Chương 224: Chapter 220: Hate and Fury

Yog rose between Nyxalair and Solan. It didn't growl, but the simmering hiss of growing amalgamations certainly gave the impression. Solan scowled and whipped her only moving arm to the side. Her chains followed the motion, crashing through Yog and the small mountain of amalgamations, but got caught in the cursed growths across her body. Each bollard, as unnatural as they already were rising from human flesh, seemed to magnetise Solan's chains.

Her whip sliced through Yog, but it was little more than a glancing blow. It didn't come anywhere near Nyxalair. The motion of her arm coiled chains around each steel growth. They tangled. Frustration marred Solan's face as her weapons failed to act as they were supposed to. Nyxalair scrambled to sever her other arm before the chains forging themselves into the bark and rubber of her bicep could reach her torso. The concealer had already been destroyed. Crushed beyond repair before she'd managed to sever the arm.

She didn't focus on the loss. What did it matter that her mutations were out in the open when Solan already knew everything. Nyxalair was probably due a replacement anyway. A roar shook Coral. The old grated walkway Nyxalair kneeled on caved in, wedging one of her only limbs that had avoided being bound by chains. The sound shook her soul. It was simultaneously familiar, and entirely alien. Still, she knew exactly what it was. The phantom.

Not one of the ones mimicking human form with their shiver inducing shrieks and whispers. It was the powerful one. The phantom that needed to destroy the corridors to traverse them. Solan hadn't killed the thing; she'd fled from it. Almost in reaction to the monstrous phantom, Solan's oversized chain once more caused a commotion through Coral's shadow behind her. It dug through a wall like an oversized worm, before twisting a dozen building sized chain links around to slam back into the path it came from.

Despite the subtle light from below, Nyxalair dared not peek at the immense work of fleshsmithing. Not with what she knew was coming after it. The dull screams of however many thousands of souls had been forged into the metal echoed over her antennae. They were both too loud, and too silent amongst the rest of the cacophony. At least, until Nyxalair heard hundreds of those crying, wailing, screaming voices vanish in an instant.

As immense and powerful as that fleshforged weapon was, it slumped beneath the natural might of the shadow's resident. The rest of the chain tried to pull back, but the links in the centre of the impact remained listless. A guttural scream escaped Solan as she grew ever more frustrated. She motioned at Nyxalair. The last remaining chains that still bound her suddenly had an immense desire to fly towards Solan. Nyxalair wasn't going to have that, and let both tentacles and leg be torn from the joint.

While Nyxalair had lost the ability to sever limbs at will with her most recent evolution, she still retained a remnant of it. Enough that she could weaken parts of herself at a whim. Solan, upon receiving Nyxalair's gifted severed limbs, smacked them away in anger. Rude. Doesn't she even want to test my value as a sacrifice? The limbs sailed through the air for an instant longer before they exploded in a shower of blood. Yog's little gift.

Nyxalair hadn't wanted to get her hopes up, but she had seen just how damaging Yog could make compressed blood explosions. It might have even scratched Solan's skin. The Fleshsmith leader hardly looked impressed. With the phantoms rushing in behind her, she wasn't in the mood to play around. Solan leapt towards Nyxalair. The chains wrapping her body — locked in place by those strange cursed bollards — suddenly began to tighten. They spun around the woman's own body, digging into skin.

For a brief moment, Nyxalair thought this was the work of the curse, too. But that hope was quickly shattered. Each chain link forged with Solan's skin, working into her muscles and bonding with bone. Every surface of the woman's body was covered. The fleshforged chains clutched Solan, and enhanced her already obscenely strong body. Nyxalair, for what felt like the hundredth time in ten seconds, had a fraction of an instant to act.

Most her limbs were gone — not yet regrown — and with the few that remained, she couldn't possibly outrun Solan. Her chainsaw roared to life as something resembling a plan formed in her mind. With her two remaining tentacles, she pulled out a pair of flamethrowers and unleashed twin streams of bright inferno that instantly scattered her shadows. She knew it was coming, but it still stung to have her claws in Solan's soul ripped out. Once again, the phantoms screeched their fury at the interlopers in their shadow.

