My breathing was steady and there was silence around me. The world seemed to spin a bit, and I landed on my feet. I then quickly opened up my eyes, and saw that I was in Michelle’s dreamscape, and no longer in the plaza by the pillars. It was Earth, some city, maybe a mix. There were skyscrapers, shops, and vehicles. But everything was ruined.

What little testing had been done, showed there was no rhyme or reason for what a dreamscape could look like. The windows were missing or cracked. The façade of the buildings was crumbling. There was debris and weeds lining the street.

The air had the smell of smoke to it and there was a yellow haze of death covering everything. There was movement through the haze just out of sight. I had no stats here. No skills. While there were ways, I could manipulate things, that could lead to instability.

I was directly attacking Michelle’s mind. While I couldn’t hurt her directly, I could create issues. One test subject had trouble speaking a dream dive. Who knows what else was possible. What I needed to do was to find Michelle’s conscious mind, wherever she was.

Focusing, a three-dimensional compass appeared in my hand, pointing in her direction. It was a minor change, and nothing bothered me thankfully. A person would subconsciously resist. I wish all the rules of this lined up with past movies or books I had read. But that wasn’t the case unfortunately. Even then the rules felt more like guidelines from what testing had revealed.

I began following the compass, while keeping an eye out around me. I saw the occasional monster moving about. Monsters that I had seen in the past in the Systemic Lands, that we had killed. They didn’t seem to be doing much, just moving about.

The trick with the compass involved focusing, but it wasn’t something I wanted to risk too much of. If things escalated, I would lose. The dreamer always had the advantage, since this was their mind. Walking through the ruined streets of this city, I paused to look at some of the shop signs and street signs. All the wording was worn away.

The dreamscape didn’t have written words very often. If they did, then they tended to be important. So, no finding books in someone’s mind. Going and exploring inside buildings was also risky. There was no geometry to this place. You go through a door, it can lead anywhere. It reminded me of a randomizer type game with the doors disconnected.

It was better to stay on the street, then get sucked into the buildings. It was easy to attribute things to symbology, but the ruined atmosphere of this place, could have any number of meanings or no meaning. Michelle could be depressed about Earth’s situation, whatever it was. Her mind could be broken. Or this was just the personal hell that was conjured up.

The smoke in the air was irritating my eyes and mouth, even though it wasn’t real. I could remove the effects, but that could create issues. One of the few things that we were able to glean before the research was shut down, was not to make alterations.

My personal guess, was that my presence was through the tether, connecting me to Michelle. If I pushed in more energy to make changes here in the dreamscape, her stats and energy would push back at me. The low stat individuals who had gone into a high stat individual dreamscape mostly died. While about half of the high stat individuals had survived when going into low stat dreamscapes.

The main concern I had was time. There was no direct way to keep track of something like that. Instead, I had to count on enforcing my presence here. Where my senses, including time, matched up to my body. That was the only useful technique that had been discovered during the testing that had been done. If I let my grip go on reality, this place would get a lot crazier, and a lot more dangerous.

After ten minutes of walking, I reached a park. I entered the park since that was the way the compass was pointing. It was tempting to get more features, but I wanted to have as little footprint as possible. I stuck to the park path. While I wasn’t always headed directly for Michelle, the slight change in directions, allowed me to see that I was closing in as the compass needle moved.

It was honestly quite creepy, with the haze and the monsters moving in and out of my range of vision. None of them had bothered me yet and I was hoping to keep it that way. Combat on a mental level was not something I wanted to do. This was a rescue operation. And if a fight broke out, I didn’t know what the consequences would be.

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After five minutes of walking through the park, I came to gazebo. Michelle was standing in the gazebo, looking out at a nearby lake. I stopped just outside the gazebo. “Michelle?” I asked in a normal tone. She spun around and looked at me.

“Michael? Watch the fishes with me,” she said without turning around. I carefully approached her side, making sure to keep my distance. She didn’t have a weird face or anything. Glancing out at the lake, I saw fishes playing in the water, leaping out occasionally. The water was impossibly clear with how dirty the air was.

