Did it matter? No, it didn't. Jail may have been captured and the Numbers stopped, but can you consider it a victory when the one who did so was the reason this mess started. Saint's Cradle was stopped and Vivio saved.
But, they wanted her destroyed. She was too dangerous, they said. Even when Nanoha and Fate pleaded to spare her, they refused.
Big mistake.
Something had snapped inside Vivio that day. The thought of being taken away again. The thought of being killed - a thought she once harbored. She didn't want to experience that again.
They call the day the TSAB fell the day the King returned. Where ever the Saint Kaiser walked, people ran. Mid-Childa would be the first to fall.
...all because they wanted to separate a child from her parents.
The land burned, and all through it, the Saint Kaiser walked. And where she did, people disappeared - like they were dust, like they were dead and gone, like they were nothing more than dreams.
Not everyone disappeared, though - a young man, blonde and red-eyed, and a distinctly odd-looking blue-striped alien. They were still there, merely watching until the young man stepped forward.
"So this is your nightmare, then?" he called out to her, both hands slack and non-threatening at his sides.
‘Only watching’ is a good way to describe what Aeneas was doing, and frankly it was all he wanted to be doing. This was honestly terrifying. Perhaps not as much as his own dream had been, but it was easy to see how someone could be afraid to become something like this.
And though it scared the digestive wastes out of him (that is how the human phrase goes, yeah?), the sheer horror of the nightmare made Aeneas want to help out more. Anything to save this one from a fate like this…
He stood uncertainly behind Sheik, attempting a calming purr. This was easier with his new companion’s backing; he never would’ve been able to do this on his own.
That’s right, Vivio. Come to the big, fluffy alien…
"Nightmare?" Vivio called out, turning to face the two. "This is worse than a nightmare... they... they said I was too dangerous! They wanted to take me away from Nanoha-mama and Fate-mama!"
She approached the two, hearing Aeneas's purring.
"Y...You're here to do that, aren't you?" Vivio said, trying her best to ignore the purr. "You're not going to take my mamas away from me!"
Zelda would be so much better at this, but it was too late for them to change now. "We're not going to take your mamas away from you," he told her gently, keeping his voice steady. "You have my word on this. What's your name? Mine is Sheik, and this -" he gestured to his companion - "Is Aeneas."
Calm and measured and soft, to keep her distracted from destruction. Like talking to a skittish wild animal, really.
Aeneas took a steadying breath, asserting his purr as he calmed himself. If he knew anything about instincts, especially the ones dealing with parental bonds, he knew that the adrenaline rush they caused heightened the senses to amazing levels. This human would smell his fear if he didn’t contain it.
A gentle nod, a disarming lower of the tail and head. It was only then that Aeneas had a sudden flicker of recognition—this girl, he’d met her once. Maybe. Okay, she was vaguely familiar. But still, it was enough to make him wonder…
Still he said nothing. Only the purring; that was all that was needed right now.
"Vivio... m... my name's Vivio Takamachi. Where's my mamas? Please, where are they?" She says, confused. She's slowly coming to, but she's still fighting it a bit.
Takamachi - ah, she had mentioned Nanoha earlier, hadn't she? And Nanoha had mentioned her daughter... "If I know Nanoha," he said gently, "She's fighting the nightmares as well - the sooner we can get you out of this, the sooner we can get you back to her."
Cautiously, he took a step forward, holding a hand out to her. "Vivio, do you remember? The Nightmare King - none of this is real. We're on the ship - you must remember."
Aeneas woke up. This actually is not true, because if he was really awake he wouldn’t have seen what he was seeing.
He was in the Med Bay, exactly where he should’ve been, lying in bed with various monitors plugged into the crooks of his joints and a heavy splint on his back leg. The alarms hadn’t breeched his slumber, and the local anesthetics were doing their job, so he wasn’t in any serious pain or distress. As a matter of fact, Aeneas felt quite…nice.
”Your mind is weak, creature.”
Lavender eyes flew open and feathers bristled. Aeneas reflexively brought his front legs in and propped his torso onto his elbows, neck craning to get a better look. His tail lashed anxiously over the edge of the bed, swiping away blankets.
And none of this fazed the large Animalian female directly in front of him, seven feet tall and twelve feet long, pure muscle and prickling fur, giant maw dribbling with florescent red blood, dark but wonderful. This…this was Thessaly.
