Mainly Nyx PoV. Ending Chapter off with Tav POV.
Peaceful nothingness, that's the thing Nyx enjoyed the most of being here, which likely meant she was unconscious. Her body lying somewhere in the living world. It should concern her, it used to concern her when she ended up here, but that's a problem for later. For now, she can just enjoy drifting in the twilight silence - no chaos, no flames, no black tendrils... simply reprieve and sweet, sweet silence.
Something was tugging at her peripheral attention. She lazily waved a hand in its general direction like it was an annoying flying insect. It dissipated and her metaphysical body continued floating in the shallow waters. The smell of smoke tickled her nose, and she felt a presence brushing against her skin like a cool wind signalling the coming of winter.
Go away, she managed to project into the gloom. But the presence persisted, and she sat up with a huff. Her outstretched legs submerged in the water up to her hips. She scowled into the direction of the presence.
"What. Do. You. Want?", she clipped at the words. Adding to her growing annoyance as the presence regarded her silently - then it started to take shape. She watched uninterested while it morphed and moulded into a shape of a little girl. Recognition flashed through her. "Why are you here? Why take her form? I've buried you long ago and accepted your fate at my hands.", she said onto the girl, unimpressed by her mind's choice in materializing a form.
"You know that wasn't you fault.", a small but firm voice came from the human child. It was more of a statement than a question.
Nyx barked out an emotionless laugh.
"Are we going to have this conversation again?", she moved her body into a more comfortable position. Sitting cross-legged with her elbow in her thigh and her chin on her fist. "Discussing fault is no longer relevant. You're still dead, whether directly or indirectly by my choices. I've accepted your fate and my part in it. Tried to do better next time.", she stated dismissively. She doesn't want to think about all the "next times" after that and how many times "next time" also didn't work out as she planned or hoped.
"That may be", the almost ten-year-old conceded, "but I did not come here to discuss that."
Nyx wasn't going to ask, but the girl already new this.
"You are dying.", she stated with as much emotion as Nyx had laughed with previously.
Nyx shrugged, still feeling uninterested in anything other than going back to the peaceful nothingness.
"Why don't you want to wake up?", the girl continued and regarded her with concern pulling at the corner of her eyes.
"Because I am tired."
"Of what?"
"Of everything." Should this not be obvious? Considering she's technically speaking to some version of herself. "Of fighting, of running, of trying." She threw her hands up in the air. The girl remained still, calmly watching her for a few moments.
"But I don't want to die.", the girl said in a barely audible tone.
Frustration flared, "Why do I have to be so stubborn?!"
Nyx brought her head down and her closed eyes into her palms. The girl moved over to her and placed her hand on Nyx's shoulder. Nyx groaned in feigned annoyance, not lifting her head from her palms.
"Because even as tired as you are. You'll still fight, otherwise everything would truly be -",
"Meaningless", Nyx finished the sentence with her. The girl patted her shoulder.
"It's time to wake up."
---
Nyx opened her eyes. Bright light, too bright light.
She shut them again and tried to assess her new shiny dire situation. Everything was mostly numb. Her mind and her body - she can't particularly feel anything. She can't decide whether this was good or not. She huffed, or attempted to at least.
She opened her eyes again, and a blurry scene swam into view. She was on her back, blue skies above and what seemed to be leaves. A tree to her right, she could feel its shade on her. She blinked, but the haze remained. It seems to be a pleasant day at least. Looks to be early morning, but then her body started screaming at her. Loudly.
Pain, pain. Pain!
It flooded her senses; her whole body was in agony, and she couldn't discern where it was all coming from. She groaned through clenched teeth, but making too much noise tends to attract predators. Of all kinds. She focused on calming herself, concentrating on her breathing and attempting to meditate. It seemed to be working, mostly.
What happened? Nonsensical images flooded her mind all at once. Blurs of orange and panic. She pushed them away.
Not helpful, and she refocused on her breathing. She registered smoke in her nose again and started to hear fire crackling too. Mercifully, it sounded far away.
Good. No, immediate threat then. Nyx slowly started to make sense of her surroundings and current condition by detaching herself from her body and feelings. A meditative technique that has served her well in times like these.
She tried to move, but her body was unresponsive, and she remained staring at the sky and its floating leaves above. Then she systematically went over herself. Her head was throbbing, and a familiar stabbing migraine sat behind her eyes - the one she gets from too much magic use. Great.
