aterat | I'm only a nightmare

Entry tags:

I'm only a nightmare

Who; Illyana + Anyone!
What; Nightmares and magik
Where; Red Building and near the edge of the forest
When; Early October at night
Warnings; None so far!

Nightmares. It seemed like it had been an eternity since she had experienced nightmares like this. Memories bubbled to the surface of her childhood in Limbo. Every waking moment there had been a nightmare and night never held any reprieve. The older she got though the more accustomed she had become to living a nightmare. Perhaps it was something to do with the loss of bits of her soul. Or perhaps it was simple conditioning. You grow used to horrors when they are all you see. Eventually, nightmares had faded from her life completely.

Until now. Now they returned with brutal vengeance. Reminding her of things she wanted nothing more than to forget. At first she just woke with tears and fear. Both were things she wanted nothing to do with. Others feared her, not the other way around. Not anymore. Yet as the nightmares grew more frequent and more memorable the fear grew within her. Then the bear imagery began to appear.

With that she screamed. Those in the red building may find themselves hearing the young woman's scream occasionally. She's always quick to leave her room and the building itself, teleporting out in an attempt to avoid sleep itself. Her teleportation leads her to the edge of the southern forest.

"It cannot be you again," she said loudly to the forest itself. "But if it is, I will find you." Her tone seems weary but firm. Defiant and filled with bitterness. "You do not scare me." But the nightmares did. That would not be something she would admit readily.

Any who stumble upon the scene will be met with a scene straight out of an occult book. Candles line the way making a path to a fiery circle with a pentagram in it's center. Above is Illyana can be found floating with her eyes closed. Any who have encountered her before will notice the change in her appearance: a prehensile demonic tail can be seen flicking in irritation and large curved red horns now protrude from her forehead. She's muttering something in a strange language that cannot be linked back to most familiar languages, even the most ancient ones.

It is not something she would wish many to see, but something about the imagery in the nightmares has made her more reckless than she might usually be.

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Jagger didn't make his way toward the forest often. He didn't even leave the boundaries of the walls often, but the lack of sleep and the need for answers was slowing beginning to wear on him as well. Whatever happened had happened beyond the walls, that much he knew, and he had the sneaking feeling finding out what exactly it had been would mean putting himself directly in danger. It ended up that way far too often.

The light ahead made him slow, though. It was dim, and there was a strange voice with it, familiar but speaking gibberish. He approached with caution, the wise voice in the back of his mind a gibbering but quiet annoyance...until he found her.

His breath caught as he cast his eyes about the alien and macabre scene. He'd heard of magic, of course, but he'd never seen it performed, and she was...changed? Demonic but in a far more literal sense than he'd ever encountered? The name was past his lips before he could think better to stop it.

"Illyana?"

He winced as soon as he spoke. She was clearly here for privacy.

The voice snapped her out of her chanting and she turned her head to face Jagger. He was perhaps the last person she wanted to see her like this. Not that she particularly wanted anyone to see her like this. There was a reason she had come out here so far away from everyone else. Her hope had been that she would not run into anyone and potentially figure something out about these nightmares. Neither of those seemed to have worked out.

After a few awkward seconds she put her feet onto the ground and immediately looked away from him.

"Why are you here?" There was a hint of annoyance in her tone and she still refused to look at him. Why did she seem to care so much if he saw her? She had cared when it had been Piotr and her team. That she had understood as well. She had felt shame when they saw her so visibly corrupted. But why him? It was stupid and strangely frustrating.

"I could ask you the same thing." It was stunning, really, how often he was asked what he was up to and reacted with the same damned statement. It was dodgy to say the least, an avoidance of the question, but too often he was somewhere he shouldn't be, sometimes after using lockpicks to let himself in. It occurred to him this must be the corruption she'd been talking about, her current appearance. He hadn't expected it to be quite so physical.

"Looking for answers, which I assume you are as well?"

"Yes," she replied more sharply than she might have otherwise intended. "There was something...familiar. I thought I could isolate it if I went somewhere without interference." It was clear by the inflection on the word interference that she actually meant without people.

