Back in the safety of the cave, the atmosphere remained heavy with psychic pressure. Enik, projecting a complex hologram of interconnected spheres, began to drone on about the cosmology of the multiverse. He explained that unlike the rest of existence, Mysterra lacks true Outer Planes—the engines of consciousness and free will created by the Afanc. Instead, Ka created a localized substitute: a "Realm of Dreams" where visions and nightmares are born and recycled. He warned that in this closed system, psychic weight builds up like sediment. If the party did not anchor their consciousness firmly, the "sub-astral shelf" would swallow them whole.
As Enik’s voice continued to drone, reality began to blur. The stone floor softened into dark ink, and the air turned to violet mist. The party realized too late that the descent had already begun. They sank through the floor of the cave, falling not through space, but through memory and concept, landing on a bridge of obsidian overlooking a horizon of purple storms. They had entered the Coil, the tangible subconscious of the hollow world.
Navigating a plain of white ash, haunted by the ghosts of their doubts and guilts, they encountered a figure of silver and ice: Marinka, the Silver Maiden. She revealed herself as a living Legend, the sentinel holding the chain of Thaegrymn, the Titan of Fear and Lord of Nightmares. She warned that Thaegrymn had caught their scent and that the only way forward was through him. Guided by Marinka, they approached a massive Azcan Logic Gate, a psychic barrier designed to filter out irrational minds. By synchronizing the contradictory truths of the dream realm (Night, Rain, Ocean, Melody), the party unlocked the path to the nightmare’s heart.
Beyond the gate lay the Petrified Horizon, a graveyard of giant skeletal trees where Thaegrymn awaited. A mountain of rotted wood topped with a titanic jack-o'-lantern, the Titan forced each adventurer to face a personalized trial of terror in a twisted reflection of their home.
Adrian, stripped of his divine agency, faced the fear of being "just a man." He responded with blunt force, smashing the Titan with the raw weight of his conviction. Akemi, taunted by a cacophony of mockery, turned her koto into a weapon, shattering the Titan's mask with a blow that silenced the nightmare. Bao Bao, utilizing her new mastery of momentum, rolled into the base of the petrified trees, sparking a domino effect that buried the fear beneath timber. Cut-Cut, facing the void of her own inadequacy, closed her eyes and hurled a stone with pure desperation, cracking the Titan’s facade. Elyndra, rejecting the paralysis of analysis, swung a petrified branch with the fury of a creature refusing to be useless. Korloth used simple leverage to topple the nightmare world-tree, and Lenti broke the logic of the dream by using a mundane pinch of salt to wither the fungal manifestations of fear.
As the nightmare logic shattered under their collective will, Marinka urged them to wake. The party jolted back to consciousness in Enik’s cave, the heavy atmosphere lifted. Thaegrymn was sucked into the Anubis box, along with (witnessed by only the most observant of the GOATs) Marinka, who seemed to have planned this escape all along.
Note: The following writings are from the character's perspective and are often private to the character. They are not considered "in-game" knowledge to the other characters, and any in-character reference to this information would be considered meta-gaming.
Letter to Master Kagemitsu at Tengai-no-mori Monastery by Caylen Redden
Dear Master,
I believe I have just woken up from a dream. This is of course odd because I do not sleep. I have lost consciousness on more than one occasion, but I don’t believe I ever dreamed then, and I have had visions induced by various stimuli, but this was an entirely different experience. One moment I was attending another one of Enik’s history lectures, but the next moment I felt I was sinking, as though the stone beneath me had eroded into wet sand and some unseen force was trying to pull me under. I gathered my strength into a leap to propel myself out of the morass, and then suddenly I was standing on an obsidian bridge overlooking the whole of Mysterra. I crossed the bridge and entered a wasteland with no life or landmark to be seen, just an endless, flat plain of white ash. As I continued walking, the ash around me rose up into shapes, forming nebulous bodies and barely discernable faces of people I failed. They made no sound, and I felt no need to speak to them; the past is the past, and the only thing to do is keep moving forward. Soon enough, the specters faded away and I found a discernible path, a trail of silver frost which led me to a woman who introduced herself as Malinka “the legend who holds the chain of Thaegrymn, Titan of Fear, Lord of Nightmares.” She told me that Thaegrymn had caught the scent of my soul, and to survive, I must go deeper in, to the place where fear becomes flesh. I will not claim I do not feel fear, but what fear have I not already faced? I continued until I reached a gate, a barrier put in place to prevent dreamwalkers from wandering unprepared into nightmares. Passing the gate required solving a logic puzzle, which I completed easily. On the other side, I was confronted with a nightmare vision of Tengai-no-mori, a version of our home filled with rotting structures, distorted faces, whisperings of failure, and the stench of decay. All illusions have flaws, however, and as soon as I saw through them, they crumbled away into gray dust. In reality, or dream-reality, I was standing in a petrified forest, face to face with the Titan of Fear. Thaegrymn appeared as a large but oddly spindly figure of gnarled wood with a gourd for a head. He resembled a scarecrow or training dummy as much as anything, but I quickly learned not to underestimate him in his own domain. It was a struggle simply to remain upright as the titan shook the ground, and I was repeatedly thrown down, flailing like a beetle on its back. None of my training or experience seemed to matter; only the most feral attacks seemed to have any effect. Eventually I gave up trying to center myself and acted purely on instinct, fighting without form or finesse and just attacking as quickly and savagely as possible. I was knocked back a final time, and one of my hands landed on a stone. Snatching it up, I heaved it at the titan’s gourd face, striking a finishing blow. Then I heard Malinka’s voice again, urging me to wake up, wake up and use the box! My eyes opened, and I was back inside the Pylon with the other GOATs around me. The Anubis Box had been activated, and we all watched as Thaegrymn’s essence was drawn inside. Malinka was in the room with us as well, but when the titan disappeared, so did she. I will need to confer with the other GOATs to fully understand what happened, but I wanted to write down what I remember before the dream fades, as I’m told they do. Although I don’t fully understand what happened, I do believe it was real, at least in a way, which means we are one titan closer to completing our goal and returning home.
Until then,
Cut-Cut