Aeneas said nothing.
”But this is nothing new, is it?” she purred, pacing slowly around the cot, giant front claws clicking against the floor, ”You’ve always been powerless. You suspected something was odd with the Project, but you couldn’t refuse. You thought Hesiod was a good man, but you couldn’t deny my word. You and all the other males of the universe knew that choosing a mate is final, but you honestly believed that we would be together in the end…You were even helpless to keep your whore of a mother from conceiving your bastard seed.”
A growl, deep and filled with static, erupted from Aeneas’s parted jaws. Too far, she’d gone too far—but he didn’t even know his family! How could he be certain that Thessaly was telling the truth? Was this residual, overwhelming anger he felt the only evidence he could go on?
…Indeed. If it was, then everything she said was correct.
“Leave me alone.”
A trill of laughter, a deepening of dark teal eyes, and Thessaly was towering beside him. Her warm breath burned his fur and smelled of blood. His blood.
”…No.”
Her mandibles parted and she roared, terrible sound echoing off the vacuous walls of Med Bay.
Her thick red hair was tousled as though she'd been running her fingers through it repeatedly, her skin pale and slick with sweat. Her forehead crinkled in worry, a frown hardening her normally comforting expression. She gasped suddenly and spun around, her hair fanning out around her.
Scott! A smile instantly replaced the worry and she took a step toward him. But then, Scott was firing at her, slamming her hard into a wall as she instictively lifted her hands before her, trying desperately to hold back his optic blasts.
"You're a failure, Jean! A FAILURE!"
It was so hard. What was wrong with him?
And then the scene shifted and she was looking up at Logan. He was glaring down at her, as he rested his hands briefly on her shoulders. She's confused and for once she can't read his mind.
"Hey, Red." Logan's smirking as his hands moved to caress her neck. "No one wants you. You're damaged. Unfixable." And then his hands are tightening around her throat, choking her. His sharp claws bury themselves in her flesh as she struggles to break free.
Fire. Explosions. Death.
Unfixable. Broken.
Not real.
Damaged. No one wants you.
Not real! Not real! Notrealnotrealnotrealnotreal.
Gasping, she stumbled back, released from the nightmare which had held her. Jeans hands went up and rubbed her neck, and frowned feeling the stickiness of blood. But she wasn't hurt badly, nothing more than a few scratches on her neck and a few bruises from being slammed into a wall.
Nightmare King.
Her eyebrows furrowed and she's suddenly angry that it had put her through something like that. It had felt so real. But it hadn't been. She knew that now.
More often than not, Will had a simple way to tell if he was asleep and dreaming, or an idiot and awake - vision. If he could see more than just energy, he was asleep. It was obvious. This knowledge had, over time, led to him being able to exert a certain amount of control over dreams, a talent he intended to pass on to the rest of the crew; as a matter of fact, lessons were going to begin tomorrow.
But the nightmare kind knew this; his spies were everywhere and told him everything he need to know about everyone on the ship (it's good to be the king). So, he had created a specific dream scenario for Will's reality bubble. It was counter intuitive, but it would work, perhaps better than most ideas.
He gave Will just what he wanted. His apartment, above the bakery. Ria, beautiful and melodious as ever. Toun, acting like the child he was. Is. Whatever. And to cap it all off, he could see his beautiful family, making everything he'd gone through, the training, prison, even being killed, all worth it. It was true happiness. It was bliss. All it was missing was Kala, but he could change that.
But he knew it was a lie. He knew it was a dream. And that knowledge scared the crap out of him. The nightmare king had turned him into a weapon against the ship in the easiest way possible; he gave him something he would fight to keep.
Leaning against a wall is someone who shouldn't be there - Sheik. He's watching the happy domestics with a wary eye, arms crossed. Until Will catches his eye, he's just... waiting.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also an alien with him. A really long, blue, fuzzy alien—one who, for his usually docile nature, is looking noticeably more perturbed in this environment than expected.
The joy radiating from these illusions was obvious, powerful, almost tempting; their emotions were nigh palpable in this air, like a strong scent subdued in water. Aeneas had experienced something similar in his first dreams. He knew what it was like, he knew what it would lead to.
And knowing that made him so angry. Knowing that this was all just a simple manipulation, a careless tossing of passions that had this human in the Nightmare King’s palms within the instant it was shown to him. It would all end in tears.
