Shadowfiend23 @ Wrocław

Last night, I had a dream that seemed strangely profound – at least parts of it. Some of it seems to be fueled by anime I’ve been watching recently, but the rest of it…well, you’ll see.

 

I was an eight-year-old boy, wearing a prison outfit, being filed into a German concentration camp during WWII. I was crying because I was scared and confused – why was I here? What could they possibly want with me? When I came to the front of the line, they asked me for my name and my nationality. I told them my name, and before I could continue, they interrupted – in French, they asked me: “Your last name is Schneberger? That sounds like a German name. Are you German?” Between sobs, I tried to tell them (in French) that I was German (in part), but they wouldn’t listen. They laughed off my plea, saying (again, in French) that with such a weak constitution, I must be Icelandic (????). Anyway, they picked me up and carried me, kicking and screaming, into a nearby bunker. They threw me on the top bunk, closest to the door, and on the way out, the guard told me with a wide sneer on his face, “This is where you will die.”

 

I started crying even harder, knowing that I would never escape this horrible place. Just then, a woman walked up to me and asked me (still in French): “I heard you speaking French to the guard outside. We French need to stick together. Don’t worry, we have a way out of here. You’ll be fine.”

 

(Here’s where it all starts to get a bit magical)

 

The lady disappears, and suddenly my perspective becomes third-person and I am watching her speak in front of a large council, begging them to summon the seven “old ones” to set all those in captivity free. The council was presided over by an old man with a long, gray beard and a tattered, arcane, red robe. After thinking for a moment, he quietly responded,”If it must be so, then it shall be done.” He clapped his hands together, and suddenly my perspective changed again.

 

Now I was looking at a dimly lit temple with large marble columns surrounding a massive statue of a goddess. The temple seemed to be in excellent condition, but the statue was strangely dilapidated – covered in cracks, stains, and creeping green moss. The priests in the temple calmly walked over the statue and stood around it in a tight ring, heads bowed in prayer, whispering an unknown incantation. The blemishes in the statue began to glow yellow, and I watched as the statue started repairing itself. It was then that I noticed a small roguish man cowering in the shadows of one of the columns farthest from the statue. He seemed to be salivating with greed, enticed by some unknown desire. Out of the shadows behind him came another man, let’s call him Reaper, who looked extremely similar to this character:

 

 

Reaper told the other man that now was his chance to steal the goddess’ power, to do as he himself had done years before. The rogue slowly nodded his head as he said, “Do what you need to do.” Reaper unsheathed a red katana he had been storing at his side and slashed horizontally, decapitating the man in one fell blow. Instead of falling to the ground, the man’s entire body disappeared. Just as it did, the goddess statue began shaking violently and a bloodcurdling scream rang out from an unknown source. The statue shattered all at once, leaving behind only a pile of white dust. A red cloud of energy congealed in its place, and it seemed to pulse with a seething, burning hatred. The startled priests bolted from the room, having no idea what they could do to stop the monstrosity that had been created. Reaper closed his eyes and lifted his arms above his head, almost beckoning the cloud to approach him. It enveloped him, and the two became one. They suddenly changed shape and grew into a monstrous black dragon, crashing through the ceiling of the temple and towering several stories above it. It swung one of its heavy claws as it leveled another corner of the temple, reveling in the destruction it was causing. But something was wrong.

 

The dragon put its hands up to its head and let forth an ear-splitting roar. It couldn’t control its own power. It started wildly changing shape (into monsters so grotesque and bizarre that it would take me paragraphs to describe them. Maybe I will at some point). It finally took the form of a hideous cross between a giant and a rotting schooner riding on top of a tidal wave hundreds of feet tall. The ship/giant creature howled in pain just as the wave began to billow outwards, destroying all in its raw primeval sovereignty. After my vision was flooded with water, it slowly morphed into a very different scene.

 

I was aboard the ship creature now, but it was no longer deformed. It had become a regular schooner, but it seemed to be broken into two equal sections, from port to starboard. There was a single narrow plank bridging the gap between the two halves. Additionally, the ship seemed suspended in some sort of purgatory. The ship was floating in a massive expanse of whiteness, white as far as one could see in every direction. Large snowflakes were slowly drifting down from the zenith, further compounding the surreality of the scene. I felt as though I had been hurled straight into the conflicted psyche of the monster, that I was there to soothe it and quell its torrential rage.

 

As I arrived on the scene, a young blond boy sobbing heavily ran across the planks and up a staircase that lead to the deck of the ship. I felt as though the boy was the embodiment of the ship’s regret, of his last lingering humanity. I don’t know who I was at this point, but I felt compelled to chase after the boy, to nourish the men’s final hope at becoming human again. After I began to race forward, a large two-headed dog jumped out in front of me, blocking my path across the plank. His two heads snapped and chomped relentlessly, as though they hungered voraciously for that which dared to retain hope for the little boy.

 

Sadly, that it where the dream ended. I’m not sure what would have happened next. Eventually, I might write how I think it might have gone.