It has been a week... A week since the terrible events at the seal to the Eater of Dreams. A week since Ariel and Takara went missing in the endless black of the dreamless void where the Eater of Dreams resides.
The Prince of Nightmares-- now the Prince of Dreams with the return of his heart, pulled on every single connection he had to see about a means to restore the barrier, and finally something came up.
The party once again finds themselves at the broken seal, and it looks like in the days that have gone by, Ariel's temporary gossamer ward has weakend over time. The old unicorn knight Amalthea stands guard, seated in her armor by the wreckage of the seal. She snorts at the sight of the prince but says nothing to him.
"I had wondered when the lot of you would return." When, not if. "They're still in there. Fighting for survival against that thing with everything they have. I'm not sure how much longer they have in them. I'll open it again when you're all ready."
Lacrima did not want to wait the week. Really, she wanted to make the same mistake The Prince of Nightmares made and came here to try to beat it herself. Well. She wanted to. What she wants and what's actually prudent and best for everyone involved is something extremely different. What's important is not acting on those wants.
Lacrima appears- and is willing to give anyone a 'ride over' if needed using her awful new powers- but there's other people who can handle that maybe too.
She's always been intimidated of Ariel's mother because she was this dark thing and she hunted and killed dark things. Now she's the new 'Princess of Nightmare' and that really did not make her feel better about that. Really. Now wasn't the time for those worries. Even if they peaked just for a second upon her arrival.
"Well. I wanted to come sooner.... but. Nevermind." she says softly. "We're here." she says with as much determination as she can muster.
Riley would have needed a lift to get here most likely. Lacrima would have once again found her in her own dream, except this time it wasn't some dusty old gym. The "Nightmare Princess" would have found her in the war room of the Pentagon in a spiffy officer's uniform, looking over charts and maps of the area in front of the gate and the shattered seal.
Still, she arrived with the others, nodding to them before looking up to the Prince. "These contacts of yours had better have come through with something good "Prince"." Riley took a deep breath, cracking her knuckles and shifting to her Prism Keeper form with a quick "shwoom" as she looked up at the gate. "Right, what's the play here? How to we fix the Prince's royal fuckup, kill an Eldritch abomination, and save the world all before breakfast?" After that she turned to look at Lacrima. "So "Princess of Nightmares" then? Does that mean you two are a thing now?"
Dream Defender Kotomi is right behind Riley, and once again, she's remembered to give herself brilliant violet eyes.
"Ironically," she's saying, "this has kinda ... helped my anxiety, sort of?" She shrugs. "Like, basically, my anxiety has always tried to react to every little thing going wrong with 'THIS IS THE WORST CASE SCENARIO!' but, like ... the Eater of Dreams has sort of ... bumped everything down to, uh, to not quite as bad, I think."
Her head jerks towards Riley as she makes that remark. "What, no, Lacrima-san is with Ariel-san!" Argh, this kind of misunderstanding is THE WORST-CASE SCENA-- wait no.
The past week has been exhausting, not just for Ariel, but for Takara as well. How does one get sleep and rest when one is already asleep and resting? The answer is: You don't. You just take a breather from time to time and you keep on running. Because of this, Takara is looking the worse for wear. Her hair is disheveled, and she's looking a bit paler than normal and worn down. But now they're back to the seal and hopefully that means the end of this and she can get some real rest.
Seishi hasn't been idle herself, this past week.
She was a wreck when she left this place: filthy and bloodstained, clothes torn and tattered, numb with shock and horror.
It's a different Akashimaru who returns to the threshold of the gate. She's mounted once again, fully composed, decked out in the familiar vivid scarlet kimono - and over that a set of old fashioned samurai chest armor in black and red, with lacquered sode on her shoulders and armored guards on her forearms and lower legs. She hasn't donned the oni mask to complete the look - yet - but it's hanging from the pommel of her saddle.
Fixed to the police horse's modern saddle is an upright banner emblazoned with a single scarlet character: Perseverance.
"I'm sorry we took so long," she tells Amalthea gravely, before her dark eyes slide towards Riley.
"The Eater of Dreams isn't so easy to kill," she says. "I won't say we can't--"
--if only because saying it in the dream realm is a good way of making it truer than it has to be--
"--but it's not the goal right now. We're here to get Ariel and Takara out of there, and recreate the seal."
She has, to be honest, no idea how they're going to do that, but that's something else she's not going to voice aloud.
Amalthea rises from her seated position slowly, rolling a stiff shoulder from under the weight of her armor as pauses for a beat. The unicorn's lone eye falls on Lacrima and lingers for a long moment, narrowing a fraction. But she says nothing as everyone displays their resolve.
