The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

Lillian sat in her mind palace. She had fashioned a tower made of brains and sat on a fleshy throne. She knew that it was not the best use of her powers of imagination in the dream world, but it felt good to just sit here and think.

Her mind raced with ideas as she tried to find the secret to the dream world.

She had been stolen away from Death by Dream to be their unpaid labor for the rest of time. She was not the first, nor would she be the last person that Dream stole in this fashion.

Within this realm she had learned that the power of belief made her more powerful than any being had any right to be. She could literally make anything that she could imagine. She had felt all powerful and had tried using these abilities to get the attention of her master, Dream.

This had started with her stealing people from their dream prisons, but she had been thwarted by her arch nemesis, Susan. Susan had taken everything that Lillian had learned within the dream realm and shoved it down her throat. Nothing that Lillian had done had made a lick of difference to the monster. And the only thing that had saved Lillian was the sacrifice of her trusty buddy Goo.

This loss had made her go on an epic training montage where she learned more and more about the dream realm and its inhabitants. This training montage finally ended after she encountered a being a godlike strength that played with her like she was an ant.

And she didn't understand how.

The being had not followed the rules of the dream realm. It had created fanciful things and broke down the walls of reality. Instead of creating reasonable things that gave him a slight advantage, he had destroyed Lillian with powers of epic proportions.

Everything Lillian had learned boiled down to one fact: dreamers fought by creating alternate realities. The stronger the willpower with the more reasonable effects will win out in the end. This was why no one could envision the sword of winning which made them win every fight they were in, because it was totally unreasonable.

Two people of equal willpower will have their fight decided by whoever creates the most reasonable powers to fight in the dreamscape. Unequal dream power made things get a little more loosey-goosey, but still none of that explained how that being had wiped the floor with Lillian.

He had envisioned Lillian as a bug and forced her body to change. No matter the difference in willpower, that should not have been possible, right?

Lillian gave herself a brain blast by letting the mind palace go into thinking overload. Of course, it didn't actually do anything, but it gave Lillian the feeling of thinking more powerfully. And that was more important to her.

She knew that she would not find a solution to this problem quickly. It was a conundrum and contradicted the rules of this environment that she had found herself in, and this fact made Lillian want to understand it even more. Alas, today was not that day.

The air shimmered around Lillian as something tried to step into her mind palace. Lillian immediately focused on the disturbance in the air and saw that Susan was coming to visit.

Her arch nemesis probably thought that they were going to get the jump on Lillian, but Lillian was too clever and too strong by far to get caught in such an easy trap.

Lillian cut the attempt to teleport off at the root. The space folded back in on itself, and Susan was sent away. Lillian had tried to pick somewhere with lots of fire and lava, but anti-teleportation techniques in the dream realm were not an exact science.

But this was the sort of thing that Lillian was talking about. Susan was not an idiot, and yet they had tried to teleport into Lillian's mind palace. That action was totally implausible in the realm world, and so Lillian could cancel it out with ease. Why had the dreamy demon tried to attack in such a foolish way?

Lillian banished the thought from her mind. It was beyond comprehension what Susan would do, so, what was the use trying to understand?

What was a dream?

Dream was a god that only existed after humanity came into existence. So, the dream world would not exist without humanity. There was a sect of scientists who had spent years theorizing what dreams were. Children younger than 13 still had the dreams, so dreams obviously existed without a connection via gifts. From this data, the group of scientists hypothesized that dreams were the mind reorganizing the day's information.

People had scary dreams when their life was scary. People had happy dreams when their life was happy.

So, if dreams were impossible to separate from the dreamer, where was Lillian?

She had assumed that this place she was trapped in was the dream world - a world where all dreamers came to rest. But why did that have to be true?

Lillian had seen other people in the dream world, hadn't she?

She had jumped into the dreams of Joy, her mother, and hundreds of others that she had freed from their tiny prisons in the dream world. But no one had spoken to her about the outside world. Neither Joy nor her mother had shown any surprise at her appearance in their dreams.

This time, there was no warning. Susan appeared in the center of the room. Their form was that of an eagle mixed with an octopus. It was writhing limbs and fluffy feathers flying around Lillian's mind palace.

"Why are you here? Did Dream send you?" Lillian shouted as she imagined an earthquake ripping through the mind palace. Chunks of brain matter splattered over Susan as Lillian started creating her armaments.

A sword that blazed with fire, armor that reflected all light that touched it, and a helm that made her invisible. Her regalia shimmered to life around her as she charged at Susan's form.

"No. You did." Susan's voice was raspy as they started shooting teeth and venom out of its many mouths.

