Re:Cursed

Chapter 162 158: Spine Extension

Nyxala didn't bother returning to her room. If the next mutation was even half as messy as her ears, then she would come running right back. Besides, the fluid dribbling down from her six new antennae was quick to dry, crusting along her neck. She wasn't leaving without taking a bath.

Her fingers brushed between tendrils as she stared at them in the mirror. She tried to force them to stay steady and not flinch back, but it was like trying not to blink with dust in your eye. They whipped back, settling along the back of her head just short of interlocking. Only by leaving her hands still for a few moments did her strange new ears to return to their natural state; springing out from her head.

Any hood or headband would hide them well. Not something that could be said for what she felt from the next crack Nyxala was determined to open.

She pressed her hair into the side of her head. The mould would help heal the raw skin surrounding her new sensory appendages while her mind was elsewhere.

The prospective mutation she trailed her mental touch over was a rather odd. There were subtle, trailing cracks from an already opened section of the remnants of Oth leading to the tail, yet the mutation lay entirely in Ine's domain. It wasn't the only one like that, but there weren't nearly as many links to Oth, as there were to the depths of Ine.

In the few days she'd been almost locked away in the Technocult temple, Nyxala had spent a lot of time searching through her name. It didn't matter that her soul sense was far better than it had once been, the mutations hidden beneath the cracks of a thousand others were impossible to view. To even gather the concept of an idea to what they were, she would need to unleash all the mutations that connected to them. They were prerequisites.

Her tail was the same. One of the mutations she had already adapted through Oth was required for the tail to come through.

She could feel another prerequisite, but she was too enticed by the idea of a tail to bother with that.

Not wasting any time, she dug her fingers in the crack, straining to pull it open and reveal that which would be hers. She wasn't surprised to find it offered greater resistance than her ears. The three pairs of antennae had taken a few hours to push their way through her head, and this mutation would be no shorter. Especially with how much more mass she could feel from this crack in her name.

Regardless, she wanted that limb. Nyxala would tear open her name and take it no matter how long it took.

Nyxala wasn't entirely sure herself why she was obsessed with the idea of a tail. She just was. It wasn't based in any solid capability it might provide. After all, any strengths a prehensile tail might offer, her tentacles could do better.

The four of them quivered at her side. Clearly, they were proud she thought about them as such.

Like so many of the alien instincts that often associated her mutations, she simply knew she had to grow it. It was an entirely emotional yearning. One she hadn't been able to shake ever since she first sensed what lay beneath this sliver of her name.

When half an hour passed and she felt little more than a crack in the base of her spine, Nyxala decided that bath couldn't wait any longer. It was honestly surprising the Technocult even bothered to install one at all considering how many pipes they had running through their temple. Not to mention their obsession with efficiency. It was hard to imagine any technocultist opting for a bath over a multipurpose shower as with Tarchon's home.

As her lingering blood desperately fought off the foamy water in a gradual, but losing battle, Nyxala decided that this was leagues better than that uncomfortable bed to mutate. Her wings floated at her side. Each of her tentacles seemed to prefer stretching into the warm depths. Even Shy slipped out from its covering for once. They tread water, angling Nyxala in a slow drift across the spacious pool.

All the while, her lower spine adjusted to the change that was coming.

Nyxala could feel it. It had been almost unbearably uncomfortable until she snapped her long spikes down and dislocated her vertebrae. The pain disappeared, yet the sense of rearrangement in her lower back was unmistakable.

This would be no simple ball of fluff or stretch of boneless muscle. Nyxala's spine was extending. And so came her mutation.

Her hands poked curiously at her lower spine, but the first indication of change did not come with an extension from her backside. It appeared in the growth of her spikes. Where before, the length of each bony protrusion peaked at the middle of her back, and tapered off as it reached her hips, those lower spines were now lengthening to join her largest. Each almost the length of her forearm.

Compared to the messiness of her ears, the mutation was surprisingly pleasant… until it wasn't.

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Just when she'd gotten so comfortable with the slight shifting in her lower back that she was on the verge of dozing off, her spinal column shattered her pelvis and ripped through whatever skin or muscle was in its way. Immediately, she was floating in more blood than water.

It was a good thing she'd chosen to mutate in the bath, because between the agony and broken hip, there was no way she'd be walking. Not even on her tentacles.

More spikes sprouted, shredding skin as they followed the slow growth of her spine. They were the jagged teeth of the saw that butchered her lower back. For better or worse, Nyxala quickly lost all sense below her waist. She reached her hand back, and felt through the fleshy flaps that remained of her lumbar.

She touched bone.

Some muscle and ligaments clung to the vertebrae, but most of the spine — tail — remained uncovered bone. Nyxala couldn't help herself. Despite her paralysed lower half, and disgusting feeling of touching her spine directly, it was almost an obsessive impulse that forced her to feel how the bone tore through her lower back as it ever so slowly lengthened.

