The curse of Dormitia island
Although Sandalphon and Dedede seemed to be like oil and water, they both had one thing in common: they were equally stubborn. And yet, Zooey believed that the two of them could get along if they just tried.
On the way to the village that Dyrn and Lyrn had found, they had not stopped arguing, though, at least, they were not aggressive towards each other. Dedede was unable to say "primal beast" correctly, and Sandalphon refused to treat him like a king. Zooey had the feeling that they were both doing it on purpose to annoy each other. Luckily, she was there to act as a mediator, calling them to order every time one of them crossed the line between a friendly discussion and something that could lead to a fight. She highly doubted that the creators of Cosmos had conceived the beast and its envoys/surrogates to intervene in that kind of "chaos".
Even if she was no longer the guardian of the Grand Order, that role having been eliminated after Cosmos' death, she still acted as such of her own volition. It was very difficult to stop doing something that had been an integral part of her existence for as long as she could remember. But the main reason she had kept her role was because the inhabitants of that world mattered too much to her to abandon it.
In the end, the thing she was most grateful for after being freed was that she would not have to become the enemy of Gran and Djeeta, as she had always feared since she met them.
"For the last time: I'm not going to pretend to be a primogem beast" Dedede complained.
"P-r-i-m-a-l" Sandalphon spelled. "And what's your problem with that?"
"I have nothing against your kind, but I am a king and I want to be treated as such."
"For some people we are like gods" Sandalphon informed him.
"And that's another reason to refuse. The one with a God complex is Marx, not me. I'm perfect just the way I am" presumed the penguin.
"Who the heck is Marx?!"
"Pray you never find out" Dedede replied, causing Sandalphon to let out an exasperated groan.
The new discussion between Sandalphon and Dedede brought her thoughts back to the current mission: stopping that invader called Nightmare. Zooey had been thinking about it and she could only think of one possibility for the being to have so much information: he had been in that world before, during the time of the war. But, what was Nightmare exactly?
There were a few possibilities. Nightmare could be some kind of the Sky Realm's fundamental forces that had taken physical form, like the six dragons; or, perhaps, a creation of the Astrals. But, given the information that the sinister being had about Cosmos and Lucifer, the third option that had crossed her mind was most likely: he was an Astral. However, he was clearly not a "normal" Astral. With his strange appearance and peculiar powers, he had somehow transformed himself into something different. How? She didn't have a clue. Maybe the Chaos Matter from the Otherworld was involved somehow, but that was just a conjecture.
Zooey shot a quick glance at Sandalphon. She hadn't shared her theory with her fellow primal beast because she didn't know how the information could affect him. She was afraid that if she brought up the third possibility, he would jump to conclusions. They only knew of two Astrals that had achieved something similar to her theory, and the two were enemies of him. If he found out about the existence of a third Astral that had managed a transformation, she was afraid he would associate them by inertia, and then he would do something reckless, like trying to stop him on his own.
"Look, Dedede: I'm not asking you this on a whim" Sandalphon said, with seriousness and some concern. "f you go around saying that you're a king from another world, you'll probably end up causing a stir or attracting certain sectors of the Sky Realm."
"What kind of sectors?" the king asked, intrigued.
"Those who don't mind experimenting with intelligent beings, be they primal beasts, children, or penguins from another dimension" the angel explained bluntly.
"So this world has a few of those?" Dedede asked, stunned. Sandalphon and Zooey nodded. "I get it, though I doubt very much that they could catch someone as mighty as me. But Nightmare is a big enough problem on his own, so I will listen to you to avoid getting us into more trouble" he relented.
When they finally reached their destination, it was already morning. Although it was still early, the town was already showing signs of activity: vendors shouting their offers; families taking their children to school, and various workers installing decorations and lights, as if they were preparing for some kind of celebration. The townspeople cast curious glances at Dedede, but most of them just shrugged and went on with their lives. The trio of allies couldn't help noticing that everyone they passed seemed to have dark circles under their eyes, as if they had barely slept that night.
"Look mom!" a little girl, who was holding hands with her parents, exclaimed when she saw Dedede. "Fluffy! Can I touch it?"
"No, you can't. It could be a dangerous primal beast..." the woman warned her daughter as she dragged her, afraid.
"Don't be scared, darling" the man said. "I have heard of a superhero called Pengy that goes around saving people in a penguin costume. It's most likely that that person is just a tourist that has arrived too early, disguised as that."
