That night, after returning to her room and chatting with Zell on the phone for a bit, Lina went to sleep, but found her slumber strangely uneasy. Was it the rush of emotions she'd felt during dinner that made her nerves so uneasy? Or was the unforgettable nightmare just some inevitability that wouldn't pass her by?
She been forced, almost pushed out of a less frightening dream, right into the core of her nightmare. Strands of thick rope had crawled on their own around her legs and around her arms and held her hostage to the edge of a cliff. Her dream was tinted red. Red with the frustration she felt, and with the flame and brewed just below the edge of the escarpment.
A figure stood before her, his back turned to her and muttering something foreign under his breath. She had struggled with the ropes, but they'd not let her loose, and she watched in horror as the fire spewed from its fiery pit a smoldering flame. Unlike the other embers, this one was caught in mid air as the flame around it ingeniously crafted it into the shape of a sword. Lina blinked twice and it became clear, the sword now hovered to her side and she could see its fine leather hilt and its long pink tinted blade.
Lina felt her nerves knot themselves into a mess; they were telling her to be afraid, and she was. She could feel herself shaking with an unknown fright, but nothing could quell the trembling.
The figure turned around and revealed his face: Seifer Almasy and none other. He pulled himself in front of Lina's face and smirked his little smirk, "Do you accept, Heartilly?" Lina opened her mouth, but her vocal chords felt suspended. How was she supposed to respond? How was she supposed to tell him this joke wasn't funny? Or how the ropes were cutting through her breath? "Well, Heartilly what it is?"
Lina looked down and watched as the ropes snaked themselves up around to her neck. This was a dream right? Then why did it burn her so? Despite the hundred rope burns constraining her general mobility, she nodded feebly. The ropes released themselves from her immediately and she dropped to the ground, weakly. The ropes slithered back into the flames as Seifer skillfully took the pink bladed sword and streaked a cut across Lina's right arm. The pain was surprisingly subtle, but she could see the blood leaking from her wound. Seifer collected the blood in a small wooden bowl, and Lina could see in his eyes that he was horrifically ecstatic for her pain.
It was then Lina suddenly shot up from her sleep, utterly rattled and trembling with sheer fright. She gulped down a breath of shaky air and looked around her room. What a nightmare. What a creepy, creepy nightmare.
But she froze; her arm was numb.
"Oh no..." she whispered aloud as her index finger rolled over a cut just above her elbow, now covered in wet, sticky blood.