Chương 76: The End of Anonymity

Nyx cast one last dismayed glance back at the headless corpse before she turned her focus to surviving the collapse of the Dark Star. It would have been so nice to take either K'Caies or K'Thorn and sacrifice them for her own benefit, but she didn't have the time, nor could she risk lugging around a heavy corpse while a sphere of fractured metal spikes tried to close in on her. The mountains that had risen from the crushing force now splintered further.

She was surrounded by a forest of metal spears, both rising from the ground at random, odd angles, and stabbing down from the ceiling. The cacophony of scraping steel was deafening. Above, a mountain split like a blooming flower, and Nyx had to dive to avoid the spikes raking through her forest. Despite the sheer number of moving parts above, she threw herself upward. It was better than the other option. Down below, K'Caies motionless body was swallowed by the earth as the landscape continued its efforts to shrink.

Her corpse, crushed and shredded by uncountable metal splinters, disappeared entirely. The sphere around her was already down to a quarter the size of Coral, leaving no open space between the blooming mountains that continued to weave and scrape through each other. Nyx slid through narrow gaps and avoided razor edges. A single misstep would slice her open. Thankfully, her body slid around the dangers with ease.

Continual fighting for so long must have paid off, as her body reacted with an agility and flexibility she never remembered having. If she wasn't missing so many parts of herself, she'd have no trouble at all. Yet the weight of her injuries were clearly weighing down on her. Nyx could feel it. Despite the glowing veins keeping her moving, there was only so much she could continue to push herself before her body inevitably collapsed.

The fact that she hadn't slept in what was likely years, and still tread onwards was obscene. It was a testament to the strength of the mutations she'd rejected for so long. Really, without them, she'd be dead. Or worse. Nyx dodged a falling pillar of steel as it was dislodged by the moving mountain above. Or, she assumed that was the cause; her surroundings had grown so dense with metal spikes and the regular streams of molten flesh, that it was impossible to tell how far the environment had shrunk.

Each second, the hammer struck, and she was transported again. But thankfully, there seemed to be rules to where she was moved. Never had she been shifted within something solid — which would have been a terrible way to die — nor did she get moved down into the pipe labyrinth. A volcanic opening was available for Nyx, but she opted against diving down into those depths again. It was dangerous here, but she couldn't risk coming across Solan.

Somewhere within the pipe labyrinth was the Dark Star's core, and the further away from that, the better off she would be… even if it meant facing the risk of being crushed. The wail of a whale crashed through Nyx, and she glanced to the side in surprise. Those beings had gone quiet a little while ago, and she'd been sure they'd all died. But here there was a final one, and it was causing a ruckus. Like dominoes, the fractured pillars of steel knocked into one another and shoved them aside.

Nyx barely slid through a gap between four blades — oversized scissors — that ground together behind her. She'd made it through the worst of the blast, but still couldn't avoid the shower of shards that pelted her body. She kept moving, avoiding the more cramped areas as she pulled needles from her skin. Somehow, the rhythm of the hammer accelerated further, moving beyond a slow heartbeat, and into the realm of a machine gun's burst fire. The whale bellowed again. The world shifted countless times.

Nyx's eyes failed to find the time to focus on what she was seeing, but through the flashes, she gained glimpses of the mountainous fleshforged creature being punctured by the steel walls it once swam through so easily. Only the compression of steel beyond belief could damage a being like that. Even the candescent, molten metal seemingly preferred to pierce the beast than flow elsewhere. Nyx flailed to take some control over her movement, lest she find herself in an identical situation as the colossal.

Yet with each transportation, no spikes of steel ran her through. No razors sliced her open. As the gongs rang out too frequently for the ocean and mountains to close in on her, she was continually carried away to open spaces. It was as if the Dark Star, now on its deathbed, was finally relenting on its endless abuse. As she had survived so long, it now rewarded her with her life. Solan, who was fighting its core, was unlikely to be facing such kindness.

Between each gong, blasts of power strong enough to surpass and ripple through the planet's worth of metal ground down into the size of a city block. Unique enough to distinguish from the rest, strikes from the Fleshsmith leader's battle interceded the hammer strikes like an unmitigated accretion storm. Nothing Nyx could do would change anything. She was a leaf on the wind. Both vulnerable to the devastating battle occurring in the Dark Star's core, yet immune so long as she followed the ebb of its currents.

So she didn't resist. She moved with each wave of power as they washed over her. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. As she glimpsed a pillar of steel fracture down the middle, leaving a fissure in space itself, Nyx was given a true insight to the scale of those she had declared her enemies. Her resolution had almost crumbled at the sight of an upper creed slicing open a whale before perishing themselves, but Solan was far beyond even that.

As she felt the power threatening to tear the very fibres of her being apart, that couldn't be made any more clear. Yet, unlike that previous crippling revelation, Nyx did not lose herself. Maybe she was headed towards certain doom, and maybe she was bound to be discovered the moment she returned to Coral, but death would come for her before she let the cults sacrifice her again.

