"Remnants of Cerberus" - 12/23/2021 (Lucid)

"Remnants of Cerberus"

12/23/2021

(Lucid)

(This dream was pretty fragmented, and I could only remember a few, key moments of it. I had been playing "Devil May Cry 5", before bed, and I'm pretty sure my acquisition and usage of a 3-tier weapon of fire, ice, and electricity - that I got after defeating the boss demon King Cerberus - is what inspired these encounters.)

I was in my old neighborhood, at night, just roaming about the streets. There were a few other people out, but all was relatively quiet. Then, with absolutely no warning, a raging, flaming minotaur rampaged onto the scene. The top half of its body was set ablaze, as if it was sporting a flowing mane of pure fire that covered its head and upper torso. It was doing these rushing berserker-type attacks and mauled at least one person before turning its sights on me. It blitzed me and I had to brace against its charge with my forearms. Each impact felt like I was bracing against the heaviest lineman, running into me at full speed. After reeling from the intensity of each of its charges - surprisingly, never finding myself getting burned from its fiery headbutts - I was able to dodge a few of its attacks before it veered off toward another person. I don't how, exactly, it happened, but when it caught up to the other passerby, it immediately turned the man into ice, as if it had ejected frozen air from its snout, or something. The person literally froze in place, solid, into a strange, organic form like a nautilus shell made of ice.

Using this window of opportunity, I hauled ass and ran out of the entrance of the neighborhood, sprinting down the sidewalk next to the main road. I remember passing two motorcycle cops that were just hanging out on the side of the road, but the thought never occurred to me to stop and tell them what was happening. Instead, I continued running toward the shopping center that sat at the next major intersection. It was here that I notice something bright, filling the night sky, in the distance. As it loomed closer, I could see that it was a fire-tornado, whirling its way toward the shopping center and in my, personal, direction. 

Still not yet lucid, I don't know exactly what prompted me that I could even do this, but I suddenly decided to take flight, and I levitated off of the sidewalk and into the air. Getting a grand view of the town from above, as well as the imposing cyclone of flames that was still stalking up the street toward me, I instinctively decided to fly back to my neighborhood, feeling that I might rather take my chances with the no-less-fiery minotaur. The moment I touched down, though, just next to my home, I briefly contemplated what had been happening. I realized that - of course - this all had to be a dream.

I was no longer afraid of encountering the minotaur, but it was nowhere to be found. Instead, though, as if right on cue, I saw the bright glow of a monstrous fire coming through the dark streets of my neighborhood. The closer it got, the more I could see that it wasn't the minotaur. No. It was a machine. A crane, of sorts. It was as if an oversized backhoe was fitted with a massive, rotating sawblade on its telescopic arm, and that sawblade - itself - was also made of a supernatural hellfire. The tractor portion of the vehicle didn't have wheels. Instead, it was actively laying track, in front of itself, which constructed a system of x/y axes on the ground, for the tractor to shift toward me in an alternation of frontward / sideward movements.

Unafraid, due to my newfound lucidity, I just waited for the giant machine to approach. The flaming, rotated blade swung itself around in my direction, and I took to the air. The blade swiped just beneath me, and I could hear the loud whirring of the machine as its crane arm changed directions and brought the blade back around toward me, again. I was completely comfortable in my flight, though, able to zip through the air in short, lateral bursts, evading each subsequent slash from the crane and watching the flaming blade shred through the trees - and even some houses - in the neighborhood as it continued to try to slice me out of the air.

I don't remember anything after toying with this contraption, though.