They had the Colt now, they could stop this. Dean had his weapons ready to go, only as they moved along he was now in an abandoned town. Nothing but black eyed demons grinning at him. Cooing to him.
Didn't matter the meatsuit, he could still recognize Meg a mile away as she approached him.
"Hey Dean, haven't you missed us? Don't you miss all the fun and games you used to play? And you were so good, you were really making your teacher proud."
He snorted, and brought the gun to aim at her, "Can't say that I have, bitch." He cocked off the safety, ready to fire.
"You might as well point that at yourself, Dean-o. You're no better than us, just because you got to leave Hell early? Or well, some of you did."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The demon pouted, "Aw, poor little boy. Those angels still keeping you in the dark? You know they only needed enough for their general to wear you like a tux. Nothing more. You're just a shell. Most of the real Dean Winchester never left the pit. So sad."
It was a nightmare, the King was pulling out all stops now. Especially since he could see a familiar figure with a cold expression approaching in the background. That damn white suit again, and that superior smirk he wished will never happen for real.
"I'm dreaming," he growled back, "None of this is real."
Meg came closer, her voice a husky whisper, "Then why do you still feel nothing? Like something's missing?" On a louder voice, she added, "What's that saying of yours? 'What's dead should stay dead?' Well, baby, you are dead."
Dean wavered at that as she got closer, and then finally he pulled the trigger, "Get out of my head, you son of a bitch." He gasped as his nightmare faded away, and he tried not to think about what was said. Or how true it felt. No time for that now. They had a job to do.
The little rebellious angel that was perpetually on Dean's shoulder briskly approached the elder Winchester just as he was breaking free of the nightmare that the entity that lay within the walls of Escherville had inflicted upon him. Stepping up close, Castiel looked Dean over for a few moments, searching for any sign of injury before finally looking the hunter in the eye.
"Are you all right, Dean?" he asked. There was concern in his voice, but with Cas' perpetually flat tone it often took a trained ear to notice it.
"I'm good enough. We don't have time for this. Got a job to do, and need to get back to it." Just keep fighting, don't focus on anything else. Even if it does feel like he's just going through motions of living, he didn't have any other choice. He had to keep everybody safe and alive.
Cas watched as Dean started off again then like a good little angel he followed as they made their way toward a group of people that seemed to be having a little bit of trouble with the nightmares.
Sokka turned the corner and skidded to a stop in front of Dean, sword held loosely in one hand. Blood was still spattered along the blade, there hadn't been time to stop and clean it, not when people needed help. He looked at the other young man, chest heaving from his exertions. He'd been running, trying to find others, and the sound had attracted him.
"Good. C'mon, we have to get down to the city. People will probably be needing our help." Sokka was calm (well not exactly calm) but he was direct, to the point, and firm in his orders. There were things needed doing.
Through the shadows of the City, a small cat streaked like a black stroke of lightning. She had heard the red alert, had heard the second alert go out over the comms, and now she was moving with all the speed she could toward Escherville. She didn't dare long-jump it, not and leave enough energy for any spells she might need offensively.
A familiar, small black-and-white form made her skid to a sudden halt, her claws scrabbling across the concrete for purchase. "Arhu?"
"It's me," Arhu said, calm and aloof. Rhiow blinked slowly, sitting down, unnerved. "What's your hurry?"
"Arhu you don't know - oh, well, you must have only just podpopped," she licked her nose. "We're in battle. The Devestatrix is here - in another form, but still-"
Arhu's whiskers went forward, his tail going up jauntily, and Rhiow cut herself off mid-sentence. "Is She?" he asked, and Rhiow was once again struck by how much... older he sounded. Not like Arhu at all. "What a surprise."
"Arhu...?"
"Oh come now, you can't tell me you haven't figured it out already," Arhu said - or rather, the one wearing his shape said. The other cat, little more than a kitten, got to his feet as Rhiow's ears lay flat against her skull.
"Eldest, fairest and fallen," she said, a growl building in her chest. "Greetings, and defiance."
"Yes yes," Arhu's voice said, with a weary bemusement that was so unlike Arhu that Rhiow wondered how she could have ever mistaken the two. "The same thing, every time. Honestly, could you be original for once?"
