Episode One: Morpheus - Rough Draft

Here is episode one of The Fantastic Collection of Lux and Poochie. Enjoy until next month. As always comment below or at n8charley@gmail.com



LUX SAT ATOP THE CATHEDRAL FEELING HOT IN HIS LEATHER COAT. Like a cape, his jacket hung to his ankles, flapping in the calm breeze. The sun was high, the sky was blue. His jacket, though white in color, with gold accents, was hot and making him sweat. He felt the hot steal of his twin swords at his back, housed in their equally white leather sheaths. Their names were Undine and Salamander, as all powerful swords should have a name.

Poochie was at his feet, sniffing the gentle breeze. The dog was tracking their next target. Ever since most of humanity slipped into Morpheus, it was hard to discern a dreamer from a human — at least for Lux alone.

Poochie whimpered and looked up at his partner, “Catch something boy?” Lux asked.

Far below the people were going about their daily lives, even if it was mostly fake. Everyone was dressed for summer, short sleeves, shorts, bonnets, and sunglasses. People were gathered in groups, happily conversing with each other as they went. Nearby, in a large expanse of grass and trees people were playing ball and throwing frisbees and lathering up in suntan lotion to bask in the sun.

Most of the people walked here, in Morpheus, since they never became exhausted. If they wanted and wished hard enough, they could jump far, or float, or even fly!…Flying was particularly hard though — a skill not even Lux could master without shapeshifting.

Poochie took his stance, pointing with his nose and lifting his right paw, leaving it bent. Lux followed the star dog’s gaze. Below, about a block away, walking towards the park, a boy was casually walking alone. He moved as if he was slightly confused, but trying to blend in. Like everyone else in Morpheus he was covered in white, gold, and light blue: The colors of this realm. Lux caught the boy’s blue eyes from his perch, piercing, but uncertain.

“Looks human alright.” Lux quickly maps his path of attack. “We need to be more discrete with this one — you remember what happened last time. The dreamers came in droves!” Poochie never looked away from his target, just listened to his partner, waiting for Lux to touch his pelt so they could fuse and teleport closer to the human.

“Let’s go!” Lux announced as he placed his hand on the dog’s back. Instantly, as they have a thousand times before, they became one! Poochie, a white dog with black roughly star-shaped markings all over his body, became a two-headed star dog. Lux controlled their movements as they teleported to the roof of the next building while in mid-run.

Their target was walking across the street. Lux and Poochie had to be fast, but they couldn’t reveal themselves in the middle of the street! Too many dreamers would see them and start their pursuit. ^We need to block him off under the bridge,^ Lux thought.

There was a highway that curved up into the air for those that preferred to travel via beamcycle. They were used more for pleasure cruising, than they were for transportation. The curved highway cast a shadow across the ground below, the last expanse before the park. It was the perfect place for a spiritwalker like himself to try to save another fellow human.

Lux and Poochie, in their fused form, leapt the gap between the next buildings and teleported the distance across the street. Poochie could only teleport so far, unless Lux believed he could go further, wished it, dreamed it, he could bend reality to his will, but manipulating Morpheus meant that it was harder to leave it. After spending twenty years in Morpheus’ clutches for real, like this boy that he was about to save, he wasn’t looking forward to going back.

Lux separated from Poochie. The star dog shook of the transformation, Lux knew that it was jarring to go from having two heads to one — not to mention from one body back into two. They cowered behind an ice cream truck. It wasn’t playing its joyful haunting music. There wasn’t a man inside selling ice cream to screaming children everywhere, either. It was just sitting there, an abandoned dream. Morpheus was littered with such fragments of imagination. Eventually dreamers would come and clean this figment of some child’s imagination.

As they scurried across the sidewalk and into a decorative garden of flowers, bushes, and tropical trees, Lux looked within himself, basically mediating while moving. It’s a skill nearly all spiritwalkers have, but it takes a lot of time to master, to be able to move and control one’s body while in this hyper-mental state. Lux’s senses all heightened, he could clearly hear Poochie’s foot-falls, which is how he knew which way to go. If he focused, he could fell the change in air currents wafted off from Poochie’s body!

