The earth churns and rolls in the way only the Other Side can. A vortex of dust crashes against my scales, and rips through the fire elemental’s form. Her form distorts involuntarily as the intense winds wash over her, yet she pays it no mind. A storm that would rip even Ceph into a bloody cloud, nothing more than an annoyance.
“What happened here?” She asks.
A thunderous roar...
2025-08-19 05:23:14 +0000 UTC View PostInsulting the gathered cultists interested in acquiring her was not the wisest decision she’d ever made, but damn did it feel good to see their affronted expressions.
Nyxil knew it was bound to make the next Trial harder than it already was. She could already see some of the cultists running off; likely to organise some form of sabotage the moment she was alone. But she found herself no...
2025-08-16 15:33:58 +0000 UTC View Post“Where is your observer?” A Bodytwister walked up to them as Nyxil waited for her team’s results.
“She disappeared.” Nyxil shrugged, ignoring the raised eyebrows of her teammates.
The woman didn’t acknowledge their reaction. “It was a Fleshsmith, correct?” she asked, flicking through the pages of a tome. At their nods, she clicked her tongue and shook her head.
“Ari,” Nyxil called as she crossed the room to join her. Dan was already by her side. He seemed more concerned for the girl than himself, so she could only assume his team had done well enough to fulfil the quota. “How many did you collect?” She didn’t bother mincing words.
“Only four.” She knead her fingers, barely sparing Nyxil a glance. “We spent the first few hours stu...
2025-08-12 11:57:56 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil swept forward and snatched the token from the collar of a patchwork rabbit.
The small thing was fast. With enlarged legs — or maybe a body that had been prevented from growing — the creature was too quick for the prospective cultists. Nyxil had been surprised by how fast she was; she’d relied on her wings and tentacles for speed until now, so she was all too receptive to find ...
2025-08-11 13:24:49 +0000 UTC View PostSmoke and ash rise in the wake of my destruction. Where there had once been an immense hive, now lay rubble as far as I can see. In some areas where buildings had only crumbled, avoiding the direct consequences of my wrath, a few sapients scuttled like rodents.
They do everything they can to avoid my gaze as I coil over the obliterated remnants of a palace. Some try to dig through the fal...
2025-08-09 14:50:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe ritual was a failure.
Well, technically it succeeded… but Nyxil’s limbs didn’t suddenly regrow, so she couldn’t consider it as such.
To her best efforts, she tried to replicate the circumstances that led to her previous healing. She popped open some curses. Using the same ritual, she killed the Fleshsmith just as she had K’Sill. Nyxil even went so far as to miss the wo...
2025-08-06 13:12:00 +0000 UTC View PostWhatever monstrosity the Fleshsmiths had summoned, Tarchon stood head on against it exactly as he had the semi-dead cultists.
Nyxil, however, was not so undaunted.
The rows upon rows of spinning teeth slicing away at the walls ahead of her were similar enough to the drill-like plated head of the massive fleshforged whales that her mind was immediately thrown back into the Dark Star....
2025-08-05 12:33:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe regrowth stopped with Shy and her wing fully reformed. Her mutations had essentially been reduced to the stumps they’d been in her past life, and yet they’d grown quicker than her arm and leg. Both had not fully reformed. Her arm had gone from stopping at her bicep, to ceasing below the elbow. Just where her chitin should start. The leg was much the same; having grown down to her shin.<...
2025-08-03 11:50:26 +0000 UTC View PostThe moment Orm disappeared over the horizon, Ceph stopped dropping the explosives behind her. Just in case the snake looked her way, she continued running towards Henosis’ border, but with each second, she pulled further away.
It took all her self control not to just turn and flee. Even if it had just been for a short while, being bait for one of those nightmare weapons had been terrify...
2025-08-01 10:22:29 +0000 UTC View PostThere wasn’t much space in the decrepit service tunnel outside the airlock. Besides a small storage nook along one side, the path was narrow. Too narrow to leap around as was her preferred style. That wouldn’t matter though; Nyxil wouldn’t let this become an extended fight.
Her advantage lay in surprise. Both the ambush, and her mutations. If it got to the point where she needed the...
2025-07-30 08:04:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe bone bullet ripped through the fabric of her robe as she spun out of the way. It skimmed skin, but left little more than a scratch. Nyxil had been expecting something, and her heart rate remained at a rapid thump. The increased reaction speed gave her all the time she needed to catch the boy’s attempt, and slip out of the way.
Her hand fell to her blade and she leapt forward. It clo...
2025-07-28 10:32:03 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil loosened the neck of her robe and tugged at her shroud. To any observer, she simply adjusted her neckline in nervousness. None would consider anything further.
It was really one of the most helpful things about Ta’Stralanov’r’s armband; she could use her third eye all she wanted as long as it wasn’t obvious. Only by being observed, or seeing the damage it caused, would someo...
2025-07-26 13:02:27 +0000 UTC View PostTerr’n’s harrowing screams cut deep into Phanem’s chest. He’d fought in many wars with the woman, yet never had he heard such a sound from her. Not even those dying by his own fist ever gave such mortal howls.
The water mage, having barely made it out with her life, clutched at her face. Half her head was missing. To her own attack, no less. Her brain was exposed, and her fingers ...
2025-07-24 13:14:39 +0000 UTC View Post“Too scared to do it yourself?” Kal said and approached the edge of the rail. “I’ll do it.”
To his credit, he didn’t flinch when the next trolley came screaming out of the tunnel and blasted only a metre away from him. Despite that, he didn’t step onto the rails, nor dash along its length to the token. All Kal did, was stand there, as trolleys occasionally crossed the inters...
2025-07-23 10:23:11 +0000 UTC View Post“You’re not seriously going to make us go down there, are you?” Tru asked.
