Sleep blogging

I just woke up to find this blog open on my computer. I don't remember writing any of this. Interesting story though. I seem to of peppered my friends throughout. I bet they'd be amused if they saw it. Though they might not like the fact I apparently killed them all off.

Killed Lisa off before even reaching the end of the story. She would definitely not like that.

"How could you kill your girlfriend off so early!?" I can just see it now.

Probabkly a bad idea I put her ex in here as well.

Well all in all it's a nice little story, but I'll probably keep it to myself. Good thing none of my friends know about this blog.

Heh it's funny. This blog had a heavy focus on dreams and nightmares and I actually had a weird dream last night. Probably related to this I mean it did have a pocket watch and a grey man in it. It was a man dressed all in grey standing at a bus stop. He holds out his hand and a pocket watch just falls into his hand from the sky. He opens it and watches it for a second before the bus arrives and just as it's arriving a car tries to pass it hits like a puddle or something and swerves into the side of the stopping bus. The man looks at the crash, looks back at the pocket watch and then just nods and the dream ends. Pretty weird, huh?

The Gates of The Garden

It unfortunately appears that being here is actually sapping their strength, so we hurried on hoping to get through this before they'd be too weak to help. We reached the gates. It was just like in my dream. I approached alone the others stayed back, whether out of fear or awe I'm not sure. The creature roared to free it and I could see thousands of eyes staring at me. I held the pocket watch in my hand, the ghostly images of it's victims surrounding me and I approached the gate. On cue The Archangel showed up. With a cry of rage it fell from the sky, landing in front of me and slapping me back towards the others. It hurt, everything hurt as I hit the ground and the rest of my friends rushed The Archangel. I don't know how to describe what he looked like. It was a man, an angel, a demon, a beast and A God. It grew limbs and body parts at will and could change it's mass and form. Harold barreled into it and a mouth of sharp teeth opened up and bit into him beginning to drag him into it. Ariadne grabbed him with strings and pulled him out then tried to grab hold of The Archangel who simply melted through the strings as if they weren't there and lanced an arm tipped with what looked like a spear at her. She managed to evade, but another arm swung out and scythed through her. She fell screaming and Harold summoned blades seemingly out of wind and began hacking at The Archangel. The terrible mass simply absorbed his slashes and spiked appendages lunged out and speared into his body. He started to turn to smoke, but the creature surged forward engulfing his form and I saw no trace of the smoke escape. Dr. Malice began shooting the creature, but it had no effect. Throughout it all I tried to get up, to do something, but a pressure was holding me down.

Get up you stupid Girl! The Liar spoke in my head, You killed yourself, you killed all these people and you even killed me, to get to this point. I refuse to have been defeated and killed in vain! 

The pressure holding me down snapped and I got to my feet. The Archangel was devouring Dr. Malice as I began to run towards the gate.I almost made it, then a tendril wrapped around my waist and yanked me back, in desperation I tossed The Pocket Watch. It landed just short of the gate. The tendril yanked me back and then slammed me against the ground. It's haphazard and terrible face loomed over me and it let out a sound like a laugh.

"So, close and you fail. Isn't that just like your pitiful species. Weak, unsuccessful and easily frightened. Even in death I can see that you're afraid. Well you should be. I can make your afterlife as painful or painless as I want and in your case it will be painful," he spoke directly into my head. I didn't struggle, I didn't cry. I don't know if it was simply because I'd accepted my fate or because I was still so crushed by my failure. However, at that point a voice spoke quietly.

"Hey, Archie. You forgot someone," Portnoy stated in a quiet, matter of fact voice. Portnoy was standing by the gate holding The Pocket Watch. The Archangel didn't turn in surprise or anything. The moment Portnoy finished speaking all manner of limbs launched from the mass towards Portnoy. The Pocket Watch began to glow in Portnoy's hand and The victims of The Pocket Watch appeared again. Blocking and destroying the limbs before they could reach Portnoy. Portnoy touched the Pocket Watch to each of the locks in numbered order and they all snapped open. The Archangel was screaming in rage and it's scream hurt my head and filled my mind with nothing, but white hot, painful rage. As a result I didn't get to see what happened next. I was only aware when the pain faded and I could see that The Gates stood open and there was nothing beyond them. Portnoy was simply standing there. The Pocket Watch seemed to be gone and so did all the summoned. Except me, though I'm not actually sure why I remained.

The Archangel was focused entirely on Portnoy now. Portnoy raised a hand and The Archangel's form began to shrink and change and then became the Gas Masked form.

"Know me, Grave Digger," Portnoy commanded and The Archangel seemed to cower a little and then reached up and removed the Gas Mask. Underneath it was a mildly handsome man with blond hair. He looked on the verge of tears.

"I... I should have killed you, when I had the chance," he said quietly and Portnoy... Or probably God? nodded.

"Killing The Echo would have been best. However, like your creator, you never destroy what you think you can control or use," Probably, God responded.

"You took the powers I was given... You've made me human again. What will you do now?" The Archangel asked, his voice trembling.