"These tourists... The festival is in three days, and they have already come in disguise. They are disrespecting our customs!" Another woman, who had heard that conversation, complained.
"Well, at least it looks very well done" replied another man. "Maybe they'll win the contest."
Dedede usually liked attention, but those people talking of him that way like if he wasn't there, were annoying him. However, he managed to stay calm: he didn't want to cause a scene.
At least, they had obtained some info from that conversation. The festival was convenient, at least for Dedede to go unnoticed. It seemed that the monarch wouldn't have to pose as a primal beast while they were on that village.
Zooey was thoughtful. What could the festival be for? It could be something as simple as a celebration of a good harvest or the change of season, or it could be something more unique to that island, perhaps commemorating some historical event that took place there.
"I think I know where to start our investigation" Zooey informed her companions. If that island was in a high tourist season, there should be an easily accessible site with information about the festival they were preparing. Zooey quickly looked around and soon found a sign on a bulletin board.
"Come see this" she called to her companions.
"Dormitia Island Festival
A unique festivity to ward off the spirits that bring bad dreams and attract the blessings of the stars. It is mandatory to come in costume to enjoy the festival activities! This year's best costume will win a prize of 100,000 rupies, an invitation to an open buffet and a unique trophy. Contest entries are limited!"
"Yes, yes. I can totally read that..." Dedede said sarcastically, as he looked at the unreadable characters on the sign. "Can you two tell me what it says?"
"It is about a local festival. It's not a big deal" Sandalphon explained, uninterested. Then, he realized something about what he had just read. "Although that 'the spirits that bring bad dreams' thing sounds familiar, don't you think?".
"Nightmare" Dedede murmured, understanding what Sandalphon meant.
They had to find out more about it. And the best place to do so was the library.
Except for the librarian, the town library was deserted. It wasn't very big, but they couldn't waste their time looking book by book (besides, Dedede couldn't read the written language of the Sky Realm), so they decided to ask the librarian directly.
"Hello!" Dedede greeted the librarian energetically.
The librarian was an old man with a sour and subdued appearance. The man gave Dedede a crooked, disgusted sneer. Dedede barely managed to keep his composure at the unpolite gesture.
"We have come to seek information on the island's history. We are here for the festival, but doing tourism just for fun is not our thing" the monarch improvised quickly. "So, we would like to know the reason behind the festivities."
"I find that hard to believe when you haven't even bothered to learn the correct date for the costume contest" the man replied. "That costume is going to smell like a dead dog by then, though I'm sure it already does."
"Are you calling me stinky?!" Dedede yelled at him. "I won't tolerate such disrespect!"
"Dedede, calm down" Zooey asked the penguin, as she dragged him back by his coat. The king seemed ready to get into a fistfight with the manager for the insulting treatment he was receiving. "Sorry about my friend, his temper is fickle" she apologized to the librarian to try to get on his good side, even if internally she was mad at how he was treating her comapion. "Would you be kind enough to tell us where to get the information we are looking for?"
"I'm not going to let some tinpot tourists tinker with the library's valuable manuscripts" the manager rudely refused.
"Tinpot?! Do you know who I am?!" Dedede shouted, furious at the insult. "I am the king of... a very distant region."
"Sure. And I'm Siete of the Eternals, your highness" the librarian replied with irony after letting out a dry laugh. "They don't pay me enough to deal with this kind of clients..."
"I refuse to waste more time on this" Sandalphon finally said, exasperated.
With unusual speed, the archangel closed the library door, drew the curtains, looked around to make sure no one was there, and then unfurled his six multicolored wings as he announced:
"Be not afraid. My name is Sandalphon and I am the Supreme Primarch. There is a danger to our world on this island. We require your information and cooperation..."
Sandalphon had to interrupt his speech: the man had collapsed to the ground. Zooey was stunned at the scene.
" 'Be not afraid'. If you open a phrase saying that, you only get the opposite effect, kiddo" Dedede reproached the angel, while incorporating the librarian. "Any normal person would collapse out of fear in a situation like this. Anyway, any of you have some water around?"
Sandalphon formed a sphere of water with his hands.
"Heh, that seems practical. Can you also act as a lighter?" Dedede joked. Sandalphon glared at him with annoyance. "It was a joke, sour boy. Throw it over his head to wake this scoundrel up."
Sandalphon dropped the sphere of water on the head of the man, who sat up suddenly and prayed with fear in his voice:
"Please don't kill me, primal beasts. I'm sorry I offended you."