The four Trial participants stood at the edge of the crater that had once been the Dark Star. Plenty of construction was well underway, but for the most part, it remained a voided space. Below them, large masses of flesh convulsed along the walls. Pulsing veins and cramping muscles branched from their feet to...
2025-07-20 12:54:02 +0000 UTC View Post“The second Trial will not be as straightforward as the first.” The assistant Adjudicator stood on the hand of the giant as he had for the first trial. His superior nowhere to be seen. “You will be given the freedom to approach the task as you wish, so long as no fighting breaks out. Save that for the harbinger trials.”
Nyxil stood amongst her group of ward-mates. The crowd was th...
2025-07-17 10:32:09 +0000 UTC View PostThrough pain and blinding ash, my roar strips the world of motion. The explosion halts, but the damage has already been done. No thought cro
Through pain and blinding ash, my roar strips the world of motion. The explosion halts, but the damage has already been done. No thought crosses my mind. Only primal sensations remain. The agony of my scales melting and muscles burning. The unmitigat...
2025-07-15 09:08:24 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil stood by Ari as she lost herself to the ritual of naming. There had been no stopping the girl; as soon as she’d been given the time, she’d dropped to her knees and scrawled the simple runes around her. Ari dove into her name as soon as Nyxil had promised to snap her out for Dan’s Trail.
They couldn’t speak with him until he’d had his time to perform, so Nyxil and Ari linge...
2025-07-14 08:21:11 +0000 UTC View PostNot much differed between the dozen fights that followed Ari’s. Some could do nothing against the hounds, and were tossed to the side to make room for the next. Others did well enough — even if they didn’t kill the beast — and had their names recorded by the representatives.
When the participants survived, but failed to deal any wounds, the representatives would vote whether they ...
2025-07-11 07:18:11 +0000 UTC View PostThey were given no time to prepare before the challenge started. A tug at one kid’s arm and he was standing out in front of the line of observers. The Fleshsmith removed a panel from the surface and unceremoniously tossed it off to the side. Beneath, a bowl of sand was revealed. He whipped his fingers through it, then uncorked a bottle of a black liquid which filled the lines he’d created.<...
2025-07-10 12:35:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe Great Iris always spun. Wispy tails of the accretion disk that stretched into the pupil had never stopped its slow spiral. From there, each burning arm quickly increased its speed as it edged outward. Most of the Iris was nothing but a solid ring. Either too fast to see, or frozen in time.
But Nyxil had never seen the stars spin.
Only once had she seen a single star move, back w...
2025-07-09 12:37:51 +0000 UTC View Post“Shit. Already? I hoped we had more time.” turning away from Ceph, Albin shouts across the hall to the volan messenger. “What are we dealing with? Any of their top division elites?” before he gets his answer, he turns to the other sapients around him. “Organise the mercenaries. Figure out their counters and sortie.”
“Commander, sir.” The volan landed on the table before hi...
2025-07-08 12:43:49 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil half expected Grif to be flanked by a dozen Scripture cultists given how obvious their sponsorship was. Instead, he walked alone. For
Nyxil half expected Grif to be flanked by a dozen Scripture cultists given how obvious their sponsorship was. Instead, he walked alone. For a sixteen-year-old, he looked mature. It was as if he’d aged years in the few months since their naming. An a...
2025-07-07 08:43:26 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil, flanked by Tarchon, broke the surface of Coral to a cacophony of jabbering teens. It was impossible to miss. With fifty thousand prospective cultists raring to prove themselves, none would dare be late today.
Even on the peripheral of the safe zone, the streets were bustling. A slow shifting wave of people moved towards the centre of Coral’s surface. Some of them would par...
2025-07-04 15:02:30 +0000 UTC View PostWar is nothing like what I had imagined. I thought as we travelled east, we would come across battles. Hundreds of small fights, or maybe a
War is nothing like what I had imagined.
I thought as we travelled east, we would come across battles. Hundreds of small fights, or maybe a big one with thousands of sapients. But all too quickly is my misplaced prediction disproven.
Inst...
2025-07-04 03:09:14 +0000 UTC View Post“Cover yourself,” Tarchon said as he stopped before an ordinary section of dark wall. “We will soon enter our temple; there are eyes everywhere.”
She did as he said, tucking her wing and tentacles away, but left her sternum eye peeking just above the shroud so that she could see in the dark. Once satisfied, he stepped forward and touched the wall. Nyxil had only a moment to wonder...
2025-06-30 10:24:49 +0000 UTC View PostIt felt like a lifetime ago that she’d last seen the Fleshsmith leader — and technically, it had been — but seeing her now, so much of the pain the woman had inflicted upon her came crashing back. Nyxil remembered the horrid chains that nibbled and chewed at her body. She remembered the constant agony and exhaustion of her captivity.
Solan’s eyes burned with a greed far surpassing...
2025-06-28 07:32:27 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil sat cross-legged on the guest bed in Tarchon’s home. The mattress was much comfier now that the sheets weren’t torn to ribbons, and it beat meditating on one of Tarchon’s many workbenches.
Her tentacles lay limply at her sides, and her wing stretched out behind her while it had the chance. They were still invisible — there wasn’t any way to disable her arm-band, and she di...
2025-06-26 13:34:57 +0000 UTC View PostNyxil took a single step forward, and the hard glare Tru was giving her gave way to fear. He matched her step, moving back into the hallway.
Nyxil took a single step forward, and the hard glare Tru was giving her gave way to fear. He matched her step, moving back into the hallway. But instead of running, he kept his eyes on her, demanding an answer.
The skitter dug deeper into the b...
2025-06-25 12:59:13 +0000 UTC View Post