Re:Cursed

Chapter 178 174: Skull

Nyxala had barely an instant to fly out of the path of the encroaching sea of animated skulls. The larger visage held back. It watched on like an indomitable lord as its many lessers rushed forward in unflinching alacrity.

She wondered briefly if Ts̟͂tll, the name she'd used to trap Lysyra, would stop someone like Ezaltena from simply running away. Something told her it wouldn't be that simple. The description, particularly 'Fell the immortal', implied more of a counter to abilities that made her enemies untouchable or unkillable. It would be interesting if she could hold some people in place with her death pact… but she doubted a retreat to find backup would be considered a violation as Lysyra's attempts to disappear had been.

Not that it changed anything. If Nyxala had failed to cut through the woman's head, she wouldn't have been any more successful if she'd gone for her soul.

"Below!"

Nyxala heard Lysyra's shout and without so much as glancing down, she leapt back. More shiny ivory rose through the floor. The bone didn't break through the flooring panels. They seeped through. Like bubbles in boiling water, skulls appeared by the thousand wherever she might land.

Jaws connected by neither muscle nor tendon snapped with a litany of clacks. The sound accompanied only by the unending grind of one skull scraping against the next.

Experimentally, Nyxala flipped in mid-air and brought down her tail on the growing pile beneath her. The skulls were hard. Harder than the metal they slipped through, yet with the power of her Feat still flowing through her, they shattered. Frail as glass.

The big skull wailed. "My skulls! My precious skulls!"

Its presence suddenly flared to much greater heights. The ceiling groaned as it struggled and ultimately failed to contain the being. The room shattered. Instead of the oversized fleshless head punching a hole through both floor and ceiling, as would be typical without corruption, the entire room warped.

Shelving stretched as if tied at two ends. A chaotic webbing of cracks spread across the ceiling and what little she could still see of the ground. Shards of metal twisted, leaving both above and below with an appearance more akin to a scrapheap than anywhere one should walk.

By all means, this summoned creature should be her focus. It was the most pressing danger. But Nyxala was still bound by the narrow-minded focus. Life; that which she could steal. The name's new aspect might give her clarity where there hadn't been any before, but slaughter was still her priority.

And this skull wasn't alive to kill. No — it wasn't that it wasn't alive… but that the being behind the skulls was only partially here.

This was what Ts̟͂tll was for. If she were to use the name to tie the creature down, then she would surely drag out the life from behind whatever veil it came to fuel Lýotepͦ.

But… at best, that was an idiotic idea. Chaz's ritual only summoned a portion of this being. While her death pact would strip it of methods to escape death, it was also sure to manifest any strength that hadn't been summoned with it.

Well, she didn't know that for sure. It seemed like a safe bet.

Nyxala gazed up into the empty sockets that pierced her with hollow fury, then turned away. It was the life behind that wall of skulls she hungered for.

While her edge sight couldn't make out his teeth amongst the thousand others, her Feat guided her. Now that she had some form of control in this slaughter state, it was hard to pin down exactly what made her so sure where Chaz was. It wasn't like he glowed to any of her senses. She just — somehow — knew.

He was there, with only a wall of skulls and the visage of a monstrosity blocking her way. Nyxala didn't hesitate; she beat her wings and barrelled towards horde before her slaughter state could slip.

She could feel it. Now that she was fully recovered, her intense need to kill was slipping, and with it, the strengthening of her body.

Where before Lýotepͦ had evolved, she might have dove headfirst into the massive flesh-bare jaw and been swallowed whole, now, she had the sense to crash into the bony wall to its side.

Her fists shattered the first few craniums with ease. Nyxala found her rhythm again, but held back from altering it at pivotal moments. She didn't want a repeat.

As she wailed on the wall of skulls, so too did they wail on her. Teeth ripped into her skin. They bit wherever their jaws could gain leverage. Her healing was no longer able to keep up with the wounds now that it had been so long since her last kill. But that was fine. All the butchered skin reignited the power of her slaughter state, flooding her body with more adrenaline than she had the means to use.

Punch. Spit. Swing of the tail. As Nyxala unleashed on the barrier between her and her prey, she noticed that same empowerment from earlier creeping back into her motions. It wove in with the viciousness of Lýotepͦ, amplifying the boost to greater than the sum of parts.

She threw a punch. Second in a row. While the skull cracked and she finally broke through enough to see the man puking his guts beyond the threshold, Nyxala also felt the power drain from her body.

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But she didn't despair. No. Now, she finally understood.

O̅s̫stho̲th revolved around change. The Talent had shifted from blades to her mutations; a change in her body. That was the first aspect. And now, it was rewarding her for shifting the way she fought. The more variance she threw into her efforts, the more it would empower her… but so would it snatch away that power should she repeat herself. Say, throw a punch right after another.

Nyxala knew what to do. She had learnt the core of this name that had cost her three impressive abilities, and was anxious to find the heights it could reach.

Unfortunately, the sudden loss of enhancement, while enlightening, had slowed her immensely. She could do nothing as the swathe of skulls parted only for the immense one to fall on her with open jaws.

Flat, oversized, human teeth sliced through her wing, and took Curious unaware. Pushy struck out with her rapier in fury, but it did nothing but clang against the impossibly hard skull. Nyxala saw through the gaps in the roots of its teeth as her severed limbs vanished into the void. Swallowed from existence.

