The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

Lillian was in a field of flowers. Colors filled the meadow and butterflies flitted between them. It was an idyllic paradise, and she didn't trust it in the slightest.

Lillian knew that she was dreaming, but she couldn't remember exactly how she had gotten to this meadow. She remembered walking down an endless stream of water and then encountering Susan. The demon tried to kill Lillian, but she was able to escape by jumping into one of the massive stone buildings. Then she was here.

The two events were connected, but Lillian couldn't quite put her finger on it.

Lillian's foot brushed one of the flowers experimentally. Nothing bit her toes off and nothing died at her movements, so she declared herself in a safe place.

She decided that if she was safe, the least she could do was explore this new environment. It was a beautiful little landscape, and Lillian was feeling the call to adventure.

Lillian played with the butterflies, letting them land on her skin before they flew away into the wind. The flowers seemed to blossom as she walked by, and she felt like she was a princess in some tale of old.

But something other than the beautiful flowers and fluttering butterflies caught her attention. Behind the meadow lay a dark forest. The trees were all shades of green and deep brown. No light seemed to breach the canopy above her head, but there was something about these woods that called Lillian.

One step into the woods made Lillian shiver. Her body felt cold in this place, and she could feel someone watching her. Something with lots of teeth.

Far to her left, Lillian heard a young voice singing. It was the voice of a young man who had not quite reached adulthood. His tone was good, and he kept a jaunty tune quite well, but the song did not alleviate the discomfort of these woods.

Lillian decided to follow the singing.

She ran through the brush, constantly checking behind her to make sure no dream monsters came to attack her. Low branches smacked into her face and tore at her clothing, but she refused to be stopped by something so droll as wood.

Finally, she reached the source of the noise. There in the middle of the clearing was a young man in a red cloak. It was the color of blood, and that only exacerbated the paleness of the young man's face.

He had babyish features, a mop of brown hair on his head, and a twinkle in his eyes. Lillian was looking at a youthful Joy.

"Why Lillian, what are you doing here?" The younger Joy asked as he stared up at her. It was disconcerting to suddenly be taller and older than one of her friends, but Lillian wasn't one to quibble over details.

"Where are we?" Lillian asked the apparition.

"You're in my dream, Lillian." Joy giggled a little. "You must've gotten real lost to end up here."

Lillian pondered this train of thought for a moment. She knew that she had jumped into one of the stone structures to escape from Susan. Was each stone structure a different person's dream?

What incredible luck though to end up in one of her own friends' dreams.

"What is going on in the real world? Joy, all I can remember is fighting Ian and then I was here. I can't wake up, what is happening to my real body?" Emotions flooded Lillian as she threw a barrage of questions at Joy.

"Time for questions is later. Right now, we have to run away from the wolf man." Joy started sprinting in the other direction, away from Lillian, his red cloak billowing in the wind. A howl broke the still air, and Lillian could hear feet padding against the ground at a remarkable pace.

Lillian decided that running would be the best option. She knew that Susan could attack her in the dream realm, and she didn't want to test whether any other creatures were able to do that.

Her feet tore into the soft earth as she started catching up to Joy. He was moving quickly, but somehow the ground beneath his feet started fighting him. Small hands of earth gripped his ankles and slowed his sprint to a light jog.

Lillian could hear the padding feet growing closer behind her, and do she grabbed Joy's wrist and tried to pull him away from the grasping hands.

She gripped and pulled, but he was stuck in the mud. Joy looked her deeply in the eyes, "go." He spoke solemnly and turned to face the beast chasing them.

The beast was more human than wolf, but underneath the average build were random tufts of fur as well as sharp canine teeth. The creature snarled at Lillian and Joy and leapt.

Lillian turned away and ran again before she could watch the scene unfold. But the tearing of flesh and bestial screams haunted her as she ran further away from the massacre.

A howl penetrated the stillness of the forest and Lillian knew that Joy had just died in this dream. His spirit wasn't bound to the land of the dreaming though, so he didn't have to worry dying in here. Once he died, he just woke back up, unlike her if she was caught.

A ripping sensation filled the world around Lillian. Reality felt weak around her and so knew that something was about to happen.

Something gripped her and pulled on her. She was lifted off the ground and past the tops of the trees in the empty forest. She floated above the field of flowers and butterflies. She kept flying upwards until she realized she wasn't looking down at the ground anymore.

She was looking at a stone wall.

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A gasp shook Lillian as she looked around. She was back in the area that surrounded the endless stream. The massive stone structures looked down imposingly on her and she suddenly felt very exposed.

She ran and ducked behind a building, looking around herself to make sure that Susan was not around anymore. Lillian wasn't so quick to forget that Susan had almost killed her before she had escaped into Joy's dream.

After a few minutes of furtive glances over her shoulder, Lillian finally pronounced that she was probably safe from the dream demon. She left her hiding place and started exploring the massive stone structures.

As before, she saw shadowy figures inside of them running this way and that through various windows plastered on the walls. The figures were doing all sorts of things. Some were running, some were dancing, and others were having tea parties. No two figures seemed to be doing the same thing.

She wondered what these buildings could be. Since the one that Lillian had entered had contained Joy's dream, did that mean that every one of these buildings contained someone dreaming?

She looked out at the endless stream and the correspondingly endless series of stone buildings beside it. That was a lot of people. It was an unfathomable number of people here dreaming.

Lillian decided that her only option was to go into another one of these buildings and see what she could find. It wasn't like much else was getting done out here.

