Cedric paced impatiently in front of the wisping, fiery red-orange dream smoke. When he, Andie, and Dyllan had split up to make a tactical retreat, everyone agreed that he should be the first to make his exit. After all, he was the least athletically inclined of the three and was, therefore, the most likely to bite the dust during an extended chase. “…What’s taking them so long…” The temptation to re-enter the mindscape to help his friends grew by the second, but he held back. Depending on the situation, his return could potentially make things far worse - and there was no guarantee he wasn’t too late anyway.
It had been only a few minutes since Cedric last saw his friends, but it should have taken them far less time to escape. They could make an exit portal anywhere in the mindscape, so all they needed to do was buy a few seconds - not navigate to a specific location. This meant that for at least three minutes, they had been under constant assault from that beast of a Nightmare.
“OhfankGah.” Andie stumbled out of the dream smoke, tripping over Dustin’s unconscious body as she did. Her voice was muffled by the severed arm she held in her mouth. “We ma’e I’…”
“Andie! Dyllan! You’re -” Cedric’s face lit up with excitement, then promptly shattered into horrified shock. “…not okay at all… What happened!?”
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“E'il ‘upli'a'es ma’e ou’ of - ‘ang on...” Andie dropped Dyllan to the ground, then took her arm out of her mouth and handed it to Cedric for healing. “Evil duplicates made out of all our negative traits. They could do everything we could, and then some! It was ba - ow!”
“Sorry, sorry… I’m trying to be gentle, but this wound is a lot worse than - lend a hand, my Kindness - than usual.” Deep purple energy flowed out of Cedric’s hands, shifting to rose red and then a golden orange as it wove Andie’s arm back on. “Plus, I have to finish this mess before I run out of Kindness and -” He froze in place, returning to his senses just in time to keep the healing from stopping. “Did you say they can do everything we can do!?”
“Yeah, everything. They even have their own Virtues, just like us. Well, they’re more of Vices… but you get my point.” Andie winced in pain. “Why do you ask?”
“Because, if they can really do everything we can…” Cedric checked to make sure Andie was well enough to run at full speed. She was, even though her arm was still leaking Will to Live. “Lend a hand, my kindness.” Cedric switched to healing Dyllan. This time his energy changed from purple, to rose red, to blazing red.
“Hey! What gives! My arm is still -”
“Andie. They can create portals to and from mindscapes. Your evil counterpart could leap out of that dream smoke and attack us at any moment.” He watched as Dyllan started to wake up. “We can patch up your arm later, right now we need to focus on getting the hell away from here.”