The landscape the demons created was a euphemism for escapism, the mental haven the subconscious creates as a place to go when the nightmares of reality threatened to break the mind. The Dreamscape was created by the gods to connect all of those havens in a vast and open world, their answer to the bridges of the Ancient World being destroyed when religion became the flavor of faith, instead of faith fueling religion. In the Ancient days, the god earned the worshippers’ trust and faith, which led to the devotion as the humans began to celebrate the gods and express their gratitude through acts of devotion and offerings left at their altars. Somewhere along the way, the feed was reversed and humans began to believe, the greater the gift, the more favor they earned.

Personally, Silver thought it was pretty shitty to try and guilt-trip the gods into doing stuff for her, which was why she’d offered her help with the Dreamscape without asking for anything in return for it. To her, the world was full of potential, but the biggest issue the gods kept running into when trying to introduce it to humans was the fact that religion always seemed to breed conflict. To her, growing up with the humans, the answer had seemed so obvious, she wasn’t sure why they hadn’t thought of it before but, as soon as they did, the project was off and running. In the waking world, she’d been trying to come up with reference material to make available while trying to translate the gods. It had taken her over five years, but they were nearing completion.

The Forest of Nightmares was a misleading name when it came to the picturesque cluster of thick, twisted trees that seemed to constantly shift their position and shimmer slightly in the low light as Silver wandered the path. It was almost whimsical, complete with the bright tinkling of small bells and whispered laughter of the creatures that lived there. It made her smile softly with a slight touch of nostalgia, unblemished by the ugliness of the past. She was happy to be home with clear eyes instead of the blindfold, able to understand the Dreamscape’s purpose beyond the world her mind escaped to when she was asleep. It was a small pocket of the Astral Plane, set up as a private bubble to build and test a reality between thoughts, accessible to those who knew how to separate their spirits from their physical vessels. It was a middle ground constructed on the physics and mechanics of the physical world with a fantasy flair to ensure the mind knew it was in a dream, making it easier to stay lucid.

Someday, brain mapping might catch up to the spirits, but Daemons were so far ahead of the game, it was unreal. When asked what the easiest method would be to connect the gods with the humans in a way that way ungoverned by religion, her answer was to play with them.

“Make it a game,” she’d said with a smile. “You want to keep the Dreamscape open to all faiths without the conflict of religion preventing access to those who need the help? Make it a game for the humans to play in the Waking World. They will be aware of the faiths and the gods that govern the Dreamscape, but the choice to worship will always remain theirs.”

But what of the skeptics and those that refuse to acknowledge the gods?

“They can play, too,” she said with a laugh. “In D&D, an Atheist is just being stubborn and a skeptic is someone who has experienced entirely too much disappointment. But the players know the gods are real, that they can exert their influence on the world in which they live. It’s just that some choose to go at life on their own, only occasionally coming face to face with the spirits when they decide to work with them in an emergency. Introduce the Dreamscape as a game module and you will plant the seeds of visualization needed for meditation to help those seeking counsel to navigate the world their spirits connect with. Once those seeds are there for the player to recall, it’ll be easier for you to connect with them on neutral ground. If they choose to believe, they will wake up from their dreams with that core knowledge. If they decide to dismiss it, it was just a dream and they don’t have to pursue it.”

Logic and reason in the face of what felt insurmountable had led to a project that had consumed the past four years of her life in the waking world, with only a couple of personal projects to fill her time when she needed a break from constant worldbuilding. When it came to religion, she wasn’t a big fan, but she knew she was classified as a Hellenic Pagan, thanks to the Greeks that had adopted her. Just because she loved her family did not make her religious, but it did make her feel blessed every day when she thought of the spirits that had fought for and stuck with her. That’s why her dedication to them, helping them out, regardless of the discomfort at times, came so easily to her. Looking at her life in the Waking World, she decided not to look at her less-than-favorable circumstances as punishment anymore, instead of recognizing the gift she’d been given. Sure, being awake and living her human life sucked major ass, but the trade-off was being able to roam freely in the Dreamscape whenever she wanted, doing her part to help the gods prepare before The Inspection.

