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They were summoned. By their Master, by the Lord of Nightmares Himself.
They arrived swiftly through the dark paths. There was no denying their Master’s summons, after all. Only a fool would ever think to refuse.
The pressure of their Master's presence already filled the space. They knelt, as was proper, head bowed low. The silence that filled the void and scattered stones of the throne room spoke to the lack of any presence from their myriad siblings.
Their siblings, who cowered in their presence. Who were inferior, who scattered from their presence like so many ants when not commanded otherwise. As they well should.
They were the strongest. They were the right arm of the Lord of Nightmares. The whole of the strength of Nightmare itself made manifest.
They were the First Level, strongest in all of Nightmare.
Their Master's six eyes bore down upon them. They could feel their gaze, even with their head bowed so low in reverence that they could not be glimpsed.
(A coil of fear lodged in their chest alongside a flicker, a faint ember of anger, frustration, something they buried deep, deep lest it show itself and betray them.)
"You have disappointed me, my creation."
There was no pain. Yet. Punishment was sure to follow if they were not cautious.
"You have not brought me a single red Ideya in far too long."
One impulse was to grovel, to beg, to plead for their life. The other was to fight, to rage, to defend themself with every last ounce of their strength.
But to fight was folly, to rebel was to die.
"My deepest apologies, Master Wizeman," they said instead. "I have been searching continuously, trying to find what you sent me to seek. I am sorry for failing you, my Master."
They almost choked on the bitterness using such reverence brought up inside of them. They had brought so many other Ideya now. Greens and whites, yellows and blues. Yet they needed red, far more red if they were ever to reach the Waking for the invasion.
Dreamers still holding a red Ideya were in short supply, no matter how much they hunted, how far out they sought new Nightopias as hunting grounds. They hadn't found a single red in far, far too long.
"I will not rest until I have found you more red Ideya, Master Wizeman."
They hadn't been resting. They were being stretched to exhaustion, eating constantly, devouring all the Nightopians from a dreamscape and still hungering afterwards. Unable to rest, not allowed to stop.
"See that you do, my creation. I will not tolerate further failure."
Further, said the ache lingering in their joints. Further, said the phantom pains that sparked along their claws at the memory. They knew better.
"Of course, Master Wizeman."
They felt the gaze of their Master's many eyes withdraw. They stood, bowed deeply, and vanished through the dark paths, certainly not in a run.
They did not stop moving until they were out of the shadows of Nightmare and into the bright sunlight of Nightopia (luminous and burning, warm and comforting). They let out a shaky breath, their four arms wrapping around themself, trying to bring some semblance of comfort from the fear their Master's summons always brought.
They shouldn't be afraid. They were the right arm of Nightmare! The strongest ever made. The most terrifying ever created. A walking nightmare more monstrous than any of their siblings. Towering, more than twice the height of any Dreamer. Dualistic in a way that humans found so disturbing they balked at the slight of them. Two sets of eyes, one nested above the other. Skin a stark marble white, markings on their face of jet black. Four arms with four gauntlets, two sleeved and two not. Two rows of jagged, sharpened teeth. Bifurcated horns with stripes in deep tones of velvet violet and ruddy red. Claws like yellowed bones, jagged and wickedly sharp. A vest of ruby and onyx and gold with metal pips of stars and circles that betrayed their rank, boots armored just so to prove that they were a force to be feared in battle.
A form of muscled bulk that was meant to inflict fear.
(That weighed them down, they felt it. Boots that let them barely bend their knees. Gauntlets that weighed down their arms, limiting how dexterous they could be. Horns so large that wind and gravity both dragged at them. They could not be swift, no matter how hard they tried. They were heavy. Heavier, something in them whispered, than they should have been.)
And, among the three diamond marks on their chest, the center-most was a gleaming red. An Ideya shard wedged in their chest. An accident born from the moment of their creation.
But it wasn't, a part of them whispered. A part of them knew otherwise, even if their memory could bring no argument.
