Re:Cursed

Chapter 145 144: Spoilt Children

Rhythm came to Nyxila with practised ease. Her feet: the thump of drums to her duet hymn. Each step came quick, striking glass in time with heartbeat and sung syllable. The song was indiscernible. Nyxila let the melody come naturally. Not a single lyric was comprehensible, nor familiar to those of her rituals, yet it rang with potency. Wherever these alien sounds originated, they narrowed her focus, and battle was suddenly all she knew.

A second wave of cold green fire sliced through space. Nyxila's foot crunched glass. She bound forward, towards Grifvoi, and right into the blaze's path. O̅ssuqul took care of the rest.

Her face prickled. A chill threatened to burn through skin and bone for a moment, until… the fire slipped behind her. Nyxila's body twisted through space itself to dodge, slipping straight through the blaze with nothing but a chill crawling down her long, hidden spines to indicate it had crossed her path at all.

She absolutely loved this new, upgraded version of her flexibility name. It only worked in bursts, but now she never had to give up her advantage. She never needed to slow down.

Nyxila slipped around the halberd, not even bothering to divert Grifvoi's swing, and thrust her rapier into the gap between ribs. Even with his flames accelerating his reactions, the boy couldn't move fast enough to stop her. She struck dead centre.

Rhythm. Momentarily added weight due to Gov̝a. Ritual and N̚o̲th massively enhancing her body. With all that power behind her thrust, it should have pierced the boy's heart easily. Instead, with a bone-shattering crack, the boy was thrown back.

Nyxila didn't stop to narrow her eyes. It was obvious the weakness of his armour was amended after she showed how foolish it was to have gaps in armour. Her thin blade had make it entirely pointless then. Now, she would need to find a way around it.

That… or simply break through.

Grifvoi had kept his feet despite having been knocked a dozen metres through the air. Impressive, but the wind had been struck out of him. Nyxila would capitalise.

Never stopping, Nyxila thrust her blade towards the skull helmet's eye sockets before the boy had even slid to a stop. She would have buried her metal stick deep in the cultist's head, if not for a blade manifesting before her face.

She abandoned her attack. O̅ssuqul couldn't split her head through space so soon after its first use, but its flexibility remained. Nyxila twisted. While she jerked out of the path of the girl's blade, her momentum was too great. The blade sliced through her cheek. Pivoting on the toe of her boot, she spun her blade through Lysyra.

Predictably, the girl vanished.

Nyxila threw her knife as Lysyra reappeared. Unfortunately, she teleported again. There went the theory that there was a delay between when she could use the ability. Only to be driven home when she popped into existence already swinging for Nyxila's exposed kidney. With her rapier too far to block, she jammed it into the ground to twist her boot in a wide kick to the girl's head. She struck, but not before the blade cut her wing.

Four teleports in a second.

Any chance Nyxila had to press her advantage was gone. Grifvoi took the space given to him. Lysyra appeared opposite him, staring down at her pair of knives as if not comprehending how she hadn't killed Nyxila yet.

Nyxila crouched to pick up her sacrificial blade as it slid across the glass. It had struck a barrier rather than the grandstand she'd been aiming for, but her blade rebounded regardless.

Blood trickled across her face, bubbling over her eye. She immediately wiped at it with a sleeve, removing the liquid before it could get in the way. The cloth of her robe repaired itself. Nyxila's eye flickered between her opponents and the crowd. No one seemed to have noticed the feathers beneath. They were mostly black, and her armband worked well, but she couldn't help but worry.

At least her wings were now stronger than skin. Mere drops of blood trickled out.

This was going to be difficult. Nyxila had hoped to eliminate Grifvoi in that first strike, but now that it had failed, her worst case scenario was reality. Her opponents might as well have sealed their alliance in Nyxila's blood.

Lysyra would strike any time Nyxila exposed herself, yet she had no way to respond. Not yet. Not while Grifvoi could interfere. Those two working together made this vastly more difficult than it should be. And still, it was only going to get harder.

Grifvoi sang no hymn, yet the inscriptions burnt through the bone encasing his neck bright enough that his head took on the appearance of a skull floating in a blaze.

Heavy footsteps rang in concert with their echoes. Head low, fist in chest, she kept her blade close. Nyxila ran. Any other glass would have shattered beneath each powerful step as she charged the acolyte Scripture.

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Lysyra disappeared.

Nyxila leapt. Twisting, her back faced the black hole as the girl appeared above. A rapier swung. Lysyra didn't have the time to widen her eyes before the blade sliced through neck. The girl lacked the ability to think and move as fast as Nyxila did, yet she still exploded in white motes. Not a drop of blood fell as she teleported away.

Does Lysyra's name activate the moment she's in danger?

Boots hit glass, and Nyxila was back in her charge. Hardly interrupted. She couldn't see where Lysyra ran away to, but as long as the girl gave her a single second, Nyxila would be happy.

A second that Grifvoi might not give her.

