Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 18:45:46 GMT
The silence broke with the sound of footsteps. Out of the dark, a figure began to appear before me, walking across the darkness as though there was ground to walk on beneath his feet. The figure began to take form the closer it got to her. The first thing I noticed was that it looked human, like a tall, thin human in a black business suit and a bright red necktie, but then the light fell upon its head, and I recognized it. Instead of a human head, Naga's head took it's place. The sight made her think of a modern Egyptian god.
"You invaded my mind..." Naga said, the sound not coming from his avatar but from the bald woman's own thoughts."You attempted blackmail me through threat of physical pain..." Naga's manifestation stops a few feet from where the bald woman stands in his mind. "...and you dare to go through my memories and read my thoughts." His avatar gave the bald woman a wicked grin. "This is going to be fun."
Outside of Naga's mind, in the physical world, the mighty draconian stood tall, motionless, his eyes closed. Black fog poured from his jaws, but that was the only thing separating Naga from a statue other than the occasional breath.
I didn’t respond with words, and quite frankly my thoughts weren’t intended as a means of communication either. I was concentrating on that two word truth that kept the ground beneath my feet in this place, and to aide in its obscurity I laid an old nursery rhyme on top of it: barley and grain, barley and grain, all that falls will rise again…
The truth of the matter was that I was rapidly growing to regret the fact that I’d waited until after he’d tried to kill me before commencing with force. It hadn’t ever been blackmail; it had started with negotiations, then morphed into interrogation, and now the shoe seemed to me being put on the other foot. Really I should have come in guns blazing, and I should have skipped strait to the heaviest stuff. Standards, it seemed, had interfered once again with the successful prosecution of the attack. As it was, I might not ever get that chance. I was fully focused on holding a defensive position, and I hissed softly-not out of anger, but simply as an exercise to keep her prepared.
The avatar grinned. "since you like to go through people's memories and inflict pain on them so much, why don't we play a little game. lets see just how well you handle someone else's pain...namely, mine."
The scene changed instantaneously and the avatar disappeared. I found myself on a great balcony high above a great raging river, and I could feel the wind blowing through the night. All at once a sudden sense of great fear hit me, but it was an alien thing, and not my own. I was against the stone railing facing two royal drakes. One was obviously quite young as he was hardly any taller than her, he had a panicked expression as he tried to hold back the other royal drake, tugging on his arm, biting and scratching . But the other was full grown and looked down on me, disregarding the little drake as he fought him. She recognized this royal, it was the same drake who's head was impaled on the crystal spear after the destruction of the drake palace; but instead of a look of terror on his face, there was a look of shear anger and rage. "YOU DIE NOW, ABOMINATION!" He cried out at her in the drake language. He had freed his arm from the little one revealing his claw to be clutching an orb of energy burning like fire. "Father, NO!" yelled the little one. But it was too late, the drake released the energy and it took the shape of a flaming spear in the air. The energy tore clear through my body, the pain unimaginable, the force of the blast propelling through the railing and down a long fall to the river with a bone shattering splash, colliding with rocks on the river bed as she was swept away. All of this should’ve been fatal, even for a memory, but somehow I felt that I had survived.
It was that survival that made the pain curious. It flowed through my form with efficiency, and at the instant the memory ended I found myself hyperventilating; I could feel the pain in my back from where the railing had been shattered as I passed through it, and I would have sworn I was drenched with cold water. It was an illusion, but an effective one regardless, and I trembled under its weight, struggling to control my breathing.
But it was that survival that made the pain curious. The drake hadn’t flown, for starters; and mind you I’m not a drake. I’m sure as anything not a drake. But it struck me as odd that a creature with wings wouldn’t have used them on that long, long fall; if there was ever a time for wings, it was that. The affair should have killed the drake, she could feel it strongly in whispers, but Naga survived. Royals, the texts said, were the only ones who could kill royals. Still, it had seemed like a potent enough attack. Beyond that, she’d spent considerable time studying Naga, and he was a deceptive creature. The problem with that was I had my suspicions, yes, but the pain recreated was real enough regardless of the authenticity of the memory. It still burned in me, and as I controlled my breathing, I forced the vision into the past. It was a clever attempt at turning me, or at starting that process anyway, but I didn’t intend to buy into it.
I held onto those two words with ferocity, the nursery rhyme continuing unapologetically in the background of that dire place.
