IGS #4, Chapter 42

Naomi

How do you process a selfless deed you know you don’t deserve? As Naomi struggled to keep up with Nox, she wrestled with what was happening, the deed he was doing, the contest he was eschewing, and came up short.

She wanted to protest, but feared his withering scorn if she pressed too hard that he abandon her. Somewhere, somehow, he’d become a true friend. Even his willingness to bring her to the Radiant Pools of Gold could have been understood as a minor inconvenience seeing as how he was intent on going there anyway, but this?

She didn’t want it. Couldn’t, on some fundamental level, accept that he was willing to put his entire reason for existing aside so as to escort her deeper into the Lustrous Maria in search of answers.

But protesting felt petty, worse, would feel pathetic. She didn’t want to force him to justify his selfless aid. To explain, patiently, as a parent might a child, why he was willing to risk missing the entire Quantics contest on her behalf.

So all she could do was lumber after him, distraught, unable to will herself to catch up, pulled along as if by an invisible twine, a reluctant attachment to his determined progress.

And for the first time she traveled as Naomi. Her puny legs burned as she splashed through shallow blue pools, burned as she scrambled up rough rises, as she jogged across mineralized stretches of encrusted sand. She sweated freely in the humid air, paused frequently to cup water to her mouth, and fought back nausea as she ate the raw weeds and tiny fiends that the Nightmare Lady had devoured without question.

Because she couldn’t summon that… other self to the fore again.

Could she? A tenebrite. A queen tenebrite. Implanted. Used to awaken her, to allow her to Ignite her Heart. The thought made her want to vomit, violated her sense of self in a way that the Nightmare Lady’s whisperings and torment never had.

Her father. Her mother. Her past. Her very life. Who was she? Was everything a lie? Had she been born into that mansion, or placed there? Where had her father gone? Why had he done this?

What twisted horror was this that truths and revelations only made her past feel more muddied and hidden?

Deep within her soul, she felt the Nightmare Lady twisting and twining, watching and waiting. Naomi could feel her dark amusement, her scorn.

And what even could be done? If the tenebrites were willing, would she acquiesce to having the Nightmare Lady extracted? Where would that leave her? A regular person, without an Ignited Heart? Her powers were, after all, all Nightmare Lady focused. Her form, her mastery of darkness, the tails she could summon from the abyss. If she excised the Nightmare Lady, but retained her Heart…?

Naomi couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

Instead, all she could do was stumble after Nox, who heaved his bulk in a definite direction without hesitation.

He wasn’t upset. He was… resolute. Each hour spent spearing deeper into the Lustrous Maria was a second he’d need to spend returning. There was no hesitation on his part as to the rightness of their quest, but nor was he willing to dilly dally.

So Naomi did the best she could and raced after him.

“We reach Shores of Night,” Nox rumbled one afternoon as they rested under a vermillion overhang beside cool waters. “Soon night happen, waters rise, Lustrous Maria change.”

“Shores of Night?” She stared out over the shallow valley of undulating hillocks from whose peaks diaphanous veils of pearlescent white and gold shimmered into the air, capturing the passing mana. “What do you mean?”

Nox worked his broad mouth, shifted about, and she could sense him frowning. How, she didn’t know. Familiarity. He was seeking the right words. “Lustrous Maria vast. Vast mean big.”

“I know what vast means.”

“We travel through borderland. Sunwise Rim. Always golden light. But now enter Shores of Night. Darkness grow each cycle. With darkness, tides rise. We seek high ground, then travel by day. Shores of Night were tenebrites reign.”

“Oh. You don’t usually come through here, right? After… after your competition, you return to Bastion?”

Nox remained silence in that manner that indicated he saw no need to confirm the obvious.

“But some of your kind do? The… Supreme Phantom Toads and Sovereign Death Toads?”

“Best friend Naomi correct.” Nox considered. “Once Nox ascend to Supreme Phantom, Nox journey south. Enjoy Emerald and Sapphire saturation. But now, Nox lead Naomi to tenebrites. Perilous. Great caution. Nox not want to be eaten.”

“No, me neither.” Naomi wrapped her arms around her shins. “But… what do you think the tenebrites will… do? If they… I mean…?”

Nox considered her, but didn’t answer.

“I guess we’ll find out,” said Naomi softly.

“Tenebrites filthy fiends. Nasty parasites. Nox not treat with tenebrites before, but heard much. Intelligent, yes, but nasty. Tenebrites find Great Souls very tasty. Prized meal. What tenebrites think of Naomi, Nox not know. But we find out.”

