IGS #4, Chapter 12

The Nightmare Lady

The Nightmare Lady loped along the edge of the cliff, her tail undulating behind her, talons digging into the crusty rock. She ran smoothly, fluidly, drawing on the ambient Bronze mana with ever more proficiency, feeding it into her blazing Heart without routing it through her reservoir.

He would have been proud.

As always, her monstrous face pulled into a silent snarl at the thought of him, a reflexive wave of hatred and self-loathing and disgust flooding through her skeletal frame.

Don’t think about him. It. Anything.

Just now, here, in the moment.

A massive shape soared into view overhead to land a score of yards before her, his massive and soft frame taking the impact on the rough shoals of raw rock without damage.

Nox.

The Nightmare Lady didn’t adjust her pace. Kept running, and soon passed him, not even bothering to glance sidelong at her erstwhile companion, who’d begun striding in his strangely muscular, deliberate manner over the rough rocks. He’d walk for a spell, then leap again to hurl himself past her, and in this manner they’d proceeded for weeks, cutting through the Unfathom as they devoured the endless miles.

Little conversation.

Yet with Nox she never got the sense he was withholding comments out of respect for her prickly nature. He simply didn’t have much to say when they were on the move, his concentration on his progress and their environment total.

With good reason.

The Nightmare Lady raised her gaze to the distant Silverine Sun.

The first time she’d seen one sail free of the endless fog clouds she’d staggered to a halt, amazed, appalled.

She’d been completely unprepared for the sheer size of it. It had hung low off the horizon, vast as a planet, its rough ivory surface mottled with glowing orange craters, the largest of which blazed gold in their depths. The lights had pulsed as if the planet were alive, a shimmering corona of burning light enveloping it and occasionally giving off a curling flare that had stretched for what had to be miles into the black sky.

Another blazed ahead, far beyond where the plateau on which they ran curved away and would lead them to the east. The banks of fog had parted before its unholy majesty, their rippled surface limned with burning light so that it seemed as if an eternal sunset were taking place.

The distant edge of the plateau where it met the curving line of the cliff was a battered bronze, the stone and ice reflecting the Silverine Sun’s light in burning streaks.

The plan was to follow this flat ground along the edge of the plateau and then away from the Sun. To their hard right, spikes and spires rose in ever greater profusion to become an impenetrable forest of knife-like mountains. But here a great avenue of flattened rock followed the waving curtain-line of the cliff, beyond which roiled an infinite ocean of cottony-white fog that stretched toward the horizon.

If she leaped from the cliff top, she reckoned she’d fall through that cloud-sea forever.

On she ran, limber and lethal. The vasty heavens here were still but for the endless banks of scudding fog overhead, and the terrain appeared similarly abandoned. No signs of life, no signs of Great Souls, no fiends, nothing.

But she wasn’t fooled.

Nox again sailed overhead in one of his prodigious leaps, to land thirty yards ahead of her into a great wrinkled black mass, adjusting his posture immediately with a couple of steps and several deep swallows that caused his throat to ripple. He cocked his head to one side as she passed him, the great hooded spikes over the eyeless hollows of his head tracking her.

Alerted by his curiosity, she slowed, cast around, and then moved to the cliff’s very edge to peer out over the cloud ocean. Like surf, the fog stole halfway up the rough cliff, exhaling endlessly and falling back on itself.

No sign of Silverines.

But Nox was never wrong. His mana sensitivity would have put a Charnel Duchess to shame.

The Nightmare Lady crouched, tail twitching, and canted her head from one side to the other, peering. Probing the foggy depths. Waiting.

There.

Four alien shapes emerged from the white fog to fly up toward them, far enough below to appear small, but that was an illusion.

“Four of them,” she called back to Nox.

He waddled away from the cliff’s edge, looking for suitable ground.

The Silverines were fascinating to observe, utterly unlike anything she’d ever seen, and eerily beautiful. These were clearly related, for they all had roughly the same body plan. They had to be, what, ten, fifteen yards long? A half-dozen deep blue tentacles as thick as her thigh braided together and clasped between segmented white bone carapaces that ran down their stomachs and spines. Four red arms emerged from near the top, each terminating in elongated hands topped with foot-long talons, and a mane of blue tentacles ran down what had to be their necks, the two or three yards above their arms that ended in their newt-like heads.

