The room is somehow more abysmal than the one we were given in Omega Centauri. It has a simple bed, a singular dresser that looks like it was falling apart, and a desk. We look between it and Luna, who doesn't seem worried.

"I hope you weren't expecting a five-star hotel room in a random repurposed sewer. We do what we can where we can, and unfortunately, this is what we can do."

"That's fair. Thank you."

"Well, I'll leave you to it."

Luna walked away, and the two of us plus Aurora take the chance to sit down on the bed.

"I don't know about you, but I am exhausted. That whole galvanaught thing really took it all out of me. And then we came here."

I nod. Hopefully, Sola got out of there all right, but the odds weren't high.

"I'm almost ready to go to bed, but I kind of want to test out our new powers a bit more. Isn't this exciting? A new world? New powers? We can literally make things appear out of thin air. I wonder what all we can do with this."

Holly raises her arms, and a chair appears from the ground. She walks up to it and sits down, somehow excited that it worked, even though we both knew it would. I conjure up a chair as well. Its dark purple hue gives off a somehow ominous aura.

For the next twenty minutes, she lists off a household item and conjures it up. They're not quite functional, like a refrigerator, but they are certainly some form of real.

"I'll bet there's more to test," she finally says after creating a translucent tree, "but I think I'm ready for bed. What do you think about the bed situation?"

Shrug.

"Honestly, I'm over the whole 'trading every night' thing. We can be adults about sharing a bed."

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With that, she hops in, taking a conscious amount of blanket with her. I kick off my shoes and do the same, and it isn't long before Aurora joins in the middle.

I couldn't tell I was dreaming at first until it became a nightmare. I remembered falling asleep in bed, but I couldn't remember where...

And then Holly came into view, holding a bundle of roses with one of the rings from Alpha Centauri. She looked at me, and for a moment, things seemed normal, until her face warped grotesquely. It turned gray and more rectangular until her whole body was buried, and then she became a gravestone.

Others popped up around her, completely unintelligible aside from one large one in the center: Tesla Simms. I felt a ping of rain, and then another, until I looked up and saw that it was not rain, but sand, and I was at the bottom of a skull hourglass.

As the sand poured, I could feel my body slowing down. I desperately wanted to run, but no matter how much I forced my legs, it felt as if I was in slow motion. The grains of sand grew larger and larger until popcorn-sized pellets were raining down.

"Help!" I screamed out, but it was too late. The sand began to suffocate me, and the world turned black, and—

And then I was digging myself out of a bush, where the cover of nighttime kept the color choked from the world around me. An ink blot drew danger in the sky, roaring loudly, headed my way.

This time my legs worked, and I pounded across a bridge, the blot following closer and closer every second. Ahead of me was a sandy coast, which I made a break for. Despite being almost midnight, the sand was hot and burned my feet, slowing me down just enough for the ink blot to take a stab at me. Right as its jaw unhinged, the world around me shifted again, throwing me onto the deck of a ship in the middle of the sea.

I crawled to my feet, hoping for steady ground, but the ship rocked on the heavy waves, tossing me back to the floor. When I looked up, I was in a cell, and multiple blurry people dressed as pirates were standing around me, yelling and shouting things I couldn't understand. Then, the ship lifted off the water and into the air, with massive jets on either side.

"Is this too much for you?" a booming voice says.

"Yes," I reply, hands over my ears.

"You're not supposed to be here, are you?"

"No."

"Then leave."

I wake up back in the sewer bed, sweating, crying, and panting. It's pitch black, save for a small crack of light coming from underneath the door. Aside me, Holly sleeps peacefully, her rhythmic breathing matching Aurora's beside her.

Well, I guess she's not really aside me. More like in my arms. At some point during the night, I must have rolled over and wrapped my arms around her. I slowly retrieve them, hoping she hadn't been awake when I did it.

What a nightmare that would've been.