[We will unlock one of your powers in dreams and dreams alone, for now anyway: the ability to shapeshift. What this means is you won't be restricted to your current physical form whenever you are in a dream. Instead, you can take on any form you wish.] The system began, telling me about some of the stuff I'd want to know if I was about to go into dreams.
[One of your wild traits is named 'Shapeless One'. That trait gives you the ultimate shape-shifting power. Your form is totally malleable, and you can opt to even shed a physical body and become a creature of pure spiritual, divine, and magical power if you wish. But we think it's important that you be able to relate to mortals and so we wish for you to stay in a physical, human body. For now.] The system said, urging me to continue to be in my physical form, for the moment.
[That said, in the dreams of mortals you'll probably want to leave an impact. Being able to adopt an awe-inspiring godly forms helps leave a solid impression.] The system remarked, before stopping for a second to formulate its own thoughts.
At that point, I chimed in. "Look... I don't know what an 'awe-inspiring godly form' even looks like." I told it, reminding the thing of my exceedingly limited knowledge. I heard a sound like the clicking of a tongue in frustration in my mind, and then the system apologized.
[That's fair. We're sorry, you've only seen humans, goblins, and animals and we just forgot about that for a second. What we mean by an 'awe-inspiring godly form' is a form that radiates divine power and is one of great beauty or power.] The system explained. As an additional favor to me, the system transmitted images that accompanied the end of its message to illustrate its point.
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After spending a few moments sorting through the images that accompanied the system's message I could see what it meant by awe-inspiring.
Many of the images I had were received were of purely elemental looking beings. What I meant by this was that they were entities that looked to be made entirely of the elements themselves.
I could see massive, mountain-sized men made of gorgeous orange fire. Human-sized feminine figures made of water and ice. Gigantic animals made of air or stone. Their forms were breathtaking and looked like they could inspire tales of wonder and magic.
A handful of the images weren't of elemental beings. Some of them were astoundingly beautiful women and powerfully built, impossibly tall men with eyes as white as glaciers. Others were of fusions between men and animals.
Some were of men and women who had the upper bodies of humans or human-like entities and the lower bodies of terrifyingly large spiders. Others had the bodies of men and women but the heads of a massive predator like a crocodile. One stunning example of this was of a man who had the lower body of a massive stag, and the upper body of a powerfully built male and stag's horns atop his head.
It was in seeing these images that I began to formulate my own envisionment of what my own divine form could look like.
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[Have you had time to begin to visualize a divine form for yourself?] The system asked me, curious to hear if my time looking at the images was useful. I nodded and responded affirmatively to its question.
[Excellent. More and more people are falling asleep. This seems to be a town wherein people fall asleep early, which is perfect for your needs.] My oldest companion revealed to me, suggesting I had more time to engage in mischief here than elsewhere.
[How do I... actually do what I'd like to do? This is the first time I'm actually doing this, do you mind giving me a walkthrough?] I asked, quite humbly.
The system chuckled, and then graciously explained how I could go about doing what I hoped to do. [Since it's your first time trying to do this you'll need to use your other new passive power. It shows you which creatures within tremorsense range are sleeping. You can use your dreamerwalker power on any sleeping humanoid you can detect.] The system began telling me.
[Once you detect them if they are sleeping you'll be asked if you wish to activate your power, targeting them. That said, you can also use your powers on creatures under your influence regardless of their distance from you.] The system explained. I nodded and closed my eyes.
The minimap was taking less and less time to become not-so-mini. This time almost the instant I closed my eyes I could see it in my H.U.D. And when it showed up I was immediately drawn to the differences between it now and it earlier before I had my ability to detect who was awake and who was asleep.
Folks who were asleep had a distinct purple aura that radiated out of their circles, and the first one on which I clicked revealed more than when I had last identified someone.
[Nearby neutral humanoid detected. Preparing proper notification... Scanning creature.
The selected human lacks class levels. The human is asleep and if left unbothered will have an average night's sleep.
The human is neutral towards you. She doesn't know you.
Do you wish to use dreamwalker on her?]
I smiled and nodded while telling the notification that I did want to do that.
[Understood. Since this is your first time using dreamwalker, among other things you will need to select your dream form. Initiating dreamwalker in 3... 2... 1...]
Upon the countdown reaching zero, everything around me changed. All of sudden I went from standing in my room in the inn, into standing in a blank white space, the exact opposite of the void I spent an unknown amount of time in.
