Dream: Origins of Rebutena

I found where I originally wrote down my dream that evolved into the character Rebutena. This is the original, unadulterated dream.

I had a dream in which I was a little girl. Much  younger than my current age. I had a friend who was a boy of the same age. Though, my memory is blurry as to what he looked like. My friend kept having arguments with another boy. Those two were disputing harshly because they didn’t agree about something in the game they were playing. They were playing Dungeons and Dragons.

I don’t know how many times my friend had played Dungeons and Dragons, but this was the first time the boy he was arguing with had played. They tried playing a few more times at separate moments during my dream, but they always got into a verbal fight.

It was always very dark, and it appeared that we were inside a building at all times. I didn’t notice any windows or electronic lights. Maybe it was night and the power was out? Unlikely. There was light coming from magical lanterns. They are magical because they are cylinders made of lampshade and… oh, they’re just floating lanterns that don’t float.

They don’t use fire or electricity to produce light; they emit light by some magical means. I always kept my magical lantern on, and I usually brought it with me. I am pretty sure that everyone or most people had a magic lantern.

They could adjust the brightness by spinning the lanterns. If they spin them clockwise, they grow brighter. If they spin them counter-clockwise, they grow dimmer until they turn off. These lamps could apparently run indefinitely with no need of any fuel.

There was lore, history, a reason we were inside a building. We were at war. Our people, humans from what I could see, were struggling for survival against Lovecraftian Horrors. Think aberrations, the Elder Evils, and the entities of the Far Realm from Dungeons and Dragons. Think of Angels from Floraverse. Think of the Eldrazzi from Magic the Gathering. Or just imagine a vague, menacing silhouette hiding in the shadows of your peripheral vision, as I never got a good look at one.

These creatures lived on another dimension than us. It was speculated by many that these creatures were literal demons from Hell. However, I can’t confirm or deny the validity of that theory because I never saw their homeland clearly.

Yet, if they’re in a far off realm, why are we at war? How are they a threat to us?  Well, it turns out, the mysterious monsters of unknown origins had supernatural powers that allowed them to open portals to our realm. Yet, they rarely did so.

Don’t worry, us humans adapted to their attacks. We developed magic, as seen by our lanterns. And apparently, we developed futuristic advanced military technology. And there was a synergy between our fantastical magic and sci-fi technology in ways similar to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but our world was more tech savvy than magic oriented. It actually seemed that our only magic was the magic lanterns, and legends of how magic was used in past battles against these abyssal creatures.

Even though we didn’t know much about the creatures, there was apparently a lot of exposition I nearly skipped out on. The problem was the exposition came in written form; and if you’ve ever had a dream where you tried to read something, you’d know how hard it is to read something when the words are constantly changing. I imagine it is like trying to read with dyslexia of the greatest severity.

Luckily, dream memories clued me in to the main premise: there are 12-13 human factions and 12-13 abyssal factions. I don’t remember the number exactly, which is why I used a range, but I think that the number of human factions was equal to the number of abyssal factions. What are the Abyssals? That’s what I’m going to call the unknowable enemies because I need a name, something that the humans never deemed necessary.

I think Abyssals is a good name for them because there was definitely a deep sea monster theme going on with the names of the factions and the shady figures that are apparently armies of alien evils.

I can’t remember the faction names specifically, and the writing kept changing, but I think some of the Abyssal factions had names along the lines of Throes of Three Waters, Tide of Terrors, Flash Flood Frenzy, Gale of the River Current, and other menacing names. Some of them, of course, lacked any relation to water. Names like Forked Tongue Flock of Fury. I don’t remember any pattern with names of the human factions. Apparently they were too boring.

Despite knowing we were at war with such creatures, and they could appear anywhere at any time, I wasn’t afraid. Attacks were rare, and none had affected me. It’s kind of how no one is scared of a school shooting that’s three states away.

So, a whole lot of nothing happened for most of the dream. I just went through my day in this dark building, with nothing but my magic lantern to light my way. I don’t know if I was scared of the dark or if it was just for practicality, but I now notice that I bought that lantern everywhere.