If there were any not already rushing towards Solan, they were now. Well, Solan and Nyxalair. Hopefully the phantoms would find the higher evolution more tasty. That was certainly how it worked for her tongue. Solan was a mere metre from reaching her when the canisters exploded in her face. Nyxalair had been busy chewing through the flamethrower with her gem eye.

Only a barrier of blood stopped her from being frozen solid, but the blast itself struck with enough power that Nyxalair felt the fibres of her very being shatter. Nyxalair rocketed downward. She shattered through the floor that her chainsaw had already mostly drilled away, and now she was falling into the light outside of Coral's shadows. A hail of frozen blood shards rained around her. They cut into her already pulped, unresponsive skin.

The explosion had done so much damage to her body that Nyxalair's slaughter state rushed to the forefront in a way none of her lost limbs had managed. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. She barely noticed how her body spun and cratered another hole through the next floor. Every ounce of her being focused on Solan. Even through the third stage of Lý̥o̻tepͦ, she couldn't tear her gaze from the cultist that hunted her. Bloodthirst boiled her veins.

Nyxalair hungered. Her unbending desire to kill — to finally punish one of the people who had made her past miserable — it overwhelmed the coherent part of her mind that still realised how obscenely stupid it was to do anything but run. Nyxalair's perseverance pushed the hyper-aware mental state of Lý̥o̻tepͦ to new heights. She didn't even need to kill anymore for it to activate. Combined with her slaughter state's enhancement of her heart-rate, the world seemed to still around her.

Solan's desperate, greed-tinged eyes bored into her own. Frost coated her chains, but was hardly an obstruction to their glacial shifting. The flicker in the dust behind her showed the swarm of phantoms that was bearing down on them. They scraped at Solan's back. And something huge chased after her. It was as if Nyxalair had all the time in the world to think. That was always enough to smother her Feat's murderous intent. Not this time. A lifetime of hatred and anger wouldn't let the bloodthirst settle.

So instead of her mental enhancement tempering her slaughter state, as usual, they bonded. They converged into something more. The world faded away for all besides Solan. Her hyperfocus on the life she would take was the same as ever, only now, she didn't lose sight of her own actions. With the world ticking by at the pace of a snail, Nyxalair noticed everything about the Fleshsmith leader. She saw the way the woman's muscles twitched before every motion of a chain.

She followed the subtle flicker of Solan's eyes, and the way they revealed the woman's thoughts and intent. Nyxalair twisted to the side, dodging the second shrapnel blast of chains that had pinned her only seconds ago. She'd moved before Solan had even decided on the attack. The world below her shattered. Wherever the link fragments impacted, they toppled walls and sliced through steel. Only upon impacting one of the Bodytwisters otherflesh walls did the shrapnel come to a stop.

Chains sprouted like parasites, coiling through the fleshen structure until it was overtaken. There wasn't anything in the world as satisfying for Nyxalair as the subtle recoil of outrage that rippled through Solan's body when she realised how easily she'd been seen through. Her choice had already been made. Flee? Call for help? Nyxalair's long-seething hatred had found an opportunity, and it wouldn't give it away for anything. Despite all logic that spoke out against the idea, she was not going to run.

She had a plan. So long as she timed it right, Solan was going to die. As Nyxalair's chest widened once more, forming a portal to Pink behind her, she gave a taunting, hungry grin up to Solan. Obscured by neither shadow nor concealer, Nyxalair's full showcase of mutations was displayed before Solan for the first time. Her hair, her eyes, her teeth, all down to the slime of her regenerating feet, it was all laid bare.

Everything Nyxalair was, everything Solan had desired from her, it was out in the open; a temptation. And so when Nyxalair fell into the embrace of her Pink realm, Solan didn't so much as hesitate. She dove in after her. Never questioning the possibility of a trap. Nyxalair blinked, and Lý̥o̻tepͦ dragged her perception to a crawl once more. She waited. Solan speared towards her, rapidly closing the gap. She crawled while Nyxalair was frozen.

