Dan was in a state of disbelief.
So much of the world had flipped on its head that there was less familiar than not. He wasn’t sure if this was all some elaborate hallucination. Was he dreaming? Or had he gone insane? Even Perize, his Feat, refused to believe the events of the last few minutes. It scrambled to find two contradictory points, evidence that this was all a fabrication. But the reassurance didn’t come.
The Great Iris really knew Nyxalraith.
And Nyxalraith knew it. Treated it like old buds. Worst of all, she had addressed what was probably the most well known godly figure, the one that filled the sky, as ‘Little’. Dan wasn’t even sure he wanted to consider the possible ramifications of what that meant.
What was worse? That the Great Iris treated Nyxalraith like an old companion, or that it had deliberately spurned the Cult of the Everseeing Eye?
Even if Dan hadn’t already been convinced to leave, that alone would be cause for concern. Their entire fundamental legitimacy had been shattered. It was an embarrassment. A disillusionment. The very god the cult was structured around treated them like rodents, and had expressed so in a very visible fashion.
Dan wouldn’t be surprised if, by this time tomorrow, half the cult had absconded in shame. Arasthis had lost a world of respect. What faithful of the Everseeing Eye would follow one condemned by it?
Nyxalraith’s massive teeth punched closed behind him, and Dan found himself unable to ignore the other incomprehensible truth thrust before his eyes.
Pink.
The colour that was more than a colour pierced his mind with only the briefest twinge of light, yet he was shoved into the depths of an entire realm of it. He wanted to blink. His eyes refused, having grown too familiar with being held open. He wanted to turn away. There was nowhere to find reprieve; the Pink was everywhere.
Dan’s weren’t as good as many of the older cultists, but he had a name directly related to seeing further. Even then, it was impossible to see how far the Pink stretched. There was no end. This place, Dan realised, was an entire world crammed inside Nyxalraith. Did that make sense? No. But he knew it to be true.
The pupil of the Great Iris had always awed him. Even before he’d joined the Cult of the Everseeing Eye, he had looked up into the sky in wonder. He doubted there were many who didn’t. But this? It was like a veil had been stripped away from his world. No, he’d straight up been torn from his own world and pulled into this one.
His mind bubbled trying and failing to comprehend. The constant, unchanging, ever-shifting blanket of Pink pierced through his eyes and brain as if they were not distinct organs. It buzzed through his legs. Vaporised his guts. Each second he remained in this strange reality, it was as if his body melted away into strands of vapour, trying to become part of that elusive Pink that was both right there within reach and impossibly far away.
Then, he was suddenly free of Pink’s clutches.
The reintroduction of gravity and the sense of touch struck him like a charging Technocultist. Dan didn’t register the tentacles curled around his midsection as he flipped and puked. The carefully prepared breakfast his superior cultist had prepared for him vacated his stomach in sickly splotches of black and red. Not the colour they’d gone down.
“Ah! Sorry, you’re the first unevolved I’ve brought through my stomach,” Nyxalraith said, then continued in a low voice that Dan barely heard. “Well, the first to leave, at least.”
Dan panted, sprawled on the ground. His head spun just as much as his guts, and for some reason his legs moved when he tried to hold himself with his arms. He peeked at Nyxalraith out of the corner of his eyes. He was not about to ask her to elaborate. Nope. This was all already too much for his mind to handle.
Now that he was finally free from the clutches of Pink, he realised he had seen something else within its expanse. A mountain of chains. They had been brittle. So brittle he was sure the slightest touch would reduce each link to a pile of metallic dust. But that wasn’t the important part. The complete alien presence in that realm made the chains stand out, and the slow, almost whimpering movements pinged his new Feat.
That was what remained of Solan. Her soul, reduced to an insult of what she had once been.
Finally, Dan managed to flop over, away from his foul puddle. The walls were a dark grey, illuminated by the dull white of the LED strips found all through Coral’s depths.
This wasn’t the Observatory.
