Re:Cursed

Chapter 177 - 173: Head On

"I'd never dare stick my nose where it didn't belong," Lysyra whispered, her voice lilting in a way that made sure Nyxala knew she absolutely would. "But by the gaze of the Great Iris, what have you got in that tail? You hit with more weight than a full speed trolley. But still, are you sure we can take them? It's going to be harder now that they know we're here."

Nyxala put her hand in the girl's face and pushed her away. She was somewhat surprised that Lysyra remained physical and stumbled back rather than burst into motes as she tended to.

"They're a little much, sure. But I lost three names to an evolution and I still haven't been able to figure out what it gave me." Nyxala pulled herself up the shelf by her tentacles. "This is the challenge I need."

As she slunk behind a pile of metal framework that reached the ceiling, the door to the shadows sat out in her sight. An errant thought struck. Maybe she didn't need to survive forever in the shadow of Coral, but to simply use it as a weapon. If Nyxala could drag these Scriptures into the phantoms' lair, it would simply be a task of outsurviving her enemies.

"I'll go for Ezaltena. I think she's the bigger threat, and I'm not so sure I'll be able to assassinate either Varrus or Chaz," Lysyra said. "My knife didn't make it that deep, and the latter has a rather powerful healing ritual carved into his face. I've seen it before."

Nyxala paused. With a grunt of annoyance, she dropped herself from the top rung. Her boots thudded audibly, and through a dozen storage racks the cultists each snapped their heads her way.

Guerrilla tactics? Using the shadow to hunt? Letting Lysyra backstab them while they were distracted? These weren't a challenge. Nothing besides assuring their victory, and her own safety. Nyxala knew that if she were to follow any of these plans — or all of them — she would come out with four heads. It would take time, she might even get injured, but against this squad? She wouldn't lose.

But it also wouldn't push her to grow.

"Change of plans. Stay out of the fight unless I look like I'm about to die and am in no situation to get a kill."

Nyxala stepped into a long aisle. In a few moments, the Scriptures would turn the corner and find her out in the open. Unshrouded and unhidden.

Besides her, Lysyra seemed like she wanted to protest, but gave in before the words reached her lips. Instead, she gestured to Nyxala's brows, where she knew a pair of eyes hid. "Those do anything fancy, or are they just there to offer more places to poke?"

"In a roundabout method, it lets me see through walls," she said. Nyxala would have told her about pink as well, but she hesitated. How exactly would she explain that? She herself didn't even understand the mutation or how it affected her.

"Huh?" Lysyra stared at her face, taking in the alien way her eyes opened and closed. "Well, don't get killed."

The harbinger squad turned a corner thirty metres away, and locked eyes on Nyxala and empty space where her companion had instantly vacated.

"Won't happen." Her voice brimmed with confidence. "I'm not dying until the cults are gone."

Nyxala's tail snapped off the floor. She pierced through the air in an instant, twirling around the flying scroll and ignoring the explosion that charred her feathers. She embraced its force. It pushed her ever faster into those who thought they'd best her.

The only way she'd face enough of a challenge to bait out the use of her new name was to take them head on. O̅s̫stho̲th wouldn't assist skulking or assassinations. It was a name comprised of parts that embraced her body in the heat of motion. Direct battle was the only way.

She cut down two more vitiate beasts as she rocketed through the air before an explosion at her side sent her crashing through a shelf. The thin metal framework snapped, and boxes of sharp carving instruments fell on top of her.

The tools cut into her back, but she didn't stop. Momentum carried her until her wings found their hold again with the help of tentacles and tail, and she swung around to attack them from the side.

Nyxala had lost some strong names, sure, but she still had her strongest. Lýotepͦ had shown what it could do in the Trial. Now, she had to place her trust in it, and not fear the tightrope at the edge of death she needed to walk.

Once parallel with the cultists, Nyxala turned and crashed through the shelving that separated them. She was on top of them now. Her claws were wide, ready to slice through bone while her tentacles flared around her. Pushy even wielded her rapier.

Varrus held the front of his unit; the three others deferring to his lead and slipping behind him. Nyxala knew whatever was coming was going to be painful. She knew, but that didn't stop her. Acid, blade, claw and teeth. Anything that could dig a hole through the man's head, she tried it.

Instead of throwing out another exploding scroll, Varrus opened his arms. A welcoming gesture, as if to embrace. Any thought that he was accepting his own death died with the sudden red glow burning along the scars of a ritual circle carved through his skin.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Nyxala covered her face with one claw as the other reached for his head. An instant later, her skin became fire. Four eyes burst from the heat, the fluid within evaporating before it could even dribble down her cheeks. The inferno clung to her. Even as her spine crashed through four rows of shelving and skidded across the ground, the burning of ritual fire seeped into her skin.

She melted and burned and sizzled alive. Any effort to extinguish the blaze only allowed it to spread quicker.

Her mind narrowed as the Feat took hold. The four souls before her were quickly becoming the only things of regard. Nyxala moved. Staying still was a death wish. So was taking these four head on, but she did so regardless.

The top of Varrus' robe had been burnt clean off, but despite the slowly dimming ritual light, he was untouched. When he saw her running in again, he had a moment of shock. A moment she capitalised.

To the rhythm of her heart and the beat of her wings, Nyxala shattered the barrier containing each of their curses.

