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H-huh? Where am I? What happened?
Nyxivaan stares up into the starless sky, the dark around her oddly colourful, for someone used to seeing in the dark in shades of grey at least. Shifting onto her side she winces in pain, looking down and spotting the claw wound in her side, it looked red, bloody, and painful. Weirdly though, it wasn’t bleeding. Sitting up slowly, grunting in pain with every movement she managed to get to a point where she could push back against whatever stone object was behind her, holding her aching side and wincing at the branching lightning scars over her shoulders and what she could see going just below her collar onto her chest.
Okay. Think. How did I end up in this situation? What is this situation? And where am I?
Resting her head back on the cool stone Nyx took in a few laboured breaths before letting her mind go to work.
Point 1. I was in a fight. There was a massive spider covered in eyes, several druids (probably possessed), annnnd… friends? Allies at least. Okay. I was trying to shove the spider under a big chandelier so it could be dropped on it. It managed to get its pincer-claw thing up and hit me in the side, that’s where that came from… dammit I have to fix this top now. But that didn’t knock me down or anything? What else was there? A rumble. Like thunder? Oh that’s right a druid had summoned a storm inside the building. I guess they must have struck me, which explains the new scars on my chest and shoulders. But still. How did that lead to me ending up here-
Looking up and around at her surrounding Nyx cane to a very startling realisation. She was in a graveyard.
Oh. I died.
Pushing up against the stone she turned around to find a headstone with her own name on it.
It’s not really mine though. Aribis wouldn’t have buried me in a graveyard like this. And the people I was with would have brought me home. All but the new girl knew I had a wife. Unless they’re dead too… well now I’m sad.
Slowly Nyx started to make her way from the headstone, walking around and examining others.
Several hours later, what felt like it at least, and Nyx was finding that there were occasionally spirits heading in the same direction as her, they however did not have bodies and looked like ghosts, and Nyx was pretty sure she still had her body. Even her prosthetic arm was here. So what was going on?
Pushing further into the graveyard eventually she found the centre as though drawn towards it where sat a massive gate of silver bars, souls silently passing through the open gate to a bright glowing portal. Nyx slowly approached the gate and portal as though in a trance, however her hand brushed up against the metal of the gate and she pulled it back with a hiss, turning away from the portal and looking down to her hand.
That burned?
Looking back up to the portal she glared at it for several seconds before turning her gaze back to the gate and her burned hand.
The gate of the afterlife? Guess I really did die… Wow… that sucks.
A few tears fell from her eyes and she let out a soft sigh of sadness as she thought about her wife, now left in the mortal plane.
Can’t believe it. She’s the career assassin and I’m the first one to die. What was I thinking going into the feywild like that? What moron accepts a quest from some dwarf claiming to be a goddess without at least fact checking. Serves me right.
Looking back up at the portal Nyx takes another step forward. Suddenly spreading her arms wide she grabbed onto both halves of the gate, screaming as the contact burned her ethereal flesh and scored the metal of her right arm with sparks of jagged light. Steeping back she slowly pulled the gate shut, closing herself off from the portal to the afterlife, with one last great heave she slammed the gate shut, turning her back on death.
She brought the others back at least once each but not me. Well I’m not done with life yet. I’ll make my own way back if I have to. There’s magic here in this place between death and the afterlife.
Turning away from the gate and walking back to where she woke, standing tall and no longer wincing from her injuries, her left hand horribly burned up past her wrist and on the back of her prosthetic hand an engraving that looks like the closed gate, Nyx walked away from death.
Magic is a tool and I’m an engineer. I’ll get back to you Aribis, I swear it.