Whether she got her game material completed and distributed before The Inspection wouldn’t stop it from being, or prevent other minds from accessing it. All it did was ensure that there was reference material available for those that believed to find and see that it wasn’t a dream taking place in their minds. The nature of Spiritual Communication was one of faith, instinct, and intuition. Sometimes, one simply had to say, “fuck it” and begin operating on the principle that the connection was real, without room for doubt, to break through the skepticism long enough for the proof that was needed to present itself. One unfortunate drawback was the nature of signs and coincidences. For those that cannot open themselves up to feel the spirits and process their communication in their minds without dismissing it as their imaginations, the gods tended to rely on their ability to recognize synchronicity; the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection except to those for which they resonate. An example of this could be as simple as a person missing an old friend, not sure if reaching out would be welcome, only to have the person they miss post something on social media that feels relevant to the conversation they might have been having in that moment if they weren’t physically separated. For Silver, seeing that would be enough to try and reach out, regardless of the answer. But she’d been working with spirits and signs her entire life.

Her biggest problem came with her spiritual blindness and deafness. In the Dreamscape, when it came to the gods, she could recognize and visualize them very easily because she was used to them. But spirits that were connected to human forms, living or dead, always appeared as shadows to her unless they latched onto the visual aspects, or avatars, she had accumulated in her memory from seeing people walking around in the waking world, as well as the movies and shows she watched to escape her real-life circumstances. Because she didn’t have very many close, personal relationships with the living, she could always recognize the people she knew in both worlds when they crossed paths in the Dreamscape, but the aspects of those she didn’t know could be deceptive if she wasn’t careful. It was for that reason that she kept her interactions with them as brief as possible, using the knowledge she’d gained when it came to character and psychological analysis to judge the nature of the spirit before she spoke to them. If they showed up in the guise of a serial killer or an unlikeable villain, she ejected them from the Dreamscape for Phobos and Deimos to deal with as to prevent herself from having a malignant spirit tormenting her thoughts in the waking world. Drawbacks of being the Dreamscape’s sole anchor.

Eventually, she knew, there would be more Daemons to share the responsibility of anchoring the Dreamscape and keeping it strong enough to encompass the entire living world. Until then, she was on her own. Her first job was to map the layout of the landscape, marking the borderline of the Forest of Nightmares, as well as the few things that were in there to allow her to turn it into a game module as an introduction to the environment before expanding it outward to connect with others like herself that had a natural talent for worldbuilding. She wasn’t sure whose idea it was, probably Aphrodite, but the final border of the Forest outlined an anatomical heart. Seeing the shape develop on her map as she completed her first circuit made her laugh a little because she thought it was cute and fit when she thought of how much love had gone into building it.

The Forest of Nightmares had been so named because each tree was a mental connection with someone she had yet to meet in the waking world, but needed someone to disrupt their nightmares long enough to help them find their mental rest and recovery in their dreaming hours. Within a twenty-mile radius of her physical home, there was a V.A. Hospital, a Children’s Hospital, a Cancer Center, a college, farming, fishing, and areas known for celebration. In that radius, some minds needed help in ways the gods could provide, from trauma, mortality, being overworked, struggles with addiction, and the worries of being able to provide for the loved ones that enriched their lives. They all had nightmares and those nightmares brought them to the Forest thanks to Deimos and Phobos leading them to it. When they entered, they came through a portal in the base of the tree that connected their minds to the Dreamscape, World Trees given as a gift from the Norse Pantheon to the Greeks to help with the project when they saw the benefits to it. Since religion didn’t govern the Dreamscape at all, the gift was welcomed and implemented without hesitation. As soon as it was, all a human had to do was meditate enough to quiet the mind, find their World Tree in their subconscious, and step through.

