bakerstreet | △ inceptus nolanus overratus

△ inceptus nolanus overratus

THE DREAMSCAPER MEME

Welcome to the mind - your mind, to be exact. Inside your dreams, anything is possible. You can do whatever you can imagine... and a great deal about someone can be reflected by the world their psyche creates.
Of course, the dreamscape isn't only a place where the normal laws of reality do not apply. It is also home to one's fears, hopes, and memories... now free for you, the visiting dreamscaper, to explore. What will you discover in the maze of a thousand doors leading to each memory? What terrors and aspirations will you uncover? You have until it all fades away, as the dreamer wakes up.
So sweet dreams... and beware of lurking nightmares.

HOW TO PLAY:
△ Post with your character, giving a description of their mindscape! It can be as simple or as detailed as you like, but try not to leave your post blank, so others know what kind of dream world they're going to explore! Example: "Lucy's dream world is a kingdom made entirely of desserts. Her memories are located inside a giant chocolate castle."
△ Choose a scenario from the list, or use RNG if you're feeling indecisive!
△ Tag other characters and explore their dream worlds!

SCENARIOS:
1) EXPLORING THE DREAMSCAPE: The world inside the mind is as vast as you can imagine, and no fantasy is too great to be brought to life. What sort of incredible things are waiting to be found?

2) MEMORY OF A MEMORY: When searching through someone's memories, it's almost like experiencing them yourself as past events unfold before you. Perhaps you stumble upon a happy recollection of childhood, or a horrible, terrible secret locked away...

3) HOPES & DREAMS: We all have our goals, our desires. You can learn a lot about a person from seeing first hand what they want out of life. Are you involved somehow, and is it a surprise?

4) FACING FEARS: Where one holds their fears can be a dangerous place to tread. Do you have the bravery to conquer a phobia? Or maybe, you're just here looking for something to exploit...

5) AND YOU WERE THERE...: You've found yourself in this dream, whether you were meant to be there or not! The dreamer may not even be aware this isn't really happening. What's going on, and is it even something you want to be a part of?

6) IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHTMARE: Seems the pleasant dreams are over and the fears have gotten loose. As darkness takes hold of the dream world and you come face-to-face with a nightmare, it may become difficult to remember none of this is real... none of this is real...

7) BATTLE IN THE MIND: It's a dream fight! Whether it's against a strange dream creature, a horrid nightmare beast or another dreamscaper, you can conjure whatever you can conceive, so just think of cool fighting stuff and it'll happen!

8) YOUR WILDEST DREAMS: Obligatory wildcard or mix-and-match option! It's all up to you!

Inspired by episode 19 of Gravity Falls.
Meme created by

donotsummon. Reposts welcome!

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Cal was puzzled, briefly, by Niko's movement, but he caught on before long and grinned. The expression was still too sharp and too toothy, but he scrambled down himself, bare toes digging in between tendrils -and if he hadn't been barefoot before it was anyone's guess when it had happened- to give himself a somewhat more stable stance.

He twisted easily, using the spear as a lever to pry two of the larger segments along Abbagor's back apart, holding them there even though he had to use both arms and a good portion of his own weight against the weapon to do so.

Where his grin was too sharp, his eyes, likewise, were nearly fully red, nearly glowing Auphe-bright. The cat was still perched where Cal had just climbed down from, tail not quite lashing, but definitely swaying with intent, looking ready to pounce.

Niko traded grins with Cal, wild-eyed and toothy himself, and darted into the opening Cal provided, blade flickering at it plunged deeply. And there, a nice little hole like it was just made for him to shove that grenade right in there, the side of his hand skinned raw against bones like steel and concrete.

The tentacle caught him around the arm this time, and yanked down, but the grenade was set and Niko barely had time to register the ominous pop from his shoulder before he was in freefall - and the ground was much, much farther down this time.

He'd said that gates didn't work predictably in dreams, especially this deep, but that was apparently something that didn't matter, not at the moment, all that mattered was not letting Niko hit the pavement at his current speed, dreamscape or no.

