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With no more Nightmares between them, Pip finally got Whistler to look at him square on. The showman’s eyes glinted in amusement, like a child observing the charge of an especially small and angry kitten. Pissin' me right the hell off, Pip thought with a growl, advancing.
“All yours,” Whistler sang out with a smirk, tossing his cane up in front of him.
For a wild and confused moment, Pip raised his hands, unsure whether to catch the object or ward it off. An ugly laugh came from it as the cane itself froze in the air, as though caught by an invisible hand. The silver handle, shaped like a lion’s face, contorted with maniacal guffaws as it came swinging toward his face.
“Oh hell,” Pip snarled, catching the strike on an arm. The cane hooked around his wrist and swung its footed end around, crunching under his ribs.
Pip grunted and pivoted to the side. But any space he made between the cane and him, it pressed into. The shaft was unencumbered by petty considerations like footing or muscle coordination or body mass– just a constant press, press, press, forcing him a step back, laughing uproariously all the while–
And that’s when the first Nightmare came roaring up from his flank. Something sliced cold across his back, deep and agonizing. In the midst of a village stinking of tanning leather and piss, someone began to cackle and dance at the approach of the dark.
Pip felt his footing slip. Oh no oh feck oh feck feck FECK. Panic lit through him as he glimpsed the bear creature behind him, bringing down a claw for another strike while he desperately tried to shove away the silver cane.
“Keep its disgusting blood away from me,” he heard Whistler snarl. The Nightmare hesitated, as though trying to measure exactly what angle it could cut him open with to avoid displeasing its master.
Now or never. With an adrenaline-fueled eruption of strength, Pip grabbed the cane and flung it toward the Nightmare. In the same motion, he bounded away, angling straight for the conductor of this hellish ordeal.
Surprise sprang onto Whistler’s pallid face just before Pip’s fist connected, satisfyingly, right beneath that wretched smile– but what he’d just struck, he was unsure.
What Pip touched had something other than form. It had place and cohesion and multitudes. It had sunless skies and choking sulfur air. It had agony and fury striking like endless lightning. It crawled in many bodies and it towered in hideous and great ones; it laughed and screamed and whispered and groaned. And if that were all, that would already be far too much, but it was many. If a Nightmare was one, this was as countless as the stars. It was something beyond, and in that fraction of a moment of contact, the Investigator’s mind all but unmoored.
Then Whistler’s form shuddered with a roaring hiss, and Pip’s fist fell through its thinning substance. His reflexes carried him ahead with barely a stumble, hopping away before any counterattack could land, but none came. The shape of the thing before him, slipping between wisps of gaseous material and undulating shadows beyond touch, had lost even the ghostly imitation of a living being.
“Oh, I hate e’ry bit of this,” Pip gasped, backing away into the empty hall behind where Whistler had stood. Whatever Whistler was, it wasn’t right to call him a creature anymore.
Pip’s hands were shaking. His mind was going wild, trying to understand what he had just experienced, but he didn’t have the luxury to process it. Things were pouring from the shadows now, Nightmares whipped into a frenzy, and he could barely catch his breath in time to defend himself.
Here came one, vulpine in body, fast and fierce on the attack. Pip kicked it away, but then unseen claws tore into his back, right above his right hip. Impressions of a life long since lived and ended, now dragging itself through the grave dirt under a shadow-streaked sky. Pip whipped around with a skull-cracking strike, and the Nightmare went flopping to the ground.
Already came another. A snakish creature flew at him from a far shadow, a strike desperately telegraphed and doomed to failure, but then another Nightmare with too many eyes was charging, and from somewhere too close to his legs, a thick-limb slammed into his side– from a ship at sea, screaming defiance as the stars faded out–
A piercing whistle vanished the Nightmares all at once.
Slowly, Whistler tucked his cane beneath one arm and reached down to reclaim his hat from the floor, fallen unseen during the onslaught of Pip’s mind. The showman brushed it off with a sleeve, seeming to have found his form again.
“Well. You’ve managed to make an annoyance of yourself, haven’t you?” The fresh scar on Whistler’s jaw still hissed. Producing a handkerchief from his pocket, Whistler dabbed at it, wrinkling his nose in distaste.
“Aye, well, been years I’ve been wantin’ to do that,” Pip answered. Leaning against the cold stone of a wall, he pressed a hand against the sting and drip of his shredded hip. The gash wasn’t deep into the muscle, but it flared with pain whenever he moved. He willed his heart to calm. Drawing from his dwindling Pond, Pip directed the bleed to slow. Downing a potion would better staunch the wound, but he needed to save those for worse injuries.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Speakin’ of which…. Grabbing for the back of his shoulder, Pip set his jaw and ripped free the barb at last. He was ready for pain, but the whole area felt only numb. He directed his Pond there as well, hoping to stem the spread of whatever it had injected.
“Years? Oh, yes. We have met once before, haven’t we?” The creature cackled deeply, replacing the hat atop his head. “I remember. You were the clueless whelp on that night near the mountain, left shivering in the snow while my Noruiniviani disappeared into the night. Ha!”
Pip packed the bristling anger deep in the furnace of his heart, taking its power but not letting it cloud his mind. Of more dire concern: the energy he sent to his poisoned wound seemed to be disappearing like water through a hole in a bucket. Curling his lip, Pip used his Pond to cordon off that area instead. The terrible numbness pressed relentlessly against the dam, and Pip knew he couldn’t contain it long.
