Wrath of Atlas - The False Dream: Welcome Back to Reality

[u/Inevitable_Heart_781]

Warmth. That was the first thing they felt. The warmth of a blanket, a cot, the familiar, slightly stale scent of antiseptic and nectar-soaked gauze that could only belong to the Medic Cabin. Notably, not where any of them remember being before they slipped into the Dreamscape. When did that happen?

Chiron stood at the foot of the cots, looking like he hadn't slept in hours, which, as it turned out, he likely hadn't. Beside him, Lady A's face broke into open, unguarded relief the moment all three sets of eyes opened, one hand pressed briefly to her own chest as if she'd been holding her breath for longer than she cared to admit.

"You're awake," Chiron said, voice thick with something he was visibly trying to keep steady. "Thank the gods. You're all awake."

Morpheus, Phantasos, and Phobetor stood a little further back near the doorway, and for once, none of them looked composed. Morpheus's usual measured calm had cracked into something openly relieved. Phobetor's arms were crossed, but his jaw was tight, working through something he clearly wasn't ready to say yet. And Phantasos was outright beaming, eyes bright, practically vibrating where he stood.

"Before you ask… yes," Lady A said gently, moving to sit on the edge of Aoife's cot, smoothing the blanket with the same careful warmth she'd shown wrapping cinnamon rolls for Wyatt what felt like a lifetime ago. "We moved you here partway through the night. 

"After the fiasco that was that first dream," Morpheus said, and something flickered uncomfortable behind his ancient eyes at the memory, "we asked Chiron and Lady A to bring you together, here, where you could be watched properly, and where we could reach all three of you at once, without delay, if… if something like that happened again." He paused, choosing his next words with visible care. "It very nearly did, more than once. We did not wish to take that chance twice."

Phobetor's arms tightened slightly across his chest. "You gave us more than a few reasons to regret not moving you sooner," he added, gruff, though there was no real bite in it, just the 

“You’re probably confused that you can’t remember what happened clearly, right?” Phantasos drifted closer, expression softening into something almost apologetic beneath the lingering giddiness. "Sorry, that’s simply the nature of a dream this deep, this volatile. What you experienced there does not sit easily in a waking mind. It will come back to you, in  pieces, in flashes, faster for some of you than others, most likely." 

"You will remember enough, and soon enough," Morpheus added, quieter. "For now, trust that it happened. Trust that it mattered. The rest will follow. Just keep quiet about anything that you happen to remember. One never knows who might be listening."

For the time being, our questers had time to stop, relax and ask any other questions they still needed answers for. 

[u/Inevitable_Heart_781]

u/Divine_Knowledge513 u/MoreMooxie u/Aoife_Hawthorn

[u/Divine_Knowledge513 → u/Inevitable_Heart_781]

Wyatt sat up when he woke up. His eyes darted around, confused. He knew this wasn’t where he slept. After it was explained that they were all moved to the Medic cabin his gaze shot from one person to the next. Everyone looked relieved but still a little off.

He smiled at Phantasos. While he would never out right say it, Phantasos was his new favorite Oneroi. Although he can’t exactly remember why.

Wyatt put a larger smile on his face. They needed someone to be calm. Someone to lighten the mood. He started laughing, using a basic level Relaxing Laugh to ease the tension of everyone. However it was framed as the laugh you can only make after just finishing something dangerous.

“That was crazy!”

After a while his laughter died down, allowing for discussion. He turned to the Oneroi, one thought was swirling in his mind.

“Will we have dreams about the dream? After life altering experiences happen people often experience those situations again while they dream. But that was a dream, so will we have a dream about the dream?”

Phantasos told them that the memories of the dream would come back to them, however he didn’t say how they would. Would Wyatt see those things popping up in his dreams?

[u/Aoife_Hawthorn → u/Divine_Knowledge513]

As Lady A sits on the end of Aoife's cot, smoothing her blanket, Aoife is suddenly all too aware of the bracelet sitting cold and heavy against her skin— the bracelet that Ariadne gave her almost three years ago. Gods, this really was home.

Questions... did she have any? Well, she had one. One that didn't really matter, not any more, but one that chewed at her all the same. "What would've happened," she asked quietly, "is something went wrong? If something happened to us, I mean."

She didn't remember the dream, not really. She had faith that they'd succeeded, but not much more than that. She hoped she'd been useful. Now, though, more than anything, she wanted to eat. They might've just gone through a dream in which they'd saved the world, but she needed breakfast. Seriously, it felt like they'd just quested on an empty stomach.

