Re:Cursed

Chapter 148 - 146: Slaughter State

The burning pile of bones in equine form barrelled across the Grand Sacrificial Chamber towards Nyxila. Grifvoi sat atop its back, double his normal height. With all the swaying spears flaring around his glowing, armoured form, his appearance was nothing if not formidable.

He knew that he now held the upper hand. His bound beast cut through Nyxila's rhythm and speed as if that was all it had been created for. Whether she'd gained a new evolution or not, she could do nothing against Grifvoi.

So why did she rush to meet them?

Nyxila didn't know. Her strategy should be to play to her strengths; slip around the edges with her speed and strike when there was an opening. Maybe slip through the spears with O̅ssuqul, and get another hit on Grifvoi.

But her body compelled her aggression. Each wound and ache's call to lay down and stop moving had been replaced with a demand to attack. Natural self-preservation had been supplanted by something else. Something that called for slaughter. And the two lives coming to meet her were an affront to this new primal instinct.

She knew it was dangerous, but it suddenly didn't matter. The only way to survive was to kill. And she would kill until her survival was assured.

Nyxila swung her blade at the first spear. The bone fractured, and was knocked off course, along with the second that she battered with her arm. O̅ssuqul let her slip past a dozen, but the creature had learnt to pace its strikes. Five more came. She deflected them all, continuing on a direct path to her prey.

Then, her rhythm was shattered. Again.

A stinger drilled through her thigh. Momentum carried her down its length, like fabric to a needle. Or, more aptly, a trolley shattering around a protruding girder. No matter how desperate her body was to scramble forward and kill, it could not deny reality. Three more spears thrust through her body. One in the shoulder, and two in the stomach.

The stallion's weight crashed into her all at once. She was jerked from a full sprint to sudden reversal. Whatever wasn't pinned by stingers was thrown forward. Legs, arms… the amount of whiplash to her head would have snapped her neck if her spine wasn't so sturdy.

Even after tripling her weight, she came nowhere close to their combined mass.

Still galloping across the glass, Grifvoi's mount lifted Nyxila into the air ahead of it. All hundred spears surrounded her, ready to leave her a shredded slab of meat.

"You did well last time, but that will never happen again," Grifvoi gloated. "Surrender."

The words didn't reach Nyxila. Frozen burns spread from each flaming bone piercing her body. They gnawed at her. They brought her ever closer to death with each second they remained.

Nyxila couldn't see the world around her anymore. She could only see Grifvoi and his mount, in more detail then she ever desired. She caught the way each flicker of green fire danced along bone grooves. Her ears caught the Scripture's every breath, the thump of his still beating heart, and the scrape of each spear tendril as they slid over one another. Even her skin became hyperaware of each touch.

Her free hand dropped to one of the spears in her stomach. She clutched it. Grifvoi stared down at her pityingly. She could taste the sense of superiority flowing off him. It was acrid, and burnt a hole in her tongue.

She squeezed, and the bone shattered.

Staring deep into his eyes, Nyxila caught the exact moment Grifvoi — or the fire that accelerated his thoughts — realised that the fight was not yet over. No matter how close to death she was. Those little balls of combustion wavered. A tiny flicker that should have been impossible to spot.

But once the slaughter began, there was little he could do to stop it.

Except die.

The instant the bone shattered, Nyxila's heart rate exploded past anything she'd dared attempt before. The agony in her chest threatening a heart-attack only fuelled her desire for slaughter further. It was a feedback loop that isolated her mind on a single thought, and gave her all the time in the world to focus on it.

Her rapier fell on the tendril pinning her leg, and sliced through it with an explosion of bone fragments.

Nyxila could no longer keep her focus enough to garner a rhythm. Yet it did not matter. Her muscles, joints, and bones had all been handed a decree: kill at any expense. Every restraint for her own safety had been well and truly removed.

Either she would kill, or destroy the last of her body in the attempt.

As she sliced through the spear pinning her shoulder, her hand gripped the second through her stomach. Instead of crushing the bone, she tore it free. Blood spurt out, but quickly slipped free from the spear and trailed back towards her.

It was quick, but not nearly enough to catch up with Nyxila now.

Her limbs struggled to follow the speed at which they received commands. The spear in her hand twisted, driven straight through the neck of the horse, yet the motion was sluggish. Nyxila fell, but even the ground wouldn't rise fast enough.

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The bound beast finally reacted to its tendrils being destroyed, and sent the hundred stingers in to shred her.

What had only moments ago been a swarm of deadly weapons fast enough to consistently interrupt her rhythm now trudged through space like grounded leech-spawn. It would be almost too easy to slip past them and escape.

Of course, Nyxila did nothing of the sort.

Her blade whipped around, slicing through spear after spear. Not a single one offered any significant resistance. She grabbed another, using it to pull herself upwards at the same time she crushed it into flaming powder. Already balled into a fist, she threw that hand into the path of another tendril. It exploded into a shower of shrapnel. Many of which battered against Grifvoi's armour.

Nyxila dropped her hand to one of the severed spikes still lodged in her body, and with no care to the damage it did on the way out, ripped it free. Her wrist barely moved, and the spear rocketed towards the Scripture.

Three more fell to her blade, before impatience got to her and the rapier soared through the air following the spear she'd thrown. With her weapon gone, she threw herself into an outright brawl. Each swing of a fist caused a tendril to explode. Every so often she grabbed one and, with a jerk of her arm, tore it free of the beast's neck.