"Could you?" Rhiow asked, now seeing the dark laughter at the back of Arhu's eyes. "Always the same trick, always the same choice. Always the same goal. You become very tiresome to fight, you know." Arhu hissed, his form growing to that of the black-and-white panther he used in old Downside - and that was what finally shook the realization loose in Rhiow's mind. It was impossible for one, even under the Lone One's influence, to take that form here. "And you too, Nightmare King, you're the same way. It's little surprise. You thought you could shake me this way?" She began building a wizardry in her mind, pacing around not-Arhu in a slow circle. "You thought you could get to me like this? Think again," she said, and snarled the release word on the spell she had built.
Something knifed cold and stunning into her gut as Arhu's eyes went wide in kittenish fear - fear that was like him, that did look familiar - in that split second before the wizardry took, he said "Rhiow-!" And then form of a black-and-white kitten exploded across the concrete in a shock of blood.
Rhiow staggered backward from it, shaking herself all over, her fur puffed out in all directions. Just a dream. A nightmare. Only a nightmare. Great Queen Iau, let it be true.
Sokka was headed deeper into the city. If things were this bad, Aang would need his help. And while Sokka wasn't exactly sure what he could do to help, he'd be damned if he would sit around doing nothing while he could be helping. He paused at the sight of the feline, frowning. Wasn't there a cat that was a member of the crew? He altered his course, heading in Rhiow's direction, sword helf loosely in one hand.
Rhiow turned her back on the bloody smudge splashed over the ground and began a through and vigorous bout of composure-grooming. It wasn't Arhu, not really, it's just another way He's trying to get into my head. she paused, closed her eyes for a moment. Right?
Her silent plea to the Whisperer went unanswered, and Rhiow felt a shock of despair creeping up on her. The Silent One was sometimes just that - silent - but this seemed like a time where it would be vital to have a hint, just a clue...
She heard footsteps approaching and cut her grooming short, looking up with narrowed eyes. The boy with the sword smelled... familiar, almost, the same kind of elusive thread of cold and furs as someone else she had met before. "Hunt's Luck," she said cautiously, made paranoid and wary by the painful reality of the dreams. "Are you... Hh-t'hara's kin?"
"Uh, you too..." Sokka replied. Well, that confirmed that it was one of the crew. He hoped. He knelt down to examine the cat for a moment, momentarily sheathing his blade across his back. He was heavily armed, besides the sword. A shotgun slung over one shoulder, and probably a pistol in one of the pockets of his jacket along with copious ammunition if the bulging pockets were any indication. He frowned, trying to decipher what she had said.
"Hh-'thara...? Oh! Katara? She's my sister." Speaking of Katara, where was she...? He shook his head. She could take of herself (mostly) and he needed to focus on the others right now.
"The Nightmare King is messing with us again, worse then ever. I think Aang needs our help right now...if the Nightmares are bad enough that they can hurt us physically...that we can't tell the difference..." He touched his arm gingerly, wincing. A glancing blow from a phantom spear-haft had caught him there, bruised.
Bella's running hard and without much thought, on her way toward Escherville. A massive wolf, five feet at the shoulder but somehow seeming larger, comes galloping up. She's bleeding freely from fresh wounds and a torn ear, but while she'd normally be sort of terrifying, it's oddly... reassuring.
The Visage of Fenris she tried to use to cow the Black Spiral Dancers still has not faded, but it won't last much longer. Until then, to her allies, she appears a more regal, impressive specimen than she really is.
She sees them and comes to a halt, fur bristling.
"I am Bella. I am Ahroun. I am Get of Fenris," she says, a short introduction. "I hear there is battle."
Rhiow opened her mouth to answer Sokka and then was interrupted by the wolf - well, it was just like the kin of the houiff to lack any kind of social graces and subtleties whatsoever. She glanced sideways at Bella. "Rhiow," she said by way of greeting, switching her tail from one side to the other. "I've known this was impending for a while - all of the mystical team has - and to tell you the truth, I am itching to sink my claws into something." The disgust in her voice was palpable, although she glanced over at the bloodstain and her ears laid out to the side, uncertain.
Her claws came out, scratching against the ground underneath her, and a low rumble like a growl buzzed in her throat. Entropy stalks the world in all its usual shapes, and some less usual than others. I'll meet them, the strange and the deadly, but I don't need to crouch in fear or bristle at them in show of defiance. I know my job. My commission comes from Those Who Are. We stand together, They and I, in protection of the world They made and I keep. It was the part of the meditation one said before a battle, and Rhiow knew that now, more than ever, it was appropriate.