Head throbbing and heart burning, Nyxalair extended that single moment into what felt an eternity. Steady. A strained spring held back by a pin. The instant Solan crossed the threshold, Nyxalair's jaws clamped down. They crashed inwards, and a rib fractured as it smashed into Solan's chest, shoving her to the side and wedging her between two other teeth. Like a vice, Solan was pinned.

Newly regrown wings slammed against Pink, and Nyxalair pealed forward again, biting into Solan's face with all the feral fury her Feat demanded. Neither first strike nor second did much damage, but after the fifth — a whip of her tail that blunted her chainsaw against Solan's chains — Nyxalair's razor teeth finally pierced something soft. The fluid of an eye spilled over her tongue, and the little mouth within couldn't help but dart into the opening to bite at the inside of Solan's skull.

Finally, Solan managed to twist her head enough to command the chains around her neck to knock Nyxalair away. The impact immediately shattered her jaw and ripped out the tongue, which now wiggled in Solan's eye socket. It'd apparently bitten in hard enough not to be pulled loose. Nyxalair coughed. Blood and phlegm blocked her throat, so she forced herself to cough again until the airway was clear. Looking at Solan now, there would be no more diving in for opportunistic attacks.

No matter; Nyxalair had dragged O̅s̫s̋tho̲th into the fight with that little act. Now that the boost flooded her body in conjunction with the slaughter state, she'd achieved what she wanted. Solan tried to wedge her single operable arm between her ribs and force the portal open. She tried, but Nyxalair's empowerment also applied to the mutation that wasn't even physically connected to her. Compared to before, it was like lifting a mountain rather than a boulder.

Even then, Solan still seemed to be overpowering her jaw strength. However slowly.

"This will do you no good." Solan's irate voice remained unwavering in self-assuredness despite her situation.

"The more you drag this out, the more painful it will be." Nxyalair hardened her eyes on the cult leader. There wasn't so much as a twitch across her form. Solan truly believed that there was nothing Nyxalair could do to kill her. She still didn't see her as a threat. We'll see how long that attitude lasts. With a single thought, Nyxalair sent her jaw down. Down beyond the shadows. Down past the lower service tunnels. Down below Coral itself.

Solan screamed, and Nyxalair realised the immense phantom had followed the stockaded woman as she'd been dragged down into the depths of Coral. It now ate away at her legs and whatever else of her body was stuck on the other side of Nyxalair's teeth. The cult leader redoubled her efforts, and with a grunt of exertion, slammed open Nyxalair's jaw. But it was too late.

Solan's soul had already been mauled, her lower half was as numb and unresponsive as a paraplegic, and the Darkness had already curled tendrils of gravity around her. They hooked into every chain she left out in the open. Solan froze where she was, holding Nyxalair's jaw open. She realised. If Solan were to leave her chains to wedge open Nyxalair's mouth, then the entities in the Darkness would continue to latch onto them. Because of the curse, they would latch on to her through those chains.

But if she were to dive into Nyxalair's stomach without leaving something to hold open the portal, nothing would stop Nyxalair from simply escaping. No, worse; Solan would be trapped in the Pink that was constantly trying to consume her. Nyxalair grinned again as she peered past Solan to the bottom of Coral gradually moving further away. Solan's giant chain ripped out of the underside, carving a scar through the lower surface that marred nearly a third of the station's length. There was no sense to the destruction.

Just simple fury. With Coral slowly growing more distant, this was a massive gamble. But Nyxalair didn't waver. She hungered. Nyxalair was finally going to achieve the vengeance she'd desired for so many years. The temptation arose from her growing enjoyment of terrorising.

"This," Nyxalair hissed. Her hundred voices echoed through Pink and amplified — multiplied — as they squeezed Solan from every direction.

"This is where you die." Even she was surprised by the certainty she felt in her own voice.

"This, is where you pay for your atrocities. Both those of the past, and of the future never to come." And finally, for the first time in any of Nyxalair's lives, she saw the faintest hint of… uncertainty in Solan's expression.