Then came another memory began, this one drastically different. I found herself floating in a great and endless void, the only sight was a single massive, golden light that made up the sky above her. a terrible sensation racked the my form, as though every atom of her physical being was being torn apart, as though her very existance were at stake. "A-am i dead?" I found herself weakly saying to the great void, the pain from this great void was unbearable and utterly unimaginable, it almost drove her insane. "yes." Said a great and terrible voice from an unknown point in the void, the sound made her feel as though her head would split apart, her very soul was burning. "W-where am i?" I found myself saying against her will. It was then that I realized this was another of Nagaetros’ memories. "You lie in the void between realities. I have chosen you." Said the voice. The pain continued with no sign of ending. I could not move despite myself, and I seemed to drift helplessly in that place. "W-why?" another word escaped my lips. "I need not explain myself. You are chosen. You will prepare entire realities, you will tip the balance. You will spread chaos. "Each word from the voice caused more and more pain, ever increasing pain that showed no signs of stopping. Suddenly the great golden sky began to shift, it was moving. It was at that moment that I realized it wasn’t the sky.This was not a sky, nor a star, but a massive golden eye with no end in sight, millions upon millions of miles away. The eye set it's infinite gaze upon the insignificant form of the bald woman, the sight of such a thing could drive anyone insane. "You shall be reborn, you shall serve APOPHIS!" …and with that, everything goes black.
Memories are heavy things. They weigh us down beyond common understandings in most place, and as Nagaetros unloaded his upon me, I started to weep. Where I had intended to coax via the body, and to reason with the mind, Nagaetros was going after the mind in order to render the body an empty shell.
He would succeed, I realized with some lamentations, if I merely tried to weather his storm. Weathering the storm would only wear me down until I had nothing left to give, nothing left to use, until I was nothing in that void.
"...do you...know," I weezed, gasping as I tried to restrain the tears, but my voice failed me. There simply wasn't the air to breathe for those words, and with my last fading strength, things began to move in the black fog. Naga's strength and attention was utterly on me, and he was going to win if that persisted without resistance.
"Know what, little one?" Naga began relentlessly bombarding my mind with more memories, each one of some injury or significant pain he once endured: how he got his scars over his eyes, a fight between him and mother spider, a flaming sword being stabbed into his skull, the burning of gold upon his skin, weapons of all kinds being used against him, the memory of having his soul ripped from his body when he was imprisoned, even the pain the bald woman had attempted to inflict on him only minutes before before. He made me experience all of them.
...and it broke me. Oh gods, it broke me. I have known pain in my life. It and I were not strangers at any point, really, though I don't find them all too substantial in hindsight. But the only thing stronger than the hatred I felt for Nagaetros was the pain I felt him feel The truth was there, yes: those two words maintained some sliver of something. It wasn't quite sanity anymore, though it masqueraded as it quite nobly. If he had asked for something during those tortures, I know I would have given it; but I thank the gods that Naga did not. He was enjoying himself too greatly with pain to bother with things like questioning. I had interrogated. He had tortured.
But outside, where Naga breathed his black smoke, there were things coming out of the fog. He could not hear them, for I had closed his ears. He could not see them, for he had closed his eyes. And they were my only hope.
He stood before me with a snake's grin on his face; a grin too wide, too sharp, too insincere to believe. "Know what, little one?" He asked again, his voice mocking. Oh, I hated him, and I hated being powerless, and I hated myself for hating him, and I hated and I hated and I hated...
Still the nursery rhyme played: barley and grain, barley and grain, all that falls will rise again...
I gasped out a word, one word only. It was all I could muster. I felt spread so thinly then that I might just fade away into that black pit. Truth...what good was truth in a place like that?
"...how..."
"How?" His avatar said with a sneer. "How do I live with myself? How such a creature exists? How you got into my mind? How you made the biggest mistake of your life? There are many 'how's , little one. Take your pick." Naga sent another wave of memories into her mind.
I could hardly speak, and he knew this. That's the thing with Nagaetros; he didn't really want to know the question. If he had, he would have given a breathing spell, unduly short of course, but a pause all the same, for those few words to come out.
Memories are heavy, yes. Very heavy. But as painful as a memory can be, it's in the past, and I looked back at him with tired eyes right as he began to feel it. Something was brushing up against his leg, but he couldn't see it with his eyes closed. It was like that feeling when something rubs against your leg in the water, that temporary moment of recognition that something was where nothing was expected.
"...how do you..." I began again, drawing out the strength of those words for all they were worth.
