Young Writers Society

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There's many ways you could've gotten here. It doesn't really matter, however: the point is, you didn't mean to arrive, yet here you are. It’s a very empty room in a very empty building on a very empty landscape. The door is unlocked, the goal is unclear - all that is evident is that you aren't alone, for there are four others in the room with you.

At first, it's odd, but doesn't seem too spectacularly crazy. Until, that is, someone steps the first step outside. Dark, dusty soil, like that of burned ground, spans the length of the flat plain. It's entirely featureless. It's even bare of rocks. The sky above is gray and blocked out by clouds or smoke or something else entirely and it's honestly a mystery how any light is getting through cover so thick. But if you continue to walk - which I'm sure you will, because it's the only option you really have - you find yourself standing on the edge of a vast chasm.

That's where the magic happens.

In this roleplay, the characters must relive one or more of their most potent and intense memories that involves a fear, a regret, or both - and not a small one. It must be major to the character. Here's the catch: every time a memory is triggered all party members are pulled into it together. And, in each memory, all characters, including those who haven't already lived the memory, play a part and may have an effect on and change the chain of events. Think of group time travel and you're about there (note that this doesn't affect the actual timeline, since this is akin to a dreamscape). The memory ends when it is somehow resolved. That's open to interpretation by the players. It may be the death of the main character's nemesis, a resolution of the fear/regret, the death of the character themselves, or something else.

Rules of the Dreamscape

Note: in the following, the term “spectator” refers to the characters who are in the “main” character’s memory; the “main” character is the one who triggered the memory and is reliving it. A “player” is a character who is corporeal and interacting with the environment, just like NPCs and the main character in the memory.

1. Spectators may alternate between being corporeal and present in the memory and being mere spectres (specters are merely observers and are not seen by anyone who is not either another spectator or the main character; they may also not interact with the environment). However, in any given encounter, one may only change states from either a spectre to a player or from a player to a spectre once in any given encounter.

2. At least one spectator must be a player at all times.

3. The main must always be a player; never may the main become a spectre. Period.

4. All memories must be of great emotional importance (negative or positive) to the main.

5. No main is pulled into the Dreamscape more than twice in a row.

6. NPCs or other characters that are a part of the memory treat the main as though they are in the same state they were at the time of the memory. For instance, if the character was a child, all the NPCs treat them and perceive them as a child.

7. The abilities of the NPCs all are adjusted so that they are proportionally the same in relation to the main as they were at the time of the memory. For instance, if they are now a bodybuilder but at that point in time were extremely physically weak, the school bully will still be able to fling them around the same way they were able to when the main was physically weak.

8. Any non-spectre is subject to physical harm or death.

9. The main possesses only the abilities they had at the time. For example, if a character was once a normal human but now has regeneration, the regeneration won’t kick in if they’re harmed until after they’ve left the Dreamscape. This also means that if, at the time of the memory, they possessed abilities they no longer have, they have access to those abilities until they exit the Dreamscape. Additionally, this may apply to age and appearance, attire included.

10. A memory may only be resolved in three ways:
1. The main is killed.
2. The primary subject of the memory (if the memory revolves around a person/object) is killed or destroyed.
3. The emotions around the memory are somehow resolved (writer adjudication).

11. If a main is killed in the Dreamscape, all characters are pulled out of the Dreamscape in the player’s last 5 seconds of life. If, outside of the Dreamscape, the character has abilities that may save them, they are allowed to go in effect. However, if a player is killed in the Dreamscape, all characters still remain in the Dreamscape.

12. All players must remain in the same room as the main. If the main steps into a separate room, all players are spoofed after them.

For once in his life, der Silberfuchs had been having a decent and somewhat normal day. He'd gotten some coffee in the morning at a cozy shop on the corner to start it all off and then proceeded to go down to the local music store and browse for a couple hours. Afterwards, he camped on a roof for the majority of the afternoon before getting one of the cleanest shots he had in months to kill the drug lord as swiftly as possible. By evening he'd gotten his pay and was sitting in a comfortable, bug-free hotel room with warm Chinese take-out for dinner and an eclair to finish it all off.

He would've been quite pleased had it ended there. In fact, it would've been the best Christmas surprise that could come by.

Unfortunately, 'twas not to be, as he discovered when he innocently stepped into the bathroom so that he could brush his teeth and get an early night's rest...and wound up in a vacant, featureless room.

And he was in his pajamas.

It was a peaceful, beautiful day. It was one of the calmest ones that the Castle of Blood had experienced in quite some time - animals and birds flitted about in the gardens as the warm sun shone down on the castle and its surrounding forest. The moment that the prince had seen how beautiful the weather was, he had devised the best plan he had come up with in months: he and Aska would spend the entire day out in the gardens, a picnic lunch included, and enjoy every single second of the beautiful day.