They shivered, both sides of themself rattling with fear. They were meant to be one. Their Master said that they were one. But the part of them that thrashed and screamed in rage and howled to defend themself, to turn their claws to the being that tore them apart and stitched them back together like they were no more than a toy, did not feel like one. The part of them that bowed and scraped and worshiped and fear spoke louder, screamed louder than the other, but time had picked at the reverence that should have been there like an old scab. Until resentment for something they couldn't name settled in, silent voices a howling chorus of betrayal and resentment and rage .
But they knew the consequence for betrayal. They knew better.
The fearful part of them won out every time.
"It's okay," they whispered to themself. "We're okay."
'We.' A small little selfish self-indulgence. They were meant to be one. They had been created to be one. To be two was to defy their creator.
So they listened to the part of them that said to bite their tongue and kept it to themself. Themselves. Whichever it was.
They let themself breathe. They were out of Nightmare, no one could see them now. Their siblings avoided them, which suited them just fine. It meant no one to spy on them in moments of weakness like this.
The fragment of them that screamed for freedom was not always loud, not always so close to bringing words to their mouth that would result in punishments. Moments like this, in open fear, they were soft. Gentle. Everything a Nightmaren wasn't supposed to be.
It helped so much in moments like these. Exhausted, but unable to rest lest there be consequences.
They had been hunting for so long that they had lost track of how long it had been. All without a single red Ideya. It felt like, a fragment of them thought, they were hunting the Dreamers to extinction. That, at the rate they were going, there were simply going to run out of Dreamers completely. No more red Ideya. No more Ideya at all.
"We have to find one," they muttered. "There's always more. Humans keep making more humans."
"Bravery's so rare ," they argued back. "We're running out of them."
"We can't be. There has to be more. We can't have hunted them all."
They hadn't found that many as it was. Their creation hadn't been that long ago.
If they were, half of them hissed.
That gave them, the whole of them, pause. The tower to the Waking was so small, though. Mere fragments. Nightmare had been trying to make it to the Waking world for hundreds upon hundreds of human years now.
But they were the only one that could steal the rarest, red courage.
...They felt like they were forgetting something. Something important . It was on the tip of their tongue, yet so far away they couldn't even begin to grasp at the thought.
Something floated on the wind, giving them pause. Notes. Music. Not the trills of Nightopians, no. The faint, far distant sound of proper song.
Of human song.
A Dreamer.
They should hunt. Part of them tried to drag themself, themselves forward to hunt, but the other stopped.
Impatience leaned on the hesitation, annoyed. This could be their chance! They could be lucky. Maybe this one. Maybe. Finally. They'd said that for so many hunts now, but maybe-
"I know this song."
'I' not in the way they were meant to, no. Not 'I' in the way they were created to be, only one, the 'they' that they were meant to be that was one and one alone. Instead, 'I' in the way of only one of them. One fragment of the whole.
One that, very suddenly, didn't feel like a fragment at all.
One that suddenly solidified into something else. Something more .
Their arms dropped from around them and they flew. Not fast enough, they should be faster, should be lighter. They were weighed down. So very, very weighed down. It wasn't right. It felt wrong . Like their skin was too tight, like they’d been squished and stretched into an ill-fitting mold, like their form didn't belong to them at all.
They followed the song, the solid part of themselves refusing to yield, the more fragmented part full of confusion, but unwilling to try to stop pursuit.
The Nightopia was sunny and bright, rolling hills and sprawling valleys, distant snow capped mountains, windmills on floating rocks, a few scattered clouds idly rolling by.
This was familiar, something deep inside of them whispered. Insisted. That they had been here before.
Or at least one of the two that were meant to be only one had.
They found the human at the side of a river beside a towering tree with its bows in the center, roots at the top and base with Waking impossibility. The human's back was to them. Unaware of their presence.
Pounce, part of them demanded.
The other part of them didn't. Instead approaching slowly, near mesmerized by the notes, by the words of the human's song.
"Keep the dream~ of the one you're hoping for."
Something inside of them slowly congealed into place, into a shape more correct . They held up one set of arms, the one adorned with sleeves with belled cuffs, and played the harmony on an unseen flute. The backing trills. The countermelody.
