IGS #4, Chapter 20

The Nightmare Lady

“Run!” screamed the Nightmare Lady, scampering over the dunes on all fours. “Damn it, Nox, run!”

Her shadow fled before her, angular and rippling on the ivory sands, cast by the great blazing Silverine Sun that was in the process of setting the storm clouds aflame. The air was charged with its power, and great riveting bolts of lighting cracked out with thunderous power to rend the entire sky, each deafening boom that followed hitting the Nightmare Lady with such power that she felt herself jarred and almost thrown off her feet.

“Nox not like this!” warbled the giant toad from behind her, and then she sensed more than saw his great leap as he hurled himself skyward, passing overhead like a black meteor only to impact the dunes before her and detonate the top of the highest one.

Behind them came the Silverine horde.

Pouring down the black crags that framed this valley like shards of black glass, the Silverine Instinctuals rushed toward them like a flood, hundreds upon hundreds of them seeking to outrace their peers and catch their prey.

“You—” She wouldn’t to scream curses at the Emperor Wraith Toad, but Nox was already fighting for purchase on the treacherous sand, turning his huge body sideways to cast a terrified glance back at the wave of Silverines. “You said you knew how to slip by!”

“Acherzua very strange place, very wondrous!” Nox finally got his back legs under him, worked his throat, and then exploded forward again, hurling himself into the sky. Half the dune collapsed behind him just as the Nightmare Lady reached it, forcing her to curse and go out wide so that the wave of sand woudn’t engulf her.

The Silverines were coming in from the left flank now as well, several hundred of them skittering down the near vertical shards on all fours or sixes or eights depending on their configurations. At least there weren’t any—

Small shapes flew into view over the dagger-like peaks, humanoid but definitely not human.

Damn it.

The Nightmare Lady felt the same impulse as Nox, the same irresistable draw, and against her will looked back, sighted at the great Silverine Sun, and saw how livid it looked, how glorious, how utterly impossible as it hung huge and pregnant in the sky.

Its huge corpus was shuddering as orange and pale honeyed yellow light bubbled up from within its core, causing strange black shapes to bloom amidst the rippling light. It wasn’t truly a moon, but something ethereal and impossible about its vast spherical body gave the impression of immense size, even as the Nightmare Lady knew it to be only perhaps the size of the Fiery Shoals. Yet space distorted around it, so that she could have sworn it was hundreds of miles away, seen from a great remove instead of almost over their heads.

That damn toad! She wanted to scream, but it was too late, it was all too late, and his ‘shortcut’ through the tunnels he’d proudly revealed in the blasted heath through which they’d passed some days ago had led them right where she knew they shouldn’t go.

But he’d insisted, oh how he’d insisted, with that supreme arrogance and complacent condescension that had scorned her wariness, right till they’d heard impossible music that had beguiled them, mesmerized them, drawn them on against their will. Along the last stretches of the tunnel till they’d poked their heads out and found themselves not only under a burning Sun, but catching what looked like a host of Silverines in the midst of some private ritual.

She’d caught a glimpse. A single, desperate glimspe of a massive Fiend, its body marble white, easily as large as a whaleship, its head a geometrical impossiblity, a distended pyramid or the like, while the rest of its body had been fused or merged with the white altar on which it stood, the altar itself a great mesa rising from the sands. It had faced away from the sun, and from its back had extended scores of great white strips of cloth, or whatever they might have been, a complex webbing that extended up into the sky, disappearing as they stretched toward the Silverine Sun.

It had been beautiful. Eerily, disturbingly beautiful, for the great Fiend’s body had been wreathed in purple blooms, each probably the size of a house but against its vast body reduced to tiny dots, and the Fiend had seemed to lean away from the Sun, heaving against the traces, the reins that had bound it and held it back. Its body had blazed, growing bright like forge-heated metal, and all around it had worshipped thousands of Silverines, rank upon rank, all of them singing, filling the air with an impossible song whose melody had mesmerized her, a tapestry of beauty that warped the air so that she thought she could see the music, like impossible hues of color rippling and surging and playing with its own complexity.

A marvel.

A true wonder of Hell.

Until the closest Silverine had espied Nox inflating his neck sacks in admiration or alarm or whatever emotion the toad had been feeling, and screamed in outrage.

Things had gone badly from there.

The Nightmare Lady had hauled Nox back into the tunnel, but the toad had grown confused, possibly by the song, and kept turning around and filling the passage completely so that she couldn’t flee. She’d shoved at him, put her shoulder to his side, and he’d croaked in alarm till she finally lashed him with her tail and only then had he understood, pain speaking clearly to his addled mind, and rushed away down the tunnel, but by then it had been too late.

