The destruction of Altador surrounds them. Nyx gazes out at it, taking in the sight: the rubble, the debris, the smoke and the dust. Somehow it all seems so far away, still, compared with the image seared into her mind of Ozzy, wrapped in chains, reaching out to her for help as he was carried off on the back of Vocivus. 

Even now, Nyx feels the urge to go after them. There’s a thrumming under her fur, a fizzing sensation beneath her skin screaming at her to use her powers, to chase, to fight, to move. To get out of the suffocating darkness of—

But when she blinks, she returns to Altador from the cold, desolate place she had almost withdrawn to in the back of her mind. The sounds of chaos and destruction rise up around her anew: Luxinia calling out for anyone injured, Styx barking as he sniffs out someone else buried under the rubble. There are countless other cries for help, too, some familiar and some not: an adult calling out for their child (a mother for a son, or a sister for her brother?); howling petpets, strays who have nowhere to go; high, shrill sobs of little children who don’t know what’s going on.

Nyx bites her lip. She can feel herself shaking, but tries to suppress it and push it away, dismissing it as useless residual anger. It doesn’t quite work, but she has to try and ignore it. Everyone—Tavi—had just wanted to help, but…

Her breath comes faster. Shallower. She tries to steady it, to calm herself, but the racing of Nyx’s heart is now almost as loud in her ears as everything else around her, and the sound of her panting breath is just making it worse. She has to focus—noise or no noise, there are people in need. She has to save them. She has to.

Just like she couldn’t save Ozzy.

“Yip!”

Bracing herself against the noise, scrunches her eyes shut and tugs on her antenna-ears, digging deep inside herself to call on that thrumming energy within as she stomps over to the first pile of rubble. The power of the void crackles inside of her, sparking and popping, and she focuses hard to try and smooth out the crinkles as she forms it into long, smooth tendrils that stutter and fade intermittently. She needs to focus, because there are people calling out for her to help—calling and calling and calling and calling—but—

A tug at her tail brings Nyx back to herself again, and all attempts to summon her powers fizzle out and dissipate. When she looks down, Juni is looking up at her, his glittering void-covered fur too bright in her eyes. She lifts a hand to cover her face, then turns away from her little friend to rush over to where a young Pteri’s tail is stuck under a crumbled statue.

“Yip? Yip yip?”

The Pteri flies away when Nyx frees him—good, no injuries to his wings—but there’s no time to celebrate. Nyx shakes her head and moves away, frustrated at how slowly she’s moving, and gets to work tossing stones and broken marble columns aside with her hands. “Not really,” she says, belatedly remembering to answer Juni. “I… I keep messing up. It’s getting to me. But there’s no time to let it bother me; there are people who need us.”

Juni whines. He flutters up to sit on Nyx’s shoulder, his fur itching as it brushes her cheek. It makes her skin crawl, and she jolts—not because she doesn’t appreciate the gesture, but because there’s something wrong with her right now, and it feels like every sensation is too much.

Luckily, Juni is the smartest Faellie in Neopia, so he hops off her shoulder the moment he realises she’s uncomfortable. “Yip…”

“It’s not your fault,” Nyx says. She pauses her rifling through the rubble to grind the heels of her palms into her eyes, then gets right back to it. She manages to summon a few void tendrils, but they fade after batting away a stray Shade, and it makes her growl in frustration. “It’s not anyone’s fault but mine. It’s always my fault, always…”

“Yip yip yip yip yip!” 

“Yes, it is!” Nyx’s voice comes out louder than it needs to, and she clamps her hands over her mouth as if that can retroactively soften her tone. Juni stares up at her, head tilted, and she lets out a quaking breath, trying to scrape the sob out of it before her friend can hear it.

“I’m fine,” she insists, even though Juni hadn’t asked this time. He doesn’t enquire further, either. He just scurries off, using his newly-acquired sight powers to seek out more Neopets in need, and points them out to Nyx.  

She follows Juni’s lead, and the teamwork helps to settle her—at least a little bit. The physical labour helps, too. Having something to focus on at least can quiet her mind for the time being, but Nyx can still feel herself trembling. It makes everything so much harder: she keeps dropping what she’s holding, she can barely focus on her powers, and her arm hurts—it’s still bleeding, she distantly notes. But that’s okay. She’s making some progress, at least, and that’s what matters, right? As long as she can save someone. Anyone. And it’s probably for the best that she can’t focus on her powers long enough to properly manifest her void tendrils, anyway, because every time one materialises she sees his face, panicked and scared and desperate to be saved, and she sees—sees that eye, and—

“Yip!” Juni points to another pile, and Nyx obediently heads toward it, breathing hard and fighting back tears as she rips away pieces of debris with her bare hands. She sinks down to her knees, and Juni comes up beside her, lifting away smaller stones himself.