"I could destroy you with ease. Punish you for the terrible things you've done, however, forgiveness is in my nature," God responded and then snapped his fingers. The Archangel was gone. God approached me and then looked around. Ariadne, Dr. Malice, Harold were all dead and of course Lisa, Muffin and many others as well. He made a sound like a sigh. "I wish I could return them and you, but I can't. Not now, not like this. It would... unbalance things and they have not even yet been completely balanced. I can only promise that I will do as The Man in Grey wants. Now that I am free again I will oppose Jack and bring Balance," he looked thoughtful, "There is perhaps one more thing I can do for you though. Like Jack created universes of terror and pain I can create new universes as well" he said and placed a hand on my head.

"Finish your story and then sleep, when you awaken you will be in a better world one free of monsters and full of friends," he said and then vanished.

I guess my mission is complete... I guess I knew it would end like this. I practically called it.

"I'm important... I have a purpose... and everyone I know and love is going to die as a result." Good call me.

I guess there's nothing to do, but go to sleep.

Pearly Gates

Eventually the area around us began to change from a corpse filled wasteland to an area more similar to common depictions of heaven and the area I saw in my dreams. I was feeling better and I'm walking now. Everyone, but Portnoy and I are starting to feel weak though. So, we took a rest on the edge of the more heavenly area. We should be able to reach the gates by tomorrow if everyone is feeling more rested.

I'm remembering the dreams I had and I remember there was that one where I was at the gates... Something attacked me. As a result I'm fairly sure that something is going to go wrong when we get to the gates. Portnoy agrees to me.

I hope that this world just makes the others more tired and doesn't actually sap their strength. I'm going to need them at full strength when we reach the gates.

I'm pretty sure that's when The Archangel will make his move. I wonder what form he takes in his own domain?

Dead

Hey, it's Amanda. I'd say I'm still alive, but I guess I'm not. I'm dead, huh?

Kind of a bummer... I wasn't in my right mind and I still have a little trouble focusing myself, but Portnoy's presence is... helping me. I can keep my thoughts together as long as he's nearby. The Quest isn't over. I'm dead and I can't leave here, but this is where I'm supposed to be. Those gates are here somewhere. We're going to find them and use the key and then this will be over... and I'll still be dead.

This will be over and Muffin, Lisa and I will still be dead. Will we still be here? I don't know. I haven't found Lisa. I haven't looked. I couldn't before Portnoy and the others arrived and I don't want to now. I don't want to see her like this. Muffin is of course here with me as Harold said. All those killed by The Pocket watch and used to make the key are here. The Liar is here too, but she's a special case. The entirety of The Shard that makes up the liar is contained in the pocket watch now. I don't know what will happen to her when the key is used. I don't know what will happen to any of them... us? I'm one of them too? The pocket watch killed me to get The Dying Man's essence. Who knows what will happen to us when The Key is used. I guess it doesn't matter. Can't get much worse than dead. I can type cause I'm being carried at the moment. Harold is carrying me. Apparently I'm very light now that I'm dead.

We're going to find those gates, use the key and make a better world for people who aren't already dead.

Who knows maybe things will even get better for us dead people.

... I don't want to Jinx anything, but I'm a little surprised The Archangel hasn't shown up to try and stop us yet. I mean we're in The Archangel's domain or debatably in The Archangel itself.

I mean obviously I hope he doesn't try to stop us, but I'm expecting he will.

So it occurred to me there are a few things I didn't notice and thus didn't mention in my last post. First of all considering that I made a big point of how we're disconnected from the outside world here how in the hell am I writing these posts and sending them? Unfortunately I don't have an answer for you. I don't understand it either. There are a lot of things relating to blogs and the act of blogging in regards to The Fears that I don't think we'll ever get an answer too.

Like how do blogs manage to travel to other universes and why do we almost never if ever see more than one blog from the same person coming from different universes? I've stopped questioning that kind of stuff.

As for the second thing... I didn't dwell much on the corpses that line this place. Corpses are unfortunately not that much of a bother too me, given my nature. However I should talk about them more. They seem to come in about three variants with small differences. You have the ones like we first ran into that simply lie around unless acted on, others that seem to crawl around and lastly standing ones that appear to have become homicidal for some reason and rush us attempting to kill us in a Berserker Fury. So, yeah they're all hostile. The unmoving ones will try to grab and bite you if you somehow cause them to become attentive. The crawling ones will try to grab and bite you if you go near them and the berserker ones will charge at you on sight and try to grab, bite and gouge out your eyes.

However the thing we noticed about them is that they are all naked. In fact they're all missing any sort of extra accessories that aren't part of the normal human body. Some even missing parts of their normal human bodies.

It appears that when you die whatever ends up here doesn't bring clothes or other accessories. I guess that whole "You can't take it with you" thing is true. I guess the fact we're clothed and have our stuff means Portnoy didn't kill us to bring us here.

We spent a nightmare time here searching what is essentially an infinite expanse of things that want to hurt us, but are mercifully bad at doing so. Also indestructible. Did I mention that one already? They can't be harmed. I cut off one of the berserker one's arms and the arm regenerated even as my blade slid through it. So, we've been fighting them off and running away until eventually we found Portnoy again and he had found Amanda.