"Information. Now." Dedede demanded, annoyed that the man had only taken a respectful stance once he had believed his life was in danger.
"Alright, alright. Follow me... the director will be able to help you."
The now afraid librarian quickly leaded them to an small office inside the library.
"Director. We have a little problem" he said in a trembling voice as he opened the door.
"The one who has a little problem is Rudolf" the director, a young woman, replied curtly. "He's five days late in returning his book. Five days!"
"This is not about books, ma'am" he replied as he ushered the trio into the office.
"Who are these people?" she asked, but then a look of recognition came over her face as she saw Sandalphon. "Oh, I know you."
Sandalphon was taken aback a bit. Had the lady somehow recognized him from the cataclysms he had caused three years ago?
"You are the primal beast that defeated the sharks that attacked Auguste two years ago!" the director exclaimed, patting her hands. "Those monsters almost ruined my holidays, but you saved the day!" She then turned to the librarian and said: "you should have seen it. Those creatures even formed a tornado."
Zooey glanced quickly at the angel, who seemed deeply embarrassed. Sandalphon would rather have been recognized by the cataclysms than by that event.
"You fought an actual sharknado?!" Dedede asked, excitedly.
"Don't ask about it, please..." Sandalphon asked, flushed. It was actually a ridiculous and embarrassing event, especially the part that had involved a shark "eating" certain person.
"But that sounds like a cool story."
"Not as cool as when Zooey, together with Gran, Djeeta and a couple of their friends, got on a giant robot to finish off a being made of anti-worldmatter" the angel revealed, ready to pass the buck to his companion. She looked at him with a "why did you say that?" face, while Dedede's eyes lit up.
" A GIANT ROBOT?!" the king exclaimed, as he approached Zooey excitedly. "You have to tell me everything about that!"
"Perhaps some other time. It's a really long story and we are short on time" Zooey replied, stepping back a little in awe of the penguin's enthusiasm.
Dedede seemed a little disappointed, but he didn't insist.
"Sorry to divert the conversation," Zooey apologized to the director, who looked at the scene completely perplexed. "If you know the events that happened in Auguste two years ago, then you must have heard about the Grandcypher. We are affiliated with them."
"Of course I know that name. What brings members of such a legendary crew to our village?"
"A threat to the Sky Realm is hiding on this island for some reason that we do not know yet" Zoeey explained. "We would like to know about the past of this island to understand the intentions of this being."
"So my suspicions have been confirmed: the island's 'curse' has returned" the librarian said with regret.
"Curse?" Sandalphon asked, intrigued.
"Last night all the inhabitants of the town had nightmares. Maybe that's why my fellow librarian is in such a bad mood" the director revealed.
Sandalphon and Zooey exchanged glances with Dedede. The monarch of Dreamland nodded, understanding that they wanted him to confirm that this was an expected effect of Nightmare's arrival.
"Is that related to that curse?" Zooey insisted. If her theory about Nightmare was true, he probably had something to do with the legend behind that curse.
"All the children of the town know the tale of the curse of the island" the director said. Then, she narrated:
"A long long time ago, the inhabitants of this island suffered from terrible nightmares caused by two evil spirits. But one day, as an answer to the prayers of our ancestors, the stars shone brightly and with a ray of light they made the spirits disappear. If you behave badly, the spirits will return while you are sleeping and they will give you bad dreams. But if you are good, the stars will bless you with good luck during the festival"
The director made a short pause as she took some old looking documents and manuscripts from a drawer.
"This, as you may have guessed, is nothing more than a children's bed-time story based on the real history of the island. The truth is much more chilling" the librarian commented severely.
The librarian then handed the manuscripts to Zooey and her companions as she said:
"These documents are all we manage to savage from the times of the Great War. I think it will be enough to clarify some things for you. I just hope this doesn't mean the oppressors of our ancestors have returned."
Zooey, Dedede, and Sandalphon went back to the reading room to study the documents. Well, Zooey and Sandalphon were reading while Dedede, who couldn't help them, decided to take a nap. It didn't take them too long to discover what lay behind the tale of the curse:
"An Astral Research Center?!" Zooey and Sandalphon yelled in unison, waking up Dedede who looked around startled.
– – –
It had taken him several hours to get everything ready, but finally the lab was ready to start operating again. Now all that was left was to get to work.
