The swirling red light that floated in front of Dyllan began to slow and solidify, forming something that looked to be halfway between a swirling portal and the ripples left by a skipping stone hitting water. He reached toward it… but stopped short when hesitation overtook him.

Dyllan took a deep breath in through his nose, then slowly let it out through his mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In, out. In. Out. Focus. Nightmares only had as much power as their host chose to give them. Dyllan knew that. He knew that ignoring his Nightmare was the best thing to do.

…but even still, Dyllan found his gaze drifting towards his Nightmare. He thought it would still be throwing its tantrum, skittering around and roaring at chunks of bunker or the broken platforms that once held them up.

It was not. The sickening monster was standing perfectly still, staring at Dyllan with a twisted grin spread out across its face… if you could call it a face.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Shadowy holes opened up one by one across the mindscape, and from them dropped rotting, monochrome corpses. Sickening, twisted, mockeries of children dangling by their necks from nooses made of power cords. Not just any children either, no. They looked like Aspen.

Dyllan could feel something starting to slip away from him - to return to being part of him instead of just him. He quickly shook it off, but not quickly enough to keep his Nightmare from taking advantage of his hesitation.

The monster threw aside its iteration of Dyllan’s Rage - digging its blackened talons into the air of the mindscape as its back began to wriggle and writhe like a leathery corpse with maggots just below the skin. The two arms that were on its back shifted further apart while the Nightmare plunged hand of the arm attached to its left shoulder - which it had previously been using to help support its rifle - deep into its back and pulled out a crude SMG caked in oil and bloodstains. The shapes moving underneath the beast’s hide began to gather together and coalesced into two new arms that pushed against the Nightmare’s skin until they tore open its back like a cocoon - brandishing a heavy machine gun, which the monster rested on top of its own head.