Re:Cursed

With the opening to the furnace growing ever closer, and the flow of boiling flesh impossible to fight against, there was only one path for Nyx. She leapt. Crashing both her legs and the stiffened tentacles into the surface below her, she broke free of the waves. Her wings beat — or as much as she could force them — and gave her enough speed to reach the roof of the great white's mouth.

Everything hurt. All of her skin was red and bubbling from burns. Her feathers had grown frail, and many had fallen out as she forced them to push her forward. None of her tentacles acted with the speed she wanted. Their movement stiff. And it was hard to tell if her eyelids had been seared shut, but she didn't dare open them.

The only part of her that didn't feel like it was killing her, was her hands. And thank fuck for that.

In her right, she slammed her rapier into the hot metal ceiling, while her left grew to claws and clamped tight. And not too soon. The moment her pincers locked into the hard surface, the blade slid free, and she was left dangling by one hand.

Her body screamed at her, and as she glanced back into that raging river of flesh flowing from the shark's massive teeth to its furnace, that should she fall she her body wouldn't listen to her again. Even having resolved herself to the same determination she never should have forgotten, her body wasn't invulnerable.

Invulnerable? She laughed, hanging precariously within the jaw of a fleshforged. I might as well be to still be alive. Nyx glanced over the damage to her body. Cooked chicken and octopus would be jealous.

She tried to re-correct her mind. It used to be so easy to just laugh off her misfortune. Yet even after rededicating herself to her plan, the sardonic joy she'd once taken in these moments was difficult to garner.

Nyx handed off the blade to one of her tentacles, and slammed another claw into the ceiling. A second later, her stiff tentacle drove the blade into the metal again, creating a third, if less reliable, point to hold herself. Thankfully, even stiff, her four new limbs were far stronger than her arms and took off some of the strain from her upper arms as they wrapped around her hands and the rapier.

The agony washing through her body demanded that she stop. It wanted her to hang here until the pain stopped. But she couldn't. Nyx took the demands of her body and used the spite it created to keep herself moving.

Her red, bubbling skin that didn't even look like skin anymore, demanded relief from the heat. But there was nothing to cool it down. Her broken wing, now shedding feathers by the dozen, wanted to be cradled, rather than hang at her side. But she needed her hands to keep herself upright.

Nyx knew that what her body wanted, and needed, were two entirely separate things, yet she also knew that she couldn't hang here indefinitely. She would die.

Releasing a claw, she swung her body forward to the resentment of every fibre of her being. Her pincers snapped. She steadied herself. Then Nyx swung again, stabbing her other arm into the hot ceiling. Over and over again, she cycled the motions until she reached the backside of the shark's upper teeth.

Despite her efforts and dedication, her body continued to grow sluggish. Her arm almost refused to do as she demanded as she threw it forward… and yet her claws barely sunk into the metal teeth. A shallow dent at most. That was all the damage she could do to her only path of escape. The teeth were too hard.

She spat — her tongue spitting too — and her acid dribbled down the side of the fang, sizzling away metal. Considering the size of the tooth, it would take some time, but it was better than scratching at it with her claws.

Just as she spurred her gland — the slight vent in the back of her throat that produced her acid — Nyx froze.

What was her plan? She wanted to cut herself free of the shark's oven-like mouth… then what? It was clear by the flowing river below her that the great white wasn't anywhere safe. They were in the molten ocean. If she destroyed this tooth, she would be subjecting herself to the flood of boiling flesh.

Nyx swallowed. She abandoned her efforts to melt the tooth.

What now?

The most optimistic outcome she could think of was the gong of the Forge hammer. With that, the translocation would save her. But no matter how much she pushed her limits, she could only reach so far. Nyx could hear the screams of her body. It would not survive the wait for the gong.

So were those her only options? Hang here and wait for her body to give out, or dive headfirst into the ocean that would kill her in minutes. Nyx wasn't even sure which would be the worse way to die.

Hanging there, her gem eye flickered over the walls to keep her pushing through the near fatal burns covering her body. One of her tentacles collapsed from its place around her arm. It dangled uselessly for a moment before curling up around her waist, sliding between the bones of her now extended spine vertebra.

Soon, the vibrant crimson-violet veins spread through every corner of her body reached as far as her toes. If she were to open her eyes, she was sure the blood vessels in the white of her eyes would be glowing. After the major veins and arteries began glowing brighter than the scorching metal she clung, they spread inwards, permeating all of her muscles.

They were a relief. The burning agony of all her skin lessened. It wasn't perfect, but it helped. And in that moment, her fears of some crippling downside seemed unwarranted. She glowed like the vitiate, but she could keep her mind through the pain.

As she hung there, her body swaying with each of the great white's sudden shifts in direction, Nyx realised she no longer had anything to actively fight. It was the most precarious position she'd been in since igniting this Dark Star, and yet she was safe from the relentless assault of the smaller sharks.

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That didn't mean she was safe, but she no longer had to put her mind on anything but keeping her hold on the ceiling. Staying out of range of the hot sludge flowing beneath her feet.

And best of all, the metal roof she clung to was flat.

Nyx took control of the tentacle wrapping her waist and brought it to the pouch opposite her scabbard. The limb was stiff and difficult to move, but with slow, careful movements, she guided it to unzip the bag.

Warm, chunky, liquid flesh spilled out. Her pouch had been sealed, yet the disgusting substance had still found its way in. Working the tapered tip of her tentacle into the small space, she found her candles melted, and chalk half dissolved.

She clicked her tongue. The mouth in her tongue growled in discontent.

The ritual kit was supposed to be resistant, but apparently the intense conditions of a Dark Star were too much for it.