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[Hello Althos! Welcome to... well welcome to where you go when you need to decide how you look.] The system told me. An instant later I was surrounded by mirror-like images of myself from all angles.
[Here is where you go whenever you need to change your appearance. Or rather here is where you will go when you need to change how you look once your shapeshifter power is well and truly unlocked. There are no limitations imposed on you in here, you can look however you desire to look.] The system told me, eagerly letting me know that when it came to how I looked, in this place if nowhere else, I was close to omnipotent.
I smiled and imagined my form changing. Which it did, before my very eyes.
I watched as my human flesh dissipated and vanished into nothingness. In what felt like seconds the mirror-like images of myself revealed nothing, indicating that I had turned invisible.
[You have been transformed into what you originally were: invisible motes of divine energy. To change your form once more all you have to do is will your appearance to change. You can take on any form, merely will it into being.] The voice of the system whispered into my mind. I smiled and considered what to mold myself into.
"What form would most inspire awe?" I asked myself, my voice exuding from nothing, seemingly coming out of no place in particular. My mind was running a kilometer a minute. After I was still invisible for over what felt like a minute and as indecisive as ever I opted to try something: to try and change my form.
I imagined the basic frame of my humanesque form and visualized this form appearing where I was. It took a few moments, but eventually, I gained a new, featureless body. I watched arms form from nothing, a torso spring into being, legs phase into existence and other body parts suddenly start to exist.
I examined my unmemorable form and mentally smiled. There was no mouth on my temporary form. I continued to ponder what to make. I thought back to all of the things I had seen before. As I did I noticed something that linked the elementals I had seen: they had an order to them.
The fire beings I saw were just fire. The air beings I saw were just air. The earth beings I saw were just earth. There was creativity in their forms, but no true mixing of elements. The humanoid-like gods I saw were different though.
They mixed and matched parts of humanoid anatomy with parts of animal anatomy, and I liked that. It spoke to a part of me that I couldn't yet name but felt in my heart. Something about the images of them in my mind was comforting and pleasant.
For a moment I wondered if it was the influence of the domain of chaos on my mind and in my heart. And I almost immediately realized that it was probably was.
"I should create something truly unique. Something that isn't one thing or another, but mixes and matches." I thought, free and safe to be creative in this mental space.
"That way whoever witnesses my form imagines that I am myself a mixture of things and thus something new. Not something ordered and structured, but something chaotic and free." I realized, being seized by creativity after spending moments contemplating the majesty of the forms of the creatures that I had seen.
I visualized something new and something more memorable: my right hand transforming from flesh into flames. And this time it took less time than before to shift from flesh into something else.
In almost no time at all I watched my flesh melt away and be replaced with a blazing fire. I looked over to my left hand and imagined this process taking place again but with water. In seconds my fleshy arm fell away and was replaced by a tendril of freshwater.
For my lower body, I felt like being more consistent. I envisioned my lower body becoming not a thing of flesh and muscle but instead one single solid hunk of stone and grass. And in the span of the time it took to snap one's finger, the boundaries between my two legs vanished and instead my lower body became a thing of rolling stone and soil.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
At this point, the last part of me that was left was my head. And only one core element left: the element of air.
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I sprang into this body knowing things. I didn't know many things, but what I knew, I knew. One of the things I came into being understanding was the necessity of four basic elements: fire, water, earth, and air. This understanding was enhanced by my conversation with Mateo and Isadora.
I knew that the four elements were basic necessities for humans and many other lifeforms. A part of me knew and understood that most living creatures in worlds like this one breathed air, drank water, stood on earth, and needed the heat of fire in order to live. Not all living creatures, but most of them, in this world if nowhere else, needed at least three of those elements.
I knew that those four things also had their own subdomains. This was more of that mysterious knowledge that both the system and I had hypothesized came from a domain, subdomain, domains, or subdomains. I knew that these subdomains were powerful ones. And I hoped that I'd get to begin to gain influence over them soon.
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I watched as my head faded away. And a heartbeat later my head was replaced with someone else. Where a head of flesh had once been a face and a head made of solidified, marble white air floated in its place. The colored air that made up my face had a pleasant expression planted on its lips.
I was smiling, impressed by my new form. I spent a moment alone with my thoughts. And then I was interrupted.
[Hello Althos. Do you wish for this to be your form, or would you like something more harvest oriented?] The system asked, curious as to why I wanted this form. I had, after all, made it by hand. In response, I shook my head.
I took a second to pause and consider a legitimate rationale before opening my airy mouth to speak. When one came to mind my smile was not only external but internal as well.
