11 Being A Dream Lord of The Dream Kingdom
1476 Words
Peter was confused.
“A what?” Peter asked. He tried to recall what the dream goblin might be talking about but then he remembered about being “something like a dream lord” as he coined it.
The dream goblin smiled. “My name is Wiboe. First of all, I apologize if you were intimidated by me when we last time we met for the first time. That was just my impression,” he finally introduced.
“Yeah. You just threatened me that I’ll be a dream lord’s slave,” Peter said.
The goblin laughed a bit. “Threatened? That was supposed to be a deal. If you play the game you’ll win a prize. If you can’t play the game, you won’t win but stay alive. Either way, if you failed, you’ll be a dream lord’s slave. It’s a deal to me.”
Peter scoffed. “Well, to me it sounded pretty clear that you threatened me.”
The goblin just nodded. “Okay, okay. But you survived anyway and you played the game. You even won so I’m here to deliver your award.”
That moment, the goblin took out something behind him that looked like a small crown. He gave it to Peter and Peter just leaned down a little to reach the crown from his small hand.
“What is this?” Peter asked.
“Wear it,” the dream goblin instructed.
Of course, Peter didn’t wear them easily. “Is this some kind of trick. Are you still trying to enslave me?” Peter asked.
The goblin laughed and a pipe appeared in his hand. The goblin started to smoke in front of him. “We’re done there. I told you, I’m just here to deliver your award.”
Peter narrowed his eyes at the dream goblin. “Are you sure?”
The dream goblin sighed. “I swear.”
Peter brought the crown slowly on top of his head while looking at the dream goblin’s reaction. Wiboe was just smoking while calmly watching him. So far, Wiboe showed no signs of something Peter should suspect too.
When the crown levitated over his head, it shined for a second then slowly dissolved into thin air. Peter touched the crown but it wasn’t there. “What happened?”
Wiboe smiled at him while holding onto his pipe of tobacco. “Congratulations. You’ve officially become a dream lord.”
Somehow, the way it sounded powerful made Peter a little delightful and excited. He anticipated the things he could do with it.
The goblin grinned. “You look happy.” Peter just stood there, suppressing his uncertain feelings about it. As long as he didn’t know what he could do with it, he couldn’t celebrate yet.
“Most of the time, our boss is the one to make someone a dream lord, but these days he has a lot of things to do so he would ask dream goblins like me to deliver the award of becoming a dream lord instead,” Wiboe explained.
“But I don’t understand how I won. I knew winning means waking up and living but how do I even deserve this?” Peter asked.
Waking up alive was winning for Peter, so he was surprised to know that there was an actual prize or award for that. He wasn’t even sure about the game.
“You played it nice. My riddle is easy but it’s always misleading. As you saw on the obstacles, it’s impossible for one normal person to survive it because it was meant to kill that person,” Wiboe explained and added, “Only some manage to live, and you’re one of them.” Wiboe blew a ring of smoke toward Peter to emphasize what he meant.
As Peter expected. He knew he would be killed if he continued taking the obstacles.
“The riddle was simple. I took you to a dream, which was the game. Now, winning is waking up and living as you said, Losing is not knowing how to wake yourself up. So if you couldn’t do anything to wake yourself up, isn’t that losing and being a slave? Because you’re staying at the dream for so long,” Wiboe said.
Peter snorted mockingly, “That sounds like what a madman would think.”
Wiboe nodded in agreement. “I know/ But that’s what we do for people who summon dream goblins. To earn that person as a slave or as a dream lord.”
“What does it mean to be dream lord, anyway?” Peter asked.
The dream goblin snapped his other hand and an apple appeared over his hand. He threw it away and then snapped again, and Peter was now wearing a fancy pair of glittering clothes, “You can do more than these. I’m just a dream goblin and I can do this from a use-once dream ball, like the last time you summoned me. In your power, You can create a lot of things in your dream. You can build towers city, even your world!”
“Everything depends on your limit,” the dream goblin said and added, “Let me show you something.”
Wiboe snapped and his pipe was now gone. He was now holding on a small blue crystal ball and placed it on his small pocket bag.
Peter noticed the change of location.
He was now outside his dorm, but he couldn’t see anyone. He looked around, and everything looked like earth.
Except for the lines and posts. It looked like a copy of every house on earth but without any people.
“Welcome to dream space. This is a duplicate of the earth in the dream world. Feel free to look around, but you might find it boring, as you wouldn’t be able to see anyone else but us or other dream lords,” the dream goblin said.
As Wiboe said, he continued to look around. He entered the dorm and checked the rooms, which were empty.
Peter noticed clear crystals showing something like a clouded memory. He was about to touch one that was in his empty dorm room when Wiboe appeared.
“Careful. When you touch it with your hand, you’re gonna be sucked into that dream. There’s a high chance that the dream owner might see you on his dream,” Wiboe explained.
“What are these things floating around? I saw some outside, too,” Peter curiously asked.
Wiboe wore gloves and took the one Peter was about to hold. He saw Josh there. It must’ve been his dream.
“These crystal orbs are dreams floating around. They are floating at the exact location of the owner of the dream,” Wiboe said and let go of the crystal orb and it floated back to its earlier position. “Now that you’re a dream lord, you can spy and enter into someone’s dream. If you wanted to enter the dream, touch it, but if you want to spy, cup your hands to the orb without touching it.”
“This is my roommate and I’s room,” Peter started. “Why can’t I see my crystal orb?”
The dream goblin smiled. “It’s because you’re here. You can’t see your dream. You can’t watch yourself watching your dream of watching yourself. It will be a never-ending cycle.”
“So, I can’t see my own dreams?” Peter asked. The dream goblin nodded.
He looked over at Josh’s dream and walked towards the dorm room across theirs. He opened the door and found two orbs floating there, which meant that it was Ray’s and Zack’s dreams.
Wiboe started to walk outside the dorm. “Follow me. The tour is not finished yet.”
He walked in the middle of the street. Peter followed suit, and he almost stumbled to the curb of the street. The dream goblin looked at the sky and squinted his eyes at what looked like the sun.
“What are you looking at?” Peter asked.
“That bright thing you’re looking above, like the sun, is the dream kingdom. Dream space is part of dream kingdom, but dream kingdom is the main place where dreams are handled,” the goblin said and took something on his pouch. Another small crystal ball, but yellow in color.
“Brace yourself,” Wiboe reminded.
Peter looked at him. “For what?” Wiboe didn’t answer and threw the yellow crystal ball on the ground and a hole was made.
Peter screamed in shock as he felt he was falling, but when he blinked he was outside of someplace.
Dream goblins wandered around with pouches hauled on their shoulders, as well as other people looking weirdly at him. Peter looked at his clothes and it was still the same as the one Wiboe made for him. The fancy and glittering suit.
Peter thought it was time for him to use his dream lord powers, so tugged at the suit he was wearing and his outfit changed back to the ones he had before. T-shirt and pants.
Wiboe nodded. “Not bad.”
Peter looked at the place.
It mansions with towers, look no other than a castle. It looked old and rusty. It had a lot of floors and he felt dizzy looking at it from below. On top of the highest tower was what seemed to be an orb of light, like the light on a lighthouse.
Peter thought it was the light he saw below, and the reason why it looked like the sun.
He looked around and concluded that it was above the dream space.
“Welcome to the dream kingdom,” Wiboe said.
- Writer
