The Cold Shadow of Statues of the Great

"Right this way!" the drowzee spoke with calm enthusiasm, gesturing for the eeveelution to follow him. He made his way through the rough shack to the rooms where they performed the different services The DreamCatchers had offered. The glaceon was the first customer in months! Why was this service so unpopular? Was it too expensive? He wished he could have made it free, but he needed a way to pay Kyrie and support himself. The worries of the drowzee were masked by a cheerful grin.

"Just have a seat and we can begin. I'm going to have to hypnotize you, so don't be alarmed if you suddenly fall asleep. Some rather odd things may happen once you're asleep and dreaming, but just don't move and keep calm. I've done this plenty of times. Any questions or concerns?" he asked, after gesturing to a light purple cushion. Morpheus made sure to keep the cushions comfortable, so that the nervous clients would not get uncomfortable.

(Numbers: 1, 10, 5)

The glaceon followed along until the drowzee began speaking.  He froze for a moment and hesitated as he heard that he was going to be hypnotized.  He knew he had to go to sleep for this service, it was VERY openly advertised that the services available here were all sleep-based, but still.... hearing it still made him worry.  Regardless, he forced himself to move along after a moment, over to the nice, comfy looking cushion and laid down on it.  Questions.... concerns....  Did he have any questions?  Any concerns?

"What should I expect?", he asked, hoping to get a bit of an idea of what he was going into before going through with it.  He'd already paid, so he was going to go through with it regardless, but if he could get some solace in knowing what to expect beforehand, it would be nice regardless.

"Well, when you go to sleep it's different what you first see for everyone. Just know that I'll be there shortly once everything has calmed down and the dream tower still isn't trying to construct itself," Morpheus answered.

"...Just do it," the glaceon responded.

Morpheus nodded, "Well then, let's begin," he spoke. Morpheus lifted his arms, and waved them about, staring deeply into the glaceon's eyes as his eyes took on a hypnotic purple glow. The Hypnosis took effect, and the process of constructing the wonder known as the dream tower begun.

The Glaceon was sent into a deep slumber, in the slumber, the dream was filled with darkness where the glaceon was all alone with nothing around him. Not even the company of his cherished necklace was upon his neck. It was sheer and utter darkness. It took a moment, but something appeared in front of him, his necklace. It glowed faintly, floating before him before it seemed to back away from him slowly, forcing him forward as he attempted to chase after the cherished necklace. The necklace picked up speed, going faster and faster, until eventually it zipped away at almost light speed into the distance. There was a bright flash as if something had exploded, lighting up the darkness slightly before returning to the dark. The necklace was seemingly lost, but in the distance the bright white light started up once again, glowing brighter and brighter until the glaceon could see no more, forcing his eyes shut in order to prevent blindness. The temperature, which had been comfortable for any pokemon, suddenly dropped to what seemed to be sub zero temperatures for only a moment.

The glaceon reopened his eyes, to see a tower before him. It was not a normal building, but more made up of thousands of massive crystals and pierced the heavens. Each massive icy crystal had a soft colored tint to it, yellow, blue, pink, green, you name it. The colorful tower went up and up and up, one could not even see the top to it. There was a arc towards the bottom, marking the entrance. It seemed that all of the crystals were hollow, and one would be able to see straight through them if they were on the inside, looking at the world with a tint of the color that the crystal wore.

Around the glaceon, was nothing. Well, not nothing per say, but a vast wonderland of snow, nothing but snow. From above, despite there being a distinct lack of clouds, snow drifted ever so slowly and softly to the floor, adding on to the coat of snow on the ground. There were no trees, no bushes, no shrubbery, not even hills, it was a flat snowy wasteland. Beneath the snow, however, bright green and alive grass sprung forth whenever the snow was uncovered. Footsteps left marks of green, as the feet cleared the way for the grass.

A certain drowzee suddenly appeared out of nowhere beside the glaceon. He seemed to be focused on the never ending tower of crystals. As he appeared, something fell from the sky and dropped in front of the glaceon, the necklace. It shined brightly, and looked as good as new.

"Well," he spoke at last after a moment of gazing at the massive monument, "Here's your tower, ready to start climbing?"

Kat carried out 1 launched of one tower :

18

Sova immediately lunged to catch the necklace in his front paws, not allowing it to even touch the ground. To his amazement, it seemed to be.... repaired. Maybe even better than when he'd first received it. For a moment, he let his jaw hang open as he stared at it in awe, before the drowzee speaking caught his attention and reminded him what he was doing. This place wasn't real, this necklace wasn't real.... right? It didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it, though.

