Chương 54: Witnessing the Forbidden

Nyx glanced back at the swarm of bots for the fifth time as she swung from pole to pole. It had only been a few moments, but the machines already had a logistic order in place where the larger carried materials in from who-knows-where and the smaller ones did all the repair work on the massive antenna. It left Nyx feeling disoriented to have what she thought would be her enemies show no hostility towards her. Little God led her between a forest of inverted metal spikes. Unfortunately, she had no walkway.

Nyx needed to swing between each metal spike poking out from the uneven metal subsurface to keep pace with her guide. Her wings gave her some lift, but with how heavy she felt, she didn't trust them well enough to stop her tumbling into the black hole. At least she was no longer in the fleshy, beating region. With actual, solid metal above her head, she didn't have to fear that the spikes she clung to could be plucked free by tugging too hard. Probably.

Little God did lead her on a very specific path through the consistent pattern of metal poles, so she had to believe it was the safest. Although… her trust in the living orb's decision making was at an all time low. True she came out of it alive, but the path he'd chosen took too many risks that a single mistake on her end would result in her death. Little God may be a god — or at least something close — but she wasn't. Nyx could only handle so many life-threatening moments before something would go wrong.

As if in reaction to the very thought, the spikes she clung to shook. Nyx held tight, but there was no stopping the quaking of Coral above her. She spun to her side. A mountain of shattered steel fractured into a million pieces as it shot off into the distance, to eventually fall into the Darkness. She caught the tail end of a monstrous limb returning to the black hole. Something struck Coral. And from where Nyx hung, she could see a valley carved into the metal of the subsurface.

Before her eyes, another impossibly massive limb struck out at the same place it had before. It was as black as the Darkness itself, yet Nyx could make out the long serpentine tendril as if it stood against the Grand Iris itself. It was distinctive. Unnatural. In the absence of light, the black limb was a lack of existence itself. And yet there was no denying its presence as it loomed out from the black hole that shared its impossible aspects.

Instead of striking out again, the tentacle seemed to sink its grasp into the newly-made ravine and tense. Quickly, as if the gravity strong enough to prevent light's escape didn't exist, the tendril pulled up the rest of its body. Her first glance revealed its form to be simple. Three tentacles. That was it. They all grew outward from a single point that held no distinct torso or anything that could be taken for a head or mouth.

It was reminiscent of the shadow that formed from the splayed ends of a half-formed braid. But the longer she looked, the more certain her first impression couldn't be further from the truth. The limbs frayed. As her sternum eye focused more on the centre of the being, she realised there were more than three tendrils. Each second she gazed, another seemed to materialise. Nyx's very observation itself made the monstrosity multiply. It finally pulled its body into the inverted valley, and slipped into Coral's depths.

Nyx blinked, realising she hadn't been able to for minutes. Her eyes burned. She wanted nothing more than to shove her hands into her sockets to pull out the orbs that saw what they absolutely shouldn't have. If not for the death that would have come should she let go of the spikes she hung from, she might very well have blinded herself in her desperate need to remove the source of the scalding heat. She hung there, blinking after the being from the Darkness that had infiltrated Coral. It shouldn't be that easy.

Creatures weren't supposed to be able to just reach up and pull themselves into Coral. The orbital platform wasn't exactly a haven from monstrosities, but they were supposed to be safe from the worst of the worst down in the black hole unless some fool enacted a mass ritual to invite them here. But nothing had stopped that indefinite being climbing into the home of the cults. How many more were like it? Nyx's head ached, but considering what she'd just witnessed, she was lucky her mind wasn't mere mush. Honestly…

why was that? She'd been unaffected by the Dark Star as well, when that should have left her in a comatose state at best considering her lack of evolutions and what she'd seen in there. It was clear she was more resistant to these mind altering effects than most. As she was with corruption. Was it all because of her status as a perfect sacrifice? Or was there some actual reason behind why she could handle curses and corruption and metal melting inside her body better than others? She was glad for the resistance.

Only because of it was vengeance even a possibility. Because of it, she hadn't succumbed to her curses while she was still in the crib. Still, while her inherent resistance meant she fared better than most, the sight of the undefined creature did not leave her unscathed. Her eyes still throbbed. They screamed at her for relief. She had seen something she shouldn't have, and her body reacted in kind. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Only when the swarm of bots arrived in the newly formed valley did she gather the strength to turn her eyes away. Where before, there had only been a hundred of the machines, there were now enough to blot out the void behind them. Thousands. Maybe millions. Every flying bot from across Coral flew in to repair the damage inflicted by the impossibly large monster that had wormed its way through Coral's belly. Nyx hoped she wouldn't have the misfortune of coming across it.

"Come," Little God urged her, sounding more impatient than she thought possible.

"This way." She swung between metal spikes only a few more metres before she reached where the eyeball hovered. A hatch sat in the metal above their heads. Considering the lack of any railings or ladders nearby, the thick circular door seemed out of place down here, but she wasn't about to question her luck more than she already had. Shifting one pincer back to normal, she gripped the valve. She readied herself to throw all her weight into twisting it. Nyx yanked as hard as she could. It opened easily.

