Chương 166: Shadows

Nyxala's sternum eye became an immense well, gulping down a flowing river of fragmented flakes. The weight of her gaze actively destroyed the round chute. Bits of wall broke away and welcomed shadowy pockets. It was… less than ideal, but Nyxala was desperate to see. And yet, that weight did nothing to help her track the phantom. She was likely only making it worse for herself. Those crevices in the ancient infrastructure gave the phantom more places to hide.

A subtle breeze brushed over metal dust, disrupting the pile below a long caved wall. Nyxala reacted. Her wings snapped back, and she struck with both claws. They hit nothing but empty space. There was no air down in this tunnel, so she knew it must have been the phantom, and yet it remained without a presence. She steadied herself. Twisting her body, Nyxala tried to find any of the elusive hints of its existence. Fingerprint on the wall. Maybe a scuff-mark left by a foot.

Instead, the cold grip of a hand touched her shoulder. Nyxala leapt away with a yelp, but it was already too late. The fingers, neither aggressive nor welcoming, left an ugly black patch of death. It was more than painful. A bit of skin and muscle nothing to lose. The true pain came from the scraping of her soul. Such an unassuming, idle touch had carved a deep wound into O̅s̫stho̲th. She immediately felt the guiding hand of her mutations fade. An unreal sickness and terror washed over her. She felt wrong. Empty.

A part of herself had been stripped away from nothing but a touch. This was why people didn't dare enter the shadows of Coral. Phantoms were anathema to life. It didn't matter how strong you were, they ate at your soul, sapping at your strength the longer you stayed. The danger was the whole point of her coming here. She could hardly hope to escape Solan if she were to run through a field of flowers. But still, this really made her question her judgement.

For the first time since it had appeared, the phantom stepped into the flow of observed flakes on course for Nyxala's chest. They shifted only enough to reveal its form. Human. It held an entirely identical shape, despite only partially existing. The metallic dust moved towards her eye ever so slightly slower where it pervaded the phantom's form. Immediately, Nyxala cast out her name sense. If she knew the strength of what she was dealing with, then she had something to play with. But… the thing had no soul.

Nyxala searched and searched, but there wasn't even the slightest traces of a name inside that barely present entity. It simply did not have one. Without a name, there were no curses to unleash. No weakness to exploit. Hoping that, maybe, Ts̟͂tll could wring its invulnerability from it, Nyxala did the same she'd done in her battle against Lysyra. She layered her rapier in corruption from her soul core, and thrust it through the barely apparent phantom's form. But the creature didn't have a soul.

There was nothing to bind to a deathly contract. Without life, not even Lýotepͦ would keep her alive. If they didn't even have a name, then Nyxala highly doubted the Feat would consider them legitimate targets for slaughter. Her silver lining was that she'd found a way to witness them. Not from her third eye's vision itself, but the subtle shift in the effects it created. Already, the violet-crimson light shone from the veins around the gem.

That glow reflected off the trailing dust and gave her actual eyes something to see. So long as she kept the intensity of her gaze heavy, then the phantoms would become easier to see. Only… Nyxala was not so lucky. As the creature's slow, difficult-to-follow steps continued, its form suddenly faded, and the flakes returned to their normal tumble towards Nyxala's chest. It was gone. She leapt back, trying to find the phantom again, but all traces had disappeared. Metal cracked.

A bare footprint cut through the ceiling, right over her head. Nyxala reacted immediately. She twisted and her tail slammed through space with more strength than she'd dare face herself. When it struck — if slipping through the phantom as if it didn't exist counted as a strike — she bit through her lip to suppress her scream. Feathers shrivelled and shed. The skin underneath, now revealed, were as black as her feathers and strained against bone; muscle evaporated in moments.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. What had she been thinking? The first touch should have been enough of a warning. Her reaction had been quick, but she should have had the awareness to not rely on physical attacks. It was a mistake, and not one she was likely to repeat. But… how was she supposed to fight something without a soul that could kill with a touch? The ground bent with the shape of a footprint. Not a full one; just the ball of the foot.

A mere instant later, another set of bare toes broke the metal metres away. Forget slow, the phantom now sprinted at her. Nyxala's wings whipped forward. As she was launched back down the chute she'd come, her tongue slipped through her severed lower lip and spat acid down on the horror that no longer approached so languidly. Unfortunately, her saliva sailed over the footsteps fruitlessly. The phantom continued its relentless pursuit as Nyxala backed away as fast as she could.

