Dream Magic: Awakenings (15 page)

"Time does not heal all wounds, but when time can heal a wound, patience helps you get there."

"Healing through preparation is mostly about making sure you give your body and subconscious the space it needs to restore itself - be it physical, emotional, mental, or any other kind of space. Rest, sleep, cut back on regular activities, and actively do nothing."

Instead of corpses, broken-off weapon and armor pieces lay littered on trampled grass. There were no dead bodies, but there were casualties: sometimes instead of reappearing at the glade, the wounded remained on the battlefield, lying in shock and pain. Dream violence was more emotional than tv violence, but its results less permanent than real-life violence.

"Next in depth is a trifecta of reinforcements: external, mental, and emotional. Healer-specialists operate at these depths."

"Doctors excel at external reinforcement - give a pill, excise a tumor, place a bandage - but they mostly focus on the dis-ease instead of the patient."

Eric, Lucy, and Rose kept up with Maeve's steady pace, walking across the battlefield to help the wounded. Most of them needed only reassurance that everything is going to be all right. Others just needed rest after the exhausting battle. Of course, there were exceptions, like the boy with the dagger in his chest.

"Mental reinforcement involves clarifying the mind, improving mind-body feedback, integrating the conscious and subconscious closer together, and so on... Psychologists seek to carve out logic from these depths."

"The goal of emotional reinforcement is to bring forth happiness and spiritual fulfillment. Choiceful action is preferable over unwilled reaction, but there has to be balance between being ruled by emotions and suppressing them with frigid discipline. For emotional reinforcement, there is rarely a better healer than a trusted friend."

There was also the girl with the wide gash on her upper leg - Eric didn't think he ever saw a person bleed so profusely.
Right out of a horror movie.
Maeve said she had control issues. They helped bandage the wound - it was weird with all the blood gushing around Eric's fingers - but it stopped soon afterwards and the wound healed fast.

"Going even deeper, we step into the domain of values, codes and attitudes - those things that knowingly or not, shape the core of a personality. There are no healer-specialists at this level, since it's no longer about fixing a broken part, but about deciding which 'whole' to realize. Symbolists occasionally dip down here to find and form archetypes."

And of course!
There was also the kid with the severed arm. He walked calmly up to Maeve, carrying his severed arm in his other hand. In his head, Eric knew this was supposed to be scary and worrying, but after all that blood, the situation seemed morbidly funny rather than serious.
Must be a mild shock.
That boy healed quickly too - the three of them held the arm in place until it got reattached. There remained no marks of the injury and the boy regained full movement in his arm and fingers.

"Language becomes increasingly useless as we go deeper."

Then there was the berserker kid who chased others with an ax in his hand and a senseless glare on his face. Maeve handled this one on her own: she 'ported after the kid, touched him lightly on the shoulder, and made him collapse immediately.
These things happen, Maeve said.

"We can talk about identity boundaries, identity contexts, core patterns and core integrals, but the dissonance between experience and verbal thought grows wider. The pressures of the collective subconscious become more obvious, and memetic motions more pronounced."

The goblins had casualties too, and they carried away their own. In few occasions, Eric thought he saw Mr. Smith finish off or heal goblins.
I'm not sure which, maybe both.

Eric listened to Maeve's droning with only half his mind. They walked across the field at a leisurely pace, looking if they missed anyone still needing help. Maeve used this time to expound on the basic theories of healing magic.

"Going even deeper with a relatively fixed perception of self-individuality triggers the Hall of Mirrors experience. Horrid things can happen; it's not that you can get lost, but that it's so easy to lose yourself. If you become an NPC, you'll have to wait for someone to stare into the abyss so you can look back. There are generally two ways out from the Hall of Mirrors: escape back any way you can and forget you were ever there, or go through."

In Eric's experience, all teachers had the tendency to talk on and on about topics they liked and understood, and often forgot they were supposed to be talking to someone other than themselves. Even if they caught themselves going off tangents, many of them wouldn't - or couldn't - change course.
They don't get that the mindset of learning is different from the mindset of having learned.
Some teachers were plain incompetent:
How does one learn about history by memorizing dates?

"I can't tell you much about going through; this 'me' that's talking to you doesn't know. Your individuality shatters, the anthropomorphism of your identity dissolves, maybe even taking with it whatever context the elementality of the realm offered you."

The teachers in Dream Camp were nowhere near as bad, but Eric felt they tended to talk over their students' heads - like Maeve did now. What Eric wasn't sure about is if they were doing it on purpose. He could feel the pressure of her words, prodding at his mind.

Sometimes, when he tried too hard to understand something, he would understand some small part and skip out on all the rest. Of course, when he didn't try at all, he understood nothing.

But, somewhere in between, when he didn't try too hard to control his own mind, he wouldn't get much of it at first, but after sleeping on it and thinking about related stuff, it was easier for all to just 'click'.
Like, if I just let it, my mind does most of the thinking for me, and I can just pick off the ripe fruit from the low-hanging branch.

He hoped this was one of those times - he just let his thoughts loose and hoped all that complex theory would make sense later.

"Mystics say it's all a big circle; massive regeneration, rebirthing or ressurrective capabilities are the boons of master healers and archmages - they are experts of what we call 'doing nothing'."

"They also say a society is advanced only if the collective subconscious is purified and reintegrated with the individual. Humanity has much shit to clean up, and most of it will fall on you..."

Like now, when he followed the trail of his own attention: some words he understood, some he disregarded, others came together and formed strings of light in his mind. He recognized thoughts and ideas behind some of the words, and could put them into words of his own, while with other thoughts and ideas it was like he could see their glowing shapes, even if he couldn't re-assemble them into words.

When he looked at the world this way, it wasn't only words that became light... Everything seemed to have light glowing around and above - himself included.

