K’lon ran for his life.

  The mission was supposed to be simple: guide a kid to their main temple, and protect her from any of the other cults. They had a reason to believe the Technocult was already interested in her, and while none of the others had given any indication, it was possible they could interfere.

  Really, just another Monday.

  All they needed to do was encourage the girl to join them — by threat if necessary — and lead her through the depths. It should have been easy. The girl even spent most of her time alone, which cut out the most annoying part of these types of missions. Nothing should have gone wrong.

  But it did. It all went so horribly wrong.

  The girl was a monster.

  They should have realised something was wrong from the start. Between the shredded vitiate beast and her all too calm demeanour, warning bells should have blared in his head. But no. K’lon, along with the rest of his team had assumed it was the arrogance of a kid who gained an impressive additive and had yet tasted defeat.

  He knew all too well what that was like.

  Yet, in an instant, the world flipped on its head. K’lon’s curse reared itself to the back of his throat faster and more intense than he’d ever felt. He couldn’t hold it back. A vile taste clawed up the back of his tongue and he puked. Doubled over, his stomach emptied itself, but he remained aware as everything unfolded.

  Nix — the supposed cursed girl that looked like a twig and weighed half as much — decapitated K’faal. She was dead before she could react. K’lon doubted his eyes. It was easier to believe he’d been cursed with hallucinations than what he saw before him. K’faal, the woman fast enough to deflect bullets, died before she could so much as twitch.

  K’lon had blinked, trying to comprehend what he saw, but the girl had disappeared. What he found instead, was the demonic appearance of huge black wings sprouting from her back where she crouched on the chest of his fellow gunman. She’d crossed the distance in a second. Only when K’lon’s friend collapsed did he realised the girl’s arm cleaved through his chest.

  They were not facing a human. This was a monster. Something worse than he’d ever faced.

  He’d only been a part of this team for a few months now, and they’d taken on plenty of dangerous hunting grounds. After he’d been almost fatally wounded in the Trials a few years back, it had taken him a while to catch anyone’s eye. But once he had, he’d been able to evolve. He’d been able to join this team. Now, with all the experience he’d had with these four around him, a second evolution was in sight.

  K’lon had been in plenty of dangerous situations, but never had he felt such visceral fear. So sure that death was upon him. Not when his arrogance had been wiped in the Trials. Not even when he’d had the chance to stare down into the core of Darkness below Coral. No, this fear was immediate.

  He ran through the forest with his dismembered hand cradled to his chest. A ritual painted onto a scroll he’d kept for emergencies had stemmed the bleeding of his stub, but he barely paid it any mind. That monster was after him. He just knew it.

  A flash of the instant he’d lost his hand lingered in his mind. The visage of a young girl was terribly deceptive. Even ignoring the claws and wings that stood out on her feeble form, it was her eyes that he couldn’t forget. Intent and hateful. She had shown no hesitance when she struck. It was nothing like the mindless viciousness of beasts, phantoms and spawn.

  He’d faced someone who’d been intent to kill him before, but not even he had shown the single-minded desire for murder he’d seen in that monster.

  She’d killed his team. Those black-turned-crimson wings flitting across the battlefield to stab K’roane in the back while he was distracted was the last he could handle before he’d ran.

  Everyone in K’lon’s team was stronger than himself. He knew that, and had hoped to change that over time, but now they were all dead. A girl he knew to only have just received her name had slaughtered them all. Whether she was possessed by some greater being, or it was something pretending to be human, it was not something he could fight.

  He felt like a coward for fleeing, but this wasn’t something he could handle. Not when she killed a third creed.

  Something shifted in the trees to his right. K’lon jolted and nearly tripped, but when he looked again, there was nothing. Was he seeing things? Or was that monster already chasing him down?

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  There had been no thought when he’d begun running. He’d just chosen a direction and fled. Now he didn’t know if he should continue this way, or work back around to the main entrance. Even through the pain-induced fear, he worried that going for the increased populous was too obvious an answer. If she was waiting for him to go that way, he was doomed. But if she had a way to follow him, he was doomed anyway.

  He groaned, and wished he at least had a second weapon as he shifted his path towards the biotowers. He should have kept his old one as a back up, but the new, cult-crafted gun had enraptured him too much.

  Another black shadow flit between the trees in his peripheral, and for the first time in K’lon’s life, he wished it was a phantom. At least with a phantom, he might have some idea what he was dealing with. The girl, or whatever was pretending to be her, was an absolute unknown. And everyone knew the unknown had to be revered, and feared.