Amanda wasn't like the other corpses. She seemed to have retained herself to a degree at least. She wasn't quite herself and Portnoy was guiding her around like a child. With her, however, were other people. She was followed around by ghostly images of Muffin, that Adrian guy and I assume everyone else who had been killed by The pocket watch to make the key. There was even some strange leech like thing wrapped around her arm that I'm pretty sure was some symbolic representation of The Liar. The other dead people won't come near her so, we're all just hanging around here for now trying to figure out what to do.

Oh and Ariadne apparently carries her Sally outfit with her and so Amanda is dressed in "Sally's" clothes.

Harold again. There's been a development apparently. With Amanda dead, Muffin dead and the war over everyone was just sort of leaving. Even The Ordeal were leaving. Apparently deciding after this little war there current location was no longer safe and so they were moving on to somewhere new. It was me, Ariadne, Dr. Malice and Portnoy left. We were debating about what to do with The Pocket Watch. Ariadne wanted to take it so she could try to carry out the plan anyway. Dr. Malice didn't trust her and frankly neither did I. Portnoy was being quiet. I don't like him much. He's never really done anything to me specifically I guess, but he was there with Faceless during my final fight with him and I can't get the idea out of my head that he's somehow my enemy.

Eventually Ariadne convinced us it was the only chance and we were preparing to hand over The Pocket Watch, when Portnoy spoke.

"This isn't over. We need to find Amanda," he said.

"We know where she is, Portnoy. She's in the ground," Dr Malice responded.

Portnoy shook his head, "No that's where her body is. We need to go to where she is," he replied cryptically.

"and where's that?" I asked to which he responded,

"Where all Dead people go,"

There was a bright light then and when we awoke we were in a nightmare world. A vast expanse filled with nothing, but corpses laying on the ground. The sky above was an empty black that sucked at the eyes. Portnoy seemed unaffected, but the rest of us were reeling from the sudden change and the hellish land around us. He moved purposely ahead. We tried to follow him, but Dr. Malice stepped on a corpse's finger and the corpse screamed and grabbed at him with another hand. All the corpses began screaming and writhing and by the time we managed to overcome the shock from this development, Portnoy had gone. I tried to summon, The Brute. Hoping to get out of here, but I can't feel him anymore. It's like being disconnected from your hand. I feel a terrible numbness in my... I don't even know. Dr. Malice doesn't seem to be able to leave his body either. Ariadne's staff still works, but she can't open a path to the Screaming Tower, none of us can. The three of us are trapped here in the land of the dead.

Still Awake

I waited all night in my room to wake up from this nightmare and I haven't. It's time to accept that if this is a nightmare it's not one that's ending soon.

Muffin is dead. I've killed him. There's nothing I can do about that.

It... It had to be done eventually anyway. Besides I was sleepwalking... Or something... Wait...

This shouldn't be possible.
It is
You can't be here.
I am
No... How, when?!
Back in the alley. I slipped a portion of myself into you while we were talking.
That's impossible, Lisa would have sensed you and when we got here Richard would have found you.
My entire point in being is to go undetected. I can lay completely dormant inside of someone for as long as I want and I lay dormant in you. Your friend Lisa could detect me when I wanted her too, but even The Fears can't detect me if I don't want them to, so your friend's weakened form of detection didn't have a chance. Richard couldn't detect me either. Well he probably did, just before he tackled you in front of a window. He still wasn't expecting it. The only reason he beat me before is because I spread myself too thin and wasn't expecting him. This time the opposite was true. No matter how powerful he might have become a shard of a shard is still lesser and now he's gone. I passed from Brian to Lionel to Seth and have erased all traces of Richard. 
Why?
Eliminating threats of course.
No, why did you kill Muffin?
Repaying you for freeing Sergei. I suppose.
I didn't need your help.
Of course you did. Though I must also admit, it's just fun. You break so amusingly.
So, that's it? You kill Muffin get me all the essences I need except yours and then kill me?
Well I don't intend to kill you. I intend to use you. You've built up quite a network of friends I could travel through and of course once again through you I've achieved what I set out to achieve when we first met.
The Ordeal.
Correct. With Richard gone, I can take control of them at my leisure and through them I'll have access to the runners and through them and you I can get access to The Archive even.
All I still need to complete this key is your essence.
Yep... So close.
That's all you shards are. Essences. Tiny essences of the creature known as The Dying Man.
If you're trying to insult me, you're doing a good job and you should know I can hurt you in many ways from in here.
No matter how spread out you are among how many people you're still just one creature, correct?
I see what you're getting at. Yes, if you'd killed me way back in that alley when I gave you the chance you'd of killed me completely. The entire Shard known as The Liar would have been absorbed into the pocket watch. Too bad you did

It's Harold. Amanda wasn't responding so I came up to check on her and found her dead. One of her hands was in her pocket grasping the pocketwatch and this was on her computer. All the numbers on the pocket watch are glowing. I think that means the key is complete. Too bad we don't know what to do with it.

I guess Rest In Peace, Amanda.