Andie charged toward Dyllan’s idiot Nightmare. She didn’t need to look to know the lunkhead’s arms had already started to regenerate, and she didn’t need to waste a fraction of a second worrying to realize that its regeneration changed nothing. No matter how many times the bestial moron restored its limbs, Andie could always just cut them off again. She was a shadow, she didn’t get tired. Pain and fatigue were unnatural for her. Her only vulnerability was her ego - one mistake was all it would take for something to pierce her chest and break what remained of the fragile thing. One mistake was all it would take for her to become one of those brain-dead “nightwalkers.”

Good thing she didn’t make mistakes.

Andie wove through a hail of bullets. It seemed the hollow-skulled Nightmare had finally remembered its gun.

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A thought that almost resembled doubt sprung from Andie’s chest: Was her ego’s plan really going to work? Andie scoffed. Of course her ego’s plan would work. The glowing bundle of pointless anxiety may have been made up of all her weakness, but even at her lowest, Andie was still smarter, tougher, and fiercer than anyone else.

Besides, it was too late to turn back now.

Andie tossed aside her weapon and leapt at the Nightmare - latching herself onto the beast’s chest. She channeled the same focus that she used to open portals out of mindscapes, gathering it in her right hand then plunging it deep into the Nightmare’s charred and rotting flesh - tearing open a rift beneath its skin.

From the rift poured out twin plumes of dream smoke, their arrival neither expected nor surprising. One was blazing red, the other ashen gray. Both blended together in a spiral that stunk of burning spice and rot.