It was demoralising to see that not even her direct attacks affected the being. As terrifying as it was to have something she couldn't dare touch chase her down, Nyxala didn't turn her back. Her eye burned through the tunnel, and the veins along her chest shone bright. It didn't take long for the phantom's form to take shape. Indistinct, but there. It rushed through the trailing dust as if Nyxala had personally insulted it.

The light from her veins wasn't much, but it lit those floating flakes well enough to pick up the basic facial features of that which rushed her. The phantom took another step before it raised its arm in apparent pain, before it threw them at its side and dropped its jaw, face enraged. A wail louder than the eruption of cannon-fire slammed into her antennae, curling them back. The phantom disappeared, but the screech continued. It lingered.

The harrowing cry waned far slower than any natural sound, resonating with the very shadows that surrounded her. Nyxala didn't need to be a genius to know she'd done something to set it off. First, to make it chase her, then this scream. Did it hate being observed, or simply the light in her chest? Either option were equally bad. She couldn't exactly fight or get around without her vision, and to see… there was nothing she could do about her light. She tightened her robe, but the light still leaked through.

It was unmissable in this dark place. Nyxala twisted, keeping herself moving. While she would love to lament how annoying it was to repeat a fight much like Lysyra's — except without the solution of a death pact — she didn't have the time. What else could she use to her advantage? Ta'Stralanov'r said it was only a mutation that was likely to allow her to navigate this place, but what of her names?

Tsal̺air̡ might not be the perfect solution, but if the light of her chest was enraging the phantom, then enshrouding herself should do the opposite, right? If the phantoms couldn't see her, then would they ignore her? Nyxala reached out. A tertiary touch half way between a hand and a breath took hold in the free-flying dust around her. The metal flakes were desperate to reach her sternum eye, but Tsal̺air̡ took over, twisting the haze around her.

Dust leading into her eye swirled around Nyxala a dozen times before it finally fell into her chest like it were the light of accretion tumbling into the black hole. Nyxala's form disappeared. The name was a lot more direct than her others. Always hiding, but never hidden. So long as she had a plume of some sort of free-floating particles, she could hide within it. Of course, someone would need to be blind to miss the swirling wraith of dust.

With the shroud blocking much of the view of her third eye, Nyxala had no way to know if it worked. She could only rely on the brief glimpses she got of the outside world to judge whether she was safe. She saw nothing, but whispers had no need for eyes. The sound started subtle. A tingling at the tip of her fringe-most tendrils. They did not remain so quiet. Soon, whispers formed of a dozen voices. A hundred.

They came from all around her, and every few moments, a voice would come from so close she could feel the chill of their lips. She spun, but they were never there. Unspeakable words twinged in her periphery. She could never quite pick up what they said — always too quiet — but it felt like they surrounded her. The whispers tainted space close enough to touch. Nyxala knew deep in her soul, that she needed to leave. This was not a place she could stay. Quietly, hoping not to be seen, she crept back through the chute.

The whispers stopped. Nyxala paused, but only for a moment. The whispers returned, and while they remained as indecipherable as before, their tone had changed. The whispers were curt, quick, and venomous. They held fury. The type of fury directed towards an invader. An intruder. She didn't wait to see if her instincts were wrong. Nyxala bailed. Her wings scraped the edges of her narrow tunnel as she stretched them to carry her at their limits.

The assistance of her new tail would have been amazing, yet her foolish attack left the end dead and floppy. There was a wail behind her, and suddenly her antennae could hear nothing but the intense grating of whispers whose meaning still evaded her. Words were used. Words she recognised. Yet they never flowed into a cohesive whole. They hammered at her mind as much as the hollow rattle of phantom footsteps shook the brittle chute. As she flew through the shadows, the assault never let up.

She could feel the antipathy to her own life closing the distance behind her, despite how her wings were competing with legs. And the whispers. They didn't fade; they only grew with more voices slipping in from elsewhere to add weight on her mind. In no time, she made it back to the split in the tunnel and made to dive down the path that should lead her to the relative safety of the subsurface… but found the chute gone. The place looked similar to where she'd come in, but it wasn't the same.

Somehow, she'd been turned around. No, that wasn't right. That was the same ancient walkway and sealed off door she'd seen on the way in, and the converging of tunnels was the same. Only the way out was gone. Nyxala didn't have the time to concern herself with choices or unhelpful concerns. She picked a tunnel at random, and flew into it. She had no way to know if this would lead deeper into shadows, or save her from this nightmare place. Fuck preparing for Solan.

She was ready to take on challenges that came her way, but this would lead nowhere but death. What had she been thinking?