It hung from a sinuous line of black vertebrae, segmented and gleaming as if dipped in oil, its power obvious in how easily it manipulated the massive blade.
“You didn’t come find me,” crooned Nightmare Lady, her tail rippling out across the ceiling as if gravity was inverted for it alone. “Left me by myself, wondering, growing sad, feeling lonely. Until at last, I decided I’d misjudged you altogether…”
Claws rippled into view, talons as long as his finger emerging from the tips of alien fingers that appeared to be all sinew and bone, gleaming and jet black just like the tail.
Scorio stared, unable to breathe, transfixed, until at last her head descended into view.
Her face truly was a nightmarish visage, her cheeks planes of upswept bone that melded with her brow to rush back into a mass of ridged horns, her hair falling in a greasy black waterfall into the hallway. Two cracks in the bone carapace of the upper half of her face revealed her eyes, both burning their fulminous green, bright and noxious and penetrating.
“Scorio,” she said, sweetly, softly. “There you are. My little coward. My deal-breaker. My latest disappointment.”
“Nightmare Lady,” he managed, allowing his fear to show. She’d expect it. Become suspicious if he showed too much bravado. “How about we talk? Perhaps new terms?”
Her smile pulled into a caustic smile, and with lithe, unnatural grace she dropped through the hole to land on all fours at the end of the hallway, a mere ten yards from where he stood, tail poised over one shoulder, its tip aimed unerringly at his face.
“Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re going to beg. I couldn’t stand to be so utterly mistaken about you.”
Quick as he could, he bent down and scratched a white line across the breadth of the corridor, and the air above the chalk immediately began to shimmer.
Her burning eyes narrowed, her head canted to one side, and then her tail exploded forward, launched with impossible speed, clearing the space between them faster than he could blink.
Only to crash against the invisible wall and bounce off violently.
Scorio didn’t wait but reached up and scrawled a second line horizontally across the top of the wall.
The air just below the ceiling immediately began to shimmer, extending from where he stood all the way to the hall’s end.
“What is that?” she hissed, sinking deeper into her crouch. Her whole body was twisted, warped by her transformation, skin a gleaming black, her flesh ridged and fluted, impossibly emaciated yet somehow looking utterly lethal at the same time.
“This?” Scorio still didn’t dare believe his plan had worked. He bounced the chalk in the palm of his hand. “Something you overlooked the last time we spoke.”
She snarled and leaped up, only to crash against the invisible barrier that now blocked the trapdoor.
Down she fell, only to race toward him the moment her feet hit the ground, tail slamming into the wall of force before him, its tip stabbing again and again, faster than he could follow, a dozen times in less than a couple of seconds, and then she was upon it, clawing at the shimmering air, talons raking down and across, a cyclone of rage, screaming as she sought to break through.
Scorio pressed back against the stone wall and prayed that she wouldn’t overwhelm the chalk.
For a solid thirty seconds, she battered and stabbed at the wall, only to finally fall back, shoulders heaving, tail whipping about her. Turned slowly, she examined the corridor with greater care, then sent the blade of her tail slicing down along the ceiling, probing at the invisible barrier. She walked away, running her talons along both walls, sending a flurry of stone chips flying until she reached the cave-in at the far end.
Pausing, she considered it, then placed a foot upon the largest rock, her prehensile and talon-tipped toes closing about its face.
She pulled, and when the rock didn’t stir, she turned at last to gaze at him over her ridged shoulder.
“So. You have me trapped.”
“Yes,” he breathed, hardly daring to relax. He licked his dry lips and forced his shoulders to settle.
“But trapped does not mean defeated. We are at an impasse.” She turned to face him fully. “And we are past the deadline. You lost.”
“The competition, sure. But you’re in my power now. We’ll strike a new deal, or you’ll die.”
Her lip writhed back from her fangs. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. “You think to renegotiate?”
Scorio gauged where she stood, reached around, and made a mark upon the wall, followed immediately by a second a foot away.
Each mark was no wider than an inch.
Immediately beams of shimmering air appeared as if they’d simply always been there, one on each side of her torso, pressing in tight.
The Nightmare Lady hissed, wrenched against them in surprise, and gave Scorio the second he needed to make a third mark, and then after a moment’s hesitation, a fourth.
Two more beams appeared. The third sliced in between her legs, nearly severing her tail, while the fourth cut in just over her left shoulder.
She exploded into a frenzy, jerking and hurling herself about, constrained by the four beams, hemmed in at crucial angles. But it wasn’t perfect. The second she realized that all she had to do was relax, lie back and slip out, she’d escape.
Scorio didn’t intend to give her the chance.
Carefully, watching as the beam extended, he drew a fifth line down at an oblique angle, arching his arm over the fourth, drawing it slowly till the shimmering wall pressed down upon her. She screamed, bent before it, but was held in place by the beam over her hip and lying across her other shoulder.
Not lifting the chalk, he continued to draw the line down, forcing her to constrict into an ever-smaller space, till at last, he had her head trapped, tilted back, the chalk’s line pressing right into her neck.
“It’s not sharp,” he said, “at least, not sharp enough to cut through flesh. But it can constrict you just fine. I make this line a little longer and I’ll crush your neck.”
To which she simply screamed at him and thrashed within her confines once more.
“Enough!” His bark echoed within the hallway. “I don’t want to do this. Talk with me and we can figure something out.”
He saw the moment when she realized that she was only pinned while facing him full-on, and how that by lying back and narrowing her profile she might be able to escape; but it was too late, and the shimmering walls now held her too tightly, her neck squeezed between two vise-like beams, her head too large, the ridged horns preventing her from wriggling free.
Again she screamed and slashed at the beams with her talons, whacked at them with her tail blade as a maddened man might hack at tree trunk with an ax.
But finally, she relented, sagged, and stood there, heaving for breath.
Pinned.
Trapped.
Defeated.
“I win,” said Scorio, making his words deliberate. “Doesn’t matter that we’re outside the competition. I win because I can kill you and you can’t stop me and that by any definition makes me the victor of this encounter.”
“Cheater,” she hissed.
“Not quite. I chose to lose our challenge so as to win overall. Now. Will you speak with me, or shall I end this?”
Again she struggled, but this time it was half-hearted. Her body was contorted between the beams, and though her tail lashed back and forth, Scorio knew she wasn’t going anywhere.
They’d talk whether she wanted to or not.
But he hoped to reach an agreement before the chalk walls faded away and she came at him again.
If she was that murderous, that obstinate, then she could wait him out, force him to expend all of his chalk, and eventually, perhaps not today, maybe not even tomorrow, but eventually—force him to kill her or risk her tearing him apart.