He hated having to start from scratch. The massive empire that he had built for more than a thousand years crumbled after his death in a matter of a couple of decades. Everything he had achieved had fallen like domino pieces. His demon beasts? After the hero of Dreamland destroyed their master's body (and thus his link to reality), they had become inert and were soon destroyed. His numerous fortresses and labs? They had long been looted and destroyed by space pirates, thieves and treasure hunters. His workers? Arrested for war crimes on different planets or hired by other companies of dubious morality. His allies? He had none.
He never had them.
During the time in which he had been reduced to an entity that wandered between the borders of reality and unreality, he did something he swore to himself he would never do: he looked back. And then he realized that not everything he once had was lost. His first laboratory, part of a research center he had acquired in that previous existence, was still standing. It had been assigned to him when he was just a mere investigator subject to the divine laws of his world.
"Our world is stagnant. We cannot progress because evolution is not for our species. Then, what meaning lies in live? What is the purpose of our existence?"
Remembering those words filled him with rage. It was not because he didn't agree with them, but because of who had said them.
He clenched her fists at the thought of that person. It seemed that the animosity and hatred he felt towards the creator of the primal beasts, as well as his damned "serpent", had not faded with the passage of time. Now that he was back in that world, he would have gone to destroy him with his own hands if Lucifer hadn't beaten him to it two thousand years ago.
The overwhelming image of the late Supreme Primarch, holding in his hands the decapitated head of his creator as fresh Astral blood strained both his pure-white plumage and the walls of Canaan, had been etched forever in his soul. A memory from another life that still lingered over others that had been left behind when he had abandoned that world. That scene had been the reason why he decided that his future creations would not have the will to oppose him.
Though he had to admit it had been a fitting end for a bastard like Lucilius
But, as much as he hated him, he had to give some credit to that despicable Astral who had duped him with his false promises. After all, his betrayal was what led him to the investigation that had allowed him to transcend.
"Enough thinking about that. You are no longer the being those memories belong to" he told himself.
He was no longer an Astral. He had achieved what was thought impossible for his species and had evolved. He had become Nightmare, lord of terror, nightmares and despair, and dreams were his domain.
And he had more important things to attend to than his resentments. The envoy of Cosmos, the current Supreme Primarch and the detestable monarch of Dreamland were after him.
"Hmm, although without the Star Rod they can't do anything to me, I don't want them prowling around the island: they might find this place. I should prepare some demon beast so they don't bother me." Nightmare thought as she approached the star Rod fragment, which was currently being analyzed in order to find out why an artifact even more ancient than the Astrals was capable of harming him.
Astral technology felt archaic compared to what he had found on other planets and dimensions: ships capable of crossing galaxies in a matter of minutes, interplanetary communication systems, computers capable of performing millions of calculations at high speed, weapons of mass destruction that the Astrals couldn't even imagine... and that just to name a few. The only thing that came close to those advances was the technology of the Sky Realm's Moon dwellers, but not even they had been able to escape from that world.
Still, that outdated technology was everything he had now, so he had to put up with it. He approached the "cradles" and put them into operation. Originally, Lucilius had designed them to create the primal beasts, though during his own research he had modified them to use the power of Dream Matter instead of the elemental forces that shaped the world. He knew that with the progress of the war, the release of patents, and the researchs that had succeeded those of Lucilius, the Astrals had ceased to rely on those machines to create the cores and bodies of the primal beasts; but he still preferred to use the cradles, as they allowed him more control over the creation progress.
In one of the cradles rested the prototype of a demon beast that he had never managed to finish due to his sudden departure. The monsters he had created back then hadn't amounted to much: being creatures born from dreams, their forms in the real world had been too unstable and had collapsed in a matter of minutes due to their ephemeral nature. But back then he didn't have even a third of the power that he had now. His magic had increased exponentially, and over the centuries he had perfected the technique to create his beasts. With the power he had now, it wouldn't take him long to effectively bring that beast to life.
Why had he called them demon beasts? During the first steps of his research into "dream manipulation for population control" (that was how he had sold the project to the Astral Council) he had discovered that mortals sometimes woke up in the middle of the phase where dreams were most vivid. In this state, despite being awake, they were totally paralyzed and suffered from hallucinations, which some had mistakenly called demons. "What if I could make those demons real?" It had occurred to him at the time.
