Re:Cursed

Nyxil took a single step forward, and the hard glare Tru was giving her gave way to fear. He matched her step, moving back into the hallway. But instead of running, he kept his eyes on her, demanding an answer.

The skitter dug deeper into the boy's curly locks, hissing all the while.

Tru looked ready to bolt. He looked at her with more suspicion than anyone directed her way before. Something was off, and he knew it. Yet he still had the determination to stand there and demand answers from the target of his suspicions.

She didn't know whether it was courageous or foolish.

Nyxil had to admit that the idea that she, formerly the weakest of the ward, was able to survive the Dark Star when thousands of cultists many evolutions above her hadn't was difficult to believe. Tru wouldn't be the only one to doubt her.

"What am I supposed to say?" She shrugged helplessly. "I'm still me. It's not my fault the cultists died. The Dark Star didn't like how the fleshsmiths gathered together."

"You want me to believe that you survived without help?" he scoffed. "You?"

"Nix killed K'tan, in case you forgot." Dan defended her. She was grateful that he'd hidden her evolutions. "The Fleshsmiths had a target on her head. Why would they help her?"

"Then she's lying about having been stuck in the Dark Star Event." Tru was grasping at straws now.

"Ask Tarchon," Nyxil said. "He's the one who found me in the labyrinthine remains."

Tru grit his teeth and glanced to the two beside her. "I just can't believe it. Someone so weak and crippled should never be able to survive on their own. Never able to rise. It is impossible of the unfortunate to overcome the powerful." He took a hesitant step further into the hallway. "You should have died down there."

Ari and Dan shouted their discontent, but Tru was already running down the hall.

"What a prick," Dan grumbled. Ari turned to reassure Nyxil, but she didn't need it.

Nyxil was too busy berating herself. She had been far too close to skewering the kid when he burst in. Tru may be aggravating, and have just told her she was better off dead, but that was no reason to kill someone. From what she could see, he hadn't even joined a cult yet. Nothing but a childish bully.

Yet her blade had almost gone straight through his head.

She couldn't ignore it any longer; her time in the Dark Star had left her scarred. Nyxil was jumpy and quick to strike before her mind could follow. It had helped down there. Up here, it would only get her in trouble or have her do something she regret.

The Trials would be against kids. She didn't want to leave a trail of corpses in her wake because of some uncontrolled panic that kept overriding her reactions in battle.

But how was she supposed to figure this out? Maybe it would be better if she put some space between herself and her ward-mates until she could control her stress better. With only a week before the Trials, some isolation in Tarchon's home might do her good.

With her only hand fidgeting on the hilt of her blade, she made for the door. "I think I should leave. See you two at the Trials?"

Dan's eyes widened as she spoke, and quickly ran to block her path. Meanwhile, Ari grabbed her elbow, pulling her back.

"Don't think we're letting you leave so soon." Ari led her back deep into the room.

Despite her superior evolution and all the mutations through her body, Nyxil was still emaciated. It was nothing for a girl of average weight to pull her around. Of course, she could fight and pull off the arms holding her, but she didn't exactly want to hurt Ari.

"You were never very social, but I think it'll do you good to have some company for a while," Dan said, his eyes on her hip.

Following his gaze, Nyxil noticed her hand clenching the handle of her blade. If it had been the table, it would have cracked. She had to force her chitinous fingers to unravel and pull away from the rapier. Nyxil clicked her tongue. She didn't want these two to think there was anything wrong with her.

❖❖❖

An hour later, they were back in that dingy seafood restaurant Dan had first shown her. Well, technically not the same one. The owner had packed up and moved to get away from the corruption of the first Dark Star Event.

Instead of being wedged in a narrow alley between two buildings on one edge of the safe zone, it was now on the other edge, hiding in the basement of some unsuspecting apartment building with access stairs so well hidden Nyxil doubted even the residents knew of the place.

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How Dan had found it again was a mystery.

In a dark booth decorated with nothing but warding runes, Nyxil shovelled bowls full of probably-not-octopus down her throat. She was ravenous. After so long sustaining herself on only flesh of the fleshforged — Tarchon's bricks didn't count as food — a hunger overcame her that she'd never experience before.

Four empty platters sat before her, while Dan and Ari had barely touched their first, too busy watching her as she tried to choke herself on the suspicious food. At that moment, she hardly cared if it was eating her from the inside. It tasted so good.

Lobster, yabbies, cod, and now octopus. Dan had labelled the meals as she worked her way through them. She didn't know if there was any connection, or if her ward-mate was simply attaching the flavours to the types of sea creatures he knew. Though as she slurped down another ridged tentacle — that she ignored any similarity to her own — she liked to imagine he was close.

It was a strange phenomenon of how rare fish were. They all knew more of the species that they would never lay eyes on than the animals most ate everyday. Nyxil didn't even know what animal the white meat of beef came from. There wasn't an animal called that.

