Souls, Spells, and Shadows

I Swear It's Not My Blood!

Mythomagic seemed simple enough, and Nico was delighted when she knew some of the more obscure gods, like Oizys.

(Oizys was the goddess of grief, anxiety and depression, of course Alys knew her.)

At one point, Nico's sister, a rather pretty girl with long, soft black hair and eyes identical to Nico's, joined them, and Nico coaxed her into playing as well.

She seemed to be the only caretaker Nico had, which was...slightly strange. What was even stranger was the fact Nico and Bianca had been brought to the Lotus Casino by an erinye. Neither of them had any memory of their past life, which meant something or someone had wanted to either entrap them or protect them-or both.

Alys decided to leave well enough alone.

First of all, she barely knew these kids, they could be trying to murder her for all she knew. Five years saving demigods and killing stuff meant several demigods knew about her, and so did several monsters. It also kinda gave her quite a lot of paranoia. Secondly, meddling in other people's business was nearly always fatal to heroes. Thirdly, they might not be demigods, but if they were?

Wasn't living in paradise forever better than facing the monsters of the real world?

Oh fuck.

It was 1 o'clock and she had to leave now, schedules were important.

She stood up abruptly, nearly knocking over the table. "I'm sorry. I have to go now."

Before they could say a word, she sprinted away, leaving two nonplussed children in her wake.

She'd deal with that later.

..................................................................

Feet pounding the ground, heaving breaths, sweat trickling down her face, running to Alys was heaven and hell. It'd been an hour since she'd left the casino, fresh on the track of a Cynolycus, and holy hell these things were terrifying. From the brief glimpse she'd caught, it had the expected body of a stag, a lion's neck, cloven hooves, and a wide mouth with a sharp, bony ridge in place of teeth, but jeez, the look on its face was just plain terrifying.

It was already a death machine, it did not need to look creepy as fuck, but Tyche already hated her generally so why not?

How many things hated her by now? Lycaon hunted her down every once in a while, presumably because she'd killed more than half of his pack, there were all the things she'd killed over the years, she'd angered quite a few Epimelides-yeah, everything hated her by now.

Oh. Oh. She'd caught up with the monstrosity and-eurgh, it was tearing at a small boy's arm.

It turned, spotted her, and lunged.

Saliva and blood dripped down its chin, catching in its mane, and Alys was definitely not going to deal with that on her shirt. Behind it, the small boy twitched and whimpered, and yeah, Alys was damned if she died and let the boy get eaten.

Gnashing teeth, flashing metal, Alys let herself go through the motions she'd practised so many times before. Sometimes fighting was a dance of death, but more commonly, it was an all out brawl, messy and loud and chaotic, and Alys loved every second. It gave her something to live for, a thrill down her spine, the knowledge that she would fight and fight and never stop. Violence and power and death was in her blood, and she could use that to help.

It'd taken her a few minutes, the boy passed out from blood loss, but she'd cast a rune last minute, and glowing green ropes thrust out of the ground, dragging the monster to the ground.