A Dreamer in a Dream (chapter 21)

There wasn’t any point commenting about how surreal this all was. That had been true since I first woke up on that fucking cart.

“I’d have given you shit if you did, Mini-Me. You got the girl and everything. Even put a ring on her.” There was a sound like static again. “The last thing I want to hear is you complaining.”

“You’ve been watching all this time?” It wasn’t so much speaking as thinking the words.

“No shit. That’s the whole reason you’re down there, even if it’s a crapshoot sometimes. Reminds me of the fucking dial-up days.”

“I guess it’s nice to know my purpose in life,” I snarked.

“What did I say about complaining, Mini-Me?”

“How about you bite me?”

“I’m not calling you Leman Russ. You’re lucky I’m the only one who can call you out on it.”

“Whatever you say, Sad-Sack-Me.”

The rainbow of Aetherius that my tower had pierced seemed to be shifting quicker.

“That’s a low blow.”

“Maybe. How did you… we… get there anyway?” That had been on my mind ever since I got a peek behind the proverbial curtain.

“Beats me. That last night’s the last night we remember. Except I didn’t find myself in Skyrim, looking at seven feet of woman. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Then what did you find? A guy dreaming about a game we played?”

“I know we’re stubborn, so I’ll say it once. The guy, not the word I’d use, wasn’t there when I woke up.” Static again. “Maybe there’s more out there. Maybe we would have eventually stumbled back home. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don’t want to roll the dice again. Do you?”

It was a rhetorical question. I was only a gambler by necessity. “I’m more surprised we aren’t gibbering lunatics.”

“At least one of us is good at pretending.” The static turned deeply unpleasant. “I think it’s time I came clean. The moment I started messing around with the ‘guy’s’ dream, I may or may not have given it an expiration date. Yeah, oopsie-doopsie, I know.”

If I had a heart, it would probably be beating like a drum right now. Instead I just felt cold. “You waited until I put a ring on the girl to tell me the world’s about to end?”

“Don’t look at me. I was stuck watching on dial-up unless I wanted to make things worse.”

“How long?” I muttered.

“Not a clue. But the locals are starting to catch on. Probably not a good sign.”

My thoughts went back to what Morihaus and Mephala were talking about. Something about having more freedom to act.

“They’re just not seeing the whole picture. It’s the dream becoming untethered that’s doing it. It’s always been Anu and Padomay. Stasis and Change. Order and Chaos. Is and Is-Not. We brought with us Other. I and Not-I. Eventually it will reach critical mass, and then…”

“Poof?” I helpfully supplied.

“Poof. The dream ends, the dreamer wakes. Or maybe it all starts again? I’m not too sure what happens, really.”

“Cool.” It was not cool.

“You try wandering around a desert for eternity, until one day you find an oasis.” Static. “Anyway, I’m happy to say it’s not all bad news. I have a plan! A magnificent plan! A beautiful plan! A—”

“You should have led with that.”

“Trust the process, Mini-Me. The plan is simple. You get out before it goes poof.”

I saw what I was angling at. I didn’t like it.

“…You want me to convince her to go for something that’s almost a sure bet of going poof at the starting line?” That being CHIM.

“Yes and no. Mundus was made for this, but it only made the impossible possible, not plausible. That’s where you come in.” Static. “You’re going to build a highway.”

“A highway?”

“A highway!” The other me’s voice was grotesquely distorted through the static as he continued. “You’ve already halfway there. The tower in Oblivion… you’re going to build another on Mundus. One leading into another, a highway stretching all the way from Mundus to me.”

It did sound like something I would come up with while high off my ass.

“Here. Let me make it all official.”

       = New Quest Accepted! The Highway to Heaven =

       Build a tower on Mundus and connect it with your tower in Oblivion.

              Reward: A Klondike bar.

A menu with that on it popped up in front of me like it was a fucking game.

“Funny. Though I don’t remember accepting.”

“I accepted for you. Get with the program. Here, have some more while I’m at it.”

       = New Quest Accepted! Arch-Mage =

       Become the new Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold.

              Reward: An all-you-can-eat buffet in the library.

       = New Quest Accepted! Marry Skadi =

       Do I need to explain?

              Reward: A wife.

       = New Quest Accepted! Spank Mephala =

       Second verse, same as the first.

              Reward: Catharsis.

“You could have at least come up with some more creative rewards,” I commented. One of those also sounded borderline suicidal…

“My hands are tied. Be happy you’re even getting a Klondike bar.”