Cal scrambled down Abbagor's side, half-gating and half-climbing, catching Niko again and again on the way down, acting like a drag chute, slowing his fall until they both hit the ground with a thump from less than ten feet up, the cat landing lightly beside them a moment later, "We should move." Was all Cal said, voice brittle, sharp at the edges.

Niko coughed and rolled to his feet wordlessly. He stopped, blinking, as his left arm dangled uselessly. He shook his head and ignored it, because it didn't hurt. But nothing hurt right now, and he still had his sword in his right hand, and that grenade was about to blow.

Like now.

The explosion was muffled, but the effectiveness was clear; Abbagor rocked where he stood and began to fall.

"You ready for a scene change?" Cal asked, the words practically breaking off instead of being said. Abbagor's gravity seemed to have increased, pulling the whole landscape along with him as he fell, Cal did have an occasional flair for the dramatic, and now was no exception.

Except that the cat chose that moment to pounce, a beautiful perfect arc, slamming into Cal's chest, snarling low in its throat, teeth bared and claws digging into his shoulders. Someone, it seemed, objected to the idea of going any deeper into Cal's subconscious, and had decided that it was time to wake up.

Niko's response was split-second, and even as the cat impacted Cal Niko hit the cat from the side. His katana dove between the cat's ribs and he snapped a leg up to kick the body off his blade. He moved fluidly, quick, and the bright fight in him had gone cold, his face blank and still. Pain and personality took a distant backseat to Cal's safety and in the back of his head Niko grimaced. Knowing it was a dream didn't stop him from thinking how much damage he was doing to his own body when he struggled to use his left arm still.

Disassociating sucked, Niko decided again, and watched as he followed up the kick with a rapid pounce, katana gleaming as he drove for the panther's throat.

That had, apparently, been the wrong thing to do. Even half-feral, more than half, even this far down, Cal knew that the cat had been helping, and was the closest thing to a friend he'd had on his excursions this far down into the dreamscape.

He snarled, scrabbling to get his feet under him properly, rolling upright and launching himself at Niko in almost the same movement, knocking him aside with a hiss and a snarl of white noise that was probably as good as a string of curses in Auphe.

The katana clattered to the ground as Niko dropped limp, going down under Cal without a single ounce of fight or response. He hit the ground hard and stayed there, arms outflung, hands lax. He stared up at Cal without fear or alarm, only a serene acceptance of his fate. Whatever attack or instigation Cal had against him was more than justified and Niko would not fight it.

He met Cal's red-eyed gaze steadily, then closed his eyes with a sigh and tipped his head back just the fraction more. Throat bared, eyes closed, he waited.

It took him a moment to actually make words work in anything other than Auphe, fingers curled in the front of Niko's shirt, thumping his head against the ground with each word, "Leave, her, alone." Once he was sure he'd gotten his point across, he let go, leaning forward to butt his head against Niko's just once, more gently than he'd been thumping that blond head against the pavement.

He rolled to his feet then, eying Niko a moment before offering him a hand up, "We should go. Shouldn't be here any more."

Niko took the abuse with a doll-like limpness, eyes closed. At the head-butt, though, he did open his eyes, surprised by the apparent affection in the action. He blinked at Cal's outstretched hand. The impact with the ground had rattled him back into control, though, with just enough pain to break him loose from disassociating. So he reached up and took Cal's hand, let the other help him to his feet. Once there, he looked around for his katana.

"Alright." The words felt clumsy. "Where should we go, then?"

There was his katana, lying in front of a closed door. A closed door with absolutely no wall left around it, only the door standing there.

Niko wondered if it could get anymore blatant than that, and moved slowly to fetch his katana. His left arm dangled at his side, throbbing. Something in the shoulder was out, but probably not broken.

"Away." He said, as if this were the most obvious answer. There was some small part of his mind, likely whatever part was really on the cat's side, that realized how far he'd regressed and was probably more than a little disgusted by it.

