Combating Human Night Terrors

Writing Prompt: a team of 20 psychic aliens geared up in psychic armor and entered the humans head, they WOULD cure this humans night terrors once and for all.

The entry into the human child’s mind was easy. Too easy. We had expected to find psychic shields like all human adults have but this child seems to have none. Or that had been dropped for some reason. We only thought of this later on, way too late.

Our first glimpse of the child’s mindscape was a typical human town. It looked like a normal town except for the lack of any movements, animals or humans. But we all felt a sense of being watched, which should not have been possible with our psychic armor. First sign we were not prepared.

Our scout was capable of finding a guidance thought and we could follow this thought towards a human domicile which was confirmed to look like the child’s house. It appeared to be much larger than we expected and we didn’t recognise that we were not our real heights. Second sign we were not prepared to be in a human child’s mind.

As we entered the house and followed the thought, we found we were entering a sleeping room and we saw a dream child asleep on their sleeping platform. This is when we realised that we were more affected by the child’s dream that we expected. We focused but were still observing when the night terror started.

There was a sound like footsteps and the child woke up, and whimpered and scrambled under their sleeping platform. They saw us all in the room and whispered that we should hide as well before the ‘bad thing’ could get us.

We silently spread out in a combat formation and watching all directions for the dream entity to appear to try and attack the child. We thought we were ready to combat anything we possibly could meet but we were not ready for what burst through the entry portal.

The noise of heavy footsteps echoed through the domicile and getting closer and then they stopped. We were confused over this and then the child whimpered and instantly the entrance cover was violently thrown open and a wave of darkness flowed into the room. Two of my team were struck directly by the darkness and their psychic shields sparked and started to collapse. Their emergency systems activated and withdrew them from the dream.

There were 18 of us left and combat hadn’t even begun.

The entity was massive and had darkness flowing off it’s form. It was vaguely human shaped but extremely large. It had glowing eyes in the head and they were casting a psychic pressure that put strain on our shields when it glanced at us. But we were not even the target of the glance.

It looked around the room looking for something, and I instantly knew that it was looking for the human child. I couldn’t understand why it appeared to not know where the child was but this is how the night terrors work.

It knows exactly where the child was and it pretends not to know because this increases the terror of the child. A truly vicious entity and once I realised that it was pretending to look for the child I gave the order to attack.

This was a mistake. I should have observed longer and looked for it’s weaknesses. But I thought we were simply dealing with one of the normal psychic entities we have been combating for millennia.

We fell into our squads of five members and the three remaining of a squad with the loss of two. Two to shield, one to heal and two to attack. Normal psychic warfare formation and duties.

The first squad started to throw their attacks but they just splashed on the terror and flowed off with no damage. It glanced at them then focused it’s attention and a wave of darkness streaked at them and punched through their shields as if they didn’t exist. The squad took almost fatal damage even with the healer putting all their effort into healing.

Emergency protocols yanked the squad members out with severe psychic damage. They were comatose and have been so for the last three months. Estimates are that they will not be capable of leaving their coma for at least a year. Their damage is still unknown but the doctors believe they may have had their psychic cores damaged beyond use.

At this failed attack, I ordered the squads to not attack but to place ourselves between the terror and the child.

The child’s whimpers had turned to sobs and I felt I had to grab them and get them out of the room.

Upon getting under the bed, the child looked at me and asked if the ‘Monster is still out there?’

When I nodded, they started wailing and the entity stared uttering hideous laughter.

I noticed that as it laughed, slight injuries kept appearing on the arms and face of the child and I started to realise that this entity was not an outsider but a part of the child’s mind. The onyl way that the child could be injured at the moment is by remembering something that had happened in reality. An outsider would have to touch the child to injure them.