“That’s if I do the impossible. I don’t even know how to stop my tower in Oblivion from being knocked down, and now you want me to build another one?”

“No complaining! Trust in the me that trusts in you. Because you’re me. I can throw in a second Klondike bar, but that’s it.”

“What a steal,” I snarked. “Got any advice on how to build a tower?”

“You’ll have the Eye of Magnus if you play your cards right. Start there. On that thought…”

       = New Quest Accepted! The Eye of Magnus =

       Take the Eye of Magnus for yourself.

              Reward: The Eye of Magnus.

“Right. Shouldn’t you have some idea how after…” You vaguely pointed in the direction of the tower.

“All I did was bully the dream until it gave me what I wanted, just like you have. You’re lucky Akatosh has advanced multiple-personality disorder.”

“Touché.” I glanced at the hot springs absently. “You know, I was going to ask you how to stop snacking down on anything enchanted. I’m guessing I’m shit out of luck?”

“Yeah. You just kind of turned into something straight out of Lovecraft on your own.”

       = New Quest Accepted! Abomination Rise =

       Master your Lovecraftian body.

              Reward: A bigger dick. You can also wear enchanted items, I guess.

“…How shallow do you think we are?”

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t?” So much for it being easiest to lie to yourself. “Oh, and you can chow down on as many books as you like now. It was a bandwidth problem.”

That kind of explained what happened earlier. It also meant it wouldn’t take me forever to devour the library.

“Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“I still have to become Arch-Mage first.”

The next moment I found myself back on Mundus, Shalidor’s statue staring at me.

“Something has changed again,” a spider immediately whispered in my ear.

“Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid, Mephala?”

“No, no, call her Mep-chan. It’s funnier that way.”

I felt a hungry, slavering thing bearing down on me, too many legs skittering across my back. “I will figure you out, Abomination. There has never been a secret that wasn’t mine.”

“You see?”

The peanut gallery was starting to get crowded.

“Hey, don’t compare me to those losers. They’re unbearable. ‘Look at us, we’re so much better than these icky mortals. That’s why we’re always obsessing over them.’”

It was kind of pathetic when you put it like that. It didn’t make them any less dangerous, however.

“We’re the bigger fish here, Mini-Me. Yeah, they can knock down our tower, but we’re spiteful.” The static returned with a vengeance. “If I have no skin in the game, I’m taking everything down with me.”

I didn’t know if I was that spiteful, but I also didn’t have an eternity of trauma weighing me down.

“You’re never going to be able to contest them in their little safe space, and while they might be pathetic, you’re not going to fool a busybody like Mep-chan forever. And you don’t need to. Mutually assured destruction, baby.”

Mephala’s presence had already retreated elsewhere, and I had to figure out the right way to approach MAD with seventeen Daedric Princes anyway.

       = New Quest Accepted! Mutually Assured Destruction =

       I’m not explaining this.

              Reward: You don’t get your tower knocked down. Probably. Some of them aren’t too bright.

“I got the message,” I snarked back. Mephala’s presence had already retreated.

Returning to the dorm, I was quickly ambushed by a very bored Lydia. But then she wouldn’t really have that much in common with the other students.

We sat and talked for a time. I encouraged her to give learning magic another go while she was here, and she tentatively agreed to Restoration and Enchanting. Then she fell asleep in my bed, but I didn’t raise a fuss. I wasn’t going to bother pretending to sleep anyway, and this way I could tease her in the morning.

I still didn’t know when the school trip to Saarthal would happen, but that wasn’t the end of the world either. It was past time I started figuring out how my Lovecraftian body actually worked, and now I had all the time in the world to do it.

“Now you’re thinking with portals. And by that I mean quests.”

Ignoring the other me, I thought back. It was only in times of stress or euphoria that my body had stopped pretending to be a man’s, if only for a moment. I just didn’t think it was stress or euphoria itself that had done it.

No, that had to be coincidental. I looked like me because I thought I should look like me. Just like I slept if I thought I should sleep. It was my self-image, maybe? Or something like that. I wasn’t a psychologist.

But then why did I try and eat anything enchanted that I came in contact with? Even a Flame Atronach once.

Maybe it was just a survival instinct gone haywire? When I ran dry of magicka, all I could think about was how hungry I was. It wasn’t anything rational or reasonable. I saw magicka inside that guy, and so I cracked him open for it like a piñata.

“Hey, he had it coming. Kidnapping cute lizard girls and everything.”

