Nocte Yin: Anti-Villain, Anti-Hero and Anti-Everything Else

Chapter Six

And she couldn’t breathe.

She coughed, hard and painful, her skull rattling at the sudden movement, the darkness echoing her cry.

There was something about Earth’s air that did not sit well with her body.

She took another experimental breath and her lungs convulsed again. Holding her breath, she knew at once what it was: pollution.

Earth’s air was not as pure as she had expected. There were chemical and toxins, all mixed in with the oxygen and carbon dioxide, among other things. The contamination in the air was so thick that even Nocte’s fantastical immune system had trouble purging it… She was beginning to feel faint.

Not good.

Swallowing down bitter bile, Nocte pulled her shirt over her nose, letting the fabric act as a filtration system. As long as she took slow, minimum breaths, she could still function without breaking into coughs.

For now, she had to get out of the darkness and search for a way above ground. Certainly the air above ground must be better than that of underground.

“Light,” she cast, holding the glowing orb to her face.

Her heart beat wildly as her magic cut into the darkness, opening the world for her. Softly, objects began to reveal themselves – a smooth surface – a chain – a large cave. As her eyes adjusted, her brain pieced the different objects together, constructing the smooth surface into a slide – fashioning the chain into a swing set – building the cave into an underground room.

Frowning, she straightened from the ground and heard her bones crack. Her body was still sensitive after the rough inter-space travel. Watching her heart rate (she did not want to become too excited and take in too much of the polluted oxygen), she checked herself over. She was fine and, after rolling her shoulders to test herself, she turned to take in the size of the underground playground.

It was larger than what she had expected, with very little oxygen to be had. Behind her was a tunnel running perpendicular to the room, with train tracks placed along the ground.

She was in a little pocket of an underground subway system.

She suddenly stiffened, feeling a distant rumbling. Holding her breath and standing very still, she thought she was going crazy until she heard a far crying screech.She took a step towards the playground and away from the tunnel. A moment later and the whole room started to shake. The hairs on her arms stood as warning and she felt a spike of panic rush up her spine.

It was the train!

Dropping the Light spell, Nocte flung herself behind the slide, landing harshly to the ground. Covering her ears, her glasses askew, she coughed harshly when she unexpectedly took in a gulp of air, smelling smoke and tasting metal.

Suddenly, the train roared into her vision, pounding in tremendous speed. The headlights flashed angrily as sparks flew from the wheels. Nocte squinted and felt her teeth clack together from the vibrations.

Yet, despite it being Hellish, Nocte had to wonder about the sparks. The train ran on electricity, obviously, but did the engineer not include a magic buffer to prevent the train from dragging on the tracks? Furthermore, whoever had built the subway system had been very irresponsible. They had not buried the playground.

Nocte frowned once the train had gone and fixed her shirt over her nose. Turning to face the playground, she cast another Light spell. By not burying the playground, the Earthlings were testing the dead. Those who had connections with the playground could haunt the area at any time and never pass on. Did the people of Earth not know how to take care of their dead?