Chương 222: Chapter 218: Hunger and Greed

Solan had leapt into Nyxalair's stomach. It was her mind, her soul, and a Pink endless void. But most importantly, it was her stomach. Nyxalair didn't wait a moment before she began to digest. Whether it was the chains spilling through the gaps in her teeth pinning her realm to a physical location, or simply Solan's high evolution body, the cult leader did not suddenly melt away into digestable sludge. Unfortunately. But she did react. Solan recoiled as the Pink seemed to crawl over her skin.

It both grasped at her, and remained as nothing more than a background haze.

"What is this?" The cult leader furrowed her brow as she glanced down at her hand. Her eyes caught in Nyxalair's otherwordly light. For a moment, the woman seemed lost; entranced in a place an infinity away. She took the opportunity. Nyxalair flew backwards, gaining as much distance from the faltering cult leader as she could. The chains clung to her, even in their master's lapse, and refused to let go no matter the strain she put upon them. This was too similar to her binding shackles from her past life.

The flesh between chain links grew dozens of tiny mouths like that of a leech and began to bite into her. She felt them sap at her energy. Small teeth pierced skin wherever they could find it and did their best to suppress her movements. Nyxalair was incensed. Desperate. The memory of her past pushed her to move as quickly and decisively as she could. Anything to get rid of the shackles. Acid spilled over the chains.

Rapiers, claws and teeth — wherever they could bite — all hacked at the bindings, but none could so much as scratch the metal. Any wounds she inflicted in the fleshy half was replaced by flesh flowing over and forging anew. Musculature fibres sprung over her blades, trying to jam them between links of the chain. Only by increasing the churn of her stomach did she finally slip from the chains. Not by eating through the fleshforged creations. No, Nyxalair escaped only by consuming her own arms, legs and wings.

It was… not nearly as unpleasant a sensation as it should have been. Likely a result of her new name. As was the sudden burst of energy flowing through her. Still, she'd cast aside half her limbs just to gain a little space. Thankfully, she'd killed her last cultist less than a minute prior, so her healing activated and began to regrow the lost limbs… but she'd missed out on the most intense of healing. Nyxalair would need to kill again if she wanted wings or claws in this fight.

Still, she was free of the chain and Solan remained dazed… for another second. Solan blinked and scowled. Her eyes locked on Nyxalair, or the twirling shadows that embraced her. The Fleshsmith leader deliberately avoided allowing them to fall anywhere else, as if doing so would be a mistake. Solan considered Pink a threat. As… encouraging as that discovery was, considering the woman was still fending off digestion with ease, Solan hadn't backed down.

She was concerned about this strange mutation of Nyxalair's, but not enough to halt her greed. She took a step forward. The sea of chains tried to jam their way through the portal behind her, to limited success. Nyxalair might not be able to bite through the hardened steel, but she could keep her jaw clamped shut tight enough to stop most of the serpentine weapons from slipping into her stomach.

"How far have you gone?" Solan's voice was curious, though tinged with manic avarice.

"Drop the shadow. I want to see what you have become. Show me just how perfect you are." Of course, Nyxalair did no such thing. Against someone like Solan, hiding her movements would be of minimal benefit, but she wasn't in a position to shun even the smallest of boons. Her tentacles carried her back, widening the distance between herself and Solan. Once again, she tried to throw all her weight into cleaving her chest shut. There was a groan.

A rattle of chains that was enshrouded by Pink, and amplified into an unsettling jingle. The screams and moans of the half-living joined the melody like a chorus of subtle whispers. The chains, as if they were people themselves, cried from the assaulting teeth. But they didn't shatter.

"Fine then." Solan's eyes narrowed.

"I'll have to unveil you myself." With that, she leapt. Well… she tried to, but it seemed that in this strange space, only Nyxalair could willfully interact with pink. Solan flailed. Her feet, instead of pushing her away from the ground she thought she was standing on, simply spun out below her. Nyxalair laughed. She couldn't help it. Seeing one of the most dangerous people on Coral — who'd tormented her most of her past life — fumble like a fawn was one of the funniest things she'd ever seen.

Each of her hundred voices echoed her. And like the jingle of chains, her humour was magnified through Pink. Solan was livid. The woman's eyes hardened as the greedy glow melted away to fury. Nobody laughed at her. And Nyxalair's next words shifted Solan's intent from capture to punishment. Very painful punishment. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"No wonder the Fleshsmiths are considered second rate." A lifetime of hate bubbled to the surface of Nyxalair's thoughts. Even in such a concerning position, she relished the opportunity to spit down on the woman.

"The other cult leaders must think of you as a joke. Is that why the Scriptures were able to drag you into their war? You are such a dullard that they can bend you in whichever way they wish." Solan said nothing. She didn't need to; her eyes alone scorched holes through Nyxalair's obscuring shadows. Nyxalair's own eyes searched for the cult leader's soul. She found it easily enough, and immediately dove towards the biggest of her curses. Something about recrafting her flesh.

An instant after she wedged open the gate to that massive curse, Nyxalair felt herself shunted from the woman's name. She hadn't had so much as a blink of an eye to notice the soul attack coming before it had already obliterated her own assault. Of course it wouldn't be so easy. The chains that had already managed to spill through the gap between Nyxalair's teeth gathered up around Solan. They coiled around her arms and legs. Unlike the woman herself, the chains appeared to have no problem shifting through Pink.