  K’lon stopped running when he next glimpsed black and red between the thick foliage. She was above him now, and no matter how fast he ran, there was no escape. He backed away from where he’d seen her. His eyes flickered to every moving leaf.

  There was a crunch behind him, and he twisted, throwing the only thing he had with all the flesh consuming power he had.

  It was only an instant after the amputated hand left his fingers that he realised what he’d thrown.

  He watched the hand sail through the air. The fingers splayed as they spun, and whatever droplets of blood hadn’t yet been squeezed out of it when he’d clutched it to his chest now trailed behind.

  Fuck! How stupid was he?

  The automatic lock-on that he’d focused his first evolution around found its target. Despite K’lon not able to see the girl, his hand chased after her.

  At least, it did for a second, before it melted into motes of flesh that dissipated into the bush.

  K’lon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the erasure of his hand. It had simply ceased to be. Destroyed before the power he’d flooded it with could do any damage. No longer did he know what to do. He could begin a hymn and try to draw a circle of one of the few useful rituals he’d been given… but there was no chance she would just stand around while he tried.

  It all seemed hopeless, so he did the only thing he could. He dropped to his knees. He bowed his head.

  And worshipped.

  He didn’t know if she was a god, a monster, or simply some twisted experiment, but if he prostrated himself, there was the possibility of survival. If he showed his subservience, and Invowed loyalty into his name and soul, then no matter what she was, monster or god, as long as she was intelligent, she would take him on as an eternal servant.

  The sharp prick at the back of his neck sent him stiff. There was also a horrible burning sensation at the back of his head, but that disappeared as soon as it began.

  “What are you doing?” he heard. Her voice that of a siren-call; young and innocent, yet hiding terrible danger great enough to wipe out third evolution harbingers.

  “I give myself to you. Tell me your name, and I will Invow it into my own.”

  “You would make yourself an eternal slave for the sake of survival?” K’lon heard the disgust in her voice, and he suddenly doubted himself. Did he really, truly wish to sign away his very soul to cling to the rotten life he had here on Coral?

  As much as he hated himself for it, the answer was clear.

  “Yes.”

  The monster snorted in either amusement or disgust. He couldn’t tell; he refused to glance back at her with the blade at his neck. “Alright. It’s N?x. Carve that into your heart.” The moment she said her name, the prick at the back of his neck pierced skin. The threat was clear.

  K’lon took a breath, and gathered himself for the biggest choice of his life. Slowly, he reached down and etched the pentagram into the soil beneath him. It was a simple thing, not even all that necessary for this ritual. The lines were only there to support his focus and direct his will when he truly dedicated himself to this decision.

  When that was done, he began the oath. It was a short thing for a ritual of such immense, life-changing properties. The Invow was not something that could ever be considered a normal ritual. It was an etching into your soul; only if you truly wished for it, would it work. No form of coercion could invoke an Invow.

  “My body, mind and soul belong to the one named N?x.”

  As soon as he felt her name etching into his own, K’lon knew he made a mistake. Where before, her name sounded like any other, he now had an intimate and instinctual feeling for it. It felt sick. It was like his own curse, but wrapped up in a million more only to be shot into the depths of the black hole and rot for an aeon.

  He now despised his connection to her, but also loved her. She terrified him, but also shone like a saviour. To K’lon, N?x was his god.

  “Huh. Now that’s interesting.”

  The claw at the back of his neck was gone, and he hesitantly risked a glance at his god. She was the same as before — a winged human with deadly claws — but now he could see a shadow looming over her. It was barely perceptible, completely unreal, and emanated from the scar of her name in his. Another small cloud of darkness loomed over her shoulder, separate from the rest of the shadow, that took on the shape of a sphere.

  As he stared up at her, he knew he could never go against her. He would worship her forever. But she had suddenly grown eternally more terrifying for reasons he could not grasp.

  “Teach me the rituals of the Fleshsmiths.” There was no hesitance. K’lon complied.

  “Tell me how much the cult knows of me.” There was no hesitance. K’lon complied.

  “Climb into the ritual circle, and sacrifice yourself for me.” There was no hesitance. K’lon complied.

  As he drove the blade through his heart, he knew this was his end. His god would consume his soul to empower herself, and he would cease to be. This was the very thing he wanted to avoid by Invowing her name, yet he did so willingly.

  He commit sacrificial-suicide with a smile on his face. This was the sole purpose for his existence.

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