She draws her blade. And with a mighty cut, slashes open the brick wall of dreamstuff that had been blocking the path.
"Alright, get in now and be quick about it. It's been far too long as it is. Those two are likely waiting for their friends about now."
The darkness beyond the seal... Is different from what everyone may remember. Small regions of grass and trees are strewn about, woven from dreamstuff but drained of their color and partially devoured. Clearly Ariel's attempts to distract the Eater and give it something to focus on aside from her and Takara. It's a small forest of death and decay, visual 'glitches' and artifacts all over the greyscale landscape where the Eater passed sapped it all of color, vibrance, and life.
Ariel, of course is... Nowhere to be seen. Having been separated from Takara in the oppressive bleakness of the dark realm behind the seal.
Lacrima IMMEDIATLY shoots Riley a glare. "No." she bluntly to that idea. "Just NO---" she says again.
"Apparently there's some du---" a pause. She was gonna say 'dumb'. She's frustrated. Angry. Depressed. She's gonna say stuff she doesn't mean like that. She's trying to catch herself -- "There's a dreamworld prophecy that says something about 'Powers of Nightmares' passing or something and apparently that's what we found at the end of that Temple." she says looking at Kotomi. Who was there in the temple at the time. "Remember the wall mosaic?" she asks. "That Ariel asked me why I was in it?" she snorts.
"He's the Prince of Dreams again. Don't worry. He's sticking around when this is all done to apologize. A LOT.." she says angrily. She manages to not stare at the boy while she says this.
She passes by Amalthea.. a pauses. "I'm bringing her back." she says bluntly as she stops and leans in towards her. Like this is something she can argue with. But her negative emotions are flaring as she stops and marches into the dark with everyone else. She has no idea why she said that except that she had to say it to someone.
When they get into the dark, she notices 'things' since this place was just horrid black void the last time they we're here. Good: Ariel has been fighting and distracting this thing. Good: There's landmarks maybe now in the dark!? Bad: It's all horridly greyscale and wrong looking and things are glitching.
"...Do we follow them...?" she asks out loud.
Riley held her hands up. "Hey, I ain't judging. He's uh, he's tall? I guess?" She grinned after that. "Is there going to be a big Royal wedding like the Brits had? Are we gonna be invited?" She couldn't contain the fit of giggles, especially seeing Lacrima's reaction to her ribbing here, especially when she started talking about apologising. "Heeehe... Phrasing."
With that though she took a couple of deep breaths, trying to focus her mind and once again get serious as she stepped through the threshold. "Right. Right, let's do this... Huh. Trees. If we're lucky that'll lead us right to 'em."
Kotomi nods to Lacrima. "Oh! I get it now," she says. "That ... actually ... makes me feel slightly better. I think. Sort of. Uh, y'know what, let's just ..." She shakes her head. "... yeah."
Her immediate reaction to the changed scenery is relief.
Followed by panic: Where's Ariel!?
Followed by relief again as she notes that the artifacts of Ariel's dream are still there. The would've all just disappeared if she'd been ... dream-eaten. Right? Right??
She sighs softly and flies in after Riley. "Somehow, this makes me think of the True Lab from Undertale," she murmurs. No panicking! She said they were going to rescue Ariel and Takara, and she's sticking to that!
Sometime during the last few days, the ribbon that Takara tied around herself and Ariel snapped, during a particularly bad run in with the Eater of Dreams. She hasn't really had any time to tie them together again, since then, but they somehow managed to stick together until just recently.
Now she's wandering about what landscape there is, following the faint thread of fate that binds her and Ariel together. Like everything in this god forsaken place, the thread is barely there, and it's taking all her concentration to follow it.
When the others enter the dark, dead realm, the threads that tie her to the others snap into place, and the blind girl is now left with a decision. Find Ariel or find the others.
The big dark horse tosses his head fretfully as Akashimaru urges him through the open gate - the only outward sign, this time, that Seishi's calm outward determination might be taking some effort.
She rides a small loop, reins in one hand and tessen in the other, scanning the altered scenery for any sign of either of their friends.
"Seems like the best option," she agrees with Lacrima and Riley. "Everybody make sure to stick together. And stay on guard."
As though anyone here really needed to be told.
Further on into the bleack nightmarescape, the greyscale little forest expands, dotting the black ground in washed out shades of grey into the distance. Following them takes what seems to be an eternity. But eventually a new clue is present among the dreamscape... Blotches and splashes of liquid silver on the ground. And something breaks the ever present silence of the dark place beyond the barrier. A single distant voice in the darkness.