She pulled the curses just as her fire ate too deep. The blaze tickled her heart, and the gaze of her gem eye narrowed immensely.

Blisters sprouted across the man's body. Not a speck of skin remained unspoiled. Varrus faltered. It was only for a moment — the sting of hot skin where he expected none — but it was enough for Nyxala.

Rapier tip pierced a widening pupil, before being buried deep in his skull.

There was an endless instant of clarity that struck Nyxala's mind. With the cultist's death the world seemed to stop. Her eyes traced the fragments of skull and brain that splattered from the back of Varrus' head. Each little piece floated in air, waiting for time to carry them to the three distracted by curses of their own.

Nyxala's mind was still locked in her narrow-sighted focus, but with the life taken, she regained the freedom to think. She felt her flesh sew back together against the flaming assault. The world was sluggish; Nyxala's wounds were not.

This was clearly the third stage of Lýotepͦ. To kill and survive is to retain her mind? If so, she was happy for it. As powerful as her slaughter state was, lacking any consideration for a target or thought behind her actions was bound to give her grief one day.

Well, it still required her to kill, so maybe not a perfect solution. But for right now? It was perfect. Especially because it gave her this endless moment frozen in time to plan her next step. To take in her surroundings. To see which was the next to die.

Time flowed back into motion, but Nyxala already had her new target. Kuzlos was the least effected by his curses. With Chaz on his knees wheezing and clutching his stomach while Ezaltena clutched her eyes, he had no help to stop her.

Nyxala's feet struck ground and she shot forth. Her skin was still alight in a constant war against her regeneration. Metal boots struck earth to the rhythm of her heart, but just as she was going for the kill, she felt a murmur of guidance from O̅s̫stho̲th. Nyxala snapped her foot down half a beat early, and snapped with her claws.

It was change. A shift in the beat. By the logic of her rhythm up until now, that should have stolen all strength from her arm.

Instead, Nyxala's claws clamped down with such speed and ferocity that the man's head exploded.

"C̬hͥͬa̙zͩͫ, get up." Nyxala's gaze immediately snapped to the speaker, time sluggish with her second kill. "C̬hͥͬa̙zͩͫ, I don't care if you're puking out your soul. Collect yourself."

Ezaltena spoke with a collected voice, as if the gruesome deaths of her squadmates didn't bother her in the least. All the while she stared at Nyxala, she spun rituals through the ground at her feet. If Nyxala wasn't in a fight to the death with the woman, she might have appreciated the way runes carved themselves into the world around her at a command.

Nyxala was ecstatic that she now had a direction for her name, but Feat-endowed murderous intent still flooded her veins. She had control over her decision-making, but it was still impossible to snatch her newly regrown eyes from the one she'd decided would die next.

As she raced towards her next kill, Nyxala relished in the feeling of strength. Both the Feat, and this new name. The accumulated boost to her strength was almost addictive. It manifested in every wingbeat. The tension of her arms, as they readied to strike. Even her sight seemed to grow clearer with all this power flowing through her.

To keep this enhancement going, Nyxala repeated the actions she'd done to initiate it. She ran in step with her heart. She altered the rhythm at the last moment.

Yet when she clamped her claws down on Ezaltena, all strength slipped from her. O̅s̫stho̲th howled in refusal.

Nyxala's claws never found Ezaltena. Instead, the ritual swallowed the woman whole, replacing her with a swarm of grey flowers. Her claws sliced through the first rose. It was immediately replaced by three more.

She stepped back, not able to worry too greatly about her own safety, but instead to find where her target had gone. The woman's teeth had disappeared from Nyxala's sight, but she could still see her life. It trickled through the flowers, worming towards the other side of the storehouse. Back where they'd entered.

The flowerbed spread rapidly. It crawled over shelving, infesting its way into the ceiling and dug roots in solid steel. Colour drained from everything nearby. The roses fed on it. Even the intense red of her feathers faded to a dull grey when they fell too close.

Ezaltena had decided to run, so that left her to deal with Chaz. She didn't want to linger in this colourless garden longer than she had to. Who knew what it did besides a little malfeasance against colour.

"Follow her," she said, knowing one of Lysyra's replicas would be nearby. "Make sure she doesn't reach anyone, but leave her to me. This shouldn't take long."

Chaz had stopped crying over his stomach. He still held one hand to his gut as if that would stop the liquified organs from being any less painful. In his other hand, he held one of the skulls from his bag.

There was no time to stop him. A pentagon flared all along his arm, which quickly flowed into the skull still dripping with bits of flesh and unpeeled skin. Immediately a wall of white exploded from the original skull.

Ten thousand skulls pushed aside every shelf in the storeroom and drove into floor and ceiling until there was enough room for the wall of bone. Nyxala ignored it. She ran forward with the intent to get close and end him before whatever he could lock himself away in a vault of skulls.

At least, until the countless skulls formed a larger skull that bore down on her with more weight than any of the Scriptures had. It wailed. An ominous, hollow tone denoting a being far greater than what manifested before her.

The dark, empty sockets gazed down on her, sending a sharp, visceral pinch through her soul.

"Your skull!" A sickly wind spilled from the skull's empty jaw. The fetid stench wilted the new flower garden. "It shall be mine!"