"No!"

With rapid footsteps, Nimua charged into the room and threw herself across her husband. Her lovely blonde hair was falling out of its ponytail and escaping the pins that kept it out of her eyes. Unshed tears trembled on her lashes, sticking them together. Her thick eyebrows, darker than her hair, pulled together in the middle, creating the most pitiful expression.

"Please, Mr. Asher!" she cried. "Don't kill my Ev!"

Unmoved by her hysterics, Asher merely looked down at the pair. Nimua locked her arms around Evidd's neck so tightly that he struggled to free himself. She seemed determined to cover as much of his body with her own as was physically possible, even if she had to strangle him in the process.

He succeeded in throwing her off. "I told you to stay inside! You don't know what he's capable of!"

"I won't leave you!" The tears scattered when Nimua violently shook her head. Deciding on a different tactic, she jumped to her feet. She threw her arms wide to hide Evidd with her ruffles, her ribbons, and her apron. She glared at Asher. "If you want to kill Ev, you'll have to kill me, too! I won't just sit here and watch him die!"

Asher studied her angry, tearstained face. She begged mercy with her wide, sky-blue eyes.

Then he saw it: Her right arm, not held quite as straight as the left, nor as high. It trembled ever so slightly. Her lips, pressed tighter on one side as if to hide something. Like maybe a tooth that hadn't been missing before.

"Really?" he asked her quietly. "Okay."

He thrust his saber through her stomach so hard that the point exited her back in a gout of rich red.

Evidd gaped up at the sword hanging above his head, his face splattered with his wife's blood. Asher could feel the weight of Keon-hee's stunned stare.

He ripped the saber out of Nimua, his eyes narrowed. "Just as I thought," he said disgustedly. "You're powerless in your human form."

Evidd began to shake, his pupils contracted to thin dots. "Ni – Nimua," he groaned, his agony constricting his voice. He couldn't seem to tear his gaze away from her.

Nimua did not answer him. She bent forward like a flower whose stem had been nicked by a sickle. Her began to steam unnaturally. The splatter across Evidd's face steamed and sizzled as well, though he did not seem to notice. The smell of it permeated the room, crawling into Asher's nostrils, thick and coppery. He made a face.

So did Nimua. With a low growl, she bared teeth that lengthened into points as they watched. Her peaches-and-cream complexion grayed and started to bubble, sagging off her skull. The pretty blonde hair sifted around her shoulders. It drifted like golden rain to the floor.

Then her jaw unhinged, and the nightmare began.

It shot upward and outward, exploding from Nimua's blue dress and her soft human body with terrible, meaty, wet tearing. It towered over Asher, the same Nightmare who had tried to eat a maid in the alley on Posh Hill. Curved horns, high-set nostrils, long, muscled legs, and skinless, ape-like arms. It seemed to fill the room, the top of its head cracking into the ceiling. It screeched while the last of its joints popped and snapped into place, the supersonic stabbing making Asher wince.

"Ali . . . Alienn," it rasped, segmented tongue exploring the cavernous, ribbed palate. "Destroy!"

He'd expected as much and had an Ephemeral Card ready in his fingers. "Oh, shut up. You're boring me!"

Asher stabbed the smoking Card the same way he had stabbed Nimua, and it combusted.

"Zind!" he shouted.

A fountain of fire gushed from the saber's hilt like flames from his grandfather's throat. They roared, hot and hungry, and punched the Nightmare square in the chest. With a boom that made the entire building shake, Zind blew the Nightmare off its feet, into the wall, through the wall.

Asher brought his sword down swiftly, dispelling Zind's used-up flames. He examined the ragged, charred hole in the wall thoughtfully. The night outside seemed calm beyond the occasional thunk of adobe clay separating and falling to the floor. Probably, none of the townsfolk had heard the commotion, thanks to the dampening effect of the Nightmare's aura.

As if to prove this, an owl fluttered past the hole in a whir of cushiony wings, snatched up something small that squeaked, and soared off, unconcerned with the squabbles of aliens and Nightmares.

Evidd spoke, haltingly, into the quiet. "How did you . . . know it was her . . . and not me?"