“Whe-” he tried to ask, but found his tongue worked about as well as his stomach right now.
Thankfully, Nyxalraith seemed to understand the question. “About a dozen levels under the Safe Zone. I teleported you here.”
Right. Because of course she could do that.
“And…” he gathered himself, finally pulling his knees under him. “The Great Iris?”
“Eyeball?” Dan flinched at her casual address. “He’s still up there. Where, I guess, he has been for the past few million years.” She shrugged. “He’s not going anywhere. I intend to have a good talk with him after I introduce you to some… acquaintances.”
The small sea of blood churning around them suddenly flowing inwards. Dan didn’t dare move. All that crimson washed up to him, rising to an intimidating swell around him — he remembered all the screams it had caused — but ultimately parting around him. Nyxalraith gave the pool of blood an expression Dan couldn’t decipher. Amusement? Exasperation? It rippled in response, as if some unspoken communication.
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The blood wasn’t alive? Was it?
As if to make that question all the more confusing, the sea of red crashed into Nyxalraith. It slipped through her cloth, which rapidly began to repair itself over her exposed chest teeth, and sliced through her skin.
The visual was as incredible as it was horrifying. Blood cut open a thousand tiny lacerations over her veins and arteries before shoving itself inside. There had to be enough blood to fill a thousand Nyxalraiths, but somehow, it all found space. When the wounds sealed, she didn’t even look affected.
As Dan’s thoughts were brought back to the completely alien nature of Nyxalraith’s form, he was ready to ask what she was again. This time, to get an answer more satisfying than ‘A Seed’, which meant less than nothing to him. But, as if expecting it, and not all that inclined to answer, Nyxalraith’s tentacle wrapped around him again and brought him to his feet before lightly pulling him along.
“I know you’re probably worried about your life without the cult, but those abandoned aren’t as unorganised as you think,” Nyxalraith said. “That’s where I’m taking you. The Cultless may not be a pillar of power, but their Refuge is safe.”
That’s what Nyxalraith was focused on? With the very foundations of his world shattering, the last thing on his mind was what he would do without a cult. Not right now. It was a bit hard to focus on future uncertainties when you were walking next to someone that was looking more and more likely to be some sort of god. Or at least an entity that lived up to the nickname she’d been labelled.
Sure, he knew it was probably still Nyxalraith, but it was a bit hard to dismiss any of the things he’d just witnessed.
In normal circumstances, he might have cared for the uncertainty, rejoiced for not having to sacrifice parts of himself, or even find the mental effort to be disgusted by the alterations Nyxalraith had welcomed to her body. But not now. All of that took a backseat to the obscenity.
Nyxalraith threw her hood over her head, barely covering those strange gill-like tendrils that pushed against the fabric. “I would have teleported you right in, but the Cultless tend to be rather jumpy. Especially with me.”
“I wonder why.” He’d meant it as a joke, but it come out a little harsh.
Nyxalraith gave him a conflicted look. After a moment, she answered as if it had been a legitimate question.
“The main reason the Cultless have remained untouched by the cults is that their Refuge has countermeasures for name abilities,” she said. “You’ll feel it soon. Think of it like a cage that suffocates your soul. Effectively, it drags everyone down to the same level. Human or not.” Nyxalraith paused. “I am… mostly unaffected. That unsettles them.”
Right. Because of course that was the dynamic. Dan wondered if he was about to face a bunch of people who were forcefully coerced into working with Nyxalraith.
She stopped. The clank of her boots rang loud through the eerily quiet hall. When had Nyxalraith found the time to put them on without him noticing?
Completely ignorant to the unceasingly turbulent thoughts running through Dan’s mind, Nyxalraith approached the far wall. It was a dead end. Nothing more than a wall of thick conduits and piping leading down to the deeper levels of Coral. Raising her hand, Nyxalraith slammed her fist into the metal pipes. There was no sound of flesh or bone pounding against steel. It was more akin to steel on steel. Her chitinous hands rang off the pipe loud enough that he could hear the echoes of its echoes.
