Inception

"Alright so you are basically going to try to dream together?"

"Well I guess that's one way of putting it. Basically I want to test out my sheep talisman and see if I can connect to people in dreams allowing shared dreaming. I already did this with Shendu, but I'm not sure if the talisman is strong enough yet to do it with other people." I try to explain what I want to try to Naaza as she tries to decide whether I'm crazy or not.

"And why would this be any different?"

"Well for one Shendu is stuck inside my body. That plus the fact that the talismans are his means he should have some control over them. I'm not sure if this allowed what happened or if I'm too weak to do it with others. It's all unknown right now hence this experiment."

"And what do you need me for?"

"Well just basic safety really. Considering we'll be helpless while asleep and we don't know what could happen I thought it prudent to get you to watch over us. Also if you could make sure our hands stay connected as I think it could help with the connection."

"So you want me to knock the both of you out cold holding hands and make sure you don't let go of each other? Why not just hold each other to sleep?"

*Cough!* "Ahem! You see I'm not quite comfortable sleeping in the same bad as another man." Naaza starts to grin seeing my flustered appearance

"Oh? Are you sure? It would probably help by having more contact right?" Naaza's grin gets bigger as she teases me.

"No, I've already thought of that. The connection is there just to make sure I can target Lord Miach in my sleep and to make sure I don't have to pull out his or my astral form. Doing so to me could leave an opening for Shendu, while I have no clue what could happen if Lord Miach's astral form was removed from his mortal body. Besides should you really be teasing me like this?" Naaza cocks her head at my less flustered response.

"What do you mean?"

"Well you see the next logical step after this if it works is to see if I have to be present in the dream in order to link people." Naaza doesn't seem to get my point and just keeps looking at me.

"You see I should check if I can allow other people to share dreams without me being present. This would of course need volunteers to sleep together, and considering safety the only ones possible would be you and Lord Miach. Of course this would require you holding hands together to sleep. Also we should check to see if full body contact has any affect on the process so hugging each other to bed would be a necessary experiment as well." I cock my eyebrow as Naaza starts to light up the more I talk. By the end of it she's beat red and swishing her tail like a high speed fan.

"Alright I've got the sleeping potions here. Naaza are you alright? You look a little hot? Do you have a fever? We can do this tomorrow if you need to rest today." Of course Lord Miach comes in right at that moment. I've got to say his timing is truly godly

"No no no, I'm fine, I'm fine. Just a little excited at what this could mean." She hurriedly tries to cover it up. She also procedes to stomp on my foot for giggling.

*OW!* "What was that for?"

"Oh, just wanted to check to see if this dream of yours hadn't caused some damage to your senses." She turns around to hide her blushing.

"Don't worry Naaza. I gave Jack a full look over to make sure he was fine when he told me about everything." And there goes Lord Miach. Honestly I sometimes wonder if he's the god of stone instead of medicine with how dense he is sometimes.

"Well let's get this started then." Gingerly walking over to one of the two beds prepared I lay down and wait for Lord Miach to do the same.

"Yes, no sense wasting time now." Lying down Lord Miach reaches out and grasps my hand and rests them on the stool between us. Naaza comes and ties them together with some cloth before administering the sleeping potions to Lord Miach first and then myself. Quickly I can feel the potion kicking in. Before it can fully take me, I focus on the sheep talisman and feel it activating.

'Well here goes nothing.' I slowly drift to sleep. Waking up I find myself in a Japanese style room.

"Well at least this looks promising." With an effort of will I try to feel if this is the infinity fortress I had created last time. Feeling my mind ballooning outward I can almost see the fortress almost exactly the same as I had left it. I couldn't really tell, but it felt as if some of the rooms had switched positions. A quick look over showed some problems. Rooms meant for defense had come inward while others had moved outward. Looks like having a wandering mind did not work well with mental defense. A quick fix and everything was back to where it was. The only problem was where was Lord Miach?

"I don't see him anywhere in here so maybe he is outside?" I brought out a crystal ball and tried to see if I could find anything. Outside of my fortress was a massive amount of swirling grey mist. Deciding to keep with the ninja theme and not wanting to have to explain combat drones to a god, I summoned a large number of hawks and sent them out to see if they could find anything. After some fruitless searching I slapped myself.

"Right sheep talisman. DUH!" Channeling the sheep talisman I directed it at the birds. Sure enough shortly after the birds discovered Lord Miach, or more correctly Lord Miach's dream. The only problem was that wasn't all they found.