They coursed up towards her, undulating as if swimming through water, and the Nightmare Lady snarled in defiance then retreated to where Nox had settled into a hollow, and was even now making minute adjustments to his bulk.

As always, his serenity in the face of danger annoyed her.

“They’re coming fast.”

“Nox sense them. Worry not.”

“I’m not worried,” she snapped, but if he cared for her temper, she couldn’t tell. Taking a breath, she engaged one of her powers, so that darkness began to emanate from crevice’s and cracks, rising from the hollows beneath stones and rocks to eddy into the air like vials of ink poured into water.

The darkness soothed her. Called to her. She could sense their depths, their locations, and urged them to reach out for each other, tendrils connecting the spreading columns. Farther and farther afield she pushed the darkness, till the area before her and Nox was as mottled with midnight hues as the Silverine Sun was blistered with burning craters.

The four Silverines came pouring over the cliff’s edge into view and together they let forth a shrill cry of excitement, the air bruising before their musical assault. The Nightmare Lady grit her fangs and forced herself to remain still, shielding her Heart in the manner Nox had taught her, waiting, waiting as they arced up in to the air and then plummeted down to attack.

Their neck tentacles frilled out wide, their hands reached forth, and the mouths in their eyeless newt-like faces of red and blue suddenly split in half to reveal huge maws riddled with needle-teeth.

Down they flew, faster and faster, and Naomi almost panicked, almost lost faith and leaped aside for the sweet embrace of darkness when Nox detonated.

His reservoir was huge, and in one violent explosion he released a weaponized mass of Coal shot through with Iron into the air around them.

Even prepared, the detonation rocked the Nightmare Lady where she crouched, caused the shield around her Heart to crack and fragment, and sent her head spinning.

It felt as if she’d fallen headfirst down a well, fallen upwards, fallen outwards in every direction, the ground spinning away from under her.

But there was no time to waste.

The four Silverines let out gasping cries of alarm and pain as they dropped from the sky to crash onto the rockets and there writhe, tentacles and arms slapping at the ground.

The Nightmare Lady slipped into the closest column of shadows and appeared beside the first. She leaped as its tentacles swept through where she’d been, and fell upon it, taloned feet finding purchase on its side, grasping at carapace and muscular tentacles both as she slashed an arm off with her tail and cut frenziedly at its neck.

All around her more segmented tails like her own set about butchery, their great triangular blades slashing down and hacking again and again at the other three fiends.

Who mewled and yelped and contorted their bodies in shock and bewilderment.

Nox’s tongue flew forth, the great pad at its end splodging onto the bone-clad neck of one, and with a gurgling grunt he hauled it toward him over the rocks.

The Nightmare Lady cut a handful of the thick blue neck tentacles away, then slammed her talons down into the writhing crimson and blue flesh, slashing at the muscular body till she tore sufficiently deeply into its core that the fiend spasmed and flopped to lie still.

Already the other two were half rising, gaining buoyancy. But her forest of bladed tails had cut them nearly into chunks, and with satisfaction the Nightmare Lady watched as they finished the job, hacking and hacking away at bone and tentacle and arms until they both flopped down to lie still.

The fourth yet writhed as Nox dragged it toward him. The Nightmare Lady could only shake her head. It was bigger than he was.

“You can’t eat it!” she shouted.

Nox dug his rear legs into the ground and kept hauling, his throat working. The Silverine flexed and spasmed, fought instinctively against the pull, but then Nox bounded forward and closed his mouth around its head and shoulders.

“Spit it out,” shouted Naomi. “It’s… damn it, Nox!”

The toad ignored her. He was massive, armored now with impressive black plates, with whorls of mana markings emanating from around his eye sockets to spread over his neck and back, but still, impressive as he’d become, the fiend was just too—

Nox rocked from side to side, opened his mouth wider, and hauled half the fiend down his gullet, causing his sides to begin to writhe as the Silverine fought him from inside.

The Nightmare Lady sighed and strode to the edge of the cliff. She gazed out over the ocean of clouds half a mile below, but there was no sign of other Silverines.

