Summary:Dream Dimension Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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The dream realm is a place Isis knows very well. She comes here often to watch. To prowl. To feed. And to travel. It's not safe. There are things here other than the dreams of mortal men, but Isis knows the dangers. She can do it with a minimum of hassle most times.
This is not one of those times. There is something else in the dream realm here. Not an individual dream or dreamer but something else. Something powerful. It's warping the space around it. And at the moment that space is becoming like something of a creepy carnival.
Getting into the Dream Dimension takes a lot effort and Isis can only do it once a week. But she likes to. She gets a different view of the dreams of those around her and it's a bit of a thrill for the feline-like muntant.
She knows something is wrong the moment she steps through the dream of the person in the apartment nearest her. Her cats ears tilt forward and she's immediately on edge. What the hell is going on here?
The carnival music is tinny and piped in from… somewhere unclear. Everything is distorted as if in a funhouse mirror. The barkers are calling, but it's hard to tell what. Everything is vaguely sinister. Everything here feels like it's hiding something. Something dangerous waiting to leap out at any moment.
As Isis pushes in the tents seem to loom around her. Taller than they should be. No matter what path she takes everything seems to lead in toward a big central tent.
Is… someone following her?
The tinny music is nearly painful to Isis' ears. They're more sensitive than a humans. The strange landscape, the washed out colours, the distortions are things she's learned to expect in this dimension. Just not the Carnival that she's found herself.
Taking a step and then another, Isis decides to try a different direction only to find herself heading to the Big Top. She frowns, letting out a low feline growl. She doesn't like this.
Did she hear something? The hair on the back of her neck stands on end and one ear turns to try and catch a sound. Her nose is working overtime as well - there's scents that she might expect to find at a carnivale - washed out and pale reflections of the thing in real life.
The scents are… odd. Out of place. Dirt. Sugar. Blood. Oil. Sweat. Diesel fuel. And shoe leather. The overpowering odor of shoe leather. She can also smell antiseptics and rubbing alcohol. Just like… back in the lab.
A flash of yellow gets her out of the corner of the eye. Behind her. No, wait. There's nothing there. But a few paces later she sees it again. Every time she turns to confront it, it's gone. But every time she moves she can almost see a yellow lab suit following her. Seven feet tall. Huge.
Stalking her through the crowd as she gets closer to that big tent.
That feline growl gets more ferocious and low as Isis catches the scent of the lab. She doesn't like that and she likes the glimpse of the yellow even more. This is too much like what they did to her … back there.
She takes the next left, then the right, moving inexorably towards the tent in the middle. Growing frustrated with the glimpses, feeling her heart beat a rapid tattooo, the feline-like mutant leaps … to the roof of the tent she's next to.
It's a precarious thing and she needs to land just so - right on the edge where it's reinforced and balanced. Fortunately she's … like a cat.
Isis leaps and finds herself atop the tent. She can peer down - some of the flaps on the roof are open - and see that there are a lot of people here. Rather than a show, though, they all seem to be filing through and taking something. A seed the size of what one might get out of a nectarine. In turn each person accepts it from a woman with pale skin, green hair and long arching horns. Then they eat it and return to their seats. Others applaud as though this is very, very entertaining. It's hard to escape the notion that something bad is happening.
And then the landscape shifts around them. Isis is a cage. A big cage on a cart designed to have covers draped over the sides. In front of her a barker is standing.
"Roll up! Roll up! Everyone come see the freak from the farthest corners of Oneirica!" The freak is Isis. She's in a skimpy outfit and on display like an animal.
What just happened… was a lot like someone shaping a dream. Something Isis is very familiar with.
From her perch on the top of the tent, Isis narrows her slitted grey/blue eyes and growls. If she had a tail it would be flicking in agitation. She doesn't like this, not at all.
What are they taking from that woman. It requires work as she moves a bit closer. Leaping the gaps between tents to land lightly enough. The woman with the horns, the seed, the way the crowd applauds…
As the scene shifts and she finds herself in a cage … again… Isis yowls, dropping to all fours and baring her teeth. Without really thinking, the scantily clad woman attacks the bars before she collects herself.
It doesn't take much for her to slip to the edge of mindset, nearly feral but not quite. Where is that dream shaper … she starts to look around.
"Everyone come see the freak!" The barker yells again. People are indeed gathering. Most of them are indistinct. A crowd of shadows with red eyes. All indistinct. No faces.
Except for one. A little girl comes forward as she yowls and attacks the bars and offers something. It's a seed. A pit just like all the others got.
"Even freaks deserve to have sweet dreams." The girl says sweetly.
Where is the dream shaper? Nearby. In the crowd. Isis can't see whomever it is but she can feel them near.
Isis claws are out when the girl approaches. She swipes through the bars trying to draw blood. Hissing and spitting, the panic rising - too much like the place Nick and Piotr had found her in.
"I am not freak." she yowls again. "And I can have dreams… " still she takes the pit with narrowed slitted eyes, drawing on her own power to try and shift the scene herself.
A meadow of lush green with pretty pink clover spread throughout, is what she visualises. Banishing all but the dream shaper she can sense. Nothing to hide behind, everything out in the open.
She doesn't know if she can. She's strong but she's young and that matters.
This might be the first time Isis has ever hade to fight to shape a dream. Well, fight another dream shaper that is. She does shape herself out of the cage and the crowd thins considerably but it doesn't disappear. The carnival turns from spooky to happy though. A circus in a pleasant green meadow. The shaper though…
Isis can see her. A woman, tall and pale with green hair and long curved horns. The very same woman handing out those seeds.
