Nyxala ripped out a metal maggot from her arm. The thing was half as long as a finger, but just as fat. It roiled in her hand. The pair of spinning grinders that made for a mouth spun as if to swallow the hand it couldn’t reach.
For such a little thing, it was strong. As it twisted in her grip, the mechanical bug pushed back at her fingers. Any more leverage, and it might have been able to free itself of her chitin.
She squeezed her hand. It popped. Blood and pulp squelched from between tiny moving metal plates. Was that her own flesh, or that of Shelo’Su’Senalos?
Flicking her hand, she tossed the remains. The blood once again clung to her, but she had more important things to worry about.
The man she’d saved was being torn apart by the little maggots. While she could feel them worming around in her own flesh, through sacrifice, her human parts had reached their limits. His had not. She would survive their wriggling far longer than the comatose man beneath her.
“Can you stop his bleeding?” she asked, unsure if the obsession would listen after she’d refused to make the vow it had asked for.
To her surprise and relief, the blood listened. The man’s numerous wounds ceased their flow, but that did nothing to stop the maggots continuing to eat through his body.
“And the bugs? Can you pull them from his body?”
WE CAN
Nyxala almost let out a relieved breath before the words reshaped over the man’s still chest.
ONLY WHEN YOU PROMISE YOUR LOVE
So the blood was being fickle? Well, at least it was working with her in some fashion now.
“Then come, join me again.” Nyxala gestured for the wounds of her arm.
Cooperatively, the left-over blood curling around her arms slipped inside, adding to her veins. It wanted to prove it was worth her love, but it seemed there were some actions it would refuse despite being capable.
Eiỷpi̬ny had shown the ability to rupture thousands of people — weak as they were — with nothing but the blood inside their arteries. If it now wasn’t willing to remove simple bugs from an equally weak unevolved, then that was likely a show of what it could achieve should she love it.
There was no mistaking it now. The name wasn’t the source of this power. Eiỷpi̬ny was second evolution and with a particularly incomplex description. It should be impossible for such a name to grant the power to kill so many with such ease. No, her first instinct when she watched the name evolve was likely correct. It had been directed by an outside entity to craft a name of its desire.
Something else — a god maybe — had latched onto the name to make a connection with her.
It should be impossible. A name was built by ones experiences and reflected their desires. No outside force was supposed to have any influence on the one thing that was so intimately one’s own.
But that wasn’t right, was it? Invows existed. Those were without a doubt a way to manipulate the soul of another… and who knew what nightmarish capabilities belonged to the entities in the Darkness of the Black hole. To the Great Iris. Or even to the Eidolons. All were beyond understanding.
So, comprehension or not, what was she to do with the entity that was trying to worm its way into her soul the same way these metal maggots ate into her body? The blood seemed simple. Like a child. But was that a limitation of its form and connection? An actual representation of its lack of link with humanity? Or simply a method to get under her guard?
What good was her love? What good was any love besides the creation of a greater sacrifice?
Nyxala set aside her doubts of the questionable intent of her blood and made to slice open the man at her knees. She could see the maggots writhing through his flesh, now that she looked. The sharp tips of the shearing gears stuck out amongst edgeless flesh.
She went for those digging towards his heart first. Slicing through the gaps between ribs, she plucked the bug from a hole in his lung, quickly stuffing the hole with her hair. The light coloured mould was hardly a cure all, but it kept him breathing long enough that she could carve out a proper healing ritual.
There were eight more she had to pull from his chest, then another five in his tattered leg. When she was done, she’d gone through most of her hair. Nyxala’s hand slid over the short fuzz. She couldn’t help but smirk to herself, remembering a time when its absence would have horrified her. Very long ago.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
She directed corruption to her head. Opening her name like this, and intentionally directing it was incredibly difficult — like trying to guide a river with nothing but her hand — but she was able to spill some through the roots of her mould. It should help the hair grow in a few hours rather than a few days.
Funny how it was easier to open a Dark Star than a trickle of a stream.
As she looked upon herself, she considered just leaving the little bugs to chart their own demise. If they thought they could eat through her, then she would enjoy watching them splinter and twist as her flesh fought back. If the Technocult’s work couldn’t last in her body, then nothing the Worshippers made would do any better.
But that would likely take too long. They were machines of her enemy; who knew what sort of functions they had that would be detrimental to her. For all she knew, they were signalling her location back to Shelo’Su’Senalos right this moment. Nyxala didn’t have the time to toy with them.
