“That’s quite the mess you’ve made,” One of the Fleshsmiths said as he walked from the line of trees. His gaze locked on the headless corpse of a wombat Nyx had just butchered. “You do all that with that tiny knife?”

  Nyx stepped back as she watched the four other cultists spread out and surround her. Two of them had guns; a rifle and a side-arm. Both barrels were steel, but the firing mechanisms and chambers had been replaced by flesh and snarling mouths. The three other cultists — speaker included — held more melee focused weapons. As with all Fleshsmith tools, they were disturbing mixes of metal and life from the Darkness.

  I knew they would try something, but this soon?

  She’d thought that with the Dark Star and her apparent proximity to the Technocult, the Fleshsmiths would wait a good month before acting. Moving now was bound to draw attention.

  So why? Was this about getting retribution on K’tan, or did they want to take her as a sacrifice?

  “Fuck me, she’s absolutely got a name related to cutting.” A woman — the only one of the group — kicked the dead vitiate beast.

  “You’ve been busy since your naming,” the first cultist stated. He lazily twirled a bladed spike at the end of a rope; a rope entirely constructed of muscular fibres. “Couldn’t have been two weeks since.”

  Ah, so I’m not lucky enough for all info about me to have died along with the K’tan. Nyx winced. Now, just how good of a sacrifice do they think I am?

  “What do you want?” she snapped her head to the cultist with a club that was veering out of her peripheral.

  “No need to be so guarded. We are simply here to invite you into the fold.” The speaker snapped his hand and caught the handle of his rope dart while spreading both arms wide. “The upper creeds heard about how you struck down your own overseer after he tried to sacrifice you. Very impressive. They’ve decided to allow K’tan’s death to be water under the bridge when you join us.”

  Ah, so it isn’t only my value as a sacrifice they know about.

  “No.”

  All of the Fleshsmiths halted. Their speaker himself blinked, leaving his jaw hanging. “What?”

  “No. I’m not joining the Fleshsmiths.” She’d considered the possibility of infiltrating one of the cults to take them down from the inside, but it was simply not something she believed she could do. She didn’t want to help those bastards at all. Even if it led to their eventual downfall.

  More than likely, it would only make her do something rash.

  “Kid, I don’t think you understand your position.” The woman besides the wombat corpse said. She’d walked closer than the last time Nyx had looked. Her toothy sabre clung to her waist with a dozen semi-formed fingers, but with how her hand rested on it, she was ready to attack at any moment. “You’ve already been discarded by the other cults. This is your only option.”

  The man with the rifle agrees. “Few who go cultless achieve much. None of those live long.”

  “I’m not joining the Fleshsmiths.” How many times did she have to say it? “Leave.”

  Finally, the rope dart cultist got a hold over his shock and sighed. “Alright, let me make this clear; you either come with us willingly, or we make you.”

  At that, the two gunmen levelled their weapons towards Nyx, while the woman and the burly club wielder strode towards her with their own in hand.

  She’d already scanned their names. None were more than their second evolution, but they were harbingers; they almost certainly had names related to combat. Even the two amongst them on their first evolution — the same as herself — were surely leagues apart from anything she’d fought before.

  “Don’t do this,” Nyx warned.

  Her eyes darted between each of the Fleshsmiths and landed on Little God. As always, he observed. She couldn’t rely on any help coming from him. If she was going to get out of this alive, she had to save herself.

  There was no world she would let the Fleshsmiths capture her. Not again.

  “Give up,” their leader spoke again. “I am on my third evolution. There is no winning for you. No matter how good your additive might be.”

  She could run, but the only way she’d be able to outpace adults — any adult — was by revealing her wings. Doing so would mean that even if she survived today, her future was doomed. If she fought, she was bound to lose. No matter how well she could wield her knife with her improved wrist strength, it wouldn’t be enough to take on one of these cultists. Not to mention all of them.

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  No. There was only one option for Nyx. Only one way she could survive.

  She lowered her hands, dropped her eyes, and let the two approach without a fight. A mumbled ‘thank you’ came from the club wielder to her left, but she ignored it. She was too stressed to care about him.

  This was it. “None of you will survive.”

  Nyx was sure the woman besides her made some sort of response, but she’d already stopped listening. Her arm flung forward, throwing the knife to the rifleman, while simultaneously tearing open every curse permeating the pistol user’s name. Immediately, he doubled over, puking.

  A hand clamped down on Nyx’s shoulder. The woman tried to push her down, but it was already too late. Claws clamped around her neck.

  The ripping sound of wings tearing through cloth accompanied the thud of a decapitated head impacting earth. Before the screams began, Nyx’s wings beat. By the time the screams struck, her claws had already pierced through the rifleman’s chest.

