Re:Cursed

Chapter 139 138: E͍p’H̰͂or̓r͛u

A resounding crack rang out from each footfall as Ep'Nanorschi stormed along the keratin bridge. The stitches through her upper lip snapped again with her snarl. Droves of lesser cultists scrambled to get out of her way — some deciding the acidic pit below was safer than being the focus of her wrath.

Ep'Nanorschi hadn't been this furious in a long time.

Usually, she enjoyed her job. No, that was putting it too lightly; she relished in it. Even the occasional back-stab and attempt on her life were good sport. They were to be expected of a thriving cult with competition to push them all forward. It was how she got where she was.

But this… today was different. Ep'Nanorschi could see nothing but foolishness, incompetence, and a sheer lack of any benefit for anyone besides the child who walked away holding more names than she knew what to do with.

Their cult gained nothing. And Ep'Nanorschi stood to take the brunt of accusation.

The death of an entire generation was not something they — or she — could could avoid retribution for. Besides three, all the most promising harbingers of this year were lost. The other cults wouldn't stand for it. She wouldn't have stood for it, had it been another cult.

Any child of talent had been in that Trial. The opportunity to pick up individuals for their cult had been taken, so her peers had better be damn certain this Lysyra of theirs was worth a hundred lives. More-so, because the girl Ep'Nanorschi had kept her eye on had been turned against them. Nyxil did not hide the hatred in her eyes well enough.

But what was most enraging, was that their human sacrifice stipulation would drop to accommodate the lost population. The other cults would face the same problem. Ep'Nanorschi all but expected them to come siege their borders in demand of replacements.

Her spine snapped involuntarily. The sound ricocheted tendon pillars and sunk into the deep pit below. A small crowd ahead flinched at the sound, all too familiar with the danger she posed. They split, making way for her, yet some remained to block her. Albeit, not of their own will.

"Create a path," Ep'Nanorschi growled, feeling her teeth slide up into a ring as her face barely held itself closed. "I will see E͍p'H̰͂or̓r͛u now."

One of three faces embedded in the wall of muscle slowly rolled cloudy eyes her way. Former cultists, now part of the Bodytwister Temple. Patches of skin offered only the thinnest of cover for their innards expertly woven into the underlying flesh of the hive. Both arms and legs, long since sacrificed, now ended in bulging tendons that spread through the wall.

"The seventh creed, E͍p'H̰͂or̓r͛u, has requested seclusion." Its voice was dull, lacking the personality of the man it had once been.

"I don't give two shits what a seventh creed has requested," she snapped. "Either open the way, or I'll tear you from your socket and dig my way with whatever little remains of your skull."

Stepping forward, she sunk her fingers into what had once resembled a throat, now just a bundle of nerves that connected the protruding head to the malformed collarbone. She could have announced herself, but she wasn't in the mood. The Temple Mind should have recognised her instantly, and never gotten in her way.

"Ep̽'N̺an̺o͐r̔sc͈hi̫͑," it choked out, the cloudiness in its eyes receding for a brief moment to reveal the deep seated fear of the man inside. "Eighth Creed. Veto authority granted. Standing order rejected."

The Temple Mind convulsed, its body shivered, muscles and tendons clenched through its barely human form and through the wall behind it. She reluctantly let go of the thing's throat, disappointed by how little blood flowed along her fingers. The mass of muscle opened the way for her. Ep'Nanorschi waited not a moment, striding from the hard bridge surface of fingernails and hooves, to the fleshy stairs. Above, pulled in by strands of muscle, the Temple Mind sank into the ceiling to become a living mural. Its eyes fogged once more. The soul, suppressed.

So twisted by corruption as the Temple core was, Ep'Nanorschi reached the target of her ire's quarters in mere seconds.

"You better have a damn good explanation for me, E͍p'H̰͂or̓r͛u." Her spine snapped again, making the man flinch as he worked over some squirming beast.

Dropping a pair of suture scissors and forceps, the small man sent a glare her way, making it clear how annoyed he was that she hadn't been blocked at the gate. Though, he wasn't the slightest bit surprised. "Could we not do this?" He waved dismissively, yet never took his eyes off her.

"You knew, didn't you?" A stitch snapped, splitting the bottom half of her nose. "You knew what slumbered under the pyramid."

"Of course." Ep'Horru shrugged, as if he hadn't caused one of the greatest blows to their cult in recent years.

"Yet you gave the Null Scar to me regardless." Another stitch split under the pressure of her snarl.

"Yes." He squared his shoulders and returned Ep'Nanorschi's glare, even as he stood a good four heads shorter than her. "The competition was too fierce this year, and someone just had to go and bring the Trials months earlier than we were prepared. We cannot lose the Grand Sacrificial Chamber. Not yet. It is too important. A single year group… is nothing so long as we retain our hold until the ritual is complete."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The final few stitches ripped free, and her inhuman jaw was let free. So much did she want to bite off the man's head. He wasn't a harbinger; not really. It would be as easy as swallowing a grape. But Ep'Nanorschi couldn't risk a internal war with his faction. Not now when all the other cults were ready to tear into their necks at the first sign of weakness.

Fuck, she'd been put in almost as bad a position as the Fleshsmiths.

…And by the man's unnatural confidence while standing in her presence, he knew it.

She knocked him aside and approached the bound chimera he'd been working on. It was a work of art. Even she had to admit that. Beautiful stitch-work that integrated such alien parts in a way that allowed it to struggle as if it were natural. Ep'Horru had put many hours of passion into this creation.