Also, calling the, in his opinion, improved version of the primal beasts "demon beasts" was appropriate considering that the first branch of the former had been called "angels" by Lucilius. He grunted as the name once more came back to his mind. He didn't understand why that was happening: he had never thought of him during his time in space. Was it a side effect of returning to the Sky Realm?
"Focus on your task. The past in the past" he said to himself.
The process took him just a few minutes. The newly born demon beast woke up and looked around with eyes full of curiosity and wonder. Immediately, Nightmare plunged his hand into the center of the creature, where its core was located, and began to fill it with negative energy until he erased its sense of self. His creations did not need to develop such emotions to fulfill their purpose.
"Make sure no one finds this place."
The beast nodded and disappeared in a small beam of light, with no other idea in mind than to fulfill the role it had been given. Nightmare nodded, satisfiedly. Now he would just have to start mass producing them. He would have to send one after the Singularity too, just to test how those two would deal with it. Maybe a Terribleye. They were easy to create, but why was he so bad at naming them?
If everything went according to his plan, everything would be ready to launch his offensive in three days, coinciding with the festival that the inhabitants of that island celebrated to commemorate their liberation. Fools, they hadn't been released: he had only left. How he was going to revel in the screams of horror when they saw that one of his oppressors had returned.
"What have become of her?" Nightmare couldn't help but wonder as he gazed back at the cradles, thinking of his first creation for the first time in a long time.
– – –
Dedede couldn't read the texts of that world, but he could understand the maps. So he was convinced that something was definitely wrong.
After their investigations, they left for the place that, according to what Sandalphon and Zooey had found out in the library, was home to an Astral Research Center, and they had enough reason to believe that it was there where Nightmare had headed to.
The two primals had explained to the king who the Astrals were, and Dedede couldn't help but draw an eerie parallel between the otherworldly conquerors who created primal beasts out of concepts and legends, and the intergalactic tyrant who created demonic beasts out of fears. In the past, he would have put it down to coincidence, but experience had taught him that in those kinds of situations, there was no such thing.
In addition, there was the fact that the research that had been carried out in that center was related to the manipulation of the dreams of the inhabitants of the Sky Realm, or so Zooey and Sandalphon had told him. The person who had been in charge of the center had experimented with the ancestors of the island's inhabitants in creative ways, in the most disturbing sense of the word. There was no way it was all a coincidence.
"This doesn't make sense," Sandalphon said, snapping him out of his inquests. "We've walked past this rock ten times."
"That's what I was thinking," the penguin agreed with the angel.
"Could it be that the map they gave us in the library is wrong?" Zooey questioned.
"We've been going straight for a while: there's no natural way we've backtracked" Dedede denied.
Getting to the forest had been easy. The problem had come when they tried to find that research center. In that area of the forest, the trees were too close to each other and too tall, making it impossible for them to fly in order to observe the surroundings well. Zooey's dragons fluttered around her, looking around nervously.
"This could be some kind of trap then" Zooey suggested. "Dyrn and Lyrn are acting weird."
"The forest air feels weird too" Sandalphon commented.
"Yes: this is definitely a trap" Dedede sentenced. Then something occurred to him. "Have you ever dreamed that you got lost somewhere and couldn't find your way back?"
"Most of us primal beasts don't need to sleep often, and if we do we rarely dream" Zooey replied. "Well, I used to be an exception: my natural state had always been to sleep in the planet's atmosphere until the world needed me, then I would put an end to the crisis and go back to sleep" she revealed, grateful that she never had to go through that again.
"But if our bodies or minds get too damaged or deteriorated, most beasts enter into a deep slumber and return to our core form until we heal, what can take centuries" Sandalphon added.
"Damn, all of that sounds harsh..." Dedede commented. "The thing is that what I just described is a common nightmare."
"So, what you are trying to say is that this is Nightmare's doing" Zooey intuited.
"Exactly"the king confirmed. "We have to find out if this is the work of a spell or if it is the power of one of his beasts."
"And how do we do that?"
"I have no idea. I'm open to suggestions" Dedede replied with a shrug.
"Hmm... The first thing we should do is determine the radius of the area that is affected" it occurred to Sandalphon. "Stay here while I check."
Sandalphon ran off in a straight line at high speed. Before long, he reappeared, coming from the opposite direction. He repeated the process six more times, in different directions, always coming back the other way.
"We seem to be trapped in a circular area with a radius of about 100 meters" he reported once he finished, without showing any signs of tiredness. "I have not perceived any kind of magical power when crossing from one side to the other."