Lillian cut through them without a blink, her skills were imaginary, but here in the dream realm, what was imagined was just as powerful as what was real.

Lillian threw her blazing sword at Susan and formed a new one in her hands. This sword oozed energy and Lillian knew that if she struck Susan down with it, Susan would stop existing.

She believed with every inch of her being that this terror that had infected her dreams since she was a teenager would just stop existing if they were hit by this blade.

Lillian could feel Susan's feeble attempt to stop the blade's existence, but Lillian bashed that aside with her willpower. Susan had to try, but Lillian's training in the dream realm had brought her to a whole new level of power.

With a roar, Lillian brought the blade down on Susan. A flash of light emitted from the blade and nothing happened.

Susan looked at Lillian and Lillian looked at Susan, an awkward silence filled the room.

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"Was something supposed to happen?"

"You were supposed to get smited out of existence."

"You can't do that!"

"Watch me."

Lillian hit Susan over the head again. Susan rubbed at the welt forming on their head with one of their tentacles, but otherwise nothing changed.

"Why aren't you dying?" Lillian almost screamed but kept her composure. Instead, she only pouted a little bit.

"Because you can't kill me?" Susan's form slowly started folding into themselves. Tentacles rolled up and feathers slowly turned into skin.

Soon, a beautiful androgynous person stood before Lillian. This was a form that Lillian had never seen before, but its beauty kept Lillian on her toes. Lillian had learned this lesson early on in her career with prince David: never trust someone beautiful.

Susan sighed and looked at Lillian.

"Stop trying to figure this place out. This is our last plea. I will do anything to get you to stop. I can even get you your friend Goo back."

With a flourish, Susan's shadow pulled Lillian's little friend out. He looked essentially unharmed, with a sad little smile on his face.

Lillian didn't trust this. The dream world was cruel and unkind. It never gave Lillian anything without ulterior motives. Power had to be wrenched from this realm with a firm hand and any sort of token offered by the realm was an attempt to keep her from its true power.

"Please don't wake up, Lillian." Goo said as he stared at Lillian on her throne.

Lillian felt tears start to well up in her eyes as she stared at who she had thought was her friend. But she should have known better. Her real friends were in the real world, everything here in the dreams was fake.

"No, Lillian. Nothing is fake." Susan walked towards Lillian and tried to touch her with their beautiful fingers.

"Where is Dream?" Lillian's fingers curled around the hilt of a sword that she brandished at Susan and Goo. Susan recoiled back from the blade as if it really could hurt them.

"Dream is a weak god, Lillian. If you wake up, you will have to destroy them." Susan's voice was cold and calm. There was a dreadful certainty in it.

Lillian ran away.

She wasn't sure why she ran away, but she curled up into a ball and let herself travel through the infinite recesses of the dream realm. It blurred past her as she hurtled far away from these problems.

A voice was insistent in her head. It was telling her that it was time to wake up. It was telling her that the godlike being she had met was simply a harbinger, that being was foretelling the fact that Lillian was ready to awaken again.

The blurred movement around Lillian stopped as she stood outside one of the stone edifices that housed the dreamers.

Lillian knew what would be inside, but she felt a dreadful magnetism that drew her deeper and deeper into the structure.

With a flick, a wall disappeared, and Lillian stepped into someone else's dream. Or at least that was what she thought she was doing. She wasn't too sure what to trust anymore.

Before Lillian stood her mother. She looked perfectly like Lillian remembered her: her auburn hair flowed in a summer breeze as she looked down at her little daughter.

But that was not right. Lillian had grown a lot since this moment occurred. This was how Lillian remembered her mother on the day that she left home to join the prince's entourage. Her mother should have a few spots of grey in her hair now, not pure auburn. And why was Lillian shorter than her mom? She had grown quite a bit since she was thirteen.

"You're not actually my mother, are you?" Lillian asked the thing that looked exactly like her mother.

"I am your mother, just not your actual mother." The woman had a soft smile on her face as she spoke back to Lillian. Even the inflection was the same as Lillian remembered her mother speaking.

"Then what are you?"

"I am your impression of your mother." The image turned around and Lillian saw that she was two dimensional, a being without depth.

"Where is my real mother?"

"Not here."

"Why not, everyone dreams." Lillian pictured her mother in her mind's eye with as much detail as she could. She tried to imagine stepping into her mother's mind and feeling the comfort of her embrace.

She could feel her mother's arms wrapping her in a warm embrace.

But when she opened her eyes, it was still the lifeless image that hugged her, not her real mother.

"Why aren't you real?" Lillian cried and found a measure of comfort in this thing's arms.

"I am real, Lillian. Everything in dreams is real, just not in the way you think it is."