"This form is the form of the harmony needed for a good harvest. For a good harvest must have a bounty of soil," I said gesturing to my legs. "One must have the light and love of the sun to consume." I told my lone companion, as I rose my fiery appendage.
"One must have the kiss of rain," I said, thinking on my feet of the knowledge gifted to me by sources unknown as I rose my other arm. "And one must have oxygen for plants to breath." I said, pointing my limbs at my face.
"Put them together and mix in some hard work and you will get a good harvest. Me. If you mix the elements together and work hard, you can have a Cosecha!" I said, excitedly. My grin was wide to bursting and I heard a soft laugh from the system itself.
[That's fair enough we suppose. And an interesting take on what it takes to get a good harvest.] The system told me, admitting that there was creativity to my approach to the first divine form I made for myself. There was a pause for a second, a solitary moment of silence. It was ended almost immediately.
[Are you ready to enter Alma's dream?] The system asked, identifying the name of the person whose dream I was about to step into for the first time. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard a smile in its voice. A wry one. I grinned and nodded at it, excited to explore a new land in my divine form.
One second I was standing in the blank, white space. And the next I wasn't.
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I found myself standing in front of a windswept forest. Underneath my earthen feet was a path that wound into the forest. I turned around and looked behind me and saw a gentle and idyllic grassland. I wasn't oblivious to the fact that this what surrounded me was likely a version of the world as remembered by this woman, Alma. It didn't take a genius to come to that logical leap.
Weirdly enough I didn't see Alma herself. I turned and looked into the forest, scanning it as far as I could see, and didn't see her. "She must be deeper in the forest." I realized. As I spoke I heard my voice in my head, and keenly realized that my voice was awfully mundane which didn't fit with the potent imagery of my physical form.
I began to move into the forest and began to softly speak so as to work to speak in a voice that was more befitting my fantastic form. "My name is Cosecha," I said, as I took my first few steps, lowering my voice an entire octave.
While I was moving into the forest I mentally targeted my goblin friend Troik and tested if I could activate powers in this place. I targeted the goblin, focused on giving him restful sleep, and was disappointed when it didn't work.
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The forest I was traveling through was eerily silent. No other lifeforms surrounded me as I strode atop the winding path I emerged into this place onto. Aside from me saying words and sentences in various voices, no other sounds could be heard as I moved past trees, vegetation, and shrubbery. And while I was here this place was either abandoned or my tremorsense power also didn't work.
One difference from this forest and the forest of the world was that this forest was bright. For some reason, this place's canopy must not have been as dense as the real-world's forest canopy because bright light readily shone through the treetops down to the forest floor. It made this forest a beautiful, peaceful place for exploring.
Alma realized where I was before I realized where she was.
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It took me some time to finally stumble across Alma herself, but when I did I found her seated on a naturalistic looking bench deep in the heart of the forest. She was looking at me when I laid my eyes on her wizen form. While looking at her I realized that my earlier assessment about tremorsense was incorrect. The truth was that my tremorsense power actually didn't work while I was here, and the place was abandoned, not one or the other.
The elderly woman had a peaceful expression on her face, and stared at me thoughtfully. For a while we stared at each other in silence, sizing each other up. Eventually, she spoke to me.
"Why hello there," She said, greeting me with an expression as kindly sounding as she looked. She stretched one hand out towards me and motioned for me to come closer. I stayed still, finding her behavior pleasantly surprising and shocking for a moment.
"Must you be so timid? I know dream-things are scared, but you seem so much more vivid than the things I normally dream up. I'd like to see what you have to say. Or perhaps to do." She said to me, grinning openly. Her open-mouth grin revealed a mouth that was missing some teeth. I chuckled and moved over to her. Reaching her took a quarter of a minute, and upon doing so I began to speak to her.
"Hello Alma. My name is Cosecha." I told her, speaking in a low voice meant to make her envision me as a potent elemental being, and not as a random creation of her dreams. She kept smiling at me, admiring me as a grandparent would a grandchild.
"Hello Cosecha. Are you a creation of my wonder?" She asked, curiously. I shook my head at the kindly figure.
"I am a spirit. A spirit of the harvest." I said to her, staying in character as Cosecha and using her to begin to gain an understanding of how a mortal may react to the sight of what I hoped to use as a way to gather worshipers.
Alma looked at me skeptically but did so in the way that a parent might patiently admonish her child. She sighed and began to speak. "I am growing more creative in my old age. It must be something to do with the free time I have to myself and to me reading the old stories." She said, grinning as she dismissed me out of hand.
