Chapter 54: Second Nightmare
Darkness.
Hugo dreamt of darkness.
Not the temporary blackness of a closed eye nor the shifting gloom of the dead Forgotten Shore but an absolute absence of anything.
A sensory void where even the concept of 'up' or 'down' had no meaning.
Hugo floated in said void, his consciousness barely registering the world around him.
His mind, still reeling from the moments before the plunge, tried to latch onto recent events.
Gwendolyn Tennyson forced him inside the nightmare and She knew his True Name despite Hugo forgetting to introduce himself...
The manipulation he was afraid of was confirmed...
The inhabitants of the beast realm knew of his coming and had likely done a lot of things to manipulate him for whatever ulterior motives...
By all accounts, He should be furious, or at least He should be plotting a thousand scheme as retaliation...
Instead, he only felt a profound disappointment in his chest...
His own people were treacherous, deceitful and hurt each other a lot. After all, as eurys said, this was the nature of the children of war... It was a bitter truth to swallow but he had somehow accepted that fact.
But these people?
Survivors of a fallen divine realm, warriors who had endured the unthinkable?
He had, against his better judgment, allowed a sliver of hope that they might be different. That their shared burden and suffering might have forged a purer purpose... But alas, they too were vile...
The disappointment tasted like ash.
It was so… annoyingly predictable.
So utterly, humanly disappointing.
Perhaps this is why all realms fell to the invasion of nightmare creatures. Perhaps the Corruption is merely the universe's answer to the cruelty of humans and Nobel creatures...
He saw it now: not just the War God's children, but all of them, scheming and betraying even in the face of an apocalypse.
Couldn't they simply have told him the truth? Couldn't they simply ask for his cooperation rather then lie to him?
Hugo was not a saint, but he would have tried to help as best as he could.
But now it seemed his intentions —or help— did not matter. The children of beast were going to get their way forcefully...
He shook the dark thoughts away violently.
'What am I doing? I'm inside the Second Nightmare, and I'm philosophizing about the worth of humanity? Survival was the only morality that mattered here...'
The survivors of the Beast God's realm could wait and He would deal with Gwen and her calculated 'investment' later... If he survived that is.
As Hugo's grim resolve solidified, he noticed a slight change in the void and 'something' was finally visible once again.
A figure stood in the distance, its back to him.
It was Undeniably human wearing A long green jacket and blue jeans. [He] also seemed to have short brown hair but Before Hugo could see [His] face, the void itself began to move.
Somehow, Hugo knew the void was moving backwards despite there being no indication of that.
The absolute darkness condensed, swirling into points of brilliance that swelled into stars forming vast furnaces of aetherial light. Nebulae spiraled into existence, galaxies whirled into shape at an impossible speed as if Hugo was seeing the dawn of creation.
Hugo stared at awe as he saw the dead space being resurrected.
The sheer scale of such an event was... Alarming to say the least.
A Second Nightmare recreated a fragment of history, such as an ancient kingdom, a sea, a forest but not entire galaxies, at least that was his understanding.
Then, Hugo focus was forcfully narrowed somewhere. Before him, a planet was being remade. Shattered continental plates skidded back together with terrible speed. Oceans of dispersed vapor poured themselves back into vast basins. Forests of literal ash un-burned back into existence, with trees rising from nothingness to become something
The speed increased to a blinding blur, making Hugo head hurt terribly.
He saw flashes of the cataclysm that had destroyed the World being undon But the cause that had rendered a world to fragments and destroyed the stars, remained hidden by the frantic speed of the rewind... And perhaps that was for the best.
Then, just as it begun, It stopped.
The world—a blue-and-green marble of stunning familiarity, Earth but not his Earth hung serene in the starlight.
Then, the similar mechanic voice of the omnitrix resounded in the darkness:
[Duplicate Omnitrix detected...]
[Initiating synchronization protocols…]
[ERROR. Protocol conflict.]
