Lindon Van Helsing

Right before 2021 ends, I'm going to try to earn the title of "Most Random Blog Post." Anyway, last night I had a dream that Lindon hunted down and killed a bunch of vampires.

That's what this blog post is going to be. Me recounting that dream in detail. Merry Christmas.

I almost never have Cradle dreams, in spite of what you may expect. When I'm deep enough in Cradle that it consumes my every thought, it's usually because I'm writing, and when I'm writing I have no energy left to dream.

Writing devours dreams. Send help.

But apparently this time I hit that sweet spot of "immersed in Cradle but not a soulless husk," so I had a very vivid and surprisingly well-structured dream starring Lindon, with a cameo appearance by Yerin.

It starts with Lindon walking up to a big Victorian mansion that is for some reason in a normal suburb, like a massive haunted house planted next to a regular real-world one-story house.

He is in another world and completely aware of this. He's there on a mission. I don't know if that mission was to hunt vampires or not, but that's definitely what he ends up doing, because he blasts in the door and incinerates a bunch of low-ranking vampires.

I'm then watching Lindon tear his way through higher-ranking vampires. Each of them wake up, because it's daytime and they were asleep in their coffins, and talks about the new powers they have and how much stronger they are than the last batch, and Lindon effortlessly annihilates them and keeps marching deeper into this huge, sprawling, maze-like mansion.

As he proceeds, the vampires start activating magic to seal off his abilities. I'm not kidding, this whole vampire ranking thing and them coming up with magic ways to deal with Lindon were actually parts of the dream.

The most significant one is that they have this anti-fire enchantment that prevents anyone from using fire magic inside the mansion, thus sealing off Blackflame, which they think will make him powerless. Only to have him switch cores and continue with pure madra techniques.

They seal that off, only to find out that he's also stronger than them, and is getting stronger by feeding on them as he continues.

By the end of the dream, he's facing down this elder vampire, who claims to be a world-ending threat and this apocalyptically powerful being, and Lindon has been stripped of basically all his techniques, but he's still strong enough to go toe-to-toe in a superpowered brawl.

And, even though this isn't very Lindon-like, he's having fun. He's enjoying finding someone in this universe who can, even under these incredibly restricted conditions, kinda-sorta match him.

So Lindon finally wins, the elder vampire lays there dying, and then Yerin blows the entire upper half of the house apart looking for Lindon.

She's shocked and hurt that he would take these guys on without her, because they use blood aura and thus she would have annihilated them instantly.

Dross comes out to explain that was the point, that it would have been too easy had they gone together, and then the dream POV switches to the dying elder vampire who senses the power of these other-world invaders and dies in despair, having realized only at the moment of his death that he was never as powerful as he imagined.

...real dream, no joke.

I also find it pretty hilarious that I didn't dream that *I* was Lindon. For most of it, I was just watching him fight up the vampire ladder from the outside. The only other point-of-view I took besides "person watching" was the evil elder vampire.

So anyway, that was my subtle way of letting you guys know about our upcoming licensing deal to make Blade IV: From the Grave to the Cradle.

​-Will