For now.

Turning, she gauged the battle. Nox was making deep belly burping sounds as he shook his body from side to side, and then he tilted his whole head back and opened his mouth even wider so that more of the Silverine fiend’s tentacles could slide inside.

Deeply muffled shrieks sounded from within his rapidly swelling body.

The Nightmare Lady watched, then sighed and shook her head. “Fine. Stuff yourself into a coma while we’re this close to a Sun. See if I care.”

And she stalked back to the dead Silverines to begin carving out their Hearts.

It was bloody, messy work, but her tail made it easy; she parted muscles and dense fiendish flesh till she was able to tear free each Heart. They were practically identical, each as large as a human head, and fluted and frilled with silver and bronze. She tossed each toward Nox, but he ignored them, busy as he was.

When finally the last Heart was free she hurled it after the first two, and straightened with a sigh. Blue gore dripped from her arms up to her elbows, and the smell of dead Silverine was rich in the air, coppery and metallic, but strangely acidic and noxious at the same time.

With a final slurp of his tongue, Nox pulled the tips of the tentacles in his mouth, then smacked his lips together as his whole body rocked and contorted from within.

“How the hell did you do that,” she said, walking over. “You’ve doubled in size. What if more find us now?”

“Nox magnificent Emperor Wraith Toad.” This offered as if it were an explanation in and of itself. A muffled shriek sounded from within him, and an angular shape protruded violently through his black skin, causing it to distend alarmingly. “Nox capacious. Silverine tasty. Naomi should try eating Silverine Heart. Improve her mood.”

“No, thank you.” The Nightmare Lady sighed and glanced about. “Well, it looks like we’re camping early. Think you can move?”

“Nox Emperor Wraith Toad.”

“Right. Well, we should make for those mountains and get out of sight, at least. So much for clearing the Sun’s periphery today. I’ll see you there.”

To which Nox could only offer a deep and reverberating burp whose undertones were made melodic by the pained piping coming from within him.

Grabbing the Hearts and stashing them in her netbag, the Nightmare Lady strode toward the closest spires. She couldn’t help but cast worried glances at the distant Sun on the horizon. It hung there, malevolent and impossibly huge, and though Nox had assured her that they would never get close enough to get turned around, she hated being this close to it.

Silverine patrols were guaranteed as long as it lay within sight.

She cast a glance behind her. Nox was painfully waddling after her, looking incredibly ungraceful and bloated, his now-huge belly making it impossible for him to get all four legs down at once.

“You damn glutton,” she muttered. With that big a meal it’d take him at least a day, if not two, to absorb his prey. Two days of sitting tight and hoping nothing more dangerous found them.

It would serve him right, though, being forced to vomit up his snack so that he could fight. He’d be grumpy for days, but was that her problem?

No.

With a sigh she scouted amongst the growing spires. She leaped easily amongst their sharp slopes, talons finding purchase, and clambered over their pocked and fibrous surface like a spider till at last, several hundreds inside, she found a large hollow that would accommodate them both.

Nox would have to truly work to reach it, but that was his problem.

With a sigh she leaped down onto the smooth rock, unshouldered the netbag, tossed it aside, and then moved to crouch against a wall. For a long moment she remained thus, face buried in her hands, not exhausted, but… depleted, until at last she grimaced and released her Nightmare Lady form to become… Naomi.

The cold grew sharp, her hunger gnawing. Her slender human body felt weak and filthy and dusty, her hair hanging before her face in greasy strands. She’d never gotten this dirty even during her first months in Bastion’s ruins. But it wasn’t as if Nox cared.

And it wasn’t as if she could spare water for bathing.

She reached into the netbag, pulled out a fiend bladder, untied an umbilical cord or whatever it was, and poured metallic water into her mouth. Drank slowly, without joy, then tied off the bladder and tossed it aside.

Rested her head back against the wall, and for a long, long while thought of nothing.

She’d become good at that again.

In the distance, she could hear Nox’s grunts. He was making them extra loud to ensure she could hear them and note his protest at her having picked such a difficult spot to reach.

Naomi snorted. Too bad. Let him learn a lesson.

Not that he would.

