What little blood wasn’t sacrificed in the ritual now clung to her hands. At her request, it took the shape of gloves. Now that it was willing, the obsessive blood took on any shape she wished, yet she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the necklace form it had originally taken when asked.
Her… friend wasn’t so willing to be soft with its touch.
Even now, it clung to her hands as if they were clasped in another’s. Much better then being held around the neck. She could probably cut herself again and ask the blood to rejoin her, but it had shown reluctance in the past. While Nyxala hadn’t offered it her love, she wasn’t unwilling to acquiesce to some requests.
Besides, it might not be the best idea to allow blood tainted by others’ back into her veins.
The mutated man had yet to wake. To remain unconscious through both those worms digging through his flesh, and the healing ritual, it was unlikely he would awaken any time soon.
Nyxala wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or not. Having the man up and about would make it far easier to get him somewhere safe. Not to mention her desire to question him. But there was one teensy problem she might face if he awoke.
He might be Mad.
Sure, it was the entire fact that he hadn’t gone Mad which likely made him a good enough sacrifice to go through the effort of preserving, but now he was free of the Worshippers containment. If they had anything that was suppressing his mind, it now had no effect.
So, where would she be able to hide him?
The Technocult wouldn’t accept him into their temple, and the safehouses they had through Coral — like Tarchon’s old home — were likely under threat of the Worshipper war. Besides, they would be the prime suspects of this raid. Especially if they found the remains of the ID badge Lysyra had dropped when Nyxala popped her replica.
Nyxala carefully made sure nobody was around before slipping out the door. The sacrifice should be fine where he was, at least for a while. In the meantime, she needed to find Lysyra. Well, wander around long enough for the girl to find her.
As she ran through the halls — her tail swaying across the ground with each step — Nyxala brought her sceptre up to her eye. It took but a thought to increase the burning light from the glow of a torch to a scorching ray similar to the accretion disk.
She tried to will it further. Sekhhath’Ra had cast out solar flares that incinerated everything the light touched. It was still not entirely certain whether that had been this relic, or the dead pharaoh’s own strength. If she couldn’t replicate that power, she would be disappointed, but not terribly so. It was already useful. The combination between the physical darkness and her hiding name alone was worth the effort of the heist.
…who was she kidding? Just knowing the Worshippers had lost so much today was enough to have her chuckling like Euphoria.
God summonings were notoriously unreliable, but he was quite enjoyable to work with.
Nyxala willed the sceptre to give up its light. It dulled, but the glowing gold refused to accept darkness. She wrapped it in cloth. Despite her efforts to hide it with the thick fabric of her cloak, the light still pierced through.
This was going to be a problem if she ever wanted to truly hide in the shadows.
“Finally!”
Nyxala spun, whacking Lysyra through the head with her sceptre. The girl had appeared right behind her again. This repetition was getting annoying.
“I’ve been scouring the tunnels for you.” Lysyra appeared again, this time just out of sceptre range. “About time you showed yourself.”
Nyxala struck the girl with her tail instead.
“You sound sure I survived,” Nyxala said. “Maybe Shelo’S͐u’S͐en̲ͧa̦̅l̥̊os killed me. Or I was taken captive.”
Lysyra solidified once more. “If either of those happened, we’d both be in a Dark Star now, no?” She shrugged, before her gaze hardened and she glared at Nyxala. “Besides, I think there’s some more important things to talk about. A god, no less?”
“Later,” Nyxala dismissed, already turning to lead her back through the halls. “But you’re right we have more important things to focus on.”
Lysyra hummed in question, but Nyxala was pleased to leave her hanging. She deserved it for constantly trying to get the jump on her.
“Oh!” The girl was frustratingly unbothered. “What of the things I asked for? Were you able to pick them up?”
She didn’t offer the girl much more than a glance over her shoulder as she ran. Only when they were outside the room of the preserved sacrifice did Curious toss the screw needle and scroll from under her cloak. Lysyra barely saw them in time to catch.
As they both entered the room, Lysyra was too busy oohing and aahing at her new toys to notice the man until she tripped over him. Nyxala wanted to laugh, but that needle dagger came a little too close to the comatose man’s head with Lysyra’s fall.
“Who is this?” a new replica asked, pretending like she’d never tripped. “Wait, does he…?”
Nyxala nodded. “Those are cursed mutations. The Worshippers had him and many other sacrifices stored away in the deepest part of their Tributary.”
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“Is he like you?” she asked, crouching besides him and casually collecting her gifts.
“Can’t say, but I intend to find out.” Nyxala watched as Lysyra traced her finger over the sawed-off horns. His body, still unconscious, jerked at the touch. “Once I find somewhere safe to take him.”
“The war makes that difficult.”
She hummed in agreement. “The Technocult have never been strong in numbers. They won’t be able to spare the resources to watch over him. The biggest problem is his lack of evolutions. We can’t leave him here or the corruption will twist him… but anywhere free of it is only going to announce his existence to the cults.” It would be particularly bad if the Worshippers found out.
“I might know of a place.” Lysyra looked down at the man ponderously. “But… I don’t think he’d survive the journey. Reaching the safe zone is not so easy anymore.”
“I don’t think there is a Rearing Ward that wouldn’t sell him out.”
“Not a ward.” Lysyra met her eye. “The Cultless.”
Nyxala was doubtful. “Why would the destitute be any more trustworthy than the wards?”
“Not all the Cultless are impoverished,” Lysyra said, a bit too forceful. “I don’t mean the abandoned streets. Well, technically I do, but there’s more to those discarded by the cults than what they allow to be seen on the surface.”
