Re:Cursed

Chapter 185 - 181: Bloody Love

Nyxala wanted nothing more than to take her time scouring the countless relics lining the walls. There were sure to be so many immensely powerful artefacts. But the one thing Nyxala didn't have was time.

The deconstructed handful of electrical components that had once been her forged ID badge attested to that. Between Euphoria's chaos and the alarm ringing across the tendrils of her ears, upper creed Worshippers were bound to be on their way. She needed to be gone before then.

There was only one thing she'd come here for, and now the warmth of that nestled in her hands. Its light was blinding, yet it failed to part the darkness. Instead, the sceptre deepened the black until it thickened to a tangible, touchable lack of light.

She needed nothing more from this place, but as she looked upon the three preserved, cursed sacrifices, she couldn't leave.

The Worshippers didn't deserve them. Nyxala could kill them, but she despised leaving even a scrap of bone for the cultists to abuse. These victims… they weren't in a position so different from what her own had been.

No. The Worshippers deserved none of these thousand. Not just the cursed.

Nyxala took her rapier and sliced it across her bicep. She wasn't sure if she'd simply become desensitised to pain from the experiencing agony a thousand times greater or if improvement of her body by mutation and evolution simply allowed her to ignore injuries that had been once debilitating. Either way, she barely felt the cut.

Blood poured down her arm. It spiralled and embraced her as it once more soaked the fabric of her sleeve. Only moments ago had she finally rid herself of the obsessive blood, and now she was calling it back. Nyxala already lamented her choice.

When enough crimson fluid had gathered, she drove her blade through the heart of a lost child.

Her arm didn't heal.

Nxyala paused, taking a moment to realise she hadn't experienced enough struggle to trigger Lýotepͦ's healing. Apparently sneaking around while a god caused mayhem in close proximity didn't count.

If there were any hopes the child would look any more peaceful in death, they were dashed as Nyxala looked down on him. Now, instead of pained and hollow but living, the child had that pain and hollowness etched into a still permanence.

Both her blood and the child's flowed into the mass that clung to her.

"Can I ask that you stay here?" Nyxala asked as she stuck some mould into the wound, halting the flow of blood.

YOU WOULD LEAVE US?

It could not speak, but the words scrawled themselves in the blood of her arm.

"You will always be a part of me," Nyxala tried to reassure. "I simply need the amalgamations to manifest in this chamber after I'm gone."

She was already siphoning corruption from her core into the pooling blood. Soon enough they would come, regardless of Nyxala's presence.

"You can have all the sacrifices here in exchange."

WE DO NOT WANT ANOTHER

The blood trembled as it spread down her stomach, clutching her closer.

WE WANT YOU

"Then I will hug you again." At least this time Lysyra wasn't around to ogle.

Nyxala bent down, arms wide, and the blood slipped from her body to wrap itself in her embrace once more.

PROMISE

"What?" she asked, leaning away from the flowing toddler visage, but it pushed itself back into her embrace even as it spoke through written words behind it.

PROMISE THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS LOVE US FOREVER AND EVER

Nyxala looked down on the creature as its bloody head tilted up to her as if it had pleading eyes.

LOVE US ETERNALLY AND WE SHALL SERVE YOU FOR ETERNITY

She hesitated. Nyxala leaned back from the inhuman child who, for once, didn't dive back into her. It simply gazed up at her. This was no promise she could make at a whim. It was a pledge. One that, if broken, would not grant her a curse so easily consumed by her core. This was something she had to mean.

Nyxala was intimately aware of the time passing, but even so she spent a dozen seconds simply staring down at the unnatural toddler. It stood hopeful. Too pure for a being made entirely of blood.

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"I… cannot. Not yet. I'm sorry." When Nyxala knew next to nothing about this being of blood, it was impossible to state she could love it forever. She felt no love for it now.

She expected the bloody mass to act how it looked; for it to throw a tantrum like a toddler and return to clinging to her body. Instead, it looked down, radiating disappointment.

THERE IS TIME

The entity stepped away from her. It's head lifted again, though she could still feel the pain of rejection rippling through the liquid surface of its body.

YOU WILL LOVE US — WE WILL MAKE SURE OF IT

Nyxala was given no moment to feel the chill of the declaration. The instant the words appeared, every child-linked machine in the vicinity ruptured. Blood spouted from each in a massive inverse fountain that flowed inwards to the toddler. Nothing but broken husks remained of the machines and the sacrifices they held.

THIS IS OUR GIFT TO YOU

The bloody entity exploded. A sea of red stolen from the bodies of thousands spilled over every wall of the chamber. It latched onto the corruption she fed it, and guzzled it down. In an instant, it consumed more than she ever intended. Already, twisted limbs contorted the surface of blood, pushing at it like it was a thin rubber sheet.

The amalgamations were manifesting now.

