Chapter 80: Nightmare
I was slowly being rocked back and forth in my sleep, the gentle breeze swinging my hammock back and forth. As much as I was not impressed about it, I would have to admit that it was a fantastic sleep. I slowly opened my eyes. I wanted to stretch, but I didn’t think that it would be the smartest thing to do, seeing as I was still a long way from the ground.
I felt a bit of weight on my chest and looked down. Looking back up at me was the giant spider that I had seen following me yesterday before the whole vine and tree incident. It blinked its six eyes at me, all at different times, looking like one of those cute, animated spiders. Its fur stood upright like a giant puffball around its head, body, and legs. It was a dark grey color with the lightest red stripes on its legs.
The more I looked at it, the cuter it appeared. And apparently, I had a thing for cute fuzzy things. Who knew?
"Are you claiming me, or am I claiming you?" I asked as it almost appeared to smile, its upper fangs handing over the bottom of its lip. Slowly, because I just realized that I was not wearing my armor, I reached out a finger to gently stroke the puffball’s head. It closed its six eyes and purred in enjoyment. Well, I guess it was the size of a cat, so why couldn’t it purr?
"I don’t suppose you have a name?" I asked as I continued to gently pet it. I wasn’t that dumb, I did monitor it to see if, at any time, it seemed to become annoyed or poised to attack. However, it didn’t seem to be a venomous species of spider. In fact, other than its looks, it didn’t really seem to be a spider either.
Then again, if it looked like a duck, quacked like a duck, and walked like a duck, it was a duck.
But, on the flip side, it looked like a spider, purred like a cat, and I had yet to see it walk. So maybe it wasn’t a spider? Whatever, it was an alien, I shouldn’t compare it to what I know.
The puffball, because I refused to call it a spider, simply purred, opened its eyes, and blinked at me. "I’ll take that as a no. You know, I am absolutely horrible at naming things," I said conversely as I continued to pet the thing. I wasn’t in a hurry to get a move on, even though my stomach was growling.
"Let’s see. I like Puffball for you, but I don’t know if that is too obvious?" I looked at the thing on my chest to see if it had any reaction to the name. It cocked its head to the side as if listening to my words.
"Okay, not Puffball. I would call you Snowball, but you aren’t exactly white. Do you like Snowball? I could also call you Xue Qiu; it means the same. Because the name thing is completely up to you." Yes, it was official. I had completely lost my mind in the middle of an alien jungle. I was now asking creatures for input on their names.
However, the thing shook its head in a very ’no’ like way. "Okay, no to Snowball. Then there is Moonlight?" Once again, the spider thing shook its head no. I sighed and lightly booped it on the head. Yup, some days I was too dumb to live. I blamed it on the different levels of oxygen. It was making me stupid.
"Nightmare?" I said in a last-ditch effort. This time, the spider seemed to perk up and slowly nodded its head. Nightmare, sure, why not? It will fit in perfectly with Merciless and Swift Killer. Couldn’t I get one thing around me with a normal, cute name? Was that really too much to ask for?
"Nightmare it is. Can I call you Night for short?" Once again, the spider nodded its head and slowly stood up. I was right the first time when I called it the size of a medium dog.
It was 18 inches tall and 18 inches wide and probably about 13 inched from its head to its cute little butt. I noticed that it didn’t have the spinnerets, so I could only assume that it wasn’t a spider. Or at least it wasn’t on that could produce silk for webs.
You know what? Its species was now considered to be Nightmares. That was the end of it.
My stomach growled, and Nightmare jumped up onto the closest branch and looked around. "Sorry about that, I am hungry," I said, petting my stomach in emphasis. Now that Night wasn’t on me anymore, I activated my armor and slowly adjusted the anti-gravity settings to allow me to hover in place. Look at me getting the hang of things.
I quickly untied my hammock and wrapped it into a ball. As soon as I took off my armor and got access to my backpack, I would throw it in there. "I’m going down," I called out, looking up at Night, who looked confused about my armor. "You coming?"
I held out the arm that was not holding the hammock, not quite knowing what was going to happen but offering a ride anyways. The Nightmare (not spider) jumped into my arm and clung tightly to me with its eight legs.
Knocked off balance for a moment, my anti-gravity system quickly adjusted to the additional 20 pounds or so.
"Warning, warning, voragyvis attached to the armor. Warning, warning, voragyvis attached to the armor." Inside my helmet, red warning lights were going off like crazy, and the disembodied voice that was just my helmet sounded out a warning.
"Override for this voragyvis, this is Nightmare," I said calmly, happy that I now knew what type of species it was.
There was a moment of silence as I slowly fell to the ground in a controlled manner. With Night hanging on to my torso himself, I was able to use my wrist unit even with my hands full.
"Understood. Will make an exception for Nightmare," said the helmet.
"Thank you," I called out just as my feet touched the ground. Nightmare gave me a squeeze before jumping onto the ground beside me and walked over to a pile of... food?
