The White Chronicle

Chapter 32 - Wake up, Nyx

Jasmine pushes back the figure into a corner and prepares to strike, but the shadow evades her by turning itself into smoke and ember. As the figure tries to flee, Shamir surrounds the escaping future with her sand and hardens it further to close the cracks to prevent it from escaping.

The figure inside yelled for its freedom and pleaded with Shamir while calling her by a different name - Nyx.

"Nyx, wake up! The souls across different underworlds are switching places. Mine, Valkyrie, and Mebuyan's are switching, and worst of all, Kali is invading different underworld realms! You need to wake up-," the figure pleaded, but Shamir will not hear its lies. She shut the sand tightly that only its muffled voice escaped its grasp.

Jasmine looked with curiosity as she heard Mebuyan's name. She asked Shamir what the figure meant, but Shamir shook her head and reasoned that figure might be a form nightmare that attacked them on the inn. "Nightmares dwell on their victim's past and mix it with their lies to catch us off guard. I'll keep this alive for now and interrogate the fiend later,"

Shamir powers her magic as she begins to return Jasmine to her mind and wake them up back to the inn. The two shared this moment and agreed on a plan – Shamir will attack the soldier and cause a diversion while Jasmine will sneak and destroy the Priest's staff to stop the spread of the nightmare.

The two woke up in the inn as a second had just passed since they fell asleep. Shamir cast a veil of purple sand around them to keep them awake from the nightmare's influence. Shamir can create this veil to wake the townspeople up, but it will expend her magic quickly and not enough to fight off their attackers. For now, she must put her faith in Jasmine to follow thru with the plan.

As soon as they began to stand up, the inn's doors broke as the soldiers rushed in. Shamir summons a massive wave of sand to push the soldiers down the stairs. "Release these people from your nightmare, Preist! If you want me, then I will gladly trade myself for their freedom."

Their gaze of malice towards Shamir gave her a sense of dread. And something else. Somewhere, in her mindscape, the figure within screams for her. To let go of her dream and wake up. She shakes herself and focuses on her fight.

"Come out there, thief! Return our King's treasure, and we might spare these people. After all, they are under our jurisdiction." the Priest continues to taunt Shamir.

Jasmine exists through the window, jumps to the roof, and evades the Priest's gaze. Days of training have pushed Jasmine to be agile; this instant, Jasmine is thankful that Leshin and the others were patient to teach her. "Looks like I owe Leshin an apology," she says as she makes her way across the roof, inching closer to the Priest. From above, Jasmine can see all the villagers sleeping on the ground, murmuring in their sleeping of something dire. And in the middle of it, she can see the Priest and his staff.

The staff is spewing that sleeping mist continuously. Jasmine needs to get a good angle and wait for that perfect moment to strike. She climbs to a higher structure and prepares herself to lunge at the staff and break it with her knife.

The inn's window breaks from Shamir's huge sand fist. Soldiers are tossed around like toys as Shamir effortlessly them out. Shamir sense something is wrong. When she fought the soldiers at the inn, their movement and attack were erratic and dysfunctional. It seems as they don't have any bone structure as they fail their weapons around with difficulty. And right now, the soldiers get back up after receiving such a beating from her.

The Priest taunts even further, "Do they feel pain? Yes. But Phronesian soldiers are durable and stronger than those of Zeus' or Athena's."

With a snap of the Priest's finger, the soldiers removed their cloaks and revealed Shamir their secret. Puss and rotten flesh cover their flesh, expose muscles, and visible decayed bones that make up their body. Then thousands of scarabs began to crawl from within their bodies and heal their broken parts. All of these soldiers are like the ones that they fought in Antrian. Upon closer inspection, all weapons have the same marking that only the Chronicler can read.