Nyx slumped into the grass with a groan.

  Despite benefiting from both the ritual of wellness and the empowerment of a self-sacrifice, she still felt beaten up. All her wounds had closed, yet she was sure her ribs were still broken. Some cartilage in her wings might also not have healed properly, as they were agony to stretch.

  She sneered at the dried husk of K’lon where he lay in the burn grass a few metres from her. His name had appeared in her mind despite how little she had cared to learn it. The Invow gave an instinctual knowledge of the man. Her own name hadn’t changed at all, but it felt like he’d opened a hole in his own soul large enough for her to reach her hand through and fiddle as she pleased.

  She still hardly believed the man had actually done it.

  Never, no matter how one would torture her, would Nyx have swore herself to another like that. Even if she believed it would save her from her confinement and sacrifice. The very idea that the Fleshsmith had given up his soul for a slim chance of survival bewildered her. But she didn’t complain.

  Because the cowardly man had made such a foolish mistake, she’d gotten everything she could have hoped for out of the man. It was so much better than torture. She could be absolutely certain that the knowledge he shared was not at all an attempt to mislead her, or obscure details. Well, it was possible what he knew was wrong, but that was besides the point.

  The choice disgusted her.

  K’lon had desired nothing more than to live. He’d committed himself to eternal worship of her to simply avoid Nyx’s claws. If she wanted, she could have used him as an infiltrator in the cult. Someone on the inside that could send her information or push to rise through the ranks so she could take down the Fleshsmiths from within. She could have done that. There would be no doubt about his loyalty and dedication.

  But K’lon was a Fleshsmith.

  Life — especially with how much he desired it — was not something he deserved. It was not something she would bend on. Not even when she knew it was smarter to use the man for her long term benefit.

  Should any of the cults decide to follow her — decide to worship her as this fool had — that would not save them from their sins.

  Besides, having the cultist kill himself blessed her with far more immediate benefits. Despite being of the same evolution as K’tan, K’lon’s death fuelled Nyx’s name and body with so much more energy. She didn’t know if it was simply the benefit of the self-sacrifice, or the greater number of components in each additive, but she was very happy with how strong it made her feel afterwards.

  …If only her broken ribs didn’t detract from the feeling.

  She’d stolen a bunch of the Fleshsmiths’ rituals from his mind too. A better ritual of wellness; which had apparently been what the rope-dart cultist had been trying to perform. Not a monster summoning, which she’d feared. Most of their rituals seemed to be about their weapons; either creating them, or adapting to the flesh so they didn’t try to bite their wielder. As a harbinger rather than a craftsman, K’lon hadn’t cared for the former, and his recreations for Nyx had been very clearly wrong.

  Nyx had just killed a team of harbingers. It hardly felt real. She’d ended each of their existences without needing to rely on the extreme option of a Dark Star Event. While she hadn’t left the fight unharmed, murdering each of the cultists with her own hands had felt great. It was proof that she could do this. Her efforts to grow and eventually take down the cults weren’t beyond the scope of reality.

  She wasn’t happy that she needed to rely on her mutations to have achieved this, but nothing else offered her such strength.

  Thankfully, from the mouth of K’lon, the Fleshsmiths had not yet discovered her true worth. They were interested in her, but not enough to send one of their higher creed harbingers. That would change. There would be no way she could hide the deaths of the cultists. It would be easy to cover it up as them coming across a beast they couldn’t handle — and she wholly intended to do so — but the Fleshsmiths would be suspicious. They would send another team, and when those didn’t return, Nyx could expect them to pull out the stops.

  Nyx’s timer was no longer just how long she could keep her mutations hidden; it now counted down to the point the Fleshsmiths took her seriously.

  What could she do? Would it be alright to continue as she had? Slowly gaining experience with her mutations by hunting vitiate beasts until she eventually gained new names?

  Stolen story; please report.

  No. Even if she’d improved rapidly in the past few days, it hadn’t been fast enough. She needed to constantly push herself. Any lapse in effort would land her too weak to face the cults when they inevitably came. Spending half the day carrying a vitiate through the forest would be a waste of time, even if she needed the money. Her time was far more precious. Nyx needed to use it wisely.

  Though, she still needed that weapon…

  She couldn’t stay appeased with the slightly feral beasts at the fringes of the forest. She needed to dive deeper. She needed to hunt the true dangers of the Biovault. The creatures everyone stayed away from.