Dean joined them, his gun ready. Great, some humans, an angel, and the wild kingdom. Rhiow was ok, he didn't know Bella though the name made the hunter pause for the briefest second. That was just weird.
"So we all awake and ready to go?" He had some bullets ready for the Nightmare King.
Castiel, who had followed Dean over to the group, stood behind the hunter and almost seemed to be hovering over his shoulder and following the elder Winchester around like a trained puppy to its master. He remained utterly silent, not muttering a syllable as he waited to follow Dean's lead the moment he made a decision about what to do.
Castiel stood still for what seemed like an eternity, watching as the air around him seemed to ripple and buckle causing the interior of the ship to look distorted. To one unfamiliar, it would appear as if the ship itself were changing, shifting and twisting but to Cas it was little more than a haze, like looking through the heated air above a fire--a slight blur. His mind would not be breached. It could not be breached.
He had led an army and laid seige to Hell itself--the prison God had created for the eternally damned--to capture Dean Winchester's soul and rip it out of the demons' hands and resurrect him back on Earth. Castiel was created for war. That was his purpose. He marched of to battle without fear in his heart or questions in his soul. There was not a horror in all of creation that he had not witnessed.
He had seen Heaven itself torn apart by civil war, angel killing angel, during Lucifer's rebellion. He had, himself, faced the wrath of the Archangel Raphael, for defying Heaven and freeing Dean in an attempt to avert the Apocalypse.
He would not be broken. His mind would not be breached. He would not be subjected to irrational fear. Castiel was sworn to love and fear only one being in all of Creation: God. And the "Nightmare King"--god or not--was not that god.
Slowly, the rippling effect began to lessen, the blurring diminished, and Castiel stepped forward to aid the others, starting with Dean Winchester.
Sokka was cold. That was the first strange thing. He was never cold. Why should he be cold now? But he was. He sat huddled against the ruins of his 'watch tower,' staring out to sea. The village was in ruins, everybody but him gone. Gone because he hadn't been brave enough or skillful enough to protect them when his father had left him in charge of the village. The ghosts of his failure drifted past him. Gran-gran, Katara, his father, Aang...
Aang? Aang was his friend, not a member of the village (he might as well be, though). No. This was a trick. Another dream. He stumbled to his feet, drawing his sword as he did so. Another trick by the Nightmare King. But perhaps a more dangerous one. A giant metal prow loomed out of the fog, scraping against the snow-covered beach. The Fire Nation, but not as Sokka knew them. These men were twisted caricatures in strange armor with dark skin and strange masks. He darted forward, swinging his sword in a vicious arc to slice the first from shoulder to hip, then whipped around to deflect a spear, his body responding almost before he could think, the weeks and months of training, the knowledge Piandao had imparted to him already mastering his body.
In a few moments, the men's bodies were scattered around him and Sokka stood panting, breath emerging as puffs of condensation in the cold air. This was the Nightmare King's doing. Which meant Aang needed his help, and so did other people. Time to get moving.
It is Bella's lot in life to fight. She is an Ahroun, a warrior of a race of warriors. Her job is to protect others from the Wyrm, and to strike it as hard as she may as much as she can.
Bella's duty lies in the City now. But she cannot get there. Her way is blocked.
Three wolves stand before her, twisted mockeries of Garou.
"Spirals."
Bella halts, bristling. She shifts upward into Hispo form, thinking fleetingly of her axe, but she forgot it in her haste. She'll have to fight tooth to tooth.
"Hello, Bella," says the first.
"Do not speak my name, Abomination," Bella growls, baring her teeth. "Allow me to pass and I will allow you to live." How did they get here? Surely Stacy would not preserve the lives of these things.
Bella calls upon one of her Gifts. The Visage of Fenris is, in times like this, a useful tool. Bella honestly has some doubts as to if she can take three Black Spiral Dancers on her own. And she has to move, she's needed elsewhere now. If she can solve this quickly by scaring them off, so much the better.
Bella does not change, but the Spirals' view of her does. She seems bigger. Stronger. More imposing, with longer teeth and bigger claws and sharper eyes.
She flattens her ears to her head and snarls. The leader takes one step back, hesitating, but they do not flee. Damn.
"Do you have somewhere to go?" mocks the smallest Spiral, rallying the pack's courage.
"Yes, and if you delay me I will rend you into so many pieces that no one will ever be able to put them together again."
"I should like to see you try."