Most likely because they still had something to grip onto back on Coral. Solan lunged. This time, there was nothing to laugh about. Compared to the pinnacle cult leaders she might be a joke, but she was still a frightening existence. Far beyond that of Sekhhath'Ra. All the distance Nyxalair had gained in the past ten seconds evaporated to nothing. She pulled herself away. Wherever her tentacles reached, Pink always offered leverage. Nyxalair's shadows struck out.

They spread through Pink so wide that it would be impossible for Solan to dodge them. Now that Tṡial̺air̡ had been incorporated into her core name, and her shadows seemed to work effortlessly with the newly formed name, Nyxalair's soul touch spread through it as if it were a physical limb. Something stronger and more hardy than before. The moment Solan passed through one of her shadows, Nyxalair struck again.

She assaulted the woman's curse, diving into it like a feral dog, desperate to shred the gate and unleash it upon the cult leader. Solan's defences crashed into her as fast as before. This time, Nyxalair wasn't thrown off immediately. The shadows clung to Solan's soul, opening new avenues to enact her curse whenever one strand was dealt with. Even for a cult leader like herself, the best Solan could do was slow the unravelling of her curses. But it was a threat the woman now needed to consider.

Either she threw herself into the coiling shadows and give in to whatever horrifying curses a woman like Solan would have, or acted passively and attempted to capture Nyxalair from a distance. Solan wasn't the type to back down from a threat. She sailed through the dark, somehow getting as close as an arm's length from her target despite the storm of darkness that obscured her location. How had she sensed her in that dozen-metre spiral? Nyxalair had even thrown her sceptre off to the side as a decoy.

Her direct attack missed, but as Solan allowed herself to rocket through the air to reach the other side of Nyxalair's storm, Solan was kind enough to leave her target with an attack she couldn't dodge. She flung an arm wide, casting her fleshforged chains wide to slam into Nyxalair. Not even her heartrate could keep her mind at pace with the whip-like motion. The chain ripped towards her. It threatened to strike her with more power than being struck head on with a trolley, and there was no way to dodge.

The tiny sliver that remained of her Talent nestled a thought in her mind. She listened. All her limbs made space from her chest, and she twisted as marginally as she could in the given time. Solan's chain cracked through her torso. It struck nothing but Pink and continued on its way. Nyxalair breathed nervously as she glanced down at herself. With her mouth still open, nothing existed for the weapon to strike. She could dodge so long as the chain struck the upper half of her torso. Solan's scowl deepened.

The chains along her arms slithered further, letting half a dozen ends hang from her hands without disconnecting herself from the portal to Coral. The flesh rippled across their length. Metal links split, unfolding into smaller, more numerous chains that occasionally linked together. The cult leader had missed Nyxalair — swiped through her obscuring shadow without so much as a physical reaction — so now she adapted. Her serpentine chains were now a net. Nyxalair didn't like her chances of dodging that.

She reached her shadowy tentacles after Solan, trying to activate even one of the woman's curses. If it was bad enough, it was possible it could even the playing field. Like it had with Sekhhath'Ra. She could hope. Unfortunately, the cult leader slipped away from the reaching shadows. Maybe Nyxalair should be happy the woman wasn't willing to get in close for a physical brawl she simply couldn't win… but Solan was clearly not disadvantaged by the distance.

In a moment, she would throw those nets, and Nyxalair wouldn't have an escape. She had to try something. This was her stomach. Her soul. One of the only places she had a true advantage over everyone else. Solan had been foolish enough to leap into her mouth, and Nyxalair wasn't going to be the one to die here. Her ribs were being pinned open, but this mutation had allowed her to escape from an Elder God. Surely these chains wouldn't stop her.

There was no way the space in The Soulchasm's stomach would be surpassed by something as simple as a metal toothpick. So Nyxalair focused on the one place where she knew Solan would get absolutely obliterated. She thought of the hall before the main entrance to the Technocult cathedral, where Ta'Stralanov'r surely had thousands of those deadly cannons that had sent Solan running the first time. Her jaw didn't budge. Not wanting to give up so soon, Nyxalair tried to incite her new Feat.

She'd gained it for a very similar situation, so surely it would work. And it did. Though, not nearly as effectively as she needed. The jaw filled with chains began to move. It was slow, and the mountain of chains trying to shove their way to their master let out a deafening screech of defiance as they tried, and failed, to resist the ungrounded jaw. Nyxalair's jaw slipped through spaces that it shouldn't have fit. Sometimes, it chewed through walls to get where it needed to go.

Despite the sheer power behind Solan's chains, there was no stopping its slow, gradual march. But as much as her torso maw no longer seemed tied to a physical understanding of strength, it was not going to reach the cathedral for days or even weeks at that speed. So, as the chains pulled along by her jaw were forced to cut through tighter, tougher and more undesirable locations of Coral to remain connected to Solan, Nyxalair changed her mind. She would never reach the Technocult in time.

Instead, she would go to the only place nearby that would cause Solan grief. Nyxalair ripped through Coral until the portal of her jaw revealed nothing but darkness. The shadows of Coral.