  But would that be enough?

  Even if she found the perfect hunting grounds that no other harbinger of her strength would dare take on, was it even possible to gather the personal strength required to fight them off in such a short time? Say she broke records and reached a third evolution within only a few months. That wouldn’t come close to protecting her from the upper creeds.

  Nyx hovered her sense over her name. It was all as one now, but she should be able to unleash her mutations as easily as before. She wasn’t facing an immediate danger this time, but the mutations she’d already gained had shown themselves to be unbelievably beneficial. Knowing what was coming, she needed to be prepared. She needed to gather power however she could. And now, even without a knife to her throat, she considered opening the floodgates for more of what her curse could bestow.

  If she took this path, it would need to be a balancing act. Her two timers both led to death, but she didn’t need to worry about accelerating one if the other was already about to ring. Conversely, the reduction of either would only bring her doom closer. If only there was a way to delay the timers. Something to add time…

  Her thoughts suddenly derailed as her sense trailed over a second name.

  A name that hadn’t been there the last time she’d checked.

  Apparently killing four harbingers and having the last sacrifice himself was enough to finally push her to the threshold. And it was an impressive additive… even if she didn’t know what it did. It had nine components to it, which was comparable to even some of the better names the second and third evolution Fleshsmiths had.

  She wanted to discover what it did immediately.

  It was clearly not corrupted. And unless she was obscenely lucky and somehow gained a second Feat — while below her fifth evolution — this was her first additive. What sane person wouldn’t want to find out what new ability they’d gained. Would it help her against the cults? Would it improve her ability to fight, or was useless to her, and had nothing to do with what she needed?

  Nyx had to know… yet the ritual would take too long.

  Before she could even think about finding a place to kneel and perform the name ritual, she had two major concerns to deal with. The harbinger corpses, and her broken ribs. It would be easy to deal with the bodies; she could just lead some vitiate beasts to the four she’d killed and nothing but bone would remain of them in an hour. Though, K’lon’s husk was different.

  Rising to her feet, she returned to the body. In a few seconds, she had a ritual drawn around him, and he was burning. A dollop of her blood and the extra corruption in the air thrust the ritual beyond its original purpose, and had it incinerate all that remained of the fool who signed away his soul.

  She’d considered using her eye to do away with his corpse, but the resulting veins grew too obvious with overuse. Nyx needed to keep it for emergencies. Besides, the ritual worked well.

  She scooped up his ashes with his cloak. It would be better to spread them somewhere far off, so no investigator could discover he’d died by ritual rather than a feral beast. Really, she was just happy his soul was no longer around for any soulsinger to question. Not that he would have betrayed her.

  Nyx froze.

  Soulsingers? Why have I only considered them now?

  If the cultists who came to investigate these harbinger’s deaths brought a soulsinger along with them, then Nyx was fucked. She could hope they took long enough for the souls to be swallowed by the Darkness, but what were the chances an entire week passed before they attempted to call their souls?

  None. They would speak to her victims’ souls, and suddenly all Nyx’s secrets would be revealed.

  For a moment, she lamented not using them all as sacrifices… but quickly realised the folly of that thought. If she hadn’t struck them dead as quickly as she had, her life would be over.

  Forget any immediate plans of growth. She needed to act. Now. Nyx couldn’t remain passive as the Fleshsmiths worked out what happened here, then came after her with harbingers she could never hope to handle. The only way out of this was to divert their focus elsewhere. She needed to sow chaos throughout their entire cult so the very thought of looking outwards would never cross their minds.

  “But how?” she suddenly asked her permanent companion.

  Little God simply tilted its body. The black mist rolling off its form barely shifted at the movement.

  “No. That option is too extreme.” She rebutted, as if Little God had said anything. “they’ll could track it back to me. Two in such a short time is bound to attract the attention of the cult leaders. Not to mention the Eidolon Gods. I don’t want to be seen again.”

  But how else could she make the Fleshsmiths forget about her? Nothing else came to mind. She could try to attack some of their peripheral temples and forges, but unless she destroyed some of their major infrastructure or logistics network, it wouldn’t work. And anything important was bound to have upper creeds defending it.

  She was not yet strong enough to attempt such an option.

  It really came down to whether she wanted to risk everything and remain passive. Or risk everything and strike in a way that could actually hurt the cult.

  In the end, it was her hatred of the Fleshsmiths that made the choice.

  There would be another Dark Star Event.

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