“The fishes are quite nice, but you need to wake up,” I told Michelle.

“Watch the fishes with me,” she said again. I frowned at this. What exactly was going on here? I looked around, and the monsters moving about still kept their distance. I decided to play along for now.

“The fishes are nice. They like leaping out of the water. Do you like the fishes?” I asked something that should provoke a different response but wouldn’t trigger anything. At least that was my hope.

“I like the fishes,” she said.

“What about monsters?” I asked.

“Monsters?” There was a questioning tone to that single word.

“Michelle, you know me. Do you know where we are?” I asked. This time she turned to look at me.

“Michael? I am here,” she replied. The big downside the dreamer had was their lack of control.

“Michelle, you need to wake up. You are dreaming,” I told her. She gave me a confused look.

“Dreaming? I am watching the fishes,” she replied and turned back to look at the fish leaping in and out of the unnaturally clear water.

It was time for greater action. “Wake up,” I said and gave her a poke in the shoulder. All the movement around stilled for a single moment. The fishes turned to look at me and the monsters half visible through the haze all stopped and looked as well. Then they went back to moving.

“Michael,” Michelle turned towards me. There was fear on her face. “It is something that has one of my monsters, resonance.” She then trailed off and turned to look back out at the waters. “The fishes are nice,” she replied. I took a step back.

I knew what was happening now. Good job Michelle, you managed to clear things up. Something out there had taken one of Michelle’s monsters and was using a resonance attack, to disable her. While her monsters disappeared, that was only the ones we could see. At least one was left, and it was being used to disable Michelle.

My senses didn’t appear to be disabled, and I focused back down on my compass. The link to the remaining monster. The compass spun and pointed in the right direction. Since she had been using skill summoned monsters, and her own skill, meant the tether were very well hidden. But the endpoints were still vulnerable.

I left the gazebo and kept following the paths to make my way around the park. This was when things started to get even weirder. I noticed glowing crystals, in various shapes and colors sticking out of the ground. Like unnatural growths.

The path I was following began to break apart as the landscape turned to rubble. I then paused. I was being stupid. If it was a resonance based attack through a monster, there was a range limit. We could just move her, and she would recover, or the monster would be forced to follow us. There were too many hiding places within the city.

This entire place was throwing me off my game. Fighting in this dreamscape was where I would be weak and vulnerable. I closed my eyes and focused on waking up. I then opened them up. I was still here in the dreamscape. This wasn’t good and not something I knew how to deal with.

Everyone who had come out had said they had just been able to focus slightly and wake up. “Wake up,” I commanded myself and gave my body a pinch. I didn’t wake up. I focused on creating a capsule to rise up out of the ground nearby, that once I got in, would wake me up.

The ground began to shake, as a metal capsule tried to emerge. But there were glowing crystals embedded into it. The capsule came out deformed and unworkable. I immediately turned around and began making my way back out of this glowing crystal area.

The path back disappeared more and more, turning into rubble. It was completely gone. Stupid non-Euclidian dreamscape geometry. It was going to be the death of me. I looked down at the compass, and focused on a location free of the glowing crystals, and whatever influence they carried.

The compass spun and spun some more. My heart fell. There was no way out. “Stupid,” I muttered to myself. This was the stupidest idea, and now I was trapped. Maybe not in the same way as Michelle, but I couldn’t cut the tether linking me to her mind and freeing myself.

No matter what, I had to get out of here, right now. Or I could fight. Well it was time to stop holding back, if I was trapped. Sorry Michelle, if this causes you issues in the future. “Sword.” A sword began to materialize in front of me. I had to focus intently on what I wanted so that it wasn’t taken over by a crystal. Thankfully, the sword was simple enough that it worked.

“Gun,” I got a bunch of crystals instead. Anything more complex or esoteric would probably have a harder time. “Shield.” This mental demand worked, and a kite shield materialized.

I checked the compass once again, while thinking about the source of these glowing crystals. An obvious clue was an obvious clue. Even if I shouldn’t read into the symbology, I was a bit worried. Crystals were a sign of the Almighty System in my mind.