Re:Cursed

Nyx stared at K'Thorn's corpse.

Her claws were still wide, ready to clamp down, but now frozen in shock.

Of all the outcomes she'd seen as possibilities of an attempted attack, the man being stabbed in the back by his own student wasn't one. The man had survived until Nyx's death last time round. The only way she'd considered his death possible, was if the Dark Star claimed him, or Nyx herself did. If K'Caies was going to betray him, then why didn't she in the last timeline?

The woman's staff flexed and released the severed spine to flop to the ground like a dead snake. From the bottom of the neck to the lower back. The body itself had bent over itself unnaturally; K'Thorn's face buried in the metal between his legs, exposing the broken ribs that protruded from the widened gash on his back.

Nyx shivered and she felt her own spine raise again as the staff flexed its needles like the legs of a centipede. Her spikes had offered very little benefit so far, but right now, she was so very glad to have them. That could have been her.

K'Caies seemed to finish with whatever silent hymn she gave her former teacher, and turned to Nyx. "Don't look at me like that," she said, as if she actually cared about what the cursed girl thought of her. "I've been planning to do this for years. Now that the Dark Star is coming to its end, there's no better time. Especially given the lack of witnesses."

But… why? Sure it was common enough that cultists would betray each other for their own gain, but K'Caies role was primarily a healer. She had no chance to beat Nyx, even if she was a few evolution tiers above her. Surely the woman knew it was only K'Thorn that was keeping Nyx from tearing her head off.

Her confusion had Nyx hesitate. Was K'Caies trying to appease her in a similar way to K'lon had? Did she realise, looking upon the devastation of her cult's fortress, that they fighting against her would be meaningless. Sure, Nyx couldn't recreate such an army without significant preparation, but what did it look like in K'Caies eyes? Did she think Nyx could unleash such horror at a whim?

Was the cultist trying to get on Nyx's good side?

Unsure exactly what K'Caies intent was, Nyx watched as she pulled a scroll out from a pouch at her back, and wrapped it around the tip of her staff. The parchment was clearly skin — whether human or not, Nyx couldn't tell — and held the runes of a ritual circle.

Without a moment's delay, she shoved her staff into the spineless corpse and began a chant. Her voice was gruff. Almost toneless. Even as she listened to a hymn she didn't know, Nyx's ears grated at the imperfect tune. Whatever she was doing, she was not doing it well.

Streaks of red spread up the length of the staff from the wound like veins of fire. Inside the corpse, the needles shifted and the staff split. Each long spike of metal stabbed into bone. The metal shaft stretched, connecting to the pelvis and neck, quickly taking on an imitation of the missing spine.

When K'Thorn breathed again, his eyes snapping wide and the man gasping like he hadn't taken a breath in hours, Nyx realised her folly. She should never have given K'Caies the chance to do whatever it was that she'd done.

Nyx dashed forward. While Pushy snatched her sword out of its scabbard, her other tentacles threw her body towards the cultist. Even Shy didn't shy away. With both pincers at her side, ready to snap forth, she had too many methods of attack for the healer to avoid them all. Her eye already burned at the base of the staff.

She was battered aside before her rapier could pass more than skin deep towards K'Caies heart. So close. Stepping forward with a pole of metal rising from his back and tethering him to K'Caies, he slammed his rifle like a club into the side of Nyx's head.

Her head spun as she crashed along the earth, but the satisfying feeling of crushing bone within her claws dulled the pain. There was blood on the chitin. She looked up to find K'Thorn's arm severed. Seeing her chance, she leapt forward again, this time intending to take out the reanimated corpse while it was off balance and holding its terrifying weapon in only one hand.

He moved terrifyingly quick. The rifle held by the stock slipped into his grip and the barrel angled towards Nyx in a single fluid motion. She burned her eye into the chamber, hoping to burn the bullet she knew would come. It didn't so much as slow the lump of flesh and metal.

Nyx was stuck in mid leap when the gun fired.

Like a worm squirming out of its hole in the earth, the bullet crawled out of the barrel. Spiralling tongues of fire followed close behind, wrapping the tiny metal-tipped bundle of nerves in their embrace before gathering into a ball of hot white energy within the grasp of those nerve endings.

The bullet seemed to barely move as she watched, but no matter what she tried — beating her wings or moving her arms — her body was slower. That tiny, superheated flame behind the bullet carried it towards her with ever increasing speed. It dug through the void, ready to obliterate her chest.

She noticed, too late, that Shy reached for the bullet.

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Her tentacle crept forward. Slow as a snail. She watched the limb that spent near all the time since she'd grown it hiding beneath her robe touch the bullet. Shy vaporised. There was no explosion of blood. No visceral remains from the blast. Yet Nyx still felt her face splattered with grime and filth as she was thrown off her leap and hit the earth again.

"You're not making yourself easy to control," Nyx heard the grunted complaints as she ground her claws through the earth and ground to a stop.

K'Thorn spat. A harrowed expression locked across his face. "Is it not enough that you betray me? You tie me to my own corpse?"

Despite his distress, K'Caies shrugged dismissively. "Your body is useless without your name." She snapped her staff in half, and speared the unattached part through his severed hand. Small tendrils of steel-studded flesh wiggled from the wound until K'Caies brought the arm to K'Thorn, where it sewed back in place.

