“I’m sure I’ve passed you at least twice by now.”

“Four times total, including this time.”

“Thanks, talking can of potato chips.”

“No problem.”

As Vaile finished taking in the absurdity of his dream, he took stock of his situation. To his right was a can of potato chips with arms and legs, with a familiar mascot face printed on the cardboard packaging that had been talking to him. To his left was a waterfall that fell sideways for about fifty feet, only to immediately make a loop and then fall off into the abyss that surrounded the landmass that e was on. In front of him was a large gateway that he had walked through three times now, which led to a maze-like mess of corridors and other gateways.

He was still dreaming, but damn was his dream absurd. Each time he took a gateway, it led to some other absurd bit of nonsense. But then again, when had dreams ever made sense? At least he was conscious in this dream, otherwise he might have found all of this totally reasonable.

He had been rather lucky in his choice of which gateways to use, as each time he started this whole maze again he managed to make it farther than before. The first try saw him get nearly 1/4th of the way through, the next was nearly ½ of the way, and the one prior saw him nearly at the end. How he knew that he was close to finishing the dream maze was something that he couldn’t tell you. He just knew it, and he didn’t know how he knew it. But once again, when had dreams ever made any amount of sense?

Well, it was time to dive in once again. Or he thought that he was going to dive in again, but then he heard the sound of the can of potato chips get up and start vibrating rapidly. Vaile turned around and saw the face that had been printed on the can’s side distort into something more akin to a nightmarish form, and Vaile didn’t stick around to see what other changes would come along with that.

He bolted for the gateway, only to fall on his face as his ankle was grabbed. He looked back and saw the Potato Chip Can Man’s arm had turned into an absurdly long tendril and the hand on the end of it had split into two exact copied, both of which were holding his ankle like some nightmarish monster might.

“Once you pop….”

Vaile began to feel rather afraid as the face on the Can Man moved up to the top of the can, which then opened into a toothy circular maw that distorted and opened wider than it should have been able to.

“YoU jUsT cAn’T sToP!”

The tendril-like arm lifted Vaile up and over the distorted Can Man’s open maw. From this position, Vaile could see that the teeth went all the way down and rotated inside the can like some kind of abominable meat grinder.

“Do YoU wAnT tO pOp?!”

Vaile’s ankle was released, and he began to fall towards the open mouth of the Can Man. Before he could fall in, the Can Man was hit from the side by something that knocked the nightmare creature off of the landmass that both it and Vaile were once standing on. As the Can Man fell into the void, it let out a drawn-out Wilhelm Scream before it left Vaile’s view, only for a blast of light and particle effects to rocket out in a geyser from the place it disappeared into as though it had just suffered a defeat in a certain video game.

Landing on his feet, Vaile withdrew his walking stick/ quarterstaff from his item box. Well, he tried to, but he was dreaming, so that turned out to be impossible. Although, his dream had been limiting his power, just as the Fog City had, so perhaps he would be screwed even if he had managed to pull that whacking stick out of nowhere.

He prepared to face a new foe, but the being in front of him was not something that he desired to fight. No, this was not because it was big, scary, dangerous-looking or even because he felt that it was stronger than him. No, he didn’t want to fight it for an entirely different reason.

It,

Was.

ADORABLE.

The common household dog had long since been replaced with cybernetic beings, at least back on Earth. As it turned out, it was simply cheaper and more family-friendly to buy a machine that looked like a dog and that didn’t shed, eat, drink, piss or shit and could always remain cute and wouldn’t be a bother than it was to go and buy a real dog. Plus, the bots made the animal rights groups piss themselves giddy, at least until they had to deal with the fact that an entire species was essentially rendered obsolete and doomed to die out.

Yeah, they had not exactly planned that far ahead when they pushed those through development, but what did it matter? So, if you couldn’t figure out what was in front of Vaile, what had saved his life, and what he was fawning over, it was a dog. An actual, real, flesh-and-blood dog. Or at least a dreamland version of it.

The dog looked to be a perfectly dolled-up King Charles Spaniel, complete with a silky, shiny coat, big, sweet eyes, and tiny little paws. How something so small had kicked the shit out of the nightmarish Can Man was something Vaile did not know, but as had been stated before, dreams rarely, if ever, made any sense. Overcome with the sheer cuteness of what was in front of him, Vaile scooped up the little doggo and began to cuddle it. He honestly didn’t much care if this thing turned out to be another nightmarish monster. He had been starved of cuteness for too damn long, and now he just wanted to soak in the absolute sweetness of the sweet little thing in his arms.

He was so engulfed in this, that he failed to notice the fact that the dog’s eyes were not ‘right’. Almost as if they were windows not into a normal dog’s soul, but that of something altogether more alien and eldritch. But, for now, the dog didn’t seem to want to reveal too much, and just let Vaile cuddle and pet it with a look on its face that one would expect to have found on some creepy old man and not a tiny little dog.