aterat | I'm only a nightmare

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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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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?"

She shrugged and gestured to the little ritual setup she had. "That was what I was attempting to figure out here." There was a moment of hesitation before she frowned. "The sword is a part of me. A physical manifestation of my lifeforce, my soul. To fully unleash it's power against a creature like the Demon Bear would require tapping into a considerable amount of my energy and magic." Her eyebrows furrowed and after a few seconds she decided on admitting to the concern she was currently wrestling with.

"I do not know where this creature came from precisely and therefore I do not know how much dark energy I might need. I am not foolish enough to risk destroying the bear only to lose myself." Besides, she was uncertain if anyone here could actually even handle fighting her dark self if she were to lose control.

He listened to her explanation and did his model best to follow precisely what she might mean. He realized, of course, that he didn't have a full grasp of it. One would need to understand where her dark self came from, exactly how one were to form their soul into a blade, and anything about the bear in question, really, but he could follow the gist of it. Hopefully that would suffice.

"No one's asking you to lose yourself to stop this creature. If it's not quite like yours, then it might not come to that anyway, yeah?"

"If it is a copy of the Demon Bear from my world, then it is my responsibility." At least that was how she viewed it to some degree. Regardless of how little knowledge they had on how something like this could have happened, it would still have some connection to her. Which only left her feeling like she had to be the one to handle the creature. No matter what that might mean. Strangely though, she felt more hesitation with that than she ever had before. As much as she would loathe to admit it, she found herself actually a bit scared. She had just gotten a soul back and the idea of losing herself again was...well, frightening.

"Nobody wants to die, pet. There are a lot of powerful people here. You don't have to deal with it alone." He could see her hesitation, and he couldn't blame her, though he didn't truly understand the cause. Who wouldn't be nervous going up against that thing? It couldn't have been an easy task to stop it the first time.

"So, no taking on the weight of the world, yeah? We'll figure it out, or someone will."

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I'm only a nightmare

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