpreted the dream as just a vivid metaphor even while I was inside the dream, With the facility representing this earth, the students/research subjects/inmates being the people and the staff being, well the government I guess, I wasn’t really sure. And the events being a metaphorical and exaggerated version of my perception of what’s happening here. A system where no one is innocent. People didn’t seem to react in what I considered a realistic way. The staff in particular seemed, in my opinion, a little too okay with me, some outsider with a weapon, walking around their facility. Even though I know we’d talked about it when I first arrived and they’d more or less said I was okay it still just seemed odd. The serial killer cosplay at the end had also supported this, seeming like it sort of came out of nowhere and had all happened so quickly, and just the nature of it seemed like it was probably a lot more fantastical than what could be expected to really happen in such a scenario. And to top it all off, all these things came together in such a way that seemed almost too metaphorically on the nose for what I’m dealing with right now, which was a huge part of the reason why I ran, instead of doing what I’d typically do in that scenario, which is get really, really angry, rush downstairs and attack the creature while sarcastically mocking it. Fully intending and attempting to torture it the same way it was torturing everyone else. I’ve been really trying to detach from my previous pattern of throwing my life and sanity away for others who, not uncommonly, don’t really deserve it.
But something about that girl seemed like it was a lot more real than the rest of what happened. Her reactions seemed a lot more genuine. And though her mention of [REDACTED] could very easily be said to just be my own mind inserting personally meaningful stuff into the dream I wonder about that given how the rest of what she said went. I mean if there’s anyone who could remotely be considered my employer for these things, it would be them. Though technically I suppose former employer would be more accurate. And from what I remember from her background, she was connected to them in some way. And to be honest, the fact that I so incredibly conveniently just happened to wake up precisely before I could decide, or I guess “understand”, what I wanted was also intriguing. I’ve had similar things happen only a handful of other times and all of them also had very suspicious “real“ things in them.
So now I have this horrible feeling that maybe it wasn’t all so metaphorical, and that the reason she protested so much was because she had no idea that the reason I was so intent on leaving so fast was because of that demon thing that was going to slaughter everyone inside and then make its way outside. Spreading its infection all the while. I don’t think I told her about it and I’m not sure she would’ve sensed it herself given I lost track of it in the main office. She may have thought I was just generally leaving this group of troubled people because I didn’t care to help them. In which case, if she was still there after I woke up, she probably got a very horrific awakening after a couple minutes, or if she went back inside. She didn’t seem at all like a fighter, she was a counsellor, and I highly doubt she would’ve fared well if she encountered that thing. So I’m really hoping that it was all just metaphorical.
I was investigating some sort of facility in another earth. My main task was to extract someone. I know there was some energetic activity happening in there. The only equipment I had was the sword on my back.
The facility was reminiscent of a YMCA, though it also had a clear school and housing component. It clearly had a school component but it seemed like that was secondary or part of its main purpose. The “students” or whatever they were, were largely troubled, seemingly criminally inclined. In a sense the place reminded me of a jail, or juvenile detention because of how they acted. Many of them, if not all were either late teens or young adults. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember seeing anyone who I thought could’ve been older than 30, except among the staff, though there were a couple that got close. The facility had above ground components, but it seemed like the bulk of it was located underground. The students seemed to have limited, controlled access to upper levels, though they did technically have access. There were many heavily armed guards everywhere carrying what looked like carbines and submachine guns and some form of body armour.
The first thing I did was talk to the staff ion the main office though I don’t remember exactly what I told them. But in general they seemed to recognize who I was and what I was doing there, they may have called me themselves but I don’t remember clearly. The staff were getting more ansy about their situation, as it seemed that the students were getting increasingly hostile and confrontational, though they hadn’t yet become openly violent. Some of this if not all of it appeared to be due to whatever was happening to them within the facility. Whatever education, or other activities they were subjected to. Some sort of social experiments, I’m not really sure at this point.
As I investigated the facility I learned that four of the students had developed magical abilities due to their shared interest in the occult. And interest that had sprung from whatever else they’d been subjected to at the facility. The “culture” you could say. It was in a sense a natural evolution of the mainstream of the place, though incredibly fringe. Their abilities were unknown to the staff and seemingly the other students as well. I mainly remember figuring it out initially through being able to directly sense their much higher energy levels. The rest came through some semi covert conversations with them and those around them. They were all friends, and they were the source of the disturbances I could feel. They also seemed to be involved in something a lot deeper in the facility and were at least partially responsible for the increasing mental instability of the other students via their abilities.