Bella's Rage is already running high, and she will not stand for this anymore. She charges the smallest Spiral, going for the throat of the bat-eared monstrosity. She's aware of the two males snapping at her but they're too slow to save the insolent one.
Bella releases the small one with a barking, bitter wolfish laugh and turns to the other two, the leader in Crinos and the quiet horned one in Hispo as well.
They have underestimated her.
Bella launches herself at the two Spirals, whipping around like a snarling beast from hell as they try but fail to pin her into a corner. She manages to kill the leader, tearing out his throat, and leaps off of him to face the last.
She expected him to be shaken. Any Garou, even a Spiral, would be by the loss of their Alpha.
But he laughs.
"Bella, Bella, Bella."
"STOP USING MY NAME!" She rushes him, but the Spiral dances aside easily. Mockingly. He grabs her by the ear with his teeth, earning a loud yelp as he twists her head around by force.
"Look what you've done, Lupus. Look what you have done."
Two bodies lie where Bella killed them, but they're not those of Black Spirals.
Two humans. Two teenagers. Kids, even. A boy and a girl.
Jack and Claire. Her pack! And even then they shift before her eyes. Plays and Leaf and Wags and Katara and San and Miriam and -
Wait. There were only two, and not all of those are Garou. Bella twists free of the last Spiral's grip with a roar, blood dripping from her ear as she faces him.
Horns.
Antlers.
The twisted shape in front of her is that of Michael One-Crow.
"Well?" he says, "Are you going to kill me?"
Bella stops cold. Crow. One-Crow. One of the few Garou she has truly respected. One of the few Garou who has shown her respect. Can she kill him?
But... No no no no NO this is not RIGHT!
She snaps her jaws a hairsbreadth from his face.
"YOU ARE NOT HIM!" she roars in defiance and charges at the Spiral. The nightmare. A dream-thing.
Oh how could it think she was so weak?!
Bella throws the Spiral aside and tears pell-mell down the hall, trying to make up for lost time. The City. She must get to the City.
The only thing that's changed is the blood flowing from fresh bites and her ear, and the white-hot fury burning in her belly.
Pixie is stuck in an endless loop, the same nightmare playing itself over and over again.
A shadowy figure engulfed in power ahead of her, eldritch, chaotic energies swirling in the air, and a woman intoning "No...more...mutants!" in a cold, desperate, feverish voice.
And then a flash of bright white light.
When the world readjusts itself, all of Pixie's friends are dead, except for herself.
Rhiow walked into the dream suddenly, without warning. The light flashed, and she squinted her eyes shut, her ears pinning back against her skull at the intensity of the light.
When the dream reset, her eyes were pulled to the shape of the figure, her ears to the woman's voice. She knew to close her eyes this time when the brilliant light flashed, and she tilted one ear backward as she got to her feet, shook herself all over, and trotted right up to the shadowy figure, putting herself in between it and the shivering girl, deliberately not looking at the bodies intermittently scattered in her way.
She sat down and looked up at the figure the next time it appeared. "Eldest, Fairest and Fallen," she said, her voice carrying remarkably clear for one of her size. "Greeting, and Defiance. You really don't have the slightest ounce of creativity, do you?"
"Welcome back," Rhiow said. "Or should I say good morning? It's nice to see you've woken up, since this is a dream."
The figure went through her litany again, the scene repeated again, Rhiow closed her eyes at the brilliant flash of light. "It's not even trying to hide the fact that it's a horrible nightmare. You can break free of this easily, right?"
Rhiow turned her back on the shadowed figure, dismissing it from her mind. It obviously wasn't interacting with the people around it - just a movie loop. If that changed, though... Rhiow did have a shield handy. One can never be too careful.
Pixie looked at Rhiow confused before looking at the apparation of the Scarlet Witch. "So, what, I deny it and she goes away?" Pixie didn't wait for an answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the Scarlet Witch, trying to ignore the constant loop that Pixie had just realized she was stuck in and....
"That was trippy," she replied. "I mean...trippy. And it's not like my pixie dust can affect me or anything either."
"It's the Nightmare King. He's becoming much more powerful - I suggest we get out of this nightmare quickly before he figures out that you're not caught in the loop anymore and decides to throw something truly nasty at you." Rhiow stretched, her tail lashing slightly at the thought.
"If there are people like that on your world that can kill that easily? I don't want to stick around to see what else might be in your head for you to dream up."