With how much of her hip was also sliced through, Nyxala might have once been sent out of commission. Not anymore. Lýotepͦ expressed its unparalleled nature. It pushed her body many times beyond its limits as she approached the barrier between life and death.

But now that she had slaughtered as she survived, her mind clung on for the ride.

Power flooded her arms. Clawed swipes interspersed punches and the occasional bite. No longer did she repeat the same action twice in a row, but the power slipped slightly any time she enacted some attack she'd done not too long ago. Even if there was a globule of acid tossed, a kick, and the clamping of her pincers on a skull, two punches in less than a second still sapped at the amount of strength she was awarded.

A skull shattered within her jaw. The sharp fragments of bone sizzled in her mouth as they poked sharply into her cheeks. She didn't know how she was fitting entire skulls between her teeth, but she wasn't of a mind to question it.

She did everything to ignore the dry, chalky taste.

Nyxala shattered the last of the skulls holding her back from Chaz with a twist of the tail. Her feet hadn't the time to so much as hit the ground before she was racing towards him. One wing and a feathered tail wasn't enough to fly, but they certainly moved her.

The massive skull, despite its size, was no slouch. It followed. Its cranium scraped across the ceiling with an excruciating screech, as did its jaw with the floor.

Its teeth came for her again. Nyxala twisted. Her leg caught the side of the skull in the hardest kick she could manage. Metal boots clanged against cheekbone, but it showed no sign of being effective. The skull bit down, and sliced through her knee.

Nyxala grunted, but never stopped moving. Better a severed leg than her tail.

Chaz stood to face her, hand wiping away the bile and blood dripping from his lip. An array of runes was already glowing across his body, burning through one of the sacks he carried strapped to his back.

Her eye consumed what skin she could see. It was a pointless effort. He had abilities or rituals hardening his skin, and what little she burned away, immediately healed. Still, it was an act that counted towards her name of change. A new effort, regardless of how pointless, added to her strength.

In her scrap to get through the wall of skulls, Nyxala had learnt how it would very quickly become a balancing act to manage this name. The more diverse her move-set, the greater her reward, but if she were to hold back her most fitting, or powerful attacks for the sake of that diversity, that alone would be detrimental.

Nyxala reached Chaz with a slice from her dagger swung by Cuddly. The skull nipped at her heels, but with a sudden acceleration of her tempo and addition of lyrics to her song, the blade struck hard.

No; hard didn't begin to describe it. As soon as the so-far-unused knife cut into the blade Chaz had raised to defend himself, Nyxala felt an overwhelming force flow through her. O̅s̫stho̲th filled her with strength, speed, and more flexibility than her body would ever need, and it all was directed through the blade held by Cuddly.

One knife sliced through another. There was no resistance. It was as if the world severed beneath her concentrated strength, but Nyxala didn't understand the extent until the short blade cut Chaz's body.

Having slipped past his defences without even the hint of stopping, Nyxala's blade sliced through his ribs below the shoulder of his raised arm. It cut through neatly. With how little resistance Chaz's chest put up against her blade, she lamented not having saved her rapier for this attack. As strong as it was, a knife's blade was only so long. It could only cut so deep.

Except… as she spun around and readied herself for both the cultist and his summon, she found the man struggling to turn.

The skull had to stop to avoid swallowing its own summoner.

A line of red slowly seeped through Chaz's robe from below the armpit to the opposite shoulder. All that blood immediately began to sail through the air.

Nyxala wasn't sure what she was seeing until the man's robe split. Along that red line, it folded down. It exposed his upper chest and the pentagrams inscribed there. The robe was only held from falling to his waist by the single untorn sleeve that remained.

Chaz choked as he tried to say something. He took a step forward, but his knees gave way beneath him. His chest hit the now sharp ground with a thud, and Nyxala couldn't take her eyes away from the head and shoulder that slid free from the torso.

She stared. Her tiny knife had cut clean through the man's body.

A sputtering noise came from the head. His lips were moving. The ritual burned into his bald head was still ablaze. Somehow, he was alive.

With a creature still to deal with, she didn't want to take any chances that he was going to sacrifice himself in spite, or find a way to force his body back together. Pushy shoved her rapier through Chaz's eye. It jiggled the blade around until enough of his brain was mush and the runes fell as silent as his breaths.

Nyxala turned back to the skull far too large for the room that held it. It didn't attack. Its dark sockets stared down at its summoner blankly.

This wasn't good. She'd hoped it had been a ritual contract dictated upon the continued life of the summoner. But if the skull remained… who knew what sort of restrictions no longer applied.

"You will break no more skulls." It turned to her, fury bubbling below the surface. "My skulls." The heavy scraping returned as it slowly moved towards her and the body of its summoner. She hopped back as it spoke again, this time focused on the corpse. "Come. Join me."

The severed head of the Scripture immediately reacted. It lifted off the ground. The head moved towards the massive skull while the remains of the shoulders hung like a burdensome weight. Skin bubbled, then from a split in the forehead, Chaz's skull escaped its encasement. Flesh flopped to the ground, lifeless. As the skull rose, Nyxala found herself revelling in just how clean the white bone was. Not a spot of blood clung to what was formerly Chaz.

He joined the rest. One skull amongst ten thousand.

"I will lose no more skulls today." Instead of tearing down on Nyxala in some sort of desperate greed for her own head, the being faded away.

Whether it was slipping back to whatever realm it resided, or slunk into the depths of Coral… well, that wasn't her problem.