It is hot. Unpleasantly, stickily, searingly hot. The silver soldier is bathed in sweat before she's even begun, her sides and neck lathered and damp beneath the overwhelming spring humidity. Dominus lolls beside her, his tongue dangling so far from his mouth it's almost tripping him up. He is ill-tempered and abrasive, irritated by his bonded's sudden desire to traipse all the way across Helovia to this - as Nyx so eloquently puts it - sweaty ass-crack of a land.

But the aforementioned ass-crack serves a purpose. The silver hasn't fought in months, not since her tangle with the father of the twins (who she does not want to think about, the grey-eyed bastard), and she's feeling decidedly stir-crazy. Neither Oizys nor Enyo seems to need her much anymore, Libertad has disappeared completely, and d'Arcy appears to hate her. She is sizzling with frustration and self-loathing, and the best way to burn this off is by fighting. Not only fighting, but fighting in this god-awful place, where the air is thick enough to touch and her lungs burn after just a few steps, where her stamina will be pushed to its limits and her resolve thoroughly tested.

It is her version of pennance. This is her Hell, and she is descending to the ninth circle of it to do her time for the crimes she's committed. She wants sweat, blood and pain, she wants brutality, she wants to hurt for what she's done. She is a failure of a mother, a liar, an unworthy herdmember unfit to bear the title of General. She deserves to burn, and burn she will.

Her hooves touch the edge of the water that seperates her from the Riptide Isles, and unlike last time she was here (when entering the dreaded water filled her with ice-cold terror), she steps into it freely and happily. She's so hot that her fear of water can take a back seat, and even when her feet fully leave the ground she fights down her misgivings and simply revels in the cool liquid against her skin. Dominus clings to her hindquarters, holding his head as high out of the water as he possibly can and complaining loudly all the way across.

Finally, both mare and lion touch down on the Isles, and Nyx swiftly finds herself a small, rocky beach on which to conduct her battle. Her sopping skin soon dries in the heat, the cloudless sky doing nothing to hide the rays of the sun, and after she's caught her breath she lifts her head to the heavens to bellow her battle-summons. "Someone fight me - and quick, because I'm sweating my balls off here!" At her lion's quizzical glance upwards, the mare adds a snort for good measure; these are metaphorical balls, of course. Hardly the most conventional of battlecries, but Nyx is not the most conventional of women.