"Night owl calls while the dove soars across the silver moon...
All alone the rose petals close and kiss the night...
All across the darkened night skies sail fireflies...
Gently lighting shadows that hide a thousand eyes..."
A single, familiar voice singing a soft lullabye. And following it will lead to the sight of Ariel on her knees, looking haggard and ragged, hair a tangled mess, armor disshevelled and missing plates, the tunic beneath in tatters, stained silver.
Takara Himura has decided that finding the group takes precedence. Once together they can find Ariel and get the heck out of here. It doesn't take long to find them. "Oh thank God," she says. "I can't tell you how good it is to see you." A little blind person humor there.
Once caught up with them, it isn't that much longer until they find Ariel and she breathes a sigh of relief. "There she is." She doesn't seem surprised to see how tired and ragged the unicorn looks, since she looks about as tired and ragged as she does.
Lacrima is more than happy to follow the trail as she eyes Akashimaru. "Yeah." is all she says to her. "And No." she says bluntly to Riley, again while they're traveling. She's trying to just keep focused. Then they come across silver liquid. This is bad. Mainly because she knows Ariel bleeds silver. So either someone dropped a box of mercury thermometers back there or....
Well. They hear singing. So she's alive. She isn't paying attention to the words just yet.
"Ariel!?" she calls out. "Ariel!" she calls out again. Okay. There. There she is. She looks horrible. That's not surprising. But something feels... really off that makes her stop and dead. And when Lacrima stops dead running towards Ariel that should probably be a good clue for most of you to stop.
"...Wait...!" she suddenly bluts out. "S...Something..." is all she can manage to mutter.
Riley glanced left and right, advancing carefully along with the others with her hands raised in a "ready" position. That being said though, she hadn't "ignited" yet. Giving their position away here would be an absolute death sentence.
"What is that on the floor? The hell? Looks like gallium." The girl took a moment to sniff the air, frowning. "No. No it smells more like blood around here. That can't be good. Wait... Eyes up. I see someo- Oh shit."
Riley's pace was more measured, stepping out a little to cover the flank at a jogging pace. "Something? What something? Is this some sort of trick? Eyes up people, watch for ambushes."
Relief sweeps over Akashimaru's face the moment Takara's in view, and she even cracks a bit of a smile, however brief. "That's my line," she replies to the other girl's quip. "Sorry we kept you waiting."
Realizing Ariel's not with Takara steals any remnant of the smile from her face. She only just restrains herself from asking - if Takara knew where Ariel was, she'd be saying so, and not emerging out of the darkness alone.
But she does look worried. All the moreso when they find the first splatter of liquid silver. That's... bad.
By the time they follow the trail and the sound of singing to where Ariel is finally in sight, she's ready to urge her mount into a sprint to cover the last remaining ground. Just as she does so, though, Lacrima stops short - and that's enough to make the dark horse balk underneath her even before her conscious mind has caught up. A bitten-off curse escapes her as the gelding plunges and rears, nearly dislodging her from the saddle. "What the he--?"
Something's wrong. A wild look to either side, and then Akashimaru sets her mouth grimly and snaps open her tessen with a jerk of her hand.
"Come, the wind that blows away lies...
San-kyo-sen!"
They have found, her. Or so it seems. Though Ariel doesn't respond to approach for a moment longer, still murmuring the words to her song.
"Night hawk sings as the black raven circles overhead...
All alone the white lily bends and slowly dies...
All across the darkened night sky, the thunder roars...
Winds come howling harmony to a lone wolf cry."
But something is off about this situation isn't it? Lacrima being the first to notice, prompting pause from the others.
And then Akashimaru wields her tessen, dispelling the illusion.
The silver bloodstains are gone. The ragged look vanishes and that silvery armor is pure, pristine and untouched. Now that lullabye stops as she heaves a sigh and rises to her feet, dusting off her knees. Her hair is black. Her eyes are black. Gone is the glitter and sparkles, and her cheeks are too rosey.
"Ah... It looks like you weren't fooled." She says, folding hands behind her back. "Well that's fine!" Chirruped as sweet as sugar. "It's not like I planned for that little charade to last long anyway. I'll just make things easy." Mused as she unfolds her hands from behind her.
In her hand is a knife.
"Greetings. And goodbye!" Chimed sweetly as that horn glows, countless more knives forming in the air before beginning to fire off like machineguns in the darkness.
It doesn't take long for Takara to notice that there is something quite off about this whole situation. It isn't until she tries to find the thread that leads to Ariel that she figures this out.
