Chương 107: Ditching the Team

The regrowth stopped with Shy and her wing fully reformed. Her mutations had essentially been reduced to the stumps they'd been in her past life, and yet they'd grown quicker than her arm and leg. Both had not fully reformed. Her arm had gone from stopping at her bicep, to ceasing below the elbow. Just where her chitin should start. The leg was much the same; having grown down to her shin. Nyxil glared at the two-part pipe that was her prosthetic.

It had been welded to the bone, and yet her body spat it out like a unwelcome hair. The thing now lay useless; unfitting. She pat her wing affectionately while she decided on what she should do. Was it better to hobble around on one foot, or try to jury-rig the lower half of the prosthetic back on to her leg… somehow? With a snap of her claws, she severed the lower half and placed it against her leg.

Curious and Pushy — Cuddly was too busy snuggling up besides Shy — wrapped around the hollow metal tube and held it in place. Her new peg-leg was uncomfortable, and despite the strength of her tentacles, they couldn't stop it from wobbling. Questions were bound to be raised. If not for Nyxil's sudden regrowth, then for the disappearance of their Fleshsmith observer. So she decided it wasn't worth worrying about. What was worth pondering, was just how had she healed?

Nyxil was certain the ritual itself hadn't initiated the regeneration; she'd performed in the past without such an effect. It wasn't unrelated. The timing was far too coincidental to not be relevant. Her current guess was that the ritual was a catalyst for something else. A name or mutation she didn't fully understand. Could the stomach she mutated recently have some hidden effect… or was this a part of N̚oth? Or her other names?

She checked herself for new additives, and while she found one, it was a single component as weak as El, the additive that let her use bones as candles. Not something that could ever be capable of regenerating limbs. Now if only she had more people to sacrifice. She would love to experiment. Unfortunately, the only group she'd probably get away with slaughtering at the moment, was the ambushing party that K'Sill had intended to lead her to. Nyxil doubted they would be any easier to beat.

The smart choice would be to return to her team and continue the Trial immediately. Having more people around her made the Fleshsmiths' job more difficult. That was the smart choice… but her wings had demands. It had been a little over a week since she'd last flown. That felt like an eternity. She really should have more control over herself; Nyxil had gone a whole lifetime without flight once, why couldn't she do it again?

Whether there was a legitimate answer to that question beyond it being a joy she couldn't throw away after discovering it, Nyxil didn't care. She had already thrown herself into flight. The narrow walls of the tunnel made for a horrible flying experience. If you could even call it that. Until she escaped the tight confines of the old maintenance corridor her tentacles kept her off the ground as small flaps shunted her forward.

When she broke from the tunnel into a storage room with plenty of open space, Nyxil snapped her wings to their full span. She relished the feeling. For five whole minutes, she simply soared in circles. Preferably, she would fly somewhere with far more open space, but here was about as good as she was going to get without someone spotting her. Nyxil felt a little guilty for leaving her team to wait around while she enjoyed herself. But only a little.

Mavi had made it clear that she wanted to blaze through this Trial. In less than an hour, they'd already gained half the tokens they'd needed to pass, so Nyxil wasn't too worried about leaving them to sit around. After she got the need for freedom out of her system, she sat down to bind her wings back beneath her robe, where they would remain hidden for the remainder of the Trials. Their return was a blessing. It returned her balance to how it should be. And in dire situations, she could rely on flight again.

A scream echoed through the room. At first, Nyxil ignored it. The sound was not terribly uncommon down in the depths of Coral. Such exclamations were to be treated with suspicion. She only looked up when the scream was followed by the dull resonance of gunfire and metallic clangs of battle. Jamming her claws beneath a roller door, she forced it open. The sound grew louder.

Not wanting to be noticed, Nyxil had her tentacles carry her to a dark nook of the ceiling, where she could approach the noise without being seen. It didn't take long to realise that she was heading near the hidden entrance to the Biovault she'd shown her team. The same one she'd expected to find an ambush. Nyxil stopped. She tossed up her curiosity against what was absolutely not something she wanted to be caught up in, and started to back away. But a voice added weight to her curiosity again.

