Re:Cursed

"You're not seriously going to make us go down there, are you?" Tru asked.

The four Trial participants stood at the edge of the crater that had once been the Dark Star. Plenty of construction was well underway, but for the most part, it remained a voided space. Below them, large masses of flesh convulsed along the walls. Pulsing veins and cramping muscles branched from their feet to the centre of the crater, where they twisted with the constructions of the other cults.

"Of course." Mavi stepped up to the edge with no mind for the fall. "Unless you want to go back and be stuck in the crowd?"

Tru looked reluctant, but didn't argue further. Nyxil wasn't willing to go back either. It was much easier to look out for surprises when there was only three around her rather than thousands.

"Watch your step. The Scriptures' summons tend to be clingy." Mavi stepped forward, and Nyxil almost reached an arm out to pull her back, when the fleshy ground unfolded beneath her.

A staircase formed. Hugging the wall, it lead down one side of the crater.

Mavi didn't bother to wait. She bound down the fleshy steps, wet squelches echoing one after the other. Nyxil gingerly pressed her foot into the Scriptures' construction and leaned forward, her foot sinking into the soft ground. There were a few tunnel entrances along the way, but she didn't like how the path squirmed.

"You first," Kal said.

"Oh? Scared of a little height?" She was given no other option than to tease the boy. "I guess you should leave all the hard stuff to us girls."

She made to move after Mavi, but her words clearly had the desired effect. Nyxil smirked as Kal brushed past her and made his way down the stairs. Quickly at first, but after his fourth step, he hugged the wall carefully.

"You should stop riling him up," Tru said, and she raised an eyebrow at him. "He'll be harder to work with if you poke him too much."

"Maybe," she said. "But he should fix that personality of his first."

Tru groaned. "You're only going to make it worse."

"Probably," Nyxil admitted, unashamedly.

Kal was childish, but he was still an ass. Until he grew up, she would enjoy pissing him off. He should be glad he wasn't a part of any cult, nor did he take part in her sacrifice. If she actually hated him, he'd be dead. Or would be soon. Nyxil had a feeling the path Mavi was taking them wasn't exactly well-trodden.

On that note, she should be careful of an ambush. Would the Scriptures have placed a target on her head this early in the Trials? It was certainly possible. The sabotage of her first Trial hardly went unnoticed.

If Tru was to complain any more, Nyxil didn't hear it. She stepped over the ledge and down the stairs.

Gazing down the long fall below, she could only yearn for her wings. Nyxil had become so accustomed to flying that the height seemed like nothing, and yet terrifying without the first of her mutations to assist her. It was like being blind and trying to see. Having no tongue and wanting to talk. She felt no vertigo at the sight, yet the feeling of deprivation hit just as hard.

When she reached the tunnel where Mavi and Kal waited, she was not grateful for the narrow, esophagus-like walls, but it did smother her longing. A week without flight had been agonising.

Kal stood only a few metres away, glancing warily down the dark, shifting tunnel. In what little light there was, they could see it change from veering right, to left. "Where exactly does this lead?" he asked.

"The first on the token list. We'll get there long before anyone else does." Mavi was proud of the path she knew, but Nyxil had a feeling that even with this, they wouldn't be the first. There would be other groups with their path rolled out for them. Possibly even literally. "As much as the Adjudicator emphasised this wasn't a race, I'll bet it is."

"No, I don't think he was lying." Tru slipped into the tunnel, his skitter-spawn scuttling from his hair down to his shoulder. "Misleading, but not lying. Notice how they've only given us five locations? We need eight tokens. Unless he meant there would be one of both types at each location — which is possible — then no team can entirely pass. Not to mention gather extras."

Nyxil hadn't really considered it. She figured the Trial wouldn't be straightforward, but mostly expected it to come from the biased playing field. Not integral to the Trial itself. They weren't even in the harbinger trials yet. The goal shouldn't be impossible. Taking out the map, she inspected the provided locations.

"So we're supposed to steal them from other teams?" Mavi asked.

"That's an option, sure," Tru said. "But that still creates far too great of a failure rate. In the best circumstances, three in eight participants would fail. And that doesn't account for people failing the token challenges, or teams going around, snatching dozens."

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"There's more locations," Nyxil said. "They gave us five, but are we to share those five with every other team in the Trial? That would get obnoxious. They expect us to find other tokens for ourselves."

More than likely, there were dozens, if not hundreds of these scattered around Coral. At least the less dangerous parts. That might have let participants accidentally come across the locations if not for how much of a convoluted labyrinth Coral was below the surface. Especially the further away from the safe zone you travelled.

"That is stupid," Kal scoffed. "They probably have a small number of tokens so only the best in the teams will pass."

"Oh? And I assume you'll take a set for yourself?" Mavi questioned with an innocent smile.

"Naturally. I can't fail here. I need the opportunities of the harbinger Trials."

"Naturally," she repeated patronisingly.

Kal narrowed his eyes, but eventually decided that she was agreeing with him. "You can have the second set. The suck-up and the cursed girl can fight over any more we happen to come across."

"You call Nỷx 'cursed girl'?" Turning her head to give Nyxil a once over, Mavi seemed both amused and curious.

