Chapter 14: The Seeds that are Planted, the Harvest that Looms.

In Elcon, all sleeping denizens and their dreams form a dreamworld. If Elcon is a silly place, then the dreamworld is doubly so. Elcon is normally quite a… flexible world, but the dreamland of Elcon is even worse.

A world where every intention and thought spirals out of control and produces all manner of nonsense.

Spongy was, as usual having a dream where he was fighting savage gingerbread eating cakes and buns, along with frenzied gingerbread animals! Now, for many people, such a dream of getting swarmed by so many confectioneries that want to eat you would be a nightmare.

Spongy of course was having a blast. He was even eating his foes as he fought. Interestingly he did not fight with his gauntlets. Instead he was holding a pair of grim beasts by the scruff of their necks.

A hound and a feline.

These would bite and claw as Spongy swung them, as if he was used to using a whole creature to attack. Every now and then he would toss the beasts into a mess of hostile buns, while pounding a cake with his bare hands.

The favourite kind of dream of Spongy continued on…

In similar obsessive manner, Gheel was dreaming about chompers. Though, in this dream, he was as a farmer, ploughing fields and growing chompers like turnips. It was a fairly fine dream, but then his chomper crops began to get eaten by suspiciously gnarg-like flies.

Frantically trying to stop his bumper crop of chompers from being eaten, Gheel’s dream continued on…

In another dream, Waufronk was in an attic, yet, as he spent his time there, more and more people vanished. In the end, Waufronk was alone in the attic, in deepest darkness. Then he flew down to the ground, which was covered in bones. He assembled together skeletons, and danced in the air with them, until they changed into puddings that had a remarkable likeness of Kepo’s face in mid-leer.

The kepo-puddings stole all the bones away and fled the attic, Waufronk of course chased them, but alas his wings turned into horses and ran away.

In his dream, Waufronk wandered through snow and darkness, looking for his wings…

In one dream, a horse stood on the brink of a boiling cauldron. Within the cauldron was another cauldron, within that another one, and so on. Eadam stared through many cauldrons, and Calleydron stared at him.

In his dream, obscure recipes whispered into his ears…

Kepo, as one might have suspected, was dreaming of loot. Massive piles of gems and precious metals, the lollipops seemed fairly out of place, but then, in Kepo’s mind, those sweets were as valuable as gems. Now, many would not be able to tell, but while the gems and metals were dreamstuff and so were the lollipops, there was one curious sight. A number of real things.

A pile of lollipop sticks and wrappers, these were real. Kepo loomed over it and chuckled.

“ehehehe, nobody will ever fine my secret stash, not here in the dream world”

Such was Kepo’s devotion to petty theft that she had managed to hide her spoils in her dreams. However, while you might think her happy. She was quite nervous and while some of her dream was spent gloating and revelling in loot…

In her dream, Kepo nervously watched, fearful of someone coming to steal her ill-gotten gains.

As for Ulex, he was having a common dream for him.

A dream of a memory.

A town that hailed a hero.

A town that burned.

A hero that never came.

A carrot that trained in anger and hope, and so discovered a mystical power of muscles.

Again, Ulex was confronted with his ambition in his dreams…

We will, however, return to Gheel, for something was happening in his dream. The other dreams began to blend into his, They all worked the field after the town burned. Kepo hid her things in a barn. Spongy Snaps fought off marauding confectionery. Waufronk sorted the chomper crops into barrels, but the chompers kept vanishing and the barrels remained empty. Ulex ploughed the fields as a form of training and Eadam much to Gheel’s dismay was trying to cook some chomper-crops.

The dream twisted further…

The chomper crops were wilting. Everyone dug into the soil, trying to find what was causing this…

Tossing away dirt, it was Ulex who found it. An ominous package.

Before he could open it, there was the sound of a horn, and everyone woke.

Waufronk moaned and rubbed his encrusted eyes. Everyone else stirred.

The dreams had ended, but the horn sounded a second time.

This caused everyone to freeze in place.

The horn sounded a third time.

“Is that…” Gheel wondered.

“Waufronk, go, take a quick look around, be careful”

A flurry of wings and though groggy, Waufronk flew out of the tree alcove. Everyone else had barely gotten themselves and everything else together when Waufronk returned, fully awake this time and looking quite worried.

“A hunt, a goadskull hunt is chasing their prey this way!”