They’d managed to escape perhaps a hundred yards when the tunnel ahead of them collapsed and Silverines had swarmed down to confront Nox, who, in a feat of prodigious strength that he’d no doubt spend hours later boasting about, had exploded upward in a leap that had carried him through the thin shell of stone and sand to emerge into the Silverine Sun-lit sky and land in the center of the stunned Silverine horde.

Without a choice, the Nightmare Lady had followed, and deployed her roiling banks of darkness as best she could even as she’d screamed at Nox to flee. Which he’d gladly done, bounding away with his impossible mile-eating jumps and leaving the Nightmare Lady to follow.

The Silverines, predictably, had not been willing to let them go.

But to her surprise they’d been slow at first, almost lethargic. As if they were awakening from a stupor, bemused by their own rite, so that they turned reluctantly away from the great Sun and the strange, geometric giant that was connected to it from the mesa top, and as if awakening from a dream, began to give slow chase.

Slow enough that the Nightmare Lady had been able to dance between them, weave a passage through their massed ranks, and for a moment entertain the desperate dream of actually getting away.

Nox had been too far ahead for her to negotiate the direction, so she’d been compelled to follow, follow to the edge of the great plateau that housed the mesa, and then down its steep black glass sides, leaping and sliding and passing through the darkness to emerge farther down the slope, down into this valley of cursed sucking sand and its distant mouth toward which Nox now fled.

The Emperor Wraith Toad could move fast when motivated. But now the flying types had arrived, and these, she knew, would be trouble.

There were too many Silverine types for her to keep track of. Nox insisted there were only three, but that made no sense. Some of the bestial kind ran on four legs, others eight, while some flew, and others burrowed. Then you had the more humanoid types, whom Nox insisted were more dangerous even though they were pensive and prone to just drifting in the winds as if lost in thought. These also ranged in form, though they’d steered well clear of their clusters whenever they’d come across them by surprise. Some were nearly perfect human, their figures accentuated in vivid crimson, while others were crude simulacra, their heads angular and birdlike or unfinished or depicting grotesque masks.

The Nightmare Lady had disdained them all, knowing that in the end she and Nox would have to kill whatever came to close, and that all else had to be avoided.

Right up till his damn hidden tunnels which he’d guaranteed—guaranteed—would lead them right past the final major encampment and to the border with the Lustrous Maria.

The Nightmare Lady ran. Always fleet of foot, now she put every ounce of strength and determination into her flight, and became shadow that sped from dune peak to dune peak.

Up ahead, Nox had reached the valley mouth, and there turned to wave a foreleg in her direction in that annoying way he’d decided was very charming and sophisticated.

“Naomi come! Nox find correct tunnel! Very exciting development!” His croak echoed across the sands, a rumbling blast, but she didn’t have the breath to curse him back.

Correct tunnel? He expected her to believe him again?

But he turned, gave a little hop, and dropped out of sight into the stony scree at the base of the last of the valley-girdling cliff.

She looked back and up. A dozen of the flying Silverines were angling down toward her, their alien visages devoid of all emotion, their intent, however, chillingly plain.

The Nightmare Lady let out a cry of pure frustration and hurled herself across the last of the dunes, her talons tearing each peak apart as she briefly touched down, her strength such that she was able to propel herself the dozen yards that seperated each from each.

She heard the wind comingin from behind, heard the flying Silverines at last loose their chilling war song, the sound washing over her and causing her entire body to vibrate as if she’d banged her funny bone and then generalized that awful sensation over her mind, her skin, her organs.

It grew louder and she began to lose control of her limbs, such that she crashed into the last dune, hitting its peak abdomen first, and then rolled over it to tumble down the fine white sand to finally sprawl out on pebbled rock.

There.

A large, irregular hole of pitch darkness.

The Silverines swerved overhead, having missed her on that last pass, then flew high, veered and turned over to dive right back down at her.

The Nightmare Lady summoned just enough darkness for her to slip into, leaving the Unfathom behind to sink into the velvety, freezing void that had become so familiar, and then emerge a moment later within the darkness in the tunnel.

The tunnel mouth was perhaps a four yards overhead, bright and luminous with the eternal Unfathom brilliance. Shapes appeared in its glowing mouth, the Silverines, and one unhinged its bizarre, eagle-like beak and shrieked down at her into the darkness.