Aeneas stood, seething by the back wall, every vengeful thought and carefully checked curse directed at the false specter that he knew was watching all this. And Spode, did he hope the bastard could hear him.
Will put a hand on Toun's shoulders, protecting and guarding him. It was what he did; he was a teacher, after all. Well, maybe not quite back in this time period, but then again, he'd lived a long life since this point.
"Aye. Belfast, 1942. Three years before I died, and four years before I was declared a mass murderer." He focused on Sheik, bordering on glaring.
"I won't go back to the ship. This is my dream, and ye've no right to bring reality here."
((ooc: I honestly don't think we should bother too much with a post order.. frankly, I just want to try and get this section taken care of so we can move on.))
"It's tempting, I know," he said softly. "You want what you've lost - that's only natural. But..." And he took a step forward, one hand outstretched. "You can't stay here."
((OOC: Yeah, fair enough. Also, what do we do about Jean-mun's hiatus? Just say that they all go to find her after Will's out and handwave that bit?))
Aeneas shook his head sullenly and let out a low hiss from his ruffled feathers, breaking his silence and polluting the atmosphere with the unusual noise. If this human can be defiant, then so could he.
“If we do not bring reality here then reality will find you itself,” he took a few brisk steps forward, not imposing himself between the two, but still far enough to make himself noticed (moreso than usual at least), “And believe me, that revelation will be many times more unpleasant than if you leave now.”
((ooc: Works for me if it works for everyone else.))
A low, slightly manic chuckle escaped Will's throat. "What I've lost? Oh, this has noting to do with what I've lost. People die. It happens. I'm used to it. This is about what I gain."
He grinned. Yeah, definitely entered a manic phase. "Ye guys don't get it. Ye see, but ye don't see it. Reality is always changing and shifting. For once, one singular moment, it shifted in my favor. I died when I was 25, blind my whole life. God brought me back with a mission, and gave me a stupid gift; I don't age. That way, I can keep working until someone kills me again. The one thing he promised I'd get someday has finally been given to me, 60 years later. I can see, boys, and I'm lovin' it. Why would I go back?"
For the first time in a long time, Aeneas felt honestly frustrated.
“Because it isn’t real!” he argued, now taking the liberty to put himself in the front, “I know it seems wonderful and beautiful and fantastic beyond all belief, but as soon as you let your guard down, as soon as you give in, the Nightmare King will rip you apart, limb from limb, emotion from emotion. He is using you, human. Using you like the puppet you are.”
…Wow. That was…wow. Certainly won’t see Aeneas do that on a regular basis.
It hadn't been Sheik wandering the halls that day - it had been a blonde girl few would have recognised, shadows under her eyes testament to the fact that she had undergone the same treatment that the rest of the crew had.
Link had been with her, hadn't he? But they had got separated, and now she had wandered straight back into a nightmare - the halls of the meatship wavering and warping into an image of the blasted castle, a dark stain against the sky, an abomination marring the peaceful view of Hyrule.
She wasn't alone.
It wasn't Ganondorf that came for her, this time - it was the many and varied residents of Hyrule. They didn't attack her, though - this was something much less simple.
"Stupid girl. What right do you have?"
"You should have suffered alongside us."
"What makes you think you could rule?"
"You couldn't even protect us!"
If Sheik was here, she couldn't hear him. Had he abandoned her like she had abandoned Hyrule? She deserved no less. Stupid girl.
A choked sob escaped. If it had just been lies, they would have been easy to brush off. But this was Truth - bright and sharp and painful, something inescapable. "I'm sorry," she whispered hoarsely, and screamed. "I'm sorry!"
Aeneas wasn’t entirely sure how he managed to get himself out of his bed—something about the pain meds combined with his fear-induced adrenaline rush made him move faster than his brain wanted to comprehend—but there he was, backing away awkwardly, steadily making his way for the exit. The splint on his back leg was taking some getting used to, making him unsteady at best, though at least he could still walk. Oh, the joys of being a quadruped.
”Don’t think that you can escape.”
The female Thessaly looked even larger on the ground, her posture swaggering, mandibles clicking as she stalked towards him. She was the perfect hunter, no doubt about it. Perhaps if Aeneas knew more about his own species’ history then he could make better assumptions about each gender’s role in the community, but as of right now? Females probably got the food. Females got the food and they definitely wore the pants in the family. Even Hesiod, who was considerably larger than this one cowering away from his nightmare creature, would’ve been completely overwhelmed…Aeneas was just a little scrap of meat to her.
