Andie groaned as she pushed herself up off the ground. A stream of warmly glowing energy was flowing into her from a white drone - from Cedric’s Kindness. She felt mostly fine, a little sore at worst - but if Cedric had felt the need to heal her, it was safe to say that her current “feeling mostly fine” status was a relatively recent development.
After dusting herself off, Andie glanced around her surroundings. She was standing in a smallish crater, about three times as wide as she was tall. It was carved out of a floating chunk of rubble - one of hundreds broken off from the platforms that made up Dyllan’s mindscape.
Speaking of Dyllan, he and Cedric were on the same floating 50% of a bunker as Andie. Dyllan was standing next to a small crater of his own and quietly watching his Nightmare… which was currently flipping its shit and losing its lid. Dyllan was being really broody, too - like he was trying to do his best Batman-on-a-Gotham-gargoyle impression. Cedric, though, seemed a little nervous.
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“You doing okay, Andie?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” Andie did some quick stretches and cracked her knuckles. “Mind getting me caught up? Last thing I remember is Dyllan having some kind of epiphany, then a flash of red light.”
“Dyllan’s Nightmare went berserk and the mindscape tore itself apart with a razor-sharp tornado that’s still wrapped around the damn place like tinfoil on unwanted leftovers.”
“Well. That’s not good.”
“You’d think not, but Dyllan and I both agree that for all the thing’s bluster, his Nightmare…” Cedric paused mid sentence, a sad look crossing his face, almost like he felt bad for the monstrous hate-golem. “…it seems… afraid.”
“So!” A paradoxically friendly, vicious, and reassuring grin spread out across Andie’s face. “Do you think that means we can actually hurt the thing now?”
“No.” Dyllan spoke bluntly but quietly. His tone was flat but confident, and he kept his eyes locked on his Nightmare as he talked. “We can’t hurt it. I think I can, though - and I suspect I always could. If only I’d had the conviction to actually face it on the battlefield.”