Dion't blame the moon, it only glows

[lest_ye_become]

Another night comes to the station. Or night cycle, anyway. And with it come the usual phantasmagorias of sleep... though tonight, there's something special. Here and there might be a shape out the corner of an eye, or a figure glimpsed dimly in the distance. Closer-up it's a thing like an adult, womanly shape, carved out of shadow and specks of

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[prideofabh]

Lafiel is running down the corridors of the Basroil, though the state of disrepair reminds her more of the Junkstation's worst parts. There is some kind of military inspection and she has forgotten all about it, so needs to fix everything as quickly as she can.

In other words, your classic anxiety dream. At least she's not naked?

[lest_ye_become]

There is that, at least. For a dream of worry, it shows a better state of mind than most of the ones Roxie has wormed her way into.

That strange shadow-figure stalks the corridors. It is not so grand and terrible as the monsters of true nightmares, but there is a certain grace and beauty to it... and a tendency to slide from the gaze. The dream-characters ignore it completely.

[prideofabh]

Lafiel does not notice it for now, busily giving orders to crew who are unexpectedly sluggish and tearing at machinery.

[lest_ye_become]

Here and there the figure pauses, leaning in at odd and fluid angles to watch the ongoing work, but its interest is never held for very long. Lafiel is the real focus of the thing's attention.

[allflashnophoto]

The Goa'uld do not, strictly speaking, need to sleep. But without an accessible sarcophagus (he could sneak on to Ra's ha'tak and use his but that would involve more resources than Ba'al cares to devote) and after developing a habit while on Earth, Ba'al has found it useful to sleep..

So he dreams, of things that were long past and fantastic things that have not yet come to pass. Right now it is the former, and Ba'al is walking down a long colonnade, the hot desert sun filtering through huge pillars thick with hieroglyphs. Except now, instead of pretending to bend the knee to Ra and Hathor, he is the one ascending the steps to be seated on the carved ebony throne, he was the one looking down at a hall full of courtiers and both major and minor Goa'uld.

Ba'al smiles in his sleep. These dreams of power are the kind of dreams he likes.

[lest_ye_become]

He's not the only one there, though. An outline in feminine shape carved from the night sky is perched on the back of the throne, out of the way, legs crossed demurely to one side. It watches the proceedings.

[allflashnophoto]

Initially Ba'al is too absorbed in his fantasy, his dream of being the one at the top, to notice that there is someone else there who perhaps shouldn't be. He watches, an indolent smirk curving his lips up, as powerful System Lords - Ra, Cronus, Apophis, all bow and acknowledge him as their sovereign.

But he is not so oblivious, or so relaxed, not to notice that there's another someone there. Ingrained paranoia kicks in, and Ba'al sits up, glancing around until he thinks to look behind him, and manages to spy the figure.

Below the throne, the Goa'uld who were once his enemies (Sokar, Anubis, Osiris, Zipacna) continue to call him Lord, heedless of the fact that Ba'al isn't even looking at them anymore. "Who's there?" he demands.

[lest_ye_become]

It's a little hard to look at, even with the focused attention: like a trick of the light, it almost wavers from view now and again. A strange "smile" spreads across its face, though-a Cheshire grin, of slivers of light like its eyes that curl with curves that no proper jaw could ever support.

[digital_overlay]

Lain's dreams, despite her status as some kind of AI-Goddess, were rather simple. Clothed in a simple night-gown, Lain sits across a short table from her friend Alice. Of all the things she had left behind back home, Alice was the most important to the mysterious young girl.

The pair chat back and forth and giggle on occasion, nothing in the scene would suggest anything strange about Lain or her background

[lest_ye_become]

Roxie's a little jealous, as she processes it all. She doesn't really have simple things like that to hold onto.

But the star-flecked shadow-figure watches silently from a wall, dimensionless but for its dimly shining eyes.

[digital_overlay]

For a bit Alice and Lain continue to chat of nothing of real import. Eventually, however, Lain becomes wise the interloper lurking within her dream. This was her world, the collective unconscious, after all.

"You can join us if you wish." She said in a kind voice.

[lest_ye_become]

The shadow peels itself from the wall, and nods politely. Even standing on its own, there's a certain two-dimensional quality to it, like an animated outline (albeit one obviously modeled on a tall, shapely adult woman) instead of a three-dimensional being.