“Thank you.” She whispered this, and for some reason, just voicing her gratitude nearly broke her. Tears filled her eyes, and her body felt taut and tense like a tightly wrung hand towel. She could barely breathe. “Thank you for…”

Nox shifted his weight irritably. “Naomi clutchmate. Obvious. Naomi annoying second, clutchmate first. Nox say no more.”

Naomi couldn’t help but laugh, but even to her it sounded despairing. She curled a thick, matted strand of dark hair behind one ear, and lay down to sleep.

It was only after their next full day of scrambling south that she saw what Nox had warned her of: the sky began to bruise then darken, and the landscape to change. It wasn’t simply dusk; the colors shifted, the corals grew and forked or twined, and the very air felt heavier, velvety, and tinted a purply-blue.

As if it had taken a step toward becoming water.

They’d been traveling through a stretch of heavily broken terrain, the land both carved by endless gullies and precipitous drops and rising around them in warped towers, some stretching scores of yards in height. The effect was the loss of the sense of what the ‘ground’ was, as it all seemed more akin to platforms and ridges that they often had to climb up to or leap down onto so as to continue making progress. And everywhere had grown coral bushes shaped like hemispheres, some of bright orange, others aquamarine, others of royal purple. Here and there angular trees that looked more like cactuses rose into the air, their spiky hides painted rich yellow. It had required careful navigation, but now, as the ‘night’ fell upon them, it all changed.

The coral bushes stretched and grew, scores of slender arms rising to waver in the air as their hues gradated to silver, lavender, and dark purple. The grew murky, and the sky above darkened to a shimmering kaleidoscope of purple, crimson, and black swirls.

Even the fiends changed , the small crustaceans and spindly-legged spiders that had picked their way carefully over the bushes or hidden in the cracks hiding away as a school of never before seen fiends the size of her palm drifted into view, hundreds upon hundreds of them floating with perfect coordination so that they shimmered in the air like a single organism, passing through the air before them before disappearing around a great column to the left.

“Move carefully,” said Nox, his croak barely audible. “Follow.”

Naomi stared about in wonder as she did so. It was as if they’d entered a completely different realm. A vast conglomeration of crimson vines that thickened as they met at the center to form a starfish corpus swarmed into view, picking its way around the side of a distant column, its many legs reaching out to probe at bushes and hunt in cervices. Nox froze, so Naomi did the same, but the fiend had noticed them. Its center mass shivered then unfurled, fleshly petals peeling back to reveal an ivory face whose eyes were chunks of gold. It stared at them, eerie and beautiful, and then the petals folded back over its visage and it resumed foraging.

An hour or so later, a fiend flew overhead on silent wings; its body humanoid, utterly black and impossibly elongated, its head composed mostly of twin pinches with a single eye embedded just below their joint. A mass of flesh-colored fronds acted as wings, dozens layered over each other like roseate moth-petals.

“Freeze,” croaked Nox in alarm, and Naomi did so, half-hunched and about to step down to a lower rock.

The flesh-moth black sylph fiend drifted by overhead, pincer-head opening and closing, and then was gone.

Nox waited a good while, then shook himself. “Unfreeze.”

Their passage wasn’t unnoticed, however. The dark corals and strange growths reacted to her presence as before, if not more so; wherever she stepped, they shivered, and like a pebble dropped into water, those shivers passed from bush to bush in widening ripples.

A message was being sent forth.

That was good, right?

Nox continued to lead the way, albeit with greater reluctance and wariness. He’d leap across a gulf to a ledge some ten yards up, or hop down into a steep drop to a profusely overgrown garden below. Naomi did her best, but at times Nox was forced to wait patiently as she found alternative means to join him.

She’d not summon the Nightmare Lady unless she had no choice.

They continued in this manner until Nox froze again, head cocked to one side, his whole body suddenly radiating tension and alarm.

Instinct bid Naomi drop into a crouch and freeze as well. She scanned the somber growths that grew from the rough cliff face beside them, gazed out into the depthless blue that lay beyond their ridge. The thick air currents pushed against her like a tide. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and her mouth dried of its own accord. What was—?

Up.

A figure had emerged into view over the top of the cliff. A woman. Kind of. At its core was a woman, dark skinned and athletic of frame who’d have been nude if she wasn’t dressed in—or engulfed by—something else.

It was wrapped around her like a living cloak, covering her back and shoulders, sweeping down her arms and fanning out across her chest and abdomen so that only a central strip of dark skin was visible from her nose down her neck and between her breasts to her navel.