The hatch swung open far easier than she'd been expecting. Relieved that she didn't have to face some other impossible challenge on her path to the Fleshsmith's territory, she grabbed the ladder rungs attached to the inside of the door and pulled herself up. The passage was narrow. Even folded up, her wings scraped against the walls at her sides. She pulled herself up by the arms and finally gave her a foothold. The moment she had her feet beneath her, she dropped her entire multiplied weight on them and slumped.

It felt so good to rest her arms. The spikes protruding from Nyx's spine pierced the fabric of her robe as she leaned back into the rim of the hatch opening. Shit, she thought. The rubber tips must have fallen off. Well, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. Her new robe could repair the small holes her spines would poke through. She would just need to find something to blunt them again. She'd been able to hide them well enough beneath her clothing till now because they didn't stick out too much.

But without those tubes she'd been using to stop them piercing everything they touched, they would slide through anything she wore. Not that those rubber tubes had been the end-all. Nyx's own weight was enough for them to thrust through whatever she wore and touched — as she'd discovered when rolling on her back in her sleep. Still, she hadn't expected the spines to slide into the metal just by leaning back. She discovered what happened only when she'd tried twisting in the narrow space and found herself unable.

The feeling of her spikes pressing against the wall was there. Not anything more. Nyx lessened the weight through her legs, and while she slid down an inch, she quickly came to a stop. Her spines held her against the wall like a harness. Where even her legs felt the weight of gravity, the few thin spikes protruding from her spine could hold her easily, and without strain.

While it was a completely pointless discovery — why would she ever need to hold her weight like this — it was another proof that her mutations were leagues above the ability of her human flesh. Thin as toothpicks, yet stronger than her legs? These spikes were more than just an extension of her vertebrae. It reinstated the truth she already knew. The truth she struggled to accept. If Nyx wanted to reach a strength great enough to take on the cults, she needed to mutate.

Her reservations about being discovered or the fact that it was her mutations that caused all her problems in the first place wouldn't matter if she wasn't strong enough to take on her enemies. Her flesh was weak. The mutations were fixing that. Most cultists improved themselves via names, or borrowed power from some other source. The Darkness or technology. But no matter how beneficial names might be, Nyx could never gain them fast enough for her purposes.

They were, after all, even more unreliable than her mutations. Out of all the mutations she'd experienced so far, they all had their place. Only her spikes and hair didn't seem all that beneficial, but they'd yet to grow in fully. Considering she'd originally thought her chitinous hands were pointless in her last life, making the assumption that any of her last life's mutations held no advantage just because she couldn't find benefit back then would be foolish. They weren't bound and mutilated this time.

Names, on the other hand, had consistently proven themselves unreliable for those that sought them. Sure, you could always incorporate a bad name into an evolution, but each new name was far more likely to give a weak, useless ability than something that could greatly change your life and strength. Even Nyx's own most recent additive hadn't shown to be anything special yet. Compared to the average name, her mutations were actually incredibly beneficial. It was such a shame the downsides were so heavy.

Nyx couldn't look at her wings anymore and think of an abhored growth. It was part of her. Same with her claws and eye. Nyx didn't feel appalled by the idea of losing her humanity, and that frightened her. Shaking her head, she grabbed a hold of the ladder again and pulled herself up. She'd been hanging from her back long enough. The narrow tunnel only extended a short while. Soon, Nyx found herself walking again.

The hall she walked was like any other in Coral's depths with the dim white light strip above and the plated alloy floors below… yet she had the distinct feeling that no human had ever stepped foot here. They were a recreation of a blueprint. Nothing more. At first glance, they seemed purposeful, but the more she followed Little God through the branching halls, the more sure she was that it was built as a lie. A replication. An echo of the past. Too many of the paths ended in dead-ends.

It was unlike the twisting nature brought about by corruption. The labyrinths formed by the effect of excess corruption tended to loop in on themselves. You could wander endlessly and never find the end of a path. But here, the halls led to rooms that didn't exist. Nyx even attempted to open one of the sliding shutter-doors, only to find nothing but a mass of metal behind it. It felt like she was in a doll-house. At least, with her questionable guide in Little God, she knew she wouldn't get trapped here.

And sure enough, her environment began to change. The halls remained the same, but Eyeball led her down paths with thick piping adorning one side and the reappearance of beating veins trailing down the other. The reappearance of the artery from Coral's heart was a surprise, but it shouldn't have been. Even if she'd moved away from the heart, she hadn't gone that far down on the subsurface. It was the thick piping that was the true surprise. Or rather, its proximity to the thumping artery.

Nyx had been expecting to come across them sooner or later — the scalding pipes that radiated so much heat that she felt herself sweltering just by being nearby — but not before she'd made considerable distance from Coral's Heart. The Forge was Fleshsmith territory. Coral's Heart was the Scripture's. Both cults were at ends with each other, and their territories shouldn't touch. It was odd to see the inferno pipes and beating veins sliding side by side, even in a section of Coral nobody knew about.

They weren't supposed to be linked.