Without the map, it just seemed like an endless expanse of trees as the landscape shifted to keep newcomers contained within those boundaries. Technically, the rest of the world was still under construction and the containment was a precaution to keep novices from wandering into areas they shouldn’t be in yet. The purpose of the Dreamscape was to provide a safe place, but that only applied to areas where the physics and laws of reality had been developed in line with the knowledge of the game mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition she’d amassed as her waking world stint as a Forever DM. Some of the areas connected to the Forest hadn’t quite been developed yet, leaving it as open, wild, and treacherous as the raw Astral Plane. In other words, extremely dangerous for those who do not already have the tools and know-how to protect themselves on a spiritual level.

Through the Dreamscape, however, contingencies were already in place, the gods’ responses to her paranoid, worst-case-scenario oriented mind when it came to spiritual attacks against the unarmed. With the Daemons from the Dark Side of the Imagination watching the portals as each spirit stepped through, the physical vessel would be protected from spiritual intruders trying to take possession of the Meat Suit and the mind would be guarded against anything resembling Nightmare on Elm Street. On the outer edges of the space between thoughts, the gods kept it contained and guarded against any spirits that might try to infiltrate the area. As it stood, during the Beta Testing phase, the only spirits that could enter were the ones marked and approved by the gods involved in the project. Once they went live and started spreading the knowledge of the Dreamscape to the General Public, sharing the maps and modules, the entrance requirements would start to ease up as the energy required to construct it began spreading around. Since she was the one translating it all, the world’s entire energy supply came from her spirit. It was draining at times, keeping her asleep for extended periods that, to others, may seem like a deep depression, but she knew what she was doing. She limited her time actively in the Dreamscape, in deep meditation, to eight hours a day, using the other eight she wasn’t fully asleep to do all of her human things like taking care of her vessel. But, even with the routine of it, she was still having trouble tracking the days that passed in the Dreamscape.

Looking up at the canopy of limbs and leaves overhead, she frowned when she realized she couldn’t tell if there was no space between them to be able to see the sky, or if it was just that dark, either way, there were no stars. She was standing still on the path of overlapping roots, her head tilted back as she contemplated the conundrum and wondering if she should climb to the top of the canopy to find out for sure when she heard an inhuman wailing sound and instinctively knew it was another human spirit in the midst of a nightmare. On instinct, she took off towards the sound, tuning into the stampeding thunder of a large bipedal group as they pursued a hunched creature loping on their knuckles and the balls of their feet. Silver had to remind herself, for a moment, that the terror the creature was experiencing was very real to them, but she still had to bite her lips together when she saw Gollum being chased by a pack of rabid Kim Kardashians.

Dream Analysis - obvious issues with self-image warring with the need to fit in with the popular crowd, only to be shunned and reviled, and being pressured to conform.

Assessment made, Silver jumped down from her improvised perch in the limbs of a nearby tree and launched herself at the terrified spirit, cradling it to the front of her body as she rolled with it off the path and dragged it into the underbrush.

“Quiet,” she snapped as the spirit panted and stilled into shocked silence.

Silver could feel the creature’s heart hammering through its boney back as she covered its mouth and waited for the stampede to pass, the echoed illusion cooked up by the spirit’s subconscious fading away as the images were no longer needed. As soon as they were gone, Silver relaxed and let go of the spirit, sitting back on her hands as it turned between her feet and stared at her in wide-eyed confusion.

“Sup?” she asked with a smile and it blinked at her.

“Who are you?” it asked.

“Silver,” she said. “Not sure how that will translate in your head, though. Depends on your native language. But I’m here to welcome you to the Dreamscape,” she explained as she stood up and brushed herself off out of habit before reaching down in a gesture of greeting.