"Nobody was supposed to see." Nobody was supposed to come out here to see her like this.

"Familar?" That caught his attention and he dared move a little closer. There was a small part of his mind, the part that had come too close to demons and other malicious spirits in the past, that was screaming at him to leave, that he hadn't understood until now precisely what she'd meant by Limbo and corruption, but he ignored it. Nothing that had happened to her had been her choosing, of that he was certain, and she was ashamed of it. Why else would she want him to leave, and want no one else to see?

"...Illyana. I'm not scared of you." At least not all of him was.

"The bear," her tail flicked briefly betraying her irritation at being seen like this. At least she had not tapped into enough dark magic yet for her feet to change into hooves. Still, the most frustrating part of this entire situation was how strange she felt to have him see her. There was no denying she wouldn't particular want anyone she had spoken with to see her like this. For some reason though there was an added layer of...uneasiness stirring inside of her while he stood there looking at her. But he was not her brother. He was not Kitty or Sam or Dani. Why did he matter?

She furrowed her eyebrows and finally looked over at him. "You should be. Perhaps when the hooves and armor appear you will know to be afraid of demons." She could only imagine how annoyed some of the others back home would be at such theatrics.

"I don't see myself growing a fear of goats anytime soon." He might not be a fighter, but he was damned good at reading people, and what he could tell about her right now was this: she was trying to make him scared, but he'd seen her uncertainty and that didn't go away with the growth of a tail.

He crossed his arms but stepped closer, his resolve steeled somewhat. "Have you found anything?"

"Is that what I look like to you? A goat?" There was a hint of something strange in her voice, something that bridged the gap between surprise and annoyance. Something about him comparing her to a goat stirred confusing feelings inside of her. The tip of her tail flicked with agitation. "I wonder what your soul would taste like." Despite her words her tone was flat, devoid of any real threat and betraying only her confusion towards him.

"Yes and no." When she finally answered his question she still refused to look up at him. "It is the Demon Bear but not quite the Demon Bear."

"What?" His brow creased in confusion slightly at her question and he shook his head. "No, no! I...didn't mean to compare you to a goat, it was just..." the first thing that came into his mind that had hooves? He'd be lying if he said her comment about his soul didn't concern him a little bit and he swallowed before forcing his mind to focus on the conversation at hand.

"The Demon Bear?"

Well, well, it looked as though she had finally found something that caused him to stumble. The problem with Illyana was that if she was given an inch she would take a mile and run with it. "The first thing that comes to someone's mind is often the most honest thought." Which stung just a little bit but she was not about to let that show. "Sweet, I imagine. Perhaps like Pixie's." Maybe she could scare him off.

"Yes, The Demon Bear. An entity from my own world."

"Yeah, well, I don't typically keep the company of demons. I always assumed the hooves and horns were stereotypes. I stand corrected." He narrowed his eyes at her. "But I don't think you're like a goat. You're...much prettier than a goat." Even with a tail.

For a second something that looked a bit like hurt flickered in her eyes before she quickly looked down. This was what she had wanted was it not? To push him away? So, why did being called a demon just sting? At least she had turned the tides of the conversation.

The turn of conversation had another strange effect though: her tail had disappeared and the horns had shrunk back. Perhaps that was a result of her humanity coming through more? How odd. "You think I am a demon?" She glanced over with a sidelong glance. "And yet you think I am pretty?" Even more odd.

"No. Now you're putting words in my mouth." The retort was spoken before he really had time to think about it, but there was nothing to be done for it now. "I don't think you're a demon, but the tail? Hooves? Folklore tells us that's usually associated with demons. Or satyrs." He made a cutting motion in the air with a hand. "And I don't think you're a satyr, either."

He took a breath before just going with it. He did think she was pretty, after all, to spite the tail. "Yeah, I do. Is that a crime?"

"Am I? It certainly sounded that way," she said with a small smirk. It seemed to make him uncomfortable and she could not help but go with it. "If Folklore tells you so then perhaps I am. I do have a demonic form," she tilts her head. "Would you like to see it?"