He lifted the necklace on a paw and draped it around his neck in its rightful place before standing back to his paws and replying to the drowzee, "Yeah.... Is it just gonna be nice walk? I was kind of worried it was gonna be a lot worse than this...." This place WAS pretty nice. It was kind of like a wonderland for him. What was he even worried about?

"That depends, when we go to get that prize or move from your ancestors, usually the tower isn't going to just let you in easily, you have to work for it. We're probably going to end up in a few fights with the guards, but sometimes they can even be friendly and assist. It all just depends really," Morpheus explained with a smile, attempting to comfort any worries that might be in the glaceon's mind.

It was difficult, this service was a trust based one, and with no clients to vouch for their sincerity, there is no other clients. He really hoped that he'd be able to help this one though, the service had been on a bit of a failing streak recently, and it was not very pleasant to see failure after failure after failure.

Sova looked to the drowzee, then back to the tower. His question, instead of answers, had only brought about more questions. "W-what? Guards? Who are the guards!? A-and it doesn't matter if they attack us, we can't get hurt, it's a dream.... We can't get hurt, right??", he spoke a bit more quickly than normal. Attempting to keep himself calm was proving a bit more difficult than usual, mostly due to how terrified he had become of his own dreams.

What if he could be hurt in this dream? What if he could be KILLED in this dream? Normally, he wouldn't be worried about that, but he had stopped underestimating his ability to harm himself long ago. Honestly, he was just curious about the whole thing, he didn't really care that much about the possible rewards.... but now, even the interest was quickly starting to seem like it wasn't worth it. But he couldn't just back out. Especially not so soon.

"Yes we can get hurt, well not really...it'll seem like we're hurt but in the waking world we'll be just fine, I'll just get rid of the dream if things get a bit too...rough," he spoke, trying to dodge around the question of what would happen if a client died. He did not exactly know what would happen if a client was to die here, he had never allowed one to do so. Why would he? Maybe his father would have if he had continued his studies, but Morpheus would not allow it. The tapir looked to the glaceon, "Look, you're going to be fine, I'd rather die than to allow you to do so," and the tapir meant it. He was raised to care for others, this was a client, if his reputation was tarnished, then he might as well go jump off the side of a cliff. This was his life's work, even from a small boy. It was his dream to help others achieve what they normally could not.

Sova took a deep breath, then exhaled. Hearing that he couldn't REALLY be hurt was a relief. Surely, he could handle pain if he knew it was all in his head. He forced himself to calm down before setting off towards the tower. He didn't really know what to expect, but there was only one way to find out. Besides, the only other option was giving up. He didn't give up.... he might as well have been eternally disallowed from giving up.

"Well, if I'm not gonna die, that's one less thing to worry about.... I guess we should get a move on then. Maybe these "guards" are nice. This place seems nice so far....", he reasoned, mostly to himself to keep himself calm, though he spoke loud enough for the drowzee to hear as well in case he wanted to chime in.

Morpheus entered the tower, ready to take on the behemoth of a building. The inside seemed to have a icy staircase leading up in a bit of a spiral with occasional platforms that allowed for viewing. He knew that those were technically not floors, "Be cautious though, the inside of this can change in an instant depending on where we are. One minute we're in this place, the next we're in some cave or lava field. Watch your step, and let me walk ahead of you."

The drowzee started up the staircase first, the warmth of the drowzee's feet causing the ice to be slippery for him, while the glaceon would likely have an easier time on the ice. The drowzee made sure to keep his footing, only proceeding when he was sure that he wasn't going to slip and fall off the staircase to his death, seeing as there was no railing for him to latch onto. The tapir eventually gave up, after a few slip ups and nearly falling. A purple aura surrounded his claw, creating a gauntlet with sharp claws around his hand. He stabbed the ends of the gauntlet's fingers into the ice, lodging it in to make sure that he had a for certain hold with each few steps.

The tower looked even better on the inside, to Sova at least.  He shivered slightly at the mention of the possibility of the tower suddenly changing, possibly to something dangerous.  "Oh, fun.  Having an icy wonderland turn into a lava field, that sounds like a FANTASTIC time....", he sarcastically replied.  Truthfully, he was hoping to lessen the worry over the situation by joking about it.  It was working a bit, boosting his confidence  as he did his best to convince himself he didn't care.