When Gollum reached up timidly to shake the hand that was offered, she smiled as she felt the purity of the spirit. It was a good soul that had seen their fair share of bullying in the waking world and was afraid of being misjudged if they presented themselves to other people. Looking down at her own Tiefling avatar, a character she’d created for her game that the gods had decided fit her spirit the best, she understood where they were coming from. The biggest difference between herself and the spirit she was faced with was that Silver didn’t give a fuck about being accepted by the humans.

“How lucid are you?” she asked Gollum, who frowned. “Do you know you’re in a dream?”

“I’m in a dream?” the spirit asked and it was Silver’s turn to frown.

“The portal should have brought you up to, at least, 25% lucidity,” she said, chewing on it for a bit. “Just enough for the dream to linger in the conscious mind for at least a day after waking.”

“Huh?” the spirit asked and she heaved a sigh.

“Hypnos!” she called up towards the canopy. “I need your help if you don’t mind!”

“I’m right here, boss, you don’t have to yell,” Hypnos said from the cradle of a nearby tree branch.

Keeping with the theme of the Forest of Nightmares, Hypnos had taken the form of a pale-faced goblin that had been stuck in her mind since Jack and Lily took on Darkness, complete with a wet sheen over his skin that made his stringy hair drip as much as the tip of his long nose did. She snorted a laugh when she saw it, having only just seen him in his long nightgown and sleeping cap motif, and shook her head as he fluidly jumped down from the trees.

“You are enjoying yourself entirely too much,” she said with a chuckle.

“It’s not very often I get to play in nightmares. Leave me alone,” he said and stuck out his tongue.

“Speaking of playing,” she said, scratching her elbow out of habit more than a need to, “the portals are off. This poor bugger doesn’t even know they're asleep at the moment.”

“Nu-uh,” Hypnos said. “I did my job exactly to the standards you laid out,” he said, shifting back into his big, fluffy self, causing her to have to look up as his form swelled into a lumbering blonde with droopy eyes, swathed in a cotton nightgown, slippers, and cap. “Anyone who takes the suggestion from a god to walk through their world tree will immediately rise to 25% lucidity to ensure the imprint.”

“Then, how can this one be totally in the dark?” she asked.

“Momma Ume?” the creature asked an instant later in a voice that was not the Gollum hack but seemed familiar to her, causing Silver to pause and blink a few times as her form instantly shifted into another character of hers from a game she’d played online.

“Oh fuck,” she said as she turned her head to look at the spirit that had shifted into their own and knew exactly what was going on. “I know how she got in,” she told Hypnos who relaxed and shifted back into a goblin. “She was already partly attuned to my spirit and must have been thinking about me when she fell asleep tonight,” she explained quickly. “Do me a favor and go get Artemis. Let her know we have a trans male to female dealing with the body dysmorphia and self-confidence issues that go along with the physical transition,” she added in quieter tones, not wanting to make the self-consciousness worse by being stripped down to a sitrep description. “Well, fuck me sideways,” she said in brighter, cheerier tones as she lifted her arms with a smile and walked forward towards the spirit. “Looks like you found me. How you been, kiddo?” she asked as she embraced her friend and gave her some love.

She made a noise that said a lot, and Silver naturally fell into the rhythm of walking and talking as she vented her guts, letting her get it off her chest while she could. It wasn’t the first time she’d done something like that, but it was usually in the waking world through a chat service. It made her smile to see the spirit of her friend opening up and letting it out so she could breathe and think better. That was why she was fairly sure Artemis would be a good fit for her. As her friend started to wind down, filling her in on her worries and fears as she tried to offer what guidance she could, Silver saw a brighter glow between the trees and knew Artemis agreed. Seeing the approval, Silver led her friend to a small alcove created by the roots and trunks of the trees and gathered enough wood to make the standard campfire set-up in the lowest part of the semi-curved bottom of the alcove.

“Wanna see a trick?” she asked as her friend went wide-eyed and grinned as she nodded. “Whenever you’re here, if you ever need a break from the nightmares, you can turn it into a dream by turning on the light,” she said and snapped her fingers under the base of the buddle of sticks.