Of the palest purple, this alien flesh was ridged yet supple, like scale mail, and a great tail rose into the air behind her head, its tip forming into an obscenely sharp looking triangular blade.

Naomi felt pinned to the ground, her blood become sluggish ice, her stomach clenched, her mouth parting of its own volition.

For the upper part of the woman’s head was engulfed by a crown of large, alien eyes with goat-like pupils embedded into the base of a dozen thick tentacles. These hovered in the air behind her like the arms of an octopus, an octopus that had latched onto the head of its prey and there remained, the rest of its body melting and flowing out to encompass the Great Soul’s body.

Because there were two beings above her. The Great Soul, and the tenebrite.

Seven or perhaps eight large, palm-sized eyes regarded her with such fierce interest and focus that Naomi felt herself hapless, helpless, and utterly disarmed.

For a terrible second the tenebrite simply regarded her, tentacles swimming slowly in the air above, its tail moving back and forth with something akin to amusement.

Naomi knew that monster’s style. From its tail to its lethal grace to the long talons that curled into view over the edge of the cliff, its every line screamed to her of the Nightmare Lady.

Nox puffed out his cheeks. “Nox and best friend Naomi come searching for tenebrite. Nox ask tenebrite not attack. Naomi carry Nightmare Lady inside. Naomi need help.”

The lips of the Great Soul curved into a sardonic smile. Drops of ooze were extending into slender ropes from the rugged tips of the tenebrites grip around her face. “So I see,” said the tenebrite through the woman’s lips. “How amusing. How unforeseen.”

Naomi knew she should speak. Should react. But her mind was blank with terror, her breath caught. If nothing else, the very sight of this fiend confirmed her ever dark suspicion.

Nox waddled forth a step. “Nox ask for tenebrite aid. Remove the Nightmare Lady. Leave Naomi.”

“Remove the Nightmare Lady?” The tenebrite quirked her head to one side with such alien rapidity that any semblance of humanity was dashed. “You mean extract the queen? Why should I do that?”

“Best friend Naomi not want Nightmare Lady.” Nox hesitated. “Nightmare Lady happy with tenebrites. Play with tenebrite friends. Much better.”

“Play?” The fiend sounded increasingly delighted. “My, but I am always interested in playing. But my style of… play… might not accord with your sensibilities.”

Nox edged back.

Naomi broke free of the spell and rose to her feet. “Can you remove her? Is it even possible?”

“Why bother removing that which is best slain?” The tenebrite eased forward, claws sinking deep into the rock. “Why should we accept a contestant queen in our midst when we could slay her outright within your softly shell?”

“You don’t need to accept her,” said Naomi, stepping back as well. The tenebrite was looming. “Just—we don’t want trouble, we just want to—”

But the tenebrite abruptly flowed forward, her dozen head tentacles thrashing as she raced down the cliff on all fours, the golden eyes that the Great Soul wore like a crown flashing bright as if refracting and reflecting hidden sunlight.

Damn it.

Naomi unleashed the Nightmare Lady.

It felt glorious to shed Naomi’s exhausted and ragged form to become her full, magnificent self. The tenebrite rushing toward her was impressive, yes, but little more than an amusing challenge. Darkness began to boil up all around them, gouting forth like jets of ink into water, even as the Nightmare Lady felt her presence magnify, chilling the air, numbing any who would dare move against her.

Then things got strange.

The tenebrite split into six copies of herself, each flinging itself in a different direction, some racing out laterally, others approaching obliquely, one straight down the cliff while the last leaped directly at her, talons extended.

But that wasn’t all. Each tore a huge chunk of the cliff free, wresting a six or so long club of living rock and coral out of the living rock which they wielded as if it weighed nothing, the titanic clubs swinging back and forth as they scrabbled with dizzying speed.

The Nightmare Lady froze for but an instant, the explosion of movement and power before her overwhelming, then laughed.

Of course. The Great Soul’s powers.

She flung herself into the closest patch of shadows and dipped through darkness to appear on a distant ledge of her own. Tails were manifesting all around, creating a forest of scythe-like blades that began seeking a target.

There were six of them, but even as the blades slashed through the skittering tenebrite, most of the images simply vanished, massive clubs and all.

Illusions.

The stone beneath the Nightmare Lady’s feet exploded. It burst upwards in a violent mess of shards and sharp-edged rocks, shattering and blasting her into the air so that she spun, black hide wrenched and torn by fragments, to fall forward and then down into a chasm, pain and shock giving way to fury.