When she was younger, her curses would have argued with how much she was eating. She would have been in the bathroom, retching her guts after the first plate. It was good to see that was no longer the case. Her curses were working for her now, not against.

The very thought of curses not being a detriment was still strange.

"Oh." Nyxil just realised. "I don't have any money. All I had left was taken by the Dark Star." Not that she'd had much after buying her robe and sword.

"Don't worry, I got it." Dan smiled. Ari snatched some grilled fish from his plate while he wasn't watching. "The Cult of the Everseeing Eye provides a stipend even for us uninitiated acolytes."

"Are you really satisfied going with them?" Nyxil asked before she could stop herself.

Her absolute hatred for the cults wasn't something she wanted spreading around. And considering that their lives would be ruined if they didn't join one of the cults — even if she planned to topple them eventually — she couldn't tell them. It would put them at ends.

Surprisingly, Dan's answer wasn't resolute. He glanced, unsure, at Ari before speaking. "I'm in a relatively good position. Regardless of my performance in the Trials, the higher creeds already want me to take the initiation. There's a lot of people who would kill for that."

Nyxil waited for Ari to interrupt. Dan was clearly uncertain; everything he said was detached, stating his position without giving his feelings on it. If even she could tell he didn't seem excited by the prospect of joining the cult — something she celebrated a little inside — then Ari, his closest friend, certainly would.

But there was nothing but silence.

Nyxil turned to find the girl staring into the charred flesh she'd stolen from Dan's plate. She didn't eat it. The maybe-fish simply sat impaled on her fork, unmoving. Ari was lost in her own world.

"What about you, Ari?" Nyxil prompted. "Managed to catch the Omen Artisans' eye yet?"

With what she knew of the cult's current circumstances, Nyxil had known the answer before she asked. It might have been cruel — she knew the girl really wanted to be accepted into their ranks — but if there was a path to convince these two to avoid the cults, she would take it.

But she hadn't expected Dan to glare at her, trying to shut her up before she could actually ask. Though it became obvious why only moments later.

Ari broke down. A hiccup bubbled up through her lips and she turned away to cover her eyes. "No." She did surprisingly well at keeping her voice level, but it was ruined by the sniffle right after. "They don't want me."

Dan was out of his chair and holding a comforting arm around her in an instant. "Of course they'll want you. You'll prove to them that they need you. They would be stupid to pass up your talent."

"Why care?" Nyxil asked as if she didn't care at all. This was a dangerous direction to go for someone so emotional, and she could feel Dan's glare already. "If they think they are so much better without you, then as Dan says, prove them wrong. Become everything you imagine yourself to be, but without the cult dragging you down."

Dan's glare eased off, and it looked like he was considering her words himself. Good. Forget leaving them alone because life would be tough without a cult. She now had other plans.

Air looked at her through bleary eyes. "Is that possible?"

"Look at me." Nyxil grabbed the forgotten fried fish from Ari and crushed it to nothing more than paste. Fork included. "That is exactly what I'm doing. Even if I join a cult, I won't be beholden to them."

Now she had both their attention. It wouldn't be enough to convince them yet, but it laid the seed in their mind of the other option. She had been dreading the eventuality where the cults would turn them against her. Twisting them to be as greedy and self-serving as the rest. If she stopped them now, that would never happen.

The foundation was already there. Dan had doubts about the Everseeing Eye, though she didn't know what they were yet. And Ari had straight up been rejected by the only cult she wanted. Everyone knew those that didn't join the cults lived a life of poverty and struggle, but maybe, just maybe, Nyxil could bring them down a new path.

❖❖❖

"S͍̾ølą̛́̄n̼̙͈̘̄̍̓͘, the girl has been found."

"Impeccable work as always, K'No͔͌͒̇ǐ̜͆r̢̥u̝s͕." Solan abandoned her work on the temporary new forge. It was basic, and not something that could reforge the chains she'd lost against the Dark Star's core. "Tell me where our sacrifice has hidden herself."

"T̆a̹̅r͐chö̠n̩͂͑ has her under his protection. And the girl is hardly hiding. She has confirmed herself that she was within the Dark Star. Except… I had my best inspector check on her, and as far as we can tell, she has no mutations. The rest of her descriptions match, and she is on her second evolution as we suspected, but there are none of the signs of the perfect sacrifice."

Solan snarled at the news. Even at a second evolution, it was possible the girl had a powerful illusion or madness inducing name. Something that could affect even eighth creed cultists. It wasn't likely, but neither was the existence of the perfect sacrifice.

"It is a risk we have no choice but to take." She glared down into the twisted remnant of her glorious Fleshforge. It was a loss she would never forgive, but if the girl was truly the fabled existence, then the loss was minimal. Not even her entire cult, for all their immense worth, could compare. "But her protector is of particular annoyance. Send word when she has been left alone. This time, the Technocult bastards can feel what it's like to be framed."

"Understood, ma'am."