The rest of him, the mostly-Auphe, mostly-subconscious part didn't seem to care at all, perfectly fine in the moment. He nodded towards the door, "Probably a shortcut." He shrugged one shoulder, "Unless you want to go back the way we came."

"That might be difficult," Niko commented, and crouched to gather his katana and sheath it. He looked back at Cal, then reached out and opened the door.

It swung wide when he pushed it, and the interior was dark. The breath of air through it was warm and humid and sweet like a Southern summer night, and Niko stared curiously at the dim shapes beyond without crossing over the threshhold. What lay beyond almos had a different feel to it entirely, and he blinked slowly.

"Oh. I know where this goes."

He just tilted his head, apparently waiting for further explanation, both brows lifted, looking somehow curious and puzzled at the same time.

He was patient, and the cat was apparently gone, it was anyone's guess as to whether this was a good thing or a bad one. Under normal circumstances, he would probably suspect 'bad', but these weren't normal circumstances in the least.

Niko shook his head. "I don't actually know if you can ome along with me, but we can try." He held out his hand, offering. "Can't hurt..."

No, definitely not. And it might ease things, the damage done here, the red in Cal's eyes bright, the torn up ground around them. With the fight gone and rationality kicking back in, Niko could recognize again the dreaming and the effects of it n Cal's subconscious. Thecat was gone, and the blood on Niko's hand was dried. He suspected ithad a lot to do with the breeze wafting through still, and the way moss was growing green and lush over the doorstep onto barren concrete.

Starlight and taste of honeysuckle. Funny how this was where Niko almost always ended up when he managed to dreamwalk.

He accepted the hand, if a little wary, not used to being told he couldn't go places in his own head. At least until realization caught up and he just nodded, "This one's not mine." It wasn't a question, not as such, though there was space there to be waiting for a confirmation of the observation all the same.

He almost recognized it, but not enough to be familiar with it any further than knowing it wasn't one of his dreams. That really just left one other person that it could belong to.

"No."

The moss had spread and the city looked less damaged, somehow. Niko gripped Cal's hand firmly, and walked through the door into the soft summer night. The darkness was lit only by starlight, and it was like passing through a curtain: no light from the doorway penetrated. Niko's footsteps left dead patches in the summer grass, until two steps behind him they grew up again in a greater riot of green and growing and vibrant.

The air was sweet and the night not-quite-silent. The grassy path they walked down was bordered in by trees, black against the sky, and in the depths of the woods there was laughter, high and carefree like children's laughter...only it wasn't. Niko could recognize the laughter of the Auphe now, though the first time he hadn't known what it was.

Niko's own doppleganger stood at the end of the path, barring the way to the clearing. Tall and dressed in black, with eyes scratched out and cold blue lips and dead rotten hands, bones showing through strips of soapy rotted flesh. But the apparition stood aside, and let them pass.

There was a single dark-haired figure in the middle of the clearing, standing with hands clasped behind its back, face turned up to the stars, back to them.

He wasn't entirely sure about the change of location, and whatever part of his mind hadn't regressed was pointing out that it was probably a bad idea in general. But Cal had years of practice at ignoring the one dissenting voice, even when it was his own, and the fact that the transition from one to the other was painless, even easy which obviously meant that it couldn't be all bad.

His nose wrinkled, just a little, at Niko's apparently undead double. He made the quietest of huffing noises, like a cat disapproving without drawing attention to itself. But the gatekeeper, such as it was, let them through, and he was more-or-less happy to realize that despite the appearance, there wasn't any smell of decay.

Niko walked steadily along, still clasping Cal's hand.

Cal turned, and smiled sweetly at him. His hair was down around his shoulders, his eyes were clear grey and warm. He walked to meet them, and reached up to hug Niko. In the strange distortion of dream, for a moment Niko wasn't sure if he'd gotten shorter, or Cal taller, as Cal pressed their foreheads together, eyes closed, and breathed words of quiet welcome between them. Niko wrapped his arm around narrow shoulders and felt a strength he could never hope to match, and brother to brother the kiss of greeting. Niko drew a deep breath as Cal stepped back, and unconsciously carried his own weight straighter, the blood and bruising on him gone, his face washed clean.