I froze up at this and looked at her in surprise. I didn't expect such a flat and blatant dismissal of my existence. She saw this and her smile got wider.
"Do you truly believe you exist independent of my dreams?" She asked, sounding a bit surprised at that.
"Do things normally automatically believe you when you tell them that they are imaginary?" I asked, at least as surprised as she felt. She looked at me thoughtfully as I asked her that.
"Well... In fairness about half of the things in my dreams attack me, only to be soothed after I tell them about their status as dream monsters." She confessed, looking at me with some curiosity.
[Althos she's a lucid dreamer.] The system told me, as if that ought to mean something to me. Instead of waiting for my companion to tell me what that was I went ahead and skipped a forward by asking her if that was accurate.
"Do you happen to be a lucid dreamer?" I asked her, curiosity filling my ethereal eyes. When I said that to her her eyes widened as I asked her something that caught her off guard for the first time. And then she began to laugh.
"A 'lucid dreamer'? That's a term I haven't heard in a long time." She said, smiling as if the term had some meaning to her.
[Lucid dreamers are people who are aware of when they dream natively. Sometimes such folks can influence the landscape of their dreams with the force of their wills and can affect the contents of their dreams. They always remember their dreams.] The system explained to me.
"I suppose that is but one title people give to people like me." She told me, calmly suggesting that others have called her other things as well. I studied her and sighed.
"You don't believe I'm a real spirit do you?" I asked. She looked at me and shook her to indicate that she didn't.
"Honestly? That's fair. It makes sense to not believe that I am a real spirit." I confessed, well aware of the full truth which I doubted she could even begin to imagine. I also wasn't done talking.
"That said, I am real." I told her, lying. "I can also prove that I actually exist." I said to the woman, well aware of my own ability to prove wrong anyone who insisted that I wasn't real.
"Oh? Do you care to share this proof?" She said, a small glimmer of curiosity visible in her eyes. I smiled at her. And then I created an apple using magic. I called it into being in the palm of my liquid palm.
I moved the strange appendage and showed her the apple. And then I tossed it to her. She moved fluidly and caught the apple, before looking at it and studying it in detail. It was another golden apple.
"Oh, this is a pretty thing." She told me, gazing into the gold-like fruit.
"When you wake up pray to me. Just mutter an introductory message, even in your mind, and mentally will it to be heard by Cosecha, the spirit of the harvest. When you do I'll give you more of those. Real ones." I told her, offering her a chance to prove to herself that I actually existed.
"If you want to see the truth, this is a surefire way to do so. Once you do I'll prove to you that I'm real. If you want the truth that is. If not... we can definitely chat tomorrow night. Same time?" I told her, grinning. I was also leaving this up to her. I was in no rush, I could take my time.
"I see... you wish for prayers do you?" She asked me, smiling. I nodded at her, admitting that that was what I wanted.
"I do want prayers. I gain strength from having followers. I seek to convince the world I am real, but I have difficulty manifesting outside of the dreams of mortals." I explained, telling her an additional lie. She considered my words, but had a look of clear skepticism etched on her face.
There was a part of me that admired that she looked for evidence and didn't believe what I was saying. I was, after all, lying to her. That said, I looked at the elderly woman in the idyllic dream and began to turn away from her, facing the forest path I had moved through to get here.
"If you have any pains you wish healed or any conditions in need of alleviation, consider my prayer. What do you have to lose?" I asked her, confidently. She was silent as I began to move away.
As I moved away I hoped she'd consider the prayer. Once I was out of eyeshot of her, a healthy distance away, I willed myself out of her realm of dreams. As I did so, I received a surprising notification.
[Alert: Do you wish for Alma to remember her dream? If you do it will be etched onto her mind. If not, she won't remember it.] The notification read. I immediately informed it that I wished for her to remember this dream, but I was somewhat happy that if I wanted to erase a bad dream from a mortal's memory I could.
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As I returned to the waking world I immediately target my goblin friend with my dream power and toggled it so that it would make his dreams restorative and positive.
And then I sat down on my bed and began to think about my approach to interacting with mortals. I didn't want to go wandering around in dreams haphazardly, I wanted to do so intelligently. I decided not to visit another dream tonight and instead decide on an approach for future visits to dreaming mortals.
I was in silent, patient contemplation until the first rays of dawn began to shine on the Silver Xana, although I didn't know that because my room lacked any windows. It just so happened that when I felt ready to tackle the next day, the next day was dawning.