"This isn't Ariel!" she warns. The thread that leads to Ariel is askew, and leads off in an entirely different direction. "I don't know who this is, but it isn't her." As if that isn't obvious by the plethora of knives that are now shooting at her.
"ACK!" Takara cries, when a few knives come at her. While her response time is still unbelievably fast, due to the sheer amount of fatigue, it isn't nearly fast enough. She manages to knock a couple of knives out of the air, but one hits her squarely in the shoulder, and knocks her off her feet, her sword dropping from her hand.
Lacrima is not used to these feelings and sensations. She's not used to 'sensing' the dream world, she's only ever been used to interacting with it like a dreamer would. But she knew whatever she felt was hilariously bad and wrong on some level she can't understand. and she knew this was not Ariel. More importantly, this thing never was Ariel. "You're not even...."
"You're not even her...." she says angrily. She says this more loudly. "This... this isn't her. It's.. something else.. I mean.. d..don't worry about fighting it..." she says more angrily. Trying to explain more or less 'this thing just looks like Ariel... but isn't Ariel. Please stab it back'. Takara explains better than she can. Lacrima has too much personal investment in this to not be blinded by frustration and anger and wanting to rip this thing a apart.
Lacrima gets stabbed in the back. This hurts. This hurts a lot, especially when more knives follow up and she teleports away to get out of that line of fire. She has knives sticking out of her back. She peeks behind herself and then forward. "Well." she says bluntly. "It's good to know I can still be a pincushion and live." she says deadpan.
Is this thing The Eater? She doesn't know. How she used to sense things and how she's sensing things now may be different. She can't rely on... 'sensing' things at the moment.
Lacrima throws a rather large ball of dark energy. That still worked. But... that was kinda dark energy 101. Even Takashi could do that one. Heck he taught it to her. So that doesn't surprise her so much.
"N..Nrg--" Ariel is able to make stuff from nothing. Could she do the same? Maybe? She doesn't know how. She doesn't have time to think too hard on it. She's evading knives. She only had time for that one... dark blast ball.
"AKASHIMARU." she calls out. "ANY IDEA WHAT THIS MIGHT BE? IS IT THE EATER?" she blurts out.
Kotomi looks uncertainly at Akashimaru. Okay, that's looks like a sensible thing to do, as long as ... it ... only attacks lies, because if this really is Ariel, hitting her might --
Oh.
Oh, okay.
At the sight of NightmAriel, Kotomi becomes so panicked that she hits calm from the other side, then keeps going until she reaches panic again. "Yeah, y'know what?" she says, her voice eerily placid as she dodges through the knives and interposes herself in front of the fallen Takara. "This is the worst-case scenario."
She does a double-take at Takara and Lacrima's exclamations. "Oh! Okay," she says, still with that eerily placid tone in her voice. "Dreamy Starburst!" She thrusts her hand outward, and bursts of white stars tinged with lavender fly out towards NightmAriel.
"Oh really Takara? I never would have gu-... Whoa!" Riley ducked, a stream of blades slicing through the dank air and embedding deep into a twisted and gnarled tree behind her. The girl snarled, cut off mid sentence by that near miss.
She finally flared up, her flames flickering and casting long shadows in the inky black darkness as she pulled out her sword, pointing it at the fakeriel. "You call that a knife? THIS is a knife! Where's the real Ariel!" The girl stepped forward, deflecting knife blade after knife blade with her sword wreathed in flames, getting slashed and nicked up yet not slowing her stride, in fact, she was replying to every strike, every scratch, with a scorching hot purifying beam from her offhand. "Where is she!? Where is the real one!?"
"Hansha-sen!" The moment the knives fly out, Akashimaru thrusts the open face of the Shinken out in front of her, whirling the tessen into a shield that glints with a mirror's reflected light. Several knives strike against it with tones like a bronze bell, sent spinning back toward the nightmare Ariel. Others clip her armor, chipping into the lacquered surface. One or two score bloody lines in the horse's dark bay hide.
With a quick movement she snaps the fan closed, then jabs it downwards, catching the oni mask where it rests in front of her on the saddle and flicking it into the air for her other hand to catch and bring to her face. The final piece of her armor.
"Takara!" Akashimaru wheels her mount around, charging between the blind swordswoman and not-Ariel, five hundred sixty kilograms of living wall. As she switches her tessen to her other hand and pulls the banner from the fastenings securing it to the saddle, she looks toward Lacrima. "It's not! We can beat it!"
And, keeping in place between Takara and the enemy, she swings her mount around in a tight, hoof-pounding pivot, facing the false Ariel again. This time it's the flag she brandishes, raising it high.
