Re:Cursed

Chapter 132 - 131: The Trigger

Nyxil abandoned her weapon. Both halves of her skulk shroud clung desperately to her as her wings flung her backwards and her tentacles snapped free.

There was no time to think. No time to process whether it mattered or not that she'd exposed her mutations. All she could do was desperately heave herself out of the way of the second solar flare. Tentacles pulled her up the scaly wall. Her legs burnt. Her feet melted.

As the wave of intense heat washed below her, it ate through wax and scale before igniting the rotting flesh within. Tongues of fire exploded from the eyes and nostrils. She felt the rapid rise in temperature with each press of her tentacles against the embalmed.

Nyxil's chest throbbed. Her neck and stomach tensed under the engine-like thrum of her heart. Such an intense rate was just as likely to burn her from the inside, akin to the beast beneath her, but she couldn't let it rest. The unsustainable rate was all that let her react in time.

Sekhhath'Ra tossed her sword to the side. Three thick notches marred the blade halfway down its length. This was the same blade that could handle the full strength of her chitinous hands without damage.

With a flip and a beat of her wings, she took to the air. Nyxil had seen how easily the solar flare had chewed through the huge beast; she wasn't even going to try and use what remained as cover.

Her eyes twitched to the smouldering, bloody remains of the other harbinger hopefuls. She didn't know what she hoped, but nothing lived. Even the micro-tank frame of Buddy was now nothing more than a puddle of metal surrounded by crimson.

It was good that they were dead, but… she couldn't help the twinge of discontent. The choice had been stolen from her.

Before even a millisecond had passed, she snapped back to the threat. No matter how jittery her heart made her, she couldn't make such a lethal mistake. He hadn't moved. Thankfully, he just watched her.

Not so thankfully, his sulfuric, burning eyes were horrifying.

Her heart stuttered, and the agony that swept through her chest was enough to make her melted, burnt feet feel no more painful than a stubbed toe. The engine in her chest stabilised, but it appeared the mutation didn't stop her from having heart attacks. At least her feet could be fixed easily.

Well, probably.

She found the mutation in her name, and snapped open its binds. Immediately, her charred shins and ankles melted away. Not because of heat. This time, the skin slipped into a bubble of sludge. It didn't immediately reform her feet — or whatever they'd been replaced with — but it did stop the pain.

Nyxil ignored when the slime ejected a disgusting mix of bone and blackened flesh.

"You are quite the specimen." Despite the distance she'd gained, Sekhhath'Ra's words reached her as if spoken right besides her ear. "Fifteen thousand years ago, I would have taken you as a trophy and had a grand monument built in your image." He raised his sceptre. "Alas, the will of the Greater One no longer allows such luxuries."

The glowing staff's pommel struck stone. Another wave of heat repelled the darkness as it rocketed towards Nyxil. Having seen the attack coming, she'd beat her wings and flown out of the way… yet the flare curved dangerously through the air, stealing back the space she'd opened. As her body was emblazoned by unsettling light, her skin dried and cracked.

Barely, the storm passed her by. Ossuul was pushed to its limits, and curled her body out of the inferno's path just enough that she avoided crippling injury. That wasn't to say she was unhurt. With a beat of her wings, she extinguished the flaming feathers.

Darkness rapidly enclosed on her once more. Even as she ripped the shroud from where it clung to her shoulders, she only saw the wall a few seconds before she would have hit it. The shadow was thicker. Her third eye couldn't penetrate anywhere near as deep. Sekhhath'Ra alone glowed through the clinging air, his towering form a silhouette surrounded by light. Those burning eyes were the only thing she could see with clarity.

They never left her.

As Nyxil skimmed the outer stone wall, she scanned for a way out. No matter how strong she'd grown, she couldn't imagine taking on a being with… what? Fourteen evolutions? It was unthinkable.

She cast her name sense towards the monster to make sure, but as soon as she reached the inside of his silhouette, she became blind. Something — an additive? — obscured where his name was. There would be no testing his power. No unleashing curses. Not unless she wanted to spend half an hour searching through the very intentional murkiness.