She shrugged at his comment, mostly because she had no idea how to react beyond just trying to seem indifferent. "Some would say it's dangerous."

He narrowed his eyes further at her question, crossing his arms. It sounded like a challenge, and more to the point, like she had an expectation of his reaction to her form.

"You know what? Sure. It can't be that terrifying."

That had certainly not been the response she had expected. A look that mixed uncertainty with a degree of discomfort crossed her expression and then she shook her head.

"I can't..." she looked down with some degree of shame. "..guarantee myself if I transform fully." All she had been trying to do was scare him off some, but instead he'd just directly confronted her with her challenge. Fine. If that was what he wanted then she could show him something. She waved a hand and muttered a few words in a language long forgotten and fire burst up around her. It swirled and lashed at her feet, sending smoke up to her cupped hands. Inside her hands an illusion began to take shape of the fiery pits of Limbo and a demon overlooking hoards of other demonic deformed creatures.

After a few seconds of watching for a reaction from him she closed her hands and both the image and accompanying fire disappeared.

"Darkchylde. That is what I was called in Limbo."

The magic, the illusion, they were things he theoretically knew existed even though he'd never seen them. The demon she showed him vaguely shared features with her, and while the malice in the creature's eyes was palpable, it didn't quite reflect the woman before him, even with her tail.

"I don't think that's who you really are, for what it's worth."

She was silent for a few seconds before she looked over at him. "I...do not know who I really am. When I returned to life I was not Illyana. I was the Darkchylde, mind and body of Illyana Rasputin but without her soul." The only other person she had admitted that to was Emma Frost and that had only been a means to an end. She was uncertain as to why she was admitting that to Jagger now but it was already said and done. Souls were such strange things and most seemed to have no knowledge of how valuable they were.

She shook her head. "I imagine that makes little sense to you. X-Men have...strange lives." Strange seemed like the lightest way to describe that.

"I think I know a little bit of who you are, even if you're just working it out, pet." He came closer but shoved his hands into his pockets as he did. "You've got a goth vibe, at least in your clothing. You could have chosen anything about here, but you went with that unless you don't like all the black and you're just going for bleak."

"It is similar to what I wear back home when not in uniform," she said with a hesitant shrug. "Though very different than what I wear in Limbo." Something made her wonder what he would think of her armor in Limbo and she found herself confused as to why she even thought about it. "And different than how I dressed before my resurrection." When she had first come back from Limbo she'd tried to just be a normal girl. Pink shirts and band posters had been her style back then. Which was somewhat strange for her to think about now.

"And you like the clothes you usually wear here, yeah? Darkchylde's a threat more than anything." And one he at least sort of understood. She kept people away, like he did.

"Do we need to worry about this bear more than we have been?"

Did she like it? What an odd question to ask. It was simply what she had found herself gravitating towards recently. In her own way she supposed she enjoyed putting the complex outfits together. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone. "Yes, I do."

That was all hse wanted to say about Darkchylde though and so she chose to focus only on his question. "The Demon Bear was originally an entity that haunted the dreams of my friend Dani. It was one of the first big threats we faced as New Mutants. He mauled her, destroying her spine in the process and then transported us to his realm, the Badlands. Only my sword was able to stop it." So, her answer was yes, they should be concerned.

As much as it sounded like a fiction novel, he couldn't deny that even in this form, he could tell she was serious, and that whatever it was out there that was stalking them all, they needed to be really, truly afraid of it.

"But you said it's not like the bear you know, right? Not exactly?"

She shook her head at his question. "No, the magical signature is... different. It feels more unfamiliar than it should. I am very familiar with how it felt," she smirked slightly at the next statement. "I was the one to cleave it in two when we first encountered it. It had... more in it's soul." Of course, that had been because it had been accumulating souls inside of it. This one seemed to lack that. Though, as it stood, she had no way of knowing if that was because it was different, or because it hadn't collected anything yet.

"You talk about the sweetest things," he grimaced at his response, his overactive imagination filling in what 'cleaving a bear in half' might look like.

"Do you think it'll need to be handled the same?"

I'm only a nightmare

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