Skyguard: Dream Maze
Skyguard: Stratos’s nightmare
The old woman’s gift forced Stratos to face a day he already knew. He protested that the place around him was not real: she had died, and he had not been there to stop her killer. Yet being present now offered a terrible hope. Perhaps this time he could save her. He called out to Terra, who pleaded with the man confronting her that he was her brother.
The nightmare left Stratos apologizing to his sister again. He swore on his honor that the man responsible would pay, but the vision brought pain rather than the rescue he wanted. His head began to hurt, and he cried out in agony. This was a return to his loss, not a chance to undo it.
Skyguard: two days lost
When Stratos woke, the Hero reassured him that he was safe and under the doctors’ care. The place he had seen was a dream within his mind. After he collapsed and the woman disappeared, his companions had brought him back aboard the ship. He had remained unconscious for two days, leaving them uncertain whether he would return.
There was little time for recovery elsewhere in the Skyguard. The pirates were gathering, apparently preparing attacks across Lore, and High Command had assembled at Command Outpost 3G to discuss strategy. An anonymous warning spoke of an elite pirate attack, but Invidia supplied its alarming location: the commanders would be attacked in their dreams. Death in that realm would mean never waking in this one. Stratos tried to rise, but he was too weak to join the rescue.
Skyguard: the rules of the Dream-Realm
The Hero offered to go in Stratos’s place, with Invidia accompanying the mission as the Skyguard’s representative. Information sent by the king from Swordhaven’s mages offered guidance, and a Dream Draught would send them there in person. Its destination was Twilight’s Threshold, an entry point from which they could reach the place they needed. Stratos was left to rest while the Hero and his protégé took on the danger.
Invidia found the realm beautiful but deeply unsettling, as though unseen eyes watched her and something crawled across her skin. She passed on a note signed by Honoria Greyhame, apprentice to the Royal DreamWeaver. It warned that thought shaped travel: an unclear destination could trap a traveler between Dream and Sleep. Wounds would persist after waking, and death would be final without a Weaver’s protection. Personal traits grew stronger here, infection by the Nightmare could leave a victim twisted and trapped until death, and above all a traveler must remember themself and hope not to be forgotten.
Skyguard: restoring the Guide Stones
Invidia urged the Hero to find a route through the mind maze to the Command Post before the twisted Sky Pirates could delay them further. The portal they discovered answered with glowing instructions: assemble its Guide Stones, picture the destination, and channel the necessary power. Only travelers of sufficient strength could pass unharmed. Its further guidance urged them to search the invaders, solve the maze’s puzzles, and investigate even apparently insignificant objects.
The Aural Gem had been shattered by a newcomer’s sonic scream, and pirates had carried away its fifteen whispers. Returning those pieces to the arch restored one Guide Stone in a chime of bells. Another task gathered fifteen scattered Dream Gem shards and five larger fragments from the monsters, restoring a further stone in a flash of light. These repairs formed part of a four-stone search, which also required the maze’s puzzles, including a sequence of colored orbs whose pattern had to be matched through three increasingly difficult rounds.
Skyguard: the apprentice trapped in dreams
The maze also held a trapped apprentice Dreamweaver. For a moment, she mistook the Hero for a parent, then recognized another stranger who could not end her loneliness. She spoke of being taken and abandoned by the Nightmare, of a distant mistress who had been mother, friend, and teacher, and of training that had left her with visions she could not forget. Her mind, she said, was slowly shattering. Even her talk of making butterflies from drops of blood mixed childish delight with horror.
She asked the Hero to dream her a playmate after returning to the waking world. If promised that kindness, she offered advice: strong visions shaped reality here, but the Hero must never sleep in the Land of Dreams and Nightmares. If refused, she instead asked to preserve the Hero’s image in Dreamglass, a shade she could talk to when loneliness returned. Behind both responses lay the same plea to be remembered.
Skyguard: the Nightmare Child’s playmates
The apprentice’s other requests revealed what companionship had become to her. She wanted the mental defenses stripped from fifty Nightmare Sky Pirates so she could share her dreams with them. In another task she asked the Hero to play with 250 pirates, searching for laughter amid the silence. Their whispered laughter only made her want to teach them to be louder, build shadowcastles, and fill the maze with shared games and screams.
Her wish to go home was more desperate. She asked for 500 pieces of Dreamglass from the pirates, desperate to return home. After receiving them, she thought she might remember a dangerous spell from her training. Her thanks gave way to impatience: the Hero should leave before she tried it, though the Nightmare’s creatures could stay to watch. She clung to the possibility that she might still save herself if she could only wake up.
Skyguard: the assault beyond the portal
Opening the route did not make it safe. The portal warned that a creature touched by the Nightmare had forced its way through while the Hero searched the maze. Borrowed dream-magic had overwhelmed the safeguards, and the intruder was waiting beyond them. The Hero had to defeat the Nightmare Lieutenant before completing the passage toward the endangered commanders.
After the crossing, the Hero was hurting but anxious to check on High Command. Invidia urged caution and a moment to assess what they knew. They had intercepted the main pirate assault in time, and the Command Post in the Dream-Land had appeared undisturbed. The Hero blamed Dreamweaver for sending both pirates and Stratos there; Invidia reasoned that someone was probably directing such a powerful weapon, since the pirates were unlikely to have formed that alliance alone. The Hero praised her strategic thinking, but the mastermind’s larger plan remained unknown to them.
Skyguard: the Master’s grand plan
Elsewhere, the Master told Drakath that Stratos was hunting him. He feared being found, bound, and bled, and insisted that the captain had to die. His answer was to eliminate Stratos and take his position in the Skyguard. Dreamweaver would conceal any differences, allowing the infiltrator to spread havoc from within. He boasted that she had already weakened the captain through nightmares and that he would strike soon.
Drakath saw the value of a corrupted DreamWeaver but demanded results: the Master must bring Alteon’s society to its knees. The Master asked whether success would let him join with Chaos and lose himself in its madness and glory. Drakath offered only the assurance that he would know Chaos. The Master was left with that promise and an order to prove the worth of his scheme. Back at the Command Post, Invidia suddenly called the Hero’s attention to something ahead.