"It must be a demon beast's doing, then. We just have to find it and crush it" sentenced the king, taking a hammer out from his coat with a mischievous smile
"What if that thing is out of the area?" Sandalphon questioned.
"I can snipe it easily" Zooey claimed. "My cosmic rifle can reach very long distances. One time, one of its shots pierced the atmosphere."
"Holy Nova" Dedede commented in amazement. "Well, I suppose that will do. Now it only remains to locate the thing".
"I can take care of that" Zooey offered herself.
The Arbitrator closed her eyes and began to perceive all the living beings on that island, looking for one that might have hostile intentions towards that world and its inhabitants. It didn't take her long to locate it, not far from where they were. A shiver ran through her body as she noticed that aura she had perceived, felt like that of a primal beast, further cementing her theory that Nightmare was an Astral.
"The rock," she announced.
"Pfft. Really? It's so obvious that it hadn't even occurred to me" the king laughed as he dealt a huge hammer blow to the rock they had passed through so many times, breaking it in half.
Destroying the the rock had exposed the demon beast that used it as a hiding place. It was some kind lizard of deep purple color, with a mirror embedded in the middle of its back. His tail was coiled in a spiral and his eyes were totally red.
It wasn't much bigger than Zooey's dragons, which hissed menacingly at the creature as soon as it was revealed. The demon beast hissed back at them before unraveling its tail and using it like a whip to try to hit Dedede. Seeing this, Sandalphon quickly pushed the king aside and stopped the tail with his arm.
The lizard's tail began to wrap around Sandalphon's arm. Before he could process what was happening, the angel was thrown upwards at high speed, spinning like a top. In his vision, the world started to spin around him.
Dedede didn't hesitate and jumped to grab Sandalphon, preventing him from crashing to the ground. Meanwhile, Zooey was shooting at the beast, but it protected itself by making the light projectiles bounce off using the mirror on its back. Seeing this, Zooey put the rifle away and took out her sword and shield.
"Are you okay, Sandal?" the king asked as he carefully placed him on the ground.
Sandalphon tried to get up on his feet, but he staggered. Dedede quickly grabbed him so he wouldn't fall. The angel's vision was completely out of focus. Zooey's two dragons flew over to where they were and snuggled the angel protectively.
"No: I've never felt so dizzy" the angel admitted, with a look of sickness on his face. "My vision is like a kaleidoscope right now, even if I close my eyes. I think if I had had breakfast, I would have thrown it all away."
"I think that thing has altered your senses" Dedede intuited. "Zooey, don't get tangled up by its tail!" he warned the Arbitrator as she blocked the attacks of the demon beast with her shield. "You try not to overexert yourself until your vision returns to normal" he added, turning again to Sandalphon.
"But over-exertion is my middle name," the angel chuckled dryly as he tried to stand up again, barely leaning on a nearby tree.
"Well, it seems you have a sense of humor after all" the king commented, amused, as he helped him up.
Zooey grunted. The lizard was warding off her thrusts and slashes with its tail at an abnormal speed. If normal attacks didn't work against that thing, she may have to use all of her power. But she didn't want to go that far because the damage she could do to the island was unpredictable.
Seeing the girl's struggle, Dedede had an idea.
"Hey, feathered boy, do you remember when I asked you if you could act as a lighter?" Dedede asked the angel, who looked at him strangely. "Well, actually, what I wanted to ask you is if you could control other elements, like fire."
"Yes, I can. The wings given to me by the four Primarchs allow me to use the powers of the elements" Sandalphon replied. "But I don't know why you think it's relevant now."
"Can you also absorb them?"
"Yes, I can do that. What are you going to do?"
"Something very cool. I wish you could see it" the king bragged. "On my signal, use your prime powers."
"It's 'primal'!"
Dedede ran to where Zooey was fighting the demon beast. Taking advantage of the fact that the monster was focused on Zooey, he slipped away to get on the creature's back while he charged energy into his hammer.
"Zooey, move away! Sandal, get ready" the king ordered.
"That nickname is getting on my nerves..." the archangel growled.
The king of Dreamland hit the ground with all his might with his hammer, channeling elemental energy into it. That made a whirlwind of fire form in front of him. He didn't like to rely on those powers because he was proud of his natural strength, but in dire situations like that one, it was necessary to use them.
"Reflect this!" he yelled at the monster as he released the attack.