Ep'Nanorschi's teeth sunk deep.

With an almost musical flow of cracking knuckles, her fingers elongated. They slammed into the artistry and tore away chunks of flesh as easily as one would move water. Her head reared back, taking with it half the creature's neck. The chimera squealed. An impressive show of resilience as part of its spine had been torn free with her bite.

Strengthened fingers and shredding teeth made short work of the rest of the creature, yet it did little to sooth the anger she felt.

As the chimera was reduced to little more than a pile of miscellaneous organs, Ep'Nanorschi turned to the blood coated Ep'Horru. She'd made quite the mess. His gaze burned with hate, yet like her, he could do nothing. Only his frustration soothed her anger.

"Bring me Ly͚sy͚rã," she commanded as she wove her face into a human shape once more.

Ep'Horru looked like he wanted to refuse, but after Ep'Nanorschi licked the blood from her lips, he reconsidered. "Ly͚sy͚rã," he seemed to call to empty space.

In a flash of white particles, the girl in question popped into existence.

Ep'Nanorschi frowned. After all she'd seen in the Trials, she had a few thoughts about the girl in white's ability. The onomasticians would take a year to confirm. Maybe more; those cultists could be incredibly incompetent sometimes for how much prestige they had.

Lysyra, despite how obscenely complex her two names were, had disappointed Ep'Nanorschi through the Trial. For someone who could appear anywhere she wanted, she had an apparent reluctance for physical confrontation. Opting instead for trickery and traps wherever she could. It was far from her taste.

Such a shame the one that had shown an almost identical love of battle to Ep'Nanorschi had already made up her mind.

The young third evolution turned her attention to Ep'Nanorschi, and immediately the older woman narrowed her eyes. She could feel the weight of any gaze on her; how deep one pierced her soul. Something was odd about the girl's. It was different than what she'd felt back under the market arches, but… she couldn't put her finger on how.

"You don't ne-" Ep'Horru began to speak, only to be interrupted.

"Did you warn the other contestant, Nỷx̱il, of the danger? Or how to survive?" she demanded.

"How could I?" Lysyra glanced to Ep'Horru, not quite glaring. "I didn't know that trap would kill everyone."

Nodding, Ep'Nanorschi turned back to the short man. "And you never approached her in order to recruit her?"

He scowled. "With that insulting, arrogant speech of hers right after your offer? I would have preferred she died."

Ep'Nanorschi hummed. That little performance had been quite entertaining to her, and she only wanted to snatch up the vicious kid all the more for it. Too bad there were so many cultists with their heads up their own asses. Almost literally in Ep'y̶͗̽̆on's case.

"Then it looks like a little someone has not been so truthful about how she survived."

Going over her memory of Nyxil's story, the girl was very likely attempting to ignite the other cult's anger with them. Really, Ep'Nanorschi should be enraged at the discovery, but the anger didn't come. Instead, the amusement at the idea washed away the last of her anger at the man before her. By all the names she'd gained, she either felled the slumbering beast, or contributed enough to its death to be rewarded so generously. If she had told the truth, the girl would have found herself with an apprenticeship under any cult leader she chose… yet she hadn't.

It only added to the curious puzzle surrounding the girl and the Fleshsmiths' not so subtle plays for her.

"Was there someone else in the Null Scar? Or is she even more dangerous than we thought?"

Ep'Nanorschi could see where his thoughts were going even before he had them. "Don't you dare send assassins for her. We're in enough shit as is; we can't be caught altering the scales any more than we already have." Her eyes fell on Lysyra. "Just make sure this one doesn't lose. I don't need to tell you what the consequences will be if you damage our cult this much and fail."

Phosphortanis-Al'or spent most of her time in isolation, but that didn't meant their leader wouldn't appear to rip the man molecule from molecule as punishment.

Lysyra nodded desperately as if the threat had been directed at her, then disappeared in that plume of white.

Raising an eye at the short man, she asked, "Aren't you going to give her guidance?"

"I'll organise a weapon and resources for her, but the girl prefers to train her abilities alone." He glared at the space now voided. "I told you; pushing the Trial forward ruined our plans. Instead of the Champion we'd already chosen following our typical path, we had to go with a wildcard. Ly͚sy͚rã evolved those names entirely on her own."

Her spine twisted, bringing herself back down into her hunched, yet human shape. Still, she was taller than the other cultist. She turned and made her way out of the bloody room in a considerably better mood than when she entered. The last thing that pushed her back to her usual self was the promise that she would dismantle every damn Bodytwister in Ep'Horru's little posse the moment there wasn't any external pressure.

"Oh, and don't ignore the Scripture's champion."

"G͇rifv̪oi? He lost to Nỷx̱il. I doubt there's much to worry about."

"Sure, but he wasn't disqualified," she said. "The Scriptures will give the boy whatever resources he needs to take out both third evolutions he's up against."

"Both?"

Ep'Nanorschi let out a deep, visceral laugh that cut right through the man's confident stance, making him flinch. "Don't tell me you assumed Nỷx̱il would come into the Final at the same strength she was in the third Trial? That girl survived a Dark Star, and now she's the only survivor of a rouge Null Scar? Even I'd be wary of what she might be hiding."

With a grin, she slipped from Ep'Horru's quarters. She knew that girl would be interesting when she first saw her. Despite all the trouble her fellow cultists had caused, Ep'Nanorschi couldn't deny her growing excitement.