So then. How does one get away from the perfect predator? How does one combine instinct and knowledge to escape the beast?
Thessaly crouched, legs bundling like the springs they were. Her front claws would be the first to hit, tearing through his fur and flesh like thin ribbons of uncooked meat; then her jaws would come down on his neck, instantly breaking his back, and if that didn’t kill him, the kick of her back legs to the delicate organs in his torso would.
These images flashed through Aeneas’s mind, and he panicked. “W—Wait!”
She stopped, relaxing and cocking her head. Last words much? She’s listening…
Aeneas turned tail and ran. This considerably harder with only three legs and one in a cast, but you’d better believe that he’s taking full advantage of those local anesthetics to get as much propulsion as possible. And now he’s coming down a hallway, his nightmare combining with that of another one as Thessaly came tearing after him, drool and blood flying from her open maw as she reached out to snap at his tail—
-- sending the image of Hyrule's residents scattering like dust as Aeneas plows through them, words fading into the wind. Zelda glances up, startled, then has to leap aside to avoid them both - it's a risky battlefield, one with a sheer drop and bubbling lava and broken and unstable rock, and it's not one she wishes to remain in. Especially not with the new...
The new...
She's seen one of them before - the hunted, not the hunter. But she can't remember, doesn't know where the encounter took place - a battlefield, or the hidden places of the world, or...
Or the medbay on the ship.
It doesn't take long - a quick mental command to Sheik, and the transformation takes place in a flash of light. And then Sheik is running, blade in hand, to where the hunt is taking place.
"HEY!" he yells, then reaches for a rock and hurls it at the hunter as hard as he can.
He didn’t notice the landscape until he saw the glimmer of metal and a rock come flying past his head, and by that point it was too late to stop. Aeneas locked his legs, the cast reliably got in his way, and he tumbled bodily towards the cliff face. Thankfully he came several feet short, though a strategically-placed wiry stump knocked his head hard enough to keep him still where he landed.
Meanwhile, there’s that rock. Thessaly was too focused on her prize to notice it, at least until it hit the side of her face, denting a few feather-like gills. She also came to a stop, albeit a far more graceful one, and spun around to regard the new nuisance.
Sheik has just gotten the attention of a twelve-foot-long, seven-foot-tall female alien, sleek and powerful, perfectly shaped for what she did best. She looked over the new creature curiously, a string of opaque drool falling through her maw and burning a pocket in the crumbling stone below.
This is something new. No Animalian had tasted the flesh of humans, and Aeneas should know that Thessaly loved foreign delicacies.
”You carry a weapon, tiny creature,” she purred, crouching, readying for the attack, ”And you are built well, but with just enough fat to add flavor…You may not even require seasoning. Just do me a favor and die quickly so that your meat isn’t tough.”
And she lunged forward, blindingly fast, mandibles open to reveal rows of inch-long fangs and a gaping throat lined with blood.
There's fast and there's fast - if Sheik had been a normal human, he would quite possibly be dead again by now.
But he's not, and disappearing into the shadows requires no second thought. Within their boundaries, Thessaly appears as a brightish splodge, one he can skirt safely, dart several metres away, and reappear only to let loose with a handful of long, sharp throwing needles.
She skidded to a halt, large tail keeping her balance as she made a sharp turn—and taking most of the throwing needles. Some of them hit the fleshy bulk, some lodged themselves within the muscular plates running along her ventral side, and all of them were enough to piss her off.
Thessaly screeched loudly, making a second run at her prey. A real hunter of her species wouldn’t have tried this again; instead she would’ve captured his scent and use that to keep track of where her teleporting prey was going to appear. This, however, is a Nightmare King specter, meant to confront one target and one target only. She would not adapt, not readily.
A hit! ...He just hoped he could get them back afterwards, since now he was distinctly out of stock. Disappearing back into the shadows, he crouched, waiting until she had roared past him before slipping back to where he had seen a thicket of grass. And inside its depth - a prize of Deku nuts.
Scrambling up to reach the ledge above, in quick succession, he reappeared, hurled one of the nuts at Thessaly's face, then leaped, blade in hand, aiming for the vulnerability that was her spine.