Nyxala didn't hesitate. She flew to the three with cursed mutations, and shattered their spheres. The clear liquid glistened as it fell, but the moment it touched anything besides void or glass, it darkened into a murky tar.

Not water, that was for sure.

She drilled her rapier through two, but as she reached the centre one — the man with two mutations — she hesitated. There was so much she didn't know about herself… and yet here was someone who shared the same changes that defined who she was. What could she learn from him?

It was a questionable choice, but Nyxala forewent any of the relics now drenched in blood, and had her tentacles pick up the last remaining preserved sacrifice. He would live, and whether he knew the cause of these mutations or not, Nyxala would learn of their similarities… and differences.

Large, inconsistently shaped teeth curling out from a chubby oversized hand smashed through one of the walls. Rather, it shattered the puddle of blood. The mawless teeth clenched around half a dozen contraptions and their corpses, rending them from existence.

Countless other amalgamations followed.

Nyxala flew through the centre of the hall, pushing Tsal̺air̡ to twist the dust chewed up by her eye to cover her and her new charge. Instead, she found the thickened darkness of her sceptre gathering around her instead. It pressed in on her. An oceanic pressure, trying to smother the intense light of her sceptre.

The darkness was as unsettling as it had been when it was wielded by Sekhhath'Ra, yet the light of her sceptre pierced through. Unlike before, she could see through the obscurement of Tsal̺air̡. She could see, and it made no impact on her ability to hide.

As she tore through the grin in the Tributary door, she took in Euphoria, and the mechanical monstrosities that tried to fight him. An arachnoangel — larger than the entrance hall would allow — slashed its immense legs like scythes through every flashing grin that lit its form. Booming laughs taunted its efforts. They rang deep through the Tributary, echoing through the machine's shell and inflicted it with quivering, mechanically scraping chuckles of its own.

Another towering machine tore through the other half of the central chamber. Not a single bot, but one of many. The modular machines linked together in the shape of a centipede that curled along the walls and ceiling of the Tributary, scratching marks for a ritual with some appendages, and striking at Euphoria with the rest not relegated to manoeuvring.

Beyond them, her edge sight caught an army of machines rushing to their aid. If she didn't move quickly, they would enter the Tributary, and she would be swarmed.

Nyxala whipped her tail behind her, and shot into the air. There was no time to waste weaving through mountains of valuables; she needed to slip through that hole she'd come through before the Worshippers could block her.

But the instant she rose, she found Shelo'Su'Senalos staring right at her.

The machine maggots swimming through his flesh had seemingly stilled. Locked in place to twist his body how they commanded, and with more strength than the man could ever achieve himself. It took an instant for him to see the shroud of darkness that deviated from Euphoria's own dark smoke, and the place it had come from to shift his attention from the god to her.

Shelo'Su'Senalos rocketed from the back of his massive arachnoangel. Despite the distance and her racing heart, Nxyala barely had an instant to twist her body out of his path. Even missing and without his machine lord, he was at his ninth evolution.

Nyxala hadn't seen the gun barrel, nor any spark of ignition, and yet her body was battered by an onslaught of shrapnel. Chunks of her left arm were torn from the bone and splattered over the valuables behind her. Her neck had been sliced, and she tasted blood filling her throat, but she didn't let that stop her. She rushed through the chamber, using momentum and her wings to keep her moving.

When the Worshipper struck the other side of the hall and leapt at her again, this time she had time to react. He had to catch her, and despite the empowerment of all those little mechanical bugs, she had already garnered considerable momentum.

Still, he caught up. But when he did, she was ready.

Nyxala twisted her body, and battered him with her tail. The man, unable to see through her swarming darkness, was knocked into the thickest part of Euphoria's storm.

The last she heard of the Worshipper was insane cackling before she slipped through the hole of her escape.

She slipped through the long forgotten mortuary, service tunnel, and flew through the depths of Coral long before she bothered to check her injuries. The confusing layouts of Coral's deep labyrinths almost took her by the time she realised she wasn't the only one hurt.

Nyxala stopped to shove lumps of her hair into the dozens of gashes in his chest and thigh. The man she'd saved was not even of his first evolution, so the tiniest of cuts could end him if left to bleed long enough.

When his wounds were tended to — for the moment — Nyxala dropped her eyes to the sceptre. Finally, she had it back. And with it, with the way it combined with Tsal̺air̡, there would be nothing to fear from hunting with the full use of her mutations. Shelo'Su'Senalos hadn't recognised her, and if not he, then none besides the cult leaders themselves would see through it.

A wriggling feeling in her arm pulled her away from the euphoria of her success; hopefully not too greatly influenced. For a moment, she thought she was seeing things. Hoped she was. But there was no denying that which moved in her flesh.

One of the mechanical maggots had infested her flesh. She shivered, and immediately began trying to dig it out of her arm with her claws, but halted when she felt something squirm in her neck.

It wasn't one. Everywhere she'd been hit held a maggot that ate her from within. She doubted the wounds of the man below her were any different.