"Hoist the banner of perseverance!"
The spot where she stabs the end of the banner's pole into the ground erupts in red, a rush of blooming spider lilies springing from the ground and rolling outward in a wave of scarlet, pushing back against the power of Nightmare and filling everyone within its radius with strength.
"Heehee."
That giggle isn't even Ariel's. Now that everyone has figured out the ruse there's no holding back, is there?
On either side.
It may not be the Eater but this dark unicorn is a powerhouse. In comes that wall of dark energy, and the nightmare unicorn's horn glows. Weaving the very stuff dreams are made out of into a set of stairs that she rapidly climbs to leap over the immense ball of darkness, freefalling for a beat and twisting in the air, grazing through Lacrima and Kotomi's magic before landing on her feet, armor dented and scuffed.
In comes Brass with the purifying flame of her blade, and that gives the Nightmare a beat's pause, before she catches it on the blade of the knife in her hand. Sparks fly as the two duel furiously for a long, hot, second before that horn glows again.
And she lurches forward into a lunging headbutt.
All across the darkness and the greyscale landscape, scarlet spider lilies bring a light to the darkness, but that doesn't stop the Nightmare's horn from glowing again.
"Oh, I'm not the eater, dear." Chirruped at last. "I'm just old." Said with a smile as a sudden pack of wolves appear from behind her, spectral, dark, skeletal wolves lunging for Akashimaru on her horse, radiating a primal fear in waves from their fiendish forms as they bite and snap at the police horse in an attempt to make it rear."
"I'm the Nightmare that whispered in Cain's ear to kill his brother Abel." She explains. "And all I have to do is hold you here long enough for the Eater to find us~."
Which happens to be the moment the dark mists shift.
Once again... That's not the horizon.
Takara Himura groans, pulling the knife out of her shoulder, and lets it fall to the side. With her sword arm out of commission, she raises her left hand. "Red Ribbon Barrier!" She shouts and the ribbon that is wrapped around her left arm unravels and weaves itself into a shield to protect her from further harm from the flying knives.
This gives her a moment to close her eyes and concentrate on Ariel's thread. "Ariel... the real one... is that way," she says, indicating off to the right. "She's ... she's not too far away now."
Kotomi looks at Riley. "Uh, we might wanna ... not worry so much about bothering this guy, the bad guys tend not to talk much, I think."
She actually deflates for a moment when Akashimaru unleashes her spider lilies. But in the next breath, she straightens back up. "Right! I can do this!" she says, rising up higher. "Butterfly Blaster!" From her left hand, she fires glowing lavender butterflies at the sudden influx of wolves.
And then she whirls around in fright as the 'horizon' moves once again.
She turns in midair to face Takara. "Need help getting to her?" she says, her eyes darting between NightmAriel and the Eater. "I've been resting all week. Or, I mean, uh ... I can help cover you."
Lacrima is still figuring this out. She's still trying to figure out her powers. She can still do her basic Dark Energy(tm) chicanery, so there's that it seems. That'll have to be enough. When the clone Ariel sputters out that it isn't the Eater she seems confused. Was this thing trapped here all the time with the Eater? Is it a hench... mare? Nightmare? Of it?
Then it sputters out being old. And being the one that caused Cain to murder Abel with a nightmare and she twitches. What is it. With herself. And attracting all this biblical nonsense that ruins her life? Sure. Saint George then this thing Impersonating the person she loves most claiming to be the literal cause for Cain killing Abel. Yeah. Yeah okay.
This is bullshit and she knows it. Nrg---
Yeah.. yeah okay that's the Eater. Over there. Around them? She can feel it. She can sense it. This thing is... what even is it? When Takara says she senses Ariel she shoots a look to herself. She looks to the right and scowls-- she suddenly turns into an inky black slop on the ground---and starts jolting in that direction. She can still do that---- then she stops... nrg. Going after Ariel means leaving the others behind. She looks back at the others. She looks at the direction of Ariel. Others. Ariel. She twitches. God dammit. Ariel would want her to stay behind and help the others and she stops and reforms not far from Takara. Nrg.
Think.. think... What's her most harrowing fight? What bothers her at night the most? What would she have Nightmares about if she slept like a normal human person would!?
Poderoso!?... sure.
A black energy forms in front of her. It starts to take humanoid shape. Her Brother?... It takes on the form of a night!? Well... there is how her sandwiches also turn into monsters an--- wait no! NO WHY DID SHE THINK THAT!?
A huge, shadowy ham sandwich forms out of the black darkness and attempts to lunge at the Ariel copy. Lacrima sort of facepalms horrifically as it trys to explode, messily on contact.