He had spent the past hour lounging in the sun while Aska read a short distance away; his best friend had already gone through one book and had started another. He let out a content sigh and watched a white, fluffy cloud float across the sky. Tieth wasn't supposed to show up for at least another week. He could relax, and not have to worry about whatever Tieth was going to force him to do next as part of his duty-

Suddenly, he found himself staring up at a ceiling.

He blinked for a second, trying to understand how he could have possibly gone from where he was only seconds ago to the room he apparently was in now. Even more disturbing was how it didn't look like it was part of the castle. It was somewhere else.

He hopped to his feet and desperately hoped that this was some poor attempt to keep him aware on Tieth's part. But as his tail nervously swished behind him in large, powerful strokes, he realized that something like that just couldn't be the case.

Because there was a person in the room.

And the person looked very, very human as the ambassador stared at him.

Bo let out a long sigh as he tossed around in bed, trying to will himself to get up up. With eyes still shut, he threw off his blankets as he swung his legs over the edge of his bed and then stood up with a big long stretch. He let out a long, loud yawn as he did so, only to cut it off with a grunt as he felt something pop in his back. Whether it was popping back into place or out of place, he couldn't quite tell. At least it didn't hurt.

He as he plopped his arms down, he finally squinted his eye open, expecting to met with the dim darkness of his underground room.

But instead he was looking into... a very blank, empty room. Well-lit. His eye shot open, despite watering at doing so. He blinked quickly as he turned around, looking at the only two figures standing with him in the featureless room.

One looked kind of draconic. He kind of looked how he would've imagined he would look were he a fully realized dragon in human form, actually. And the other looked... familiar. His eyebrows shot up as he recognized the token scar on Kratzer's face and he smiled wide. It looked like Kratzer was in pajamas, or some kind of cozy lounge-wear. And it was at that moment that he glanced down at himself, smile fading slightly as he realized all he was wearing was his underwear and an undershirt.

He stood like that, looking at himself for a few good seconds before he closed his eye and shrugged. After his own self acknowledgement of his lacking wardrobe he ran over to Kratzer, smiling.

"Hey, Kratzer! How's it going!" he said, reaching to pat him on the back. He looked over at the dragon-like fellow, waving with his other hand. "You a friend?"

HIs hands flew to his knives the moment he saw the demonic-looking figure, sheerly out of reflex and instinct, before he stopped himself. They hadn't done anything hostile - and in situations where he'd randomly appeared in strange places before, even demons weren't always the bad guys. Just look at Damascus.

He opened his mouth to address the newcomer (though his hands still rested on his knife hilts) before seeing a very big and very familiar figure appear in his underpants and t-shirt. A massive, one-eyed fellow, with a booming voice and a glint in his gaze.

His eyes widened and a grin immediately lit up his countenance as he recognized his friend. "Herr Bo! Long time no see!" he smiled, looking up at the considerably larger man. "How goes it? He's new...guy," Kratzer said. "We just...appeared here. Like you." He turned to the draconian fellow. "I'm Kratzer, by the way. This is my friend Bo. And you are...?"

He shifted his gaze from one man to the other, tail swishing slowly behind him as he tried his best not to freak out over there being two very intimidating humans present. He of all people knew that appearances could be deceiving, but there was something very intimidating about their heights, facial scars and their unfamiliar clothing. Just where were these two men from?

Even more importantly, when were they going to attack him? They had to be thinking of; he had seen the first man reach for a weapon. "My name is..." A moment of hesitation. He very well couldn't say his real name - it would likely make them attack him sooner rather than later. He knew every second he waited would let to them growing more suspicious, so he panicked and said with a deeper, more powerful voice than before, "I am King Nex of the Castle of Blood."

There. Then they wouldn't realize just how terrified he was, right?

The scent of fear coming off the draconic individual was so potent he almost found it amusing, simply in the fact that, in truth, there wasn't much to be afraid of. On the flipside, he did feel a little bad about it. It wasn't his fault that he looked intimidating.

He took his hands off his blades and tucked his thumbs into his belt that he wore over his ducky jammies. "We aren't gonna hurt you, kiddo. Sorry about the weapons - you just startled me is all. For real, we aren't scary. I know we kind of look scary but really. We aren't."

Bo caught the scent as well, and couldn't help but smile - not because fear was something to be laughed at, but, well, he didn't think he looked all that scary in his current get-up, but when he took into account that he did just wake up in a random room he didn't remember walking into and didn't recognize, that was probably another source of the understandable anxiety.

