[Week 14, Day 5 | interactive dream ] Death on wheels.
He is, somehow, both Andalite and human when it begins. Elfangor is once again at that moment of approaching the black hole, where he sees himself dying--touching the Time Matrix, while simultaneously seeing and feeling and knowing everything at once. Yet he does not see the Ellimist. (But he does hear his laughter. Just as he always will, in a distant corner of his mind.)
And then everything is shifting, spinning, melting and reforming. He hits the ground hard, stumbles, falls to his knees. Four knees now. Andalite.
His stalk eyes scan his surroundings... and fear curls in his gut.
He knows this place. He's been here before. This place, out of space, out of time, separate from everything. The parallel universe. The one he had created with Loren and Esplin, as they had struggled to escape the black hole.
Just as before, the sky is broken into jagged patches of patterns he knows: two from living under them, one only from this place and his nightmares. The red and gold of the Andalite homeworld. Earth's blue, with fluffy white clouds drifting by. And the Yeerk sky, an ugly green shot through with lightning.
This can't be happening. This place isn't real, it collapsed in upon itself! It was an anomaly, only to occur once under very bizarre circumstances. It should not be replicable. And yet here he stands, hooves digging into the grass. It tastes real. Oh, god.
This isn't right. This can't be happening. He needs to get the hell out of here.
But where can he go, when trapped in a universe of his own creation?
He doesn't know, doesn't care--just runs.
But he doesn't get the chance to run very far before he sees them, and he stops dead in his tracks.
Jarex and Larex. Esplin's pets.
Oh, fuck, not Mortrons.
For a moment, he just stands there, frozen, not comprehending what he is seeing, because... no. No, they can't possibly be here. Because if they are, then it is entirely possible that their master is nearby as well. And the last time he saw Esplin, he'd been staring down his throat. Facing his immediate death.
He is not afraid of Esplin. Never, not that bastard. He hates him, wants to tear him apart, and fear has no part in that rage. No, what he fears is the certainty that, if he should ever leave Kannagara, he knows precisely what awaits him, and it is nothing more than a quick yet gruesomely painful death. He fears the knowledge, his certainty in that knowledge, but not the one responsible for his annihilation.
But if he is here... He knows it will not prevent his own death. But he wants to find Esplin, if he is here, and sink his tail blade into his neck.
But more importantly than that, even, is the reminder of what this means. That if there are Mortrons here... his deal with that godlike being... (Does this mean Loren is here?)
He is so distracted by these thoughts that he almost misses the squeal of wheels digging through mud as the pair of Mortrons prepare to attack. So distracted, that when one's head separates to fly straight for his face, he reacts instantaneously--his tail blade snaps forward, leaving two halves of the head to fall to the ground.
And almost immediately they begin to regenerate.
Fuck.