"So, where are those "guards" you mentioned?", he questioned as he followed the drowzee up the stairs. He hadn't seen anything that seemed like a guard so far, unless the guards were ice crystals or snowflakes. Then again, he couldn't rule out that possibility since this was some mysterious dream world he knew nothing about.  He thought about offering the drowzee some help walking, as he was clearly having a much easier time, but the drowzee seemed to finally think of a way to beat the slippery terrain on his own.  Brute force.  The glaceon liked this approach.

Fk u for making me look up wtf a tapir is.

Almost as if the glaceon had cued their arrival, a swarm of fluff erupted from below. Millions of a strange creature flew up from the bottom, and if one looked over they could see that they were far far higher than they had actually traveled now. The fluffy wings beat against the wind, creating a strong wind, causing Morpheus to struggle with keeping on the icy steps. The mass of swablu seemed to ignore the travelers, instead flying up and up and up, the end of the swablu mass taking a moment to appear as the ocean of white and blue made their way up the tower.

"Well, there's some of them..." Morpheus spoke, watching the swablu fly away.

"Hiya!" a voice came from behind them. Morpheus turned, to see something that looked similar to the glaceon, but not quite. It was tan, with leafy ears and a thin leafy tail. It had large brown friendly eyes, that seemed to welcome them to the tower rather than look at them with seething anger, desiring them to leave.

Sova backed away from the cotton-swab hurricane in the worry that he'd be knocked off balance if he got too close. The wind they created was already making it difficult to keep from falling, he didn't need to increase that risk further. When they finally passed, he took a moment to be relieved before hearing a voice. A.... familiar voice.

For a moment, the glaceon was a bit afraid to turn around. Afraid he was mistaken and was going to be very disappointed at what he saw, or that something was not as it seemed. But, he forced himself to slowly turn himself around, bringing what had spoken into his vision. Then his mind pretty much snapped in two. He opened his mouth to speak, but could not find any words, resulting in him simply standing there with his mouth hanging open.

For a moment, he was happy, then the two broken pieces of his mind began arguing. He wanted to hug her, or at the very least to say something, but he knew it wasn't real. It COULDN'T be real. This was a dream, after all.... "She's not real.... she's not real.... she's.... not.... real....", he thought, more like chanted, to himself in an attempt to keep from falling for this. He knew if he did, it would only result in far more pain when he would inevitably eventually be given irrefutable proof that this thing was just a figment of his Dream Tower.

He found himself taking a step towards the leafeon, in a bit of a trance, but stopped himself there. "You're n-not real....", he forced himself to say to the leafeon in the hopes that it would help him keep the words in mind.

"What? Of course i'm real?" the leafeon blinked, as if a bit confused, "what are you freaking out so much about? You look as if you've seen a ghost?" its head tilted, a worried look on the grass type's face.

Morpheus looked to the leafeon, "Mr. Sova, she's not real, the tower just has them pretend they are. They have no emotions, they just mimic them as well," he walked a few steps down to get on the glaceon's level. He did not know what this pokemon was, but it seemed as if it was rather important to the glaceon. The drowzee seemed to keep a cautious eye on the leafeon, they had no clue whether or not this pokemon was friendly, or a foe that was playing tricks on the client.

For just a moment, Sova wanted to believe the leafeon and considered it. Then the drowzee spoke up and explained the situation to him. Hearing this information, he now wanted to hit this thing for pretending to be his mother. But he knew he couldn't. Even if he'd decided to try to, he wouldn't have been able to go through with it. It wasn't his mother - he was making sure to continuously mentally remind himself of this - but it still seemed like her.

"So.... you're Esprit?", he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. He didn't care what the consequences were or if it was even possible, he wanted to prove to this thing that no one could pretend to be his mother.

"Y-Yes? I don't know really..." the leafeon's ears folded back, "I just wanted to help you out so I came by to help," it didn't seem to take a liking to the ice type's sarcasm, acting as if its feelings were hurt. It took on a sad expression, and avoided the look in the glaceon's eyes.

Morpheus was unsure of the current situation, the client was being rather rude to the dream tower guard, but it didn't really have any emotions. The tapir was normally against this kind of thing, but it was not like anyone's feelings were getting hurt. He instead waited, wondering if he should push the glaceon to keep moving in case some more aggressive guards happened along their path.