Re:Cursed

Nyxil ran a tentacle along her spines. The spikes were calm and settled, but still poked through the back of her robe, visible to anyone that looked her way. Anyone meaning Tarchon, who still worked away at the mechanics within the metal arm.

She sat across from him, on one of the cleanest benches in the workshop. Which she'd still needed to brush aside a dozen little contraptions to make space for herself. Fidgeting with a small, finger-sized flask, Nyxil accidentally triggered a scorching green flame and flicked it away. Luckily for her — and Tarchon's workshop — the miniature flamethrower put itself out before it landed amongst a pile of papers.

Whether Tarchon glared or not, she would never know. Only the guilty would look his way. It wasn't Nyxil's fault the Technocultist didn't practice any safety measures in storage.

Her tentacle continued its slow caress of the long bones that poked out her back. As her only mutation that she couldn't see — and had trouble inspecting in a mirror — she had to rely on her other growths to give it a look over for damage. Not that she expected any. They were one of her more hardy changes. Comparable to the hard chitin of her hands.

No. While she feathered her tentacle along its length, from the slight toothpicks along her neck to the spears that hang down past her ass in an imitation of a tail, her mind wasn't on any scratches her spine might have picked up. It was on a single question: how in the Great Iris' vastness, did Tarchon intent to hide them? How did he intend to hide her mouth, or hair, or voice?

It wouldn't be impossible to hide her wings and tentacles beneath her clothes — assuming nobody accidentally touched her — but the other changes were harder.

Would he have her wear a mask and act mute for the foreseeable future? But her spines were even more difficult than that. If Nyxil tried to hide them beneath her robe, the first time she felt threatened, they would snap upwards like a fish's spiky fin or the quills of an echidna, and rip through the cloth easily.

She'd given up trying to hide them in the Dark Star, and now let them settle through a dozen of their own holes in her robe. That would not continue to work. There had to be another method to hide them, and the one who said he would figure it out, was casually working on something completely different.

It'd be one thing if the machine arm was meant to be a prosthetic for her, but the thing looked more than double her weight. Besides, the proportions clearly matched his own.

"So…" she started, trying not to come across as impatient, despite absolutely feeling that way. "How exactly do you propose I keep all this hidden?"

With only a week before the Trials, she didn't want to be stuck within the confines of Tarchon's home for the entirety of that time. She could hardly use her Talent to improve while coddled inside.

"I am thinking," was all he said.

"You are?" she laid on her doubt maybe a little too thick. Could have fooled me, she did not say.

He paused to look her way, and she immediately regret it. This man knew everything about her now. Her entire future teetered on the decisions he made. Should he take back the offer of cooperation because she'd been inexplicably rude, then he could change his mind. He might act the exact way she expected him to.

"Do not judge my process." With that said, he turned back to his machine.

He clipped a thick cable hanging from one of the thick pipes overhead into the arm's base, causing the entire mechanism to flex. It crashed violently to the side, throwing piles of junk off the table. Tarchon grunted, fighting against the elbow as it jolted back the other way. A narrow tube got stuck between the unfinished clockwork gears and snapped. Fluorescent yellow fluid spilled everywhere. Finally, the Technocultist flicked a switch under his workbench, and the machine stilled.

For a few moments, they both sat still. Nyxil was all too glad for the distraction, and watched with curiosity as an almost imperceptible seam in the bench sucked up all the spilt liquid before it could dribble off the side and down to the floor. Tarchon did not immediately jump back into his work.

His head twisted back to her, and while she didn't know if he was accusing her, or waiting for her to comment, Nyxil knew that glare of his was a bit more direct than usual.

She tossed her hand up. Hey, don't look at me like that. I didn't break your arm. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Pushy and Cuddly had risen as well. As if they were making up for her lack of other hand. She turned her head and found Curious poking at more of Tarchon's dangerous gizmos. Again.

Robotically — and Nyxil wasn't so certain it was because of his body — Tarchon returned to his work.

Sighing, Nyxil leapt off the table and made for the front door. Her fingers slid along the unguarded hilt of her blade as she shouldered the heavy frame. Instead of opening as it should, she heard the hiss of pistons from within the door, and it didn't so much as budge.

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"Where are you going?"

She narrowed her eyes at his question, and turned to sneer back at him. Was this where the veneer ended? Was he just pretending that he wasn't keeping her trapped?

"Am I not allowed to find something to practice against? I need to get out there and make sure I can actually use this thing without my tentacles." She slapped her rapier. "There's only a week."

"And you think going out while looking like that is a good idea?"

Nyxil couldn't help the self-conscious glance down at herself. She'd come to accept all her changes, enjoy them even, but that didn't mean they were viewed by outside parties any differently than before. "I assume you still have that skitter-spawn infestation."

There was a brief pause before the locks whirred, and the door swung open for her.

Releasing a breath of relief, Nyxil moved to step through the pathway of pipes that surrounded Tarchon's home and into the ancient refinery, but was stopped once more.

