Posts tagged: battle
Marching past the edge of a large wooded area, my party is suddenly taken by a surprise attack. I mostly avoid the skirmish, even though it is raging all around me. We are victorious and take few casualties, but it has me worried.
“Who is attacking us?” I ask the captain of our group.
“Rebels,” he spits back. “There’s no telling when they’ll attack again, but I think it will be soon.”
This is not good news. Our supplies are low, morale is low, and I suddenly realize I have never been in a battle. I am wearing armor, which is a good sign, and I have weapons strapped to myself, but I’m not actually sure whether or not I can fight. I feel nervous as we march onward.
Some time later, it becomes apparent that an attack is imminent. We ready ourselves and I have one last look through our supply wagon, which is a Conestoga wagon. I don’t learn anything inside, but I felt it was important to check.
As I leave the wagon, I am approached by an enemy soldier, who just so happens to be Littlefinger from A Song of Fire and Ice. This is good, because I hate him and very much want him to die. He puts his helm on (it’s the sort with a nose guard off the top of the helmet but no covering on the face) and draws his sword.
I decide at the the last second to wield a solid steel handaxe. It’s not the best weapon due to the difference in reach, but I think it will be faster than the sword, which will give me a huge advantage if I can come in close to him.
I block several of his blows and manage to strike on his armor a few times. I’m feeling more confident about defense and thus my own safety, but my blows are glancing off his armor with very little effect. Then, I have an idea.
Going on the defensive, I wait for Littlefinger to attack. I quickly parry the blow and strike as hard as I can against the back of his helm. It staggers him, and I have just the opportunity I need - I throw my axe at his face as hard as I can.
It connects in a big way, and Lord Baelish goes down in a heap. I walk up to his body and inspect the damage. I don’t think he’s dead, an he’s not bleeding too extensively, but his face is looking a bit mushed. It doesn’t look good, and even though he was trying to kill me, it doesn’t really feel that good either. I just killed a man (probably), and I’m not sure exactly what to take away from the experience.
———-
Finally, a decent Game of Thrones dream. The last one I had was about Daenerys, which sounds awesome, right? Wrong. I was neither getting into her royal pants nor flying around on the back of a dragon, both of which I would have enjoyed immensely. I was doing some minor accounting and attending finance and supply meetings for her army. Dream life can be a real bore sometimes.
This might have come off the back end of Rachel’s wedding, but we needed to get out of our starting point. Some terrible thing was upon us, and we had to get out. The snow was coming down in droves, although not impeding movement to any great extent.
A large sort of personnel carrier arrived, offering to evacuate the women from the scene - only the women. I suspected some sort of trap or trickery and thought about what purpose some evil entity might have in removing and/or abducting all the women from the situation. I couldn’t think of anything. A large, older bald man, and a portly young bald man were involved, although I may have only come to that conclusion in retrospect. In any event, I decided to get as far away from this vehicular “ark” as possible.
Racing through the snow, I got the distinct impression that we were being followed and possibly chased. I had three unknown companions with me, although they may have been awake-life lesser friends and acquaintances. We eventually found a few very suburban homes and decided they might serve as good places to hide and get out of the storm. We were probably in Japan, as I thought how my Japanese language abilities might be useful if we encountered the owner of the house in which we sought refuge.
We hid in a large, well provisioned garage. A truck began to scour the area for the four of us, and we hid in a darkened corner. One of my companions wouldn’t hold still, and the noise of his feet on the concrete floor of the garage gave us away to our pursuers. The chase was over, and there seemed to be no real consequence other than having been caught. We milled about the garage and I thought about going up into the attic, accessible via a wooden ladder, but it didn’t seem like a useful thing to do at the time.