By the time the spear struck Grifvoi, Nyxila had carved away a third of the beast's deadly extremities.

Only by luck had his polearm been close enough to the severed stinger's trajectory for Grifvoi's to deflect it. His enhanced reaction time barely managed. Even then, the power of the impact threw his body back, almost sending him off his mount. When he finally recovered and looked down, Nyxila was gone. At least until his bound beast was thrown off its feet.

Growing fed up with how much she was breaking and how little life she was taking, Nyxila narrowed on the core of the closest life. She grabbed a fistful of tendrils in both arms, and yanked herself towards her target. Both spears ripped free. Nyxila struck the front of the beast below its neck only an instant after her flying rapier had buried itself through a dozen coiling bones. Her impact thrust the hilt deep inside.

She unleashed a flurry of blows on the equine chest, but gained nothing but shattered bone and a whole bunch of white powder exploding around her. She was doing damage, but it wasn't enough. Her soul demanded more.

Her mind still couldn't focus on anything but unleashing death on the creature before her, but there was a little whisper that lingered. An instinct she'd ingrained into her very body. There was no conscious acceptance of it, hardly even an acknowledgement of its existence, but slowly, with each punch, rhythm returned to her onslaught.

The next dozen punches significantly rose in power as they struck to a pattern. And yet, it still wasn't enough to satisfy her gluttony. Keeping up her harmony, Nyxila kicked off the chest of the horse that could do nothing to fight back. Her body flipped in the fraction of a second it took to fall, and her boots struck glass. Every part of her body and soul flowed into her leap. Whether trained instinct or something more, she didn't have the state of mind to consider.

Nyxila crashed into the underbelly of the beast, and knocked it off its feet.

Grifvoi didn't have the time or wherewithal to do anything about it. The nightmarish horse buckled beneath him, flipped backwards, and crushed him beneath its weight.

He let out a scream of pain. The armour had saved him from a quick death, but his leg had gotten stuck at an awkward angle. At best, it was broken.

Nyxila hadn't let up even a millisecond after impact. Her fists pounded away. Even as green fire burnt and froze parts of her body solid, she continued to rip away at the upturned beast's bony innards. To the eyes of her many onlookers, she was just as much a beast as the creature she dug through.

Finally, Nyxila found the core of the beast. A thick spiral of bone that protected a heart enshrouded in virid flame. It was the only thing of flesh left in the creature.

Once in her hand, the equine lived only a moment longer.

The bound summon had nothing left in it to manifest another pained screech as it had when it burned, but the trembling of its bones gave the impression anyway. Whatever held the countless bones together without its flesh was gone. Nyxila was buried in a pile of bones, only for them to burn away in the next second.

She didn't care. As soon as one life was gone, she turned to the next. Grifvoi scrambled away. With his halberd as a crutch, he reached his feet and hobbled. There was terror in those eyes.

Nyxila could feel her body weaving itself back together. The two spears still lodged inside her spat themselves out and what were once fatal injuries became little more than lacerations. As her Feat flowed through her, they would continue to heal.

Grifvoi's heartbeat thumped loudly to her ears. Still right where she'd driven her sword through, so that mention of a surgery must have been an effort to mislead. But now, without his summon and a crippled leg, he had no way to stop her from cutting him open as many times as it took.

Slowly, her heartbeat slowed and her body reinstated its safeguards. Like the Survival stage of Lýotep — because that's what she now knew this was, her Feat — the effects of Slaughter lingered even after what triggered it disappeared. At least now, she had some space to think beyond just murder.

Only some. Grifvoi still had to die.

"W- Wait. I surrender." The Scripture's pleas fell on deaf ears. Nyxila was not of the mind for mercy.

Reclaiming her rapier from the pile of dust, she strode over to the Champion. With the pace of her heart still above safe levels, Grifvoi might as well have been standing still. She reached him in an instant, kicked away the halberd, and watched him collapse to the ground. She threw a punch in for good measure, ripping open half his skull helmet and inflicting a deep gash through his neck.

He hit the ground and curled in on himself. It was a pitiful display. All his power came gifted from another. How did he ever become known as the strongest harbinger of her year when he could do nothing stripped of those gifts?

Nyxila raised her rapier as her heart rate slowed to a somewhat safe — albeit anything but normal — pace. The head or heart? She could hardly decide.

It was only when Lysyra suddenly appeared and drove her knife into Grifvoi's exposed neck did she remember the girl's existence. This girl, of anyone, should have been the one to gain recognition as the strongest. What had changed?

Wait, how had she forgotten Lysyra? Even with Grifvoi's horse, she was the greater threat. Someone Nyxila had been beyond alert for sudden appearances… up until she'd entered the near mindless state induced by her Feat's new ability.

It had worked out for the best, but the downsides of that Feat were incredibly dangerous.

Nyxila wasn't surprised when Lysyra disappeared again after Grifvoi stopped breathing. The Trial's ritual reacted and bestowed her the boost that had been promised to whoever knocked out the first contestant. She was frustrated at the theft, of course, but Nyxila had her own refresher from her Feat, so it mattered little.

Turning to face her second challenge, Nyxila stiffened. In Lysyra's fingers, rolled around like it was the most interesting thing in the world, was a feather. A red-tipped black feather.

Nyxila's feather.

"You know, I wasn't aware humans grew feathers." Lysyra's voice reached her, but her lips never moved. "Nor had slime for feet for that matter."