Nyssi woke up to a weird feeling of warmth and wetness. But not in a good way. As her eyes blinked open, Nyssi quickly realized that the source of the warmth and the wetness was a puddle of her own blood. And she was lying on the floor but not in her own home.
The rest of her senses began to kick into gear. She could hear a low rumbling sound, screaming and crying. Mostly feminine voices. The sounds a wife makes when she finds her loved one dead in a rather horrendous way. Yes, exactly those sounds.
Now the pain was beginning to appear. As Nyssi sat up, she noticed the massive gashes across her body. The memories of what had happened started flooding in.
A pack of monsters. Tattered Thraggers. Arena beasts. Nothing more than teeth and jaws on legs that would attack and tear apart. A trained gladiator could probably take on at most three of them at once. The hunters of the Torn Islet that would capture beasts for the great arenas would be able to tackle only one at a time, and even then it was just to trap them. A swarm of twenty suddenly attacking the village pub on a late evening was bound to cause chaos and death on a large scale.
And that was exactly where Nyssi had been. She’d been celebrating with her fellow hunters, as they’d managed to capture a True Thrack, a colossal, draconic beast that had been plaguing a nearby settlement for months, AND they’d managed to secure a deal to sell it to the Dessaron Battle Arena for a good sum of money. Everyone was drunk and merry and boom, walls collapsing. The average Thragger was about 3m tall and built like a large brick, if one wanted to destroy a building, it easily could.
On the plus side, Nyssi was alive. Bleeding heavily, but alive. And breathing too. That was a bonus. It was also now clear what that low rumbling sound was. Helicopters had flown in, both to transport victims and hopefully mow down those Thraggers. Once Nyssi was back on her feet, she silently swore that she’d go out, track down and murder a bunch of Thraggers in revenge for what had happened.
Speaking of feet, Nyssi realised that she was… beginning to feel better. She felt dizzy and rather dehydrated, because of the blood loss, and with some effort, she was capable of standing up. But her wounds… they were healing… before her very eyes. Not quickly, not quickly enough, but she was definitely seeing scabs and clots forming and the bleeding had definitely slowed down.
“By Sini’s scales…”
Now she was standing though, she could see the devastation. A good quarter of the Islet had been demolished. Thankfully, the bridge was intact, as were the farms, but the market area where most people worked was completely gone.
The fact that Nyssi was still standing though was bothering her. At first, she thought she had been blessed. But as old Temthan traditions often stated, being a survivor in such a catastrophe was a bad omen. Especially if weird things were starting to happen.
That was when Nyssi saw it, the puddle on the ground. The one she had been lying in. It wasn’t Nyssi-shaped. Or puddle-shaped. It was split in two, an upside down crescent above a diamond, with seven round splatters along once side. The holy symbol of Sini.
Forgetting her condition, Nyssi started to run, before anyone else noticed her or the puddle she had left. Her house wasn’t far, but it was on the outskirts of town, away from prying eyes. No one had noticed her anyway, so maybe she was safe.
As she approached her home though, she noticed the front door was… unlocked…