Nyxi's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Nyxi walked, and the priestess's body kept bleeding. Each drop hit the ice and froze bright red. The trail behind her was a long, clean line any hunter could read. Umi glanced back. "You are writing them a letter," she said. Lyr stopped. The sky above her shoulders crackled. "Close the wound," she said. "Or close the trail. Choose." Nyxi did not slow. The hunger in her chest watched without opinion. Her own ruin was interesting too. Then the ice spoke. A long grinding sound rolled under their feet. Far back along the red line, something huge surfaced — a grey shape like piled stones, a thousand sharp legs, a mouth full of yellow teeth steaming in the cold. It had found the blood. It came fast. Rylo stepped past her. He did not look back. "Go," he said. "I will hold it." Fire bloomed along his axe. He set the trail itself alight, blood and ice together, a burning wall between Nyxi and the thing chasing her. Nyxi pressed her hand to the torn shoulder and pushed the cold into it. The bleeding slowed. Stopped. Where the last warm drop had fallen, the ice cracked open and a black lotus rose, red at its tips, glittering. It marked the place her trail ended. From here on, she left nothing. Behind them, Rylo's fire roared and the grey thing screamed into it. Nyxi turned her back on the sound and walked into the white. The trail was closed. The hunter was someone else's problem now. Ahead, the realm waited, nameless, and she had finally stopped leaking proof of herself into it.