His own light he felt more than saw: wings of light, supporting him and lifting his spirits. These wings didn't help him fly - he already knew how to do that - but helped him assert his presence.
I am here. This is my domain.

Eric felt powerful.

When he observed closely, he saw the light wasn't just above things; it
was
the things. When he looked farther within, he saw his thoughts, emotions, and features of his humanness he took for granted - fly into and away from him as rays of light.

Don't go
, he vocalized the thought with concern, only to watch it shine away as a single ray of light.

He became scared.
Where's my fear?
All he could see was light; shiny rays bouncing and reflecting off of...
What?
Other light? He located the jumble of confused light that was his fear.
I may not like you, but you're mine!
He tried to pull his fear back into him.
Pull into what?

With big parts of him visible outside, he dared not look in the inner direction he felt the remainder of himself was, lest that too would turn into light.
Nothing would remain... no one to observe.

"Anybody there? Snap out of it!"

A shattering sound in front of his eyes broke his vision.
A clap.
Eric opened his eyes, only to realize they were already open. He saw a hand waving in front of his face - it was Rose's.

"Are you all right? You haven't said anything for some time."

Eric cleared his throat. "I'm fine. Just daydreaming, I guess."

"Daydreaming? Again? You do that a lot." Lucy turned to Maeve. "How does it work anyway? Dreaming in a dream, I mean?"

Maeve shrugged. "Depends. Can be iterative, recursive, coincidental... like a fractal or kaleidoscope, with varying levels of overlay. Awareness being fixed to an ego-consciousness is the exception rather than the rule."

"But, can you like, dream in a dream in a dream in a dream, and so on?"

"Sure, you could say such movement forms the basis of any reality. In practice, if you operate based from an anchor reality, that which is 'real life' for us, there are dangers and difficulties associated with going too far. Not all identities and ego-structures can handle the pressure, especially if untrained."

Maeve paused. "Or, looking at it another way, none can, and death is inevitable. You could say death is a way of life."

Lucy digested the words in silence.

"Come, let's go back to the others. I'll have a few words with Joe, and you should prepare for the second wave of attacks."

Eric walked on with the others, enjoying the inner and outer silence, paying attention only to the renewed trampling of grass.

Hunger for power is the most common reason for meddling with powerful forces. However, there are those who, either through curiosity or the push-and-pull of social forces, end up staring into the sun too long. The lucky ones get burned out, corrupted or possessed. The unlucky ones become religious fanatics. When looking into the abyss or the sun, use an adequate protective filter: a strong ego.

- Misuse of Force, Dreamer's Handbook

Eric sidestepped the fireball. It was poorly aimed, but the goblin shaman's tiptoeing annoyed him to no end.
I'll wipe that toothless grin off your ugly mug.

This shaman wasn't as fierce as the goblin warriors were. No tenacity, no enjoyment of the battle. He just hobbled about, acting all smug, occasionally casting a flimsy fireball to provoke Eric.

He deserves no respect from me.
Eric was tempted to cover the distance between them with a sprint, and snap his neck. No spells, no blades - just to feel the neck bone of this puny creature crack in his hands.
He wouldn't be able to stop me, not in time.

"Just a little more!"

The shaman had one reason - and one reason only - for acting smug: the massive demon he never ventured far from.

While Eric kept an eye on the shaman, Lucy and Rose were engaging the demon. They had a plan: first, Rose used an air containment spell. It looked like a large magic sphere around the demon, restricting some of its movements. Second came Lucy's water chains, their watery essence pressing into the spirit-body of the demon.

The demon wasn't a true demon in the hellfire-and-brimstone kind of way - it was a bear spirit, large and strong. It could have been even noble in its true shape, but its current form was leaking energy, and it raged with fiery madness at its surroundings as well as its own incompleteness.

It's torture
, Eric realized.
The goblin shaman is forcing an unnatural form on a semi-conscious force.
Eric felt a little sorry for the bear-demon and despised the shaman even more. He wondered whether the shaman was intentionally malicious...
Just petty and incompetent,
Eric decided
.

He saw other such demons on the battlefield, though none as big as this one.
Was it a cultural thing? Torturing to compensate for size?

"Now, Eric!"

He recalled Lucy's explanation about how her water-chains worked; something about dispel magic and elemental neutralization. It wasn't very intuitive, but his role was clear: to fight fire with fire.

If timed right, a well-placed fireball would add more force and break the shaman's control. If timed wrong, the demon would assimilate his fire and become more powerful. Lucy and Rose's containment spells would break and they would have to start all over again.

Eric spent a few seconds concentrating on building up his fireball. Where to aim? The head? The torso? The fiery limbs trying to lash out? Aiming for center mass seemed best.
Now, just to find the right moment...

As he deliberated, his eyes registered movement from above. He lifted his head to look.

"Crows!" Eric yelled.

I look away for a moment and that's what I get.
His fireball wasn't very good against a swarm of small targets, and he was strongly tempted to feed it to the shaman instead.

"They're mine!" Rose yelled back.

Rose's containment spell temporarily weakened as she dispatched a loose airball towards the pack of crows. The demon had a bit more freedom to rattle and steam the chains, but they did not break.

Eric concentrated on packing more power into the fireball. He glanced at one of the crows which fell nearby.
Half-dead; a zombie bird.
When the searing-steaming rattling subsided and Rose reassumed control...
Now's the time!
Eric let go and drove the fireball into the demon's center.

The demon grew in size. One by one, Lucy's water-chains snapped, and evaporated. The rotations of Rose's containment spell ground to a halt and vanished.

I timed it wrong...

Rose and Lucy hopped back, preparing for the demon's attack. Eric took a few steps back, and briefly looked at the goblin shaman - he wasn't acting smug anymore.