“Is that right?” Nyxala was still doubtful, but Lysyra seemed confident enough and if worst came to worst, she didn’t mind leaving the sacrifice behind. “So why is it so hard to reach?”
“Besides the war going on over our heads?” Lysyra rose. “Ah, right. You haven’t been to the surface since the accretion storm began”
❖❖❖
Lysyra had not been kidding. If Nyxala had slung the man over her shoulder when she rose to the surface, he would have died. No doubt. No question. His body would have been ripped apart by the intense blasting light that scraped away at Nyxala any time she left the cover of shadows.
Even with darkness swirling around her form, the solar rain stripped it away in the brief instances of flight as she darted from the semi-destroyed awning of one building to the next.
She dare not glance up. Not with the eyes in her head, at least. Nyxala pulled a lead-encased rat from the bag she protected, and crushed it, healing the horrible burns that pervaded every part of her body. The waves of ionic wind struck in pulses, but not even the lulls between were safe.
The bark of her arms fell off as the lower layer hardened. She quickly pulled it from her sleeve, tossing it out into the accretion’s light to be disintegrated. As resistant as the replacement skin was, the method it healed was somewhat annoying. She didn’t like the idea of leaving a trail behind.
Only the fact that there was nobody on the surface was relieving. Had she been required to this without her wings and tail… well, she wouldn’t have.
A flash overhead vanished Nyxala’s shade. She threw herself into the wall, breaking it down to find relief from the sudden tsunami of a dying star crashing through the streets. There was a crash. Then a plume of smoke rose, filling the air with the debris of a fallen tower.
The dust cloud didn’t last long. Under the intense assault of the deific tempest, it was all swallowed before it could so much as darken the sky.
Nyxala slunk deeper into the building, hiding from the light which seemed determined to carve through everything blocking her from the accretion disk. She sliced into another rodent, healing the damage. But looking down at the pieces of the dead creature as it fell from its shell, she clenched her jaw.
It’s fur was blackened like charcoal, and the meat wasn’t much better.
She had seven remaining, but as things were going, they wouldn’t last long enough. Not even the thick coating of lead was enough to hold out the rays.
Making her way through the recently abandoned structure, she knocked down another wall and flew across the street. The storm had not fully settled, and the scorching wind still blew, but stopping now was more dangerous than a bit of pain.
Even if it was the agony of her skin being flayed and her bones boiling from the marrow within.
Lysyra had told her where to go, and who she needed to convince to open the way for her still unnamed mutated man waiting below. She had to go alone, as the other girl couldn’t survive the storm.
It was strange that Lysyra didn’t already have a replica hidden within this supposed home of the Cultless. Which would have prevented Nyxala from coming to the surface while a damned deific tempest was tearing through Coral. When asked, the girl had simply dismissed it as she ‘couldn’t be everywhere’.
She wasn’t sure she believed her.
As she approached the final block before her destination, she looked around, as if expecting to see all the unevolved that wallowed in their self-pity on this side of the safe zone. There were none. To be expected; any unevolved that hadn’t found some hole to tuck themselves away in would be dead.
Then again, if some had succumbed, there wouldn’t be bone or blood to signal their loss. The accretion light would make sure of that.
Nyxala held herself from looking up with the eyes in her head, but she couldn’t help the temptation to do so with her sternum eye. The star she’d only recently seen spiralling out from the pupil was now very rapidly feeding the Iris.
The burning orb flowed like molten steel, twisting through the inner accretion rings and reaching the closer, outer ones. It’s light shone brighter. That of a dying sun scorching through all its energy as it was consumed by the Great Iris.
But most noticeable of all; the stars and galaxies deep in the pupil spiralled rapidly. This was no longer the subtle twirling that had pulled every Everseeing Eye cultist to exalt up in their high Observitory, but a powerful well that pulled in more stars. Even now, there were three spiralling outward, growing visibly to her eye. Before long, they would join the first, and this accretion storm would become unfathomably strong.
And still, through all that, the gaze of something amongst those stars stared down on them. On her. She could feel it, stronger than it had been back at the beginning of the accretion storm.
Soon, it wouldn’t just be the surface structures being damaged.
Scorched and in desperate need to crush a living rodent she no longer had, Nyxala threw herself through the only rusted door between long removed glass displays now boarded up with artificial timber. She slipped over the countertop and through an arch that might have only recently held a cloth divider. As Lysyra had said, there was a false floor in the corner of the room. She lifted it, and jumped into the basement.
Despite being able to see through the wall and knowing where she needed to go, it took ten minutes to find the latch that gave her access to the spiral staircase that led a few floors lower.
The place it opened out into was a service tunnel blocked off at both ends, though one side held the largest vault door she’d ever seen.
Lysyra had told Nyxala about this place, and despite being here, she still couldn’t believe the ridiculousness of this entrance. She ignored the vault, opened a service panel, fiddled with the circuitry until another secret door was revealed, then lifted yet another false floor.
This was a lot of effort to go into hiding when someone with the right name could discover it all in seconds.
What am I getting myself into? Nyxala gazed into the well-lit pit that went down a few more floors. What nonsense is Lysyra caught up in?
She jumped, ignoring the ladders. An instant later, she almost regretted the decision.
Something clasped around her name. It latched onto her soul, and bound it tight. In an instant, the thick darkness swirling around her form dispersed. Her body suddenly drooped, feeling weak. Only when the blood clutching her hands slipped free, lifeless, did she realise with horror what had happened.
Her soul had been suppressed, and her abilities, stolen. So too, had her concealer ceased functioning.