Not seeing a reason to hide what everyone already knew about her, Nyxil shrugged. It was better than giving Kal's words even a conscious thought. "I've have some curses. Had them for as long as I can remember."

"More than just some curses," Kal grumbled. "Brought bad luck to our entire ward. We were robbed the names we deserved."

"You know that isn't true." Tru's voice was subdued, but he still refuted the larger boy. "Grif is all the evidence we need."

"Grif was getting outside help long before the naming ceremony," Kal snarled, getting in Tru's face, who tried to backpedal.

"He was?" Mavi asked in surprise. Nyxil inclined her head, curious herself.

Both boys immediately seemed to clam up. They glanced at each other before Kal gave a dismissive "maybe" before he moved deeper into the tunnel. Tru looked between the girls, as if deciding whether to speak, but frowned and followed after Kal.

"Well that's interesting," Mavi chimed. "But it isn't really all that surprising. Say, cursed girl, I don't have to worry about having bad luck with you on the team, do I?" Her tone was mirthful, but her eyes held suspicion and wariness that did not match.

"No. They mostly affect my body." Nyxil gestured at herself, knowing that she didn't exactly look in the best of health even before she'd lost her limbs. She said nothing about what her cursed core name did. She had to remember they weren't friends. Mavi was first and foremost a prospective Scripture trying to impress her cult with these Trials. "And despite a couple of accidents," she waved her stub of an arm, "I would say I've been lucky recently. Not the other way around."

Apparently, that appeased Mavi. She nodded, and strode deeper into the moving tunnel. "Well, I'll certainly take some of that luck. Might not get the chance later, so I want to have enough tokens to bury the other teams. Between the two of us, I think we can make up for those… friends of yours." Mavi shook her head with a laugh. "Right now though, we should catch up to them before they fall into the feeding hole. They didn't say it explicitly, but I don't want to test whether I'll be failed for some dead teammates."

❖❖❖

Ten minutes later, the four arrived at the eleven-way crossroads. The place was busy, but not to the flooding level of a thousand teens. Enough cultists were going about their day with no mind for the Trials that were so important for Nyxil and her ward-mates. There were many intersects like this through Coral. Nodes where the well-trodden tunnels connected. The largest one Nyxil knew about was a crossroads with thirty seven connecting tunnels deep beneath the surface.

It had been quite a sight as she'd been paraded to the Grand Sacrificial Chamber. One of many.

The scream of wheels pulled their eyes up to the suspended rails, where a trolley screamed along at speed. Another, rolling in from an odd angle, twisted along its rail until it was inverted to her perspective. It barrelled underneath the first. Big cages of metal with enough momentum to squish anyone caught unsuspecting into paste. Their combined roar echoed through the crossroads for only a second before all was quiet again.

None of the cultists were perturbed.

I guess they are giving us much more corrupted areas than I would have thought for a non-harbinger Trial.

With this level of corruption, it was no wonder the Machine God Worshipper's trolleys were beginning to display some of their more… unhinged tendencies. The tunnel connections were no different. Their own fleshy tunnel seemed to have direct, unhindered paths to most of the other exits, and yet the alternative connections that should have been blocked by their own were walked by cultists. Their paths straight. It was a strange phenomenon that you learnt to ignore lest your mind complain with migraines.

Not so her two male teammates.

With how their eyes shifted from tunnel to tunnel, and the dangerously fast trolleys that rolled out of some, they had never been to such a corrupted area. Or, if they had, it had been on the surface, where things were intentionally kept to form.

At least Tru was quick to snap his eyes away from the somewhat mind-bending sight. Kal seemed to prefer pushing through the illogical nature with sheer force. Force he didn't have, if the way he turned away, holding his head said anything.

"Well, there's our first token." Mavi was nonplussed. Though, that wasn't a surprise, considering she'd been the one to guide them here. "And it looks like we are first, after all." She didn't hide how pleased with herself that made her.

Nyxil didn't bother to follow her line of sight. She'd seen the coin as soon as they'd arrived. Whoever had placed the little accretion token had gone to lengths to make sure nobody would miss it. Bright, fluoro orange paint scraped the edges of the rail, while a large board hung off the side with 'TOKEN' printed in big letters. It was obvious the challenge wasn't in the search.

Off to the side, nestled in an arch between two mostly unused tunnels, were a bunch of observers. Nyxil was of two minds about them. First, it meant that she wouldn't be stuck with an observer that just claimed she cheated to gain every token, but instead would have an unbiased… less biased group deciding these things. Her second mind was more paranoid. With more people to watch on, there was always the chance that one of them might see any slip up she made and would discover her mutations.

She shook her head. This was only the second Trial. The difficulty shouldn't be so great that she would need to resort to any of her mutations. And if it did, Nyxil had resolved herself to trust Ta'Stralanov'r and the armband that protected her.

At least she didn't need to deal with that Fleshsmith observer anymore.

Nyxil turned to the two of her team who were now looking up at the coin and the suspended rail it was attached to. Nowhere but the rail itself to stand for a dozen metres around.

"So, either of you boys feel like racing a trolley for your token?"