He flexed his hand before curling it the barrel of his gun… only for his expression to reveal the actions were not his own. K'Thorn looked like he wanted nothing more than to keel over and die. No one like that would grip their weapon with such intent and willingness to fight.

"You have made me into a puppet," K'Thorn wailed. "Is there anything more shameful than this?"

"Well, at least you can still talk," she said, before lowering her voice. "I'll need to fix that."

K'Caies didn't have full control? Could Nyx use that? As she looked upon the pained face of the man forced to stay in the body of a corpse, Nyx knew that would be too hopeful. He now hated his acolyte, but that did not suddenly make Nyx his friend. He would quicker kill her so K'Caies would lose her sacrifice, than help her win.

"Don't resist, or I'll blow off your limbs so you can't."

Nyx wouldn't. She couldn't. If she gave in here, then the next thing she knew, she'd be in the hands of Solan. That, or sacrificed here and now. She still wasn't certain of the exact reason K'Caies betrayed K'Thorn, but it certainly had something to do with solely benefiting from Nyx. If the former, the reward must be immense. If the latter, then she'd better make sure Solan or any of the other cult leaders never found out.

She ducked, and with a swing of her sword, she cleaved a mass of mould as its long strands lingered above her. With a leap to the side, barely avoiding a bullet that whizzed past the chitin of her arm, she threw the sword. Before the sword had even reached its target, she dug her claws into the metal and dashed forward.

Unlike before, she only needed to kill one. If she could break that staff of hers, K'Caies would lose the weapon she needed to keep Nyx in check. Once that happened, killing the cultist would easy. The problem was actually getting close enough to sever K'Thorn from her control.

The blade spun, bearing towards the acolyte's head. Throwing her sword had never been something she practised, but she was happy to see Push had perfect aim. Before it could get close, K'Thorn's corpse battered it away with a swing from his gun as if it were a club.

But that was fine.

The mould moved as soon as the rifle touched the blade. The glacial, bluish white strands grew and spread, covering the gun, then spreading down K'Thorn's arms like bundles of spiderwebs. As with any creature suddenly bound, the dead cultist resisted. He fought against the mould that locked his hand to the stock, but unlike when it was attached to her head, the strands were no longer so fragile. They flexed with his motions like ropes of rubber, but never snapped. Never let him go.

Unable to return his hand to the trigger, he could only watch as Nyx flew past, both claws wide and ready to shatter the staff. K'Caies tried to react. Her secondary staff was already swinging at Nyx, but she was too slow. Her pincer wrapped around the staff and clamped.

The instant her claw stopped, she knew she hadn't pierced deep enough. Beneath her claws, the staff was still attached by a thin core of metal. She brought her other hand down on the vulnerable spot as K'Caies second staff slammed in her face. Pain flared through her jaw, but she was desperate to see if she'd succeeded.

Nyx spat out half a dozen teeth and caught herself in an awkward landing with her tentacles. She'd won! Right there, across from her, K'Thorn was already slumping; all the strength seeping from his legs. Now, she only had to deal with the traitorous acolyte behind him.

At least, that's how it should have been.

K'Caies shoved her secondary staff into the back of the broken one, and in moments K'Thorn was standing tall and strong again. Not only that… while the man's hand was still bound to the stock of his rifle, the fleshy parts of the weapon folded in on themselves. Nyx watched as the trigger moved from its standard position, to right where K'Thorn's fingers were tied.

Seeing her chance at victory slipping away, Nyx dug her fingers in the ground again, ready to throw herself forward.

Only for her arm to be blown off.

The vaporising sphere had started from her chitin, and expanded outward, swallowing everything in its path. Nyx felt a part of her cheek now bled, having skimmed the edge of the sphere.

Not prepared to suddenly lose an arm, she slumped to the ground. She looked up, but she didn't know what more she could do. She'd lost one of each type of limbs. A wing, a tentacle, a leg, and now an arm. Her third eye had been burning away at them all this fight, but it gave them nothing more than skin deep lacerations and hardly even sunk through their weapons.

Maybe if she had more time she could burn them to death, but K'Caies would never allow it to reach that point.

"You are done." The cultists words were a statement, not a question. No matter how Nyx wanted to keep going, she would only face death if she continued.

She spat. Her tongue rocketed its own spittle ball towards K'Thorn. The acid melted through cloth and flesh, only for K'Caies' healing to thread his chest back together quicker than her acid could burn. It was a weak last attempt, but she had to try something. She couldn't bend to the commands of a cultist.

Never.

Then, the gong rang.

In moments, K'Thorn's foot was on her throat, and the barrel of his gun held against her remaining arm.

The world shifted, but the cultists did not disappear. K'Caies was not about to let her capture disappear.

But as Nyx glared daggers up at her captor, the world never stopped spinning. The gong rang again. The echo of the hammer stirred up the fractured world of metal and flesh and in the distance, Nyx heard screams quickly muffled by the victorious roar of whales.

Again, the gong crashed through her chest. Again, the world shifted. Like a heartbeat, the grand forgehammer thumped through the Dark Star with power enough to destroy and reforge all. Faster and faster it beat. It shattered away at the foundations for this world that Nyx had spent the past years surviving.

Neither Nyx, K'Thorn, nor K'Caies failed to recognise what was occurring. The Dark Star had finally reached its end.

The Dark Star was collapsing.