[ERROR: GREATER EXISTENCE IS ASSIMILATING THE CORE.]
[Assimilation in progress…]
[Assimilation successful.]
Hugo could have sworn that he heard another voice beneath it. One more human, like two people arguing in a distant room but he couldn't focus on the voice for some reason...
Then, vertigo.
Hugo found himself standing on solid ground once again.
The scent of dry earth, ozone and the coppery tang of blood assaulted his senses. war.
CLANG!
BOOM!
SCREECH!
A myriad of sounds resounded in the world Infront of him, and the thing Hugo noticed was the fact that he was looking at a warzone that was happening on a strange valley.
Two armies clashed with intense ferocity.
On one side, an army of knights But these were no medieval relicts. Their plate armor was sleek, angular and matte black, etched with glowing crimson circuits. They wielded swords of crackling red plasma and rifles that fired lances of the same violent energy. They fought with the disciplined fury of fanatics, their faces hidden behind impassive visors and they moved at a stunning speed, impossible for mundune human.
All of these people Infront of him were Awakened, some perhaps were ascended.
There was an entire legion of them.
If the waking world had as much awakened, then the world would have not lost that many continents.
Opposing them was a more diverse force. Soldiers in sleeker white-and-grey armor that looked both advanced and utilitarian. Among them were non-humans: a hulking, four-armed being roaring as it crushed a knight's chest plate; a slender, crystalline figure deflecting plasma bolts with shields made from their own skin.
They used weapons of green and white energy with their tactics being more fluid and adaptive, centered around not killing the knights for some strange reason But they were losing, They were outnumbered and being pushed back toward the valley's mouth.
'What the hell?' was all Hugo could think. In a nightmare, one would expect ancient awakened wielding enchanted weapons and all of that, but not ancient awakened shooting lazer.
"Tennyson, DODGE!"
The voice, young and sharp with panic, came from his left.
He turned his head towards it's source but then then, an approaching figure met him.
A black-armored knight, having broken through the white-armored line, was already upon him. The red plasma sword, humming with annihilating heat, descended toward his head.
Hugo moved to sidestep the slash, after allw his enemy was of equal rank as him, infact being a terror, he was stronger then most awakened and so this attack, no matter how skilled should have been dodged easily.
But alas, His own body betrayed him.
Everything about it was wrong, He was lighter, Shorter and His center of gravity was in completely different. His limbs responded with a clumsy lag and so The refined evasion turned into a stumbling stagger.
He hit the hard ground, eating dirt.
Unfortunately The knight didn't hesitate at all as he thrust his sword towards the ground. .
Despite the odd situation, Hugo didn't really try to figure out why his body was like this, instead he rolled around on the ground at a fast speedw dodging the assaults of the lazer sword.
At the same time, Hugo summoned [Nothing].
The transcendant memory materialized between him and the knight and shot upward.
The knight, likely being an experience a awakened, tried to block but The plasma sword passed through the mist harmlessly, and then, the mist reformed into a sharp spinning blade.
[Nothing] sheared through the advanced chest plate armor reaching the flesh of the awakened and cutting them in half.
[You have slain an Awakened human: Forever Knight.]
The spell void reverberated in his head as he got on his feets...
He had just killed a human... In his world, killing a fellow human, let alone awakened, was a dark act...
Although it felt… disturbingly easy here...
After allThey were just illusions, not actual people.. right?
Shaking his head, Hugo looked toward where the warning from earlier had come from.
Two figures fought back-to-back a short distance away, masterfully taking down Dozens of knights.
A young man, maybe a few years older than Hugo's apparent new body was the first to catch his yes, He had dark, messy hair and a perpetual scowl, His hands were not hands—they had morphed into massive, spiked mauls of dark granite, which he used to batter knights aside with brutal swings.
Hugo recognized that man instantly, after all he had just seen him. It was Kevin Elvin but he was not the intimidating Saint he knew, This was a younger, leaner Kevin, who lacked the raw and explosive power of his adult counterpart, his eyes burning with hot rage and recklessness.
