Tempest

7 - Nightmare

You have not yet been tested.

Tobias lifted himself weakly from the ground, struggling to pull himself forward. He had to ... he had to ...

Humanity is not ready for what is to come.

Mirages and visions tore through his mind, creating an overflow of horrific images.

Screams rang out as chaos and pain reigned above all other sensations. Bodies lay strewn about in masses, a testament to the tragedy long forgotten.

They hide.

They cried.

They died.

Twisted, broken forms hovered at the edge of his sight. Twitching, as though their jerky movements were not entirely their own. They came ever closer, and he crawled away at the terror before him.

Fleshy wounds and boney protrusions were all that awaited him. Maws with red-rimmed teeth in places they shouldn't be, stained with the life of their last victims. The sounds, the sounds! They slithered, they creaked, they roared, they screamed. Otherworldly noises of pure pain was all that surrounded him.

In an instant they were gone, and he thrown into a world of howling wind. Unnaturally loud and formidable, it surrounded the landscape in all directions. Snow crunched underneath him as he shifted in place, and cold needles spread throughout his body.

But there is no other path. You must find the arrays.

"What arrays?!" he shouted into the storm. "What do you mean?"

You are the Inferno, the one chosen for this burden. The fate of all rests on your shoulders.

Familiar scenes flickered again, back to something ... massive. A machine, some kind of plan ...

"Four!"

A world dominated by ice and wind.

Your answers wait there, buried under eons of preparation. The time has come.

"Dammit, what's wrong with him?! He just won't-"

The time has come ...

"Tobias! Snap out of it!"

He blinked his eyes rapidly, the snow and wind blearily transitioning back to his quarters. He was on the ground, and Gates watched his movements closely from the door a few feet away. Behind her was a medical officer, probably someone she'd brought with her.

He focused on her, and she noticed his attention slowly returning from whatever he'd been seeing. "Tobias? Can you hear me?"

Blankly, he tried to process what she'd said. After he had, he jerkily nodded, as though waking from a deep sleep. "Yeah, I ... I'm here."

She cautiously took a step forward. "That's good. Now, just ... just put the blade down."

He was taken aback, and immediately looked at his right hand. Grasped tightly in it was a sharp piece of metal. There was no handle, and his hand was bleeding from cuts sustained from gripping it too hard. He had no idea what it had been fashioned from, he definitely hadn't made it knowingly. He dropped it, and stared at it in shock as Gates walked over to him and knelt down. "You alright?"

The medical examiner, now confident that Tobias wasn't going to stab him, made his way over and began to assess the damage to his hand.

He shook his head. "I ..." He couldn't remember with precision what his nightmare had been of; just that it terrified him. "I don't know." He looked back at his bleeding hand. "How did you know to come in here?"