IGS #4, Chapter 1

The Nightmare Lady

Nox leaped and crawled across the desert, and the Nightmare Lady followed.

At first she staggered after him on instinct. Exhausted, bereft, her mind a wasteland of grief and self-loathing, she fought to simply place one taloned foot before the other, her skeletal form weaving and occasionally crashing down to her knees.

Always Nox would stop, half-waddle around to glance back at her with his eyeless hoods, and wait till she summoned the strength to rise shakily once more.

He led her to a pool of brackish water that tasted like bronze and oily smoke. She half-fell into it, arms sinking into the warm liquid to the elbows, talons cutting into silt. Like a beast she lowered her visage to the water and drank, gasping and gulping as a primal part of her awoke to her own terrible thirst.

When finished, her stomach bulging, she collapsed onto her side and there slept, not caring what her fate might be.

At one point she awoke to see Nox’s bulk silhouetted against the Telurian Band’s night sky, the sun having lowered to its nadir above the plains. Immovable, seemingly carved from jet, the fiendish toad gazed out over the sands. Only his throat gave away that he was alive, swelling and shrinking over and over till she lapsed back into sleep.

When she awoke again, she once more rolled down to the pool to drink deeply, but this time when she looked up, mouth tasting like iron fillings and oil, she saw Nox clambering away, heading south.

“Hey!” she croaked. But it was all she could muster. And she didn’t want to talk. To explain. So instead she watched him go.

In that moment her existence hung in the balance.

She could just remain there.

Alone at the bank of this silty, brackish pool, watching Nox diminish into the south, until at last some other predator happened across her and decided to be less merciful.

He was almost half a mile gone when she levered herself back to standing and followed.

For a giant, ungainly toad, he made good time. Nox alternated between his athletic crawl with the occasional prodigious leap that sent him through the sky to land a good sixty or more yards in the distance.

Each time he’d settle, breathe a little, and just when the Nightmare Lady thought she’d catch up he’d start his crawling again, his brawny, purposeful clamber.

The sun rose, the sun sank. Hunger gnawed at the Nightmare Lady’s gut like a starving rat at the rind of a rotten gourd. She ignored the pain, but grew increasingly light headed.

Nox led her past another brackish pool. This one was filmed over with copper that she dashed apart with her tail. What did Nox know of potable water? This might kill her.

The Nightmare Lady didn’t care.

Movement was its own reward. To place one foot before another, to climb over knolls and rough ridges, to leap over clefts and ravines. Her mind was blank, smoothed over, devoid of introspection.

But she could sense it.

Always.

A howling madness awaiting in the wings, a great apparition of lashing tails and bulging eyes, slavering fangs and grasping claws. Just waiting for her to relax her guard, to allow her thoughts to stray, for memories to resurface.

To claim her in madness, and never let her go.

So the Nightmare Lady forced herself to not think. Nox became her north and her south, her east and her west, an endlessly movable locus for her attention. Once he leaped over a high ridge, suddenly energized, and when she climbed over she saw him crouched beside a great serpentine lizard as long as she was, which thrashed and bucked against his huge tongue.

She crouched and watched Nox draw the smaller fiend into his gullet. For an hour his stomach revealed the muffled struggles of the dying fiend, and when it fell still, Nox vomited it forth, its scaled length now wreathed in thick ropes of spit.

“Eat,” was all Nox said.

The Nightmare Lady knew no qualms. Cared not for niceties. The sight didn’t even disgust her. She was beyond hunger, but Nox’s command was sufficient. She flensed the lizard with the tip of her tail then feasted on its rubbery muscled flesh.

Day followed day. They crossed the Telurian Band without conversation. Slowly, by degrees, her mind roused itself from its catatonic blankness. Strength stole back into her body as she ate one fiendish prey after another, as she drank from the pools that littered the Band, as she did little more than sleep and walk.

Nox was always either ahead of her, leading her on, or watching over her as she slept. Placid, inscrutable, and as solid as a mountain, he was content to be a silent companion, and that alone was what kept her going.

Questions would have driven her mad.

The Telurian Band’s alien beauty was a balm. Its wild sunsets as the sun smoldered just above the horizon. The rough ridges of the raw rocks. The different fiends that populated the wasteland. Flocks of insects, roving herds of strange quadrupeds, the occasional massive predator that Nox sensed from a distance and bid them hide from.

Their path went wide of the Plain of Bones, of the great boulder wall that eventually terminated in LastRock. She was glad to lose sight of it early on, though she found herself searching the eastern horizon occasionally for some sign of its looming presence.

One evening they rested in a steep depression, rocks like fangs ringing the edge of the bowl, the dark and blood-washed evening sky turbulent overhead. Well fed, having drank her fill of the rust-colored water that pooled at the bowl’s bottom, the Nightmare Lady sat back against a flat rock and allowed her Heart to gutter.

Her tail receded, black carapace faded away to reveal skin, and her mane of greasy hair grew longer, thicker, her form shrinking, becoming weak, febrile, soft.