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But, they wanted her destroyed. She was too dangerous, they said. Even when Nanoha and Fate pleaded to spare her, they refused.
Big mistake.
Something had snapped inside Vivio that day. The thought of being taken away again. The thought of being killed - a thought she once harbored. She didn't want to experience that again.
They call the day the TSAB fell the day the King returned. Where ever the Saint Kaiser walked, people ran. Mid-Childa would be the first to fall.
...all because they wanted to separate a child from her parents.
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Not everyone disappeared, though - a young man, blonde and red-eyed, and a distinctly odd-looking blue-striped alien. They were still there, merely watching until the young man stepped forward.
"So this is your nightmare, then?" he called out to her, both hands slack and non-threatening at his sides.
((OOC: Order is Vivio - Sheik/Zelda - Aeneas?))
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And though it scared the digestive wastes out of him (that is how the human phrase goes, yeah?), the sheer horror of the nightmare made Aeneas want to help out more. Anything to save this one from a fate like this…
He stood uncertainly behind Sheik, attempting a calming purr. This was easier with his new companion’s backing; he never would’ve been able to do this on his own.
That’s right, Vivio. Come to the big, fluffy alien…
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She approached the two, hearing Aeneas's purring.
"Y...You're here to do that, aren't you?" Vivio said, trying her best to ignore the purr. "You're not going to take my mamas away from me!"
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Calm and measured and soft, to keep her distracted from destruction. Like talking to a skittish wild animal, really.
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A gentle nod, a disarming lower of the tail and head. It was only then that Aeneas had a sudden flicker of recognition—this girl, he’d met her once. Maybe. Okay, she was vaguely familiar. But still, it was enough to make him wonder…
Still he said nothing. Only the purring; that was all that was needed right now.
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"Vivio... m... my name's Vivio Takamachi. Where's my mamas? Please, where are they?" She says, confused. She's slowly coming to, but she's still fighting it a bit.
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Cautiously, he took a step forward, holding a hand out to her. "Vivio, do you remember? The Nightmare King - none of this is real. We're on the ship - you must remember."
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He was in the Med Bay, exactly where he should’ve been, lying in bed with various monitors plugged into the crooks of his joints and a heavy splint on his back leg. The alarms hadn’t breeched his slumber, and the local anesthetics were doing their job, so he wasn’t in any serious pain or distress. As a matter of fact, Aeneas felt quite…nice.
”Your mind is weak, creature.”
Lavender eyes flew open and feathers bristled. Aeneas reflexively brought his front legs in and propped his torso onto his elbows, neck craning to get a better look. His tail lashed anxiously over the edge of the bed, swiping away blankets.
And none of this fazed the large Animalian female directly in front of him, seven feet tall and twelve feet long, pure muscle and prickling fur, giant maw dribbling with florescent red blood, dark but wonderful. This…this was Thessaly.
Aeneas said nothing.
”But this is nothing new, is it?” she purred, pacing slowly around the cot, giant front claws clicking against the floor, ”You’ve always been powerless. You suspected something was odd with the Project, but you couldn’t refuse. You thought Hesiod was a good man, but you couldn’t deny my word. You and all the other males of the universe knew that choosing a mate is final, but you honestly believed that we would be together in the end…You were even helpless to keep your whore of a mother from conceiving your bastard seed.”
A growl, deep and filled with static, erupted from Aeneas’s parted jaws. Too far, she’d gone too far—but he didn’t even know his family! How could he be certain that Thessaly was telling the truth? Was this residual, overwhelming anger he felt the only evidence he could go on?
…Indeed. If it was, then everything she said was correct.
“Leave me alone.”
A trill of laughter, a deepening of dark teal eyes, and Thessaly was towering beside him. Her warm breath burned his fur and smelled of blood. His blood.
”…No.”
Her mandibles parted and she roared, terrible sound echoing off the vacuous walls of Med Bay.
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Scott! A smile instantly replaced the worry and she took a step toward him. But then, Scott was firing at her, slamming her hard into a wall as she instictively lifted her hands before her, trying desperately to hold back his optic blasts.
"You're a failure, Jean! A FAILURE!"
It was so hard. What was wrong with him?
And then the scene shifted and she was looking up at Logan. He was glaring down at her, as he rested his hands briefly on her shoulders. She's confused and for once she can't read his mind.
