My Nightmare [Pvt | Misato]

It was another morning of this routine that Aien is slowly getting accustomed to since the first thing he does before the sun even begins to rise from the horizon. He gets dressed in his warm clothes and picks up the bag to begin his long trek down the stairs to collect supplies only to make his way back up the stairs. He was panting a bit because it is a long way to get up to this monastery. Once Aien had gotten back he proceeded to take a few minutes to relax a bit and get warm. However little did he realize that he was drifting off into a ‘sleep’ as he sat on one of the stone benches near the burning logs at the kitchen. Lately Aien’s ‘sleep’ has actually been Aien entering his inner world, and there has been times where Aien even begins to talk in his sleep a bit almost like he’s having a nightmare.

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Aien opens his green colored eyes to see the familiar terrain of gravel like ground. Additionally there is no sky, only a dome of fog that prevents all sight from perceiving through it. Little by little, this dome has expanded as Aien grew stronger, and the more that it expanded the more it reveals bits and pieces of what his world really looks like. It is mostly bare with the occasional fossilized trees that are black, twisted and looks just as dense as rock. However, Aien’s nightmare is about to resume as standing before him is a humanoid figure that is about 5’8”, wearing mostly chains and hooks that is literally maimed onto the poor figure’s skin. Each time Aien comes here this creature shows up in a different appearance, but the most common is the chains and hooks where two steel rods that possess serrated small blades at the end. Making them deadly to catch for fear of slicing Aien’s hands open just trying to grab it. Aien did that once and despite the wounds don’t carry over to his physical body Aien still feels the pain.

This thing always look like some tortured and even maimed humanoid creature, and their mouths are usually closed shut with a small metal rod that had pierced through both sides of the mouth. Which both sides are attached to a metal headdress that also possess spikes that Aien earlier discovered was actually piercing into the skull. Parts of the face is red yet threaded like someone peeled the skin off to reveal the muscles here and there. The eyes however are covered by a black, small blindfold that looks a bit wet around the eyes where the dark red can be seen around the edges. Aien gulped as his palms were sweaty since fear was gripping his heart once again merely because Aien has faced this thing time and time again. Each time the only way this nightmare ended is when this thing “kills” Aien and he wakes up with a start every night and day. The part that wraps his mind to borderline sanity is that there are no wounds thankfully, but the familiar feeling of being dead lingers on his mind and always feel like he’s still dead until after he starts his morning routine. The familiar, excruciating pain still lingers inside his mind, and every time he sleeps Aien comes to this place to face this thing. Yet nothing Aien does prove to have any effect on it. Other than Aien has been able to perceive what it can do for the most part.

The strange male like figure slowly tilted his head before one arm flung out a serrated rod towards Aien that has the same chain attached to one end of the rod. Of course seeing the trajectory and calculating the angle Aien proceed to quickly fall down to ground before reaching up to grab the chain. However the creature quickly jerked the chain back and causes the rod to brutally slice Aien’s hand up pretty bad. Aien hissed with the fury of a dragon as the burning sensation of a wound is present onto his left hand to where he has to keep it close to his chest. As much as Aien wanted to wait for the pain to stop, he knew this thing never stops until Aien is “dead”. In fact he knew what was coming next as Aien slapped the ground at 45 degree angle and the force behind it was enough to send Aien flying backwards for about 10 meters while being roughly two inches from the ground. Just enough to where Aien can half backflip so that he could land on his feet while using the right hand to keep himself up. Several chains with spikes had manifested where Aien originally was and plunged deep into the gravel. Had he been there for a moment longer Aien would’ve died right there and that would be like when he first sorely lost to this thing. So far the count is 42 to 0. 42 times this thing has killed Aien and this being the 43rd time he has faced this mysterious creature with no weapons in hand.

Blood continues to pour out of Aien’s wounded left hand as he began to sprint in a zigzag pattern towards the figure. A spiked chain manifested before it and like an arrow was fired at Aien since it already seen the pattern. However Aien was aware of this as well as he just jumped over it and with a soft tap of his foot on the sailing chain he flash stepped to get up in the guy’s maimed face. Where Aien feint by having his right hand balled up into a fist and looked like he was about to punch the creature. However instead he followed up by hurling a powerful kick on the guy’s side of the chest. The force alone was enough to disturb the surrounding air with a mild shockwave, but the guy barely budged let alone register it as the maimed male manifested set of spiked chains that primarily aimed for his left shoulder and into his pelvius where his right leg. Before the kid knew it those chains quite easily ripped his left arm and right leg from his body. Followed by an actual punch of its own that was devastating to Aien’s body enough to where the poor man’s body was flung outward roughly twenty meters before colliding hard against a really dense fossilized tree. The air was knocked out of his lungs and it was hard to breathe as his mind was having trouble registering the fact that his arm and leg is gone. Like he sees that they’re gone yet it still feels like they’re still there. He couldn’t even scream as fear had taken ahold of his mind completely and was panicking. Yet he couldn’t wake up from this nightmare, it hadn’t killed him yet and that was the worst part. For the few times he didn’t die outright this thing gets really sadistic and tortures the living hell out of him before killing him off.

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So Aien is sitting on the bench with his head hung low and eyes are closed. But he’s muttering to himself just like every night where he’s just saying. “No… No… Stop…” Over and over since it is rather hard to wake him up. Sleep was exhausting to Aien and yet he still doesn’t complain about the severe lack of sleep he gets and on top of that there’s been a couple of times where he’ll stay up for days and nights straight before his body collapses because he doesn’t want to go to sleep. Some might find it like a toddler refusing to go to sleep, but fear is generally present when he’s about to fall asleep and it keeps him awake for a few more hours. However this time Aien couldn’t fight it and so he passed out for about twenty minutes now. Yet already he’s muttering in his sleep.

Misato Ketsugōi