Ashen Onyx hated "The Nightmare" with a deep, unfettered passion. He hated the nightmare in the way he hated writing long-winded, pretentious essays for English classes back in high school and thinking about paying taxes and bills. He hated those things a lot.
This "nightmare" of his had been plaguing him for some time now -- several months, at least -- but had picked up in frequency and intensity since his Duel with Buster, and even more so since he had spent his Sunday teaching those seven girls all about Duel Monsters. The dream would always repeat the same old formula with a few minor variations here and there, almost like a bad television program. How Onyx wished he could just change the channel.
There he stood in an empty, black void. Naught but cold air and dark, widespread nothingness as far as his eyes could see. He would wait in one spot -- rooted firmly to the ground -- until a figure would slowly rise up from the blackness as if it were stepping out of a pool. It was always humanoid, but featureless and blurred. It would stand motionless for a few moments and would suddenly reel back, clutching its head. A colored fog, never twice the exact hue as before, would emerge from nowhere and snake its way around the figure as it fell to its knees in pain. The fog would slowly form some kind of creature. Never the same. Never complete. The fog creature would envelop the figure in one of two ways: protectively as if they were attempting to use their own bodies as a shield, or hungrily -- as if they moved to devour their accompanying figure... and then the darkness would swiftly overcome them both; leaving only petrified statues caught in a perpetual state of terror.
The process would repeat itself in erratic numbers. Sometimes Onyx would only see two or three figures be swallowed up by the aether. Sometimes twenty. He had tried to call out to them many times before -- but this realm was a silent one. He had stopped trying long ago. Only one sound permitted itself to exist here. Onyx knew what it was. It was always the same.
After the figures and their shadowy companions were all taken they would collapse and converge into the same dark purple fog. Onyx's fog, it seemed. It would slowly slink its way toward him and an incomplete, grotesque creature would rise up and gaze upon him with its glistening, tired eyes.
Bright, piercing yellow.
His ears heard would finally open up to that one sound: that all-too-familiar low-pitched, pitiful growl; but his mind processed them as the same sad words every single time.
"Help me," it would plead -- its voice somehow both terribly harsh and incredibly soothing all at once.
But Onyx could not help it. He could never help it. He couldn't even help himself. His closed throat did not even allow for him to say as such; only to watch as the creature stretched out its one fully-formed arm toward him in a desperate attempt to take him by the hand with its claws. Onyx always reached out to it as well, but he was never able to grasp it. Always so close; yet so far.
And then the darkness would rise up, and consume them both.