The Game

I have had this dream 3 nights in a row, last night being the most recent. It's really vivid and graphic, with blood actually flying through the air and hitting me and my surrounding props.    
  
My friends and I are in a huge arena, a lot like the Roman Colosseum was in its day. I and another player are at a table in the middle. I have one really important card that is highly coveted. I don't know how I got it, but if I lose, the other player gets it for his team. I'll win if I play it, but it is going to wreck something huge and put something else huge ahead in another game that is bigger and more broad. What we are doing right now is encompassed in that game, but we are not the main players. The two huge things are. If I don't win this game, the bad huge thing might defeat the good huge thing, and if he does, he will crack down on his subordinates, some of whom are my friends, have "turned," and are now playing on my side.   
   
We are surrounded by ongoing violent and bloody gladiator-style battles. We are playing cards in the midst of this, as if doing so is normal. There is blood on the table. It's so close and there's so much of it around, I can smell it. I can also smell sweat and, and there's that feeling that happens in the nose when there's metal in the air. I can hear screaming, shouting, and grunting, metal hitting metal, fists hitting flesh, and the occasional wet "shlock" sound of something sharp slicing into a limb. Every time I hear that sound, it takes monumental effort for me to not gag and throw up on the cards.    
   
My friends make up half of the combatants around us. Each is paired off an enemy tough enough to seriously endanger them, and in most cases, with the serious possibility of death. I know if I don't play the card, at least one of my friends will beat his or her attacker and go on to help the others, but the battle will be long and bloody, painful and damaging, and we risk losing some of our own. I know if I play the card, there will be peripheral damage in the stands among the cheering section for the other side. Those are people who support the other side, but who aren't gladiators in the match.   
  
I look around at those people and at my friends, and agonize over playing the card, thinking that maybe I should just get up and fight instead. Maybe I could tip the scales, and save my friends, without harming civilians. I want to protect the civilians even though they are enemies, basically just because they are not fighters. I don't know if they're misled, or if they're complacent, or even willing, as they could be. I just know they're not fighters, and they could never hit me back as hard as I could hit them.   
   
Among my friends, I see frustration, anger, and some fear. Then, looking past them to the stands where the enemy cheering section is, I see eagerness and hatred. These people want to see my friends die in battle. They're screaming for blood. That makes up my mind, and I start to lower my card to the table.

This is where the dream ended on the first two nights. Last night, there was this:

I can see my hand and the card slowly descending to the table. At the same time, my opponent's face is in plain sight, jaw dropping and eyes widening. I can hear him yelling, "NO! Don't do it! You'll kill us all!"

The card touches the wood, and immediately flattens down as if I slammed it instead of just placing it. A burst of air shoots out from underneath as it hits, blowing all of the other cards off of the table onto the dirt at our feet.

There is a loud booming noise, and I feel the air pressure changing. Hot wind is blowing in my face, and I can barely keep my eyes open. I can hear my friends yelling and running toward me. Through the curtain of my eyelashes, I can see panic on the enemy side of the stands, and the enemy gladiators, bloodied but not beaten in battle, retreating to the opening in the bottom rows. My companions yell that we have to get out of here before the big blast. I can see that our cheering section has all ready evacuated, the last of them pouring out through an exit off to my right.

I am grabbed by many hands, and half-carried, half-dragged out toward the exit. I can see a green, grassy field on the other side. As we reach it, there's another explosive sound behind us, this one so deafening that at first I think it burst my eardrums.

That noise woke me so hard I jumped and nearly fell on the floor. It was louder than the bang you hear when a dud firecracker goes off on the 4th, and was followed by a rumble like thunder that for a second, followed me into wakefulness. At first, I thought there was a thunderstorm, but it's sunny and relatively clear outside, just a few fluffy white clouds in the sky. The noise had to be all in my head.