Sometimes, if you look back at dream, you can try to find meaning. Not meaning about myself, as some sort of soothsaying, but the meaning of the story. How it all connects. Well, I try to do that now, but for you to understand why I would recall and record this dream, you need to remember that I’m not done describing it. I have previously said, I didn’t get a good look at the Abyssals or their homeland, but I did get a look at them. When? How? Did I die? Well, these would be the questions you’re asking, not me.

The dream picked up the pace and kicked into high gear when it was time for bed. I don’t know how we knew it was time for bed because it was always just as pitch black dark as always. Anyway, I got into my bed, and my friend got into his bed.

Looking back, I think it’s kind of weird to have a young girl and a young boy sleep in the same room, but I guess we were both too young for it to be a problem. I set my lantern on the night stand between our two beds. My friend wanted me to turn off the lantern because he couldn’t sleep with it on.

I wanted it on because I… I’m not sure I had a reason, I just had this desire for it to stay on. So, you can imagine that this quickly became a heated argument. I started arguing that the lantern had other benefits besides light, such as it smelling like mint. I never actually smelled mint, but I said it smelled like mint, so it probably did.

My friend had enough of asking and started spinning my lantern counter-clockwise, dimming it. I frantically tried spinning it the other way to keep it on, but my friend won the struggle, and my light turned off.

Well, I’m not sure what my friend was expecting. Once he was done turning off the light, I turned it back on. But for a second or two, my dream plunged into darkness—something that coincided with the opening of a portal to the Abyssal realm. Around ten feet to the left of my bed on the wall, a door shaped hole opened to the void.

The portal was wreathed in tangible darkness that my magical lantern could not dispel. Wisps of darkness, like smoke, creeped out from the portal. Then a blur of motion. Something came from the portal and took something, I don’t know what or who.

I had been watching from third person outside of my body for the entire disagreement about the lantern, and I was still in third person. However, my view focused in on the portal, so I couldn’t look at the room and see what was missing. I couldn’t see into the portal, everything inside was pitchblack.

Whatever or whoever was stolen or kidnapped was so important that some Pokemon style rodent that walked on two legs decided to risk their lives to rescue the stolen thing. It ran into the portal and slowly pulled something out of the portal.

I couldn’t see what they pulled out because my view focused on the corruption that overtook half of the rodent, turning it gray. Actually, the corruption was that half of the rodent turned gray. There were no other perceivable effects.

Looking back, I can only assume that I was thing stolen by the Abyssals and saved by the rodent. I was in third-person which follows my character, the young girl. In the blur of motion of an Abyssal stealing something and bringing it back with them through the portal, my view zoomed into the portal, so that I couldn’t see anything but the blackness of the portal. If I follow the girl’s view, then the girl who is me in the dream was stolen. Finally, the next part of the story supports this.

After the rodent saves what I assume was me, my view looks up from facing the rodent to see a bunch of adults that have just ran into the room. I’m standing in front of the portal and facing away from it. I’m facing the adults. They all look scared. But here comes the part for why I think I was the person captured by the Abyssals.

I get angry at the adults for hiding a secret from me. Some secret that I now know because something, which I assume is me, was stolen and brought into the realm of the Abyssals for just a few moments. The secret I have just discovered also supports my suspicions. What’s the secret? I’m an Abyssal.

I don’t know how an amorphous silhouette creature can be a little human girl, but apparently it can because that describes me perfectly. Keep in mind that the portal is still open behind me, it doesn’t ever come into play again, but it’s just something that gets me thinking.

Do humans know how to close the portal? Anyway, the adults apologize, and I get bombarded by another set of exposition. This exposition is verbal, and most of it is simply plopped into my mind as I somehow learned it during my short time in the Abyssal realm.

So, there are separate generations of the Abyssals and humans. Now, I inherently know that I am the eigth or ninth—no, defininetly eighth—generation of the ultimate Abyssal monster. And the eighth the generation of the human is a single human who is the most powerful warrior and wizard among them.

These seem like lines of royalty to me. We both inherit great powers. Though I have some reason to suspect that I am a reincarnation and not a generation or I am going through some avatar the last airbender avatar succession. Anyways, I have this idea that each generation is more powerful than any of the prior generations.

