Re:Cursed

It seemed that Nyxil's assumption that her Talent would be the only new name she could rely on was wrong. Or, at least, not as unusable as she thought.

Her body was as gaunt as ever, but now when she kicked off the ground, she leapt further. When she swung her arm, it moved quicker. The effect was significant. While she hadn't noticed the subtle benefit of some additives until it they slapped her right in the face, this was a noticeable change from only a day ago.

With a powerful leap off the side of a shifting piston, she swung her blade through the the swarm that rolled after her like a flood. Only some fragmented black smoke announced the deaths of skitter-spawn. By the limited amount, she'd likely only eliminated a couple. Despite the unimpressive number, it was only because of the timing of her guiding Talent that she could achieve that. Skitters were notoriously difficult to put down when they bunched up.

Before Nyxil could fully pass by them, the swarm of darkness and rat teeth reacted. In an instant, the former rodents sprung at her. A dozen chaotic waves converging at once to form a single, unnatural summit of fangs.

She dodged it effortlessly.

Her other name, Ossuul, twisted her spine to avoid the spear that would have otherwise pierced her. She'd only received it in her fight with K'Caies, so it hadn't been ready for evolution, yet she knew it would be a core part of her soul going forward.

Slamming her arm into a chunk of metalwork above, she flipped and landed on her feet, stumbling only slightly because of the annoying lack of flex from her metal knee. She would need to bend it herself in the future.

After spending so long fighting with her wings to help her, Nyxil's entire fighting style had become acrobatic. Spearhead charges and flips. A lot of flips. Having wings at her centre of mass only encouraged the method. Even with them ripped off or strapped beneath her rope, the style had become second nature.

It was not, to her shock, as effective without her wings.

Her Talent screamed at her every time she flipped and turned her back on the skitters. It had never done that previously. She wanted to do as it guided, but she also wanted to keep the way she fought at least somewhat similar between when her mutations were out and when they weren't. Besides, she didn't have the time to get over all the ingrained habits and learn a second style. Better to just adapt what she knew.

Nyxil leapt forward again. The boost to her leg strength did not apply to the robotic limb, but as that was already the stronger of the two, it mattered little. As long as she kept on the move, the rodents that combined into one indistinct blob wouldn't corner her. With all the machinery around her, she didn't trust that where she placed her foot wouldn't suddenly become a chainsaw and rip it off.

If she lost her other foot, she might even consider mutating those goopy feet of hers. They were her next main-line curse, after all.

… she really didn't want them yet.

As much as Nyxil had accepted her mutations, the sludge feet could be skipped for all she cared. Imagine having tongues where you walked. It wasn't exactly as bad as that, but it had never been a pleasant experience to constantly taste the inside of the metal boots she'd been shackled.

Before she could strike, her eye caught the decoupling of a spinning motor. With no other choice, she abandoned her attack. Nyxil straightened and sailed over the shifting wheel as its obscene RPM shredded the creatures below her. Well, it would have, if they were normal rodents. Instead, only the bubbly smoke of a single skitter rose from the mass.

Nyxil's feet hadn't yet touched ground when her Talent demanded she throw her sword. Its guiding efforts startled her, and she immediately rejected the option. Throw away her weapon? In this situation? How would she get it back from the swarm? The blade was strong, but she didn't think it was that much better than anything Tarchon might have made. Could it handle the crushing force of a piston?

The moment to do as her Talent said soon passed, and she forced herself to keep moving. Clacking teeth surrounded her in that brief lapse. When she swung to knock back rodents that already nipped at her fingers, her name encouraged her to toss her rapier, but again, she refused.

Why was it trying so hard to get her to let go of the weapon? She really hoped it wasn't trying to encourage her to use her claws. They were clearly the superior weapon, but she was trying to hide them. She needed to learn to fight without them. If her Talent couldn't understand her intent, then she couldn't rely on it. Who knew where and when it would carelessly guide her to revealing herself. Just because a specific something was the most effective, didn't mean it was desirable in the long run.

Heh, Nyxil smirked. Who would have thought the only name I thought would work would provide the least benefit. Well, it's good to know I won't be as unprepared as I thought, but I still have a lot to explore.

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She dove back into the game of cat and mouse — where she was technically the mouse, despite her cat being a creepy mass of dead rats — killing any she could as she learnt to use these new names of hers. It would take some time.

❖❖❖

An hour had passed when Nyxil had finally given up on the eradication of the skitter spawn and clambered up to the scaffolding walkway again.

There had been about a hundred of the little critters when she'd begun her hunt against them, but for every individual spawn she killed, five scampered in from the periphery and added to the swarm. By the end, she swore there were almost a thousand, and it had become almost impossible to move without stepping on the mass of teeth and getting gnawed alive.

A hundred had been hard to land any strikes. A thousand had been near impossible. She was already bleeding from head to toe from the countless bites she'd received. Nyxil couldn't imagine anyone able to take on the swarms of millions in the quarantined sections of Coral.

