Nyxala’s boots struck ground with a reverberating clang. She felt as her feet deformed within, dampening the heavier landing than she’d expected. The net around her soul had seemingly stifled much of the sacrificial enrichment of her body. Her knees strained.
It had been a long fall for her weaker human bits. Still, she kept her feet.
The instant she’d felt that sickening grasp clench down on her soul, Nyxala sent her heart racing. Her mutations still functioned, and she would need them to face whatever was separating her from her abilities.
Walls closed her in on three sides. Wide enough to fit four men at most, the tunnel led only one way, and not a trace of the walls remained unmarred. Deep scratches and divots textured some parts, while the rest was charred with soot.
At the end of the hall, a hundred metres from her, Nyxala gazed down the barrel of a gun. It was an ancient design, crafted by none of the cults, but it was big. Big, and joined by the flaming nib of an incendiary cannon.
“What business do you have here?”
Nyxala gazed passed the weapons honed on her, and took in the dozen men assembled just outside the opening. Each held heavy guns themselves, all trained on her. They were orderly, leaning over each other’s shoulders to fit as many lines of fire through the narrow hall as they could.
They each had weapons, yet it was their eyes Nyxala worried for most.
She lowered her head, hoping the shade of her hood hid her ears and eyes. Her tail slid behind her. She was careful to keep its length out of their line of sight as she brought it within her cloak and looped it around her legs. Each spine snapped down, making both her tail and back easier to move should she need to rush for an escape in an instant.
Ta’Stralanov’r’s concealer was no longer functioning, and all it would take was a single person being a touch too observant for their own good for them to realise her secret. She’d come here to have the Cultless watch over her… curiosity, not become one herself.
These were without a doubt the Cultless. But how were they able to suppress her name? Nyxala found it difficult to believe that anyone with such a powerful name could survive without the protection of a cult. There was no space on Coral for someone so dangerous to the cult leaders unless the leaders themselves assured their survival.
Even if it didn’t work on them now, an ability like that was a threat waiting to bloom.
Nyxala searched her soul. She tried to tear the encasing net free of her names, yet it barely budged despite the added weight of her previous evolution.
For an ability that affected the soul, it was absurdly strong. Not even Sekhhath’Ra’s curse containment held itself together as tightly as whatever this was. The only thing it couldn’t seem to contain… was her core. And not for lack of effort; even as she watched, the net reforged itself over and over, only to shred itself apart as it tried to wrap around N̪ỷx̱̽ala.
With her name sense free, she wasted no time scanning their souls. She expected to find one of them being the origin of this name-voiding effect. Instead, they were all just as suppressed as her.
None of them were all that strong. The speaker — a man standing at the back of the crouched gunmen — was nothing more than a third evolution. The rest? A jumble of firsts, with more than a few unevolved amongst them.
They were weak. Both with and without the strange soul net limiting their abilities. With her mutations alone, she could slaughter them all. Assuming she could close the distance fast enough to not be shredded by a wall of steel and fire.
“I was told to come here,” she shouted, the sound of her own voice echoing before it even reached the walls.
“During this storm? They mustn’t like you much,” the man voice reverberated through her tendrils, followed by a few low chuckles. “Who sent you? And why?”
Not wanting to have a shouting match through this horridly echoing tunnel, Nyxala took a step. The metallic clang of a bullet ricocheting past her foot stopped her second.
“No closer,” The man snapped. “I’m sure you feel it. In here, we’re all the same. Your name means nothing, so if you don’t wish to find your charred corpse riddled with holes, I recommend being straight with us. Who sent you?”
“I-” Nyxala felt her tongue speaking in unison with her, but without the concealer, it would only unsettle others and give her away. She clamped down on it, forcing the muscle to keep quiet as she spoke. “I am here to see someone called Judge. I was told he is who I must speak to to have the lower gate opened.”
“Last time I’m gonna ask before my friend here will triple your weight with lead.” He didn’t take his hands of his weapon, but it was obvious he meant the entrenched machine gun. “Who. Sent. You?”
Nyxala clenched her jaw. She wanted to keep Lysyra’s connection with her unknown. It wouldn’t be good for the Bodytwisters to learn that she was helping a Technocultist. Even if they had common enemies. For all it was worth, Nyxala couldn’t have the girl’s infiltration ousted.
Lysyra hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with how she knew everything she did about this place. Was it like everywhere else, and she’d simply been sneaking around until she knew everything about them… or had they actually met? If this name-net was persistent through the Cultless’ hidden hovel, then there’s no wonder she doesn’t have replicas here. But has she been here in the flesh? Do these people know her.
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Nyxala subtly widened her cloak and robe at the neck. Her sternum eye immediately began eating through the chambered shell and into the firing pin behind it. If she didn’t like their reaction… well, she was willing to take her chances.
“Ly͚sy͚rã.”
The man lowered his voice to a murmur, but Nyxala heard him anyway. Even a hundred metres away. “That brat?”
His head swivelled back, as if expecting someone to be there. He was back to glaring at her through the tunnel before long.
So he knew her, but his tone didn’t fill Nyxala with confidence that she was well regarded.
“Then who are you? An acolyte to the Bodytwisters like her?”
Her gaze flickered over each of the men training their weapons on her. At this distance, she could barely read the expressions of those without hoods. “No.” She considered her words carefully. “But I am her friend. I share her particular… disdain.”
“And why does she want the lower gate opened?” he demanded.
“We have someone that we can’t trust with the care of the cults. He and Ly͚sy͚rã are waiting down below.”
