Everything was dark, and still, and quiet, and empty, and [i]void[/i]. Quinn floated through it in a haze; half awake and half not, she was embraced softly by a wonderful senseless ataraxia. There was something comfortable about the eternity that she was bathed in, something beautiful and [i]certain,[/i] in a life where nothing ever was. Like a warm blanket on a cold night, wrapping her up, cradling her, keeping everything soft and numb.

A part of her subconscious mind—a part that was slowly but steadily growing—wanted to stay there. Stay in that perfect peace. The world outside was...so confusing. So difficult and complicated. But this—this tranquil anesthetized bliss—it was all so [i]simple.[/i] So [i]easy.[/i] Nobody could take anything away from her here. Nothing could hurt her. She didn't need do anything. She didn't need to think about anything. She didn't need to think at all. Here, she could just...

Sink.

[color=ffe63d][i]Sink, Quinnlash.[/i][/color]

And she did.

Until suddenly an image flashed through her mind. There and gone in the space of of half a blink. Perhaps it was longer, or perhaps shorter; time meant so little here, and it was so hard to bring herself to care. The image was impossible to tell as well; no rhyme or reason in the brief space her mind had to breathe before it was slowed down again. It was...it was white, she knew that. It was all white, with—with some silver-gray, and—

In the waking world, Quinn's body shifted.

The image retreated, and she began to slowly, certainly sink again. Sink into peace. But then another image blurred past. She caught some of it this time; it was a person, a person with brown hair, but that was all she could tell. And then after that, another. Again, almost no rhyme or reason, as Quinn's mind struggled against itself. Nothing to do. Nothing to remember. Just a woman with brown—

[i]Besca.[/i]

And all at once, that brief eternity between dream and reality—her wonderful little pocket of blurred nothingness—[i]shattered.[/i] It was filled in the space of a heartbeat with flashes of blazing colors, pieces that didn't fit together that shattered into shards all around her. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, she wanted to go back into the soft quiet where [i]nothing[/i] could hurt, her almost sleeping form began to thrash, and standing above and behind it all was [color=black]Quinnlash[/color] outlined against the bloody red of [i]Ablaze'[/i]s single blazing eye as her horns split and contorted and thick black liquid began to drip where they were attached to her head, her look of joy, then—then—As she unconsciously gasped in frantic breaths of air—

[i]"[color=ffe63d]Nnnnnnnnhhh—[/color]"[/i]

[i]"[color=ffe63d]AH![/color]"[/i]

Quinn cannoned upright to a sitting position, and the short, sharp cry spilled out of her room and rebounded through the dorms. Her eye was wide with disbelief and fear and filled with tears. She had just enough time to realize she was hyperventilating madly.

And then her body caught up to her brain.

Her own scream felt suddenly like someone was pounding [i]nails[/i] into her [i]skull[/i]. And it was immediately followed in rapid time by an intense and powerful nausea, enough that she could barely hold back another round of vomit as she flopped back down, pulled her cover over her, and curled up in a ball. As the minutes ticked by, the images blurred, and the instinctive terror abated. Her heaving breaths turned to shivers, and a long, feeble groan dribbled from her mouth before trailing off into nothing:

"[color=ffe63d]Ughhhhh...[/color]"