Look, Lacrima has interesting fears okay!?
"Y--yes please-- go after Ariel I'll um... I guess I'll make...nightmare sandwiches and...launch them...."
"...At this thing..."
Riley tried to ride out the headbutt, the fake Ariel's horn slamming first into the superhero's hexagonal logo "chestplate", before skidding off, sticking into the girl. She cried out in pain, the unicorn tearing into her, but in a moment of clarity she gripped on tight to the fake unicorn...
...And started glowing.
Prism Keeper Brass was superheating herself! She kept as tight a grip as her strength would allow, clinging onto the Fakeriel with everything she had, her entire form glowing a brilliant white hot as she put all of her heat, all of her force, into just the one spot that was making contact, funneling it all right into the doppelganger's face!
Eventually, her grip loosened, Riley slumped and crumbled to the floor holding a hand over the hole the horn had made in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding while her suit slowly turned from white to a deep crimson red yet despite this she didn't seem to care. She laughed with a mouthful of her own blood at the now hopefully seriously burned doppelganger and the oncoming tide of darkness, flipping a shaky middle finger to them both. "F-fuck you!"
If she was riding a real horse, Akashimaru would be in trouble.
Nightmare wolves circle, snapping and harrying at her mount's legs until any flesh and blood horse would panic and bolt or worse. But although the dark gelding pins back his ears, stamps and squeals, this time Akashimaru stays in control. Behind the ferocious grimace of her mask, she grits her teeth. "Oh, no you don't..."
Red light flares in her hands, the Shinken transforming from tessen to short bow. She dropped the reins a while back, but it only takes a thought to bring the police horse around; she fires off an arrow, another, before she looks to the other girls.
"If the Eater of Dreams is coming here, you can't face him alone," she calls to Lacrima. An arrow materializes in her hand, and she gestures toward Kotomi with it-- "You and Takara go get Ariel! Fast!"
She sets arrow to bowstring and fires again, a half-heartbeat before her horse bunches and springs into the air, both back legs lashing out behind him in a powerful airborne kick that would make the Spanish Riding School proud.
The Eater of Dreams is on the move once again, summoned by the chaos and conflict as the Nightmare holding the mahous at bay giggles with glee. At least until the tides are turned.
"What? Let go of me! Let go!" Snapped as Brass latchs on and begins to overheat. "What are you doing?!" The First Nightmare demands in a shrill shriek, before...
She eats a sandwich. A literal giant nightmare ham sandwich.
Sent sprawling, covered in burns and nightmare mustard, the thing wearing Ariel's face flashes a scowl, clutching new and smoldering wounds. ... But then she grins. "Well it looks like my time is up... I'll be going now." Decided as she slips into the darkness as the Eater approaches.
This leaves those pesky wolves, though between Kotomi's butterflies and Akashimaru, they are fended off without issue.
For those going to get Ariel, she's not much farther off, staggering through the blackness and clutching her side, doing her best to reach the group as fast as she can in spite of her own exhaustion.
"I... I knew you'd all come. I never lost faith in any of you." She says, voice strained. "Um. ... Do we have a plan?"
That. That is a good question with the Eater drawing ever closer. "... Maybe we should go now."
Takara Himura nods, and wearily gets to her feet, right arm hanging loosely to her side. She rushes over to Lacrima and extends her shield to shield them both from nightmares and evil. "I can... I can sense your thread of fate that binds you to Ariel a lot clearer than mine. She's not too far from here! C'mon!" Takara sounds beat. On her last legs, like she's going to collapse at any moment, but only through sheer stubbornness she's managing to keep going.
"There! There she is!" She nearly shouts when she finds the end of the thread. "Go.... go get her. I'll shield all of us to get back."
Lacrima summons another sandwich. This one is Turkey on Rye but she doesn't have to fling it because it runs away. "It ran." she says softly. The sandwich explodes anyways and causes relish to launch in the immediate area. It's mostly not close enough to anyone to cover them. She blinks as she looks towards the non-horizon and frowns and looks towards Akashimaru. "We need to move fast. If we're gonna lock this thing back up in this box..." she says softly.
"...I dunno what that thing was but I hope it stays in this box." she says. "It felt... wrong... bad... like..." she shakes her head and just moves towards the direction the others went. She's expecting Akashimaru to follow rather than try to face the Eater.
Especially since. "ARIEL!" she cries worriedly. "It's really you!" she continues crying. "W.. we need to go it's coming... I---"
"The Prince of Ni---Dreams said he had an idea. I.. I think but we need to get out of here first." she says. She tries to shut up her inner thoughts about the potential trust of this specific Prince of Anything. She succeeds in the moment. Ariel is here. She's alive. She's hurt. Tired. But she's alive and hopefully they can get out of this conceptual dark box.
