I don’t usually remember my dreams. I used to - I even kept a dream journal, written each morning in the present tense, and would read it every night before bed. My ultimate goal for it was to help me enter a state of lucid dreaming. It worked wonderfully. If I had to guess, reading the journal and remembering the surreal events that prompted the writing made me more aware of the part of my subconscious that was fabricating the dreams, which let me identify the times it was in use. That’s my best guess, of course; I’m by no means a cognitive whatchamacallit. Regardless, I couldn’t get enough. If I wanted to fly, I simply had to will it. If I wanted to retry arguments I had with people, I simply had to summon them. If I wanted to cheat on my diet, I simply had to imagine a bevy of bimbos serving all my guilty pleasures. If I wanted to ram an idiot’s head through a wall, I simply had to imagine my entire school cheering me on to do it. In the end, I forced myself to stop - my dreams had become too much fun. Real life became a laborious chore by comparison, and it suffered. I learned to ignore my dreams, lest their utopian glory draw me into catatonia. I’ll admit that it wasn’t a smooth transition, but it had to be done. I’ll also admit to missing those dream playgrounds terribly. Odd thing is, of course, I can’t be sure if I’m just not having those dreams anymore, or if my subconscious is experiencing them and just deliberately keeping my consciousness from remembering. My guess is the former, but knowing is next to impossible without some kind of laboratory. Tangent aside, I don’t usually remember my dreams anymore.

But I remembered last night’s dream.

It was great - my friends and I were running around this D&D world with a hot chick, killing cultists, saving babies, drinking beer, doing all the cool stuff - it was glorious. I think Topher was a half-orc, Kevin was an elf, I was a bard, and the hot chick was… hot. I’m pretty sure she was cool, too. Or maybe annoying? Both? Meh, didn’t matter now….

Wait, this isn’t my pillow.

And I don’t share a room with Topher.

And Topher certainly isn’t supposed to be green.

Oh dear.

I bolted up, nearly breaking my bed. My rented bed, from a tavern in the world my friends and I were trapped in and not certain how to get out of. I flopped back, groaning.

“Thought it was a dream, huh?” The voice was Kevin’s.

I groaned again in response. He was on his bed, sitting in a meditative pose with his eyes closed, and would’ve been looking very Zen if not for the smirk. My next groans came out as words: “I’m having… mixed feelings about it.”

“Join the club.”

“Did you ever end up trancing?”

“I think so?” Kevin shifted a bit. “I feel rested, at least. I was worried when some bright lights went off in the distance, but nothing came of it. I’ve been sitting here ever since.”

“Bright lights? Think it was the military?”

“Maybe. They were kind of far away from town, so it might’ve been them chasing down the cause of that explosion.”

I stared at the ceiling, rapping my fingers on the bed frame. “Did it remind you of any spells?”

“…No. Maybe like an all-radiant version of Flame Strike, but the columns came from the ground up, not the other way around.”

That didn’t sound like any spell I was familiar with, either. Inhaling deeply, I brought my arms wide and back, extended my legs to their fullest, and broke every clinging trace of sleep off my body, ending it with a sonorous yawn. Two seconds later, I was up and donning my armor and gear.

Kevin shook his head. “You’re too peppy. I can never understand morning people. Didn’t you drink a gallon of ale last night?”

“You know I only get hangovers from wine. And I’ve always felt best after getting up,” I shrugged. “It pushes the reset button on my mind.”

He gave a nod to Topher. “Just remember that he has the power and weapons to kill you, if he wakes up in a bad enough mood.”

“I’ll tread lightly.” I smiled - I couldn’t believe how good I felt. More so than most mornings. I felt… confident - like I could take on anything. I looked back at all the events of the past day, moment for moment, with a fresh mind’s eye and saw a hundred laughable mistakes I could correct, if given the chance.

Of course, there was that business with the drunk and the explosion….

…But that was in the past. Most I could do now was learn from it, and head out again.

That realization rolled through my spine: I wanted to go back out there. I wanted to crawl through a dungeon. I wanted to risk my life saving people. I wanted to kill or be killed by monsters and crazy cults. I felt more alive yesterday than I perhaps ever had, and it took the juxtaposition of waking up in a safe bed to make me realize how much I needed to match those highs.

Seems I’d turned into an adventure adrenaline junkie.

“So, on the agenda for today,” I said, holding out my hand for counting. “One: Breakfast. Two: We make sure the locksmith went through with Marisa’s lock. Three: You’re getting that dagger and the bow looked at. Four: Jenn needs to tell the local church about the dead cultists so they can bury them. Five: We find out what the Ware is, and see if we can confirm or disprove Topher’s theory,” I switched counting hands. “Six: Figure out what was up with that explosion. Seven: Begin the search for Brance Deralin, possibly by heading to Rikston. Eight: Do everything without raising the suspicion of the military, or perhaps figure out a way to preclude them from becoming suspicious.” I held out my hands. “Anything else?”