A seed that now sits in Isis' hand. Pulsing.
"Don't you want good dreams?" The woman says with a smirk. "You seem to know a lot about bad ones. Why dream them at all? I can help you with that…"
Isis growls as the dream fights her power, eyes narrowed to slits as she struggles.
At least she's evened the field and she's out of the cage. That lets her mind settle and not panic. "I can have good dreams. The bad ones are just important."
The feline-like mutant prowls around the green haired woman, sniffing at her. "One without the other is not balanced." Her fingers close over the seed as it pulses.
"Who are you and why are you doing this?"
"I am Titania. I am the keeper of the Gates of Horn and Bone. I am the ruler of LiveWorld. I go by many names. But you may call me 'Majesty.'"
A bit… grandiose, isn't she? She smells odd. This is a dream so that makes sense but even for a dream she doesn't smell right. She's not a traveller. And she's not a dream herself. She's something else. Something more 'real'.
"Balance? Why maintain a balance simply for it's own sake? You are not the master of your destiny with balance. I'm offering you something more. The protection of a benevolent ruler. You could be very helpful to me. All you have to do is take that seed… and kneel."
This should remind Isis of someone she knows. But much, much, much more megalomaniacal.
"Then I shall call you Titania." Isis answers as her nose wrinkles. Majesty just isn't going to cut it for the independant feline-like mutant.
"What do you hope to achieve by doing this?" Isis continues to circle, keeping her distance. The way she stalks is so reminiscent of a cat who's hunting a mouse.
She suspects she knows though. She heard the stories at the Institute. Illyana, who this reminds her so very much of, had shared them.
"You remind me of someone. Someone I know." beat "I think you need to go now."
"I think you need to come here." The woman tries to reshape the dream so that Isis is on her knees, eating the seed. The force behind the effort is considerable but the feline dream shaper shouldn't find it overwhelming. She's not dealt with this before specifically. But she's felt dreams about this stubborn. Just not dreams that reshaped of their own will.
"Simple, dream shaper. Why would a Queen not want a kingdom to rule?"
A kingdom? What kind of queen is this? And if eating that seed makes someone her subject… what does she intend to do with them?
These are urgent questions. Isis needs to either fight, or escape.
The dream shifts somewhat before Isis realises it. Titania is formidble and clearly has more practice. Isis ends on her knees, where she is, not in front of the green headed woman.
The dream 'bows' as Isis pushes back and rises to her feet. "You already have kingdom" the feline-like mutant points out. "Liveworld. Unless you lost that because you're incompetent." She's goading the woman, trying to put her off balance as Isis pockets that seed. "What are the Gates of Horn and Bone, where are they?"
She could try to escape but that won't minimise the threat of this 'Queen'. Her cats claws appear on her hand like a flick knife.
Titania is likely waiting for another attack on the dream which means she' likely not expecting it when Isis leaps and rakes her claws down the womans face.
She'd given her the chance to leave.
"The means by which you get dreams, stubborn mort-AH!" She wasn't expecting a direct attack, this Queen, but she recovers horrifyingly quickly. She does get cut on the fact but seconds later she's levitating, flying backwards and extending a hand. Yellow energy glows around it for a split second before she unleashes an energy blast of some kind right at the feline mutant.
It's not well aimed, blame the blood on her face, and cuts into the ground for a few feet before this 'Queen' gets the angle right. Well, that's unless Isis has (wisely) moved.
The Gates of Horn and Born. Isis remembers that. She's going to need help. Someone who can read and who can research.
"I'm a mutant." Like that makes a difference. Isis lands in a three point crouch growling to herself. The yellow energy comes arcing at her and she leaps again, her feline abilities proving rather useful at the moment.
Pounce, Pounce, Pounce. She's back near the Queen far quicker than might be expected. This time she leaps at the woman's chest, with the intent to knock her to the ground and pin her.
Next time, if there is one, she'll pull Nick in to help. She'll remember to tell him first though. Of course she will.
"Is that so? Then you'll be INTERESTING to pick apart once I have you where- you- stop- stay- STILL!" The Dreamqueen unleashes one energy blast after another but none hit. Isis does manage her leap and pins the woman to the ground but it begins to writhe and shift around her.
It's probably about to turn the tables. Isis has a few heartbeats to do something. She'd better act quickly. Nick will be quite cross with her if she gets in trouble here.
That sounds familiar as well and Isis might laugh if it wasn't so serious. She rakes the womans face one more time and breathes her scent in deep. She's not going to forget her, no siree.
As the ground starts to writhe, the feline-like mutant leaps away again and keeps running, looking for a particular sleeping mind to step into to. If she can't find it, any of the ones she can feel now will do.
Hopefully, it will bring her out near home. If not. It's going to be a long, long walk.
"I WILL FIND YOU!" The woman screams after the departing Isis. "YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RUN FAR ENOUGH OR FAST ENOUGH! YOU WILL BE CAGED AND DISPLAYED FOR THE MASSES FOR THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE EXISTANCE!"
The carnival, thankfully, does not and cannot trap her. But she needs a sleeper and there's not always one handy. Fortunately she hadn't gone… very far in the dream realm. And distance is kind of relative anyway.
When she comes out she's standing next to a bus stop in Yonkers. There's a rough looking businessman sleeping against the side of the stop. It's early in the morning. Very, very early. But then she knew it would be.
Maybe she can catch the bus home. Otherwise… she's gonna have to wake Nick.
And he's going to grumble.