"Hold on." The Technocultist stepped away from his workbench to dig through a pile of machinery on one of the corner tables. He pulled something from the mess, glanced her way, then spun the drill-bit at the tip of his finger until the metal pole in his hands shortened. Done in only a second, he moved towards her. "It is basic, but this should help you. We don't want your… extra limbs coming out to help you walk when you least need it."

As Tarchon brought it towards her covered stump, Nyxil realised it was a prosthetic leg. A simple one. Nothing more than a set of metal poles connected by a hinge joint.

"I thought you said you couldn't provide support?" she asked half-seriously as she lifted the hanging pant leg to give him access.

"Consider it a transaction for the blood sample and tooth."

Nyxil was expecting a strap, or some other sort of brace to connect the prosthetic to her thigh, so when an array of red lights shone along the metal, she flinched. Tarchon held her still. Her stump didn't budge despite her reaction as the small scale ritual pushed her flesh out of the way and bonded the metal to her bone.

"Wait, you took one of my teeth?" despite what was happening to her leg right now, that fact that he might have tugged it from her mouth while she was sleeping took precedence in her mind.

Not yet done, Tarchon opened a small panel in the side of the leg to reveal a tiny candle. Folding backwards in a way only a mechanical joint could allow, Tarchon's hand moved out of the way and a nozzle in his wrist lit with a tiny flame. It looked almost cute coming out of the wide pipe. Clearly, the blowtorch was not designed to be a blowtorch.

The candle was lit, and he shut the little hatch. Immediately, Nyxil felt the difference. She tested her leg, and only Tarchon's hand stopped her from kicking the man himself.

"One fell out while I was carrying you," he muttered absently before, apparently satisfied, rising to full height. "Nobody should see you as long as you stay within the range of my defences. Don't get crushed." And with that, he pat her shoulder — the weight sent her stumbling — and moved back to his work.

Thankfully, Nyxil remained upright. The mechanical leg responded to her motions as if it were her own. No noticeable delay. A length that perfectly suited. The only flaw — she soon learnt — was that the knee joint was ever so slightly lower than her real one. The discrepancy left her with a limp, but otherwise, she could walk just fine.

Nyxil wrapped her three tentacles under her robe the same way Shy liked to hide. The three long masses of muscle curled around her waist, snuggled up right below her wing. Considering she wasn't actually willing to go outside the ancient refinery, there wasn't a need to hide, but it was best to wean herself off her reliance.

When it had just been her wings to hide, she'd gotten away with it. But the addition of her tentacles would be pushing that. Even with her thick robes and loose hood.

Glancing down at her temporary leg, she flicked her pants where they'd bunched up at her thigh. As the cloth tumbled down over her prosthetic, she realised just how much space the metal pipe gave her down there. Nyxil extracted two tentacles and sent them down, to twist around the cold metal. It made her look much more natural.

Maybe if I cut off the other leg…

She had to tear her mind away from that line of thought. It would be all too easy to sacrifice her human parts for the convenience of her mutations, but that was a slippery slope. And she didn't need to become any less human when she was just about to enter a very… noticeable event.

Nyxil limped over to the side of the scaffold walkway. Leaning against the rail, she peered down into the dark nest of skitter-spawn as they ran around, slipped through one another, and were impartially crushed by moving machinery.

There were more down there than she remembered.

It was a tight space, and the moment she leapt down there, the former rats wouldn't stop coming. Not to mention she had to keep observant of her environment at all times. By all accounts, it should terrify her — it certainly had the first time she'd looked down — but after the Dark Star… it didn't come close.

She jumped, and stabbed her rapier through the first four skitter spawn she saw. Only one died. The other two had been close enough that their forms distorted and slipped into an incorporeal state just as her blade passed through them. Nyxil jabbed again, letting her Talent teach her how to move quicker, more efficiently, and the pointed tip of her rapier skewered the skitters as they returned to a physical state.

Having only a single arm, and the rest of her limbs bound, her balance was tested. When the ground beneath her shifted — throwing her towards a spinning lump of metal that looked more like the teeth of a shredder than the gear it was supposed to be — she spun. Countless hours of avoiding molten teeth showed its experience. Her foot kicked off the cog, and she slipped past another piston — barely avoiding the fate of being crushed into paste — and landed upright.

There was no denying her newly evolved name had helped her there. Her reaction time hadn't been that good a day ago. Had it only been a day?

She cast the thought aside as the skitter-spawn gathered. Unlike her handful of earlier kills, these would not be so easy. hundreds bunched up in a swarm of fangs, claws, and furry skin that flickered in and out of reality. Bunched as they were, skitter-spawn were notoriously difficult to kill. Especially with a blade. But to push her Talent, an enemy that only showed vulnerability for an instant was perfect.

The swarm crashed forward like a wave. She swung, hit nothing, and had to leap through the narrow gap beside a squealing steam geyser to escape the countless clacking teeth.

Perfect to test her new names, but still deadly. Even if she might not be in the Dark Star anymore, Coral was still brimming with threats. At least this one, she'd chosen herself.