Taking a bar of chalk, she wiped it off and immediately began etching runes into the metal above. Upon touching the hot steel, the chalk melted before crystallising. It wasn't standard, but it should still work. The problem was that it stole more from the already limited amount of chalk she had to work with.

Unwinding another tentacle from her arm, she dove back into the satchel. The candles were unusable. They were supposed to be longlasting — essentially eternal — but now all the wax had slid off the wicks and bonded with the fabric of the bag itself.

Unfortunately, she couldn't just remove the necessity of candles for the ritual she intended. Nyx took the remaining strings, knowing that they would still hold a flame, even if it made it a one time opportunity.

With not a small amount of wariness, she let one of her claws free of the ceiling. Nyx hung for a moment, until she was sure she wouldn't fall, before she scraped a tiny indent in metal where there was a node in her ritual circle. Her tentacle thread the first string into the opening, and she scraped the metal cross-ways to lock it in place. Not the most appealing of solutions, but it worked.

Nyx did the same eight more times.

With her chalk and candles consumed, she had thankfully managed to create the ritual circle she needed. Her tentacle dove into the satchel for the last thing she needed. Lodged in the wax, she felt past a dozen small vials for what she needed.

Nyx paused on Tarchon's stabilising liquid. For a moment, she considered whether it would have any effect on the ocean and allow her escape. But she reluctantly had to move on; no matter how effective it was, there was no chance it could suppress the effect of an entire Dark Star's worth of corruption. If that was the case, the disaster wouldn't be so difficult to deal with.

She moved on and found what she was after. Taking out the needle, Nyx drove it into the back of her leg. Compared to the pain of her burns, she barely felt the prick. Once the needle filled a vial with her blood, she slot it into the back of a brush and began to overlay the chalk runes she'd already laid out above her head.

The blood-brush was a little something she'd picked up after she'd discovered how useful her blood was. Thankfully, it was cheap. Less than a single blood drop.

When done, her body was flagging. Even with the help of her glowing veins, she couldn't push on much longer. She needed to finish this quick.

Nyx used the needle again, and filled two vials with more of her blood. Resheathing her rapier, she settled to hang in the centre of the ritual as two of her tentacles held the blood vials over the ritual as sacrifices. Not to waste time she didn't have, she began the hymn immediately.

The echo of her tongue joined her in the song. Its voice was similar — essentially identical — but lagged a fraction of a second behind her.

The ritual was quick to respond. Not only to Nyx, but her second voice as well. She was a chorus of two in one body. Lines of blood shone bright, starting around her claws, and rapidly expanding in an outward spiral. The moment the light struck the strings in tandem, they burst in flames, incinerating the threads as nine small balls of crimson fire hovered below the ceiling. As if recoiling from the fires, a wave washed back through the runes, twisting the ritual circle itself into a reflection of the burning balls. Not exactly fire, but neither were they simple lines of chalk and blood anymore.

It was well known that more people could improve the performance or success rate of rituals, but not until now did she realise that her second voice could work as well. What would happen once she gained more of the echoes? What if she could get her voices to speak more in tune? Or more curiously: have them sing in divergence?

Nyx had mixed feelings about using the fleshsmiths' rituals, but using them was in no way supporting them. Besides, she had that fool K'lon teach them to her for a reason.

As the vials shattered and the blood contained within sunk into the ritual circle, Nyx's burns gradually receded. It was a massive step up from the basic ritual she'd been relying on until now. She could even feel her wing mending itself.

Considering just how terrible her state had been, it was not an easy fix. She was sure she hung there for hours as her skin reformed, only to be blistered by the searing heat radiating from the furnace. But because her blood was so valuable, she would survive.

Despite having hung by her arms for who knows how long, Nyx's body felt lighter. The pain continued to lessen. She was sated to simply hang there until the gong finally freed her.

That would have been fine, if her side didn't suddenly start to feel like a knife jabbed in her ribs. At first, she thought it was just because the other pain had drowned it out, but that soon proved wrong; it continued to grow worse.

She glanced down just in time to watch a tiny shard of grey metal pierce her robe from the inside, and she finally realised what was happening.

The new ritual was so strong that it was having her body repair itself with enough strength that it worked against the bolt Tarchon put around her ribs. Her body was trying to push it out, but it couldn't.

Swallowing her pain for the umpteenth time, she released a claw from the ceiling and jabbed it into her side. Really, she should have been more careful, but she'd already suffered enough that she just wanted it all over… even if it meant some less than precise surgery.

It was a good thing that she had a healing ritual going in conjunction with the veins that suppressed her pain, because even with her threshold, scraping blades along ones bones was nothing but agony. After a few, excruciating moments, a lump of deformed metal spilled from her side along with more flesh than she was comfortable. She watched it fall.

The bolt had deformed far worse than the last. Now a spiky ball that permeated a slab of what had been muscle and bone. And she hadn't even been here a day yet.

Thankfully, her bloodloss fed the ritual rather than falling to waste in the river below, so it continued to burn for as long as she hung. She was worried that the shaved bits of ribs wouldn't recover. That the lost muscle wouldn't come back. But when the gong rang and she suddenly found solid ground beneath her feet, she didn't even feel an ache.

Nyx collapsed. Her throat was sore from singing so long. Her arms ached. Even her tentacles flopped at her side, showing none of the personality each of them usually expressed.

She had survived the great white.

Rolling over, she wanted to do nothing more than sleep. But, to her dismay, she had found herself at the edge of a river. A river bursting with sharks that would never give her a moment of rest.

Well, nothing to do but fight and survive.

Nyx's eye burnt through the first hopeful gummy that dove out of the steel river.

If I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future, I will use it to my advantage. Even if it's impossible, I will grow until I surmount the insurmountable.