Jamie was admiring the night sky with a contented sigh. The orgy he had just had with his slaves left him drained and satisfied. The stars above him twinkled. He grinned at them and tried to make out the constellations. The night sky was ridiculously dark, allowing for thousands of stars to be seen. He looked around himself and realized he wasn't on the roof of Bastion. He was comfortably lying on a floating carpet. The city was so far below him that its lights could not interfere with the pale light of the distant stars.
Jamie ignored the ridiculous height below him and turned his attention back to the stars above. They still blinked in and out of existence and Jamie frowned. He realized they weren't blinking randomly. They were disappearing and reappearing in concert, as if a giant, dark shape was passing in front of them. Jamie squinted and struggled to make out the shape when it suddenly flew towards him with terrible speed and seized him.
The dark shape clutched him in its talons and they plummeted to the city below at breakneck speeds. The air whistled and hollered past Jamie's ears. He squinted his eyes against the buffeting wind. The shape then gave him one last shove and Jamie landed headfirst into a viscous, cloying liquid. It suffocated and blinded him, slowing down his desperate efforts to surface with its molasses-like consistency. Finally, Jamie curled up into a ball and he slowly rose through the fluid until he broke the surface and gasped for air.
His lungs didn't burn, strangely, and he looked around at the impenetrable darkness that surrounded him. He was in a cauldron and the fluid he had been drowning in was blood. A large hand, marked with age, reached out of the darkness and submerged his head under, once again. Jamie fought against it, ineffectually. The hand raised him out of the bloody cauldron.
Jamie looked to the source of the gargantuan arm that held him up as if he was a puppet. Only two dark red, squinting eyes glowed malevolently in the darkness. A second gnarled hand reached out and tore his clothes off.
He hung there, limp and naked in the grasp of this giant, dark figure. His fear and dread were paralyzing him. The hand that tore off his clothes brandished giant, sharpened nails and began to tear off Jamie' skin with the exact same ease it tore his clothes off. Jamie moaned and shrieked in agony, desperate to get away from the monster that was flaying him.
His skin pooled under him in thin strips. His blood dripped over it, copiously. The figure drew his skinless, soon-to-be corpse towards the two glowing eyes. They tried to pierce right into Jamie's soul and suck it out of his eyes. Jamie's own eyes lit up at that moment, powered by his own magic and he began to evade direct eye contact with the dark creature, knowing it would mean the end of him. A pale light projected out of his eyeballs. The two thin shafts of light intersected in the air between Jamie and the dark figure. As Jamie's eyes darted away from meeting the perpetually shifting gaze of the assailant, the light emanating from them left a pale line hanging in the air between Jamie and the evil flayer.
The line seemed to be random, at first, but soon Jamie realized it made up a complicated three-dimensional sigil. When it was finished, Jamie smugly glared at the red eyes in the darkness. He was protected from them. His soul was safe. The creature simply opened its claw and Jamie began to fall. He fell towards the heap of his flayed skin that leaped up and began to wrap him up like a mummy.
Jamie jumped up and rolled away from the skin strips threatening to suffocate him. He rolled off the bed and adopted a combat stance it the middle of the dark room. His magical, Jedi-like senses stretched out and confirmed that he was in reality. No more cartoon physics and uncooperating limbs. He huffed in relief and slouched. The adrenaline rush was dissipating and he giggled maniacally in its wake.
Nova entered his bedroom and held out a large sketch pad and pencil. Jamie sat back down on the edge of the bed and began to draw the sigil that had protected him in his dream. The skin of his face and throat was itching him terribly and distracting him from his drawing. He closed his eyes, resisting the temptation to go scratching at his raw skin and envisioned the sigil. It danced vividly on his eyelids. He nodded to himself. He wasn't likely to forget it. He opened his eyes and stood up.
Jamie walked to the ensuite bathroom and turned on the light. He winced at seeing the deep scratches that he had clawed upon his own face and throat, his subcounscious desperation to awaken from the nightmare had struck again. The scratches were oozing blood. The ones he had inflicted upon himself during the previous nights were healed, but still visible under the harsh light of the vanity. Combined with the new ones, they drew a terrifying tapestry of self-mutilation upon Jamie's face. He sighed and opened the medicine cabinet.
Jamie applied a generous amount of the healing salve upon his whole face and throat, shellacking himself like a fifties' wife with a cold cream fetish. The salve was something they had mixed up the other day, after he first had the nightmare and the girls woke him up in the middle of the night to stop him from gouging out his own eyeballs. He swore then, in the middle of the night, when he couldn't get back to sleep, that he was leaving the States, as soon as he planted additional guards on the vault, and not coming back. In the two nights since, the nightmare always repeated itself, but Jamie was woken by his concerned slaves before he could see the sigil, that his inner light drew, completed.
At first, Jamie thought the nightmare was another warning that some kind of vampire was loose in the city, or that Stansfield had managed to break free of her bindings. He had Nova check, and Section was not issuing any vampire warnings. Not for their city, the eastern seaboard, or anywhere at all. Plus, none of his slaves shared the nightmare. He was the only one that had it and it was truly terrifying. He also had his A.I. check for anyone named Bolton that was moving into the area. It found none.
When the nightmare didn't go away on the second night and he was again awakened to stop his self mutilation before he could see the whole sigil that his inner light was drawing, he decided he would sleep alone on the third night and experience the horrible dream to the bitter end. He reiterated his firm intention to get the hell away from the east coast and whatever was hounding him in this terrible nightmare. The slaves were ordered to sleep in the other rooms and Nova stood on watch, ordered only to wake him up if he stopped breathing for more than thirty seconds, at which point it was to sound the alarm and begin CPR.
Jamie finished covering his face with a thick layer of regeneration salve and went back to his bed. He picked up the pencil and paper and began drawing. His eyes stung and teared up, blurring his vision. He was sleep-deprived, still feeling the aftereffects of his terrible nightmare and he had nearly poked his own eyeballs out during it.
He blinked frequently to clear his vision and kept sketching. The sigil didn't look right