For his double, Cal had the same easy smile, and held his hands out in offer of the same greeting he'd given Niko, his voice soft. "Cousin."

Edited 2014-02-24 06:17 (UTC)

His head tilted, not entirely sure as to whether he wanted to be greeted or not. But it was only a moment before he eased forward as well, apparently contact was something he craved even in a dream.

What he said, sounding almost puzzled and not as distressed as one would think was: "We lost the cat." He knew that it wasn't a good thing, but at the same time he couldn't figure out what could be done about it.

Cal hugged his double just the same, cheek-to-cheek and the soft press of lips. "She will be there when and where you need her," he said, confidently, quietly. His smile was soft and he reached up to touch a bruise on Cal's cheek. The mark faded in a blink. "But that is not here."

Niko stood silent, watching, satisfied to be in this place, gratified that not only was he allowed to rest here, he was welcomed here. Long before he'd figured out dreamwalking, he'd admired Cal's inner strength. And it was here, in the heart of his dreams, that Cal's strength truly showed; human and gentle and healing. There was peace here and every breath threatened to soothe Niko into a deeper sleep, one without dreams at all.

He made a thoughtful sound in his throat at that response, still not entirely sure he could trust it. But, Cal was him, after a fashion, and if he couldn't trust himself, then who could he trust? So finally he just nodded, "Alright."

He was, slowly but surely, becoming more aware, apparently someone else's dream, regardless of how deep, wasn't at the same level of his own subconscious, not enough to be worrisome at any rate.

"Now that you know how to get here...if you need to, you come here, okay? It'll be here for you." Cal leaned their foreheads together, him and his double, mirror images of eachother. Niko watched and felt that there was something wrong with the offer, somehow. Cal shouldn't...have to make it? No, that wasn't it. Shouldn't be offering it at all? That wasn't right either.

The sound of the Auphe laughter swelled abruptly and Niko missed the next few words, though he saw Cal's lips move.

Cal kissed his double again, on the lips, and reached up to curve his palms over his double's eyes. The laughter was all around them and Niko found himself on his knees in the tall grass, dizzy with sleep, struggling to stay aware and with Cal.

Normally he would object to that sort of thing, to having one of his senses cut off, but right now he knew that it was important, in the way things in dreams often were.

More than that, he knew that he had to wake up, that he should have done so already, and mostly he really didn't belong here, not now, not like this. His double was right, though, now that he knew the way in, he'd definitely be coming back.

Dream spaces were always easier to navigate than gates.

Cal held his hands over his double's face, fingers threaded through inky black hair, and stood for a moment with his own eyes closed. Niko leaned heavily on one hand, fighting the sleep that washed over him in long, slow, sweet waves. There was no fear here, only peace and warmth and the quiet knowledge that Cal would not leave him. Not here, not alone, not ever. Still Niko struggled, trying so hard to remain.

Distance blurred, and as Cal drew his hands away, carding his fingers through dark silky hair, Niko rested his forehead against Cal's hip, leaning on his leg. Cal ran his fingers over Niko's hair, and Niko's eyes slipped closed.

"It's not about the fight, see? It never has been," Cal said, gently. "This was what it's been about, this whole time...and we forget, when we wake, because...I don't think we're supposed to know. But we do, and I do, and you do."

Niko heard him shift, felt the sway, and the words followed him down into darkness. "And when we dream, we know the truth."

You were wrong.

He watched them both for a moment, unable to keep from swaying a little himself, eyes half closed, just listening more than anything.

Though he did shake himself out of it a moment later, his own voice low, "I should go. It'll be alright." A flicker of a smile, nodding once, "I know the way, now." The way out and the way back, should he want it.

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△ inceptus nolanus overratus

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