She needed to escape, but there was none. Fountains of stone dust raced after her from where her third eye had chewed through the walls. Unlike the other hidden doorways, these lacked cracks and divots. There was no hidden latch.

Her mind spun. What could she do? Now that they were intent on her, the Eternal Pharaoh was not about to lose track of her; not even with her skulk shroud. Nyxil's options were fight or flee… yet they both seemed equally impossible. Her blade was lost in the dark — somewhere near the feet of the Pharaoh — but even with it, she struggled to imagine how she'd hurt the being before it incinerated her.

The last thing Nyxil wanted to do was open another Dark Star. It had taken years for a hit squad to free her from the last one… but this time none of the cult leaders had any reason to collapse it. Not only would they see no reason to save a bunch of young acolytes — cult champion or not — but they were also in a Null Scar; it could be closed and forgotten as easily as sweeping some loose trash under the bed.

And worst of all, the Pharaoh would be in there with her.

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Nyxil tossed the idea. Not unless there was literally no way out. She had no way to know if there was, but she would achieve nothing if she didn't try. Her eyes flicked around. Desperately, she searched the thickening dark for something she could use. Some way to escape the clutches of this ancient omnicidaire before she became one of the many.

Sekhhath'Ra raised his sceptre. Light shimmered brilliantly as it grew in intensity, yet the shadow that lingered everywhere else only seemed to darken further.

He was only moments from unleashing another solar flare. Nyxil no longer had the luxury to search for a clean path out. She needed to take a chance.

With a beat of her wings, she barrelled towards the nearest wall. She spat in her hand as they grew to claws. Acid spilled over chitin as she clenched her pincers; their clamping strength wouldn't be helpful here. Each of her four tentacles wrapped around her arm, bracing it and pulsing in time with her echoed hymn. Nyxil didn't even remember when she'd begun the melody, just that it flowed with a rapid beat.

The wall came at her almost too fast to react. Her wings beat. Each tentacle tensed. She sung. With learned fluidity, every part of her body she could control contributed to the harmony as her claws struck stone.

Nyxil's blow reverberated up her arm so heavily she was certain her bones would have fractured if her tentacles hadn't so exuberantly taken in the recoil.

Her chest thumped against the wall as deep fissures cracked outwards. Nyxil had succeeded in breaking the stone, but the wall hadn't crumbled. She was now stuck with her arm shoulder-deep in the wall. Yanking her arm did nothing. Even enhanced by rhythm, her human muscles were weak.

"Pitiful."

As Cuddly freed her arm and Pushy slapped the wall, demanding it fall, Nyxil twisted her head. She watched the sceptre strike the stone once more. She watched the explosion of plasma as it whipped across the hall.

Nyxil hadn't regained her feet — she didn't have feet to regain — and was caught unprepared as she leaned against the wall on both Curious and Shy. Her wings beat desperately, but there was no escaping in time. The desperate ploy to break through the wall had not resulted in her freedom.

Even as the rolling yellow blaze streaked towards her faster than she could move, Nyxil's fear melted away to frustration and anger. The Trials were never supposed to be a breeze, but they should have been calm compared to her past years of struggle. And now she just happened across some ancient evil bent on the destruction of all life?

It's like there's some omniscient being determined to interfere with my life. Nyxil glared down death as it approached. Oh right! There is.

Questions of the Eidolon's incomprehensible intent aside — or if this encounter was somehow manufactured by them at all — Nyxil only had one path to survival. One she was not happy to be forced into once more.

Casting her gaze inwards, Nyxil clutched the thick bundle of curses, and wrenched it open. Corruption flooded outwards. It slipped through her body as if she wasn't there, and exploded though the throne hall. In an instant, her endless hurricane of corruption slipped through the darkness, binding with it, twisting it into something entirely different at its core. An abyss.

