Cedric pulled open a new monitor, finally getting Andie back “on camera”. Even with the near omniscience his Empathy granted him, Andie was hard to keep track of - and that was before she had her awakening. Now it felt like he had to open a new screen every other second. Keeping track of her Nightmare and Dream on top of that was just an exercise in frustration.

It looked like she was going to test out the power of her Vice - well, the power that used to be her Vice’s. Now, like everything else, it was just another part of her trait. Cedric had to admit, he was curious how it had changed. It began with her crudely ripping her scarf off - then brilliant orange flames began to spread from the parts where it had torn, and the entire scarf was swiftly engulfed in a roaring blaze of her Will to Live. Next, Andie tightened her grip on her scarf and wound herself up with a tension reminiscent of a spinning top right before someone pulled the ripcord.

A sharp headache spiked in the front of Cedric’s brain as the data stream flowing through his Trait suddenly became deafeningly loud. Reflexively, he severed his connection to it and closed all his monitors. What the hell was that!? Was it something Andie did, or -

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“Cedric, look out!”

Cedric paused as he heard Dyllan’s voice. Thanks to the headache, it took him a second to process what was going on. He turned to look at Dyllan, who was rushing at him with a frantic look on his face. Then he turned toward the center of the mindscape… and saw a titanic pillar of orange flames barreling towards him with outright alarming speed.

It was all Cedric could do to raise his hands and cover his face - a futile action that, thankfully, also seemed to have been unnecessary. The fire didn’t burn him, it wasn’t even hot, just… there wasn’t really an easy word for it. It was sharp, intense, and something adjacent to painful - but not malicious or harmful. It reminded Cedric of when he had made the grand mistake of sitting in between Andie and Dyllan while they watched a very important sportsball match of some variety. His peaceful reading had been interrupted with a sudden raucous cheer as his two friends bolted upright and used their entire lung capacity to leave his ears ringing. Except this time, the ringing echoed throughout every cell of his body like a gong.