For what could just as easily be a few seconds as a few hours, Nyx held her knee to her chest and wrapped her wing and tentacles around herself. It was the smallest profile she could force her body. She wanted to give the gong as much room to work with when it continually bounced her around the cramped spaces between mountains of steel. If at any point she was suddenly too large for any of the remaining spaces, she didn't want to know what would happen.

Honestly, it was a pretty stupid idea to wholly trust in something that had been trying to get her killed for the last couple of years, but what could she do? Death was always just a moment away. The constant pelting of power and the disorientation of translocation had quickly become something she'd adapted to, so when they both ceased, she was thrown on her head and puked a little. Though, from the liquid sludge, you wouldn't know it had been a human flesh only recently. The hammer had stopped.

It was suddenly so silent that Nyx couldn't move. She held in the urge to wipe her mouth. Her body was slumped over a sharp pillar that she could feel digging into her chest, but the silence kept her from moving, as if even the light jostle of her robes would bring the world crashing down on her head. When was the last time she'd heard pure silence like this? Within the midst of the Dark Star, there was always some sound.

The creaking of metal, the bubbling of boiling liquid, or echoing scrapes of the sharks as they moved across the surface. Now? Nothing. After a dozen seconds where the Forge hammer remained soundless, Nyx finally risked a twitch, and lifted herself off the sharp pillar. Almost as if her movement was the permission everything else needed to start shifting again, the sounds returned. They started subtle; creaking of hyper compressed steel, the scratch of metal on metal, gushing molten liquids.

With each second, they grew louder. They quickly reached the volume of before, and crashed beyond that without any sign of slowing. The cacophony spread. An explosion resounded, and Nyx leapt to her feet… foot. One of the insanely compressed shards of steel had erupted. Nyx hoped it was a one off phenomenon, but that wish was quickly buried. Another exploded.

The crushing force dislodged a forest of metal stalactites — all just as compressed as their surroundings — where they rained through the tight, cavernous spaces, and erupted themselves. It was the beginning of a chain reaction. One explosion led into four, which led into a hundred more. The Dark Star was disappearing, and so too was its twisted grip on the laws of physics. Steel and flesh could not exist in the way they had inside the the mass of corruption, and now it was all falling apart.

Nyx didn't have time to react when the very pillar she stood upon shattered. She winced, expecting to be filled with highly explosive shards, only to feel herself falling. Not a new scratch on her. Her spine struck a hard surface, but not at a sharp enough angle for her spikes to cut through. Instead, she rolled to the side and rested on her ribs. Above, the erupting environment seemed to linger and forge itself into a labyrinth before slinking away.

Nyx could still hear it, but it sounded far off, like the echoes bounced a hundred times before they reached her. Glancing to the side, she found the labyrinth extended entirely around her. The Dark Star had collapsed, and in its place, it had left a twisted imitation of the state it had last become. Pillars of steel seemed to begin and end without much reason, and there was a pool of molten flesh rapidly being filled by a river flowing down from above. Despite the similarity… it was tame.

An imitation that paled in comparison to what the Dark Star had held. It looked similar, but Nyx knew, almost instinctively, that she could escape. Finally, after so long, she was free. The relief washed over her with physical force. No more fighting off fleshforged all hours of the day. She had survived. Nyx could sleep. Only having Little God returned to her would make her feel better than she already was, but she was not so lucky.

No Eidolon god made its appearance to give her back her little companion now that she'd succeeded. Nyx's body felt heavier than ever as her tentacles tried to lift her from the ground. She was fortunate to not be out in the open where everyone could find her, but now that the Dark Star was gone, or in the process of collapsing, that would quickly change. Not only did she have to be concerned about Solan leaving the core, but all the cultists that would be rushing in for cleanup.

If she didn't disappear, her greatest fears would become truth, and her mutations would become known by all. She would become that sacrifice again. Yet, as she tried to rise, her knee buckled and her tentacles failed to hold her weight. The violet-crimson light spreading through her body flickered. Nyx collapsed. Laying face down, she found it impossible to move. Whether it was the accumulated strain finally catching up with her, or the relief hitting too hard, she found her mind clouding over.

No, she couldn't sleep here. She willed herself to get up, to at least gain some space from the remains of the Dark Star before she slept, but her body simply refused to follow commands. Only Pushy gave a half-hearted rise, before he too slumped besides her. The sinister tendrils of exhaustion seeped in from the corners of her mind, but she was a goat to the slaughter before them. She couldn't fight back. Despair struck her. There was no escaping the inevitable now.

Heavy clanking footsteps only made her grief worse. She lifted her gaze through sinking eyelids to the man who approached. Tarchon? Nyx blinked, though she found even that an effort. Well, at least it's not Solan. Better the cult that died before they had the opportunity to use her, than the cults that actually sacrificed her. Maybe they would shaft the others. It was all she could hope for now that the man could clearly see her mutations.

Nyx knew it had been inevitable, but she hadn't expected to be discovered immediately.

"Again," she said, her voice out of sync to her own ears.

"You're just a little too late." Nyx laughed. It was all she could do.