"'How do I', what?" Naga's avatar leaned in to listen closely a faux expression of confusion adorned his face. Another stream of memories attacked the bald woman's mind, but some of them didn’t seem right, Naga was in them in a different wy. Then I realized he was starting to use the memories of his victims, the many innocent souls he had consumed, memories that all ended in violent death.
Nagaetros really lived alone; he had his jester and his companions, yes, but in his heart, he lived alone. It must have been a cold, damp, unpleasant place for a soul to reside, and the victims reflected this. They weren’t their memories, obviously. They were his. So many of them, slaughtered not even coldly, but with glee. Every stab, every slash, every bite. I had to watch it all.
But Nagaetros did not understand how I thought. I was nearly gone, yes; I had been drowned and burned and crushed and my existence had never been more imperiled than it was now. But watching him kill all of those people reminded me what I could do with my hate. I could hate him. I could hate him till the end of time, if it came down to it. I wasn’t thinking anymore about not hating, about remaining aloof. It didn’t matter. The monster killed for the joy of it.
And that fury filled me.
When someone is about to die-them or someone around them-they do strange things. Mothers suddenly find themselves with strength to move great objects off of their children, for instance. I wonder if my mother did that for me at one point. I don’t remember much of her.
But it was that sort of a feeling that compelled me to take a shaking hand out towards him, like a leaf in a breeze, and wrap my fingers around his tie. His serpent’s grin didn’t waver as I pulled myself up to his eye level; the drake’s snout was but an inch from my nose, and the scent of rotten meat wafted off of it with disgusting intensity. He had made the tie slick with blood, giving some explanation to its red colour, and it was slick in my hand as I spoke.
“How…” I whispered, wheezing as my concentration was climbing up the Drake’s skin, “do you…control Shaw?”
And he started to laugh, but it never reached that point. For abruptly, he realized something was crawling down his throat.
In the physical world, Naga began grabbing at his throat, unable to see what was slipping past his fangs. Whatever it was was beginning to block up his lungs, and he attempted a cough but it did no good. Naga even ignited the black fog pouring from his mouth into a blast of soul burning black fire but they were too far down even for that.
"What are you doing to me?" naga's avatar demanded. "What trick are you attempting?"
I didn’t have strength or will to spare him an answer. I was exhausted, and I shakily held onto that tie and the two words that kept me planted in his mind like they were the only things that mattered in the whole of eternity. The tie was bleeding, oddly enough, and it trickle down my arm in thick, viscious droplets that fell from my elbow down into that infinite abyss.
“…Shaw! How?” I whispered again, as his eyes began to bulge. Naga only thought he was standing; he had gone from a memory into other memories, and now he was forgetting which ones were past and what was present. It’s a hazard of cohabitation, and one that had kept me from pushing further than that one scene. If I couldn’t make gains now, I’d let go of that truth and propel myself out of there as fast as I could. It was the only option.
When one leaves a mind abruptly, it hurts. It’s somewhat like what a diver experiences when they surface too quickly, but of the mind and soul as opposed to the body. It wasn’t a palatable option to me, but like that diver I had been down too long, and I was in serious need of air. Then again, in a minutely less metaphorical sense, so was Naga.
I just needed to open his eyes.
Naga's avatar was glaring at me, wide eyed, angry, and obviously weakening. He grabbed onto my clothes with taloned hands andhe shook my form as violently as he could, sending more memories into my head in an attempt to force her to stop. "I am Draconian! I do not take orders from the likes of you!" His avatar screamed and threw me aside. His hands began to take a new shape, turning black and his fingers extending into the long black claws of his true form.
Yet in the physical world, naga had collapsed onto all fours, gasping for breath, blasts of black flame exploded from his mouth in a desperate attempt to breath. His eyes still remained shut, but he could feel things crawling over his skin now, and he was struggling to keep his mouth closed in an effort to exclude whatever was pouring down his throat. While on all fours, he was swatting and clawing at whatever was moving over him, but to no avail.
I backed up as Naga's mental form shifted upwards, growing upwards towards its usual imposing nature. The memories he threw were fragmented things, for his concentration was on the fact that he was having issues breathing. While he was growing, there were irregularities; patches of skin would rapidly atrophy away into nonexistent muscle before abruptly returning. It wasn't the usual smooth transformation he was normally shown to be doing in the ancient texts, and the strain of what was happening on the other side of his eyelids was surely to blame for this. More unnerving still was a bulge pulsing out on occasion from his avatar's throat; it was an empathetic thing to what I was doing, and it looked like it would end painfully.