"Hey, Red." Logan's smirking as his hands moved to caress her neck. "No one wants you. You're damaged. Unfixable." And then his hands are tightening around her throat, choking her. His sharp claws bury themselves in her flesh as she struggles to break free.
Fire. Explosions. Death.
Unfixable. Broken.
Not real.
Damaged. No one wants you.
Not real! Not real! Notrealnotrealnotrealnotreal.
Gasping, she stumbled back, released from the nightmare which had held her. Jeans hands went up and rubbed her neck, and frowned feeling the stickiness of blood. But she wasn't hurt badly, nothing more than a few scratches on her neck and a few bruises from being slammed into a wall.
Nightmare King.
Her eyebrows furrowed and she's suddenly angry that it had put her through something like that. It had felt so real. But it hadn't been. She knew that now.
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But the nightmare kind knew this; his spies were everywhere and told him everything he need to know about everyone on the ship (it's good to be the king). So, he had created a specific dream scenario for Will's reality bubble. It was counter intuitive, but it would work, perhaps better than most ideas.
He gave Will just what he wanted. His apartment, above the bakery. Ria, beautiful and melodious as ever. Toun, acting like the child he was. Is. Whatever. And to cap it all off, he could see his beautiful family, making everything he'd gone through, the training, prison, even being killed, all worth it. It was true happiness. It was bliss. All it was missing was Kala, but he could change that.
But he knew it was a lie. He knew it was a dream. And that knowledge scared the crap out of him. The nightmare king had turned him into a weapon against the ship in the easiest way possible; he gave him something he would fight to keep.
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"Is this Eire?" he asks curiously.
((OOC: So! What order are we going in?))
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And, as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also an alien with him. A really long, blue, fuzzy alien—one who, for his usually docile nature, is looking noticeably more perturbed in this environment than expected.
The joy radiating from these illusions was obvious, powerful, almost tempting; their emotions were nigh palpable in this air, like a strong scent subdued in water. Aeneas had experienced something similar in his first dreams. He knew what it was like, he knew what it would lead to.
And knowing that made him so angry. Knowing that this was all just a simple manipulation, a careless tossing of passions that had this human in the Nightmare King’s palms within the instant it was shown to him. It would all end in tears.
Aeneas stood, seething by the back wall, every vengeful thought and carefully checked curse directed at the false specter that he knew was watching all this. And Spode, did he hope the bastard could hear him.
((ooc: I guess I'm next?))
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"Aye. Belfast, 1942. Three years before I died, and four years before I was declared a mass murderer." He focused on Sheik, bordering on glaring.
"I won't go back to the ship. This is my dream, and ye've no right to bring reality here."
((ooc: I honestly don't think we should bother too much with a post order.. frankly, I just want to try and get this section taken care of so we can move on.))
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"It's tempting, I know," he said softly. "You want what you've lost - that's only natural. But..." And he took a step forward, one hand outstretched. "You can't stay here."
((OOC: Yeah, fair enough. Also, what do we do about Jean-mun's hiatus? Just say that they all go to find her after Will's out and handwave that bit?))
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“If we do not bring reality here then reality will find you itself,” he took a few brisk steps forward, not imposing himself between the two, but still far enough to make himself noticed (moreso than usual at least), “And believe me, that revelation will be many times more unpleasant than if you leave now.”
((ooc: Works for me if it works for everyone else.))
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He grinned. Yeah, definitely entered a manic phase. "Ye guys don't get it. Ye see, but ye don't see it. Reality is always changing and shifting. For once, one singular moment, it shifted in my favor. I died when I was 25, blind my whole life. God brought me back with a mission, and gave me a stupid gift; I don't age. That way, I can keep working until someone kills me again. The one thing he promised I'd get someday has finally been given to me, 60 years later. I can see, boys, and I'm lovin' it. Why would I go back?"
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“Because it isn’t real!” he argued, now taking the liberty to put himself in the front, “I know it seems wonderful and beautiful and fantastic beyond all belief, but as soon as you let your guard down, as soon as you give in, the Nightmare King will rip you apart, limb from limb, emotion from emotion. He is using you, human. Using you like the puppet you are.”
…Wow. That was…wow. Certainly won’t see Aeneas do that on a regular basis.
