Nico slept miserably throughout the night. Or was it day? He couldn't tell for the first few hours, but once the endless downpour stopped, and the crushing waves stilled, yet the sea remained, he had his answer.
The storm had lasted the entire day. Now, it was night.
And damn was it cold. The cliff didn't protect him from the draft since it came from the opposite direction of the peak, and each time a gust swelled, Nico felt the life subtly drain from him.
Still, he endured, and hours passed in near solitude.
Before long it was day again.
That sun emitted streaks of scarlet light over the horizon, illuminating clearly for the first time the gory battlefield. Just shy of a hundred butchered carcasses littered the ground — all of which belonged to the eerie worms, beetles, striders, and three revenants.
An unmistakable stench of rot plagued the air.
Nico shifted to get a better view. His back pressed against the cliffside.
Now that it was morning, he had to leave before the blood shed here was discovered by the inhabitants of the labyrinth. Day spelled safety from the worst threats on the Forgotten Shore, but even those that remained were utterly deadly for anyone unprepared, or in his case, debilitated.
Only... he wasn't quite able to move. His limbs were pumped with lead, and his head hung low with the weight of exhaustion. Adrenaline had given him the strength to push through the monster horde, the Demon's brutal slam, and the resulting explosion to escape the sea monster, but the numbing hormone had all but left his body since then.
Nico sighed. Another plan had formed in his head already.
It was the only option, really.
'Might as well get myself another ride.'
And there was only one way to do that, so he summoned Shaman.
Wisps of otherworldly fog oozed outward from his Soul Cores in a way that Nico hadn't been able to comprehend before the expansion of his senses yesterday. Since the Specter often visited his Soul Sea and was made of its incorporeal mist, the Devil passed through him like water through a drain.
Maintaining that deeper soul sense required too much focus, though, so he released it.
Seconds later, the faint plumes gathered in a strange blob a couple meters away from him, billowing and condensing until it had formed a rough humanoid shape. Crimson flames ignited on its featureless face.
Strangely, the powerful Devil appeared haggard. It had recovered the majority of its essence and bore no injuries, but the battle had been a hard one. Its alien eyes dimmed while scanning his wounds.
Nico's gaze locked onto Shaman, voice raspy as he said:
"Absorb the shards from the corpses and return to me. I'll direct you to the first Beast that gets close to the coral pillar, and you'll take its mind and use it to pile all the bodies together. We'll be baiting another bird. In the meantime, possess the strongest vessel that appears — preferably a flying abomination. Kill anything else that isn't a Messenger."
Nodding apprehensively, the Devil's form collapsed into a rolling cloud of mist, enveloping him. Nico granted the Specter both of his soul roots, watching as the fog grew veins of translucent light and tripled in purity. Then, it swirled, veering towards the field of corpses.
Settling into a familiar habit, Nico opened his runic window, sweeping through the strings for some kind of entertainment. Normally, he would've just dozed off. Heaven knows he needed rest. His femur would take quite some time to heal properly. But, until Shaman got his next vessel, he wasn't going to risk anything. For all he knew, an aerial predator could swoop down and devour him at any moment.
Of course, he had his soul sense, but that didn't mean he was omniscient. The dark sea had just taught him that.
He summoned the [Glass Torch] just for good measure, then dismissed the final elements of the [Silver Wraith] in order to allow it repair. With the Memory as warped, scorched, and cracked as it was, allowing it to repair faster would be more valuable than potentially retrieving its damaged outer elements.
It wasn't long before he reached the string pertaining to his Memories. Most of them he had completely deciphered the enchantments for — all, in fact, except for the [Silver Wraith], [Severed Vertebrae], and [Herald's Locket]. Excluding the new ones, anyway. He'd check those out later.
But, since the old armor's had been a long-time mystery of his, unsolvable no matter how he looked at it, he decided to give it a shot first.
Reviewing its description was always... grim. It pertained to his First Nightmare. Not him, of course, but the story of the last creature he had killed there.
Memory: [Silver Wraith].
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Tier: III.
Memory Type: Armor.
