"No, I refuse to wake up!"
Leon looked down at Maria. She was lying in the center of the floor wide bed. Surrounded by blankets and pillows in an inviting nest of temptations.
"Come to me, I can give you any dream you want!"
She reached her arms out as if to hug him. The soft sweater slipped just enough to hint at the bare skin beneath. The hem rode higher along her hips. The outfit teased the absence of anything underneath as she tempted him to stay.
Stay focused man!
"Look, I can't promise that the real world will be as nice or comfortable as this place. But I can promise you things you've never dreamed of. Places you've never seen. I promise you things that will be worth dreaming of!"
"You're the dream! The dream I've always dreamed of! A pillow I never have to wake up from!"
"...I can't be that for you. But I'll be something better. A pillow that will carry you!"
Maria blinked.
"...What?"
"You're right. There's no guarantee the effort will be worth it, but I'll carry you there. You can be as lazy as you want. I'll let you sleep whenever, and when I feed you, we'll have blissful dreams in here."
"But then you're the one doing all the effort. Why would you keep that promise!? No. I refuse. I'm not going to wake up."
"I'm sorry Maria but you don't have a choice. As an introvert and as someone who already lived a quiet and peaceful life, I'm going to have to end this here before I falter."
He clenched his fists as he bent his elbows and drew his arms to his sides. With a flex of his chest the dream scape around them started to crack as he focused.
"What are you doing!? How are you doing this without falling asleep?!"
Focus Leon. Let your vitality out heal the fake lethargy.
Maria started to panic as her head darted around the collapsing world. Until she eventually landed on Leon.
"No! I won't let you!"
The demon's body warped.
Maria's skin darkened to a deep, starless midnight as her limbs stretched unnaturally, her joints snapping into inhuman angles. Beneath her darkened skin, her muscles twisted into tight spirals woven around her bones. Her massive horns of a cape buffalo grew larger as they curved outward. Her head was now an exposed skeletal visage. With sunken eye sockets that burned with an eerie blue light. A massive monstrous jaw lined with jagged teeth. Her arms hung unnaturally low, ending in elongated skeletal fingers tipped with razor sharp claws.
When the transformation was complete, the Mare stood in its true form.
So this is Maria's demon form. Looks like one of those paralysis demons. After seeing a Mare and Succubus in demon form, I get why Imps are envious.
Maria crouched as she took a runners pose at a starting line. Her claws dung into the floor, her muscles tensed and pulled against her bone to the sound of bending steel. Her eyes fixed ahead on Leon.
"It's no use Maria, you know you can't catch me."
"If it means making you my pillow forever, then I will hold nothing back!"
Maria lunched forward. The pillows and blankets sent flying away beneath her first stride. Each step hammered into the floor. Her claws grip the ground and pulled her forward into bursts of speed as she flew low and fast.
"~Dream with open eyes~"
A reaction ignited in his brain. A memory. A dream. A nightmare.
"~Memory Flare; Nocturne Skyline!~"
The pain like fuse burning along his nervous system burned through his insides.
Maria had almost warped her claw around Leon when the ground below them erupted.
Skyscrapers shot from the ground.
The once soft room full of blankets and pillows was now replaced with glowing lights of a sprawling downtown city at night. The world was a maze of steel and glass as the sky above cracked and fractured to the ground.
"Beautiful isn't it!?"
Leon yelled down to Maria as he stood stories above the ground. He was standing on the side of the building, his feet flat against the glass as he defied gravity.
"This is just a taste of the things from my world you could never imagine! A common action scene from so many animes where people fight on the side of buildings!"
Leon raised his hands and an EDM anime battle theme began to play.
But it wasn't just in his head this time. The music played throughout the city and the buildings lit up like an audio visualizer.
Maria looked around at the skyline.
"...I.. No! This is still your dream!"
Maria crouched down against the base of the building. Another explosion erupted as she climbed up the side of the building. Her claws digging and shredding through the glass and steel.
"Even so, if you couldn't imagine something like this then why doubt me!"
Leon ran across the side of the building.
Maria curved as she climbed the skyscraper to match him.
As the two reached the end of the building, they both jumped. Gravity pulled Leon to the neighboring building while Maria was pulled back to the group.
Maria hit the ground hard. But as the sky kept falling apart and raining to the ground, she stood back up almost immediately.
"I do have to thank you. I was struggling to learn a mana ability from Tsukihi right before you showed up. Unfortunately, it turns out Cersei was right and both Memory Flare and Bloodless are essentially me failing to cast Mana and Chi. Even so! You gotta admit, I fail in style!"
Maria placed the base of her right foot against the wall of the skyscraper. Then her left.
She was now standing against the wall of the building, defying gravity like Leon.
"You figured it out! My fault for monologuing. But yeah, since Mind Flare sits between illusion and physical memory, the terrain altering effects are mutual."
Maria ran up the side of the building. Glass and steel shattered beneath her feet as she ran on only her legs this time.
"~Dream with open eyes~"
"Why are you working so hard to avoid resting!"
"~Memory Flare; Nise-Kisha Interlocking!~"
Right before Maria could grab Leon, the skyscraper erupted.
WHUUUUUUUUUUR!!!!!!
A train shot out of the building at high speeds.
Colliding with Maria and sending her flying.
The ground rose. Countless impossible railways overlapped each other from every direction. The city scape was now replaced with ghostly fog.