The administrative staff were getting more and more concerned about the deteriorating situation, though things were stable for the moment. The students vastly outnumbered them, and even with their firepower it was conceivable that the students could trap them and kill them. And such a possibility was starting to seem plausible the way things were going. I could feel the growing tension just from being anywhere near any of the people roaming the halls. At some point I found the person I was meant to extract. It was a girl who also came from the outside like me. She’d decided to live here even though things were terrible, because she’d hoped to be a good influence on the students. She had incredibly light brown hair, It almost looked like she was going grey. She also had higher energy, though I did remember hers feeling different that the group of fours. To put it simply, hers was lighter and “nicer”. I remember stumbling across her almost by accident in a hallway filled with lockers and a few other people. She seemed to recognize who I was and why I was there. I think she’d asked me if it was time for her to leave.
My poking around (and potentially fighting one member of the group of four though I can’t remember for sure) was noticed by one of the group of four. A girl who I’d learned was either the defacto leader of the group or at least a member that stood out among them. She in particular seemed like she was involved in far darker things, or at least might be. I’d learned this from her friend, Luth, a black, or perhaps indian, british boy. He had confided something about her and how he had been concerned about her. I don’t remember the girl’s name unfortunately, so we’ll call her Ellen as that sounds closest to what I can remember. She was a pretty standard caucasian brunette with long hair past her shoulders, a white t-shirt and blue jeans. Ellen asked to set up a meeting with me to go to the gym on the first floor at a time when no one else would be around so we could talk privately. I took my VIP to the main office and told her to wait there for me, saying I’d be back in a little bit and then we’d leave.
I remember noting that Ellen wasn’t actually supposed to be allowed to go to the gym at the time set, but her and her group largely flaunted the rules of the facility and were either getting away with it or allowed to do so due to their apparent control of things and/or abilities. I went there and sort of expected a trap but was also surprised at her sheer immediate hostility.
If I remember correctly she demanded to know who I was and why I was in their facility. Then generally went on a tirade about how she owned the place and there wasn’t anything I or anyone could do about it. She’d apparently summoned, or was in the process of summoning a powerful demon who would make sure of that. It didn’t take long before it turned into a fight. I know one of her abilities was to summon these maggot like creatures, about the size of a medium dog, white and very fat with rolls kinda like a grub. Presumably the demon she talked about was an extension of this ability. She could summon about ten of them at once from what I recall. I know that I had at least some access to my ranged magic and in particular had the ability to generate the blue “crystal” that is effectively my signature ability. Though I remember using more standard beams and bolts at points as well. I don’t remember the fight lasting all that long though I do remember it being pretty intense.
The main image I remember was her laying on a pile of her dead maggots while my crystal was dissolving around them. Having been used to impale them. She was still unconcerned and laughing, claiming that the demon would free her or save her or something and that it didn’t matter what we did. If I remember correctly it may have been that her death would trigger the final part of the summoning. She believed that “he” would resurrect her or something, or that she’d be resurrected as part of the corruption he would spread by his presence. Literally a sort of infection into the land itself, though not like a fungus or anything like that, more of a planar conversion. Luth had come in at some point, and though I remember him being very angry with me fighting her he quickly came over to my side when he learned what Ellen had been up to with this demon summoning. He asked her how she could do that, and said that things were never supposed to go this far, the occult stuff was only supposed to be a bit of fun. He felt betrayed by her in a sense and agreed to help me stop the demon. Either stop the summoning, or kill it if it was already out.
His ability, which he referred to as “Luthein” which I thought was just a play on his name, was a more advanced form of the maggot summoning. He’d specialized into it, unlike Ellen, who’d had a more diverse and subsequently powerful set of abilities. He could control about 20-25 of them and was capable of seeing through their eyes. However he said he had a trick where he was able to double the amount he could summon though there was some cost in control that wasn’t made clear. With a flame of orange and red energy wreathing his body, he summoned a good 50-60 of them and sent them off towards the basement while we followed as close behind as we could. The plan being that if they ran into the demon, they would immediately swarm and devour it with their overwhelming numbers. Or at the very least damage it enough to make it easy for me to finish off.