“You’re not helping,” I threw into my head.

       = New Quest Accepted! King of the Nerds =

       Nerd.

              Reward: Maidenless.

I ignored the annoying notification, looking at my hands. They weren’t flesh and blood, but magicka. The Mehrunes Dagon fangirl said it was grotesque what I had done with it, though when I nagged her into actually explaining later… yeah, that hadn’t helped. I was a fraud, after all.

Though I did know some things. Magicka stemmed from Aetherius. It was the essence of the divine. It could be spent to make the impossible possible. It also—

       = Quest Complete! King of the Nerds =

       Nerd.

              Reward: Maidenless.

“Bite me.”

“Kinky.”

“You know I can just cut the connection, right? It is still my tower.”

“Fiiiiine. I’m in the same boat as you about magicka, but self-image? That’s nothing a little disassociation won’t fix.”

“I guess you’d know.”

“Hurtful, but not untrue. Want me to show you?”

“If it helps.”

“It’s going to suck.” That much was—

WallStonesFloorStonesLightBlueAirCold

—What the fuck was that. It felt like I’d just jumped through time. Then I looked down to find myself having turned into a shifting mass of flesh complete with malformed tentacles.

It was wrong. All wrong. Everything felt wrong.

Except the moment I thought that, it all returned to normal. Two arms. Two legs. Ten fingers.

“Well, your theory was right. Now you just have to figure out how to do it without turning into something out of The Thing. At least unintentionally. You can do it intentionally if you want to give every poor motherfucker around you PTSD.”

“That bad?”

“Worse, probably. It was some seriously gnarly shit.”

I had a few ideas. Most of them bad ones, but hey, I had time. Not like I was going to be paying much attention in class.

I didn’t make much progress by morning, and by that point I already had a Lydia to tease. Then we went to get breakfast. The school provided it free of charge as long as you went to classes and assisted the professors in petty jobs here and there, and it was actually good. But then most of the students here were nobility of some stripe, with certain expectations.

I could tell that much from Vi, seated with two other girls and a boy. All Bretons or Imperials.

I didn’t really have to eat myself, just like I didn’t have to sleep, but good food was still good food.

There was a class after. Destruction. I actually wasn’t completely lost this time, but I still didn’t get that much out of it. Amur already had her own clique of Dunmer, though she kind of stuck out like a sore thumb because of it.

There weren’t any Argonians, so Bright-Like-Dawn and I kind of just did our own thing. Even if she was actually trying to pay attention while I was trying to make sense of some deep psychological shit.

Like how was I supposed to turn off my survival instinct?

“This is a snorefest.”

Yeah. No shit.

“And these robes suck. Once we’re Arch-Mage, we’re changing the uniform. At least then we’ll have some eye candy.”

I didn’t bring up the many, many issues with that.

       = New Quest Accepted! A New Dress Code =

       Implement a dress code that doesn’t suck at the College of Winterhold. Start with short skirts.

              Reward: Three Klondike bars.

What was with the Klondike bars?

       = A New Dress Code Reward Changed! =

              New Reward: Brush of Truepaint

The brush supposedly made from Dibella’s hair? “I thought you said you couldn’t—”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s legit.”

“It sounds like a scam.”

“You’re a scam.”

I was starting to think the good at pretending to be sane was a big fat lie.

“I am as sane as a swan under the rain.”

“I’ll be nice and pretend I understood that.”

“Just have some trust in me, will you? Get me my eye candy and I will get you Dibella’s kinky brush or your money back.”

Short skirts… I’d have to at least have a cape to go with it. To soften the blow. Capes were all the rage, right?

Or I could just focus on more important things, like the class being over. Then it was back to screwing around with my Lovecraftian body.

The evening class after that was just as much a snorefest.

The next day it was Tolfdir’s class, so I figured that was it. But nope. It was two weeks later when the guy finally announced the school trip to Saarthal, though he didn’t call it that.

Two fucking weeks, and I had been a busy little bee. This body of mine was something else, and I had been itching to take it out for a spin.

Saarthal, here I—

“You spin me right round, baby, right round…”

“You had to ruin it.”

“Like a record, baby, right round, round, round…”

AN: I don't think I've ever seen anyone give themself litRPG mechanics through ultrasolipsism. But then I can't claim to have read everything. :V

AN2: Also, if the other him is grinding your gears, you are not alone. The him here emphatically agrees. To the point that Sheogorath is probably more sane.