( There are fidgets. There's an awareness, but the unrelenting pull of sleep lures her down and down, until her eyes remain closed, her breathing evening out. The dreams almost seem like they'll pass, except that what Blue's done is too effective.
The predawn or late dusk light starts to creep into her mind, and along with it, the restless forms of dozens of animals, soldiers strewn between them. She knows the uniforms. Comrades, compatriots -- patriots of her country. That's what military service meant, wasn't it?
An unasked, unanswered question. Looming in the distance is the imposing form of the pool ship, something cold and hot in her stomach all at once. There's James, the lion, king of beasts, leader of a doomed brigade. There's Timmy, and Kelly, further away, difficult to make out in the current light.
There's the cry that wasn't, the movement forward over razed terrain, open to all attacks. The sound and sight of the dracon beam bearing down on one Auxiliary at a time, incinerating all they were within seconds in the most painful way imaginable.
It's brilliant point focuses on Collette, and the pain begins. Only like each night since the zombies, it doesn't just make her wake up, unable to dream through her death anymore than she'd been unable to live through it. Instead the pain shifts, becomes something grasping and cloying, something tearing the air from her lungs and leaving her part girl, part crocodile, part monster on the ground, tatters of familiar clothing streaming in blackened strips from her body. She can't walk -- she tries, but the most she manages is a pained crawling, watching in horror and unable to properly scream as her body changes, inverts, mimics the horrible grasping nature of the undead from the start of the month.
Worse, as her eyes tear away from herself, seeing her friends where they fell, she watch them get up, similarly horrible amalgamations. Crawling, crying, tearing at themselves, and with a suddenness of logic in dreams, it's not just the people she remembers from home.
It's the people here, all the ones she's loved and cared about, all the ones who remain with her still.
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The predawn or late dusk light starts to creep into her mind, and along with it, the restless forms of dozens of animals, soldiers strewn between them. She knows the uniforms. Comrades, compatriots -- patriots of her country. That's what military service meant, wasn't it?
An unasked, unanswered question. Looming in the distance is the imposing form of the pool ship, something cold and hot in her stomach all at once. There's James, the lion, king of beasts, leader of a doomed brigade. There's Timmy, and Kelly, further away, difficult to make out in the current light.
There's the cry that wasn't, the movement forward over razed terrain, open to all attacks. The sound and sight of the dracon beam bearing down on one Auxiliary at a time, incinerating all they were within seconds in the most painful way imaginable.
It's brilliant point focuses on Collette, and the pain begins. Only like each night since the zombies, it doesn't just make her wake up, unable to dream through her death anymore than she'd been unable to live through it. Instead the pain shifts, becomes something grasping and cloying, something tearing the air from her lungs and leaving her part girl, part crocodile, part monster on the ground, tatters of familiar clothing streaming in blackened strips from her body. She can't walk -- she tries, but the most she manages is a pained crawling, watching in horror and unable to properly scream as her body changes, inverts, mimics the horrible grasping nature of the undead from the start of the month.
Worse, as her eyes tear away from herself, seeing her friends where they fell, she watch them get up, similarly horrible amalgamations. Crawling, crying, tearing at themselves, and with a suddenness of logic in dreams, it's not just the people she remembers from home.
It's the people here, all the ones she's loved and cared about, all the ones who remain with her still.
And she screams. )