The grubs were very fast, but I was able to keep track of them via energy sense. We followed down a couple sets of stairs and opened a door on another level into a central staircase which one guard was guarding, he seemed very freaked out by the maggots had refrained from doing anything to them as they’d opened the door and poured down the stairs. By this point I’d already started sensing the demons energy far below us. And pretty much as soon as we opened the door we could hear the echoing screams of people who were very clearly being torn apart by it. There may have also been bits of gunfire but I don’t remember clearly. It normally takes quite a bit to shake me at this point, but I really gotta be honest, this definitely did. Nonetheless we started down the stairs.
I could feel some humanoid thing crawling up the stairs on its stomach a few levels below us. It definitely wasn’t human, it felt very lanky, with elongated fingers and perhaps claws. I could also feel Luth’s maggots pour over it and kill it. Luth reported as much somewhat gleefully. Could feel that the demon had an energy large field around it that more or less spread darkness. It probably extended a good 30 meters in a sphere. Which felt like it was meant both to obscure its location, but was also for pure intimidation. And to be honest it was sort of working. Most disturbing to me however was that I could feel that the amount of energy it was putting out was roughly equivalent to mine, if not a little more. And on top of that, the “image” of the demon was flickering oddly. Though the energy level wasn’t flickering. So It didn’t seem like the field was suppressing how much energy it was putting out or anything like that, but I didn’t know what to make of it and that really bothered me.
Then, when we got down the first set of stairs, to the platform between floors, the lights in the stairwell suddenly went out. It wasn’t the demons aura, it was an electrical failure of some sort. Luth’s maggots were right on top of the creature, and I could feel them popping like bubble wrap as soon as they got near it. Luth froze. It was at this point that I decided it was time to fucking leave. I didn’t have access to all my magic, and I didn’t have full confidence in what I did have. I could feel this thing slowly making its way up the stairs towards us, but I wasn’t confident in being able to fight this thing, in the dark, on energy sense alone. I had limited mobility in the stairwell, and limited range of motion. And I didn’t even know what this thing could really do.
I went back up the stairs towards the light coming from the windows of the doors to that floor which only barely illuminated down to the platform, Telling Luth to follow. But he didn’t, he just stood there in a daze and mumbled something that I don’t remember now, I think it was about how his maggots were dying. I called to him to come along again, saying we needed to go, but he just kept standing there. Eventually he did slowly start to walk up the stairs still in a daze. I remember him getting angry at me about something I said about the demon, I think maybe something about how we needed to reposition so we could fight it, and he basically said that he thought he idea that we could win against “Demonic mecha Hitler” was insane. I could feel that thing still making its way towards us, only a couple levels beneath us now, and I was not about to let myself get caught by it. So I left Luth behind to either die or hurry the fuck up at his own pace. The guard outside these doors was still just standing there, I can’t remember what he said but he seemed pretty freaked out for good reason upon hearing what was going on. I don’t remember him following us.
I headed back upstairs a different way, still faintly feeling the demon coming, and made my way to the main staff offices. Apparently the whole facility was in an uproar. The students had all gone sort of “morally insane” and had decided it’d be fun if they all dressed up as their favourite serial killers. None of which I recognized but that’s the information I got. They also had pretty much all gathered on the first floor, outside the main office in the large hallway leading to the main entrance. They weren’t violent but they were certainly more than flaunting every rule of the facility and the staff were freaking out about what to do, they were a hair away from just opening fire on them but were barely holding back fearing that doing so would just trigger a stampede of a couple hundred people to overrun them as the students seemed unhinged enough to actually do that right now. The staff were blissfully ignorant of the demon slowly making its way towards all of them. Ironically, as I looked at the dozen plus heavily armed men I calculated that they might actually have enough firepower to kill the demon, or at the very least slow it down a bit, if they all mag dumped into it all at once and were insanely lucky. Though I doubted they would be. Luth finally walked in, still mostly in a daze. I tried telling him again that we needed to go but he just muttered something about how “it didn’t even matter” and that “they just got swept up in the tide”. Probably talking about his maggots, which by this point were definitely all dead. I didn’t think of it at the time, but he’d probably seen a lot more than just the demon through his maggot’s eyes.
I was anxiously looking towards the two ways into the office from the lower levels, just waiting for the demon to emerge from one of them because I couldn’t really tell where it was exactly and in hindsight I probably should’ve paid way more attention to that detail. But after trying to coax Luth one more time to follow me unsuccessfully I decided I didn’t have time for this shit and grabbed my VIP by the wrist and dragged her towards the crowd of students. She protested but only a little. I stuck close to the left wall, covered in large windows, holding out my sword defensively as I shimmied past everyone dragging the girl along. They didn’t seem to care about me and mostly wanted to stay far enough away as not to get accidentally cut or stabbed. One group were dressed as some serial killer of that world, all had shaved head, glasses and a lime green hoodie with white trim. They also all curled their upper lips on the side in a way that I’m assuming this guy famously did, whoever they were. I know the slightly fatter guy looked the most like the real person. As I moved past the crowd I thought about how the crowd might actually try attacking the demon in their state, but they’d all die in the process.