The aural attack near burst her eardrums, and the Nightmare Lady added her own scream to the shriek, though she couldn’t hear herself. She fancied she could see pulses of power flooding down, and turned tail to flee deeper into the dark, her sense of balance ruined so that she crashed her shoulder into one wall, then the other into the other.

Down she fled, the tunnel sloping quickly into the depths.

But the Silverines weren’t content to let her escape so easily.

The Nightmare Lady sensed them pour into the tunnel after her, supple and agile as they flew down in pursuit.

The darkness, however, was her territory. She willed her tails to manifest, great segmented columns of black bone to emerge from the rough ground like a forest of kelp, each tipped with her great triangular tail blade, and through this the Silverines sought to fly.

They failed.

The tails lashed and slashed and diced and cut, and the first was bisected then furhter vivisected before it could fall and die in a welter of alien flesh upon the ground.

The others shrieked their dismay but drew back.

The Nightmare Lady didn’t pause to gloat, but continued fleeing down the tunnel, down and down, her claws and foot talons finding easy purchase, the air growing ever colder, until she was reminded of her days in the great Chasm at the edge of the Rascor Plains, the two years spent hunting and surviving in tunnels just like this, alone in the pitch black darkness.

But this time, she wasn’t alone.

She caught up with Nox. He was puffing and shuffling ahead, walking with his sturdy amble, filling most of the tunnel and somehow darker than even the tunnel, as if his Coal-saturated body drank what precious little light existed in these depths.

“All is well that ends well,” admonished the toad, his voice sounding hollow and echoey in the tunnel. “Nox advise we not dwell on the past.”

“How convenient,” growled the Nightmare Lady, glaring at his prodigous rear. “You mean the part about leading us right into the heart of a Silverine Sun?”

“Small minds think on challenges. Big minds, beautiful minds, think on successes. Nox have big mind, beautiful mind.”

“You have no idea where this tunnel leads, do you?”

Nox didn’t answer, but continued ambling in his muscular fashion ever down.

“This could lead to some—what were those huge tunnels under the Iron Weald? The deadly labyrinth?”

“Unfathom not have those tunnels. Those tunnels special, those tunnels very bad. Nox not use those tunnels. This good tunnel. This well behaved tunnel. This tunnel Nox’s best friend.”

“So where does it go, then?”

“This tunnel goes to Lustrous Maria. Trust Nox. Nox travel though Unfathom many times.”

“Right. Trust Nox. Sure.” But what could she do? Over the past weeks of traveling with the Emperor Wraith Toad, she’d come to understand the strange fiend far better than she had before. His was a subtle mind, but he loved nothing more than to pretend to be a fool, not understanding her whenever she raised a valid point, going silent when he had no rebuttal, or twisting events so that his actions were validated by outcomes he couldn’t have presumed would occur.

It would have been infuriating if he wasn’t still the only creature in all of existence that she trusted on a fundamental level, that she dared be herself with, and in whose presence she could allow a modicum of normalcy to return.

With whom she could, somehow, and with great effort, forget the horrors she had committed, and allow herself to grow annoyed and frustrated and even exchange banter with him on the rare occasion everything was going well.

“There must be so few of you toads left,” she mused out loud, returning to one of her favorite arguments. “Given how terrible you are at crossing the Unfathom. It must be pure luck that any make it to the Spawning Pools.”

Nox huffed in annoyance, and his silence became wounded.

“Oh fine.” She couldn’t stay mad at him. His petulant silences were too much for her to handle—the first hint of rejection or anger on his part, real frustration with her complaints, caused a panicky vulnerability and fear to rear its head and urge her to make ammends. “You’re right. We got away. That’s what matters.”

Nox made another chuffing sound, this time of vindicated pride. It was incredible how adept she was getting at interpreting his many silences, his strange little sounds. They were as much a language as his words. Even the stiff way he kept his back straight right now reflected his wounded ego.

It was in this manner that he communicated his chagrin. He’d never admit it out loud, but his body language, that’s where he spoke this truest emotions.

The Nightmare Lady sighed and patted his great warty back. “I’m sorry I lashed at your with my tail back there. Are you hurt?”

“No,” said Nox, tone tight and upset. “Nox not feel any pain. Not any physical pain.”

His emphasis was sly and very deliberate.

The Nightmare Lady rolled her eyes in the safety of the darkness behind him. “I’m sorry. I just got a little panicked there at the prospect of being eaten alive by a thousand Silverines.”

Nox sniffed again. “No faith in Nox.”

“I mean…” Her protest died on her tongue. “I already apologized, right? You found the right tunnel. This is your new best friend, right? That’s what matters.”