She couldn’t decide whether she respected or hated that about her fiendish companion, how he refused to argue about anything, and instead simply did what he desired to do. Whether that was picking a direction, choosing to eat something, or deciding to nap for as long as he deemed necessary, he’d ignore her protests and demands for explanations. At best, if pressed, he’d simply tell her he was a Hell’s damned Emperor Wraith Toad, and that was that.

Naomi’s stomach rumbled with hunger.

Too bad she was sick of eating raw fiendish flesh.

How long had it been since she’d stolen that Great Soul’s pack while he slept in that red fortress? A week? His rations were almost gone. She was down to…  Naomi leaned over and rummaged through the sparse contents of her netbag. A little jerky and some withered apples. Enough for one really good meal, or a week of slow starvation.

Never mind.

She didn’t care what her body wanted.

Again she rested her head back against the wall, and lapsed into a fitful doze.

A huge shape crashed down beside her, and Naomi leaped to her feet with a yelp, Heart Igniting as she went to shift to the Nightmare Lady, but it was only Nox, casting what she now knew to be his supremely annoyed look at her before turning about to find his own corner.

“Inconvenient burrow. Naomi very bad friend. Nox not like leaping with full tummy.”

“Oh, stop it. You know we’re safe here. Safer, at any rate. And you should have thought about it before inhaling your second fiend in three days.”

“Nox make dignified snack. Appropriate to grand station.” The toad huffed and labored his way to a depression, and there settled, edging back and forth and wiggling his body till he at last deemed himself comfortable.

The fiend in his belly had ceased moving.

“I thought we were supposed to clear the Sun before we rested. I thought that was the crux of your plan.”

“Nox realize first plan short sighted. Nox amend plan with sublime authority. All better now.”

“We’re still in the Sun’s radiance. We’re going to be attacked again.”

“Nox sleepy. Naomi talk too much.”

“You’re not answering my damn question. And no, you’re not just going to pretend to sleep to avoid answering it. Nox? Nox!”

The Emperor Wraith Toad settled a little more, smacked his broad lips a final time, then made a pointed show of sagging as if falling asleep.

“Damn it, Nox.” He’d been the one to assure her they’d cross the Unfathom without difficulty if only they respected the Suns. It was too dangerous to avoid them altogether, for enterprising Silverines knew that prey steered clear of the Suns and thus hunted the great stretches between them with increased vigor. But straying too close was even worse. The trick, Nox had told her, was to dip into their territory where the fiends were thinnest, then dip back out. Dip in, dip out. A weaving dance that had served his kind since time immemorial for crossing the Unfathom.

She tried again. “You said yourself things seem different this time around. There are more Silverines, and much less of everything else. You really think it’s safe to sleep here?”

Nox didn’t respond.

“How are we supposed to reach the Radiant Pools of Gold if we get killed because you had to nap?”

“Nox all-wise, all-knowing. Toads cross Unfathom since Acherzua formed. Much has changed, yes, but now imperative to nap. Nox know best. Naomi nap. Naomi more pleasant when rested. This fact.”

“Pah.” Naomi eased over onto her side and extended her legs before her. That was the most she’d get out of him. For better or worse, they were trapped here till he absorbed the Silverine’s essence. Even with three Hearts right there for him to snack on, it wasn’t really a surprise that he preferred to eat the whole fiend. He preferred his snacks whole and alive.

Crossing her arms against the chill, Naomi closed her eyes and forced herself to relax, muscle by muscle.

Then, as she felt fatigue steal upon her, and just before sleep came, she allowed herself that rarest of pleasures, that most guilty of memories. She thought of a different velvety darkness, of the sound of him breathing beside her, his arm draped over her shoulder, his body alongside her own.

She’d not slept that whole night, so painfully aware had she been of his presence in bed with her, so determined had she been to drink in that incredible moment.

Alone but for a gorged toad in the depths of the Unfathom, with a Silverine Sun vast and deadly and only some thirty or more miles away, Naomi allowed herself to think of Scorio.

But only for a moment.

Only enough to warm her heart--but not break it.

Before the tears could start to prickle her eyes, she put the memory away, hunched herself against the cold, and turned her face against the rock to find sleep.