Within himself, Lux has a menagerie, a catalog of spirits that he can summon or use in a moment’s notice. Of course, spirits are more powerful in Earthrealm, but here in Morpheus they could be just as useful as Poochie, if used correctly. Poochie was there and the ferrets: Undine and Salamander. However, this visit wasn’t to choose the best spirit for the job, this visit was to call a specific spirit. Only her head appeared when Lux thought of her. The head of a giant toad looked up from the imaginary floor within Lux’s mind’s eye. She croaked, “You ready girl?” Lux asked. It was a stupid question as he knew that Umbra was always ready. She was his best spirit for lassoing humans back into Earthrealm.

ETHYN HAD EVERY INTENTION OF MAKING IT TO THE PARK BEFORE NOON, BUT TOO MANY PLEASURES FOUND THEIR WAY TO HIM EARLY IN THE DAY. Breakfast was great, a second shower was brought on when the handmaidens had appeared with towels and sponges, then a friendly visit from a pleasurelass. He definitely wasn’t going to make it to the park before noon, but he didn’t have any regrets about his morning. If only he could find some smoke on the way. Maybe someone there would be happy to share.

Sure, Ethyn could wish some smoke to appear, but bending Morpheus was exhausting. No one did anything exhausting in Morpheus. It’s why they were all here! The Land of Pleasure and Leisure, State of Dreams and Granted Wishes, is what the sign reads around the most center, highest tower in Morpheus. From where he was, Ethyn could see it, a few miles away, capped at the top by a crown of gold that glinted in the perfect sunlight.

He passed a random ice cream truck, no music was playing, no joyful kids were surrounding it. Ethyn shrugged it off as a failed dream, not all of them could come into fruition. The overpass was quiet, except for one or two beamcycles that hummed by. There was a period when Ethyn wanted a beamcycle, but the cost wasn’t worth it. He was good with walking and his wake up calls from the pleasurelass: A different pleasure every day! The brochure had said…And it delivered.

Ethyn walked under the shadow of the overpass and felt a tremor beneath his feet. He didn’t have much time to feel alarmed before the very ground beneath him split open! He went to turn and run the other direction, but there was a giant purple mouth there. A screaming croak escaped the monster’s lips before releasing an arrow-fast tongue tipped with a sticky ball! The adhesive caught him and seemed to wrap around his middle. Ethyn let out a scream and tried with all of his might to pull away to no avail. Before he knew it he was being towed back towards the toad’s giant gaping mouth!

“GOOD CATCH UMBRA!” Lux clapped. He was leaning against a support beam to the highway, nonchalantly watching the show. Not that there was much of a show. No human could escape the tongue of a golem toad. Lux watched as Umbra receded into the hole in the earth that she’d formed. She licked her lips after swallowing the human. Her purple lips settling back into the toad’s neutral pucker. Lux caught a glimpse of her warty, black, back before she disappeared into the subterranean.

Lux heard Poochie release a soft growl. He looked up, surfing dreamers were on their way, astride their floating golden clouds. “Later than usual, huh, Poochie?” The star dog responded by barking at the dreamers.

Lux responded by unsheathing Undine and Salamander. The twin blades were cut with a curve in them, however together they could fuse to become the scythe called Tempest. Each named for their special abilities. “Bring it on you cloud-riding cowboys!”

The dreamers looked no different than any other human walking the street. They disguised themselves to make humans feel at home here in Morpheus. Their skin was perfect and sun-kissed. Their hair was manicured in the latest fashion. What differentiated the dreamers was two things: One, they could manipulate Morpheus a lot easier than humans can, and two, they hold a power called the sandman.

They displayed this power now, hands held forward, twisters of golden sand flailing before them. “Hold on Poochie!” Lux called over the whistle of the wind caused by the swirling sand. Lux sheathed Salamander, in case he’d need a free hand. Poochie, without proper claws for grasping, lost purchase! Lux grabbed him as he flew by. In contact, the two teleported out of the windstorms.

Still clutching Poochie’s fur, Lux and the star dog teleported towards the closest dreamer. Still wielding Undine, Lux slashed, the blade cut easily through the body of the dreamer. Moments later, the dreamer fell to a wisp of golden sand. “One down, two to go!” Lux announced.

He unsheathed Salamander and hopped into the dusted dreamer’s abandoned cloud. “Let’s even the playing field boys.” Lux willed the cloud towards the other two dreamers. He wasn’t that good at flying the cloud, the dreamers were able to dodge most of Lux’s streams of fire released from the hilt of Salamander. Carved into the hilt was the body of a ferret with two tails that curved and curled making up the guard. Salamander opened his mouth and blew flames like a dragon.