He was strong, perhaps a high-tier Awakened or even an ascended, but the terrifying pressure of a Transcendant was utterly absent.
Beside him, was a familiar girl as well. Her Orange hair was q tied back in a practical ponytail, while her face was set in fierce concentration. She wore a red t-shirt, a black vest and simple blue jeans.
Her hands were extended, weaving shields and firing projectiles of solid pink energy.
Gwendolyn Tennyson, although just like Kevin, she was not the all powerful saint he had just met but she was still fairly strong, but Hugo was rather confident that he could beat this version of her unlike her real life counterpart.
They were ghosts of their original self hinting that this nightmare was from a long time ago where the due hadn't yet reached transcendance.
"Ben! Focus! What's wrong with you?" Gwen shouted, her voice straining as she solidified a pink barrier against a volley of plasma fire... strangly enough, Her eyes were on him.
'Is she talking to me?' confused by her words, Hugo looked down at himself properly for the first time since entering the nightmare.
He was wearing a simple black shirt, with a Green jacket on top posssesing A stark white '10' emblem on the chest area, he was also wearing Blue jeans.... And Sneakers...
He raised his hands, They were smaller and Paler, lacking the bulkiness of his chimera sui generis form.
He was… human...
Not his hybrid form but a Fully, complete human. The constant infulecne of his flaw was also gone, letting Hugo feel at calm for the first time in months.
Itt was a shocking, after all, he was used to changing forms but having his true form change was still bizzare.
"The hell is this…" he breathed, listening to his voice. It was that of a teenager his age although far cooler then his own.
His eyes snapped to his left wrist and he sighed with relief.
The Omnitrix was there But that relief curdled into confusion.
This was not his watch.
The form was sleeker and more Skinnier then his, with a black and green color scheme. The faceplate was black and the iconic hourglass symbol was glowing an emerald green light.
It was familiar and alien all at once...
His Aspect had been… overwritten? Suppressed? Or perhaps Assimilated as the strange voice had said.
What could have caused this was perhaps the original omnitrix coming in contact with his aspect?
If so then what did it mean?
Frowning deeply, hugo ducked behind a large, scorched boulder as plasma bolts cratered the stone around him.
He could ask questions later but for now he needs to start smashing these knights.
And luckily, he knew a certain four armed fellow who's perfect for the job.
Hugo activated the omnitrix, pressing the buttons on the side of the dial. It rose with a satisfying click-hiss.
A holographic silhouettes spun into view above the dial.
His frowned deepened as he looked at the imprints
"No... This can't be right."
He cycled through them rapidly, trying to find a familiar face.
The holograms displayed A glistening, green amoeboid shape, A hulking, dinosaur-like creature, A slender, cloaked figure with strange eyes, A crab-like being with a massive claw and A strange monkey with four arms. .
"I don't recognize any of these guys!" Hugo muttued to himself in shock.
He recognized none of them, Not a single one was from his playlist of seventeen was in here. These were all new, which should be impossible considering the method to unlock imprints is to either scan them or through a DNA chamber...
Or perhaps, these were not his imprints, rather they were… someone else's.
The pieces suddenly clicked in his head. Gwen called him 'Ben.'...
'I'm in Ben Tennyson's body and This place is his world... And this… this is his Omnitrix...'
A plasma bolt shattered the top of his cover, stopping any incoming extensional crisis that he might have had.
He scanned the unfamiliar roster for another moment before finding a certain alien that he liked the look of.
"Under these circumstances, This one looks pretty good..." he muttered, aligning the dial. The hologram displayed a humanoid plant creature, its head patterned like fire.
Without hesitation, He slammed the dial down.
A flash of emerald light, profound and different from his own blue transformation energy, engulfed his body.
