"I can feel your will reaching out," the woman comments. "You are powerful."

"That may be so."

Walk, walk, shift, shift, look down, imagine ground gently curving upwards towards the hole, look up...

The ground is gently curving up!

But the thing it is curving up to is not the hole. Or at least not directly. In between here and there is a large doglike creature, moldy yellow fur and an entire mouthful of big sharp teeth that are dying to be introduced to his sweet tender flesh.

Fuck, what is that thing doing here. 

Well, this time he has a sword at least. He jumps to the side to avoid an expected leap, and draws it. 

The beast seems to anticipate his movements and leaps directly at him!

Frakir tightens around his wrist, a bit late for a warning and much more strongly than usual

He tries to at least put the sword between himself and the thing, but it's faster than he expected...

It spits itself on the sword pushing right up to him, until he can feel its hot breath slavering in his face, teeth snapping and snarling.

He tries to push it off, with inhuman strength.

Off it pushes! And makes to leap right back at him.

Also, two more of it are approaching from either side, these ones slightly smaller.

This is getting out of hand, and he doesn’t even have anywhere to run. 

He says a word, and releases a spell that conjures a jet of water that should be enough to push the leaping one off-course. 

In the brief moment when the Pattern flashes before his eyes, do the dogs suddenly look different?

They look like a worst nightmare! Not his specifically anymore, just kind of generalized essence of nightmare.

(If he's paying attention, he may also notice that the woman-figure still looks like the old woman, but now with an 'essence of faith' underlayer.)

Okay, so not actually Julia’s dogs, that makes sense. 

After he sees this, he holds the image of the Pattern before him, and continues to evade/sword/push the nightmare things. 

"Any advice on dealing with nightmares?"

"Control your fear. Or run."

Well, technically he doesn’t have any reason to fear those particular dogs. Julia is in fact alive, and the last fight with it ended pretty quickly. 

Now’s not the best time for reflection, so if it doesn’t do something quickly, he’s going to try running. 

Running is probably a better plan, yes. The dogs don't seem to be slowing down.

He's quite good at running. He doesn’t quite have a place to run to, so he tries bending this place to go up to the hole again.

It seems there is a mountain path that will lead him up to a point where he might be able to make it to the rift.

There is also now an entire horde of monsters pursuing him as he runs, and an awful voice delighting in his fear singing into his mind. So sweet the fear, so rich the experience, the terrible chorus goes. Give it to us, let us feast on your memory.

He runs towards the mountains, still shifting the world around to shorten the path as much as he can. 

The voice is rather disturbing. 

Why, yes it is. And it comes with the bonus feeling of something nebulous nibbling away at the back of his mind, in a hard-to-notice-or-define manner.

He doesn't know what to do about it, though he can try to blast it with raw power, if he can see something with pattern-sight, or blast the nightmares if he can't. 

And he's still running, that he has a lot of practice on. 

He's getting closer to- that big hole in the sky? Why is that there? A glowy female apparition in front of him urges him onwards. A smaller rip in reality tears itself open on the cliffside above him and she says that one may serve as well.

He darts towards the closer tear, jumping in he can get close enough. 

It's just a little too far for him to make it, but the glowing person is up there now, extending a hand down to him, and the giant pack of doglikes is about to catch up-

He catches the hand, and fumbles into the tear.