Re:Cursed

K'Thorn was in a bad mood.

He'd been in a bad mood for a long time now. It was hard not to be when any progress they made to carve themselves a stranglehold in this hostile environment was, time after time, ripped away.

Angling his rifle, he fired. Despite the projectile's constant, rapid acceleration, it still took a few seconds to cross the immense distance and blow the head off the great white where it carved a gouge through the landscape. Not that it killed the beast. K'Thorn snarled and fired another burst, blowing out the flesh from within.

Two years.

That's how long they'd been stuck in this damnable place. At least that's how long it felt. The smiths still couldn't agree to how much time might have actually passed. Some that had determined the interval between the Forge hammer strikes proposed that ten years might have passed, yet others that followed the rate of decay of their — continually shrinking — rations posited that they hadn't even been here a week.

It was frustrating; nobody could say how long had passed on the outside. Fears were spiralling. Had their superiors abandoned them? Or worse: did time simply pass too slowly on the outside for them to make their preparations? Would they have to wait a century?

They would not survive so long.

K'Thorn reached for his ammo pouch, and found it dangerously bare. He grunted and fed the few rounds to his weapon. With no other choice, he let the next great white cut through land until it right upon them. When it dove out at their defences, it exposed its vulnerable fleshy connecting bits, and he fired.

It still took more shots than he wanted to kill the fleshforged.

Every time the gong rang, they lost more cultists. Hundreds of thousands had been caught in the Dark Star. Now, there were only a little more than a hundred. And it was unsustainable.

To defend those that remained, they needed ammunition. Between the immense amounts of metal and flesh in the environment, they wanted not for resources, but only the smiths could craft their advanced ammunition. Those smiths needed to be protected to keep K'Thorn's rifle functioning.

For a while, the implementation of a few key actions gave them the hope that they would hold against the endless waves.

First, was the creation of semi-living amulet to be worn by all. Its purpose was dual: the harbingers could find their nearest smith and protect them after a gong, then everyone could gather together and hold out until their next fateful teleportation.

That alone had drastically reduced their losses. At least, K'Thorn preferred the idea of their creation helping rather than just the weakest having all died. If that was the case, then it was the same as thinking K'Hallou was weak.

His acolyte with a dangerous interest in explosions had been an unfortunate loss. K'Caies had told him that the boy had run out of missiles and could do nothing to stop the great white from tearing into him.

K'Thorn could barely believe it. The larger sharks were major threats, but he never thought his own student would allow something like the loss of ammo to be his end. But in this Dark Star, anything could happen.

And the greatest 'anything' could strike at any time.

The more people they had gathered in a single place, the more fleshforged the Dark Star threw at them. Everyone's greatest fear was one of those mountainous whales crashing through the metal beneath them and swallowing them whole before they could react.

It was such a prevalent fear, that all the upper creed remaining traded shifts where they ran around attracting as many beasts as they could. By the number of times K'Thorn had seen whales emerge in the distance, it worked. Though he didn't envy those cultists.

The rest of their defences were built upon thousands of sacrifices. Fleshforge creations that linked themselves to cultists so that they could reconnect like puzzle-pieces when they all rejoined. Some unfortunate few that had no worth as a smith or harbinger had to give up their lives for the rest to survive, but so did K'Thorn have to give up a finger of his own.

That pinky finger would take years to regrow. Even with K'Caies' talent. If it had been cut off in battle, she'd have it back to normal in a couple of minutes. But sacrificing something of yourself was more than physical.

For a year, they'd survived with only minimal losses. It was stable. They could live until Solan or his right hands came to destroy the Dark Star. They'd adapted to this nightmarish place, and could have continued for years.

Until something changed. Until the targeted, surgical attacks began.

K'Thorn heard K'Caies coming long before she reached him. He fired over the hordes of fleshforged into the exposed side of a great white as it swam down one of the many thousands of rivers now carved through the landscape.

Turning to his sole surviving acolyte, he raised an eyebrow. He'd assumed she was coming to restock his reserves, but she had nothing on her.

"We lost another one."

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"Fuck." He clenched the fleshy grip of his rifle, making the weapon squeak. "Who?"

"K'S̘͑͝oͅn͎ya," she said. "They are getting faster. She was already butchered when we arrived only a minute after the hammer."

Another smith. "There's no denying it anymore. They have one of our amulets."

"You think they are from another cult?"

"No. They can't be human."

"Are you sure?" K'Caies taps her fingers along the side of her staff. "Their actions have seemed pretty human to me. Not many beasts have the wherewithal to flee at the simple sight of our approach. Nor do I need to mention the express targeting of our weakest links."

"They might have been human once. But not now. It is not normal for those with cursed mutations to retain a human mind, or even humanoid body. Only the interference of the Dark Star could explain it. The corruption stabilises its form, and controls it like a puppet."

K'Caies hummed, not entirely convinced. Not that K'Thorn was himself. But there was little point trying to tie logic to anything when corruption reached these levels.

"Regardless, we can't let this continue," he said as he climbed down from the twisted bone ramparts. His acolyte followed close. "Human or beast, if it continues to cut down our smiths, those of us that remain cannot last."

