Chapter 17: This is What Nightmares are Made of
Serena wondered why she felt so strange when she woke up.
She looked around. She wasn't at home. Her wrist was adorned in gold and her body was in a dress that looked like her appearance as princess Serenity.
She stood up and blinked.
She found herself in a garden on the moon. She felt a familiar sense of loss that the flowers of the moon were often only the pigment of white – color was something that she'd found more of on the earth. A haze covered it. Like a lost memory.
She felt a sense of expectation; a longing to see someone in the garden. Prince Endymion? But …she knew well that he couldn't be here. She had a sense of familiarity in this dream…she felt wide-awake and yet it had to have been a dream.
She turned around, and looked at the white lilies when she felt eyes on her. She raised her head to see a man in the shadows looking at her. His eyes glowing amber. Familiar and yet foreign. She ran towards him out of curiousity only to find that suddenly she was in the familiar setting of the ball on the night before the strike on the Moon of Queen Beryl. The last night she danced with Prince Endymion.
She turned and expected to see his hand. The moment of surprise when he comes in as Tuxedo Mask, she knew it well, and somehow consciously expected it. She wasn't reliving these moments; it was if she was remembering them. Was she awake within her dream? How come she was so aware of it?
Instead she found the hand of a man in a soldier's outfit. Amber eyes. Wavy auburn hair. And a gaze she'd only known until recently.
It wasn't real. I
t was a dream.
There was no way it wasn't Darien.
She pinched herself hard.
The room froze.
She closed her eyes.
She wanted to wake up.
Serna woke up sitting straight up in her bed. Her dream. It wasn't real. It was the man Ixion's eyes that haunted her. What did that mean? She coughed slightly and found that her room was covered in a greenish hazy dust. Luna was sleeping. Even when she got up from her bed Luna didn't awaken like she normally would.
"Luna?"
She called out, likely shaking her bed. Nothing.
She took out her communicator. Nobody was answering.
She swallowed hard and left her room to the streets. The moon was still high in the sky. But the world was quiet. Too quiet.
Could a Demon Seed have been released while they slept? She noticed the faint yellow greenish dust, in the air, sitting on top of everything, like a pixie dust or a thin sheet of pollen.
Something was wrong.
"How are you awake?" A voice hissed.
She turned to see a monster. A green skinned woman, with large butterfly wings that created the illusion of a scary face, with purple hair and red eyes.
"Who are you and what have you done to the city?" Serena exclaimed. She was prepared at any moment to transform.
"Pseudia, I'll do the answering."
Serena noticed the man Ixion had appeared again, stepping in front of the monster.
"So Princess Serenity we meet again." Ixion smiled.
"How do you know all of this?" She stepped back.
"Didn't you dream of me? Don't you understand our group is very much embedded in your past? We didn't just appear. Although the ignorance of it all might make it appear so." Ixion looked relaxed.
"What did you do to-"
"Just Dreams. You see the Seed I had the honor of using on my dear accomplice behind me, was of Pseudia. The demon of illusion and deception. Luckily the human I chose knew much about the illusions of dreams – how awakening lost memories can create realities in dreams that bring the dreamer so far in they'll never get out." Ixion looked to the human version of Sailor Moon. How long would it be before she tried to strike him like all the others had? Before they'd be labeled as evil, and simple enemies. "The deeper in they go the more likely they'll become our little demon minions, akin to the nightmares of their own negligent actions."
"Then why am I awake."
"I told Pseudia if she found a girl that dreamt of the moon…with few regrets…to lay it easy on you." He shrugged.
"Why are you so passive with me and not my friends?"
"You're friends have guilty pasts. You see Pseudia works to awaken a person's nightmares in their own heartbreak – things a person never realized occurred, things they didn't realize they've done to another, until the subconscious was woken. Humans are typical characters; they never see their faults until they are put right infront of them. All have fears of hurting another or being hurt down deep in their hearts, especially the people they have misunderstood or came to love. Pseudia is just awakening them in their dreams."
"But-"
"Your friends, well your friends happened to kill the Shitennou didn't they? They were the cause of their death because, lets be frank, they surely didn't save them like all the other people corrupted by what you like to call "evil" . I mean you must know by now they were once the Generals of the Earth? And that a core three of them fell in love with your scouts way back in the past all because you introduced them when you fell in love with your …wretched lover boy? And here we are, in a new time period when they've been killed by you. Not saved. Killed."
Serena's eyes went wide. "You're lying."
"No, I'm not. We've existed in the shadows, between time, long enough to witness decades of your own mistakes. It was too funny, how you scouts only looked for evil but never thought that your opponents might lie in Scouts much like yourself."
"But Queen Beryl killed them…she killed the-"
"Ah, yes, Beryl. She was fun wasn't she? Well I guess that explains why your masked hero isn't here…"
"What?"
"Beryl used to be a human – she fell in love with your Prince, but your Prince dismissed her so badly for you that she went to Metallia for power. Why do you think she wanted to have him kill you? Basically it's his fault for not treating matters more delicately, that caused the war erupted in the first place…or yours for over stepping your boundaries and traveling here back then…"
Serena stood there stunned.
"Don't look surprised. We've sat around watching all you've done with this "rebirth" thing on this planet. All your friends are realizing part of their consciousness that they couldn't reach- honestly consider it a favor. If they don't awake from it because they can't escape their own blame, then, well blame it on the nature of people to be negligent."
"You act like you're innocent. You can't just through these people's lives away!"
"Hah. Do you know what happens when a person sleep-walks? When the reality they are trapped within coincides with reality? What happens if Sailor Mars thinks she can save Jedite in her dream? But in reality she's fighting against another scout? Or even civilians? If they succumb to the griefs of their nightmares they'll only partially awaken as succumbing to their own demons in the illusion of redemption. They'll all witness the feeling of knowing how it feels to not be able to alter the past. To be stuck and trapped with the actions and inflictions –"
"Why are you so bitter?" Serena stepped back. She needed to change to Sailor Moon, but if she did she wouldn't learn more about them. "Why do you have to do this?"
"Do you really want to know?" Ixion turned to her. "In that case, I'll tell you more about us, if you promise not to try to blow Pseudia into star dust for the moment. Think of it as a stand off. I'm doing you a favor by filling in some blanks…you Moon people were always so one sided." His eyes were piercing.
She knew she had to. They needed to know what they were going up against. But somehow she questioned why Ixion had taken such a liking to her… why he'd made the dream she'd had so specific to him…
"Okay. Ill do it."