"Really, she only killed muta - er -" Mental images of Magneto, Belasco, Sentinels, Dark Phoenix, and others flashed across Pixie's eyes for a moment. "Good idea," she said, taking to the air. The contrail of sparkle that usually followed her around was a lot fainter than usual - probably because of the fact that her powers had been dampened. "Let's go."
Rhiow stretched, yawning, and then scratched one ear for a moment before getting back to her feet. "Very good then. Let's join the others, shall we? But keep your eyes open - your own nightmares are hardly the only threat around here."
She set off at a brisk walk, her tail high in the air.
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Didn't matter the meatsuit, he could still recognize Meg a mile away as she approached him.
"Hey Dean, haven't you missed us? Don't you miss all the fun and games you used to play? And you were so good, you were really making your teacher proud."
He snorted, and brought the gun to aim at her, "Can't say that I have, bitch." He cocked off the safety, ready to fire.
"You might as well point that at yourself, Dean-o. You're no better than us, just because you got to leave Hell early? Or well, some of you did."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The demon pouted, "Aw, poor little boy. Those angels still keeping you in the dark? You know they only needed enough for their general to wear you like a tux. Nothing more. You're just a shell. Most of the real Dean Winchester never left the pit. So sad."
It was a nightmare, the King was pulling out all stops now. Especially since he could see a familiar figure with a cold expression approaching in the background. That damn white suit again, and that superior smirk he wished will never happen for real.
"I'm dreaming," he growled back, "None of this is real."
Meg came closer, her voice a husky whisper, "Then why do you still feel nothing? Like something's missing?" On a louder voice, she added, "What's that saying of yours? 'What's dead should stay dead?' Well, baby, you are dead."
Dean wavered at that as she got closer, and then finally he pulled the trigger, "Get out of my head, you son of a bitch." He gasped as his nightmare faded away, and he tried not to think about what was said. Or how true it felt. No time for that now. They had a job to do.
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"Are you all right, Dean?" he asked. There was concern in his voice, but with Cas' perpetually flat tone it often took a trained ear to notice it.
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Oh, no! Chick-flick moment!no subject
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"I heard a shot. Is everything okay?"
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He just nodded after his talk with Castiel, "Yeah, we're good here. Just another damn nightmare."
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A familiar, small black-and-white form made her skid to a sudden halt, her claws scrabbling across the concrete for purchase. "Arhu?"
"It's me," Arhu said, calm and aloof. Rhiow blinked slowly, sitting down, unnerved. "What's your hurry?"
"Arhu you don't know - oh, well, you must have only just podpopped," she licked her nose. "We're in battle. The Devestatrix is here - in another form, but still-"
Arhu's whiskers went forward, his tail going up jauntily, and Rhiow cut herself off mid-sentence. "Is She?" he asked, and Rhiow was once again struck by how much... older he sounded. Not like Arhu at all. "What a surprise."
"Arhu...?"
"Oh come now, you can't tell me you haven't figured it out already," Arhu said - or rather, the one wearing his shape said. The other cat, little more than a kitten, got to his feet as Rhiow's ears lay flat against her skull.
"Eldest, fairest and fallen," she said, a growl building in her chest. "Greetings, and defiance."
"Yes yes," Arhu's voice said, with a weary bemusement that was so unlike Arhu that Rhiow wondered how she could have ever mistaken the two. "The same thing, every time. Honestly, could you be original for once?"
"Could you?" Rhiow asked, now seeing the dark laughter at the back of Arhu's eyes. "Always the same trick, always the same choice. Always the same goal. You become very tiresome to fight, you know." Arhu hissed, his form growing to that of the black-and-white panther he used in old Downside - and that was what finally shook the realization loose in Rhiow's mind. It was impossible for one, even under the Lone One's influence, to take that form here. "And you too, Nightmare King, you're the same way. It's little surprise. You thought you could shake me this way?" She began building a wizardry in her mind, pacing around not-Arhu in a slow circle. "You thought you could get to me like this? Think again," she said, and snarled the release word on the spell she had built.
Something knifed cold and stunning into her gut as Arhu's eyes went wide in kittenish fear - fear that was like him, that did look familiar - in that split second before the wizardry took, he said "Rhiow-!" And then form of a black-and-white kitten exploded across the concrete in a shock of blood.
Rhiow staggered backward from it, shaking herself all over, her fur puffed out in all directions. Just a dream. A nightmare. Only a nightmare. Great Queen Iau, let it be true.
