Chương 33: Reversal

Whispers. Nix could see whispers. Flickers of memories bound in an incomprehensible cluster. They burned in her mind as often as they were fleeting. Each jittery, unclear image flashed in and out of existence and struck Nix with wave after wave of agony. … or maybe that was the beating of her heart. Indecipherable knowledge skimmed past her subconscious as she glanced down at the knife in her chest. It was too far to her left to have struck her heart, but fuck did it hurt.

Nix choked on her blood as K'tan's spilled over her new eye. They mixed and pooled beneath them, inviting the glowing red runes to shine. K'tan was dead and she was alive… for now. The ritual was still in progress. Spitting blood, she gasped in a desperate gulp of air. It was hard. It was painful. Her lung was pierced and the overseer's corpse was heavy, but she breathed. She spat again and sung. The sacrificial chamber responded by spinning into motion.

A horrid mix of tech and corruption, the walls, the altar, the floor and ceiling; it all sung with her. The chamber pulsed and weaved and convulsed around her in ways her eyes or mind refused to follow. Each syllable was agony. Still bound as she was, she could not shove the man off her, so she continued the hymn while crushed beneath a weight twice her own. She remembered the intonations and melody easily. Nix lost herself to the music only the Darkness far below could truly understand. She fell into her trance.

The last thing she saw: K'tan's veins igniting in deep crimson flames. The ritual had designated him as the sacrifice. Nix cast aside her pain. Meditation was good for that; it let her ignore the horrors of the real world, by holing herself in and pretending it all didn't exist. Well, that's what the old Nix had done. The one alive — the Nix that had achieved her first vengeance — refused to become what she had been. She sung. She kept awareness of her body despite the… wrongness of it.

Stretched, squashed and stabbed. They should be the things that concerned her most; but no, it was the proprioception of the wings that now lay splayed at her sides that held her mind while she chanted. They felt massive. She could twitch them — move them — if she wanted, but she held herself back. The only thing that mattered right now, was ending K'tan the same way he tried to do to her; twice. The highs and lows of the hymn fell from her lips almost without her knowledge.

She had never memorised this chant, but as she sang, it continued to come to her. Even half-choking on blood, she was doing a better job than K'tan. At a certain point — Nix didn't know when — energy began to flow into her body. She was bleeding out, badly, but she felt like she could run a marathon. With her body, that was a miracle. She'd never run more than a few hundred metres without losing breath. Her arms flexed, as if she'd be able to break chains, but they budged no further than before.

The feeling of power flowing through her was incredible. Each second, it seemed to build. It escalated until the power began to burn. Instead of energy and strength, her veins became the pathways for magma; her muscles scorched; her throat erupted with a scream she couldn't hear. Nix's hymn continued. She didn't feel her mouth moving, but the sound continued to echo in her ears. She felt something touch her. Nothing physical. No, this was far more intimate.

She spread her touch to her name, and found each component absorbing power. It wasn't only her curses that did so. The energy flowed through the fuzzy cracks of her curses, and slipped between the seams of her Feat. Then, the hymn ended. All the building power paused, lingering both through her body and around her name, before it dissipated. Some of it sunk into her body. Some of it was swallowed by her names.

Everything else faded into the background, consumed by the ritual and the corruption that allowed it to function. Nix felt incredible. Her eyes snapped open again, only to be met with K'tan's lifeless husk. Drained by the ritual, his skin flaked and lips had shrivelled. All blood was gone; moisture along with it. Compared to before, the man weighed almost nothing. If not for her binds, she'd be able to shrug him off with ease. It was disgusting to have him on top of her, and she reacted without thinking.

Large black and red feathered wings swept from her sides and shunted the man. He went tumbling off the side of the altar without struggle. Nix could only stare. Her wings were fully grown; larger than they'd been when they'd first been amputated. She stretched, finding it incredibly convenient that she already knew how to manoeuvre them. At full length, they hung over the edge of the altar. Each equal her height. They were huge. How was she supposed to hide these things?

She'd have trouble not knocking anyone over, much less keep them out of sight. Sighing, she let them relax. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. To her surprise, they folded up and hugged her side perfectly. All that length collapsed and clung to her waist and ribs like a thick coat. With how her curses had left her unhealthily thin, she might even pass as normal with a robe wrapped around her. She glanced around.

The room was quiet now, and the white lights lit where an eerie red had only moments before. It was over. K'tan was dead. Sacrificed for her own benefit. The ritual was over, yet she was still stuck with shackles on her arms and legs, and with a knife protruding from her chest. A wound which, by all means, should still be a major threat to her life. But it didn't feel bad. It was buried in her lungs — she'd felt the effects — yet she had the sense that she could pull it out and all would be fine.

She would bleed a bit, but death wouldn't come knocking. She still didn't like the look of a knife in her chest. Nix jingled the chain, seeing if the room would be so kind as to release her now that the ritual was over; but no dice. The gem on her chest was the next best bet, but no way she tried to twist her body could give her new eye a good enough angle to perceive the shackles. Instead, it seemed determined to focus on certain points along the ceiling. Dust continued to flow into her.

