Okay, maybe she couldn’t handle this. Andie landed with a thud, taking off again as soon as she hit the ground. Thick, soupy air - if it even was air - fought her every step of the way, smothering her as she struggled to make it to the next floating cluster of apartment sized buildings. This had all been a huge mistake, she never should have -
“FUphlerxgle!” Andie tripped over a hole melted into the ground beneath her, face planting into a pile of shadowy goo. The place was loaded with the stuff, just like most of the damaged mindscapes she and her friends fought in. It wormed its way into the broken cracks of everything that looked like it had once been happy, and as far a she could tell it represented hatred. Usually self hatred, but not always.
Andie glanced toward the hole she’d tripped on. Puke brown rust was eating away at the building, slowly but surely. The stuff had caused massive damage all over the mindscape, but at the rate it was moving it must’ve taken it months to get as far as it had. She’d never seen anything like it before, but it didn’t take a master psychologist to guess that it represented the physical, chemical damage done to Dustin’s mind.
A white blur crashed next to Andie. “Ly… lY… LYiAyRRR!” Oh, that’s right. Andie was running away from a murder machine. She’d almost forgotten.
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She rolled out of the way as the Nightmare punched the ground next to her. At least, she thought it was a Nightmare? It was shaped like a robotic knock-off of Superman, and had the sort of glistening white color scheme most Dreams had - but Dreams were the guardians of healthy minds, and this was neither a guardian nor a healthy mind. An evil Dream, a Dream-mare? No, that wasn’t right. It didn’t have the usual splash of color that Dreams had. Instead it had a mixture of shadow and rust leaking out from its joints, and flowing out from it’s cracked, dull red eyes. Perhaps the dream had been corrupted through long term chemical and emotional imbalances? Turned into some kind of druggy nightmare... a Drugmare?
The Drugmare punched again, this time stopped by the blazing red forcefield projected by Dyllan, who was straddling the line between fashionably late and too-little-too-late in the timing of his arrival. “Go, Andie! I’ll hold him off!”
“Like hell you will!” Andie grabbed Dyllan by the scruff of the collar and bolted, dragging her surprised friend along as she ran. “We have a very strict ‘no heroic sacrifices’ rule, everyone gets out of this - shit!” Andie ducked under a flying chunk of building. What was it with Nightmares and improvised projectiles? It was like they were all part of some secret cult that worshiped Donkey Kong or something. “Alive! Everyone gets out of this alive!”