Earnestly, he nodded his head at Kratzer's assurance. "Yeah, kid, I mean, I'm not looking to fight anyone in my underwear anyway. Frankly, not looking to fight at all of course, but uh, you know, maybe on your behalf or somethin.'" He shrugged. "But it's nice to meetchya, Nex. Uh, do you mind if I call you that? Just Nex?"

He looked warily between the two of them, took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He had to think things through. He wasn't the child they apparently thought he was - which prompted an entirely different set of concerns, namely why they would be so accepting of someone who looked the way he did. He was royalty. He had learned how to be responsible and how to handle himself in dangerous situations ever since he was a child. And while his time with Aska may have dulled some of those initial instincts, they still lurked within him.

"I'm not a child - I'm of age," he said. He kept his voice deep. He honestly doubted either one of them had been to Laetae before, but there was no reason for him to risk his identity being discovered. Besides, his voice had always been on the higher side - he didn't want to be treated as younger than he actually was. "I also wasn't afraid of you. I was just...startled, that's all."

He was silent for a moment, looking at Bo as he mulled over what he said. "And I suppose just Nex works."

Kratzer blinked. "First of all, I doubt you're any older than, what? Thirty? Forty at most? Second, we've got good noses, there's no reason to lie to us, because it's both a wasted effort and altogether inefficient. Thirdly, it's a pleasure to meet you, Nex."

"And fourthly, sorry for calling you kiddo. Wasn't meant to sound condescending! I call most people kiddo. Or bud. Or pal. Or something like that. But if that gets under your skin for whatever reason, I'll just stick to Nex, bud." He paused, eye going wide. "Er - I mean, just Nex."

Nendros let out a heavy sigh.

Lying about how he felt was pointless, apparently - at least when it came to pretending that he wasn't frightened by the two humans standing before him. It was something that he could handle, though he did wish he could do a better job at concealing his emotions from two total strangers that still made him feel uneasy.

He would be truthful about his fear. He wouldn't openly bring attention to it, but he wouldn't try so hard to hide it. But when it came to his identity, he'd continue to keep that a secret - they had no indication on who he really was, and he wasn't planning on giving that information anytime in the near future. He would keep using a deeper voice, too - not unnaturally deep, but the deepness that he knew this body could handle.

He crossed his arms as his tail continued to go from one side to the other. It didn't make any sort of sense! They were supposed to be terrified of him. He looked like a dragon. Humans weren't supposed to chat with a dragon when they saw one; they were supposed to either run away or fight it out of fear.

And then there was the matter of what Kratzer had said. Though Bo had shown up later than him, they seemed close and like they knew each other. Kratzer kept talking about them like they had things in common - the good noses comment came to mind first - which implied that they were both the same thing. They couldn't be humans if Kratzer was implying that thirty was a young age; both of them looked like they were around that age.

Nendros took a horrified step back, and all color left the little bits of his skin that showed.

"You're dragons," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Bo’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked down at Kratzer as if the accusation could actually be true. The surprise, though, was at how quickly Nex found out.

“Uh, well, I am, actually. But Krater isn’t. He’s a vampire,” he said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “How ‘bout you? You’re a dragon of sorts I’m guessing?”

Vampire? He had seen that term somewhere before. If he concentrated hard enough, he could vaguely recall seeing the term pop up in one of Aska's books when he had peered over his best friend's shoulder. He had been fairly certain that the book was a fiction one - it was the only thing Aska really ever wanted to read - but maybe it had been nonfiction.

He didn't answer Bo's question. He was too busy coming up with one of his own. One that, if he was given an answer that confirmed his suspicions, would nicely explain what was going on. "Did Tieth make you bring me here as a test?" he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side as he looked the two of them over.

The castle was morbidly silent at night compared to its day-time mania. In his private chambers, Albin Vesper was in a rare state of disarray. His dressing shirt was untucked and untied, not to mention wrinkled. His usually perfectly moulded hair was sticking up in odd places from where he had ran his hands through it.

Ironically, he was currently stressing about how hard it was to run a kingdom during a crisis. Though he respected Queen Reida as a ruler, these past few weeks had shown him first-hand just how much he had been underestimating her.

Letting out a frazzled sigh, Vesper finally shoved the papers at his desk out of sight. He was exhausted- had been all week. Maybe he would be able to function better on just a few more hours of sleep.

Wearily, he crawled into bed with his clothes on, and was asleep before he could make it under the blankets.

Before long, Vesper woke up in a strange position. He let out an unnecessarily loud groan and pried his eyes open. Almost immediately, he knew that something was off. For one, his bed had disappeared, and these were not his chambers.

Darting to his feet in an instant, his hand was at his sword hilt. The grip on his weapon only tightened further as he caught sight of the others in the room- one that appeared to be a half-man, half-reptilian beast.

"Well, if this isn't the strangest kidnapping attempt I've experienced..."