The ritual came to its completion. From his neck, a bundle of bone, skin and fire bulged out. Grifvoi seemed to choke as his head was forced back and something crawled out with bones that skittered like legs. It spilled to the ground, and that's when Nyxila struck him.

She didn't have the time to poke around for some vulnerability, so she twisted her wrist and came at him head on. Between when her feet threw her forward, and she reached the Scripture, Gov̝a trippled her weight.

Nyxila slugged him in the face.

The crunch of bone beneath her fist. The satisfying way Grifvoi flung through the air and struck the amphitheatre wall and the gaping expressions of those above his slumped form. Even the explosion of noise that thrummed through her body felt great. It all made up for the sudden ache in her shoulder from the weight of her punch.

She wasn't done. He wasn't dead. Her healing Feat hadn't kicked in, nor had the Trial's grand ritual bestowed her its refresher. She took a step, preparing to leap forward, but instead of glass, found flesh.

Beneath her feet was no longer the small lump of bone and skin. In an instant, it had grown as large as her. Flesh spread around her feet, bulging and expanding and burning.

A bony spear barely covered in flaming flesh struck at her from within the mass. Nyxila hopped back, slashing at the appendage. Her rapier cut through cleanly, yet the damage did nothing to stop the growth of whatever Grifvoi had brought into this fight.

At first, the bundle of bone and flesh awash in green flame seemed formless. Vicious, barbed stingers grew outward, only to crumble and melt away into the blob to initiate more growth. A comprehensive shape soon appeared as the emergence of flesh slowed.

Standing at double Nyxil's height, what had appeared was a steed seeming formed of coiled serpents. There were no scales, nor the slimy flesh of a worm. It had skin, and coarse hair fitting of stallion, yet Nyxila could only see the constricting length of a rope knotted into a beastly shape.

The head — or absence of such — was the only place such form fell apart. Sprouting from the thick neck were a hundred stingers. Sharp bony spears that fanned and shifted along the beast's side with a majestic sway.

If only that was all.

Around its neck — before the body split — a solid ring of burning ivory formed a collar. The bone flared, and Nyxila noticed a spectral chain connecting the collar to another around Grifvoi's neck. The boy groaned, rolling over where he lay. He was hardly aware, yet that didn't stop the fire of his armour igniting along his ethereal chain.

The fire struck the steed before it could react. And react it did. A harrowing, sickly buzz filled Nyxila's ears as the creature tried to fight off the flames from digging any deeper than they already had. The sound was closer to a million wasps imitating a neigh than anything a horse could make.

A sound that only grew more distorted as the fire ate away whatever flesh made its throat.

Horsehair was the first to go. The blaze washed over its form and incinerated it all in the first wave. Flesh melted next. The muscles and skin that should hold its entire body together bubbled, froze, and shattered, before evaporating into nothing. Nyxil didn't need to hear the creature's cries to see how painful it was.

Eventually, all soft tissue was consumed by the green flame. Bones alone remained. Enshrouded in fire, the beast's cries silenced. It became a mimicry of what it once was, burning virid as Grifvoi's armour. Still, those stingers swayed in a deadly dance. Too many to keep track of.

"Fuck," Grifvoi groaned, finally rising to his feet. "How did your punch get stronger?" He rubbed his cheek, which she was delighted to see exposed, along with half his bruised and cut-up face.

Nyxila didn't bother to answer. He knew why.

"I was hoping to catch you off guard, but…" He shivered. "A second longer and I would have died."

His gaze hardened, and Nyxila noticed the flames burned the bones of his skull helm back into existence. The black void consumed his eye once more. Nyxila moved to rush forward, take him out before such a vulnerability disappeared.

Grifvoi straightened his back. His eyes burned. With a crack of his halberd against glass, the steed's spears lashed out at Nyxila.

"N̪ỷx̱ila, I don't care how strong you become." It was not fury in his eyes. Only an intense resolve had Grifvoi focus on her so earnestly. "I'll never lose again."

A mountain of stingers rained down on her.

Nyxila flipped over a dozen bone spears. She kicked off from one, slapping another with her knife as her rapier parried three in a single swing. Her heart-rate helped her see the dangers coming, but even then, there were simply too many. Kicking off two more, she fell hard, and pushing her hands off the glass ground, she flipped into a sprint.

She was fast. So much of her fighting style relied on it. While her hands, spine and feet now offered greater protection, the same could not be said for the rest of her human body. Once she got out of range of those stingers, she could reassess and reengage.

Nyxila was fast, but the horse was faster.

Even after a full second of a flat-out sprint, those spears continued to pester her. She battered four aside. Threw her hand in the path of one that would strike her throat. O̅ssuqul offered a brief escape, but they were instantly snapping down on her again.

Then, one struck with such timing that she couldn't deflect it in tune to her heart. Nyxila's harmony shattered and her speed cratered.

Slapping her sword and knife around her, she desperately tried to hold off the attacks and gain her rhythm again, except any time she got close, another faltered strike would throw her off.

The steed was getting better at disrupting her, and its attacks were only coming faster.

All Nyxila could do, was curse spoilt children.