  It all happened in a moment. She could hardly believed it had worked. Two harbingers dead at her hands before they could so much as blink.

  She watched as the life fled the eyes that stared at her in horror. He slumped, and she tried to pull her arm out of his torso but found too much resistance before his weight crashed down on top of her. She jerked her hand, but couldn’t push him off her.

  “K’faa?l? K’faa?l!” Nyx heard over someone’s screaming.

  No matter how surprising it was that her plan went off without a hitch, she was still surrounded by three Fleshsmiths. Distraught Fleshsmiths that likely no longer cared to capture her alive. She was a sitting duck trapped as she was.

  It was useless trying to pull her arm out of the man, so she took the other — more gruesome — option.

  Her pincers began to slice through flesh. The feeling of cutting bone and muscle was gratifying, yet it clashed with the disgusting sloppy sound and knowledge that this man was alive only seconds ago. She loved the feeling, but also felt a discorporate horror that she could do so without any hesitance.

  Finally, she cut out of his side, and used her wings to push the corpse off her. The cultist with the baton had collapsed over the woman’s body, scrambling to put her head back on. It was him who’d been screaming.

  Nyx felt pain before she heard the gunshot.

  She spun, diving out of the way of the next volley. But they hit anyway. Somehow, the cultist’s bullets curved towards her. His name, probably. She beat her wings again, and closed the distance in an instant. He couldn’t fire off another burst before her claws cut off his hand.

  Through the agony of the bullet wounds riddling her wings, she struck out again. This time intending to kill.

  A short blade pierced her arm just below where it became chitin, and yanked her back before her stroke could land. She fumbled, but held her feet as the sharp blade of the rope dart pulled free of her arm. Nyx turned and raised her arm just in time to knock aside the blade that came for her head.

  “K’roan?e! Get up! This is not the time to grieve.” Despite not being the target of his speech, the rope-dart cultist’s eyes never left the teenager.

  Nyx moved her wings to throw herself at the speaker, but her intent was not well hidden. The cultists swung that rapid moving knife around his body and flung it her way. She tried to use her hands to block it again, but a pulse along the rope of muscle suddenly had the blade spinning in mid-air, only to drop beneath her guard and cut through her side.

  As long as it wasn’t too bad of a wound, she was determined to continue forward. But a wave of… something, some power, washed through the blade and suddenly sent her spinning back into a row of trees.

  She groaned as she rolled along the earth. That felt like she was struck by a trolley. One filled with to the brim with metal. And the attitude of a bull. Whatever his name, it was clear his evolutions had been focused around the use of his rope dart. She doubted it was the blade itself that sent her sprawling.

  Rising to her feet again, she eyed the twirling blade that spun around the cultist’s body without any seeming rhyme or reason. Any attack head on would just get her struck again. Instead, she tugged down the skulk shroud and observed the Fleshsmith.

  He felt the effects immediately, and spun his blade out ahead of him, as if creating a shield from her. Of course, he was quick to learn that didn’t stop her sight. Flesh from his face broke down and floated through the air towards her, gathering near her eye before being swallowed. Unfortunately for Nyx, this effect made it far too easy for the cultist to discover the cause, and he reacted accordingly.

  An explosion of dust filled the air. Whether a name, or some Fleshsmith tool, Nyx didn’t know, but it blocked her sight. Her sternum eye had to jump from one mote to the next to burn through the cloud. She could pierce through; it would just take some time.

  Before she had the chance, the blade spun out from within the cloud of dust that continued to roll towards her. It darted in from the right. She turned her focus on the muscle strands forming the rope, and worked to eat through it. If she could sever the rope, the cultist wouldn’t have his weapon to strike her with whatever his name could do.

  But, of course, the fleshy rope just had to be able to recreate itself even in mid swing.

  She beat her wings, and made some more space from the encroaching whips of the blade out from the dust cloud, but a flash of light from her left caught her attention. K’roane, the other cultist, had finally risen from the corpse of the woman. She could only barely make him out through the dust, but she immediately grew wary when she saw his cudgel momentarily ignite with a tongue of flame that coloured the dust red with it’s illumination.

  Yet, it wasn’t his club that worried her most.

  His eyes glowed with hatred. Like cinders, they shone with a dull red light, but there was no mistaking the fury. The cudgel ignited again, and this time a horrid stench of burning flesh wrung her nose and wouldn’t let her free. As his weapon burned, the flesh writhed. Sharp claws of unfortunate, long dead beasts scraped out from the mass of flesh, as if to escape the cinders flowing through the blade that they were now bound.

  Nyx had been lucky to kill two in the first second. She’d also disabled the other gunman. Despite that, these two knew to take her seriously. They were going to do everything they could to kill her where she stood.

  This was where the real fight started.

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