Next, she was lying on something. Hard, straight, and cool - likely metal. She suddenly remembered the ship and its mind flayers. The pod, the flames, the protective sphere. Then the endless tumble through the air. As if to conjure the memory into existence, sounds of metallic creaks and moans filled her ears. It was coming from somewhere close by to her left.
Ah. So, crash landed. In more ways than one it seems. That would explain her position, her awareness of the increasing list of injuries to her body and her utter exhaustion. She considered her options.
She wasn't much of a healer, most of her knowledge was medical in nature, since her innate magical healing ability was fairly limited. Application of the former requires at least some movement on her body's side. She tried to sit up. No, it’s still declining to cooperate. Abyss take it.
That complicates things. How to get my body moving? What of potions?, continued her internal dialogue.
Clive!
Her mind jerked at the recollection. She started wading through the pain and molasses of her mind. Where is he?
She recalled dismissing him as the ship attacked the city as to not lose him in the commotion, but she was in as little position to resummon him as she was of sitting upright. She huffed mentally, and this time her lips responded in kind.
Little progress is still progress. She regretted leaving her peaceful unconsciousness for this, but there was no going back now, especially with her body demanding attention as it was.
Think. Focus.
She reached out towards each of her injuries in turn, assessing which was the one most likely killing her at the moment.
There. Something lodged in her right upper thigh and bleeding profusely. Recalling her medical training and reaching out to her limited magical supply, she slowly started stitching up major arteries around the offensive object. Said offensive object seems thin, flat, and sharp at the edges.
A piece of metal from the ship most likely.
She could feel her body strain while she attempted to heal herself in the most inefficient way possible - both from a physical and practical perspective. However, options were limited at the moment. Her heart hammered at the excursion, her pulse was thready and her breathing shallow. She was quite sure she passed out a few times, but not deep enough to return to the peacefulness. When she came to, she continued where she left off with her healing. Time didn't matter anymore, only the laboriously slow cycles of pass-out-and-stitch-again.
She vaguely recalls the sky begin to tinge pink then purple as she secured the last of the bleeding veins. She was still gravely injured, but stable and not dying anymore. So, I'll take it as a win for today.
---
She slept through the night - an all too quick dreamless sleep. She awoke to the same blue skies and leafy scene overhead. Her body was feeling much stronger in relation to the morning before, but still far too stiff and injured for her liking. Her head hasn't stopped throbbing with pain and migraine. She managed to prop herself up on her elbows and regarded the metal shard protruding from her leg. It was far wider than she anticipated - getting it out was going to be challenging in her current state.
Abyss take it, she sighed.
She gingerly looked around. The Nautiloid wreckage was a good rock's throw away; still burning and smoking in some places. It was moaning and creaking, like a slowly dying animal. She grimaced at the pieces of metal and unidentifiable goo strewn between a handful of trees surrounding her. She could have all too easily been one of those unidentifiable goo pools. She grimaced at the thought. The rest landscape was obscured by an elevated piece of ground behind her tree.
Perhaps she could try Clive again for that healing potion? She checked in on her magic reserves and, no such luck. Not to mention the severely compounding migraine that came from merely brushing against her magic. The migraine made even remembering the summoning spell nearly impossible.
Strange, she sighed again. Her natural healing was usually not this slow and her magic doesn't take this long to recover either. Perhaps she was more injured that she thought. She tried to drag herself up to a more comfortable position. Which was a very bad idea. Pain shot through her again with newfound fury and she collapsed.
---
Something tugged at her dreamless sleep again. A different sensation this time. Noise. Noise not belonging to the ambient sounds of the dying metallic giant or even nature going about her day.
Voices. She could make out voices, but not the words. Given her luck of late, it was likely a bunch of bandits coming to scavenge off her carcass.
No point in playing dead. I'm quite sure I look the part already. So she kept her eyes closed and her body remained still while she listened to the voices. One voice in particular stood out - a woman's voice floating clearly over the area.
After a few heartbeats, "Over here! There's someone over here!"
Damn. I've been spotted.
Other voices called in response, but they were further away. Nyx's heart picked up as her mind scrambled for ideas on how to survive the next encounter.
I should've just stayed in the peaceful nothingness.
She could hear a shuffle of footsteps moving to her injured side. Nyx kept still. It would be clear that she has nothing of value on her and hopefully they'll just leave, without her being accosted in any way. She heard some more movement and Nyx held her breath. She did not expect to be seized by the shoulders and shook!
She inadvertently made a strangled noise as the sudden movement reminded her of all her unattended injuries. Scrunching up her face in pain.