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Her silent plea to the Whisperer went unanswered, and Rhiow felt a shock of despair creeping up on her. The Silent One was sometimes just that - silent - but this seemed like a time where it would be vital to have a hint, just a clue...
She heard footsteps approaching and cut her grooming short, looking up with narrowed eyes. The boy with the sword smelled... familiar, almost, the same kind of elusive thread of cold and furs as someone else she had met before. "Hunt's Luck," she said cautiously, made paranoid and wary by the painful reality of the dreams. "Are you... Hh-t'hara's kin?"
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"Hh-'thara...? Oh! Katara? She's my sister." Speaking of Katara, where was she...? He shook his head. She could take of herself (mostly) and he needed to focus on the others right now.
"The Nightmare King is messing with us again, worse then ever. I think Aang needs our help right now...if the Nightmares are bad enough that they can hurt us physically...that we can't tell the difference..." He touched his arm gingerly, wincing. A glancing blow from a phantom spear-haft had caught him there, bruised.
"I'm Sokka."
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The Visage of Fenris she tried to use to cow the Black Spiral Dancers still has not faded, but it won't last much longer. Until then, to her allies, she appears a more regal, impressive specimen than she really is.
She sees them and comes to a halt, fur bristling.
"I am Bella. I am Ahroun. I am Get of Fenris," she says, a short introduction. "I hear there is battle."
It is clear which party she's here for.
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Her claws came out, scratching against the ground underneath her, and a low rumble like a growl buzzed in her throat. Entropy stalks the world in all its usual shapes, and some less usual than others. I'll meet them, the strange and the deadly, but I don't need to crouch in fear or bristle at them in show of defiance. I know my job. My commission comes from Those Who Are. We stand together, They and I, in protection of the world They made and I keep. It was the part of the meditation one said before a battle, and Rhiow knew that now, more than ever, it was appropriate.
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"So we all awake and ready to go?" He had some bullets ready for the Nightmare King.
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"Unless there's someone else near by who needs our help."
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He had led an army and laid seige to Hell itself--the prison God had created for the eternally damned--to capture Dean Winchester's soul and rip it out of the demons' hands and resurrect him back on Earth. Castiel was created for war. That was his purpose. He marched of to battle without fear in his heart or questions in his soul. There was not a horror in all of creation that he had not witnessed.
He had seen Heaven itself torn apart by civil war, angel killing angel, during Lucifer's rebellion. He had, himself, faced the wrath of the Archangel Raphael, for defying Heaven and freeing Dean in an attempt to avert the Apocalypse.
He would not be broken. His mind would not be breached. He would not be subjected to irrational fear. Castiel was sworn to love and fear only one being in all of Creation: God. And the "Nightmare King"--god or not--was not that god.
Slowly, the rippling effect began to lessen, the blurring diminished, and Castiel stepped forward to aid the others, starting with Dean Winchester.
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Aang? Aang was his friend, not a member of the village (he might as well be, though). No. This was a trick. Another dream. He stumbled to his feet, drawing his sword as he did so. Another trick by the Nightmare King. But perhaps a more dangerous one. A giant metal prow loomed out of the fog, scraping against the snow-covered beach. The Fire Nation, but not as Sokka knew them. These men were twisted caricatures in strange armor with dark skin and strange masks. He darted forward, swinging his sword in a vicious arc to slice the first from shoulder to hip, then whipped around to deflect a spear, his body responding almost before he could think, the weeks and months of training, the knowledge Piandao had imparted to him already mastering his body.
In a few moments, the men's bodies were scattered around him and Sokka stood panting, breath emerging as puffs of condensation in the cold air. This was the Nightmare King's doing. Which meant Aang needed his help, and so did other people. Time to get moving.
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Bella's duty lies in the City now. But she cannot get there. Her way is blocked.
Three wolves stand before her, twisted mockeries of Garou.
"Spirals."
Bella halts, bristling. She shifts upward into Hispo form, thinking fleetingly of her axe, but she forgot it in her haste. She'll have to fight tooth to tooth.
"Hello, Bella," says the first.
"Do not speak my name, Abomination," Bella growls, baring her teeth. "Allow me to pass and I will allow you to live." How did they get here? Surely Stacy would not preserve the lives of these things.
Bella calls upon one of her Gifts. The Visage of Fenris is, in times like this, a useful tool. Bella honestly has some doubts as to if she can take three Black Spiral Dancers on her own. And she has to move, she's needed elsewhere now. If she can solve this quickly by scaring them off, so much the better.
