Re:Cursed

Grifvoi didn't know what he expected when he'd heard one of the least likely people of his old ward had made a name of herself in the first section of the Trial. Of all those he'd shared a dorm with, the cursed girl was the last he'd have picked to have risen above the rest. He'd honestly forgotten her name until Anzolorus briefed him about her.

Nỷx̱il.

It was a major surprise to hear that not only had she done well after he'd left the ward, but she mirrored his evolution tier. He welcomed the news. She was proof enough that everyone had the opportunity to rise to Grifvoi's height, so long as they didn't blame luck on their own failures. If even the weak girl weighed down by curses could reach her second evolution, then there was no excuse for his old friends to still be without their first.

He had always found it frustrating that he was disallowed from guiding his group along the same path Anzolorus had revealed back when he was fourteen. They had the opportunities before them, but never took them, and Grifvoi had to settle with silence. As per the contract.

When the naming ritual came and went, their lack of action leading up to the day was the only thing to blame for their unimpressive names. He left them that day unable to ignore the envy in their eyes.

That day, he had moved into The Library and began his training in full under Anzolorus. Through months of painstaking effort, Grifvoi had grown quickly. He was one of the few to rise to his second evolution amongst his generation. And should the Trials have occurred when they were supposed to, he might have even reached his third before facing his old friends again.

Knowing Nyxil must have put in a similar amount of effort, he had been excited for the fight. But what he saw was both disappointing, and embarrassing for the supposed harbinger hopefuls he was supposed to fight alongside.

Her first strike was quick, but everything after that had been slow. So slow that she might as well have been a walking target, and yet they couldn't touch her. At first, he thought mind trickery. That was quickly tossed aside as the acolytes still struck at her with deadly intent. Only a combination of her reading their moves far in advance, and their own lack of flexibility mid fight stopped them from landing even a single strike.

When the girl downed her second opponent, the time to analyse her abilities disappeared. Grifvoi summoned the bone armour and halberd in a moment through the ritual circle scribed through his head.

Gifts from his father.

That had been a shocking revelation, for a variety of reasons. First and foremost that his father even knew who his child was; rearing wards were designed expressly to sever familial ties.

Grifvoi did not know exactly who his father was… but it was more than clear he was one of the highest creeds amongst the Scriptures. Along with the gifts, he had left a message. Become worthy if he ever wanted to meet.

Not that Grifvoi needed much prodding. There was only one path in this world, and the strength to reach the top didn't gather for those too lazy to strive.

Despite the hardness of the bone, it hugged his form perfectly. His joints moved unhindered. The halberd was as natural in his hands as if it were an extension of his arms. Each bone was still technically alive. Connected to the creature sealed deep in The Library, and linked to him through the ritual circle inscribed in his arm.

Before the summoned Elderscribe etched runes across his head, it had taken him minutes to manifest the armour. Now, with both his evolved name and the incomprehensible scribble across his head, the weapon came into existence without so much as a moan of complaint from the creature it came.

Thankfully.

"Enough," he snapped. "She's that slow, and you still can't hit her?" It was not meant as an insult to Nyxil, but he wouldn't mind if it angered her enough to slip up. No, he had to drive home the other acolytes weakness. If he didn't, they might think they had a shot at becoming the Scripture's champion and attempt to usurp him.

Ways to keep the lower creeds in check had been instilled within Grifvoi ever since he'd left the rearing ward.

He stepped forward and gave an experimental swing of his halberd. Nyxil backed off, her unfocused gaze suddenly snapping into awareness, as if she'd been in a daze. Some sort of battle focus state? It must be a powerful name to allow her to see all the attacks coming as she had. Her movements had been slow in that state, and while he was sure he could outpace whatever foresight she had, he wasn't so quick to assume she couldn't move faster in that state than she'd shown.

With her attention entirely on him, he took his time to step between the other Scriptures. The added weight of his bone armour made each of his footfalls a heavy thump that echoed through the temple's wide entrance. To the girl's credit, it only took her a few seconds to realise his ploy. Unfortunately for her, each of his companions' second rituals completed. His own was only a moment away.

Nyxil kicked her leg at air, flinging a short pipe of metal his way. He deflected it and blinked. Had she just thrown her prosthetic? That was… a choice. Following behind the pegleg, the curse girl's blade roared towards him far faster than she'd shown herself capable until now.