I was still staggering backwards watching him grow as I tried to think of anything else I could do to him here; he could wipe the floor with me in his inner mind, but he would be losing strength rapidly without breath. I just had to hold out long enough that he opened his eyes!
"No-Hope," I panted, still tired by the strain of it all-I could not recall when our fight began, for it seemed like an eternity had passed us-"...what do you think happens when you pass out? You fade to black, and," I swallowed and wiped the sweat from my face, before continuing, "...and I get run of the place for...a few minutes more. You've got secrets, No-Hope, but I only desire...one...Shaw..."
The truth of the matter was that I was feeling dizzy too. It wasn't that I was running out of air myself, but that Naga was going to pass out quite soon, and it was that emotional bleeding that left me with a faintness of breath. Desperation was growing, too.
Naga had but one option left or else pass out. He had no choice. "Clever witch!" Naga's avatar yelled. Then Naga picked my up by its head and began to squeeze. He's not going to give me information without something in return, something I’d live to regret. Naga's left arm began to shift even more erratically. “What you want to know is simple, as long as he does what he does, he has my power to aide him!"
In the real world Naga couldn’t wait any longer: he drove his knifelike black claws into his own neck and pulled out what blocked his lungs by hand. The pain forcing him to open his eyes and gasp for breath.
Quite simply, quite undeniably, I could not survive this. It would spread my soul to the winds, and I had no resistance left. But him opening his eyes was what did it. I wouldn’t be here had he not opened his eyes.
He saw me, lots of me, crawling all over him. If his imagination was willing to entertain the notion of my walking corpse, it would entertain the notion of MANY walking corpses without all too much of a difficulty.
From the fog to his feet, I was crawling, climbing, slithering towards him, clutching to his scales like steps and working my way towards his mouth. Immediately, he began to claw at them with much greater efficiency, for they could only resist him when he didn’t know what they were. A lucky few began to slither down his torn open throat, but most began to be thrown out into that black fog without reprieve.
As far as I went, I had let go. It was time to leave, and I don’t believe I could have stayed there any longer if I had to; for ironically, my latest move invalidated that secret two word truth. So close to a confession, and then this? I was rapidly shooting out through layers of consciousness, rising, rising…
…but I grabbed something on my way out, a dreadful thing to do. It must have been the hate that made me do so, but it was a reflexive thing. I reached out and did the most damaging thing one can do to a creature: with an outstretched mind, I stole the hope away from Nagaetros. I stole the ideas that gave him reason to live, reason to plot, reasons for joy-
--oOo—
I woke up in that cave screaming, my back arced inconsolably backwards as if it were about to break. I was in a pool of my own urine, and I was screaming as those many hands reached out and tried to pull me back down into the black. I was screaming, and that was it; back arced, eyes rolling wildly, blood coming from where my nails had cut into my hands. I didn’t even take the time to think that this must be hell, I simply knew it, as he hands ushered something under my nose; and then I fell back asleep.
They said I cried in my sleep for three nights before waking again. I was still screaming, and the process was repeated; I bit at them apparently on the second occasion, but they forgave me later. The plant extract was again pushed into my face, and in hindsight I am only thankful that I didn’t bite the poor man’s fingers off entirely.
It was a full week before I saw the sun rise. I had a thin fuzz of hair on my head by that time, and as I watched the tribesmen leaving the cave and heading out into the savannah in hunt of their next meal I felt empty watching that sun rise. Nothing is as eviscerating as co-habitation; I may have thought I had been disemboweled, but on a spiritual level I can not describe with any accuracy. It is worse than death, I think.
I did not leave those tribesmen for several days, and they were very kind to me. I was a travelling shaman to them, and my epileptic fits fit the mold perfectly. I struggled to subjugate those memories for days upon end, and in time-more than you can imagine, I suspect-I began to heal. Nagaetros’ throat likely had healed well before my mind did, but his soul had an empty quarter now. Worse still, I had it in my head. It still whispers at me, suggesting choices that I dare not follow up on. He hopes for chaos, for destruction…or at least he hoped for them. I reckon now he’s listless, uneasy, and searching for his missing half. He has many hands, many helpers, and it is likely only a matter of time before I find them.
I will give it back to him someday. No creature, not even the like of Nagaetros, deserves to live so utterly despairful as to live without hope. No-Hope, no hope…not the two word truth I relied on, but one that Nagaetros was now keenly aware of. But before that day, I must vanquish Shaw, and before that day…I must understand him.