The snap left off a spark of inspiration that set the bundle aflame with a dancing technicolor display that wavered gently, causing the shadows to dance in celebration as the fire let off swirls of lazy lights to drift like dust motes in the air, lighting the space as they gathered in the branches overhead, turning the dark verdant leaves to bright emerald where they landed. What her friend didn’t see was the subtle path the fireflies were creating for Artemis to be able to find her way without her friend unintentionally feeling hunted. She bid her friend goodbye and left her to marvel at the dancing lights, knowing the goddess didn’t need her assistance from there. Not only were first meetings between spirits a sacred occurrence, but she also needed to speak with Ares as soon as possible. One of the benefits of being the anchor for the Dreamscape equated to all-access administrative privileges. For Silver, there was such a thing as God Mode, but she really only used it when she had to. Having an unexpected spirit fall into the Dreamscape because they’d previously connected was more than enough reason to throw physics out the window and fly as fast as she could towards the Perpetual Battlefields where Ares, along with Deimos, Phobos, and Lucifer, running point, were disrupting the nightmares of the military veterans in a twenty-mile radius of her central point in the waking world.

She landed on the Cliffs of Sorrow, right at the edge of the Forest of Nightmares where her privileges ended. After that, she was bound by the same spiritual laws as the gods and the danger would translate differently to her spirit. There, if she got hurt, her vessel would feel the damage and she’d wake up with bruises, scrapes, and sometimes worse if she got caught in combat. Taking a deep breath, she spotted Ares down in the battlefield and let out a whistle to let him know she was there and looking for him. Deities, though not omnipresent, had the ability to control multiple aspects of their spirits simultaneously and process all of the information each aspect was given, allowing them to literally be anywhere they were needed. The aspect that materialized by her side as soon as he was aware of her standing there, waving like a moron at him, was one she knew well because it was his core consciousness. Uncle Ares, which was a laugh to say when she looked up at his stoic, almost brutal image and he looked down at her like she was an insect.

“Hey, Uncle,” she said, unbothered.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, knowing she normally wouldn’t bother him.

She gave him the sitrep and he nodded, understanding her concern. If a spirit was attuned to hers well enough, they could fall into the Dreamscape without anyone knowing it. She’d run into it once before and didn’t want to have another repeat of it. The only problem was, once spirits were attuned to one another, it was difficult to undo it. If her friend only had the spiritual connection of talking to her online through chat service, as well as being like-minded individuals, she was going to have to fine-tune the frequency to exactly her spirit, basically making her personal brand of crazy the Master Key to get past the barrier line separating the Forest of Nightmares from the Astral Plane for the time being.

“I’ll have Deimos and Phobos do the fine-tuning,” Ares said with a nod when she pitched her suggestion. “You prepared for the Night Terrors?”

“With as much THC as I’ve got blocking my dreams for that very reason, I’m sure I’ll get through it,” she said dryly with a shrug. “It’ll just motivate me to take a shower when I wake up to wash all the sweat off,” she added. “I just thought we had this fixed after the last time.”

“It’s Spiritual Science,” Ares pointed out as he started to usher her back into her own territory, “which means it’s not exact and requires a lot of experimentation.”

“Says the scientist to the guinea pig,” she shot back and caught him off-guard, making his lips twitch for a second before his expression returned to brutal stoicism.

“We’ll take care of it, Silver, go work on your map,” he said with a friendly shove towards the trees.

“K, bye, love you,” she called back and got the impression more than saw him shaking his head as she bounded into the trees like the little chaos bomb she was, tripping and tumbling into the underbrush only to bounce back up and wave again. "I'm ok."

She was well aware of the fact that the gods were watching her because her spirit tended to draw in the fuckery. What better way to Beta Test the world they had developed than to unleash a god-powered Chaos Witch into it and see what happened when they put her in charge of the physics and mechanics?