Whistler observed him with that terrible smile, still pressing his handkerchief to his jaw. “Tell me true: Did you ever find her after that, or is it only now you’ve seen her again?”
“I found her,” Pip answered quietly. If Whistler wanted to talk, just as well. That would give him more time to close his wounds. He reached into his pack– not a healing potion, but that poison-fixing one, maybe it could stall whatever that barb pumped into his blood….
“And how long did you have her, before you lost her? Days? Weeks? Did you make it nearly the whole month before you lost her for these last– how long has it been now? Your time is such a bore, I don’t keep track." Whistler folded the handkerchief, tainted a blackish-red, and tucked it away in his pocket. His jaw had only clean skin, no sign left of the ugly wound.
Great. He knows how to fix hisself up, too. No chance of winning a war of attrition then, even if he could find some way to get an advantage in it. Pip downed the antivenom wordlessly.
Whistler straightened up his head, his twinkling gaze sliding down his nose at the Nuralli. "But I can only imagine what it must have been like, when you finally caught up to her trail. Or did you never look at all?”
An old lump clogged Pip’s throat. “O’ course I looked.”
“But you were too slow, weren’t you? Because of course, I found her first!" Twirling his cane merrily, Whistler wondered aloud, "What sort of enemies did she make, who would invent such a charming curse for her? I know, of course. Some order, some mission. All dull, dull, DULL things. I heard it all through their screams. Oh, I was quite furious with them at first– disgusting things to put their hands on my Noruiniviani, and my own plans were quite interfered with for that night– but once I opened my mind to the possibilities! They did me quite the favor, in the end.” The foot of the cane snapped back to the ground with a thunk, and Whistler leaned forward with a smile. “Do I have you to thank for her meeting those people? Or did you merely fail to guard her against them?”
“It’s well past time ye shut yer mouth,” Pip snarled.
“Oh-ho, that was it, then? I’m only making light of the situation. It’s not as though I need your answer.” The leather-gloved fingers of his right hand, folded atop his left on the lion-headed cane, tapped one after another as he spoke. “She’s told the story so many times to so many people, how could I not know the whole of it? Your Order, betrayed, while she and her friends were journeying far to the north; frightened for the safety of her friends abroad, my Noruiniviani made a desperate race to the nearest town….”
Breathing, Pip tuned Whistler’s voice out. He didn’t need the creature to recount the worst night of his life for him, not when it lived so vividly in his own memories already. But the more Whistler talked, the more time Pip had to recover.
“... She could only take one dear friend with her, a Nuralli small enough to ride along in her pack. She cast and cast every bit of healing she had just to keep from collapsing on the flight….”
Already, the gash above his hip had calmed down, barely trickling blood instead of pooling it. And there was no more numb spread in his shoulder– the antitoxin might resolve it completely with a little more time.
“... They made it to the town faster than she could have believed, he kept her steady as they stumbled to the safehouse of their Order contact– and then, oh how she curses and blames herself, too thick and too tired to have been thinking, she didn’t even think of a trap when she was told there was a message from the Order in a gem offered to her….”
Despite himself, Pip’s heartbeat quickened. The narrative wasn’t so easy to ignore, after all. Schooling himself to calm, Pip pressed his jaw shut and redirected the energies of his Pond to the smaller hurts of his body, trying to make them as whole as he could during the brief reprieve.
Whistler’s voice cut into his focus once more. “Are you even paying attention?”
As his Pond eased the deep bruise on his side, Pip snorted. “Does it matter? Seemed like ye were enjoyin’ the sound of yer own voice well enough.”
A surprised sneer flashed onto Whistler’s face. “This is why, as a rule, I don’t bother with you creatures! No manners.” The showman sniffed. “I tell you only the same story she’s told again and again, and what vitriol! Is it untrue? Was it not you standing at her side then, within arm’s reach, as the curse swallowed her whole? Was it someone else that she called for, that first time I woke her from that crystal sleep? I think not. Tell me, after that curse landed on her, how did she disappear from you? And then, with an entire month before I came to find her in that sorry state– how did it ever happen that I found her first? These are the small miracles that I thank every month, and I’m curious what sort of creature could have let such a terrible fate befall one who called them friend.”
Whistler wasn't just making points– he was driving them right into the guilty wounds that Pip had thought he'd made peace with years ago. Blood pounded in his ears, and anger burned hot through his face. Swallowing down every bitter drop he could, Pip answered, "I'm seein’ nae reason to discuss this with ye."
"Really? What a shame. I see no reason why I should prolong your miserable life, then." Pursing his lips, Whistler produced two sharp notes. Pip saw the movements of fresh Nightmares in the shadows.
Damn it, he cannae keep summonin’ those things forever– but if the creature only needed enough to put an end to him, he’d hardly have to. His wounds had stopped bleeding, but Pip was still battered, galled, and fighting from a losing position. He needed to withdraw, get his head straight, and figure out his next move.
Pip needed to get some distance. And until then, better for him not to show that he was off balance. Licking at his lips, Pip grinned and slid into a ready stance. "That's all it takes to get under yer skin, is it? Cannae handle if ye dinnae get yer way? What a joke ye are, Whistler! Nary a wonder ye’d set up in a stinkin’ place like this, so ye could pretend yerself king of a sad lil’ hill. C’mon then, let’s see if these pups o’ yers are jes’ as ill-trained as the last!”