The unmade bed called out to Claus through the darkened room. "Soon enough," he thought to himself as he slipped on his pajama top. He caught a whiff of something wild and paused to sniff under his arm, disappointed to find a distinctive sheepy scent still clinging to his skin despite the long bath. He couldn't be too surprised by it though – after spending the whole day shearing sheep with his dad and Lucas it was a wonder he wasn't still picking wool out of every orifice.

No matter how relieved the sheep were to be rid of their winter coats, Claus always dreaded shearing days. Every last little thing the sheep stepped in seemed to work its way deeper and deeper into their wool over the course of the winter, giving them an odor that the boy had often tried and failed to put into words. He'd settled on "funktacular" for a while, but "putridiculous" had started to grow on him lately. It wouldn't have been so bad if the three of them didn't have to hold the sheep down to shear them. Plus the way loose wool would fill the air like dandelion spores didn't help. And that was without getting to how they still had to wash and dry and sort through it all. What a pain.

Needless to say, Claus was completely exhausted. He could scarcely keep his eyes peeled through the (admittedly awesome) dinner his mom had made to reward her "big strong men" for their hard work. As he flopped down onto the squeaky bed, Claus thanked his lucky stars to have it back now that his grandpa had returned home – even if a hint of the old man's aftershave did still linger. As ready as he was to pass out, though, the second he closed his eyes and stuffed his face in his pillow his mind was flooded with the sights and smells of wool stacked to the ceiling and surrounding him on all sides.

Winking one eye open confirmed it to be nothing but an illusion of course, but it was a persistent one. He rolled onto his side, kicked his blankets off, threw his pillow to the floor, anything he could think of. None of it helped. Well the wool would have to wait its turn, he decided. Let his imagination try and suffocate him under a sea of sheep's hair in his sleep if it could. At least it would be a cozy way to go. It may not have been the most comforting of thoughts to hold onto, but it did the trick as the exhaustion clouding his mind inevitably won out and he quietly slipped off to sleep.

Clutching the thick wool in his fist, Claus gradually became aware that it was still attached to a living thing whose warm body waxed and waned with each breath. The giant creature bleated up at him, turning its head just enough to give him a dissatisfied sidelong glance. The beast, which Claus had at first thought to be a giant sheep, had an unmistakably porcine face. The whopper of a chimera was trotting briskly through a dark wood, passing between leafless trees until a clearing opened up before them and Claus beheld their destination.

Sliding down off the chimera's back, the boy looked up at the large, pink seashell before him. The lone spot of light in an otherwise dark world, it compelled the boy forward like a siren's song. He extended his hand out and pressed his fingers to the wooden door, which swung open easily even with a mere feather touch to reveal a bright – some might call it garish – interior decorated in vibrant pink and adorned with balloons, streamers, confetti, and an entire buffet. A banner hung over the entryway welcoming him inside for a party in his honor. As inviting as the whole scene appeared, though, Claus still hung back. Had the door not shut itself behind him he might have turned around. Everything about this place seemed much too large to him, like he was seeing it from a little kid's point of view.

Standing in the center of the room in two rows were six of the Magypsies, lining the way to the throne at the far end of the room where the last of them sat. The first one Claus looked to was Locria, boisterously nwehehe-ing from a full set of brass horns. The others were more or less as he remembered from their brief meeting: Doria and Lydia immediately fawned over him like he was an adorable baby animal while Missy and Phrygia remained aloof and disinterested, the latter even yawning drowsily at his approach. Ionia gave him a knowing smile that reminded him of his grandpa before his vision settled on the back of the room and the Magypsy sitting there: Aeolia. Or rather, it was the person whom he knew to be Aeolia, and yet she was the spitting image of his own mother, wordlessly beckoning him forward. His heart fluttered at the sight of her and he broke into a run, arms outstretched, only to find her getting farther and farther away.

No, that wasn't right. She wasn't getting farther away; she was getting smaller. Or he was getting larger. Larger and greener and meaner. His fingers became claws; his teeth became fangs; his run became a charge. Powerless to stop himself, he lunged forward and snapped his jaws shut over the poor woman. The smell of blood splashed against his snout as he bit down, but instead of the expected spray of red a thousand bright yellow sunflower petals exploded in all directions, blinding him to all but the tinny nwehehe-ing of the horns, which grew louder and shriller and angrier by the second. He shut his eyes and clasped his hands over his ears to try and keep out the cacophonous riot of noise screeching at him from each swirling sunflower petal.

Then he felt a hand on the tip of his monstrous snout and the terrible sound was silenced in an instant. Opening his eyes again, Claus saw light return to the world. Fuel stood in front of him with a great big toothy smile. They were all alone in a grassy field under a bright, sunny sky.

The redhead reached forward with one of his terrible claws and Fuel took hold of it. A smile crossed the monster's gruesome mug as their eyes met, and when he looked down again he realized that he was back to being himself again, the green scales and talons replaced by soft, pink skin. Then he looked down further and realized that he was showing a bit too much such skin. Gasping, Claus covered himself as best as he could, but nothing could save his modesty as Fuel began to howl with laughter.

