Blessed by Night

"I've never seen anything like it before... It was the first time in a while that I can recall feeling afraid like that." Mal said honestly.

He was sitting in the living room of his quarters, using his daughter like a therapy pet as he gave a brief summary of previous events to not only the women in his life, but also to the group he'd just gone on a mission with.

Unsurprisingly, they had all come down here looking for some sort of explanation after Mal had suddenly chucked them through a hole in the ground without warning.

"It was huge... and ugly." He said with a shiver.

"How ugly exactly?" Bianca asked.

"T.I's wife."

"Damn."

The group sucked in their teeth as they visualized the horrifying creature, and understood firsthand why he was so traumatized.

"It asked me.. about my bloodline. Made it seem like it wanted to identify me but couldn't."

"Identify..?" Sei said worriedly. "Does this mean that they have a system for classification that is different from our own?"

"This is incredible... I have never heard of a nightmare displaying such intelligence, much less alluding to some kind of society. " Luna muttered.

Malachi was glad that they were all finding this so damned interesting, because he was pretty sure that the memory of everything he had just experienced was going to live in his head rent free for quite a while.

He suddenly lifted up Cami, and brought her small and cute face closer to his own.

"What do you think about all this, munchkin? Any bells being rung about an otherworldly society?"

"Bu..."

"Yea, I figured that." Mal said honestly.

Part of the reason that they were able to form the relationship that they did was because his blood had somehow acted as a barrier that protected her from the neural network of other nightmares.

Though how exactly that happened, even he was not sure.

But because it had, Cami never developed the full ego or knowledge of her people and who they were, or even what their goal was.

"I've been meaning to ask, but... Can you really understand her gibberish?" Aubrey asked.

Mal gave his daughter a funny look, almost as if he hadn't realized she hadn't been speaking in perfect English this whole time.

Turning back to his sister, he smiled as he held up Camille's face beside his own. "What can I say? We just have that special Father-Daughter connection."

"Ada!"

Everyone else rolled their eyes, save for Mal's fiancé's.

No matter how many times they saw it, they were constantly amazed and enamored with the relationship that Mal had formed with his daughter in such a short time.

It really was touching to see, and reaffirmed the choice they had all made in choosing him.

"So... back to the topic of this talking nightmare.. Are you going to try to communicate with it again? Maybe you can learn why they are attacking us." Serana asked.

Mal wouldn't lie and say that he hadn't thought of her reasoning himself already, but he didn't want to sit here and act like he wasn't a bit worried about what he would do if things became hostile.

He got away the first time, but he wasn't exactly certain he'd manage to pull off that magic trick once again.

And he already knew from his battle with Arias over a year ago that nightmares were fully capable of inflicting harm to avatars.

He had seen so himself, right when Shear had gotten the drop on the leader of the new day and stabbed him right in the chest, sending him toiling into a fit of agony.

The last thing Mal wanted was for something like that to happen to him on a much grander scale.

If he was going to go against that thing, he was going to need to have some way to defend against it first.

Or at least learn some new tricks to close the distance in power between them.

"Just... give me a little time first, yea? I want to make sure I can be ready incase things go south."

"Of course, don't pressure yourself. All any of us really want is for you to be safe and not get swallowed up by some creature again." Serana said honestly.

Mal smiled wryly as he took in the sight of everyone in front of him nodding in agreement.

"Aww, you all are worried about me. It's so touching I think I might-"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Yea, yea."

-

Night had already fallen on the exciting day not too long ago, and most in the base were beginning to fall asleep.

But of course, this was the time where Malachi became the most active and was in need of stimuli to pass the time.

Normally, this came in the form of sex or unclothed cuddle sessions.

But right now, all five of Mal's women were sleeping in bed already; as they had already been exhausted by him earlier in the day.

Currently, Mal was in Camille's room, lying on the floor beside her crib.

Being a baby seemed to be really exhausting for the former nightmare, and she was sleeping nearly as peacefully as her mothers were.

While his daughter slept, Mal had his nose buried in another textbook from Bianca's stash, this one pertaining to gravity and the theories around it.

After reading this book for almost an hour, he had come to one, inescapable conclusion.

"I am going to fucking kill myself."

Malachi Saint was a lover of the arts, psychology, literature, and some history.

Math and sciences absolutely weren't his thing, and every time he tried to understand it he felt like eating a bullet through his nose.

This was all so frustrating!

Letting out an exhausted sigh, Malachi closed the book and simply lie on the floor staring up at the deep black ceiling that was painted with stars.

"This… is impossible. How am I supposed to-"

'I'm here to finish our conversation. Come outside.'

Immediately, Mal's blood ran cold as he sat up on the floor in clear distress.

He wasn't sure if he was imagining things or if the voice in his head was really the same as the creature he only barely escaped from this afternoon.

His heartbeat was thumping so loudly that he was sure he would wake up everyone in the house if he didn't calm it down.

'No, that's what I should do..! I have to get everyone out of here before-'

Mal had just begun to reach in Cami's crib to get her to safety when the voice from before played in his mind once again.

'You have no need to disturb the slumber of everyone sleeping here. I only want to converse, nothing more. There will be no violence on this day.'