Dreamspire Castle

The mountain path joins up with a broad cobblestoned road about halfway down the slope.  Another shifty-lettered marker points you downhill.  You pass through meadows teaming with wildflowers and butterflies and forests full of emerald shadows.  Bridges take you over lively streams shimmering with fish and stranger aquatic creatures.  As you walk, you begin to see more signs of life and habitation, albeit strange habitation.  Clusters of muddy globules, which at first you take to be beehives, turn out to be tiny huts plastered to the trees, surrounded by buzzing, insectile humanoids who watch you impassively with many-colored faceted eyes.  Low doorways and windows gleam in trees and hillocks.  As you watch, a pale-furred lynx wearing a collar and cloak lined with feathers and teeth emerges from a subterranean archway, muttering under its breath in a strange gutteral tongue as it catches sight of you.  Shimmering lights at the edge of your vision resolve themselves into butterflies with luminsecent wings dancing in the shadows of the trees.  Laughter and bright music swirls around you now and again on the fitful breeze, either carried by the wind or from invisible, playful watchers.  Other roads join this one, great wheel-rutted highways and faint deer tracks, and it takes all of your willpower not to wander off into the inviting unknown.  You find yourself hoping you can return in some future dream to explore.

At last, after crossing a grand stone bridge over a river, you find yourself in front of the great pale stone gatehouse.  The walls stretch easily a mile to either side of you, rising into grand towers like skyscrapers before bending out of sight.  Seen up close, the stone looks like marble, only shot through with iridescent colors and flecks of silver and gold.  A plaque is carved to one side of the gate.  With the help of the pebble in your pocket, you read:

Dreamspire Castle

Enter All Who Seek Wonder and Cherish Imagination

- - -

Solicitors will be used for target practice

After surviving the cavern, the darkness of the gatehouse hardly phases you.  As you pass through, you sense unseen eyes examining you.  On the far side, you find yourself in a great courtyard.  Great towers rise all around you, giving the impression of several castles inside the greater walls.  A number of strange inhabitants wander about, from green-clad elven archers to chrome-plated robotic creatures.  Feeling strangely overwhelmed, you wander over to a large fountain, sitting down on the benchlike stone rim.  Bright carplike eels swim beneath the lilypads in the fountain's pool.

"Lost, new, or both?" a voice asks, startling you.  A bipedal dragonlike creature little taller as you are sitting down stands beside the gurgling fountainhead.  Its white, silver-rimmed scales shine like pearls in the sunlight, with glossy deep silver ventral scales.  Long, silver-tipped whiskers project from its brows and snout, and a short beard trails from its chin and jaw.  It has a pair of silvery-leathered wings folded against its back, matching the oversized ear-fins projecting from its wild silvery-black hair.  It wears a simple white tunic belted with a black and silver braided rope.  Slung over its shoulder is a shimmering black sack, bulging with odd shapes and furls of paper.  Its pale green-yellow eyes regard you curiously.

"Umm...." you answer, unsure of what to say.

"Both, then," it says, nodding. Something about its voice and build leads you to guess it's a male. "You must be the one Sungold was talking about.  She said there was a newcomer who might need a little help adapting." Sungold?  That must be the jaguar, you decide.  The creature invites itself to a seat beside you, trailing its long tail into the water. "I'm Peri-Thali Silverpearl.  Welcome to the Realm of the Bright Dreamers!" He grabs your hand, shaking it so vigorously you nearly tumble back into the water. "That is how your kind greets each other, right?  Sometimes I get confused." He starts digging through his pack before you can reply. "You still expect you'll wake up at any moment, I expect. Well, don't worry.  This isn't that kind of dream for you, at least not anymore."

"So, it is all a dream?" you ask, unsure if you're relieved or disappointed.

"For you, yes, in a way," Peri-Thali answers distractedly. "It's not that we're not real, of course.  It's just that your kind can't get here in the normal state of things, so you tend to show up through other means.  Short of direct magical transporation, dreams are about the only way people like you get to see people like us.  So you're not really here, but you are here, really.  Understand?"

"Not really," you admit.

"Neither do I, but that's how they explained it to me.  Anyway, since you're here, you'll probably want to look around, so you'll need... um, you'll need... Okay, where is it?... I know I put it in here just before... Huh - wonder how long that's been there?... Ah!" At last, he emerges from the sack, smiling triumphantly as he hands over a crumpled sheet of brownish paper.  You flatten it on the bench beside you.  It appears to be a map of the castle, though oddly washed out.  As you stare, words become visible, writing themselves before your eyes.