Except it wasn't Fuel who was laughing. It was someone unseen but all too familiar whose mad cackling quickly turned to coughing, wheezing, choking. How many times had Claus heard that monster gasping for breath and prayed that it would never come? That damnable laugh wormed its way through his brain as it had so many times before, a constant reminder that something which should have died a long, long time ago still refused. His eyes stinging, Claus could only watch as Fuel collapsed in a heap like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

The laughter slowly began to fade away along with everything else. The sky, the field, Fuel – it all sloughed off like mud in a downpour until all that remained was Claus, the darkness, and the figure in front of him. The boy's throat tightened as he found himself face-to-face with the Commander.

Neither one of them made the first move. The chimera wore a blank expression while fixing his gaze firmly on his human counterpart, every muscle and mechanism poised to strike. Short on breath and shaking nervously, Claus was too busy fighting against his own nerves to either advance or retreat, though he flirted with both options.

It was the Commander who eventually made the first move. Bowing his head ever so slightly, he raised his left hand to his helmet and clumsily slid it off to reveal the matted blonde hair beneath. He looked sickly and pale (albeit with a slight rosy tint in his cheeks) and had one of his eyes replaced – not with cybernetic parts like Claus had, but something organic that resembled a cross between the eyes of a lizard and a goat.

The sight of his brother's mangled form finally moved Claus to action. Turning on his heel, he tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. This was wrong. It was all wrong. He shouldn't be here. He couldn't be here. None of this was real. Light began to pour in through the cracked walls of the dream and he felt himself being pulled back into the waking world.

Claus awoke with a start and his eyes shot open, but he was not at home in his bed. He was still in that dark world of the dream, except now he knew it to be just that. The realization that he was aware and awake but still deep inside his own subconscious left him in a stunned silence. Only when he noticed the arms wrapped around his torso in a vise-like grip, one of them with a cannon for a hand, did the panic truly set in.

"Get off me!" Claus stammered, rediscovering his voice. He'd meant it to sound intimidating, but instead came off as terrified even to his own ears. The Commander wasn't keen to do as he was told. "I said let go!" Claus persisted, trying to shove the chimera away.

The Commander kept his cool and said nothing. Neither did he fight back beyond maintaining his iron grip, which was as unflinching as the expression on his face no matter how hard his quarry strained against it.

Claus squirmed and kicked and cried out until he was hoarse and exhausted. Twisting around to look the chimera in the face, Claus saw only dead eyes and pale skin – the same things he'd seen reflected in the mirror many times. He turned away again, feeling sick to his stomach at witnessing Lucas in such a state.

"Stop it!" Claus pleaded, only to be met with more silence. His dreams were bad enough normally, but it was even worse being aware of them and unable to wake up. His thoughts raced, scraping his brain for any idea of what to do but finding none. Defeated, he slumped forward. "What do you want?"

To his surprise the Commander finally responded. Not with words – that would be far too helpful – but by tightening his grip just enough to be certain the boy felt it. Claus gritted his teeth as he felt a growing pressure in his head. The whole world began to throb in time with his heartbeat, smearing the emptiness with a dull red glow that streaked his vision with waving geometric patterns. And then he heard it, speaking as if from a great distance. It wasn't the Commander's voice, but his own. "Is life here really so bad?"

". . . What?"

The light kept fading in and out accompanied by the sound of a beating heart that got louder with every pulse.

"I don't understand!" Claus shouted into the darkness.

He heard his own voice again, creeping into his mind from every direction. "You don't live in that world anymore," it insisted. "You're here with us now. Why is that not enough?"

"Who are you?!" Claus cried out.

The heartbeat grew even louder and the pressure kept building as the boy waited for an answer that was not coming. Instead when the voice returned it asked, "Why do you have to keep picking at this scab?"

Claus growled and threw himself around, hoping it would finally loose the Commander's hold. "Let go, dammit! I want to go home!"

Suddenly Claus realized he was free and lying on his back, but his limbs felt like they weighed a thousand tons each. He could just barely manage to force his eyes open, but when he did he looked up to see Lucas crouched over him with tears dripping off his chin. The vision began to fade and Claus gave his final breath.

In the blink of an eye he was back at the Commander's mercy with the memory of his own words ringing in his ears. "You can't because he's DEAD!"

"What do you want from me?" Claus demanded weakly as the last of his strength waned away.

There was a long stillness before his voice again burbled up from the back of his psyche. "There's a whole world out here," it explained, the gulf between them seeming to grow wider with every word, "and everybody wants you in it."

Claus felt the Commander let go and in an instant he was back in his own bed, sweating and disoriented but awake.

(This was a weird one. I wanted to evoke the more psychological and psychedelic moments of the Mother series and this is the result. I'm still not sure I pulled it off, but it was a fun challenge and an interesting way to get into Claus's head.)