Nyxala floated for quite a while like that. Her wings kept her afloat while her lower half sunk like sacks of lifeless meat. There was nothing quite as unsettling as knowing you were being cut open and altered while completely unable to feel or see it happen. Instead of trying to count the number of vertebra that had already slipped from her torso, Nyxala leaned back and enveloped herself in the warmth of water.

To distract herself from the lack of sensation or thoughts of just how long her tail would grow, she listened. Unlike her human ears, her antennae didn't muffle noise. They didn't fill her head with the buzz of her blood. No, submerged as they were, it was almost as if she could hear the world with more clarity than ever.

The shift of her feathers across the foamy surface. The subtle hum of machinery somewhere below her bath. And, inescapably, the disgusting crack and ripple of her tail's growth.

She tried to ignore it, but the sound was everywhere. It drilled through her tendrils with more information than she ever needed. Not only could she hear the snapping of bone and the shifting waters as its length flicked around, but the sound came with direction. She could pinpoint exactly where it occurred.

Her tail sounded rather long…

Nyxala belatedly realised her head was submerged. Her eyes closed, and embracing the strange new way of hearing, she never noticed that she'd stopped breathing. Neither air nor void touched her lungs, yet she felt no difficulties. Curious. Putting her hands to her head and folding her antennae back, the need to gasp for breath ever so slowly took her. She let go of them, and the need dissipated.

Neat. She could breath underwater. Hard to say if that would ever be helpful.

What certainly wasn't helpful was the very slight taste of blood. Nyxala could seemingly taste through her antennae too, yet it was less effective than even her nose. If her blood didn't soak the bath so totally, she might have never noticed.

For a while longer, the process continued. Nyxala kept pressure on the crack, but it was difficult to determine just how much longer she would need to wait. Assuming the mutations would fix up her shattered pelvis when it finished. She really hoped that happened. The idea of crawling her way through the Technocult temple in search of something to kill didn't sound all that exciting.

Damn. And to think that at one point in time, she was considering mutations in Ine to help her in the midst of trouble. Oth had spoiled her. With growths she'd been able to push from the months they'd originally taken to mere moments, Nyxala had assumed that speed would apply to all.

Not to mention her current crippled state.

If she'd suddenly lost the sense of both her legs and tentacles during any of her recent fights… well, death would have been the best she could hope for.

After floating around all night, Nyxala was awoken with a heavy snap that jolted every nerve. She flipped. Instantly, the sense of her lower body came crashing back, but she was off balance. Unfamiliar with herself. Her arms whipped around and each tentacle flared back to life to right herself despite her sudden change in buoyancy.

Nyxala's skin was pruney from the prolonged bath, but she didn't let that bother her. She could feel her tail. At her command, it flicked to the side. An experimental sway as she searched for the appendage with her eyes, but the last thing she expected was for it to crash against the water hard enough to twist the rest of her body.

Pushy pulled Nyxala over the edge of the bath onto solid ground as she hooked her arm below the foamy surface and pulled her tail into sight for the first time. Immediately, she knew this wasn't what it was supposed to look like.

Bony and with only sparse muscle to cover it, the tail looked no different than what she might expect if her spine was torn directly from her back. Blood spilled everywhere. Porous, impaired arteries pumped from the heart to fill flesh that was not entirely there. Only the spikes protruding from the back seemed right. The rest? Incomplete.

The crack in her name struck a block, and no longer opened further. Nyxala was left with a half-complete mutation that ripped open her back and threatened to have her bleed out.

She rose to her feet — helped by her tentacles — and realised just how long the unfinished tail was. She stood at full height, and a metre from the bath's edge, yet the tip of her tail was still below the crimson-dyed foam.

Carefully, she tensed the new muscles she felt. With so much experience using her wings and tentacles, another appendage was simple to pick up. The tail expressed its reluctance with a spark of pain up her spine, but it lifted. Though it obviously lacked the muscle and fat it should, her new limb held its own weight. It was longer than she was. Almost reaching a full two metres from the point it slipped from her torso.

On unsteady legs, Nyxala ran through the airlock, glancing back only long enough to see the tsunami of obsessive blood getting blocked by the sealing door.

"Ta̽'Ș͑t̕r̊a͑ḷa̾͆n͙͂o̼͗v͐͐̿͝'r̝͇͎͓͜ ," she shouted as she charged to the main hall of the temple, doing her best to keep the extended spine from dragging along the ground behind her. "I need something to kill! Now!"

For the first time, Nyxala was somewhat glad for the obsessive blood. It stopped her from leaving a terrible mess in her wake, and actively suppressed how much she bled out.

Didn't stop her from running almost headfirst into an unfamiliar Technocultist. A man that absolutely wasn't blind to the mass of bone she dragged behind her.

Before either could speak, the near omniscient voice rang out from seemingly everywhere. "What have you done to yourself, girl?"