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Link had been with her, hadn't he? But they had got separated, and now she had wandered straight back into a nightmare - the halls of the meatship wavering and warping into an image of the blasted castle, a dark stain against the sky, an abomination marring the peaceful view of Hyrule.
She wasn't alone.
It wasn't Ganondorf that came for her, this time - it was the many and varied residents of Hyrule. They didn't attack her, though - this was something much less simple.
"Stupid girl. What right do you have?"
"You should have suffered alongside us."
"What makes you think you could rule?"
"You couldn't even protect us!"
If Sheik was here, she couldn't hear him. Had he abandoned her like she had abandoned Hyrule? She deserved no less. Stupid girl.
A choked sob escaped. If it had just been lies, they would have been easy to brush off. But this was Truth - bright and sharp and painful, something inescapable. "I'm sorry," she whispered hoarsely, and screamed. "I'm sorry!"
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”Don’t think that you can escape.”
The female Thessaly looked even larger on the ground, her posture swaggering, mandibles clicking as she stalked towards him. She was the perfect hunter, no doubt about it. Perhaps if Aeneas knew more about his own species’ history then he could make better assumptions about each gender’s role in the community, but as of right now? Females probably got the food. Females got the food and they definitely wore the pants in the family. Even Hesiod, who was considerably larger than this one cowering away from his nightmare creature, would’ve been completely overwhelmed…Aeneas was just a little scrap of meat to her.
So then. How does one get away from the perfect predator? How does one combine instinct and knowledge to escape the beast?
Thessaly crouched, legs bundling like the springs they were. Her front claws would be the first to hit, tearing through his fur and flesh like thin ribbons of uncooked meat; then her jaws would come down on his neck, instantly breaking his back, and if that didn’t kill him, the kick of her back legs to the delicate organs in his torso would.
These images flashed through Aeneas’s mind, and he panicked. “W—Wait!”
She stopped, relaxing and cocking her head. Last words much? She’s listening…
Aeneas turned tail and ran. This considerably harder with only three legs and one in a cast, but you’d better believe that he’s taking full advantage of those local anesthetics to get as much propulsion as possible. And now he’s coming down a hallway, his nightmare combining with that of another one as Thessaly came tearing after him, drool and blood flying from her open maw as she reached out to snap at his tail—
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The new...
She's seen one of them before - the hunted, not the hunter. But she can't remember, doesn't know where the encounter took place - a battlefield, or the hidden places of the world, or...
Or the medbay on the ship.
It doesn't take long - a quick mental command to Sheik, and the transformation takes place in a flash of light. And then Sheik is running, blade in hand, to where the hunt is taking place.
"HEY!" he yells, then reaches for a rock and hurls it at the hunter as hard as he can.
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Meanwhile, there’s that rock. Thessaly was too focused on her prize to notice it, at least until it hit the side of her face, denting a few feather-like gills. She also came to a stop, albeit a far more graceful one, and spun around to regard the new nuisance.
Sheik has just gotten the attention of a twelve-foot-long, seven-foot-tall female alien, sleek and powerful, perfectly shaped for what she did best. She looked over the new creature curiously, a string of opaque drool falling through her maw and burning a pocket in the crumbling stone below.
This is something new. No Animalian had tasted the flesh of humans, and Aeneas should know that Thessaly loved foreign delicacies.
”You carry a weapon, tiny creature,” she purred, crouching, readying for the attack, ”And you are built well, but with just enough fat to add flavor…You may not even require seasoning. Just do me a favor and die quickly so that your meat isn’t tough.”
And she lunged forward, blindingly fast, mandibles open to reveal rows of inch-long fangs and a gaping throat lined with blood.
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againby now.But he's not, and disappearing into the shadows requires no second thought. Within their boundaries, Thessaly appears as a brightish splodge, one he can skirt safely, dart several metres away, and reappear only to let loose with a handful of long, sharp throwing needles.
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Thessaly screeched loudly, making a second run at her prey. A real hunter of her species wouldn’t have tried this again; instead she would’ve captured his scent and use that to keep track of where her teleporting prey was going to appear. This, however, is a Nightmare King specter, meant to confront one target and one target only. She would not adapt, not readily.
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Scrambling up to reach the ledge above, in quick succession, he reappeared, hurled one of the nuts at Thessaly's face, then leaped, blade in hand, aiming for the vulnerability that was her spine.
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