There is a text I read once, a strange one in an ancient library, that began with these words: “the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” It was similar to where I was now, but the man in black was not fleeing. Still, I follow.
"You invaded my mind..." Naga said, the sound not coming from his avatar but from the bald woman's own thoughts."You attempted blackmail me through threat of physical pain..." Naga's manifestation stops a few feet from where the bald woman stands in his mind. "...and you dare to go through my memories and read my thoughts." His avatar gave the bald woman a wicked grin. "This is going to be fun."
Outside of Naga's mind, in the physical world, the mighty draconian stood tall, motionless, his eyes closed. Black fog poured from his jaws, but that was the only thing separating Naga from a statue other than the occasional breath.
I didn’t respond with words, and quite frankly my thoughts weren’t intended as a means of communication either. I was concentrating on that two word truth that kept the ground beneath my feet in this place, and to aide in its obscurity I laid an old nursery rhyme on top of it: barley and grain, barley and grain, all that falls will rise again…
The truth of the matter was that I was rapidly growing to regret the fact that I’d waited until after he’d tried to kill me before commencing with force. It hadn’t ever been blackmail; it had started with negotiations, then morphed into interrogation, and now the shoe seemed to me being put on the other foot. Really I should have come in guns blazing, and I should have skipped strait to the heaviest stuff. Standards, it seemed, had interfered once again with the successful prosecution of the attack. As it was, I might not ever get that chance. I was fully focused on holding a defensive position, and I hissed softly-not out of anger, but simply as an exercise to keep her prepared.
The avatar grinned. "since you like to go through people's memories and inflict pain on them so much, why don't we play a little game. lets see just how well you handle someone else's pain...namely, mine."
The scene changed instantaneously and the avatar disappeared. I found myself on a great balcony high above a great raging river, and I could feel the wind blowing through the night. All at once a sudden sense of great fear hit me, but it was an alien thing, and not my own. I was against the stone railing facing two royal drakes. One was obviously quite young as he was hardly any taller than her, he had a panicked expression as he tried to hold back the other royal drake, tugging on his arm, biting and scratching . But the other was full grown and looked down on me, disregarding the little drake as he fought him. She recognized this royal, it was the same drake who's head was impaled on the crystal spear after the destruction of the drake palace; but instead of a look of terror on his face, there was a look of shear anger and rage. "YOU DIE NOW, ABOMINATION!" He cried out at her in the drake language. He had freed his arm from the little one revealing his claw to be clutching an orb of energy burning like fire. "Father, NO!" yelled the little one. But it was too late, the drake released the energy and it took the shape of a flaming spear in the air. The energy tore clear through my body, the pain unimaginable, the force of the blast propelling through the railing and down a long fall to the river with a bone shattering splash, colliding with rocks on the river bed as she was swept away. All of this should’ve been fatal, even for a memory, but somehow I felt that I had survived.
It was that survival that made the pain curious. It flowed through my form with efficiency, and at the instant the memory ended I found myself hyperventilating; I could feel the pain in my back from where the railing had been shattered as I passed through it, and I would have sworn I was drenched with cold water. It was an illusion, but an effective one regardless, and I trembled under its weight, struggling to control my breathing.
But it was that survival that made the pain curious. The drake hadn’t flown, for starters; and mind you I’m not a drake. I’m sure as anything not a drake. But it struck me as odd that a creature with wings wouldn’t have used them on that long, long fall; if there was ever a time for wings, it was that. The affair should have killed the drake, she could feel it strongly in whispers, but Naga survived. Royals, the texts said, were the only ones who could kill royals. Still, it had seemed like a potent enough attack. Beyond that, she’d spent considerable time studying Naga, and he was a deceptive creature. The problem with that was I had my suspicions, yes, but the pain recreated was real enough regardless of the authenticity of the memory. It still burned in me, and as I controlled my breathing, I forced the vision into the past. It was a clever attempt at turning me, or at starting that process anyway, but I didn’t intend to buy into it.
I held onto those two words with ferocity, the nursery rhyme continuing unapologetically in the background of that dire place.