“That what Nox say.” Another sniff, but she knew it to be the last. “Nox expert navigator. Very wise. Very cunning.”

“Yes, Nox is really the best navigator,” she said, knowing he was too sly to believe her, but that he’d eagerly drink down the compliments regardless. “Nox is by far the very best navigator through the Silver Unfathom I’ve ever, ever had.”

“That is correct,” agreed Nox, and then came to a stop. “Best friend Naomi never cross Unfathom before.”

“But!” She held up a taloned finger in the dark as she came to a stop. “I can’t imagine a better guide. One so elegant and dignified. So bold and cunning. Honestly, I’d not accept any other offer from any other toad or Fiend or Great Soul in your place. You’re that good.”

Nox seemed to consider, his pensive rumbling sound coming from deep within his gullet, and then she thought he bobbed his head in agreement. “Best friend Naomi very wise to understand. Nox forgive best friend Naomi. Nox knew best friend Naomi never doubted Nox.”

“Right.” They were in the clear. She patted his great curved back again. “Absolutely.”

He rumbled, gave a side-to-side waddle, then resumed ambling ahead of her. The tunnel ceased its descent and leveled out. The air had a faint current to it, but she couldn’t place the smell. Salt?

In this fashion they traveled for who knew how long. She didn’t want to rest, not with the other entrance opening so close to the Silverine Sun, so together they walked for hours and hours, perhaps even days. She fell into a trance, turning every so often to listen and peer into the unfathomable darkness behind her, but nothing gave pursuit.

Nox gave his victory warble, a minor variation on what could be a grossly exaggerated theme.

“What is it?”

“Come! Come! Naomi too slow, hurry!”

And he picked up the pace, eagerly crawling forward as the tunnel began to slope up gently. The light was gradually growing brighter, a subtle radiance that she couldn’t be sure of at first, but which minute by minute grew till Nox’s great form was distinct before her. The smell of salt grew more powerful, along with complex scents she’d never experienced before and couldn’t place, until Nox was practically racing ahead, devouring the last mile or two at his fastest speed.

Excitement had the Nightmare Lady, and she kept pace, not bothering to ask any questions. He’d ignore her now, no matter how much she demanded a response, so she simply followed, till at last Nox climbed a particularly steep stretch of tunnel, the air so bright and golden the Nightmare Lady could have wept, and pushed himself back out into Hell.

Eager, nervous, trembling, the Nightmare Lady scrambled out after him, and then froze.

Gone was the interminable silver sands, the steel gray sky, the wisps of endless white cloud, the bleak beauty, the impersonal vastness of the endless Unfathom plains and plateaus.

They stood in the mouth of a tunnel set high in a great cliff that, like the one beneath the Rain Wall that marked the boundary to the Farm Lands, curved away to both sides to fade toward the distant horizon. They were a good hundred yards up, and with an incredible view of the a golden sky, the clouds streaked russet and salmon pink, gold and amber, with hints of deep purple in the heavens visible beyond through the rents and tear in the burning cloud cover.

And below spread a wondrous land, as alien as the Iron Weald or the Unfathom, but far more pleasing to the eye, a great plain of undulating rocks and hillocks, dells and gulleys, all of it carpeted in wondrous bushes of impossible aspect, most looking to have been carved from gemstones, so that they burned in the evening light in hues of magenta and pink, amber and crystalline green, sunflower yellow and deepest fuschia. Above them, dotted across the landscape, rose great plinths topped by mushroom caps, though not really—they were islands atop craggy stilts, some as massive as a one of the floating islands back on the Rascor Plains. In the deepest declivities gleamed sapphire waters, shallow and perfectly clear, for she could make out the ground what looked like only inches or a few feet below the surface.

The wind blew past, fresh and rich with a thousand scents she couldn’t name, but all of which seemed to glow with the same hues of the growths and land below them, as if the very colors of the bushes had leached into the air.

In the near distance, perhaps a mile or two away, a giant Fiend was slowly plodding along, its body elephantine in size its skin marbled green band blue, but instead of a head some six vast snakes grew from its shoulders, each with a mottled cobra awning growing from its shovel-head to halfway down its serpentine neck. These grazed amongst the brightly glowing fronds that grew along a high ridge, but some instinct drew its attention so that all six necks curved about to angle up and stare across the intervening distance to where Nox and the Nightmare Lady stood.

“Behold,” said Nox, voice swollen with pride as if he were personally responsible for the beauty of the vista. “The Lustrous Maria.”