It sits in just the kind of way a person would sit with a chair beneath them, though on empty air, and crosses its legs demurely.

[1standonly]

For Gaunt, the dreams are always the same. Tanith bagpipes skirling a lament, blood and fire, fire and blood. For the moment, gaunt doesn't notice the shape, being too busy bellowing orders to his regiment as they weather a storm of iron-grotesk wearing warriors, blazing away with bolt pistols in each hand as they storm his position.

This is what they look like: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs23/f/2008/025/e/6/BloodPact_Death_Brigade_by_jeenhoong.jpg.

The men of Gaunt's regiment look more like this: http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs21/f/2007/300/9/2/For_Tanith___For_the_Emperor_by_JR_Kaiser.jpg

[lest_ye_become]

As is only suitable for the state of the dream, the edges of the shadow-figure's outline suggest at epaulets and boots and other faint traces of military doctrine. There's no real depth-of-field there-it's like a shape painted onto nothing more than a creature proper.

It observes the ongoing battle dispassionately, always somehow out of the line of fire despite never bothering to take cover.

[1standonly]

Gaunt is set upon by the grotesk-armored men, ripping out a power sword which has a molecular disruption field, swithing to one pistol, and one blade, getting unto a crunching melee with soldiers wielding trench axes, autopistols, and chainswords. He stabs buttocks, he shoots men in the back, he tears through them with his cloak fluttering about himself like a whirlwind of color-changing death.

Gaunt takes no notice of the watcher. Not yet.

[lest_ye_become]

The figure tilts its head: lasers and blades glint softly in its silver-mirror eyes, and somehow splashes of blood do, too, ruby-gem echoes instead of the muddy darkness of the battlefield. It steps nimbly, almost weightlessly, through the press of battle.

[wheelsandbeats]

The station doesn't have the proper bedding for trolls. Tavros, like all his kind, should have been sleeping encased in sopor slime, a sedative that muffles the bloody visions that plague his race's subconscious. Without it, the boy's sleep has been restless and brief, something that he puts off for fear of what he might dream. He can't hold out forever, though. His sleeplessness catches up to him at last, and Tavros drifts off in his wheelchair in a dim corridor.

He is weilding a long, black lance from astride his beloved Horsaroni, dressed in a Tron-esque suit, the uniform of the Alternian army. Around him are countless other mounted trolls in similar outfits, all bearing down on some unknown enemy ahead of them. White animals surround many of them, the guardians that they symbiotically raised and were raised by. Tavros's own small flying bovine guardian, Tinkerbull, flutters at his shoulder

[lest_ye_become]

A simple humanlike form won't do for a dream like this. Certainly not. A certain sense of spectacle is demanded-a certain grand impropriety.

Here, the shadow is a dragon, wingless and sinuous, with a body carved from dying red-starred galaxies and the darkness of interstellar space. It stays above the press of riders, keeping up with them easily, though none but, perhaps, Tavros notice that it's there.

[wheelsandbeats]

In his dream, it isn't Tavros who notices the interloper. Tinkerbull does. Unfortunately, even in Tavros's dreams, his lusus is nearly useless. The warning noises the bull offers to Tavros are drowned out by the sound of hooves and the last of the other riders disemboweling herself messily.

k1LL METhe words appear scrawled across Tinkerbull's side, this time in the blood colour they share. If he wasn't already crying his eyes out, he probably would have started again as he dismounted, walked a few steps-of course he could walk, why wouldn't he be able to?-and skewered his guardian without a moment's hesitation. As his lance hit, an infinitely long, thin lance pierces him from the sky, passing clean through his stomach and jabbing into the ground. His knees give out and the boy slides down to the ground with a cry

[lest_ye_become]

The dragon spreads broad wings that weren't there at all a moment before, and they unfold as big as the sky, edged in buzzing fractals. For just a moment they blank out everything else: there is the patch of earth against which Tavros is impaled, and then a shell of stars and galaxies, deep and beautiful. And then in shifts again: the infinity of wings withdraws from the sky and wraps around the infinity of spear, and together they dissolve into clouds of delicate obsidian-winged butterflies that whisk themselves away on secret air currents towards the edges of the world.

And so just the dragon and Tavros are left again, it giving the strong impression of watching him despite its strange living-outline nature leaving it unclear if it even has any eyes.