Then came another memory began, this one drastically different. I found herself floating in a great and endless void, the only sight was a single massive, golden light that made up the sky above her. a terrible sensation racked the my form, as though every atom of her physical being was being torn apart, as though her very existance were at stake. "A-am i dead?" I found herself weakly saying to the great void, the pain from this great void was unbearable and utterly unimaginable, it almost drove her insane. "yes." Said a great and terrible voice from an unknown point in the void, the sound made her feel as though her head would split apart, her very soul was burning. "W-where am i?" I found myself saying against her will. It was then that I realized this was another of Nagaetros’ memories. "You lie in the void between realities. I have chosen you." Said the voice. The pain continued with no sign of ending. I could not move despite myself, and I seemed to drift helplessly in that place. "W-why?" another word escaped my lips. "I need not explain myself. You are chosen. You will prepare entire realities, you will tip the balance. You will spread chaos. "Each word from the voice caused more and more pain, ever increasing pain that showed no signs of stopping. Suddenly the great golden sky began to shift, it was moving. It was at that moment that I realized it wasn’t the sky.This was not a sky, nor a star, but a massive golden eye with no end in sight, millions upon millions of miles away. The eye set it's infinite gaze upon the insignificant form of the bald woman, the sight of such a thing could drive anyone insane. "You shall be reborn, you shall serve APOPHIS!" …and with that, everything goes black.
Memories are heavy things. They weigh us down beyond common understandings in most place, and as Nagaetros unloaded his upon me, I started to weep. Where I had intended to coax via the body, and to reason with the mind, Nagaetros was going after the mind in order to render the body an empty shell.
He would succeed, I realized with some lamentations, if I merely tried to weather his storm. Weathering the storm would only wear me down until I had nothing left to give, nothing left to use, until I was nothing in that void.
"...do you...know," I weezed, gasping as I tried to restrain the tears, but my voice failed me. There simply wasn't the air to breathe for those words, and with my last fading strength, things began to move in the black fog. Naga's strength and attention was utterly on me, and he was going to win if that persisted without resistance.
"Know what, little one?" Naga began relentlessly bombarding my mind with more memories, each one of some injury or significant pain he once endured: how he got his scars over his eyes, a fight between him and mother spider, a flaming sword being stabbed into his skull, the burning of gold upon his skin, weapons of all kinds being used against him, the memory of having his soul ripped from his body when he was imprisoned, even the pain the bald woman had attempted to inflict on him only minutes before before. He made me experience all of them.
...and it broke me. Oh gods, it broke me. I have known pain in my life. It and I were not strangers at any point, really, though I don't find them all too substantial in hindsight. But the only thing stronger than the hatred I felt for Nagaetros was the pain I felt him feel The truth was there, yes: those two words maintained some sliver of something. It wasn't quite sanity anymore, though it masqueraded as it quite nobly. If he had asked for something during those tortures, I know I would have given it; but I thank the gods that Naga did not. He was enjoying himself too greatly with pain to bother with things like questioning. I had interrogated. He had tortured.
But outside, where Naga breathed his black smoke, there were things coming out of the fog. He could not hear them, for I had closed his ears. He could not see them, for he had closed his eyes. And they were my only hope.
He stood before me with a snake's grin on his face; a grin too wide, too sharp, too insincere to believe. "Know what, little one?" He asked again, his voice mocking. Oh, I hated him, and I hated being powerless, and I hated myself for hating him, and I hated and I hated and I hated...
Still the nursery rhyme played: barley and grain, barley and grain, all that falls will rise again...
I gasped out a word, one word only. It was all I could muster. I felt spread so thinly then that I might just fade away into that black pit. Truth...what good was truth in a place like that?
"...how..."
"How?" His avatar said with a sneer. "How do I live with myself? How such a creature exists? How you got into my mind? How you made the biggest mistake of your life? There are many 'how's , little one. Take your pick." Naga sent another wave of memories into her mind.
I could hardly speak, and he knew this. That's the thing with Nagaetros; he didn't really want to know the question. If he had, he would have given a breathing spell, unduly short of course, but a pause all the same, for those few words to come out.
Memories are heavy, yes. Very heavy. But as painful as a memory can be, it's in the past, and I looked back at him with tired eyes right as he began to feel it. Something was brushing up against his leg, but he couldn't see it with his eyes closed. It was like that feeling when something rubs against your leg in the water, that temporary moment of recognition that something was where nothing was expected.
"...how do you..." I began again, drawing out the strength of those words for all they were worth.
"'How do I', what?" Naga's avatar leaned in to listen closely a faux expression of confusion adorned his face. Another stream of memories attacked the bald woman's mind, but some of them didn’t seem right, Naga was in them in a different wy. Then I realized he was starting to use the memories of his victims, the many innocent souls he had consumed, memories that all ended in violent death.