She squared her shoulders and found a building where the shadowy figure inside was not running from anything. She found a likely looking window and smashed it open with an elbow.

Before she could think about it a second longer, Lillian jumped through the hole into the stone building.

The air was bright and crisp around her. The sky was a beautiful shade of red that comes only at sunrise. But most importantly, Lillian was home.

She stood with her bare feet touching the wet ground, breathing in the scent of the beginning morning. It had been far too long since Lillian had been home. She had fallen in love with David's talk of adventure and having purpose in life. And so, she had left home and not looked back.

She sent her parents letters frequently, as well as lump sums of gold. But her parents never needed it.

Her whole family ran a farm. Everyone in her family had gotten a gift that directly related to farming, and they were a well-oiled machine at keeping everything running smoothly. So, Lillian had left since she felt out of place.

It felt good to be home. She could hear cows mooing and the wheat stalks whispering in the wind. It was a beautiful idyllic day.

Lillian spotted her mother running between the laundry lines. There were hundreds of pieces of clothing hanging from them and Lillian's mother didn't seem like she was going to stop putting more on.

As Lillian approached, she could hear her mother mumbling under her breath, "too much work, too much work, not enough time." And she tottered back and forth with pile after pile of laundry.

Lillian started helping her struggling mother. It was clear that there was some distress in her life, so Lillian figured she could alleviate some of it, even if it was all just a dream.

Back and forth, back and forth. Lillian grabbed some clothes, then hung them on the drying line. Lillian and her mother moved in a frantic silence, not acknowledging the other's work.

The laundry pile seemed never ending. Every time that Lillian grabbed a shirt or pair of pants and placed it on a hook, she later found that same set of clothes back in the pile. It appeared that no amount of effort could make the pile go away.

"Why are you putting clothes up?" Lillian asked her mother as the pile of clothes started to get to her. Lillian already wasn't a fan of doing laundry, much less a magically never-ending pile of it.

"Silly Lillian. If I don't do it, who will?" Her mother didn't even look up from her work as she kept moving. She moved in a blur, getting faster and faster. She put clothes on the line so quickly that it was superhuman. But it still wasn't enough.

But with her mother's increase of speed, Lillian could see something. The clothes were disappearing off the clothesline. Something was moving at insane speeds taking the clothes off the line and placing them back into the pile. The pile wasn't never-ending; their work was just being undone at every step.

Lillian tried to open her eyes and see what was happening. With a push of mental will, Lillian strained and strained. She could feel little veins popping up on her nose from the effort. She was going to see behind the mask of this dream.

A flittering shape came into Lillian's view. It moved so quickly that Lillian's eyes could barely keep up. But she saw what looked like a small man with horns coming out of his head running between the lines placing clothes back into the massive pile.

Surprisingly, the little man turned to face Lillian as soon as she looked at him. He yelped, "EEP!" and scurried off. Could the little man feel her attention on him? Why was he so scared?

Lillian took off after the little man, unwilling to let it rest. This little man had been bothering her mother in her dreams; she was not going to let him off easy.

The little man tore into the kitchen of her childhood home and started throwing pots and pans around, making quite the racket. Lillian rocketed into the room, hoping to grab the little guy by the horns. But the little man sidestepped her easily, then he grabbed one pan that looked a little off.

The pan was a deep red color, which was not a color Lillian had ever seen on cookware before, but it was a bold choice. The little man raised it above his head then banged himself repeatedly with it.

Lillian watched in one part fascination and one part horror as she saw pieces of the little man stop existing wherever the pan hit him. As he hit his head the head was suddenly gone. There was no blood or viscera, the body part was simply not in this realm anymore.

The pan dropped to the floor after the entire little man's body had disappeared. Lillian looked at the pan, then looked at the vacant space where the man had used to be. She shrugged then picked it up.

She raised her arm above her head and slammed it down on her head.

A sense of dysphoria attacked Lillian all at once as her head was somewhere new. She could still feel her body, but her head was no longer in the same room as the rest of her. She kept slamming the pan down onto her body while she observed this new environment.

It was the front of the stone structure that she had jumped into. She could even see the broken glass on the ground from where she had smashed the window open. But most importantly the little man who had escaped her was just standing there.

He looked like a nervous man who was finally able to take a break. He was slumped on the side of the building, obviously taking a short break. Lillian wouldn't let him get away with that for long.

As soon as her legs appeared back in this reality she pounced on the little man and grabbed him by the horns.

"Who are you? And why were you bothering my mother in her dream?" Lillian loomed over the little man, shaking him for a little emphasis.

"Eep! I mean no harm; I mean no harm." The little man started squirming in her grip. But despite his incredible speed, Lillian held firmly to his horns, giving him no room to escape.

"Tell me. Or you'll get the fist." Lillian moved his fist about in a mildly threatening gesture that got the little man quivering in his boots.

"I'm just trying to work off my payment, just like you." His eyes made him look like a puppy, but Lillian was unmoved by his tactics.

"Payment?"

"You know? We are the mortals claimed by Dream, forsaken by Death. So, we are their minions, running through people's dreams and making dreams happen. I mean, foolish mortals think that their minds come up with dreams, yet our workforce just laughs; we're the ones doing it all…" The little man's voice faded into the background as he rambled on and on.

Lillian was just given a deluge of information, but she knew she had just heard something important. Mortals claimed by Dream. She didn't belong to Death, but she was the property of some god now. And what was this man saying, was everything within dreams created by mortals?

What did that mean for her?