Grifvoi barely brought his halberd around, diverting the thrust to the side before twisting his own weapon around it and locking her arm against his armoured ribs. He grinned down at the much smaller harbinger. He couldn't help it; there was just something so satisfying about a lethal fight. Especially one where his supremacy shone.

When she swung at him, he almost burst out laughing. He'd seen her missing hand. Not to mention those arms, barely obscured by the sleeve of her robe, were as thin as twigs.

He didn't see the fist until his back struck the ground.

His eyes shifted between the gawking faces above him. Looking down, Nyxil was ten metres away. How did she get so far? Seeing the fist where there was nothing only a minute ago, he could only ask, how? How did she get her hand back? How could such a tiny thing punch him across the hall? With the bone encasing him, he weighed three times normal.

As he rose to his feet, he checked the bone armour and found no damage. So she had a name that boosted her strength to this degree? It felt like he'd been struck by a brick, and her hand didn't look the slightest hurt at punching such hard bone. Did that mean she also had an additive to protect her body, or was it a part of the strengthening?

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Grifvoi placed his hand on the shoulder of a boy that thought his jeers had gone unnoticed. The boy struck the wall with a snap and a scream.

So the girl's power lied in the battle state and the strength to toss around five times her weight with ease? He narrowed his eyes. If that was all, then why had she chosen a rapier as her weapon?

Nyxil was now dismantling the team while Grifvoi took his time. Their second rituals were intended to finish fights quickly, yet the girl twisted through their attacks with flexibility and speed she'd not shown. Her acrobatic movements no longer seemed to rely on predicting her opponents attacks, but rather moving so quick that they couldn't keep up. Despite that, her rapier never missed. She wielded it with a proficiency that looked closer to Anzolorus' than his own. She had years of experience with that blade… despite never having touched one before the naming ceremony.

His eyes widened, and he grit his teeth. The girl had a Talent.

This was getting ridiculous. Just how many high grade additives did she have? As he watched, he realised there had to be another for her to have that somewhat mind-bending flexibility. Any of those — especially the Talent — would be enough to form a base for one's growth.

Grifvoi hurried to chant through his next ritual. He was rapidly realising that he'd majorly underestimated his opponent. The ritual across his forehead made it possible to do so without the hymn, but now he needed to operate with haste.

He directed the ritual to consume the unconscious rat in a pouch beneath his robe, cutting his own hand to add to the sacrifice. His left arm flared immediately with a green flame. The unstable ritual barely holding onto his skin, and suppressed by the second evolution name he'd put so much effort into.

Reaching around his back, he squeezed a plastic capsule. First, the dozen ritual requirements — from skinwalker skin to shuddermould — were forced to mix under the pressure of his armour-boosted strength before the capsule burst, and the juice spread across bone.

Nyxil flipped over the semi-bound summoned phantom, and slammed her fist into a girl's unprotected face. She collapsed. Only two acolytes remained.

The green flames spread to consume each molecule of the combined ingredients, but once they had crawled over the bones, they didn't let go. The sealed creatures' enraged cry made no sound, but Grifvoi could feel it nonetheless. Passed from weaponised bones to his own.

Inside his robe, pressed tightly against his chest by the armour, the rodent exploded. Grifvoi staggered. He grunted and waited for the pain to pass, as he knew it would.

Another acolyte hit the wall. A rapier momentarily poked through his thigh.

The blaze burst across the bones. Grifvoi tried in vain to ignore the soul-chilling cold that rolled off the inferno. Virid flames settled over his armour and halberd, before seeping through. The sealed beast continued to resist. It roared a defiance that only Grifvoi could feel. As the fire sunk into the ivory, the inferno diminished until it was nothing but an infrequent flicker.

Grifvoi's ritual was complete. But so had Nyxil taken down her last opponent. She'd broken the boy's arms and left him to sob in the field of mushroomleaches as they chewed at his skin; held immobile.

Two tiny flickers of the virid fire settled over his eyes. He blinked to adjust, and that instant was almost his end. With terrifyingly sharp acuity, Grifvoi watched an pointed tip just as sharp pierce the air towards his heart.

Cold fire burned. His body moved quicker than he could consciously keep up with. Twisting to the side, the rapier scraped across his outer rib-cage. The halberd dropped. Nyxil flipped back, avoiding the executor's swing. Her eyes widened as trailing flickers of green flame exploded. Crashing forth as if shot by a cannon.

For an instant shorter than he could comprehend, Grifvoi thought he caught her. His movements were faster than his mind, enabled by the flames using his own fighting instincts to make actions before he could think them. In this state, there was no way she could react fast enough.