The whirlwind enveloped the demon beast, which soon was suffocated by the flames. Now that it couldn't defend itself from her attacks, Zooey took the opportunity to charge cosmic energy into the blade of her sword. Her red eyes gleamed with determination before she made a horizontal slash that sent a wave of light straight at the creature, disintegrating its physical form into particles of light.
Meanwhile, Sandalphon drew the fire towards him, containing it in a small sphere before it could spread out into the forest. When all the fire had been absorbed, Sandalphon launched the sphere into the air, its trajectory being followed by the eyes of Dyrn and Lyrn. The sphere was soon lost in the sky. "I hope it doesn't hit anything..." Sandalphon wished.
"Take that, you nasty lizard!" Dedede celebrated. If Kirby were there, he probably would have dragged them all to do a victory dance, but in Sandalphon's state, he doubted the angel wanted to dance. Well, he doubted that the angel would want to dance in any situation. "Good job, team!" he congratulated his companions with a vigorous gesture.
"Heh, it seems that in the end all those stories were not entirely hoaxes. You're a good warrior" Sandalphon admitted. "Although I still don't believe that god of destruction thing."
"Meh. Feel free to believe what you want" Dedede replied.
Zooey, meanwhile, approached the place where the beast had been defeated. Only a dark purple crystal remained of it. Zooey picked it up and examined it.
"I knew it" Zooey said in a trembling voice, seeing her suspicions confirmed That caught the attention of Dedede, who came over to look.
"What is that?" the king wanted to know, looking at the crystal cautiously.
"A crystalized primal beast core. But this color is unnatural. Everything about this core feels… wrong" she replied, troubled.
"Wait, wouldn't that mean that you and Nightmare's creations are the same thing?" Dedede asked.
"I don't think so. But I do believe that we're created following the same procedure."
"You already knew that Nightmare is an Astral, am I right?" Sandalphon accused his companion upon hearing that information. The angel was still leaning against the tree. "Why didn't you tell me? You know I don't like it when people hide information from me" he growled, feeling between frustrated and hurt.
"I'm so sorry, Sandalphon," she genuinely apologized. Zooey's dragons began to look from one to the other alternately. "It was only a guess until now. If I haven't told you before, it's because I was afraid you'd do something reckless."
"Tcht," Sandalphon complained. "Zooey, it's true that I'm impulsive, especially in this type of situation," the angel admitted. "But I'm also aware of my limits. I am not going to blindly go after an Astral on my own when I can't even hit him."
"Yeah, it was kinda silly of me," she also admitted. "I promise I won't hide anything from you again."
"It's fine; I understand why you did it. I promise you that I will not do impulsive or reckless things."
"Are you two going to kiss or what?" Dedede interrupted them, speaking sarcastically.
"What are you saying?! We are just friends!" Sandalphon replied, blushing. Zooey let out a genuine laugh at his reaction, glad to hear that he considered her a friend. "Besides, I already have someone waiting for me" he added nostalgically under his breath, although Dedede heard it.
"Calm down, dude. I was only kidding" the king of Dreamland reassured him.
"And you call yourself a king with such a childish attitude?"
"Yep," Dedede replied sharply. Sandalphon didn't know how to respond to that.
"I don't understand you" the angel commented after a few seconds of silence. "You're selfish, weird, smug, fickle and at the same time, it feels like you're the kind of person you could trust with your life."
"That's me, with my virtues and my very few flaws," the king laughed. Dyrn gave him an apprehensive look.
Suddenly, the crystal began to shine and tremble, attracting the gaze of those present. Zooey released it preemptively and covered herself as if it were to explode, but it just disappeared in a beam of light.
"That was weird..." Zooey commented.
"Mmm... maybe it went back to Nightmare" Dedede guessed.
He then looked up at the sky, which was beginning to turn orange.
"It's starting to get late. Hey, Sandal. How is your vision?" he asked the angel.
"I don't feel dizzy anymore, but I still have my vision clouded by many points of light" he replied.
"Maybe we should find somewhere to spend the night and rest, then" the king suggested.
"It would be appropriate. It's been a long day" Zooey sighed, tired.
Zooey and Dedede each grabbed Sandalphon and began to walk. Dyrn made an attempt to bite Dedede when he got close enough, but Zooey was able to prevent it with a scolding glare. The group soon found a small cave that seemed like the perfect place to camp and take shelter from the darkness of the night.
But could it shelter them from nightmares?