Adventure of nyxous 1

The gate warden keeps her spear raised, but gestures toward the covered gatehouse. Beneath its beams, a brazier burns warmly, offering shelter from the snow and wary eyes.

Behind the palisade, nervous villagers watch through gaps in shutters and stacked timber. The lanternlit square remains otherwise empty, with no companion beside Nyxous.

She lowers the spearhead a fraction and points toward the largest stone building, where muddy tracks disappear beneath its closed door.

Nyxous's words roll beneath the gatehouse beams, deep as falling stone. Snow hisses against the brazier, and every shutter along the square closes at once.

The gate warden plants her spear and meets Nyxous's scarred gaze without retreating. Her lowered weapon rises again, not to strike, but to mark the boundary of her people.

She points toward the muddy tracks beneath the stone building's door, then toward a narrow postern gate half-hidden behind stacked timber.

The gate warden steps aside and unbars the covered gatehouse door. A broad stone hearth glows within, its coals breathing orange warmth into the shelter.

She points across the square toward the shadowed storehouse, then lifts the postern latch behind the stacked timber. Snow swirls through the narrow opening beyond.

The postern reveals a descending footpath cut between dark pines. Steam rises faintly below, silver against the snow, while the hearth burns ready behind Nyxous.

No hunter stands between her and the spring. The covered gatehouse offers immediate shelter, and the steaming pool waits beyond the shrine hill beneath the winter sky.

nyxous leaves settlement outskirts behind and arrives at hot spring.

The hot spring lies in a hollow beneath the shrine hill, ringed by black stones and snow-laden pines. Steam coils over the water, turning moonlight silver.

Nyxous folds her stained-glass wings and eases her large, feather-coated body into the spring. Heat closes around her dark scales, driving the mountain cold from muscle and bone.

She settles along the deepest shelf, horns rising above the steam while her secondary wings float free beneath the surface. Snow melts from her feathers in quiet rivulets.

A shallow stone ledge beneath the water bears old carved marks: a winged guardian encircling three small figures, with a narrow hollow shaped like a claw.

When Nyxous shifts against the ledge, the hollow fills with blue-white light. The spring brightens, and a hidden warmth spreads through her scarred body, leaving her rested and ready.

Beyond the pool, the pines conceal a second trail descending toward the ravine. Fresh ash dusts its first stones, and faint bootprints lead away from the charcoal road.

Nyxous climbs from the spring and follows the ash-dusted bootprints between the pines, her wet feathers steaming in the moonlit cold. The trail descends sharply toward the ravine.

Loose shale shifts beneath her hind feet. She catches herself with one folded wing, but the slope gives way in a rattling slide, carrying her sideways onto a narrow shelf above the ravine.

Ash and stones plunge into darkness below. The bootprints vanish at the broken edge, while a cracked timber support juts from the cliff face beneath Nyxous.

Beyond the support, the ravine wall opens into a low charcoal tunnel, its old entrance partly hidden by fallen snow. Fresh ash marks the stones within.

The failed descent leaves Nyxous stranded above the direct trail, but the tunnel offers a stable route beneath the ravine. Faint bootprints continue through its darkness.

Nyxous lowers herself onto the cracked timber support and reaches toward the bootprints at the ravine's broken edge. The beam groans beneath her weight.

Before she can cross, the support splinters. Nyxous drops onto the narrow shelf below, claws striking stone as shale avalanches past her into the dark.

Dust rolls through the ravine. The cracked beam hangs uselessly above, while the shelf beneath Nyxous leads directly to the low tunnel entrance.

Inside, fresh bootprints cross the ash in a single-file line. A dropped strip of red cloth clings to a jagged stone beside them, marked with a hunter's silver clasp.

The tunnel slopes beneath the ravine, its timber braces old but intact. The dragon hunters' trail continues into darkness, offering a safer route than the vanished descent.

Nyxous enters the charcoal tunnel, folding her stained-glass wings close as ash whispers beneath her claws. The fresh bootprints remain clear in the gray dust.

She follows the prints beneath the ravine, moving steadily between old timber braces. The tunnel carries the faint scents of wet wool, smoke, and cold iron.

A widening chamber opens ahead, its ceiling blackened by long-ago fires. The bootprints cross it and continue toward a thin red glow beyond a crooked brace.

Near the chamber's center, a shallow charcoal pit holds fresh embers beneath sifted ash. Beside it rests a broken waterskin and several newly cut kindling sticks.

Nyxous reaches the far side of the chamber and follows the trail toward the red glow. Muffled voices drift through the brace, close enough to distinguish words soon.

Nyxous stills beside the crooked brace, folding her breath beneath the tunnel's smoke and listening past the crackle of embers.

The voices sharpen through the timber. Three hunters are gathered beyond it, and a fourth voice answers them from deeper in the passage.

Another hunter speaks more quietly, revealing that Pyros's belongings are not in the settlement. They were carried through the kiln and hidden beyond the lower road.

The crooked brace conceals a narrow side passage behind Nyxous, its stones undisturbed and descending toward the kiln's rear. The dragon hunters have not noticed it.

Escape the hunters' ambush