And yet she did.

Before her feet could land from the flip, she whipped her blade out and struck the dark stone at her feet. Even then, her head and arms remained in the path of the cold fire. She flexed. Her head bent backwards, yet inertia didn't pull her body back into the fire as her throat and chest barely avoided a grazing.

Grifvoi moved. While his mind strained to follow, his weapon spun at the girl. Sliding across stone, she raised her blade to block the blow, only to change her mind at the last moment and divert the polearm upwards, leaving the flames to scorch the ceiling.

His eyes picked out everything in perfect detail, and he noticed how obscenely fast hers were flicking about. To reach this state, the resources Grifvoi had burnt through were hardly cheap. She was somehow keeping up.

He didn't want to believe this was another name.

With the blade swinging high, the butt of of the halberd stabbed low, halting a thrust before it could hit. Strangely, it held none of the strength of earlier. Nyxil stumbled, and stepped back. He didn't give her the space to recover. His blade crashed forward, leaving burnt icicles along the stone. Again, she deflected the weapon. She moved inside his guard, but Grifvoi mirrored her own action from earlier. His fist struck at her face.

With such twitchy eyes, she didn't miss the attempt. Though instead of blocking immediately, she waited a brief moment to knock it aside.

The explosion of fire from his fist first melted the skin off her shoulder, then froze it in place. No paltry healing could fix that up. Grifvoi was simply frustrated that the first strike he'd gotten was only glancing. It didn't matter that she couldn't heal it if it wasn't debilitating.

Still, it got a reaction out of her, and he pressed his advantage.

Grifvoi remained in semi control over his own movements, halberd swooping for a deadly strike with each rotation, and the odd physical strike thrown in. His stance was solid; trained into his core. Yet despite the danger he posed, his opponent wove around his attacks as if in dance.

Each second that passed, she got better at reading his strikes. She learnt how to divert his attacks with greater ease, and strike with deadly force. Only his armour kept him alive. The bone armour that should keep him safe from even fourth creed attacks was littered with cracks. Virid fire leaked from the broken bones, slowly mending the damage, but it was telling how many scars there were.

Nyxil was trying to hit the gaps between bones. That was clear. His answer was to keep moving. If she never got a straight thrust at him, even the thin tip of her rapier couldn't pierce through.

He grunted as another heavy blow knocked him back a few metres.

If there was a single silver lining, it was that he was learning too. No matter how she twisted, flipped, or slid around him, her fight was a dance. She fought to a rhythm. If there was ever an opportunity where she could strike that didn't fit that rhythm, she didn't take it. He had learnt it was law to her. The same was true for her deflections. If she couldn't avoid his blade, she would knock it aside with that same pattern as her strikes, footsteps, and oddly enough, her breathing.

This was his opportunity.

As soon as her foot touched ground, he struck. He discarded the halberd and slammed his bone encased fist into the girl's hand. Out of sync, she had nowhere near enough strength to keep it gripped. Surprisingly, her hand hadn't fractured beneath his blow, but he didn't stop to worry about that. He tackled her while her tempo was disrupted.

A single fist. That's all he got in before the girl caught his hand. He threw his other, but she caught that as well. Grifvoi tried to yank free, but despite her fingers barely being large enough to hold his encased fists, they locked on tight.

Her legs twirled beneath him, and suddenly he found her foot under his jaw. Compared to her earlier punch, it was nothing, but it put him in an awkward position. While she held his fists, her foot in his neck kept him from easily overpowering her.

But in a brawl, he had the advantage.

He thought that, until she began chanting. A ritual? As soon as she began pulsing her fingers in tune with the hymn, he felt the pressure building. Immediately he struggled to break free. She didn't budge at his efforts. He knocked her foot out of his neck, and twisted her to take back control, but somehow she'd scooped her blade up with her other foot. The leg that had once been a stump, now angled her blade towards his chest. The blade cut between her foot's only two toes; the rest missing.

From the blood trailing down her rapier, she was determined. He glanced down, noticing it lined with a gap in his outer ribs an instant before the hymn's rhythm hit its next beat.

Nyxil tugged. She pulled Grifvoi down on the blade to the hilt at the same time her hands finally shattered bone. Both the armour's and Grifvoi's. With crushed hands and a sword piercing his chest, he felt agony. But that wasn't what hit him hardest.

He'd lost.