A tsunami tore out from her, tearing towards the solar flare. The two crashed. Like waves, they disrupted each other, but the flare continued. Warped, its burning tongues seared the black stone of the ground and ceiling, peeling them like the skin of a fruit. Left behind, was crystallised blood. A pure, immense red diamond that filtered the eerie yellow light of the sun outside.

The solar flare hit her. It rushed through her with all the power and heat that had killed so many acolytes only moments ago. By all means, the plasma should have killed her as well… but the Dark Star's corruption had already taken hold.

Instead of burning or melting, Nyxil's body crystallised. For a moment, she froze, thinking this was her end. Then, she moved her arm. Despite the entire world suddenly becoming an endless blood crystal — like blood drops — her hand moved effortlessly. The solid diamond shimmered. Thousands of shards warped around her arm, twisting the acrid light in a million directions.

The light folded around her, until an entire section of the endless red diamond was left unlit. The darkness stood out. Nyxil couldn't look away from the piercing black. Slowly, a subtle hiss escalated until the immense clatter of shifting crystal was distinct. Before her, the world of red diamond fell away like grand waterfalls. Lost to the abyss.

Nyxil braced herself. She knew what came next. Twice had she unleashed Dark Stars, and twice had she been seen.

The Eidolon.

But before the countless stars could open their eyes, a fracture occurred. The universe shrunk. Each bare hint of stellar dots littering the abyss faded and the darkness crept in. Nyxil felt pressed. Choked. Something was pressing down on her.

"What insanity have you pulled?"

In an instant, the impossible world of corruption collapsed. Nyxil landed, unharmed, back in the throne hall, yet some of the… alterations had lingered. Pillars of blood diamond now stood where they hadn't moments ago, reflecting light from a sun she couldn't see. The corpses of the Trial participants had each taken on the wax of the embalmed, yet the same sickly yellow as the sceptre. And instead of the giant embalmed, a beast of crystallised fire now stood. Glowering. Intimidating, yet frozen.

It had regained its life in the few moments of the Dark Star, yet with its disappearance, so had the huge crocodile returned to death. The embalmed was no more; now it was an effigy of solar fire.

Most unsettling of all, was Sekhhath'Ra. He hadn't changed. No, what made Nyxil gape was the dark sphere he fought to contain within his hands.

The sceptre had been discarded. All of the Pharaoh's attention was on the orb that pulsed with miniature black solar flares each second. He held her Dark Star in his bare hands.

He suppressed it.

Before Nyxil could even think to use his distraction against him, the ancient ruler let one arm free of the Dark Star and pointed at her. She snapped through the air. In an instant, she was held by the head and left to dangle before him. Sekhhath'Ra paid no mind to her struggles or Pushy's attacks. He lifted the black sphere, and shoved it into her chest.

Nyxil gasped. As her Dark Star was shoved back through the gates of her name, she struggled not to choke. It was as if her stomach was being fed by first filling her lungs. Her name tried to push against his intrusion, but a second evolution could do nothing against the sheer might of a fourteenth.

When he pulled away, there was an ever so slight tendril of his soul that slid from the surface of her name. For Sekhhath'Ra to have shoved the Dark Star back within her, he had to have some sort of ability to manipulate souls or corruption. She latched her sight to the tendril.

He didn't seem to notice.

"I have misjudged the circumstances." The Pharaoh's gaze no longer looked at her as if she was filth stuck in the joints between exoskeleton segments. "You and your ilk are not a test. You are the Eidolon's invitation."

Nyxil knew that look all too well. It was the same greed and depravity that the cult leaders once held when looking upon her. Not even the difference in species could hide it.

Sekhhath'Ra's soul tendril guided her sight through the murky haze that surrounded his name. It took her right towards it. And not just any part of his name. The tendril joined a dozen others in suppressing one of the largest name bundles she'd ever seen.

Hanging from the hand of an ancient world destroyer, Nyxil couldn't help the grin that spread across her face.

"When picking up this invitation, you forgot to check for a trigger."

Sekhhath'Ra, who was more curse than name, felt twenty thousand years of accumulated hate, despair, and vengeance unleash all at once.