Naomi shivered and wrapped her arms around her shins, the torn remnants of her robe barely holding together.

Nox shifted toward her, shifted away. His throat swelled out pensively, deflated.

“Where…” Her voice was a raw rasp, an abused crackle. Cupping her hand to the pool, she raised the poisonous water to her lips and sipped. Tried again. “Where… where are we going?”

Again Nox shifted his weight. There was a subtle sucking sound each time his broad digits pulled free from the rock. He considered her, massive in the darkness at the base of the bowl. “Nox take favorite friend Naomi to Radiant Pools of Gold.”

Noami exhaled, glanced down at her filthy and torn hands. Was that the faintest pulse of incredulity, of amusement that she felt? If so, it felt like an eternity since she’d felt anything like it. “To your… your spawning pools? Where you’ll…”

She couldn’t say it.

The word alone roused memories.

Dangerous memories.

“Much sporting to be had. Nox Emperor Wraith Toad now. Nox magnificent. Wondrous females shall find Nox bold and boisterous. Nox becoming legendary Quantics master. But Nox not take favorite friend Naomi to Pools for mating. Nox bring Naomi to elder toads.”

“Elder toads.”

“Sovereign Death Toads may be at Radiant Pools. Possibly Maharajah Void Toad. They understand Naomi. They understand Nightmare Lady. They explain how to fix.”

Naomi’s breath stilled in her chest like a little bird espying a cat.

Nox shifted his weight, seemed to consider, then bobbed his great head. “Nox very wise. Nox very handsome. Nox understand many things, but not understand what happening inside Naomi. Not like other Great Souls. Naomi big mess.”

Her laughter burst from her lips and became a sob. She clamped a hand over her mouth and fought the hysterical urge to let our amusement become a scream. A flash of blood arced through the air, and Alain’s head -

Naomi bit hard on her knuckle and bowed her head. She tasted blood, felt a flash of pain, and the memory disappeared.

For a moment she didn’t dare move. Movement might dislodge other memories. But finally, warily, she removed her bleeding hand from her mouth and glanced again at the toad.

Who waited patiently, his alien face betraying nothing.

“I don’t… I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Nox not understand either. But Nox sense wrongness in Naomi. Nox very good senser. Something bad happened, yes, favorite friend Naomi?”

“Yes,” whispered Naomi. “Something… something bad happened.”

“Naomi did bad thing, or Nightmare Lady?”

Naomi stilled. Could it be that simple? Could she separate herself from her terrible self so easily?

Of course not. Idiot. You’re as pathetic on the inside as without. Weak and murderous, bitter and stupid. You did it. You did it. You.

Naomi curled her arms around her head as the Nightmare Lady whispered directly into her mind. “It was me. It was me that did it.”

Nox quirked his head to one side. “You Naomi, or you Nightmare Lady?”

“Me… in my Nightmare Lady form.”

“Hmm,” rumbled Nox in satisfaction. “Much wrongness. Much bad. But elder toads help. They understand. Glorious exemplars of ultimate mating prowess. Very magnificent. They understand Naomi, explain what wrong.”

“What’s wrong…” She bit off the words. What’s wrong is that I’m a monster, a broken, hideous thing that should never have left the ruins. Never have let him - him -

Tears welled up in her eyes as she squeezed them shut and pressed her brow against her knees. She couldn’t say his name. Don’t. Don’t even think of. Of him. Just…

“Nox very wise.” The toad’s rumble remained placid. “He call Naomi favorite friend because Naomi is Nox’s favorite friend. Naomi trust Nox. Nox care for clutchmate. Nox take you to Radiant Pools of Gold. And while Nox bring new age of glory to female toads, Naomi speak to elder toads.”

“Great Souls… we’re born with these powers.” She felt so broken that she could barely protest. “We all of us can do these things. Change. Transform. You’ve seen… you’ve seen what others can do. The Nightmare Lady… she’s… I named her. It’s just a name. She’s me. She’s what I can do.”

Nox rumbled again, but this time it sounded disapproving. “Naomi not understand. Naomi not like other Great Souls. When we reach Pools, then Naomi learn truth. If any can explain, it is Maharajah Void Toad.”

“Fine.” She was too tired to argue. And what else was she going to do? Where else could she go? In her heart she knew that if she left Nox, that if she turned away from him, she’d wither away and die, curled up and wasting away while the Nightmare Lady laughed.

A faint impulse arose within her. To thank Nox. But no. That might elicit kindness from him, and more than he’d done she couldn’t take. It’d break her. So instead she shifted down onto her side, curled up into a small ball, and rested her temple on her forearm.

She couldn’t stop shivering even as she felt like she was burning up. But she didn’t care. Her flesh was weak. She was weak. Whatever happened, happened. If she reached these Radiant Pools in the Lustrous Maria, then she’d hear what the toads had to say. If not? That was fine, too.

But that was a problem for another day.

For now, she’d sleep.

As Naomi.

And so she closed her eyes, and with Nox positioned protectively over her, she let the world and its horrors slip away.

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