Nagaetros really lived alone; he had his jester and his companions, yes, but in his heart, he lived alone. It must have been a cold, damp, unpleasant place for a soul to reside, and the victims reflected this. They weren’t their memories, obviously. They were his. So many of them, slaughtered not even coldly, but with glee. Every stab, every slash, every bite. I had to watch it all.
But Nagaetros did not understand how I thought. I was nearly gone, yes; I had been drowned and burned and crushed and my existence had never been more imperiled than it was now. But watching him kill all of those people reminded me what I could do with my hate. I could hate him. I could hate him till the end of time, if it came down to it. I wasn’t thinking anymore about not hating, about remaining aloof. It didn’t matter. The monster killed for the joy of it.
And that fury filled me.
When someone is about to die-them or someone around them-they do strange things. Mothers suddenly find themselves with strength to move great objects off of their children, for instance. I wonder if my mother did that for me at one point. I don’t remember much of her.
But it was that sort of a feeling that compelled me to take a shaking hand out towards him, like a leaf in a breeze, and wrap my fingers around his tie. His serpent’s grin didn’t waver as I pulled myself up to his eye level; the drake’s snout was but an inch from my nose, and the scent of rotten meat wafted off of it with disgusting intensity. He had made the tie slick with blood, giving some explanation to its red colour, and it was slick in my hand as I spoke.
“How…” I whispered, wheezing as my concentration was climbing up the Drake’s skin, “do you…control Shaw?”
And he started to laugh, but it never reached that point. For abruptly, he realized something was crawling down his throat.
In the physical world, Naga began grabbing at his throat, unable to see what was slipping past his fangs. Whatever it was was beginning to block up his lungs, and he attempted a cough but it did no good. Naga even ignited the black fog pouring from his mouth into a blast of soul burning black fire but they were too far down even for that.
"What are you doing to me?" naga's avatar demanded. "What trick are you attempting?"
I didn’t have strength or will to spare him an answer. I was exhausted, and I shakily held onto that tie and the two words that kept me planted in his mind like they were the only things that mattered in the whole of eternity. The tie was bleeding, oddly enough, and it trickle down my arm in thick, viscious droplets that fell from my elbow down into that infinite abyss.
“…Shaw! How?” I whispered again, as his eyes began to bulge. Naga only thought he was standing; he had gone from a memory into other memories, and now he was forgetting which ones were past and what was present. It’s a hazard of cohabitation, and one that had kept me from pushing further than that one scene. If I couldn’t make gains now, I’d let go of that truth and propel myself out of there as fast as I could. It was the only option.
When one leaves a mind abruptly, it hurts. It’s somewhat like what a diver experiences when they surface too quickly, but of the mind and soul as opposed to the body. It wasn’t a palatable option to me, but like that diver I had been down too long, and I was in serious need of air. Then again, in a minutely less metaphorical sense, so was Naga.
I just needed to open his eyes.
Naga's avatar was glaring at me, wide eyed, angry, and obviously weakening. He grabbed onto my clothes with taloned hands andhe shook my form as violently as he could, sending more memories into my head in an attempt to force her to stop. "I am Draconian! I do not take orders from the likes of you!" His avatar screamed and threw me aside. His hands began to take a new shape, turning black and his fingers extending into the long black claws of his true form.
Yet in the physical world, naga had collapsed onto all fours, gasping for breath, blasts of black flame exploded from his mouth in a desperate attempt to breath. His eyes still remained shut, but he could feel things crawling over his skin now, and he was struggling to keep his mouth closed in an effort to exclude whatever was pouring down his throat. While on all fours, he was swatting and clawing at whatever was moving over him, but to no avail.
I backed up as Naga's mental form shifted upwards, growing upwards towards its usual imposing nature. The memories he threw were fragmented things, for his concentration was on the fact that he was having issues breathing. While he was growing, there were irregularities; patches of skin would rapidly atrophy away into nonexistent muscle before abruptly returning. It wasn't the usual smooth transformation he was normally shown to be doing in the ancient texts, and the strain of what was happening on the other side of his eyelids was surely to blame for this. More unnerving still was a bulge pulsing out on occasion from his avatar's throat; it was an empathetic thing to what I was doing, and it looked like it would end painfully.
I was still staggering backwards watching him grow as I tried to think of anything else I could do to him here; he could wipe the floor with me in his inner mind, but he would be losing strength rapidly without breath. I just had to hold out long enough that he opened his eyes!