“Yip… yip, yip yip,” he says, after a moment, still helping her dig.

Nyx grits her teeth. “Yeah,” she says, short. Another chunk of ravage gone. 

“Yip yip, yip yip yip yip. Yip.”

“I know!” Nyx pounds her fists against the pile of wreckage they’re digging through, and it nearly causes a miniature landslide. “I know I should. But it’s not that easy. I’m still mad at her, and I…”

“Yip yip, yip yip! Yip—”

“It’s not okay!” The sob that Nyx had been holding back before wrenches from her now. “How am I supposed to face her after what I said? I can’t even—”

Nyx’s heart has started racing again, pounding so loudly in her ears that she can hardly hear Juni over it. Her breath comes in short gasps; her hands shake more than ever. But through her blurred and streaking vision, she sees Juni pointing toward something—”Yip!”—and hears the same rrrrrumble and crack! as she had when she’d tried to reach for Ozzy. 

When Tavi had pushed her out of the way of a falling building.

Tavi!

That’s what—who—Juni is pointing at. When Nyx follows the line of his paw toward one of the few tall buildings left in Altador, she sees Tavi standing atop it, her arms wrapped around two small children who must have been stranded. 

“No!” 

Then she hears it: the telltale CRACK! and BOOM! of something giving way and breaking. Dust billows up from the ground at the base of the building Tavi’s standing on, where long, thick, jagged lines have cut through the clean white facade. On the roof, Tavi drops to her knees and pulls the children closer, bracing them—

Suddenly, Nyx is gone, her mind transported somewhere else entirely. A flash in the back of her mind, a split second of panic, and she’s back out in the far reaches of space with Juni, the moments right before her ship had pitched wrong and its walls and windows began to crack under the pressure systems’ failures. She had pulled Juni to her chest, wrapping his tiny frame in her arms and curling around him, trying to shield his body from impact. And then…

Then they had been lost, stranded in the emptiness of the universe before being sucked into the Void. 

Another rumble, and a shrill scream. Nyx is back again, then, her eyes wide and vision tunnelled in to focus on Tavi and the children on the building’s roof.

And then, as if in slow motion, the building begins to fall.

“Tavi!”

With a leap and a flare of energy, Nyx takes off. She rockets past Juni, careening through the ruined street to reach her destination. Shades fly at her, drawn in by the sudden movement, and without thinking, Nyx conjures up tendrils of void energy and bats them away with ease. They don’t matter. Nothing else does. All that matters now is one thing—one person who needs her, now.

Just like Ozzy had.

She skids to a stop before the crumbling building, barely taking any stock of the situation. The ever-widening cracks in the front of the building don’t even register to her, nor do the chips of stone and marble dropping from above. They should hurt, but Nyx can’t feel any pain—all she can feel is the drive to move. The building tilts dramatically toward her, and Nyx backs up, stretching her arms out and conjuring the power of the void.

“Jump!” she cries, reaching for her friend and the kids she’s protecting with open arms and tendrils both. Tavi doesn’t hesitate: she pulls the children with her and jumps off the roof of the building. Nyx leans up, begging and pleading with her powers to just stay stable long enough to save someone, just once—

A tendril wraps around Tavi and the kids, curling safely and securely around the three of them. Nyx grimaces through the staring, but she’s grinning, too. They’re safe, they’re safe, they’re—

She sets them down on the ground a short distance away, where nothing can get to any of them. Tavi straightens up, checking on the children to make sure they’re all right, and then turns to Nyx, her eyes wide and teary. 

“Nyx!” 

Nyx releases the void energy and laughs as she starts to run toward her friend, relief flooding through her every bit as much as the renewed hysteria of almost losing someone else. 

But it’s not over yet. Distantly, Nyx registers that pieces of the building are still coming down around her, pelting her skin like hail on concrete. She thinks it should hurt when she realises what’s happening, and she expects to feel the pain of their impact, but all she feels suddenly is a strange, otherworldly cold seeping in through her skin.

The last thing Nyx sees before the building crumbles is Tavi reaching out to her.