Becaus she can't feel anything outside of the dark here. Usually. She can touch the Dusk Zone. Something... but there's nothing here. No.. emergency teleporting. Nothing here.
Kotomi ... stares at the Sandwich Nightmare. "... What."
She winces at Riley's ... "outburst", and quickly floats back. "Okay, y'know what, that was kind of awesome," she mutters, before nodding to Akashimaru and swooping down after Takara and Lacrima.
And whew, there's Ariel! The real one! Kotomi practically melts with relief. She lands next to Ariel and offers a shoulder to support her. "I mean, I'm trusting that he can help out here," she says; she hasn't had anyone else's bad experiences with the Prince. "But getting the heck out of here sounds like the best idea I've heard all week!"
She realizes that this might imply that Ariel and Takara staying behind might have been a bad idea, and clams up. This is ... the ... She glances back at the approaching Eater of Dreams. ... This is the eleventh-worst-case scenario and counting.
Riley kept her hand on the injury caused by the fake Ariel's horn, sending that same heat through it in a desperate attempt to cauterise the wound while trying to force her body away from the oncoming darkness. She couldn't stand, barely reaching a half sitting, half shuffling position as she did her all to simply scoot away.
She stopped after a while. Her eyes looking to the others briefly. "Go. Just run! Ru-!" A bout of jagged, gurgling coughing cut her off, the girl slamming her fist into the ground. "Run! Get Ariel and run! I'm only going to slow you down! I'll try to buy you some time!"
With that, she poured the last of everything she had left into it. Purifying beam after purifying beam striking the immovable wall of darkness, even as her vision started to black out, even as every sound, every movement, every sensation started to grow more distant she managed to keep her remaining thoughts on just one thing.
Blasting that monstrosity back.
With the First Nightmare no longer an immediate threat, Akashimaru definitely isn't keen to stick around and confront the Eater of Dreams in person. She lets the bow dissolve back into a tessen as she urges her mount to follow Takara's lead until they make it to Ariel... for real this time.
"It's absolutely time to de-ass this place at high speed," she agrees. "Someone can get up with me if they need to - nobody stays behind this time!"
THAT MEANS YOU TOO, RILEY.
It is the real Ariel this time. And she looks a little sheepish at Kotomi's words, but knows the girl likely doesn't mean to come across that way. "Eheh..." But she DOES get her arm over that offered shoulder.
"I'm sorry to have made everyone worry." She mumbles.
But now is very much the time to leave, and once someone grabs Riley and gets on the go, it's a staggering race back towards the exit- a single pin-prick of light amid the darkness... And bursting through the seal leads to the sight of...
The Prince of Dreams, organizing a veritable army of Dream Defenders; picking up the rubble of the destroyed seal and fitting it back into place piece by piece as fast as they can, weaving gossamer into the cracks and starting to seal it back up.
"I'm afraid it won't be as strong as it once was." The Prince murmurs. "The Eater will be able to exert its influence on others now, but it still shouldn't be able to escape like this."
Kotomi ... grumbles softly. "Lacrima-san, you can handle Ariel-san," she says.
She flies back to Riley, and swoops down next to her. "Can you not?" she says, with an amount of force that surprises even her, and she practically hoists Riley up to bring her off to the exit in a fireman's carry. Yeah, an entire human being is heavy, but Kotomi is filled with determination, and in a dream, that's often all you need.
She breaks into a grin as she sees the Prince and the Dream Defenders at work. "Nice!" she says, gently setting Riley down. She deflates slightly at the Prince's comment about the seal being weaker, but then immediately rallies. "So?" she says. "We'll be ready to fight it off this time!"
... She isn't entirely sure that came out right, either.
But frankly?
She smiles. "Y'know what," she says, "this is the best-case scenario!"
Takara Himura looks more than relieved to finally get out of that place. It's like stepping outside into the fresh air, after being trapped in a closet for a week. Once out, she just kind of wobbles and falls over, exhausted.
Once everyone's clear of the gate, Akashimaru finally lets herself slump a little in the saddle. Breathing out a long sigh, she reaches up to tug the mask off her face.
"...the last one cost a life to make," she murmurs, and offers the Dream Prince a wan smile. "Being able to replace it at all is a win. We'll... figure out how to deal with the rest."
...somehow, she thinks but doesn't say.