"No-Hope," I panted, still tired by the strain of it all-I could not recall when our fight began, for it seemed like an eternity had passed us-"...what do you think happens when you pass out? You fade to black, and," I swallowed and wiped the sweat from my face, before continuing, "...and I get run of the place for...a few minutes more. You've got secrets, No-Hope, but I only desire...one...Shaw..."
The truth of the matter was that I was feeling dizzy too. It wasn't that I was running out of air myself, but that Naga was going to pass out quite soon, and it was that emotional bleeding that left me with a faintness of breath. Desperation was growing, too.
Naga had but one option left or else pass out. He had no choice. "Clever witch!" Naga's avatar yelled. Then Naga picked my up by its head and began to squeeze. He's not going to give me information without something in return, something I’d live to regret. Naga's left arm began to shift even more erratically. “What you want to know is simple, as long as he does what he does, he has my power to aide him!"
In the real world Naga couldn’t wait any longer: he drove his knifelike black claws into his own neck and pulled out what blocked his lungs by hand. The pain forcing him to open his eyes and gasp for breath.
Quite simply, quite undeniably, I could not survive this. It would spread my soul to the winds, and I had no resistance left. But him opening his eyes was what did it. I wouldn’t be here had he not opened his eyes.
He saw me, lots of me, crawling all over him. If his imagination was willing to entertain the notion of my walking corpse, it would entertain the notion of MANY walking corpses without all too much of a difficulty.
From the fog to his feet, I was crawling, climbing, slithering towards him, clutching to his scales like steps and working my way towards his mouth. Immediately, he began to claw at them with much greater efficiency, for they could only resist him when he didn’t know what they were. A lucky few began to slither down his torn open throat, but most began to be thrown out into that black fog without reprieve.
As far as I went, I had let go. It was time to leave, and I don’t believe I could have stayed there any longer if I had to; for ironically, my latest move invalidated that secret two word truth. So close to a confession, and then this? I was rapidly shooting out through layers of consciousness, rising, rising…
…but I grabbed something on my way out, a dreadful thing to do. It must have been the hate that made me do so, but it was a reflexive thing. I reached out and did the most damaging thing one can do to a creature: with an outstretched mind, I stole the hope away from Nagaetros. I stole the ideas that gave him reason to live, reason to plot, reasons for joy-
--oOo—
I woke up in that cave screaming, my back arced inconsolably backwards as if it were about to break. I was in a pool of my own urine, and I was screaming as those many hands reached out and tried to pull me back down into the black. I was screaming, and that was it; back arced, eyes rolling wildly, blood coming from where my nails had cut into my hands. I didn’t even take the time to think that this must be hell, I simply knew it, as he hands ushered something under my nose; and then I fell back asleep.
They said I cried in my sleep for three nights before waking again. I was still screaming, and the process was repeated; I bit at them apparently on the second occasion, but they forgave me later. The plant extract was again pushed into my face, and in hindsight I am only thankful that I didn’t bite the poor man’s fingers off entirely.
It was a full week before I saw the sun rise. I had a thin fuzz of hair on my head by that time, and as I watched the tribesmen leaving the cave and heading out into the savannah in hunt of their next meal I felt empty watching that sun rise. Nothing is as eviscerating as co-habitation; I may have thought I had been disemboweled, but on a spiritual level I can not describe with any accuracy. It is worse than death, I think.
I did not leave those tribesmen for several days, and they were very kind to me. I was a travelling shaman to them, and my epileptic fits fit the mold perfectly. I struggled to subjugate those memories for days upon end, and in time-more than you can imagine, I suspect-I began to heal. Nagaetros’ throat likely had healed well before my mind did, but his soul had an empty quarter now. Worse still, I had it in my head. It still whispers at me, suggesting choices that I dare not follow up on. He hopes for chaos, for destruction…or at least he hoped for them. I reckon now he’s listless, uneasy, and searching for his missing half. He has many hands, many helpers, and it is likely only a matter of time before I find them.
I will give it back to him someday. No creature, not even the like of Nagaetros, deserves to live so utterly despairful as to live without hope. No-Hope, no hope…not the two word truth I relied on, but one that Nagaetros was now keenly aware of. But before that day, I must vanquish Shaw, and before that day…I must understand him.
There is a text I read once, a strange one in an ancient library, that began with these words: “the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” It was similar to where I was now, but the man in black was not fleeing. Still, I follow.