Lillian cried for only another moment before she stepped away from the image of her mother. From the shadows, every single being she had encountered in the dream realm stepped into view.

The godlike goblin stood there smiling at her, Susan grinned sheepishly, Goo looked uncomfortable, and every single human being that she had thought she had saved from the stone edifices was standing before her.

In unison they asked, "where are you?"

Lillian knew the answer. Maybe she had known the answer the entire time and just refused to believe it. But she spoke it into the world to cement it.

"I am in my own mind, nothing more and nothing less."

With gravitas, Lillian continued, "I release you, my loneliness." With those words, Goo disappeared from existence. He wasn't gone, he had just returned to her subconscious, where he belonged.

"I release you, my instincts." The godlike being that had treated Lillian as a bug took a bow before departing from Lillian's awakened mind.

"I release you all." With a wave the hundreds of characters that had been around in Lillian's mind disappeared - that left only one.

"I release you, my fears." Susan had a wolfish grin on their ephemeral face as they faded down into the shadows. Susan was Lillian's fears, a physical manifestation of everything she was terrified of. She could not escape this being because it was a part of her. She could not destroy this being because to do so would be to destroy herself.

Lillian stood alone. She could feel the energy of her mind whirling around her. Every blade of grass was formed by her mind, and she could control it.

Lillian honed her will into a razor sharp blade and cut into the sky. A ripping sound came as the sky fell like a bedsheet falling off the clothesline. Above Lillian was a face. The face flashed between hundreds of different expressions and people; it was the face of a god.

It was Dream.

Lillian floated up to meet this god. She now knew that she had never been trapped in this place by this god. She was in a prison of her own making, but the only way to escape was through the ruler of dreams.

"I am sorry, Dream." Lillian said as the god's shifting face turned towards more sad expressions. The hundreds of faces flitting by were now wholly apologetic and crying, none were the imposing god she had imagined.

"You can't destroy me! I am a god!" The being spoke with conviction. The air turned to fire around Lillian, and she could feel her soul start to scorch under the pressure that the god was exuding.

"That is where you are wrong, Dream." Lillian breathed all the fire into herself. She imagined the fire as a healing flame, coursing through her soul and healing the cracks that were forming. "You are not the only god here."

Lillian, the goddess of her own mind, ripped Dream to shreds.

The god would not let their essence be destroyed so easily though.

"But you are just a human. How dare you imagine yourself my equal in my domain." The essence reformed in the form of a titan. Larger than imaginable, Dream opened their gaping maw in an attempt to swallow Lillian whole.

"I refuse your claims. Here is the one place every human is allowed to be god. The world in my mind is mine alone and I refuse to let some petty god have any power here." Lillian shattered the new form of Dream and forced them to become a bug.

Small and insignificant, the bug started scuttling away. It probably hoped to escape Lillian's dream and run somewhere else. But Lillian refused to let it do such a thing.

Lillian trapped the bug named Dream under a glass jar.

Inside the glass jar, Lillian fashioned a true world. Every person she had ever met was placed inside, and a city was formed from the mud beneath the jar. Oceans surrounded the city and Lillian fashioned local customs out of her imagination. She made the locals enjoy placing baskets of fish on their head and doing twirls as a sign of prowess.

It was a world where Dream could live, fall in love, maybe even have dreams of their own.

Lillian fashioned a body for them. She made them tall and handsome; their dark eyes would plumb the depths of anyone's soul. Their hair was long and unkempt, and Lillian made them love the sea and the secrets held within.

"I turn the tables on you, Dream. You play with our lives and dreams, now I force you to go live as one of us for a time. I hope you enjoy it." Lillian winked at the person in the jar who had once been called Dream.

Lillian stood up and looked out at the rest of her inner world. She could not stay here forever. To be honest, she had stayed far too long.

Lillian touched her chest with her hand.

"I choose to bring myself back into the world."

With a whoosh, Lillian felt her essence pull away from the world she had become accustomed to. She left behind the vast stretches of greenery, the imposing mountains, and the comfort of her dreams.

She woke up to reality. Her body hurt more than she could ever describe. But she was back in the real world; no dream could make pain like this.

Next to her in an unfamiliar bed was a ghostly apparition, it looked just like her, except not so feeble.

"Come to me." With those words the ghost and Lillian fused into one being and she felt all the power of the dream realm enter her physical body. Her mind was on fire as she connected the dreamer to the waking soul.

For the first time in her life, she was whole.

"What in the gods' name was that?" Said some lady that Lillian had never seen before.

"I'm back." Lillian cried out and jumped to her feet. "Now, who are you?"