Lacrima takes Ariel. She holds Ariel and she pouts. Which is kinda like a smile but she's crying at the same time. She can't possibly frown right now. She's unhappy this happened. She's sad it happened but Ariel is okay just like she knew she'd be and just like the Prince of Dreams urged would be.
When they're free that's when she just full on surprise smooches Ariel. She doesn't care who's watching. Nope. Doesn't care. You can all blush- she doesn't care. This doesn't last terribly long but she begins bawling. "Ariiiieeeelllll!" she says. "You had me sorry worried! And I wouldn't come out of my casket for like twodaysandIhadtohide-because I look different now andtherewasthisdumbprophecyand--" none of this probably makes sense to Ariel. Or really anyone nearby. Really. Lacrima is gonna need to tell Ariel when she's more composed and Ariel's actually rested and did she just super smooch Ariel in front of Ariel's Mom over there?
She'll probably realize this later. Maybe.
Riley used her remaining strength to blast away at the "horizon" that was still fast approaching. She couldn't even see it at this point, not really. It had all become a blur a relatively long time ago, though that being said, the lack of sight didn't really matter too much. The damn thing was quite literally the horizon. The girl couldn't exactly miss it.
She didn't even notice being picked up, only managing a couple more beams of purifying energy before simply slumping in Kotomi's arms, her own finally dropping to her side.
The next thing she knew, she was outside. Her sight had at least somewhat returned as her eyes looking amongst the haze of blurred faces. "Fuck, I'm still alive? How?." Suddenly, a thought crossed her mind, she started to speak again but was interrupted by another painful bout of coughing, spitting blood onto the ground and gasping for air. Still, she managed to continue her sentence after regaining some composure. "Hey, is that... Is that nightmare prince guy still around? Tell him to get over here."
It is a process that is going to take a while, rebuilding the seal. And it will never be the same. Akashimaru is correct, originally it cost the life of Renge to make in the first place, and no one here seems keen on sacrificing another life to strengthen a new one. But it is better than no seal at all.
"Um. Hi, Norie." Ariel says when she's placed in the vampire-- Nightmare Princess' care. "I hope I didn't worry you too mm-mmh!" That sure is a kiss, and the unicorn's cheeks darken considerably. But her arms loop around Lacrima and she just holds close with a sigh and... Drifts off right there, from exhaustion. There's even a little snore.
Amalthea's face is an impossible to read mask of stone, after that.
But this is as good as it gets. Maybe not THE best case scenario, but it is certainly a better outcome than could have been.
"Yes, what is it?" The Prince says, pulled from his busy task of directing the work. Though it looks like the Dream Defenders have the rebuilding well in hand as he makes his way over to Riley.
Kotomi glances at the kiss, then glances at Amalthea, then does a double-take at Amalthea and turns away with a blush.
She glances down at Riley. "... No," she says flatly. "Oh, uh, here he comes anyway." She pauses. "... Why is it suddenly easy for me to, to backtalk?" She laughs weakly. "Oh, man I feel like ..." She shakes her head. "... man I don't even know!"
... Oh, someone else is walking over! This one isn't a Dream Defender; it's a Nightmare. Yasumi stares at the tableau before her, then looks between Ariel and Lacrima, and the slowly-rebuilding seal. And then she starts laughing hysterically. "Y ... you won!" she exclaims. "You ... y-you actually won! You s ... you succeeded! Th ... that's ... goodness gracious me, that's impossible!"
Lacrima is more than happy to sit there with a snoozing Ariel until Alamathea needs to take her back to their home dream. She's all sniffly herself but that's fading fast because she looks over to the Prince. She frowns. "I expect you to visit Ariel soon." she says bluntly. But that's all she says to the Prince. But the Prince already knew this demand was coming. She said as such.
She hears Yasumi and looks towards here. "We should talk soon. Yasumi-chan." she says softly as she merely goes about back to resting. La la la. Happy place now. La la la... will need to ask Ariel how to use powers...
Because she isn't particular thrilled with pure sandwich themed powers. No. At least it.. worked? Yes it worked.
Brass waited until the former nightmare prince was niiice and close, then... slugged him as hard as she could right in the face. Again. With that though, her "superhero" form faded. Instead of Prism Keeper Brass lying there on the floor, there was just Riley, her blood specked face contorted into one hell of a death glare.
"You deserved that you son of a bitch. This is still your god damn fault. You almost got everyone killed, you weakened that seal, and you're gonna have to live with that." She snarled those words at him, but her expression warmed right back up when she looked at the others.
"So. We won. Heeeeey. Tell you what, there's a great shawarma joint about two blocks from Seishou. You ever tried shawarma? I don't know what it is but I wanna try it."