Kevin thought about it. “Weren’t you going to ask around about how your magic works?”

I was a bit worried about that yesterday - but that was yesterday. “You know, I think I’m willing to simply explore that on my own.”

I checked my magic limb. It was still there, and I could’ve sworn it was giving me a thumbs up. Something was off, though. Not bad, just….

Ah. Touche, magical limb.

“I went up a level,” I proudly announced.

“Did you?” Kevin, opening his eyes for the first time since I’d awoken, became very interested. “How do you know?”

“My magic,” I said. “I just… know another spell.”

“Which spell?”

“Sleep.”

He scratched his chin. “Huh. Did you get to choose it?”

“No, not consciously. But… remember how I was having trouble sleeping last night?”

He grinned. “You think you got it in response to insomnia.”

I gave him the charades sign for “on the nose”. He laughed a bit hard, which caused Topher to start stirring.

We froze. Topher was a vicious beast when awakened, and that was before he became a half-orc with martial training. I made eye contact with Kevin.

“Breakfast?” I mouthed. He nodded conspiratorially and we darted out of the room.

Just to be a jerk, I slammed the door behind us. I heard a muffled expletive in response.

“That wasn’t nice,” said Kevin, smiling in approval.

“He knocked me unconscious yesterday. He can deal.”

We started down the hall. After a few steps, Kevin said, “You know, I was kind of hoping we’d go back into that dark room to level up. Mark our choices in the books and stuff.”

“Yeah, just getting a random spell because of my mood does seem… a bit too organic. We’re ‘min/max’ers, though; we might just have to get used to a lack of fine control.” ‘Min/max’ is a term found in many games. The idea behind it is a player methodically tries to minimize the effect of the character’s areas of ineptitude while maximizing his good attributes to make his character as effective by the numbers as possible. It’s not a bad practice, but the people who do it rarely make choices based on the character - only the numbers. “If I leveled up, you probably did, too. Feel more like a rogue?”

He took a mental inventory and diagnostic before shrugging. “Sure, why not?”

“At second level most characters get something pretty intrinsic to their class, right?”

He nodded. “Right. As a rogue, I should get ‘cunning action’, which gives me a lot of freedom to move around unhindered and hidden. Topher’s a fighter, so he gets ‘action surge’ to let him do about twice as many things for a short period in combat. Jenn gets ‘channel divinity’, which allows her to turn undead and heal heavily injured people, because she’s a life domain cleric.” He turned to me. “And you, in addition to that spell, should get ‘jack-of-all-trades’ and the ‘song of rest’. Do you feel like you’re partially proficient in every skill? And have you even touched your lute yet?”

We made it to the bar, though no one was manning it. “Well, I do feel more confident than usual, and I imagine confidence can be incredibly helpful no matter what you’re doing.”

“There has to be more to it than that. I mean, I’d imagine any adventurer who's leveled up a bit would be confident, but they don’t get a special bonus to things they’re not proficient in.”

I stroked my chin devilishly. “Are you saying I’m… super confident?”

“No, but let’s drop the subject. I’m more interested in hearing you play that lute.”

“Oh, the lute.” I swung it to the front. My hands instinctually found their place on it, though I’d never so much as played a guitar before, let alone something this rare. I felt the smoothness of the neck, the weight on my lap, the tension of the strings, the flatness of the face, the roundness of the bulbous body - it all rested comfortably in my hands. I plucked each of the… eleven, twelve, thir—fifteen strings in sequence, and simply knew they were in tune. “Wow,” I said.

“Wow what?”

“I don’t know, it just… feels good, you know? Really natural, if that makes sense.” I gave it an honest look-over for the first time. The neck was dark, with the end bent back ninety degrees to hold the pegs for tuning. Its light, teardrop face had a hole under the strings, covered with an intricately woven grille. It was subtly beautiful. “What should I play?”

“Whatever,” he said, shrugging encouragingly.

I idly plucked a couple notes, intrinsically knowing what pitch on the scale they were. What was a nice instrumental to experiment with? I could feel the excitement build in my fingers and make them twitch - they wanted to play. They were practically ready to jump off my hands if I held them up too long. I ran through the tones of a particular favorite in my head, and my fingers agreed that they could replicate. I straightened up, inhaled, and stopped restraining myself.

The light, friendly sounds of Classical Gas floated out of the lute. Looking down to be sure, I confirmed it was me who was plucking the notes. I closed my eyes and let a smile creep onto my face. Part of me felt this was crazy - I’d only barely taught myself how to pound keys on a piano, never mind playing a song by ear and heart on an instrument I’d never touched before. Another part told the first part to shut up, that this was too awesome for its incessant, crippling doubt, and why was it even a part of me anyway? A third part ganged up with the second part and said the first part should be apart from the parts. I silenced them all before civil war broke out.

