The bad dream kept going. Corvayne knew what was happening as he had moments of lucidity. Horrible points where he emerged into just pure pain and nausea to meet Mister I's eye and have the old man tell him he was dying, and that his friends were racing for a cure, and ask him to hold on. Then his thoughts would float back down as the knives came. They were in him, burrowing out, killing him as something else surged out to fix the holes they bore through him, forming as gnarls of pressure that kept expanding everywhere.

He felt it in his dreams too. He could feel his chest explode with lungs and he'd take a hundred breaths at once then drown as they collapsed into goo, choking him then causing him to try to heave out of mouths that were growing and shrinking and spitting knives out of his legs and arms and side.

Then he would sink into memories of places he'd never been. Corvayne stumbled through a town that sat under a looming blue dome, spear gripped tight in his hand as thugs moved to block his way. He tried to move his arm, and felt it dragging his intestines as the scene shifted to a city built of strings and he was flying over the bands of mega city and the wilderness under it, before he felt his wings start to dissolve and he was falling through a cypress swamp to the desert.

He landed, and for a moment he saw his home and despaired that he was going to live and have to go back before he saw his hand shedding thousands of fingers to wiggle and die on the ground like maggots that he could still feel the dust through, and he felt it and knew it was happening outside for real.

He heard Wick again, begging him to... do something. That hurt the most. She sounded scared, but she was never there when he was awake or aware.

He faded back into pain, then dreamed he was before a pair of gold eagles, lying on carpet that he was bleeding out of a wound on his chest that spit out cloth and guts.

The golden woman was there again, and the pain faded a little.

“Corvayne. You cannot die. You promised me we'd meet again.”

He croaked out “Sorry.” as best he could as his tongue filled his mouth and started exploding against rows of teeth that then fell out and he swallowed them and felt the bones like itchy knives matching the searing pain of black shards.

“Corvayne! A little more. Just hold on a little longer”

I can't. Even in his dream his mouth was full of blood. He couldn't. This was too much.

He dreamed of being a child. He was with the golden girl with the starry eyes. She was saying something and smiling at him and he smiled back with too many mouths.

Another memory... a group of men in the woods, and their blood running on his spear, and a woman thanking him, cutting herself on shards that jutted from his legs.

He walked along a coastline, a trail of dead monsters behind him, even as he melted into the waves.

It was forever and an instant. He tried to close his eyes, to stop the knives and nausea and horror he felt. He knew what he must look like, what a horror he had become. Did Wick see him? Did Hari run from him? Wouldn't Nyx know to put him out of his misery?

He felt something then, something solid, and for a moment he woke to darkness all around him, a bright blue box with searing white around it the only thing he saw as he oozed shards of crystal and blood and knives, his pain following him in this fever dream.

[????? is asking to use [Brainjack] on you. Y/N?]

No! No!

[????? is asking you to let them [Brainjack] you. Y/N?]

NO! NO!

[????? needs you to open your mind, so it can [Brainjack] you. Y/N?]

Corvayne searched for his spear, and found it his mind and placed it between him and the window.

The window vanished and appeared again.

[????? needs you to open your mind. You are dying. You have nothing to lose. [Brainjack]? Y/N?]

He held his spear firm. “No. I am me! I'm myself! I won't let anything take me again!”

[You are not whole. You have been robbed, and ????? is trying to help you.]

“Brainjack doesn't sound like a freaking....” Corvayne had to stop talking as a spike skewered his brain, causing spasms as he felt it inch his way through him. He wasn't sure how he could still form thoughts or have memories given that a fist sized chunk of glass had caused him to start spilling brains out of his nose and ears, falling away into the dark as they poured out of new noses he made to keep his head from just exploding.

[????? doesn't want to break you. The pointy-ears one loves you. ????? needs you too. Please. [Brainjack] Y/N?]

He forced his arms to coalesce. He started to aim for no when another box appeared.

[Wick is watching you die.]

He let his arm fall. He was afraid. “I'm afraid.”

[Of losing yourself?]

“Yes.”

A shadowy arm snaked out of him, weak and tepid like a piece of black grass swaying against the black background.

It pointed at the blazing Y in the prompt.

[Trust others. Trust yourself.]

“Fine. Fuck it. It... can't be worse than this.”

He poked the Y with his spear.

It flooded into him. Something else. Something huge, bulging him until the pressure in his head was too much, then clamped him down, forcing his mind to discard the pain. It was like suddenly someone was on top of him, flipping through his mind like a mugger counting bills in a wallet.

Then, it gently put his mind back in place with a thousand arms before it pushed something into him. A triangle.

“FORM A LOOP. STRENGTH. VITALITY. SPEED.”

