"I went in with the team that wanted to find out where the other team went. Then bad things started to happen. People started to see things, and go crazy, and the monsters came. They couldn't get in contact with the rest of the ship--the only time they could, it sounded like there was fighting and screaming and they said the skyship was under attack."

The pirate attack on the ship, most likely.

Sweeping a hand over his face and rubbing his bald head, he gets up and starts pacing around.

"They had a machine there. They put me in it so I could go into the Avatar State and stay in it a long time. It hurt the monsters and it protected me from the things that were happening to make people go crazy. It also meant I was connected to the shields to hold him in. The seals. They took little bits of my blood when I was in the Avatar State because it helped keep the seal strong. That's where my body is now. That's how I can go into people's dreams, which I couldn't do before, instead of just the Spirit World. That's why he's not free. Yet."

He keeps pacing, staff clutched in his hand--he never liked sitting still, and especially doesn't right now when he's talking about something he doesn't want to be.

"It got worse. More dangerous. I--I couldn't save them." Despite their treatment of him, he looks regretful. "And since then, I've been holding the Nightmare King in. The Daligig had showed me where my friends were in the pods, and there are millions of people. I knew I had to keep him in until someone came, until Stacy did something to stop him somehow, or all those people..."

All those people would've been defenseless.

Sleeping, as that insidious beast, that creeping horror started to break into the reality of the ship where they dreamed, helpless.