"Thank the gods!", exclaimed the woman's voice she heard earlier. The voice shifted in pitch to shout away from Nyx, "Shadowheart! Come quickly! She's still alive, but bleeding!"
Bleeding? I'm not supposed to be bleeding -
"On my way!", responded another woman's voice that Nyx assumed was Shadowheart.
"Picking up more strays, are we?", came man's voice, somewhere further away.
Three and counting - how many of them are there?, Nyx wondered. The pain subsided and she opened her eyes. She was greeted by a tanned coloured freckled face and glacial blue eyes. Nyx blinked at her and saw another shape making its way along the Nautiloid wreckage. Shadowheart, she presumed. She looked back at the woman in front of her. Whose face pinched with genuine concern.
"Take it easy. You're badly hurt."
That obvious?, Nyx wanted to laugh but decided against it. Though she was grateful for the unexpected assistance. She managed a smile instead and the woman frowned at her. There was movement in the back of Nyx's skull, and she could see the other woman's face contort in kind as another vision swept into her mind. She was back on the mind flayer ship, once again looking through eyes that were not her own. She saw flashes of the ship and its controls, how she connected the tentacles that delivered the Nautiloid out of the literal hells apparently. Nyx's mind reeled, Why does that keep happening? She tried to focus on the woman's face again.
---
"Shadowheart! Look out!", the man's voice shouted and the Shadowheart shape stopped dead in its tracks, "Above you!"
It can't just be easy, can it?
Nyx watched with her muddled senses, and everything divulged into chaos again. Shadowheart swivelled towards the wreckage drawing her mace and shield in a smooth motion when a mind flayer emerged from one of the top floor ledges. Its pink leathery skin gleaming in the sunlight, tentacles withering while it called on its psionic powers. The woman at her side jumped up reaching for her hand-crossbow.
"Pummel it with everything you've got! We can't let it attack or we're all dead!", she projected to the others.
Nyx couldn't hear any responses over the clamour of arrows firing and magic rippling through the air. It was peculiar watching a battle this way rather than participating. Her heart was pounding away in her chest, nonetheless. The mind flayer had drawn up a shield, with arrows and magic either bouncing off it or being absorbed by it. The group was preventing the mind flayer from attacking thus far, but the mind flayer seems physically unaffected despite the crash - so the situation was likely not going to last.
The woman next to her started to sing her bardic song, although its magic did not touch Nyx. However, adrenaline was clearing up both Nyx's mental fog and her anti-magic migraine. She squinted at the battlefield, looking for a way to assist. Injuries forgotten as self-preservation took hold. The mind flayer's ledge was hanging at an angle with cables and rods sticking out at the edges.
I wonder if the mind flayer realizes how precarious that ledge its standing on actually is?
Nyx reached out and her magic, thankfully, responded. She'll likely pay for this later - and dearly so, but that was later’s problem. She honed in on the ledge and sent a sliver of magic towards it. Scanning over the metal with her magic finding the weakest points of the beams, barely attached to the rest of the structure. She called to and directed more magic with her one hand this time.
Her magic rippled through the air joining in with the fray. Her magic isn't loud or flashy, but it makes it presence known, nonetheless. The woman jumped at her side, eyes wide for the briefest moment and then they sharpened, and she returned to pummelling the mind flayer's shield with her blots. To the woman's credit, her bardic incantations didn't falter for a moment and her song continues to carry across the battlefield to her out of sight companions, and now Nyx included.
Nyx's magic wrapped around two supporting beams spurred on by the bard's song, she heaved the ledge downwards. Her magic straining against the metal. The beams snapped at their weakened points and the ledge veered downwards. The mind flayer's shield wavered for a moment. One, maybe two arrows pierced into the creature. It screeched and recovered during mid fall, snapping the shield back into place. It hovered for a moment in mid-air and then started to glide slowly towards the ground, glowing eyes locked on Shadowheart. Shadowheart moved to retreat keeping her eyes fixed on the mind flayer bracing herself as arrows flew over her into its shield.
Nyx still magically held onto the ledge and it remained suspended in its vertical position, but she was losing grip. She gritted her teeth. By leveraging gravity and the ledge's building momentum, she managed to turn the severed part of the ledge towards the mind flayer. It seemed far too preoccupied at killing Shadowheart to notice the jagged metal plates and beams being pointed in its direction. The ledge was too heavy, and she didn't have enough strength to hold on any longer.