He tried to cover his ears, and the thing let him writhe a moment.

“NO TIME FOR SUBTLETY. THE WORD HAS POWER. THINIK STRENGTH. VITALITY. SPEED.”

He tried to speak strength, and in a moment he felt his body start to ripple as his muscles began to grow and snap as new ones grew under them.

“VITALITY.”

He thought of life, and suddenly the pain she, the spider, had been hiding washed away and he could feel his flesh starting to stabilize.

“SPEED.”

To be faster. He had used it before... He suddenly felt like he was holding a titanic bowl aloft, sloshing an ocean of power that was trying to jolt away from him. Too fast, he was stumbling.

“NO AGAIN. STRENGTH.”

He pivoted in his own head, his mind quick to its words even as his form was prone. He could feel its hands shaping his thoughts to help him, trying to find words he understood. It was changing his sick growth from gross explosions to quicksilver now, flowing through him smoothly if still not nauseating.

“VITALITY.” The figure of the spider drew, and it somehow had a human finger that formed a glowing triangle. Red eyes opened in the black and bore into him from every direction.

He thought of exercising then, and the spear dance. Breathing. Sweating. Growing. Eating. Living.

“SPEED! AGAIN!”

Then he stood and ran in the dark, going faster and faster through nothing. The voice was laughing as he carried that sloshing ocean, turning and pivoting as it tried to buck away from him, to push outside him.

“NO. STILL NOT RIGHT. STRENGTH!”

He clamped on the sloshing, squeezed on the knives trying to leave him. He had the strength to change himself.

“GOOD! YES! VITALITY!”

Corvayne turned a corner, his strength bringing solidarity. The knives were frozen, and a part of him, and he was a mountain, carrying a load of power.

“SP-” The word morphed “AGILITY”

He danced on his toes, solid as rock, the power to lift an entire world shifting to letting him guide the sloshing to a stop as he brought it from above his head and danced it around him.

“AGAIN!”

Strength. Vitality. Agility. He cycled through those concepts back and forth. The sloshing inside him became his. He was a sea of black crystal, flowing through him and in him. The pain was gone.

“ENOUGH! WAKE UP ADEPT! YOUR ALLIES NEED YOU!”

Corvayne's eyes snapped open as a last blast of white crystal swirled out from him. He reached out and caught the arm of an armored man trying to swing through Hari who was standing before him, bloodied.

Strength.

Hari gasped as he took her with his other arm and spun her out of harms way, then with a thought flung the man who had been attacking into another group that was hounding Nyx, shattering a spire of black crystal as he bowled them over. He set Hari down and met her eyes, saw them shift for shock to joy.

Agility.

He moved like lightning. everything crawling as he moved to where Grunt was trying to push through vines to get at a wizard lining up a smear of destructive magic to fling at the huge man. Corvayne reached the wizard's back and was somehow both shocked and not surprised at all to find he had picked up his spear somewhere, and like a bolt from god he drove it through the robed man trying to disintegrate his first friend. He skid to a stop in front of the slowly turning group streaming through the gaps in spikes.

Vitality.

One blinked behind him and tried to jam a dagger into his back. It felt like a fly biting him, and he grabbed the thief and started striding through the formation of warriors, catching a sword with his forearm rather than spear, flinging it back up into the air as if he was made of stone.

Strength.

He pivoted and elbowed the swordsman, crumpling his armor and sending him to slam into a black crystal spire behind him. Another pivot and spear thrust and another warrior fell, and he finally threw the rouge in his hand at another wizard, clobbering them as they rolled helplessly away.

Moments later he was joined by The Spider.

Agility.

Together they fought, and it was clockwork as they reached the last few attackers trying to break into the truck, spear and stolen blade striking the enemies down before they knew what happened.

A moment later and he slowed, letting the feeling of the triangle lock back into Vitality as the sloshing slowed. A last little chunk of black crystal formed in his palm and he tossed it away.

Looking at the hatch to the truck opening, he saw Wick without her glasses, eyes red from crying.

He couldn't help but smile. “Did you miss me?”

She ran to him and he wrapped her up in one arm, her tiny hands gripping him like claws. He saw his friends gathering up, some like June and Mister I looking exhausted. Nyx had a nasty gash on his head, but was grinning. Grunt, despite having two spears sticking into him, was already gathering groaning enemies to tie them up. Lady Blood Claw was glowing pink but holding her mouth as tears formed in her eyes.

Hari ran up to him and he used his other arm to pull her into a kiss. He looked between her and Wick and felt his eyes water.

Mosh, of course, ruined the moment.

“Hey boss. Your dick's hangin' out!”