I haven't lived with night terrors on a personal level, which is to say I was never woken up screaming or mumbling or flailing from my nightmares. No sleep paralysis as far as I know, either. Closest instance to that is when I pinched a nerve bundle in my arm during the night because I rolled on it the wrong way as a boy.
That said, my nightmares do tend to be quite intense and while I haven't experienced them directly, I do have close experiences with night terrors because my wife used to suffer from them. The dream sequences I write are sort of a combination of those experiences, mixed with creative flourishes drawn from my struggles with insomnia. Flavored with the right vocabulary, it comes across as quite unsettling.
Oh, regarding what happened with Erik, that can be inferred from his conversation with Marten in the previous chapter. Renald was visiting him to help ensure his recovery was going well. During his talk with Marten, Erik mentions that when Renald said he seemed to be doing much better, he started thinking Renald might not come back again. His guess was right. Since Erik's been healing well, Renald was made to return to his usual duties as a dream guide.
Poor Marten, it took him four days of hell to sink into true dreaming sleep, or nightmares.
You have this description of Stage 1 down to a T. Darkness, a feeling of being cold, seeing unremitting darkness, and then the nightmare.
It sounds like a classic bout of night terrors.
I wonder what happened to Erik, that he didn't deliver the message, or where Gauir is.
I haven't lived with night terrors on a personal level, which is to say I was never woken up screaming or mumbling or flailing from my nightmares. No sleep paralysis as far as I know, either. Closest instance to that is when I pinched a nerve bundle in my arm during the night because I rolled on it the wrong way as a boy.
That said, my nightmares do tend to be quite intense and while I haven't experienced them directly, I do have close experiences with night terrors because my wife used to suffer from them. The dream sequences I write are sort of a combination of those experiences, mixed with creative flourishes drawn from my struggles with insomnia. Flavored with the right vocabulary, it comes across as quite unsettling.
Oh, regarding what happened with Erik, that can be inferred from his conversation with Marten in the previous chapter. Renald was visiting him to help ensure his recovery was going well. During his talk with Marten, Erik mentions that when Renald said he seemed to be doing much better, he started thinking Renald might not come back again. His guess was right. Since Erik's been healing well, Renald was made to return to his usual duties as a dream guide.