"-an unbiased image. S͍̾ølą̛́̄n̼̙͈̘̄̍̓͘ won't stand for this aggression. Nor will the cults. Not while you interfere with the Trials so directly. The pinnacle cults will not turn a blind eye to your interference as they do each other." There was a hiss of steam, followed by a heavy clank and a wet squelch.

"That assumes your cult has any credibility remaining. Why should they believe you?" Nyxil knew that voice. The mechanical, impassive timbre with a whirring undertone of an engine. Tarchon? Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"The Scriptures will," the unknown voice said. Likely a Fleshsmith. A deep hum vibrated through the walls.

"And why are you so sure?" Tarchon asked.

"Why would the Scriptures trust Fleshsmiths after everything you've been caught involved with?" Nyxil crept forward and wrapping the second half of her skulk shroud around her head, she peeked around the corner. The wide tunnel was littered with bodies. Blood pooled around Tarchon's heavy feet where he stood across from three remaining Fleshsmiths. One of the walls had been transformed into a mass of monstrous, metal-embedded arms.

Nyxil imagined they would all be striking and reaching for Tarchon in the enclosed space, if they hadn't all already been severed or crushed. The two lingering behind the lead Fleshsmith were in the midst of a ritual. The speaker stood before them, blocking Tarchon from attacking before they finished. She didn't recognise him. He hardly even looked like a Fleshsmith considering his lack of fleshforged clothes or weapons. But she did recognise one of the cultists performing the ritual. Zan'Asyll.

The Fleshsmith from her first Trial. The speaker closed his eyes and patted down his robe as if to wipe off his irritation. He smiled; self assure and cocky.

"How about this: you sell that girl to us, and we help you finally take down the Machine God Worshippers. I'll even throw in some of the stronger souls I've collected. For a single kid, it's a good deal, right?" he smirked.

"Old S͍̾ølą̛́̄n̼̙͈̘̄̍̓͘ really wants to clean her ass of this whole disaster, and we both know Coral will be better without those blind faithfuls. What's a single girl to all that?" Nyxil didn't miss the fact that he was proposing such a deal only while surrounded by corpses of his own people. There weren't any Technocultists lying dead.

"You take me for a fool, Z͐a̟͠n̖͐di̥s͈t̝̾h̃̔́?" Tarchon was unamused.

"A fool? No. Foolishly righteous, sure." The man now revealed to be one of the Fleshsmiths' core members shrugged.

"But in the end, you are a cultist all the same. Your machine-like impartiality only extends so far." Tarchon had said Solan wouldn't strike personally in the Trials as it would bring far too much attention… but wouldn't one of her right hands give the same impression?

"If you explain the Fleshsmiths' connection to the Scriptures, I might consider it." The Technocultist looked different to what Nyxil was familiar. A part of his chest had shifted upwards. Thick steel clicked into his jaw, covering the entirety of his neck. Somehow, it made him feel so much larger. Zandisth scowled.

"There's no such thing."

"Did you know," Tarchon's tone was almost amused… despite remaining entirely monotone.

"That in my investigation of the Fleshforge, I found a tunnel directly connecting to Coral's heart?" The Fleshsmith looked annoyed, and dropped any pretence of cooperation. Without so much as a flick of the wrist, all the corpses around him rose. Their fleshforged equipment melted into their bodies. A cannon of metal and tooth sunk into one's face, leaving them without a mouth or eyes. Jagged teeth rimed the barrel that replaced their head.

Another had blades melt into their arms, while their robe ate away their flesh to create sickly twisting exhausts. A foul gas immediately poured from the semi-organic pipes. With his signal, the two behind him finished their ritual. One of the reanimated corpses was swallowed by a dark claw that ripped out from the ritual circle. A deep, unnatural howl echoed through the tunnel, making every feather and spine Nyxil had stand on end.