I know that the Abyssal of the generation and the Human of the generation will fight, but because they will not always both die, the next generation of a Human or Abyssal might have to fight the previous generation of the Human or Abyssal. I say people, I mean a single creature. They just didn’t have any name beyond generation which they used.

I learned that the last generations to fight were the seventh generation of the Abyssal and Eighth generation of the Humans. The Abyssal had died. This meant that I was the eight generation of the Abyssal and had to face off against the eighth generation of the Human. It occurred to me that the next generation would be the ninth generation which I remembered was the max level of spells in dungeons and dragons.

I slowly began to remember more as time passed. I left the adult humans, who asked me what I was going to do. Would I side with the humans whom I have lived with all my life, or would I side with my kin, the Abyssals, and destroy those whom I call my friends. What would you do?

Well, it doesn’t matter what you would do because I was the one making the choice. And, being an Abyssal, I made the choice of siding with my kin. However, the adult humans had tried to offer me a false dilemma by making it seem like there were only two options.

I sided with the Abyssals, but I was not going to attack my friends. In fact, I was going to help them. You see, I got to see the Abyssals’ point of view on the war. In their mind, they were defending against the humans. Mind blown, am I right? This is some Ender’s Game level plot twist going on.

However, that was just the Abyssal’s point of view. Was it accurate? Well, I can’t say I wasn’t biased, but I can look at it from an objective view. They believed that the war machines of the humans were out to get them.

They believed the humans had conquered their own realm and now seeked for other places to conquer. If you see how humans are the dominant race on Earth, you’d understand this point of view. However, most of all, they were vengeful, for the humans had kidnapped me at a young age and the Abyssals just wanted me back.

There might have been more reasons, but I don’t know of them. Based on all of the reasons I can see, I know that I do not have all of the information. It doesn’t make sense that I would be an Abyssal if I appeared to be a human girl.

It doesn’t make sense that humans would be able to kidnap me unless I was already invading their realm. It doesn’t make sense that the Abyssals would wait so long to try and save me, or that I would somehow remember all this when I spent a few moments in the Abyssal realm. However, I think my magical lantern was somehow blocking the creation of portals.

Anyway, upon deciding to side with the Abyssals I had a flashback to the Abyssal realm. I knew in my mind that I would respawn back in the Abyssal realm if I died. Which is the reason that “generation” might really be reincarnation.

I saw what might have been me in my past life—some vaguely humanoid red figure, it looks like a fiend. The word that appeared in my head to describe him when I saw him in my dream was “Blade Devil.” Those are literally the exact words that popped into my mind when I saw this guy.

When my flashback ended, I was in front of a tower and I was in the middle of a group of less than ten people. All of them were taller than me. So they were probably all older than me and at least fifteen years old, unlike me in the dream.

I can’t be older than eight; I look so young. I might have described how I looked, but I think that would have been weird. Though, if you want me to, I can describe how I looked.

A man in plate armor walked out of the tower, and I was filled with hate for him. I remember having been killed by him before. True, I had attacked him, but I had been surrounded by his garrison of soldiers.

However, in the present, I held my peace and didn’t attack. If I did, I would probably die again, but that was fine. What wasn’t fine is all of my associates that I was standing with dying as well. They were humans and would not respawn. It seems the armored human didn’t recognize me. This gives credence to the idea that the Blade Devil was my form in the past life.

However, I couldn’t contain my rage. So I left them all. Then I flew into the sky, don’t ask me how. I didn’t have wings or anything, and I was still just a little girl.

However, the giant technomagical robots recognized me for what I was because they started firing at me. Not with metal bullets, but with giant magical shots of energy. I was able to dodge them and fire back my own magical bolts of energy.

I probably looked like what you should imagine when you’re playing a warlock of the Archfey in Dungeons and Dragons.

One of the giant robots was a gym that went all Transformer and grew legs and a scorpion-like tail that fires magical shots of energy. Kind of like a Halo scarab. Anyway, my dream ended while I was blasting the scarab with magic projectiles.

I am pretty sure I had destroyed every other technomagical robot that had attacked me. The only remaining robot within the locale was the gym scarab.

TL;DR --- I had a dream. It would make a great anime. But, why was I a girl?