Bella does not change, but the Spirals' view of her does. She seems bigger. Stronger. More imposing, with longer teeth and bigger claws and sharper eyes.
She flattens her ears to her head and snarls. The leader takes one step back, hesitating, but they do not flee. Damn.
"Do you have somewhere to go?" mocks the smallest Spiral, rallying the pack's courage.
"Yes, and if you delay me I will rend you into so many pieces that no one will ever be able to put them together again."
"I should like to see you try."
Bella's Rage is already running high, and she will not stand for this anymore. She charges the smallest Spiral, going for the throat of the bat-eared monstrosity. She's aware of the two males snapping at her but they're too slow to save the insolent one.
Bella releases the small one with a barking, bitter wolfish laugh and turns to the other two, the leader in Crinos and the quiet horned one in Hispo as well.
They have underestimated her.
Bella launches herself at the two Spirals, whipping around like a snarling beast from hell as they try but fail to pin her into a corner. She manages to kill the leader, tearing out his throat, and leaps off of him to face the last.
She expected him to be shaken. Any Garou, even a Spiral, would be by the loss of their Alpha.
But he laughs.
"Bella, Bella, Bella."
"STOP USING MY NAME!" She rushes him, but the Spiral dances aside easily. Mockingly. He grabs her by the ear with his teeth, earning a loud yelp as he twists her head around by force.
"Look what you've done, Lupus. Look what you have done."
Two bodies lie where Bella killed them, but they're not those of Black Spirals.
Two humans. Two teenagers. Kids, even. A boy and a girl.
Jack and Claire. Her pack! And even then they shift before her eyes. Plays and Leaf and Wags and Katara and San and Miriam and -
Wait. There were only two, and not all of those are Garou. Bella twists free of the last Spiral's grip with a roar, blood dripping from her ear as she faces him.
Horns.
Antlers.
The twisted shape in front of her is that of Michael One-Crow.
"Well?" he says, "Are you going to kill me?"
Bella stops cold. Crow. One-Crow. One of the few Garou she has truly respected. One of the few Garou who has shown her respect. Can she kill him?
But... No no no no NO this is not RIGHT!
She snaps her jaws a hairsbreadth from his face.
"YOU ARE NOT HIM!" she roars in defiance and charges at the Spiral. The nightmare. A dream-thing.
Oh how could it think she was so weak?!
Bella throws the Spiral aside and tears pell-mell down the hall, trying to make up for lost time. The City. She must get to the City.
The only thing that's changed is the blood flowing from fresh bites and her ear, and the white-hot fury burning in her belly.
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A shadowy figure engulfed in power ahead of her, eldritch, chaotic energies swirling in the air, and a woman intoning "No...more...mutants!" in a cold, desperate, feverish voice.
And then a flash of bright white light.
When the world readjusts itself, all of Pixie's friends are dead, except for herself.
And then there's a fade to black...
Followed by the scene replaying itself.
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When the dream reset, her eyes were pulled to the shape of the figure, her ears to the woman's voice. She knew to close her eyes this time when the brilliant light flashed, and she tilted one ear backward as she got to her feet, shook herself all over, and trotted right up to the shadowy figure, putting herself in between it and the shivering girl, deliberately not looking at the bodies intermittently scattered in her way.
She sat down and looked up at the figure the next time it appeared. "Eldest, Fairest and Fallen," she said, her voice carrying remarkably clear for one of her size. "Greeting, and Defiance. You really don't have the slightest ounce of creativity, do you?"
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That...that new figure was...new.
Different.
No one she knew.
And she was addressing Scarlet Witch.
Or the image of Scarlet Witch.
Something.
"I...umm...what?"
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The figure went through her litany again, the scene repeated again, Rhiow closed her eyes at the brilliant flash of light. "It's not even trying to hide the fact that it's a horrible nightmare. You can break free of this easily, right?"
Rhiow turned her back on the shadowed figure, dismissing it from her mind. It obviously wasn't interacting with the people around it - just a movie loop. If that changed, though... Rhiow did have a shield handy. One can never be too careful.
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"That was trippy," she replied. "I mean...trippy. And it's not like my pixie dust can affect me or anything either."
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"If there are people like that on your world that can kill that easily? I don't want to stick around to see what else might be in your head for you to dream up."
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She set off at a brisk walk, her tail high in the air.