She tried to cut off the focus of her monochromatic vision and simply see nothing, but it was impossible to pull back beyond a certain point. Nix couldn't stop looking at things. It was a slow trickle — unlike how she'd melted through K'tan's head — but it was constant and unstoppable. Damn this would have been a nice mutation in my last life, Nix thought. Good luck trying to cut this one out without killing me. I could have killed so many cultists.

She would need to try out its limits later; it was unlikely to be enough, but there remained the hope that this could kill the cult leaders. Now, Nix was in a dilemma: how did she get out of these restraints? She really didn't want to give in to any more mutations, but it would be far worse if someone found her here with her wings and claws out in the open. As she thought about it, she snapped her claws down on the chain in annoyance. It broke immediately. The chain clattered on the floor.

Her arm raised and did a few motions to stretch. Nix paused when she realised what she was doing, then flicked her head to the side where the chain should be. Huh? With her other claws, she did the same to those chains. This time, she watched. Through the metal that her claws hadn't been able to so much as scratch earlier, they now sliced through the chain links that held her arm in place. With both arms free, it was only a matter of a few snips, and the shackles on her hands and legs were gone.

She sat up and yanked the knife from her chest. As she'd expected, there was barely any pain. Blood flowed, but it wasn't nearly as much as such a wound should cause. What happened to her claws? The answer was obvious with a second of thought; the ritual had enhanced them. Enhanced her. All of what K'tan was, and the very value of his life itself had gone into improving her being. No wonder she felt like running. She dove off the altar, only for her wings to instinctively snap wide.

Her feet touched ground, but her wings sunk into the void and tried to lift. Nix's stomach flipped. The wings hadn't even beat and they already felt like they were trying to rip her from the ground. If there was any doubt before that her wings could actually hold her weight, it was gone now. A pain struck at her chest. Looking down, the knife wound gushed blood. Apparently it wasn't a perpetual effect, but a lingering benefit of the ritual that kept it from killing her.

Before it could get worse, she drew a rune in the sand and returned to the altar. In a few minutes, she was healed. While Nix was excited to stress-test her body, she had to rein in her hopes before they ran out of control. Sacrificial rituals could not enhance the body to a great degree, even if one sacrificed a person of a higher evolutionary tier. The human flesh was simply too weak to be pushed far beyond its limits.

There was a reason the cults like the Bodytwisters and Technocult replaced their organs with alternatives. Nix snapped her claws. The sound echoed satisfyingly through the chamber. But I'm not just human flesh, am I? While she hoped her condition had improved enough that exhaustion wouldn't find her so easily, it was her mutations that gained the biggest benefit. Her claws could now cleave through steel, after all.

She wasn't sure she liked the idea of her cursed growths taking up all the benefit of K'tan's sacrifice, but she couldn't deny they were the best option for growth. As inhuman as they were, how far could they be pushed? How strong could they reasonably become before they hit the limit of what their flesh or chitin could do? Something to think about later. Now, Nix needed to replace her torn robe. Kicking K'tan, she rolled his corpse onto its front and made the effort of extracting the clothes from his back.

Nix tossed them around her shoulders and found, unsurprisingly, that they were far too large. The top of his robe fell down to her knees. She sighed at how this would clearly make her stand out and tied off the cotton belt, pressing down uncomfortably hard on her folded wings. Her third eye was already trying to burn its way through. Nix glanced around, and found the skulk shroud coiling on itself besides the altar. Between her new, sharp spines and the explosive growth of her wings, she'd ripped the cloak in two.

Well, it's not like K'tan needs it anymore. She grabbed one, and had to grapple with it to stop it from circling her arm. Opening her oversized robe, she guided it to wrap her chest and cover the gem and the veins of violet-crimson streaking out from it. That was concerning… but something for later. The other piece of shroud was shoved into a pocket on the inside of the robe. They were expensive. It might be years before she could earn enough to buy one herself… even if she did discover a method to make money.

And she had some plans to use them with her wings. Nix picked up her ugly gloves and flicked the switch to open the vault door. She cast one last glance at K'tan. The man had been the origin of all her pain. He had betrayed her trust, given her up to the cults that sacrificed her. It suited him. A husk, alone in some forgotten chamber meant for improvement at the expense of others. He had never been able to succeed with his own efforts. Instead, he decided the only path forward was to cut down the future of others.

She wouldn't consider him the worst of those that confined her, but to Nix, his death meant everything. His actions — his betrayal — hurt worse than any other. She would take revenge on the cults, but none would ever be this personal. Nix would not forget K'tan's death for as long as she lived. Eye blind and wings bound, she heaved the thick door open, only to come face to face with Tarchon. His fist was wound back with steam rolling off his form, ready to obliterate anything in his path.

The two of them stared at one another for a long moment, before Nix couldn't help herself.

"Are you late to everything? Or just for me?"