Asher, observing the dust settle, did not look at his former friend. "Easy. You told me that Basanose was your wife's hometown. Well, I've been there. It's a reap-site. There's nothing left. So I had to ask myself—" he turned then, fury burning behind his sternum— "why didn't she die with the rest of the town? What's she doing still alive?"

He pointed his sword accusingly at Evidd. "Using you as her cover story, that's what!"

A flicker at the edge of his sight instantly put him on alert. The Nightmare woman was still there, the one he hadn't been able to look at before. Her dark brown hair, bleached to a pale yellow in the front, framed a smooth, featureless black mask, carved with a curving V-shape that ran from forehead to chin. She wore a forest-green mantle that wrapped her from jaw to toes in heavy folds despite the residual desert heat, and she hovered several inches off the floor, no doubt showing off just a little. He could tell nothing else about her. Not age, not figure, not species, whether or not she was concealing weapons. She watched him impassively from darkened eyeholes.

A gulping, indrawn breath sounded from the floor. Asher's ear twitched.

Evidd sobbed brokenly, his words pouring out like noodle soup broth from a posy-painted mug. "Her beautiful smile, the touch of her hand . . . she warmed my heart and my soul! And now, because of you, she's gone!"

"She's been gone all along, Ev," Asher said, grim. "What you married was a lie."

Keon-hee's wide, innocent eyes drank in everything about the scene from her spot on the floor, but she said nothing. Evidd raised shaking hands to his face, his eyes and his nose streaming.

"I didn't care if she was really a Nightmare! I loved her." He dragged himself to his feet, staggered into Asher's personal space, and spat, "A man like you has never loved. You can't understand!"

Asher closed his eyes. The dragon claw twitched fretfully against his chest. A reminder. An admonishment.

"I'll say this once," he said. His foot snapped out, catching Evidd in his snot-smeared face. Evidd flew backward and crashed onto the floor, his eyes rolled up and showing white. "I don't care! You've turned soft on me, Ev. Crying! Do you think I give a crap about your problems with women? The Nightmares saw your weakness and they exploited it!"

In reply, Evidd gurgled. Bubbles of spit foamed at the corner of his mouth. Asher sighed.

"Sorry for destroying your dream, Nightmare-lady," he said over his shoulder to the floating woman. "Now how about you take off that mask and tell me where I can find the man with the moon tattoo?"

"Ah, dear boy," she said in a kind of purr, "the terror isn't over."

Behind her, two enormous, skinless hands reached through the hole in the wall. The Nightmare lady wafted to the side, allowing the Nightmare-that-was-Nimua to haul itself back into the room.

If Asher had thought it grotesque before, that had been nothing compared to what it looked like now.

"Incredible, isn't it?" the masked woman asked, possibly misreading his expression of revulsion for one of awe.

The lesser Nightmare swayed on its legs like a caterpillar grasping for a leaf just out of reach. Its torso reached higher than ever, stretched and stretching, as faces pushed outward against a thin, pink mucous membrane. Human faces, all screaming silently, eyes and noses and open mouths pressing against the membrane, shoving into the interstices between the inside-out ribs and pelvis and spine, turning back and forth, seeking air, or freedom, or release. Utterly composed, the Nimua-Nightmare exhaled bloody steam.

"What you see here is all the power collected by Evidd's late wife," the masked Nightmare went on, her voice bubbling around a girlish, ghoulish giggle, "which is far more terrifying than anything even the vicious human mind can conjure."

Terrifying? Perhaps. Sickening, certainly. This, then, was what became of those poor human souls harvested from a reap-site – imprisonment in an unending nightmare, until their essence was used up as fuel. This was why the Nightmares had come to Elidu.

Asher discerned a large, green-irised, thick-lashed eye under the shadow of the mask, crinkled in a smile. "Care for a taste?" the Nightmare asked coquettishly.