This next part may or may not have occurred, but I remembered it later in the dream, so it enters the history books as everything else: I had a polar bear as a familiar or possibly a spirit animal. I don’t think I everwasthe polar bear, but I can’t swear it didn’t happen. The bear was generally friendly and keen on protecting me, but it was still a bear. Bears are not particularly gentle creatures, and I worried a lot about being injured by my bear during our interactions, which mostly involved wrestling around. I didn’t particularly trust my bear, any more than I would “trust” any wild animal, but he or she was clearly an ally.
Leaving the garage, or possibly several months later, I spotted a wolf on a nearby ridge. As much as I like wolves in awake-life, I have never seen one in the wild, and I enthusiastically told my companions this as I watched the wolf. It was beautiful and large, emanating a beautiful danger. It ran back and forth along the ridge a few times before spotting us and approaching.
I knew the wolf was an enemy, but it also seemed to have some aspect of unnaturalness to it. The wolf ran by us several times and snapped at us or bumped into us as it went. When it was close, I saw that it was a hyena-wolf hybrid of some kind, with a wolf size and body, but the spots of a hyena on its coat. It was a loathsome creature, and while worrying, I can’t say it was frightening.
Several hounds traveling with our party (which seemed to be fluctuating between four and twenty people) engaged the creature. At one point they were all together in a big critter-bundle and I began punching the hyena-wolf as hard as I could. After only a few strikes I realized I was punching my bear, so I stopped. My bear apparently made short work of the hyena-wolf, although the details are fuzzy. Once the scrum broke, I noticed that another wolf had joined the fray, although it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. I suddenly got the impression that the wolves had been the alternate forms of lycanthropic humans.
I looked up to see the large, older bald man approaching and talking to us. Admittedly short on specifics, I got the impression that we were working together out of necessity, but were natural enemies. I began to suspect him as the hyena-wolf, or at the very least the cause of its appearance. I turned to look at the rest of his companions and saw the young bald man, who looked remarkably like a young Dr. Evil circa flashbacks in Austin Powers in Goldmember, looking much less portly. He looked haggard, with a significantly thinned, exhausted-looking face. Around his mouth and eyes there were red sores. As we made eye contact, I gave him a look. I’m not sure what look could accomplish such a thing, but I asked, “Were you the second wolf I just barely saw, and were you trying to help us?” He gave me the slightest, practically imperceptible nod.
I awoke unsure whether I could trust him, but probably willing to try. He looked so pained and vulnerable, worn to the point of necessity. He shouldn’t have been helping me, but it seemed to be his only hope.
———-
Bears, again. And wolves, too. And the matters of trust.
Mistrust never felt pressing in the dream, but it was constant. I believe this makes sense. I plan to use one of my friends to help me achieve something in the near future, and I will need to trust him. It isn’t something so serious and dramatic, but I need to open myself to him, and we are only on the verge of that sort of trust. It is a nagging thought, that I should overcome my fear of vulnerability and put faith in my very worthy friend.
As for bears, wolves, hyenas, snow, and fat men… I’m still thinking about it.
I remember a bear. It wasn’t particularly large, but a bear is a bear, and I had no desire to fight or even be near it. For whatever reason I wound up in a tight hallway with this bear, trying to squeeze past at great risk to my safety. It snapped at me a few times, but I was unhurt. Oddly, this isn’t the first “get past a dangerous animal in a tight space” dream I’ve had.
Fighting a bear would be difficult. Of course, you have a mouth full of sharp teeth to worry about, but then there are the claws. The front ones are probably the most dangerous, but the back ones looked just as sharp in my dream. And I’ve heard those things are strong as hell.
———-
I believe this dream was brought on by an experience last night, as I was sitting on a couch next to my bear-like friend, Matt. The couch was pinned by a table. Whenever I had to get up, I had to squeeze by him, either awkwardly against the table or by having him lean forward while I walked along the back of the couch.
Truthfully, I can’t remember whether I had this dream last night or the night before, which means that I might be able to see the future. In this case, obviously, there would have been a tremendous amount of interpretation involved and little to no payoff, but if I keep practicing, who knows what I might glean about what is yet to come?
