Chapter Text
Nightmares were an enigma as far as Dilan was concerned. To him sleep ment shutting your eyes against the moonlight, dipping into a deeper darkness, then, the next time you opened your eyes, morning had arrived. As a child he had therefore felt shock and jealousy when he heard a classmate’s retelling her travels onboard a train driving across the sea, visiting a island where the palm-trees grew blueberries instead of coconuts and participating in aerial-battles with wizards riding geese.
His fascination had only grown after he found out about the things dreams made people do: mumble nonsense, take walks as if they were awake and hide socks, making them impossible to find them the next morning. Again he found himself an outcast. He had, once or twice, been awoken by a room-mate checking his pulse to make sure that he hadn't died in his sleep.
As he aged, child fancies diminished: his days being filled with more pressing things to fret, ponder and be concerned about. After ending up in the castle of Ansem the Wise, and finding his time there stretching out into years, he still remained a close observer to the phenomena, the darker part of it, as two of the other residents suffered nightmares like an affliction.
As if his project-upon-unneaglible-project-neglect of himself hadn’t contributed enough to the head-apprentice’s irregular sleeping patterns, the things Even saw once those around him managed to heatedly debate him into taking a nap, only served to make him more reluctant, to the point where collapsed-over-his-desk was not an unusual position to find him in. While in bed he would toss around, yammering, gnashing his teeth together: generally having as hard a time keeping quiet as during waking hours. Keeping the nightmares in check brought yet another row of emerald and maroon medicine-bottles and pill packages to his bedside table, and when they did not work as intended he greeted mornings with frowns, eyes protruding like they wished to escape his sweating skull, and hands clutching his mintgreen coffe mug as if it was his life saver on a shipwreck. He would tell the concerned observer that the nightmares weren’t terrifying at this point, only bone wearily exhausting. Every night was the same, his mind’s affection for routine turning against him: a shadowy figure would chase him through the castle, a clock would count down towards midnight - What would happen at midnight? Things would pull him down into the earth where under the horrors were enough to make the skin of his dream-self crawl off his body, or demon children wrestled him down and choked him with stubby hands like wracks around the throat.
… Sometimes I see all of you there, though you’re useless: lounging in a coach, sipping tea, and not batting an eye while Ienzo strangles me on the carpet.
Ienzo is?
He has been the only child I’ve gotten to know properly. It makes sense that when my subconsciousness conjures one ...
... Sure.
You have to admit that Ienzo showed a fair bit of unsettling behaviour while he was younger. Like the time he dissected a rat at eight. I was impressed, ofcourse, but the thought of that thousandyard stare piercing through you like it is you he’s going to dissect …
Should you talk to Ienzo about this?
Splendid idea, because that would be an entirely unawkward conversation.
The second one plagued by bad dreams, Xehanort, had refused to speak about the things which hunted him out of bed and into patrolling corridors from midnight to dawn, even when Ansem tried to convince that dreams were important pieces to the puzzle of figuring out the memories that the man had lost. An argument that was usually a sure-fire way to get him to agree to anything had not convinced Xehanort to break his silence. Perhaps for the best. Dilan had only needed to look into Xehanort’s eyes after a bad night, and all the jealousy that he had ever felt washed off him. Instead he reconsidered that he’d been blessed with a great fortune, especially after learning that if he wanted to see something like wizards riding geese he only needed to visit Wonderland.
To this day dreams remain a foreign concept to Dilan, however this story, one of many – there’s always a ton of ridiculous stuff going on in every world at every moment - but this story begun when he wrongly assumed he was having his first nightmare.
Though lacking in direct experience, Dilan had listened to and red enough accounts of dreams to know that opening his eyes and seeing a bear-like monster leaning over his bedside, hot breath wafting over his face, was a classic among night terrors. More so than the times when he’d woke up to somebody checking his pulse, he felt shock and summoned a whirlwind.
Wind and creature howled in unison as the storm swept it to the edge of the room, where the beast scrambled up to it’s paws and lunged for the bed, as quick as only a beast could be. The bed-sheets trapped Dilan like a net. Kicked wildly, he pushed himself upward, summoning a spear barely in time to stop claws, large as the curved blades of knives, from raking his chest. A great weight pressed him down and the bed creaked threateningly, as the beast slashed, barely kept away by him summoning more spears, creating a fence of iron poles and wind. Dilan screamed out against the vice upon his chest, the sound of his ribs like miniature logs breaking apart. Despite reasoning that the creature couldn’t literally hurt him, being a nightmare and all, fear gripped him like yet another set of claws. Again, he cried out.
At which the door to his chambers flew open, flinging of it’s hinges and crashing against the wall. Only one man in the castle could open a door that forcefully: his giant frame filling out the doorway, tomahawkhammer-crossbreed of a club ready in hand.
When Aeleus saw Dilan struggle against the beast his steely expression hardened further. With a bellowing that drowned out the beast’s roaring he rushed forward, swinging the club in an upward arc. It connected, propelling the creature into a wall as if it had been as light as a sheet. Groaning the beast slid down into a pile, black tendrils of smoke erupted from spots around it. Realising that it was trying to escape Aeleus spurted forward. Before he could get close enough to deliver a final blow, the same darkness that he himself, before regaining his humanity, had utilized many times as transportation, enveloped the beast in a tower of black, and dissipated, leaving no trace of the attacker apart from a crater in the wall. Huffing in frustration, Aeleus pushed the enemy out of his mind and turned towards the bed where Dilan was sitting up and letting his spears vanish.
– Are you alright? he rumbled.
– Fine, I’m fine, Dilan grumbled while pressing a hand to his swimming head, focusing on breathing and not letting dizziness topple him over.
– Dilan.
Aeleus voice contained alarm and an arm, like a tree-trunk in both frame and constitution, appeared behind Dilan’s back, steadying him the moment his attempt at staying upright failed.
– What are you doing? he sneered and tried to push Aeleus away. How could a man that large move to his bedside without him noticing?
Instead of obeying, his arms fell down to the bedcover where they refused to budge. Puzzling. Dilan looked down and his mouth opened into a dawning “oh”. Meanwhile Aeleus tore off strips of bedsheets and pressed them against Dilan’t stomach, the white fabric soon turning crimson.
– Heal, Aeleus mumbled and green magic spurred to life beneath his fingers: a handful of glowing leaves spiraling into the air, like short-lived embers of a flame.
He furrowed his brow and removed the cloth for a second, revealing that the four gashes, proof that Dilan had been mistaken by a few inches when he thought that the beast had only almost managed to reach him, still bled profusely. Making a worried sound in the back of his throat, Aeleus once more applied pressure.
– What’s this? Dilan slurred. It might have sounded like he was struggling to comprehend the fact that he was bleeding out, - not so, he was adept at recognizing a seeping gut-wound when he saw one. Had his lips felt functional he would have elaborated: If this is a dream, shouldn’t pain be at the very least dulled, and if this is the point where the dreamer normally wakes up, how come darkness is creeping in the edges of my vision?
– Don’t tell me this is happening in reality, he slurred, before his eyes turned into his skull and his head fell backward.