No that was wrong. She could think of one. The mountainous chains that shredded a fleshforged whale like it was nothing still lingered in her mind.

If the rodents had been as physical as they were individually, Nyxil would have had no trouble at all. But as time went on — and the spawn count increased — she found it endlessly more difficult to strike the flickering bodies that did appear. It would have been so easy if those fat rat-teeth needed to be solid to sink into her flesh.

Well, at least she'd learnt why her Talent kept trying to get her to throw her weapon. Apparently, it was adapting to her tendency to dash around a lot in a fight. It seemed to think that teaching her to throw her blade was a good idea while the fight had been manageable. She'd only come to this conclusion because it had stopped trying as the swarm grew larger. She couldn't throw her weapon if she couldn't retrieve it, after all.

It was… not exactly the sort of thing she'd thought the well reputed Talent would be teaching her. Throwing away your weapon in the middle of a fight was a recipe for disaster. An opponent would simply have to knock it out of reach, or use it to trap her when she dashed in to receive it.

Hopefully, there was a reason behind the regression.

Nyxil stepped up to the door of the control room in the centre of the ancient refinery feeling far more self-assured than only an hour ago. She was relieved, and confident that coming out on top in the Trials wasn't impossible. They were kids. Even if she didn't include her time trapped in with the cults, Nyxil already had two years of experience and a set of enviable evolutions to her name.

She may not be able to reveal her full potential, but knowing that her names weren't tied to her mutations alone — even if there was a clear bias — Nyxil could take a breath and let herself relax. She wouldn't stop entirely. Couldn't. That would be nothing but the pinnacle of hubris, especially considering it was inevitable that the cults discovered her mutations. Tarchon and the Technocult couldn't protect her from everyone.

Still, after so long moving, fighting, and stressing non-stop, it would be best if she slowed down for a while.

…Even if that seemed impossible.

The door swung open for her before she could even reach the handle. It hadn't done that any of the other times. Walking into the deceptively large workshop, she found that no, the large Technocultist wasn't standing behind the door. He must have added a system to open the door automatically.

Unless it had already been in place, and he'd only now decided to have it recognise her.

Inside, Tarchon was nowhere to be seen. She darted across the floor and peeked into the room with his very uncomfortable looking half-recliner, half-machine, and didn't find him plugged in. The man must have left while she was busy down in the skitter nest.

Nyxil made her way back through the line of workbenches, first veering to the back shelf with the bricks. She snatched one from the pile, and let her acid work away at some sheared pieces, doing her best to ignore the taste. It would be nice if Tarchon picked up some reasonable food, but she was hungry, and wasn't about to hold her breath.

As she gnawed on the brick like the skitter-spawn had been on her toes, Nyxil wandered to the table Tarchon had been working on before he'd left. It might be a little foolish, but she was curious to see if she could connect an arm heavier than herself to her body and still make it work.

Instead, she found not the massive gauntlet Tarchon had been working on, but a slender set of connected pipes. A prosthetic. Of the same simplistic design style as her leg. Next to it, was a note.

You can remember the ritual, correct?

So… that's permission to put it on herself, right? She flicked a little metal latch in the upper arm pipe, and found an identical candle slotted inside. Well, if he's gone through the effort of leaving it for me, I might as well.

Pulling up her sleeve, Nyxil began to hum the short hymn she'd heard Tarchon speak in monotone. Maybe she'd find greater effect by inlaying tone and rhythm, but the Technocult's rituals were all about consistency… and she wasn't so sure she wanted to change something up when their machines relied on expected results. So despite her desire to give the ritual some… flair, she held back and spoke the ritual in the same boring tone Tarchon had.

It was an incredibly unsettling feeling, having her skin and muscle fold out of the way to accept the binding of steel to bone. Before, she'd been able to push it out of her mind along with every new experience that day, but doing it herself was uncomfortable. The process was painful both then and now, but at least when Tarchon had done it, she wasn't the one that had to push. When metal grafted to bone, Nyxil let out an involuntary shiver.

The next ritual was easier. Just light the candle, say a few words, and suddenly she could move the metal arm. As with the leg, there was no sensation returned. Only the commands being sent outwards.

But unlike the leg, Nyxil felt sick as she looked at the metal replacement.

Her leg, she hadn't cared for. In her mind, the limb had already become a remnant of the past. Necessary for her current situation, but ultimately something destined to be replaced. She hadn't even truly internalised her feelings on this until she laid eyes on the mechanical arm she now wielded.

It was wrong.

This lump of metal was trying to imitate and fulfil the role of her hand? Never. Not in a million years could she mar her body with a poor replica of the claw that had once been there.

In a fit of unbidden, sourceless rage, her chitinous hand morphed into claws and clamped down on the steel arm. Nyxil's arm of only two seconds severed. From circular levered fingers right up to the point where her chitin once ended, she had removed the heresy.