Cutting the machines from herself was only marginally more difficult than doing so for the mutated man. She had more, and they’d already wormed their way through parts of her neck where she couldn’t see. It was a good thing blood was on her side, otherwise she might have bled out from all the prodding she was doing trying to find the little bastards.
Once the maggots were all crushed and discarded, she picked up the man again and moved on. She would stop to enact a healing ritual once they’d garnered a safe distance, and not a moment sooner.
Lysyra still hadn’t appeared, but knowing her, it was only a matter of time.
Now that she was away from the immediate danger of being followed, Nyxala let go of the swirling darkness as the light of her sceptre dimmed. She hid her mutations, and hooked the man’s body over her shoulders. The name, while helpful, attracted far more attention than some cultist carrying a body.
Nyxala was strong enough now that she could handle his weight, but her stature hadn’t changed much. The man’s body was unwieldy. Made worse by his oversized ribcage mutation. She was forced to lean forward and use the weight of her tail to assist her posture.
As she ran, Nyxala pulled her touch from the fissure of the shadow mutation and found one of her old changes she’d been putting off. With how her shredded arms rubbed painfully against the body she held, now was a good a time as any to welcome the mutation. Besides, it would return the sacrificed skin of her elbow to her.
The crack in her name opened easily. As a part of what was once Oth, there was no resistance to returning to her what had already been mutated.
An unbearable itchiness immediately spread across her upper arm and up to her shoulders. It was bad, but better that than the pain it replaced.
She adjusted the body, using him to rub at her shoulders. The action was supposed to ease her itch, instead it simply folded her skin away. If she hadn’t already gone through this once before, she might have thought her skin was falling away. No, it was simply altering its form. And to do that, it melted into something almost mouldable.
Her skin lost its top and bottom. It was the same throughout. Soft and flexible, with an almost slippery texture.
The mutation was done quickly. The back of her elbows to the top of her shoulders were replaced with an unbroken substitute. Not skin, but not so different. Besides the slight variance in colour and texture, of course. She hadn’t bothered to mutate it as it offered no benefit to her. Only now that it allowed her to clear her arms of wounds did she care to accept it as part of herself.
But as the mutation came into being, she realised the crack in her name was still not fully opened. It should have been. This was hardly the last mutation she’d taken on in her last life, and so it had plenty of time to reach its completion. Why then, was there now resistance in the fissure?
Too curious for her own good, she pushed more force into opening the door for the mutation.
The resistance, while stronger than other Oth mutations, didn’t come close to requiring the effort of the new changes she’d been taking on. The crack didn’t quite rupture, but it certainly came close.
Nyxala’s new, rubbery skin hardened. Instead of a smooth replacement, it became rough with what might have been wrinkles if they weren’t so… thin and orderly. Curious was already poking at her arm, trying to figure out what had happened.
She slipped into an old viewing bay. The window to whatever it had once looked out over was now blocked by a solid steel wall. Dumping the man on the ground, she was glad to see he hadn’t died.
Her hand grasped her wrist, and slid upwards. The sleeve of her robe went with it, revealing something completely different from what she’d had in her past life. She’d expected the pure white of rubber at her elbow. Instead, there was only the dark brownish grey of what could only be bark.
It was a slender trunk, not like that of the surface’s plastic trees. It splintered in places. Her hand traced the arm, feeling rougher than sandpaper, yet contrarily, the chitin slid across it as if it were glass.
Experimentally, she extended her claws and sliced her arm. What would have carved a gash into her only minutes ago now left nothing but a scratch in bark.
This wasn’t what she was expecting, but Nyxala wasn’t going to turn away a defensive mutation so long as it didn’t impede her speed. She knew it was where she lacked most.
Before she could get lost in testing the limits of another mutation, she returned her attention to the unconscious man laying at her feet. If she was to learn anything from him, it was probably best she stopped him from dying.
“Can you paint the ritual circle?” she asked.
Blood spilled from her less than intact neck and spread across the ground around them without hesitation. It plucked the pentagram from her mind and manifested them in the world without her needing to lift a finger.
She didn’t love it yet, but it certainly knew the route to get there.
Nyxala began a hymn.
When this man was stabilised, she needed to decide on what to do with him. It wasn’t like she could rock up at a Ward and ask for a room, and the Technocult barely let Lysyra in even knowing she was Invowed to her.
So then… where?