It wasn't entirely in place when Nyx's magic stuttered and ran out. She let her hand drop and with it the ledge fell towards the mind flayer. Nyx's vision started to blur again, she could hear Shadowheart yelp and saw her form dive out of the way as the ledge found its mark. Metallic sparks flew off the mind flayer's shield and it winked out. The mind flayer half turned towards the ledge, but it was too late. A last few arrows found purchase on the creature's body while the ledge drove it headfirst into the ground below. There was a satisfying boom when the ledge made contact with the ground, sending soil and dust into the air.
Nyx let out a breath that she didn't even knew she held. There were sounds of chocking and coughing all round while the dust drifted from the impact site in a wide arc. The bard called out to Shadowheart, who replied that she was intact and alive.
That's good, Nyx blinked the dust from her eyes, her vision and the air began to clear. Shadowheart had retreated out of view. The bard at her side stood still, hand-crossbow raised, her attention remaining on the general proximity of the mind flayer. Nyx could hear gurgling noises. The mind flayer was not quite dead yet. It seemed to be pinned under the ledge, Nyx could make out a single tentacle struggling against the jutting ledge. Suddenly a battle-cry rang out, jerking Nyx more awake.
Another figure charged towards the ledge, great sword held high. The warrior flung her sword down and the singular tentacle ceased to move. The panting warrior then spat on the dead mind flayer. Nyx's eyebrows would have been in her hairline at the display where she not so, so tired. Exhaustion fell over Nyx like a blanket, and her eyes fluttered shut.
Nyx had fallen back into limbo, that place between sleeping and waking. Her body and magic were numb again. She couldn't move or speak, but she was aware of her surroundings. She could hear the others moving towards her. The bard called to Shadowheart again and some shuffling noises.
Shadowheart knelt beside her to the left.
Hmm, you might want to start at the other side. That's were all the action is. She could feel herself become giddy from the delirium as a fever took hold of her.
Something is likely infected, she sung to herself, and its more than just my head. She snickered mentally.
She could feel Shadowheart's magic scanning her body and taking stock of the injuries. Shadowheart groaned, displeased at the damage.
Yeah, I'm a mess. So, tell me doc? Would you be able to save my leg? I really do like both of them.
Multiple footsteps approached and stopped around Nyx. Her eyes still closed, her mind drifting.
"My," the man started. "She's in quite the state.", he observed with an upper-class accent and a voice like silk.
Well, sir, Nyx responded mentally. You could explain the obvious to me all day with a voice like that. I won't mind listening, she thought to herself.
Behave Nyx!, she scolded herself.
What?, she asked her other self, I didn't do anything! More mental snickering from the both of them.
"Good. Then it is best to put her out of her misery.", a new gruff voice declared. Likely the warrior's.
"What?!", the bard, Shadowheart and her mental self sputtered at the same time.
"You saw her powers. How she manipulated the ledge - she is likely to become ghaik at any moment. Kill her now.", the warrior continued making her case for murdering Nyx.
Ghaik? Whatever that is, it's not me! Nyx started to panic, but she was trapped in limbo. With giddy panic she could only listen to the unfolding conversation.
"I'll do it.", the warrior offered as though she were offering a glass of water instead of coldblooded murder. Nyx could hear movement and she assumed the warrior was likely reaching for her weapon.
"No, wait. Stop Lae'zel.", the bard demanded, "We don't know that for sure. She might still be able to help us with our tadpoles."
Tadpoles? Our tadpoles?, Nyx's mind was like molasses again, They must have been on the ship too.
Nyx was relieved that there was a voice of reason amongst them, and one intent on helping rather than murder. She decided that she doesn't quite like this Lae'zel much.
The bard continued, "Besides I was right here when she used her powers, and it didn't feel psionic."
"Oh, so now you're an expert on psionic powers, are you? Chk!", Lae'zel made a sound of disapproval.
"No, but you know of them. Probably better than I do. So, did they seem like mind flayer powers to you?", the bard asked coolly.
There was an uncomfortably long pause and people shifting.
"No. They aren't.", the final judgement from Lae'zel, although she sounded displeased at her own verdict. She sucked in breath to say more, but Shadowheart cut her off.
"Fine then. If all of you are done discussing how to murder my patient. I'd like to heal her now. Preferably without the lot of you hovering over us.", both Shadowheart's voice and her disapproval were as clear as a bell.
Thank you Shadowheart. I would also welcome a change in subject.
"We'll search the area for anything useful in the meantime.", the bard offered.
Boots receded and Nyx followed along with Shadowheart as she worked to heal her injuries. Shadowheart's magic feels like a cool night breeze, slowly soothing her away from limbo and into dreamless sleep. After today, Nyx doesn't mind it at all.
--- --- ---
