(REWRITE) The 17th Realm, The Maniac Trilogy - Book 1

Chapter 3 - Nightmares

NYA'S POV

It was around noon, and Lloyd was still asleep. He was muttering and shuffling around, his eyebrows knitted close together.

"Lloyd?"

His eyes suddenly glowed green, which made me jump. The colour was switching between green and purple. His muttering grew louder.

"Lloyd?! Lloyd!"

He suddenly shot his eyes open and abruptly sat up, "NO!" He tucked his ears and screamed as if there was a loud noise for a moment. His screams echoed through the forest like cries of agony.

He started hyperventilating before breaking down into sobs. I instantly rushed over to him and pulled him into an embrace, letting him bury his head into my shoulder. I rubbed his back as his crying slowly faded. He was like a younger brother to me and I wouldn't want anything to happen to him.

"You're okay now. It was just a nightmare."

He hugged me a little tighter, "A terrible one. It f-felt so real..." he choked out in a whisper between sobs. He pulled away and wiped his tears.

I tried comforting him, but it's hard to do so when you don't know what's wrong. "Can I help in any way? Maybe if you tell me what's wrong I could-"

"No, you can't help!" he snapped. "You can't turn back time, can you?!" he shouted with a glare; a glare that was filled with both fear and anger. He stood up, "We have to find the others."

I followed him into the forest. We were accompanied by chirping birds and buzzing of insects and an occasional rustle of the leaves as a result of the breeze. I didn't want to force Lloyd into saying anything, but keeping it in won't help...

Since the whole Crystal King thing, everything's been weird. We fought side by side less as a team; Cole especially has been more distant; Kai also spends more time outside the monastery and even bought a house with Skylor; Jay and I almost moved out but didn't end up doing so because of the loss of our newborn - we named her Jaya; Lloyd goes to school... We all have our own separate lives and see each other like once a few months. It's been... eventful to say the least.

We've been walking for a while. We only seemed to be more lost by the minute. Suddenly, a familiar voice echoed through the air. "CAN THIS GET ANY WORSE?!"

Lloyd and I looked at each other, "Jay."

We started calling out the names of everyone else. We didn't get a reply for a while. I pointed at the ground beneath us, "Footsteps."

"Jay?!" I screamed.

"Nya? Guys, I think I heard Nya!"

We followed the footsteps and the sound of Jay's super loud voice until eventually, we saw a few figures in the distance. Sure enough, it was everyone else. We ran over and I gave Jay a huge hug.

"There you are! We were worried for a sec there, sis."

"You okay there, Lloyd?" Cole asked. Lloyd plastered a fake smile on his face and nodded.

I glanced over at PIXAL, who seemed to be fixing Zane up. "What happened to him?" I asked.

Cole let out a frustrated sigh, "They both got a malfunction and let's just say they weren't acting themselves. Or let alone acting intelligent."

"Yeah they acted like three year olds," Jay exaggerated.

"And then we tried fixing Zane but he just started talking backwards." PIXAL finished fixing Zane up.

"Oh..." I giggled.

"It was NOT funny!" Jay exclaimed.

"You should've seen it when Zane tried to "scrap" with Cole," Kai snickered.