Before I knew it, my soul began to churn. The colors - the emotions - were dancing. They swirled and glided and flourished about, like a kaleidoscope of butterflies on ballet. Their movements became more and more grandiose. One in particular had become charged and powerful, its dance commanding all the attention worthy of a prima ballerina assoluta, and each of the others fell back into supporting roles. They beat against the walls of the cold, foggy shell of murk that held them, demanding more room for their celebration. It complied.

Bit by ephemeral bit, the shell began to dissolve. The emotions rapidly expanded into the new space, pressing the remnants of the shell taut, until…—Snap!

They raged through me like a foxtrotting tsunami, led by the prima emotion, which I could now identify as joy. My magical limb scrambled frantically to get out of their way. As a violent torrent, joy poured through my arms and out my hands, crystalizing on the strings as I played them, reverberating out. The room filled with joy. More kept coming, ushered along by the other emotions, an unending wellspring from my soul.

I had no idea what was going on, or how long I could keep it up. It was amazing, though. I prayed it could last until the end of the song. I breathed a sigh of relief when it did, the final notes holding the emotions aquiver. Seconds passed until they were silent. The colors receded back into my soul, but seemed to have a pleased glow about them, perhaps happy at the use.

There was applause. It startled me, as I hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the bar besides Kevin. I hadn’t even opened my eyes since the song began. Doing so, I saw Kevin looking rather surprised and impressed, as well as a dozen other people, all clapping frantically. I looked at them, bewildered, then turned to Kevin.

“That… that was all right, then?” I whispered sheepishly.

Kevin raised his eyebrows and gave me a few very serious nods. I turned back to the crowd, smiling, then stood and took a bow to more crescendoed applause. I felt great, if a bit exhausted.

“Thank you, everyone! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to order breakfast.” There was some mild disappointment from that. Always leave them wanting more. I reaffirmed my smile and spun around on my barstool.

“Your food’s on the house,” said a man, possibly related to Geoff, on the other side of the bar. “That was incredible. What’ll you have?”

“Oh, thank you so much!” I said, sincerely. “Do you serve eggs in the morning?” He nodded. “I’ll take them however they’re best prepared.”

“I’ll have the same,” said Kevin. “Of course, I’ll pay for my own.” The man went off into the kitchen. “So, if you didn’t just roll a natural twenty, I’d like to hear what that sounds like. I mean, I remember you took the perform skill, but damn.”

“I have no idea what that was, but it felt awesome. When did all those other people come in here?”

“They heard you from outside. You got a small crowd pretty quickly - it’s a shame you didn’t have a hat out for donations.”

“Huh. Well, it’s nice to know I can probably perform for money, like we planned as backup.”

Kevin took a sly glance back at the room. “Yeah, you probably can. You even got some of the crowd to stick around, hoping for another performance. Pretty sure that’s why the bartender’s comping your food - he want’s you to stay and attract more.”

I nodded. “Maybe I should just stay here and make money while you all run errands.”

“Why not ask around about the Ware and that explosion between songs? As long as you’ve got the public’s ear…”

“I could do that, but I think the Ware’s supposed to be common knowledge, so it might seem weird if I was to just openly ask what it is. The explosion should be fine, though.”

The bartender walked by, started wiping down a mug. “Your eggs’ll be out in a minute,” he said.

I smiled. “Thanks. So, what was up with that explosion last night? Anyone hurt?”

He shook his head. “Yeah. Lost a whole block. Army’s right pissed.”

“Pissed?”

“Mmm-hmm. Can’t figure out exactly what happened. They think it’s them Blighters, though.”

“…and ‘Blighters’ would be…?”

“Not from ‘round these parts?” I shook my head innocently. “Lil’ Blighters - goblins. Word is, they’ve been comin’ up with nasty things. Or their ‘sympathizers’ have. Think they made the fire.”

Goblins had sympathizers? I looked to Kevin, who shrugged back. I was about to ask a question when the bartender excused himself and headed for some other customers.

“So the military’s pissed. Great.” I muttered, fatalistically. “And we’re the only ones who walk around with weapons and can’t explain how or why we came to this place.”

“We’ll be fine. We haven’t actually done anything wrong.”

“I don’t think that drunk they beat did anything wrong, either.”

Something caught Kevin’s eye, and he smiled and nodded to it.

“Your song was exquisite,” said a female voice.

I smirked and turned to my new fan, whom I’d hoped would be hot. I saw her and froze.

She was hot, but I didn’t suddenly have trouble speaking because of her magnificent chocolate eyes or full lips. No, I was paralyzed with fear because of her familiar black hair and red robes.

“I’m Captain Minerva of the A.U.T.C. out of Rikston.” She leaned in as she introduced herself, using sensuality as a thin veil for malice. “Can I ask you and your friend a few questions?”