The glowing runes flashed, rapidly expanding through the hallway before blinking out of existence. All light extinguished. Even with her third eye, Nyxil suddenly found it hard to see. It was as if the void itself carried weight she couldn't pierce. She could see, but doing so made her head pound. The ground trembled, yet none besides her seemed to notice. The dozen corpses riddled with Fleshsmith weapons rushed Tarchon. Each moved faster than Nyxil could follow.

They coordinated perfectly, while retaining an individual style. This was much like what K'Caies had done to K'Thorn. Their souls had been trapped within their own bodies. Used as puppets against their will. Not that she felt pity for Fleshsmiths. Tarchon stood between them, completely undaunted by the resurrected cultists. He took a single bracing step forward — his thumping footstep interrupting the trembling ground — and an explosion of steam rose from a geyser along his back. The first Fleshsmith struck.

A small woman, who's short daggers — that now replaced her hands — eroded the ground as she rushed in close. Tarchon never moved. Her perfect strike hit him between the eyes and at the back of the neck, along the spine. The Technocultist didn't so much as flinch. The strike connected, and smoke rolled off his form, but he was undamaged. She let her momentum pull her out of danger. Space itself seemed to warp, helping her slip away from any retaliation long before it came. It almost looked like she teleported.

If Nyxil had seen it with her normal eyes alone — or if her heartrate wasn't so high — then she would have assumed that's what happened. The next attack left Nyxil deaf. An explosion ripped from the head of the head-melted man. Somehow the blast was both a beam and an explosion; it left a momentarily lingering maroon light in the air, before it rocketed outwards, buckling and warping the metal walls around them. Nyxil was nowhere near the blast. Around a corner.

And yet she was thrown from her narrow hidden crook in the ceiling. Torn from the suction of her tentacles that held her up, and tossed across the floor. She scrambled back into position, glad that none of the cultists seemed to have the observational skill of K'Thorn. She wouldn't observe their souls, though. That would be just asking for them to notice her. One side of the tunnel had melted away; it revealed nothing but another small passage that ran in parallel.

Despite the damage done to the surroundings, Tarchon stood unmoved. He barely had a scratch. The rumbling through the tunnel had grown tremendous now. Something was coming. And it appeared Tarchon knew it very well. A whirring of a turbine spun out from the Technocultist. If Nyxil wasn't questioning her hearing after the explosion, then this certainly pushed her over the limit. Her ears bled. While the rest of the already half crushed corpses came at him, Tarchon finally moved.

In an instant, he crossed twenty metres of tunnel. With an eruptive start, his anvil-like feet through his massive weight forward with enough power that being hit by a trolley at full speed seemed like a better proposition. Coral trembled beneath his feet. His rapid charge was brief, but three cultists laid as nothing but a bloody paste where he'd either stomped on them, or burst through them. In his arms, he held two dead Fleshsmiths by their heads as they grappled hopelessly against him.

Whatever escapes they usually had seemingly ineffective. Their heads popped with little effort. He proceeded to crush their bodies with his feet, preventing Zandisth from reviving them again. A tube opened up in his knee, spilling some liquid into the blood puddles. Another countermeasure? There were still half the dead Fleshsmiths remaining, and the three living ones, yet they suddenly lost priority as the quakes reached their peak. From the far end of the tunnel, the roar returned.

She felt it thrum through her bones, yet it remained silent to her ears. Before Nyxil's eye, the metal walls of the tunnel warped. They expanded outwards, massively increasing in size, while twisting so neither the floor and ceiling were discernible anymore. A dozen rows of teeth crashed through the walls all at once. They came from every direction, like the inside of a worm's mouth. What wasn't very worm-like, was how rapidly those teeth spun.

They buzzed around the interior of the tunnel, shearing away at all the metal and sucking it into the darkness that not even Nyxil's eye could pierce. It shredded Tarchon's way. Hunger for none else. Nyxil just happened to be in the offshoot tunnel a hundred metres behind him.