"Didn't we already agree that it was too risky?" They strode past a dozen harbingers cutting away at the sharks siphoned into choke-points. K'Caies, almost unwittingly, smacked her staff into the back of a cultist with a gash down his arm, threading the wound back together in an instant. "We don't know how long it will take to find them. Whatever expeditionary force we send will be numbers away from the wall."

"That was before. We didn't expect them to be so… slippery. Between the two of us, it shouldn't take too long to hunt them down. They have fled from any challenge. As long as I can catch line of sight, they will die."

He caught her raised eyebrow. She was clearly questioning if they should be the ones to do it.

"I want to finish this quickly," he admitted. "We leave immediately. Gather what you need."

Before he could follow his own guidance and extort one of the smiths to give him a stockpile of their higher grade shells, the terrible sound of shearing metal exploded around him. A grinding scrape that clattered his bones and sent shivers down his spine.

For one dreadful moment, K'Thorn believed their fears proved true. A fleshforged whale was striking at them from below. Even if he launched himself skyward, there was no hope of survival.

But reality was both better, and far worse.

Massive, serpentine chains crashed out of the earth, and encircled their fortress. They whipped around. Building thick and endless, the chain held mountainous links of sharp iron, bone and a wall of flesh convulsing with the screaming faces of a million souls.

The ground quivered. K'Thorn had no time to react as the steel beneath him fractured, and shot upwards. He, along with the entire fortress, split from the rest of the flat plane, and reached for the remnants of the Forge hammer's rails.

As soon as his feet were his own again, K'Thorn ran for the ramparts. The moment he peered over the ledge, there was no swarm of sharks. No, all he could see was the titanic chains wrapping the fortress, and the steep drop beyond. Even he felt vertigo.

Far above the heights of the volcanoes, their fortress now rested on a spiralling tower of fleshforged chains. With the chittering scrape of metal stilling, the screams of the flesh rose to prominence. The eerie echo formed a distinct chorus; like the hymn of a ritual enunciated entirely by dead woes.

Only one person could do this.

A deafening wail muted the screams. As if attracted by the sudden, mass erasure of its kin, a whale shattered through the steel surface at a vast distance, only to rush towards them with a greater desire than he'd ever seen from their kind.

Steel parted around the mountainous heft of the fleshforged as it swam towards them faster than it had any right to. The whale brushed past a volcanic forge. In a devastating show of power, the volcano disintegrated. The explosion of magma and steel rained down on the landscape as far as K'Thorn could see.

He spotted the few eighth and ninth creed cultists trying to distract, and pull it off course, but it no longer paid them any mind. Not with bigger game to chase. The cracked landscape littered with molten rivers and fissures broke away with the monstrosity's approach, leaving nothing but a burning ocean behind it.

A rumble shook the earth beneath him, but K'Thorn didn't lose his footing this time. He kept his eyes peeled as the chains holding their fortress aloft suddenly shot forward, ready to meet the whale head on. Half a dozen serpentine chains twisted like the heads of a hydra as they, too, ripped apart the surface in their effort to clash against an equally huge enemy.

The first chain struck the whale head on, but the spinning, drill-like plating over its head shafted it to the side and through the air. Snapping in from the side, the second chain carved a deep gash through the whale, but it regenerated as quickly as it was damaged.

In the next second, the remaining chains smashed head on into the heavy spinning plates, jamming them in place. Cracks split its molten surface, only to reforge once free. It was obvious they did damage, but even as thick as a building, the chains were nothing against the sheer might of the mountainous whale.

For a moment, it seemed as if the fleshforged beast would reach them. Only a few seconds, and their bastion swallowed.

Then, with a jolt beneath his feet, a hundred more chains breached the surface. A wall of serpentine heads that snarled with an echoing cacophony of screams. The whale didn't slow for a second.

When the beings clashed, it felt like his chest collapsed. The power held between both sent shockwaves through the fabric of space itself, visibly warping the landscape as the shock carried outward.

The whale, with its immense momentum, had been brought to a stop. But it was hardly dead. Its spinning plating opened and the massive jaw snapped shut on a dozen chains, butchering them. The other chains — including the first few — wrapped around the beast in a constant motion that ground away at its metal plating.

Each motion of the fleshforged broke more chains, but it was an unending game. As the brawl continued, it became all too clear who would win. The chains clung to the steel slabs, and tore them free. The whale was being pulled apart, and regardless of its regeneration, it could never pull itself fast enough.

Finally, in one last act of defiance, the whale roared its droning wail and rushed for the fortress.

The chains locked in place. Like grasping tentacles of the black hole, the chains of iron and flesh dragged the molten fleshforged whale down into the depths. The wail of a dying monstrosity continued until a rumbling crunch of metal cut it off, and left the world lingering in silence.

A creature that not even a cultist in the double digit evolutions had survived against had just been felled before his eyes. And so quickly. This was a display he doubted he would ever witness again.

Only one person had this much power.

Finally, she had come to free them of this nightmare. The person every Fleshsmith wished to become. Coiled in smaller, arm thick chains, a presence nobody could ignore rose over the walls of their fortress.

K'Thorn whispered beneath his breath. "S͍̾ølą̛́̄n̼̙͈̘̄̍̓͘-K̨̩̯͚̻͎̙̩͚͚'K͙͔a͔n̡͎ṱ̡̿͗̚'l̹̮-R̫̜̩u͂̇'a͚͌̏n̫̝̔̉̍."