He felt his bones stretch, his skin transform into something rough, fibrous, and wonderfully alive. Moss and vibrant green flesh consumed his flesh as His head reshaped, a crown of red, petal-like structures forming on top of it, resembling hair. The smell of damp earth and methane filled his new senses, making him almost want to puke. The transformation was pretty swift but right as it ended, he suddenly felt the urge to scream out something, and unfortunately, he couldn't resist it.
"SWAMPFIRE!"
His voice was a rasping growl, utterly unlike his own, He now stood as a strange humanoid plant like alien, which was entirely different from his wildivine form.
Just then, A stray plasma bolt slammed into his chest passing through it and causing a burn mark.
But then, his body miraculously regenerated perfectly leaving not a single scar where the burns were a minute ago.
The power coursing through this form was immense and more powerful than most of his others imprints making Hugo feel a strange sensation.
He tapped into the core of this new being, seeking its abilities, as he did that, His awareness expanded through the form's biology.
His eyes widened behind their green, slitted pupils.
This body… its soul core… it was not Awakened.
The realization was incredibly shocking to Hugo, after all he had been only a dormant and an awakened all of his life, so feeling such a change was surprising to him.
The innate strength, the density of his transformed soul and the quality of his soul cores was completely different from what it used to be, becoming something unreal.
'An Ascended imprint!' he thought.
He was no longer an Awakened terror, instead He was, for the duration of this transformation, a true Ascended Terror of a very powerful species.
'...The time limit must be even shorter then my awakened forms...' while he could not tell how long it exactly was, hugo knew that he could not stay in this form for long.
Just then, one of the knights charged towards him with their sword raised high. Hugo—Swampfire—didn't dodge, instead he simply stopped the blade with his ascended physicality and then clenched his fist and brought it towards the knight's chest.
CRUNCH.
The knight was launched like a projectile, his armor crumbling as he flew across the battlefield, bowling over two others of his comerades.
Hugo raised his hands, tapping into the form's primary abilities.
The knowledge was just there, instinctively although it was a bit hard to grasp as it was still a new power.
[Methane] was the name of the dormant ability and it produced flammable gas from his body unique biology.
His Awakened ability, on the other hand was called [Ignite] and it used Soul essenceto ignite the gas produced by his body.
The process was definitely strange and inferior to heatblast Pyrokonisis but it was still strong on its own.
And so Hugo got to work.
A torrent of green gas appeared at his fingertips, gathering rapidly, then just as it was born, the gas quickly died out as it transformed into violent flames.
The flames shot forward as an explosion engulfing a dozen knights in a second, their armor flashing to white-hot before melting on their skins, It washed over the ground, creating a wall of fire between the knight's advance and the white-armored defenders.
"BEN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! ARE YOU CRAZY? DO YOU WANT TO KILL THEM?!"
Gwen's scream was filled with horror, which surprised him, weren't they the enemy?
A shield of hard pink energy flashed into existence, not to block the knights, but to deflect Hugo's fire away from a group who had been surrounded by it.
She was protecting the enemy.
Hugo stared at her with a strange expression....
Was that not the point of this battle? They were trying to kill him so he should kill them.
He was not someone who killed humans, infact this nightmare was his first time killing one, but this was an illusion after all.
Sadly he could not use that as a reasoning.
"They're trying to kill us," he growled back, trying to keep his disdain for the original Gwen in check. "What do you want me to do?"
"Remember Grandpa's orders! We subdue and contain them ! We do NOT execute them!" she yelled, firing precise pink stun-bolts at knights' joints. "We're the Plumbers, not the Forever Knights!"
Plumbers. Forever Knights. The names meant nothing to Hugo but the doctrine was clearly in favor of restraining them...
Hugo felt his frustration bowling as he slowly understood why the beast realm fell in the first place, Noble ideals in the face of war was just asking to he killed, how could they be so naive?
Gritting his teeth—or the equivalent of doing that in this body —hugo switched tactics.
He dove into the form's Ascended ability, which was called [Chlorokinesis].