He took his time to consider. The men around him stayed in formation without so much as a twitch. She swayed left and right, and each of their barrels swayed with her. There was an intense focus there. One that betrayed no confidence in their own ability. Only deep mistrust of the teen that stood before them.
“Approach.” It seemed he’d finally decided to let her in. “Slowly. And no sudden movements, lest our trigger fingers twitch.”
Nyxala took one last glance at the hole in the ceiling, considering whether some random sacrifice was worth the risk against a bunch of cultless she had no intent to kill. Her name was bound here. If she got shot in the wrong place, Lýotepͦ would not be there to help her.
All it would take was a beat of her wings and she’d be gone. But then, the answers she wanted from that man who’d probably lived in captivity since he was a child would be too. Sure, she could probably find some room that no cultist could ever find and learn everything she wanted there… but the corruption would take him quick.
Maybe it was naive, but she didn’t want someone who was treated the same as her to have death to be their only fate.
She did as ordered. Her feet carried her forward slowly and with purpose. One after the other. Her tail stayed hooked around her shins, pressing out at her cloak in a way she could only try to obscure with each step. Of all things to be glad of, she never expected a near-bald head would be one of them. Now, the unmistakable blue locks couldn’t hang low enough to be seen beyond her hood.
Her hand laid on the unfinished pommel of her rapier. The blade fit in its scabbard anything but smoothly, still marked by the eternal pharaoh’s claws. She probably could have found a replacement in the Technocult cathedral. Something that didn’t destroy itself with explosions.
Still, she hadn’t. She liked her rapier as it was. It had changed from its original form, just as she had, and that made it all the better. Maybe it wouldn’t slice as well as before, but those new ridges near where the blade was missing a guard would dice any flesh it passed through, or twisted through.
Perfect for the cults.
Well, she may not be facing cultists right now, but the rapier would be her weapon of choice. While she lacked the name to hide herself, she didn’t want to announce to these men what she still needed to hide. For all the effort she’d gone through to gain the sceptre, it could not replace her blade.
Especially considering the soul-net had suffocated its light too. What good was the sceptre now? It was nothing more than a heavy golden club to her here.
Nyxala wasn’t willing to slow her heartbeat when a single squeeze of the finger of any of the men before her could spell her end. She didn’t trust that they wouldn’t fire. Not with how intent they were.
She couldn’t give up the reaction speed, and so the slow hundred metre walk felt like it took an eternity.
At only fifty metres, there was a change. One of the men waved to someone she couldn’t see, and a segment of the ceiling behind her opened up. As jumpy as this rhythm made her, she didn’t bounce in shock as the steel bars fell. Nyxala couldn’t have. They fell so slow that it almost looked like watching a bug crawl down the wall. The speed to react to bullets was far faster than the fall of some previously stationary object.
It felt like she had an entire minute to contemplate slipping past the grated steel barrier before it blocked off her path of retreat. The heartrate was affecting her, and she couldn’t stop the thoughts and fears racing through her mind. None of them made any better with the shackles on her name.
Still, she was close enough now that she trusted her speed. The iron gate fell behind her. Gaps wide enough to be no hindrance to their fire, but tight enough not even a child could slip through.
“Stop,” The man commanded.
She stopped five metres from the orderly group, tightening her cloak and robe around herself once again.
“What’s your name, girl?” he asked.
Most of the men around him lowered their weapons, but didn’t leave formation. All except the one behind the belt-fed machine gun bolted to the floor. That remained pointed squarely on her.
She let her heart slow to a reasonable level.
“N̪ỷx̱̽ala.”
“No. Here, you are Nyxala alone. As I am Prong.” His eyes fell to her hands, where she’d never stopped clutching the hilt of her blade. Then to her sceptre. He didn’t seem to find whatever he was looking for. “This is the last place a newly accepted Technocultist should be. Especially after achieving victory in what is being termed the bloodiest Trial.” He relaxed from his stance. “Search her.”
One of the men slung his gun over his shoulder by the strap as the others spread out at her sides, watching her carefully.
“You touch me, and you lose the hand.” There was no way she was letting them discover her mutations so easily.
The man approaching to search her had the audacity to scoff. “You might have gotten lucky and gained a few good names, but that stays out there. In here, you are nothing but a child. And a girl at that. Weak.”
Nyxala didn’t give him the opportunity to touch her. Her hand whipped forward and grabbed him by the elbow. She barely even needed to twist, and he was on his knees pleading.
“Weak, huh?” Nyxala bent down, ignoring all the guns trained to her once more. “I could squeeze until your bones are nothing but mulch. And something tells me you don’t have the resources or capability in here to ever bring a crippled arm back to function.”
She glanced up at the alarmed guards ready to blow her head off. Well, try.
“But I won’t, because I’m here to play nice.” Nyxala let him go, and ignored as he scrambled away. “I won’t let you search me. Just think of me as a shy little girl and take me to Judge.”
The squad stood around her, unsettled. Their eyes kept shifting to Prong, and so Nyxala did the same.
“Fuck me, you’re somehow worse than her,” he muttered before raising his voice. “Fine, but don’t expect to be given time alone. Try anything, and it won’t matter how hard you can squeeze some unevolved’s arm.”
He turned, and gestured Nyxala to follow. Five guards fell in step behind her.
“Oh, before we go.” She glanced back to the cultless operating the oversized gun emplacement. “You should really get some repairs done. With a firing pin so worn down, you’ll never fire a shot.”