The correct notes .
The human startled, the notes going with it. They stood and turned, staring up at the monstrosity of claws and teeth and limbs that towered over them.
Unfamiliar, their fragments said.
An adult, adult humans didn't usually reach Nightopia. Dressed in bright pinks and oranges. Hair dyed pink, darker roots showing.
And pink eyes.
"...NiGHTS?" the human whispered with eyes wide not in fear, but worry .
All at once, half of them snapped back into shape inside of their mind.
And with it snapped memory .
" Claris ," they choked out in a voice too soft for a monster like them.
The human hesitated for a moment before lighting into the air with even more ease than they did, hovering at level with their eyes. Their lower set of eyes were brimming with tears. Tears they couldn't explain, tears they couldn't stop, tears already spilling over.
Fearlessly, the human put their - no, her , this was Claris, they knew her - hands on the sides of their face.
"What happened ?" the human asked.
"Wizeman," was all they could think to answer, leaning into the contact.
Claris looked at their lower eyes, blue and violet and full of tears. Then their upper, blue and teal and full of confusion.
"...Reala?" the human guessed.
And the rest of their scattered fragments of thought snapped back into shape, along with a growl, two of their four sets of claws curling into fists, a tooth-filled snarl stretching across their face.
"Yes," the Nightmaren growled.
"...We'll fix this," Claris promised. "I'll get Elliot. We'll figure this out."
Elliot. A familiar name.
A good friend.
The annoying brat they enjoyed tormenting.
They weren't one. They had only been one against their will.
They were two.
They were two.
"He stuck us together ," the part of them that was Reala snarled.
"We'll fix this," Claris assured them. "Come on."
They took one of their massive hands, fearless, and the world dissolved from hills and grass to rocks and metal.
Stick Canyon. They both knew it. So much more metallic. It had turned so industrial in the years since they'd seen it. Not degraded, but progressed, metal and nature made one in harmony.
A human looked up from a small device they were tinkering with, startling in an instant before jumping to their feet, into the air with such ease.
"It's NiGHTS," Claris said quickly. "And Reala. Wizeman did something to them."
"It looks like he squished them together," Elliot said, grimacing. "It looks... painful."
"It doesn't hurt," they assured the humans. "It feels... heavy."
Because NiGHTS was not muscled bulk. NiGHTS was light as a feather, free as the breeze. A dazzling acrobat, a deceiver in bright pinks and purples, one that had screamed for freedom and took it with their own claws.
Because Reala was muscle, but not so heavy, not so large, an ambush predator but more than fast enough to keep up. They had been loyal, so loyal, and had been rewarded with this .
"We have to fix it," Claris said. "...Somehow."
Elliot looked the hulking form of the First Level up and down.
An idea visibly flickered over his face.
"I've got an idea," he said. "It's kind of like Dualization, right? He squished them together, so we just need to un-squish them."
The humans - adults, they'd grown up, how long had NiGHTS been gone , age was in the starting throws of showing on their faces - were too kind for their own good.
Elliot grabbed one of their hands with both of his. Claris took to the idea in an instant and grabbed one of their hands on the other side.
A count of one. Of two. Of three.
And they pulled . Across, one side from the other, stretching and tearing.
There was a flash of white, of silver, of red .
In a blinding surge, they were light .
There was silence where there had once been noise, quiet loneliness rather than clashing arguments, everything where it should have been.
One and one, now two.
As it had been. As it should be.
NiGHTS lighted into the air, laughing and spinning through the sky in delighted swirls of twinkling blue stardust. They were free. Free! Lighter than air, like they were meant to be.
Reala clenched and unclenched their claws. Their own claws, their own strength. Theirs and theirs alone, as they were meant to be.
Though the little red gem lodged in their chest was new. As was the missing even divot of a diamond missing from the center of the gleaming shard lodged in their twin's chest.
...They would concern themself with it later. They took a breath in, with their own mouth, scenting metal and sand on the back of their tongue, and took off into the sky to join their twin.
Separate once more.
As it should be.