When the wall opened — a fake collection of half-cylinders embedded into a heavy duty barricade — Dan wasn’t even surprised. After she knocked, the hidden doorway was almost obvious. Compared to everything else that had happened today, it was incredibly mundane.
As they slipped inside, the barricade was shut behind them. Dan’s eyes tracked the man who sealed the door, but even after it was locked back in place, he didn’t raise his head.
“Aren’t you worried about being seen?” he asked as he rushed to keep in step with her.
“No point,” she said. “The ritual interferes with my concealer. My cloak is good enough.”
Dan’s eyes fell to the back of her legs, where the sharp points of her chainsaw and tail very obviously pressed into the hanging drape. Or the way her back spines pierced through the back of her robe. Or the very, very obvious eyes.
“When was the last time you looked in a mirror without that concealer?” Dan glanced back, catching the man’s eyes as he flinched and bowed his head again. “He absolutely saw.”
Instead of growing concerned or doubling back to… deal with the young man — Dan realised too late he very well might have brought death upon some unfortunate sod — Nyxalraith simply hummed. Annoyed, but not worried.
“He’s one of the few that are unfortunately aware that I’m not entirely human. Judge puts him, or one of the few others in the know, on duty when I’m expected to drop by.”
“Judge?” Dan asked. It was so much easier to just go with the flow than let his mind trail back to his… other thoughts.
“He’ll be the one to help you get settled in,” she said. “Now that we know Littl-” Nyxalraith cleared her throat. “I mean the Great Iris. Now that we know he is a friend, the accretion storm should stop. The upper levels will be rebuilt in the next few months, and the Refuge should become less crowded.”
Dan barely registered her words before he felt a chill settle over him. He noticed the difference immediately; his eyesight grew duller, no longer able to perceive the smallest of details in the far wall. The intuition of his Feat vanished.
Nyxalraith hadn’t been lying about the suppressor. He felt like he was being suffocated. It was a fleeting feeling that he adjusted to quickly enough, but he hadn’t yet reached his first evolution. What would this feel like to a high creed?
At his side, Nyxalraith shifted uncomfortably. Clearly, it wasn’t completely ineffective against her.
Honestly? After today, that little sliver of vulnerability — no matter how small — felt incredibly comforting to Dan. Nyxalraith wasn’t omnipotent. She was just… inhuman.
Dan froze when he turned the corner. More weapons than he’d ever seen in his life stood at the end of the long corridor. Flamethrowers and machine guns and who knew what else. All trained on him.
“Ah, good. Judge has come out to meet us.” She turned back to Dan. “Don’t worry. They know better than to fire.”
There was no doubt to her words. But Dan wasn’t sure where her certainty lay. Did she know they would never shoot those big guns… or was she just promising retribution if they did?
Looking upon Nyxalraith now, he realised he would never look upon her the same. Never again would she be that fragile loner. Never again the fate-defying ward-mate. Not even the peripheral conceptualisation of her being a thorn to the cults lingered. They were all images he’d had of her at one time, but after today, that had all changed.
“I know this might not be the path you wanted, but trust me, this is the only way you will survive,” Nyxalraith said. “Once you settle in, I’m going to get Ari and bring her here as well. With you here, it should be easier to convince her to give up on the Omen Artisans.
Dan blinked. It felt so strange to do. He blinked again, and found her facing him, expression as serious as he’d ever seen from her.
“The Cultless may not seem impressive compared to the cults, but they have their role to play in the future of Coral. Their interim tasks are important, but it’s what comes after that is integral.” Her swirling eyes bore into Dan’s. This time, he didn’t blink. “Dan, the moment I am ready, I will be killing the cult leaders. I will be eradicating the cults from Coral. And from their ashes, I intend to raise a world devoid of their practices.”
He would never see the old Nyxalraith again. There was only The Nightmare. There was only the favoured of the Great Iris. There was only Pink.
Nyxalraith was a God. Of that, he had no doubt.