Memory Description: [There was once a blind swordsman who journeyed through an endless winter with his daughter. She was delicate — a wisp of fragility consumed by the insatiable cold. Yet still she lived, for her father wrapped her in the warmth he no longer kept for himself.
He gave her food, though he tasted none.
He gave her strength, though his own waned.
He gave her hope, though his own had grown stale.
But, one morning, as the pale sun rose into a bleached sky, she asked in a voice as soft as the morning breeze:
"Father, when will we find warmth? When will we find the Forest?"
He did not turn, only stood as a man drowned by purpose, and said:
"Soon, little one. Soon."
Her tone wavered:
"But we've... we've searched for so long."
And as the blind man faced the horizon — one he had faced millions of times, one he could never behold — the world seemed to exhale. The gusts fell still. The storm's veil parted. And there, at his side where she had always waited... was silence. And snow.
And nothing else.]
Nico stared soberly at the line of runes. The Spell seemed to tell the story of a daughter and father shackled by each other — the daughter from death, and father from life. Fortunately, he knew all too well how their story truly ended.
He had been the one to finish it. Well, in the nightmare version anyway.
The winter realm had all but eaten through the last shreds of their sanity by the time he had found them, and the daughter was but a mere wraith that had died eons ago, pretending to play the part of a living girl in spite of her yearning for death.
'I think I get it now.'
One thing he had overlooked until now was that they had never forgotten their journey — their pilgrimage. That was what he had been doing too. After experiencing it endure the worst damage he had ever seen an armor-type Memory endure and coinciding that with the insane determination they both displayed in the description, Nico figured that one of the [Silver Wraith]'s enchantments was impossible durability. Not literally, but in a figurative notion. He bet no matter how much it was physically abused, as long as whatever kind of soul nodes powered the enchanted item weren't destroyed, it would forever be able to repair itself.
'That's got to be it.'
Nico moved on to the next on the list.
Memory: [Severed Vertebra].
Memory Rank: Ascended.
Memory Tier: I.
Memory Type: Tool.
Memory Description: [A fractured piece of spine; a shattered peace in time.]
Nico exhaled. The Spell certainly was a let-down at times. The [Severed Vertebra] really was nothing more than a useless bone that's description was as plain as its appearance. Or so it seemed. He'd figure out its meaning sometime later. They all had one.
Wasting the essence to review it physically was unnecessary for now.
'Onto the last.'
Nico conjured the [Herald's Locket].
Swirling sparks coalesced around his neck and cold metal brushed against his bare skin. The same stale curiosity scratched at his mind as he wondered what its enchantment might be.
He didn't bother reviewing its runes, though. The mystery here lay within the artifact itself.
'What will it show me, huh?'
Running his fingers along the chain, he grabbed the pendant and flipped it over in his hand. It sure was a beautiful piece of jewelry. It was like a silver teardrop.
Opening the locket, he once again regarded the cracked, clouded mirror and incised coin. Last time it had depicted him a sad figure marred by blood. If there was a difference now, it could clue him into its purpose.
Turning his gaze fully onto the mirror, he waited for the glass to clear, gazed into his reflection again, and found himself...
...A child — as young as he had been on that first unfortunate day and draped in a cloak of frost, his hair softly swaying in the wind.
He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of an infinite, flat field of snow, and in front of him was his shadow, cast long by the rising sun.
In the flat shape of his shadow's face was a pair of crimson flames flickered where eyes would've been, their light doing nothing to dispel the shadow. In fact, it only grew deeper, darker, and more material near its nurturing blaze.
Time seemed to flow by without purpose like sand loosed through a sieve, but no matter how much passed, the morning never gave way to day or night, merely swaying higher and lower in a pendulum of infinite twilight.
Yet despite the sights, Nico never looked at the sun or his shadow. His boyish face was unnaturally still. His now brown eyes were cold, demeaning, and cruel. But, above it all, he was... incomplete. Where one arm was vaguely distorted one moment, then gone the next, his shadow now held two. Where one foot disappeared in a cloud of snow, his shadow had gained another.
And where his lacked life — lacked the spark of desire — his shadow basked in it.