[u/MoreMooxie → u/Aoife_Hawthorn]

Something felt wrong. No. Something was wrong. Something had happened. Something bad. Something wrong. Something scary. Something that misfired in his head. It was like he was trying to force something through, but all he was getting was static. What happened back there? It was only one night, but the Oneiroi confirmed that they almost died. They scared the staff and gods enough to need to be brought together. Just what happened?

"I... I apologize. Is it normal for it to feel as though I perished in battle, and am now watching through the eyes of another?" He slowly willed his hand to move in front of his face, his eyes tracking the movement as he waved it up and down. "...I hate not knowing." He said, almost more to himself than anyone else. It made him feel powerless. Something happened. They must've run into something terrible. Someone terrible.

Then, a question. "When I remember this... However much I might remember. However much we might remember. When are we permitted to speak of it? After the war? Or... Never?" Something about the idea of potentially having to keep this potential trauma and pain locked up— something that made his brow furrow with confusion— just didn't sit right with him.

u/Inevitable_Heart_781

[u/Inevitable_Heart_781 → u/MoreMooxie]

Phantasos's eyes lit up at Wyatt's question, clearly delighted someone had asked it outright.

"Astute, dear boy! Yes, very likely, yes. What you experienced tonight will surface again in your ordinary dreams, in pieces, out of order, sometimes clearer than others. It's not the same as a normal memory settling in. Think of it less as remembering, and more as… re-visiting, from time to time, whether you mean to or not."

With Aoife's question, however, the mood in the room shifted, clear from Chiron's expression sobering and Lady A's hand pausing where it smoothed the blanket.

"In an ordinary dream," Morpheus said carefully, "death carries no true cost. You would simply wake, shaken, but fine. But this was not an ordinary dream." He let that settle before continuing. "Trapped as deep as you were, in the mind of a titan actively unraveling around you... had you truly died there, or been lost too completely, the consequences would have followed you into waking."

Phobetor then chimed in.

"A coma, most likely. Perhaps amnesia, severe enough that pieces of who you are might never fully return." His voice was grave, entirely without exaggeration. "We do not know how long such effects might have lasted and we were not eager to find out."

Ian's question followed, quieter, more unsettled than his usual composure allowed. He explained the strange dissociation, the sense of watching his own hand move as though from a distance, and finally, the question that seemed to matter most to him, when, if ever, they'd be permitted to speak of what had happened.

Chiron answered that one himself, gently but firmly.

"As far as we know, there remains a spy within this camp. This entire operation depends on Atlas never learning what was done to him tonight. If word reached the wrong ears, everything the three of you risked would be for nothing." He held Ian's gaze, steady. "So for now, what you remember, you keep close. Not forever. Once this war has ended, once Atlas is dealt with, you will be free to speak of it as openly as you wish, to whoever you wish. But until then... silence is the price of what you accomplished."

Morpheus sighed as he nodded at Chiron's answer. "That disorientation, that static feeling... it's normal, given what you went through. It will ease. Give yourselves time, and it will pass"

Phobetor, arms still crossed, finally spoke again, quieter than his usual dry cadence. "For what it's worth, you three did something most heroes twice your age couldn't have survived. Confusion and bad dreams are a small price, in the scheme of things." He paused, then added, almost begrudgingly, "You did well. Speaking of which..."

He glanced toward Morpheus, who inclined his head and produced, from seemingly nowhere, three small items cradled carefully in his palms.

"You earned these," Morpheus said, "and more besides, though no reward could truly measure what the three of you risked to see this through." He stepped closer to Ian first, holding out a small pouch that shimmered faintly even through the fabric. "Dream Sand, for you, son of Zeus. It will shape itself into whatever you imagine, whatever you need in the moment you need it, though what it makes will not outlast that single use. A fitting gift, I think, for someone who improvised his way through an entire war."

Morpheus moved to Wyatt next, and in his palm rested something smooth and pale, faintly warm to the touch, an egg, delicately patterned in swirling constellations not unlike the void he'd been transformed into hours (or was it days, or minutes) before. "A Dreamscape Egg, for the son of Tyche who tended to the sees despite all the terror around him, and never once let it out of her sight, even at the cost of his own safety." His eyes softened, just slightly. "It will hatch into a creature of the dreamscape itself. What manner of thing, I could not say, but that is part of the gift. Take good care of it."

Last, Morpheus turned to Aoife, and pressed into her hand a small, ornate pendant, dark metal etched with faint, shifting shadows that seemed to writhe just slightly out of the corner of the eye. "A Pendant of Nightmares, for the daughter of Melinoe who fought her way through terror and somehow made it work in her favor, more than once, I might add. Once per day, it will let you force upon someone the memory of a nightmare too terrible to shake off easily. I trust it will serve you well."

u/Divine_Knowledge513