Ashlyn's POV
Maybe this whole thing is a dream, who's to say it isn't? People like me always question what's real and what is fake, it's part of our life. Our life is all an extension of what is possible. I am an architect in the dream realm. My job is to construct various dreamscapes and make them as hard as possible to escape so the dreamers, like my friend Syrie can stay as long as possible to solve our little problem that is making us come into this 'world'. The chemist in our little group is a boy named Travis, and he is responsible for making the drugs needed to sustain Syrie and I in our dream states. And my friend Syrie, she is responsible for picking the target we need information out of and infiltrating his or her dreams and finding their secrets with my and Travis' help.
Another thing that you might want to know is my name. I am Ashlyn or sometimes I go by Ash in our dream raids to avoid being recognized by the victim because most often it is someone that we know. Anyway, back on topic, my name is Ashlyn but sadly my last name cannot be given away because it is a major risk for me and my team. Briefly describing myself I would say that I am average height and from what I can recall my hair color is dark brown with small streaks of crimson highlights. Travis and Syrie also describe me as being very careful but confident in our 'work'. But they never say I'm the least bit over confident even when I feel that I am, and because they never tell me something could go horribly wrong in one of our missions. Moving right along in this brief description, one last thing before I start to talk about the important stuff, my eyes are a leafy green color and I tend to blend in with any place I go, just another random person that you'll forget about by the end of the day. But Syrie is the exact opposite, or so I think. Her hair is jet black and quite long, it goes down to her waist and she, for some odd reason, put in blonde highlights.
Moving on now, at this very moment Syrie and I are in a dream talking. We are walking up and up and up a set of Penrose stairs. As it is my favorite illusion to make in dreams Penrose stairs are dubbed as the impossible staircase. The stair make four ninety degree turns as they either ascend or descend in a continuous loop. Basically, if you are stuck on a set of these stairs you would never get any higher or any lower even if you spent a whole week trying. Another thing that you might want to know is my totem. A totem is a small trinket that dreamers, architects and chemists carry around while they are inside dreams. Inside the dreams and in the real world the totems do different things. For example, my totem, which is a small hourglass with my initials carved into the metal 'AJ'. In the real world the sand in the hourglass flows regularly whenever I tip it upside down, from top to bottom. But in the dream scape the hourglass' sand flows from bottom to top even when turned the other way over and over again. At this second Syrie and I are trying to find out the many secrets of one of our suspects under suspicion of trying to infiltrate Travis' dreams to find the secret to the ingredients he uses to make the drugs that keep us in our dream state. The suspect is someone who goes to our school but is a grade or two higher, and since Syrie and I are in tenth grade my best guess is that whoever it is is in twelfth grade and getting ready to graduate. And all on top of that Syrie has decided that we should try to go find this person she has been obsessing about that has been lost in limbo for over two years. Everyone knows that no one can escape from limbo and if they do that person is just plain crazy. While still talking to Syrie about the matter of trying to get out of limbo I bring up a good point.
"Syrie what if we save Leo, but we can't get ourselves out of limbo? What's going to happen then?" I ask her quizzically.
"We don't go into limbo Ash," she replied, a slight smile crossing her face.
"Okay, I'm listening," I say in a curious tone wondering what in the world she could be talking about. Limbo was the ultimate trap.
"What if we just go to the edge of a thrid level dream and lure Leo out of limbo then create this gigantic kick that will knock him out of it?"
"That... is an amazing idea. But how in the world can we even begin to try to get him on the edge of limbo? He's been there for like two years," I ask while I stop walking and lean against the railing on the staircase. My brain goes overtime trying to figure out how to make a kick that large. "If we're really going to follow through we need to recruit more people that we can trust. At least two or three more so we're able to get down that low."