At Lux’s feet, Poochie was retching. The star dog could teleport everywhere like a pinball, but put him in anything flying and he couldn’t hold his stomach. “Hang on Pooch, this will all be over soon.”

A dreamer came in fast and hard, a spear made of golden sand in his hand, and oversized. “Fuck!” Lux swore. He tried to yank the cloud out of the way, but he couldn’t move fast enough! The spear caught the cloud and ripped it right out from under them! Poochie felt himself falling and as instinct, teleported himself to the ground. Lux lost Undine from his flailing arms, barely holding onto to Salamander as he fell.

The second dreamer was ready. A giant hand made of sand caught Lux and quickly wrapped giant fingers around him! “No, no, no, no,” Lux cried as he desperately tried to find a last minute escape. He spun, coaxing blasts of flame from Salamander’s mouth. The fire did nothing to stop the enclosing sand.

The giant hand carried them to ground level. Only Lux’s head was exposed from the sand tomb. He heard a whimper. “Poochie!” Lux cried, but he couldn’t see his companion. He heard the usual rip of air as Poochie teleported. Soon it stopped and Lux assumed the star dog was caught. “Let him go!” Lux screamed, to no avail, at the dreamers.

The dreamers smiled and unmounted their golden clouds. They quickly became something else, no longer wearing their human costumes. They resumed a humanoid shapes, the sound of sifting sand could be heard as they transformed, but lost most of their human features for tanned, almost metallic gold skin, elongated arms and legs, they moved gracefully, like they were underwater. Their faces became plain, alien. Their eyes became larger, almond-shaped and completely black, a contrast to their shining golden bodies. Their features lost all gender tropes as they walked towards Lux, breasts, penis, abs, and ass all disappeared for a general shape that seemed to be shared among all dreamers in their natural state. “Well if it isn’t Lux the most famous of Spiritwalkers.”

“You’ve heard of me?” Lux asked.

“Of course we have,” the other dreamer said. “You have caused a lot of trouble for us here in Morpheus.”

“Tell us,” the first dreamer began, “What do you intend to do with all of those awoken humans? Do you really think that you can take back Earthrealm? Make it all that it was before? Don’t forget, Lux, the people wanted to be here.”

“They were tricked!” Lux spat.

The first dreamer laughed, “Believe as you will spiritwalker. But we have you now.”

“Where are you going to take me?”

“To the tower of course,” the second dreamer answered.

Just then, Lux spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. A white ferret was slinking along in the grass, careful to not be seem by the dreamers. Undine was albino and red eyes, to her twin sister’s dark and bandit mask.

“Or,” the first dreamer snickered, “We could simply crush all of your bones.”

“You wouldn’t do that…” Lux began, just trying to stall the dreamers while Undine did whatever she was going to do.

“What makes you so sure?”

“…You need me.”

“Oh?”

“You’re taking me to the tower. If you wanted me dead, I’d already be crushed. You need me for something.” It suddenly dawned on Lux exactly what the dreamers needed him alive for.

“And what might that be?” The second dreamer asked, walking closer to Lux, its hand clenching, the giant sand hand around him following suit. Lux groaned in pain.

“You don’t know how to travel to the other realms. You need me,” Lux smiled. Just then, Undine unleashed her assault. The tiny ferret opened her pink-nosed muzzle and released a yawn of frigid icy air! There was just enough in the two streams that it began to freeze the dreamers. They were unable to move. A mist formed around Undine herself as frozen armor began forming around her, the sound of two taut ropes rubbing against each other played as soundtrack to Undine’s growing ice armor. In moments she was giant and used this enlarged size to chew off the heads of each of the dreamers. With the second dreamer’s concentration broken in death, the sand hand released its grip on Lux.

“Thanks girl,” Lux cooed at the coldfire ferret as she shapeshifted back into her blade form. He returned the swords to their sheaths. “Poochie, let’s go!” Poochie was obviously excited to be out of his own sand tomb. “We need to find some cold water.”

New things coming soon!

I promise! I'm so sorry that I haven't added anything recently. But things are in the works (aren't they always) and new postings will be happening soon!!!