She fell into darkness, dipped, emerged back on the first expanse of rock. The tenebrite was falling upon her, tentacle hair splayed wide, a scream tearing from her lips as she swung her absurdly huge club.

Once the Nightmare Lady might have rolled aside, or dipped back into shadow. But ever since she’d made Dread Blaze out on the Telurian Band, she’d wanted to revel in her strength, to test herself against a fitting foe.

So she screamed, Heart blazing with Bronze, and leaped up to meet the falling tenebrite and punch her huge club directly in its downward swinging face.

Her bony fist burst the column of rock apart, so that chunks of stone and purple weed and dirt went flying. Her fist passed through the weapon altogether to seek out the tenebrite’s face, which flashed and became rock seamed with dirt just like her club a second ago.

The Nightmare Lady’s fist cracked against the crown of gray, lifeless eyes, but without enough force to shatter; instead the tenebrite was knocked away, spinning and falling to crash on the ground, leap up onto all fours, then split into six again to come swarming around to attack the Nightmare Lady on all sides.

Nox detonated.

Black Coal mana seared the air, washing over the tenebrite copies and immolating them where they ran.

The Nightmare Lady rushed in to attack the sole surviving copy, the others having vanished. The tenebrite rose to both legs, a great column tearing free from the plateau floor and leaving a deep trench behind, and she swung this wickedly fast so that the Nightmare Lady could do little more than bend as it hit her in the side and whacked her away.

But her tail curled around the club, held her fast, so that on the upswing she curled around the club, released to fly directly up into the cobalt-blue air, then fell upon the tenebrite as it gazed up at her, purple alien flesh and human skin once more.

The tenebrite’s tentacles surged forward to come together at a peak from whose tips flashed golden light. The Nightmare Lady had a sense of Gold mana burning off at a prodigious rate and then a beam of pure destruction manifested.

The Nightmare Lady didn’t even have time to scream. She willed darkness to flood the air between them both, and dipped through the shadow to appear right behind the tenebrite just as she unleashed a wrist-thick blast of molten light into the heavens.

The Nightmare Lady’s tail smashed into the back of the tenebrite’s legs just as they turned into stone, but such was the force of her attack that she sheared one clear off below the knee. The tenebrite collapsed onto her side, and the Nightmare Lady felt the ground shiver beneath her just in time to dip into shadow once more.

She emerged high up on the cliff as the ground behind the tenebrite and now below her exploded upward once more, leaving a crater below and flinging chunks of coral and rock into the sky.

Nox flung his tongue out and slapped it into the tenebrite’s side, then whipped his head to the side so as to fling her bodily into the cliff. Again the tenebrite turned herself into stone just before she cracked into the cliff, but Nox didn’t release her. Instead, he snapped his head away, tongue arcing and yanking the fiend back out into the air and hurled her clear across the plateau before the tenebrite could react to smash her into a far ledge.

Where the Nightmare Lady emerged at precisely the right moment to slam the tip of her tail into the tenebrite’s abdomen. Rock or not, her triangular blade dug inches deep into the stone flesh and pinned her there.

The tenebrite reverted to flesh and gore fountained up from the stomach wound, from her severed leg. Her massive tentacles again flew forward in an attempt to pinch together and form a beam-generating attack, but the Nightmare Lady swiped once, twice with her talons and sheared the tentacles apart, cutting three clean away and leaving purple ichor oozing stumps.

“Stop!” cried the tenebrite, blood bursting from between her lips. “I—”

The Nightmare Lady seized the fiend by the nape of the neck, raised her, then smashed her back down, again, and then a third time, and then a fourth, each blow causing the stone ledge to crack, then crater, then finally breaking off a great wedge which fell into the darkness of the chasm.

The Great Soul’s skull decohered.

The Nightmare Lady dug her talons under the tenebrite’s suctioning crown and peeled the octopus fiend off the dead woman. It came away with a great, bloody sucking sound, chunks of skull coming away with it, tentacles flapping madly as the rest of its corpus began to peel off the corpse.

The Nightmare Lady didn’t wait. She surged off the ledge, dragging the tenebrite behind her, the dead Great Soul finally tearing free to topple into the chasm, and landed on the ruined ground beside Nox to slam the pulpy octopoid fiend into the ground with extreme force.

Purple blood spattered upward.

“Now,” hissed the Nightmare Lady, raising the soft, floppy fiend whose various eyes had burst, its tentacles weakly slapping at her arm. “Are you ready to do as you are told?”

The tenebrite shuddered and closed its golden eyes.

Yes, the Nightmare Lady heard deep inside her mind. Yes, my queen.