Me and the girl got outside to the parking lot in the shopping plaza this facility apparently sat in. it was a bright sunny day and everything was so incredibly normal, peaceful and mundane it was almost disorienting compared to what I’d just been through inside. My intention, quite frankly, was to open a gate and leave this world to whatever fate was about to befall it. The girl protested this and asked me not to just leave them. And that she had stayed because she was hoping she could be a good influence on them and that if I left she wouldn’t join me. I told her that I have been through this sort of thing multiple times already and I wasn’t about to deliberately put myself through it again for the sake of people who I have no obligation to help or connection with. I told her that if she wanted to stay she by all means could, but I was leaving and lifted off to start flying away.
She sort of paused for a moment and started talking again, more calmly. I wish I could remember exactly what she said. But in general she sympathized with how I was feeling and mentioned something about [REDACTED] and how they might perceive this. Though it wasn’t a threat, not really anyways, I think she was saying that they would also probably be sympathetic. Which was something that very much caught my attention. She finished with a warning that, although this is how I feel, I may not be able to just leave, because I’d be in conflict with myself, there might be a part of me that couldn’t let go so easily, or something to that effect. At which point I woke up, technically having been undecided about whether I really wanted to leave or not. But really, knowing that the existence of that thing and what it was doing would piss me off and that I’d inevitably just turn around to kill it, or try to.
I had initially interpreted the dream as just a vivid metaphor even while I was inside the dream, With the facility representing this earth, the students/research subjects/inmates being the people and the staff being, well the government I guess, I wasn’t really sure. And the events being a metaphorical and exaggerated version of my perception of what’s happening here. A system where no one is innocent. People didn’t seem to react in what I considered a realistic way. The staff in particular seemed, in my opinion, a little too okay with me, some outsider with a weapon, walking around their facility. Even though I know we’d talked about it when I first arrived and they’d more or less said I was okay it still just seemed odd. The serial killer cosplay at the end had also supported this, seeming like it sort of came out of nowhere and had all happened so quickly, and just the nature of it seemed like it was probably a lot more fantastical than what could be expected to really happen in such a scenario. And to top it all off, all these things came together in such a way that seemed almost too metaphorically on the nose for what I’m dealing with right now, which was a huge part of the reason why I ran, instead of doing what I’d typically do in that scenario, which is get really, really angry, rush downstairs and attack the creature while sarcastically mocking it. Fully intending and attempting to torture it the same way it was torturing everyone else. I’ve been really trying to detach from my previous pattern of throwing my life and sanity away for others who, not uncommonly, don’t really deserve it.
But something about that girl seemed like it was a lot more real than the rest of what happened. Her reactions seemed a lot more genuine. And though her mention of [REDACTED] could very easily be said to just be my own mind inserting personally meaningful stuff into the dream I wonder about that given how the rest of what she said went. I mean if there’s anyone who could remotely be considered my employer for these things, it would be them. Though technically I suppose former employer would be more accurate. And from what I remember from her background, she was connected to them in some way. And to be honest, the fact that I so incredibly conveniently just happened to wake up precisely before I could decide, or I guess “understand”, what I wanted was also intriguing. I’ve had similar things happen only a handful of other times and all of them also had very suspicious “real“ things in them.
So now I have this horrible feeling that maybe it wasn’t all so metaphorical, and that the reason she protested so much was because she had no idea that the reason I was so intent on leaving so fast was because of that demon thing that was going to slaughter everyone inside and then make its way outside. Spreading its infection all the while. I don’t think I told her about it and I’m not sure she would’ve sensed it herself given I lost track of it in the main office. She may have thought I was just generally leaving this group of troubled people because I didn’t care to help them. In which case, if she was still there after I woke up, she probably got a very horrific awakening after a couple minutes, or if she went back inside. She didn’t seem at all like a fighter, she was a counsellor, and I highly doubt she would’ve fared well if she encountered that thing. So I’m really hoping that it was all just metaphorical.
"The cure for bad information is more information."
(This post was last modified: 2021-03-22, 04:22 AM by Mediochre.
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