It was a deeper, more profound version of his Wildvine's power over plants, after all, wildivine had an awakened ability that manipulated plants while this form, which he called swampfire, had the same ability as an ascended one making it naturally more powerful.
Just as he felt the ability activate, dozens of hard seed-like pods erupted from the frills on his arms and shoulders,They shot out over the battlefield, landing amidst the knights. On impact, they suddenly went through a rapid growth producing thick, whip-like vines that moved with terrifying speed and purpose.
They coiled aroundthe limbs of the knights, yanked their weapons away and pinned armored forms to the ground.
It mimicked a Tyrant's control over minions, but it was not it as this was extension of an ascended ability rather then commanding minions which meant he had to control the viens manually causing a slight strain on his mind.
He would have much preferred the fire as It was faster andcleaner But the vines worked.
Dozens of Knights shouted in surprise and rage as they were tangled and immobilized.
"Hey!" hugo roared over the din to Gwen, sidestepping a lunging knight and catching his wrist then with a wrench that tore the servo in the armor, he disarmed the knight and flung him into a cluster of his tangled comrades. "How are we supposed to hold this many?!"
"We just need to hold out until Grandpa crosses over from the Dream Realm!" she shouted back, her face paling with effort.
His frown deepened at her words...
He did recall the original Gwendoline mentioning that her grandpfather was the only supreme of this realm, which meant he was going to meet him soon...
But then again, did the dream realm even exsit in this nightmare?
His mind raced with a myriad of questions as he kept subduing the knights.
This nightmare was perhaps the most unique one in the world, two worlds even. It was set during the age of the nightmare spell in another realm entirely similar to earth.
And so, while earth was replicated, was the nightmare spell truly capable of re-creating the entirety of the dream realm?
How would that even be possible? As far as he knew, the dream realm was nearly infinite containing multiple realms mashed together...
Then, just as he was wondering that, the world suddenly cracked.
At the same time, Hugo felt a strange feeling wash over him, as if the world was suddenly hit by a hammer.
Behind the crumbling Plumber lines, in the empty air above the valley, a jagged tear of violent emerald light ripped open.
It wasn't a Gateway like the ones he knew, instead it was more like a wound In reality torn by an unimaginable force.
The tear expanded, stretching vertically until it formed a colossal, shimmering portal.
Through it, Hugo didn't see another landscape. He saw a swirling, chaotic storm of conflicting colors and shapes—the raw, unformed chaos of the Dream Realm.
And then, he descended.
A figure flew through the portal, and the world… bent around him.
Gravity seemed to reorient to pay him homage, the Light dimmed as if afraid to be within his presence and The very air thickened with a crushing pressure. It was a presence that Hugo had felt only once before.
It was the same asthe suffocating weight of the Great Terror in the nightmare desert But this was different, Where the Terror's pressure was vile and corrupt, this pressure was more authoritative.
It was law, order and righteous judgment manifested on the world.
Just like azarax had described himself, It was the pressure of a Supreme Monarch.
The Supreme landed softly, his boots touching the red earth without a sound. He was an older man, his face a roadmap of hard years and harder decisions, framed by a fringe of white hair. He wore a simple white armor just like the other plumbers but his supported a red cape from behind giving him a more dignified look.
His eyes, sharp and weary, swept the battlefield and just as then, the retreating Forever Knights froze as if pinned down by an invisible force.
From the raging portal behind him, machines followed. Appearing as hulking, humanoid mechs, They stood at nearly three stories tall, armored in grey and green colors radiating a unique type energy undoubtedly coming from their supreme monarch.
They marched out in a phalanx, their organized steps shaking the ground.
A wave of shouts and cheers escaped the mouths of the plumbers:
"Lord condemnation! Our sovereign is here!"
"It's the asura legions! We're saved!!"
"Drive the knights back! For the galactic domain!"
Hugo, still in his Swampfire form, could only stare in awd, at such a display of power.
It was the first time he had ever seen a supreme, and just then, the mighty soveirgne unleashed his powers.