The Nimua-Nightmare attacked. Its uninjured arm whipped toward Asher. Though his saber blocked the talons from exposing his intestines to the air, the strength behind the ape-like arm seemed to have quadrupled. The blow lifted him off his feet and hurled him into a row of shelves. They splintered beneath him, depositing him on the floor, and then dumped their contents all over him. Candles, crockery, and books spilled, broke, and tore. Asher thought he heard Keon-hee call his name.

A five-gallon jar, the kind of heavy pottery that could keep honey fresh, sealed with waxed cloth, rocked unsteadily on the highest shelf, still miraculously attached to the wall. It tilted one way, then another, hesitating. The sound of sloshing came from within.

When the jar made up its mind, it tipped over and rolled ponderously off the shelf.

"Evidd! Look out!" Keon-hee screamed.

"Oh, this is stupid!" Asher snarled at the same time. He kicked his way out of the mess in time to see Keon-hee throw off the paralyzing effect of the Kage Card and leap.

The jar hit her in the back, knocking her flat across Evidd, who had tried to get out of the way. His face was so swollen that he'd blundered the wrong direction.

Little red roses bloomed over Keon-hee's white shirt, blood mixed with water. The contents of the jar had soaked both her and the Card trader, washing away Nimua's filthy pus.

"Miss Keon-hee?" Evidd asked in a bewildered sort of voice, which meant, Why did you save a guy like me?

Asher wondered that himself. How could anyone be so stupid—

Unaware of his low opinion of her intelligence, Keon-hee moaned, sitting back on her legs.

Then she, like everyone else in the room besides Nimua, stared in surprise as an activated Ephemeral Card freed itself from the remains of the jar and hovered in front of her. Clear blue water swirled through the air like ribbons. From the ribbons, water elementals took form. Sapphire-blue eyes twinkled in sweet cherub faces. Sleepy, pocket-sized turtles spun like lazy tops, peridot-shelled. Tiny lavender dolphins capered through the air. Naked Undis sat on spheres of water; Asher could have held one cupped in the palm of his hand. They danced around Keon-hee, inviting her to play, while the Card glowed and pulsed, waiting to be claimed and commanded.

"Undeneh," Evidd breathed, and then he choked on his saliva when he inhaled in horrified realization. "She hatched! I don't believe it! You're the Sorceress of Water, Miss Keon-hee!"

A scent, fresh like clean laundry, pure as mountain streams, and nectarous as a meadow in spring, clashed with the rotten-meat stench of the Nightmares. The Nimua-Nightmare, advancing on Asher, straightened like a dog on the hunt. Its head swiveled toward Keon-hee. Its lizard-pupiled eyes narrowed and a growl slipped between its teeth on a blast of more bloody steam.

"Hey! Pay attention!" Asher yelled at Keon-hee, who was sitting in the middle of the frolicking water elementals with her fist to her lips. She looked dazzled, as though she'd never seen anything so cute in her life as the androgynous Undis, who clapped their chubby little hands and laughed at her. "Use whatever weapon you've got! Protect that Card in front of you at all costs!"

Too late, he was too late, for the Nightmare had lunged for Keon-hee, sitting defenseless on the floor.

Asher lunged after it, but it evaded him, its feral eyes fixed with hunger on the unprotected Card. "Do it quick if you want to live!" he bellowed. "Show me some guts! Fight!"

Keon-hee blinked. She saw the Nightmare rearing up in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream.

Sang-eo, whose table had been knocked over when Asher went sailing by it, coughed. It abruptly puked something long and metallic onto the floor, startling everyone. Keon-hee stared at it for a couple of heartbeats, and then she snatched it up.

"I don't want to die here!" she cried passionately. The thing was a pistol of some sort, and she held it up as if she knew how to use it. "I will go home!"

A/N: Hello, friends! I've been working on this all week - when I could. Work is busy, home is busy, I contemplated locking myself in a dark closet just so I could have some time alone, lmao. I did a little more tweaking of the vocabulary too, like changing the awkward "In Dream World" to a simpler "Ephemeros," but nothing major. Hope you like it!

Reviewer Thanks! St4r Hunter, I feel like you're my official partner in crime. This one is for you.

Everyone else, please leave a review on your way out! X3

Forever silly, forever tired, forever busy,

Anne