The Dark Star was large enough that it didn’t matter where you stood, as long as you weren’t intentionally trying to ignore the thing, you would notice it.

  As Nyx walked down the wide road towards it, long black solar flares struck out at nothing. It had already been a few days since the Event, so there were no longer any buildings in its path to reach for. They’d been broken down and removed. Not by the Dark Star, but by the cultists that feared the devastating corruptive influence emanating outward.

  It was easier to knock down a hundred buildings and take the loss, then have to deal with the twisted monstrosities they became. Even if it was possible to return them to their former state, it was often not worth it.

  The line of stripped surface revealed Coral’s structural depths. Massive metal beams that were usually hidden away were now revealed to all, but alongside them were a whole bunch of things one wouldn’t expect in the supporting structure of an enormous orbital platform. Fleshy growths. Thick, building wide roots interweaving below where the surface used to be. A sea of black sludge that both clumped together and flowed like water.

  With all the cultists standing on the other side of this moat from the Dark Star, it was the closest thing to a warzone Nyx could imagine.

  Wars weren’t exactly uncommon between the cults, but the teachings of the rearing wards avoided the topic entirely. The way Nyx understood it, there was no way to properly portray war in a way that was completely favourable to all participants, so the cults refused to allow it. A lot of what the wards taught were heavily curated. Much of the information was straight up lies; things Nyx only found when the truth whacked her in the face.

  Imagine my surprise when, oddly enough, the cults didn’t always honour the loyalty of their members.

  Then again, the teachings of the wards were rather bare of political or historical points. The cults never agreed. So most of the efforts to embed children with lies beneficial to any one particular cult never made it through to the curriculum.

  Groups of harbingers cut down any beast that left the wall of intense corruption, but the Dark Star still remained. Nyx was surprised it hadn’t been dealt with. For a disaster to occur on the surface like this, it was almost an expectation that the highest creed harbingers would gather to destroy the Dark Star from within. And that was if the cult leaders themselves didn’t decide to take it on.

  What was taking them so long?

  Nyx didn’t bother to hide herself as she walked down the street adjacent to the harbingers. Many cultists noticed her. They would have noticed her even if she did her best to creep by. And yet none paid her any mind; not more than a raised eye at what one as young as herself was doing here. If there was one thing that she liked about the cultists of higher creeds, it was that they rarely cared about anyone but themselves. They wouldn’t have gotten where they were otherwise.

  Well, there was the chance that one could see her as an opportunity for themselves — K’tan’s recent attempt came to mind — but out in the open like this, they would be under the scrutiny of many other cultists.

  They may care only about themselves, but if they got the chance to cut one of their competitors down, few would hesitate.

  Despite technically working together, none of the cultists mingled outside their own. They each held their own operating bases — buildings repurposed for harbinger needs — and many not holding the defensive line rested there.

  Nyx veered as close as she dared. The temporary quarters of the Bodytwisters had already been reshaped with hard, rubbery tissue that she assumed was harder than steel. She had decided they would be the best targets. They wouldn’t discover her questionable actions as easily as the Everseeing Eye cultists, nor did they have countless minions running around like the Machine God Worshippers’ mechanical spiders or The Scriptures bound beasts.

  No, the Bodytwisters were the only ones so fully focused on themselves that they would never notice the touch of her Feat sense. Her former Feat sense.

  She wasted no time and cast her sense forward. It was slow, but with the cultists in sight, she had no problem feeling around in their torso for where their name hid. Her first target was a lady busy dissecting a few rodents upon a small fold out table that already had a complicated ritual circle inscribed.

  The base name was easy to find. Considering the woman’s name had just over fifty components to it, Nyx had to guess she was on her third evolution at the very least. She would have assumed much higher, but names of higher tier were likely to have more parts; especially for additives that one couldn’t get with less inflected names.

  There was little chance the second evolution additives would have the same number of components as you would receive while unevolved — well, unless you were really unlucky — so Nyx decided it was more likely the number of components per evolution was exponential.

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  Her theory was supported by the four subtle stripes on the cultist’s hood that represented creed. Even if she didn’t trust such symbols. They were incredibly easy to fake, after all.

  If it truly was exponential, then the cult leaders… well, she didn’t even want to think about it. They were out of her reach; that was all she needed to know.

  Nyx followed the guiding attraction of her sense as it carried her over the dozen small and nearly pointless names for someone with three evolutions. She tried to see if there was anything to learn from them, but found nothing. They were clearly forgotten remnants. Additives the woman discarded when she evolved.

  She wondered if every cultist was like this. Was it even possible to evolve the natural way? Could you incite each name to grow enough for evolution to trigger in your sleep, or were you doomed to continue collecting names and delaying your evolution each time you did?

  Suddenly her touch arrived at what she was being led to. She was stunned.

  “This is it?” Nyx mumbled to herself, making Little God tilt his eye in curiosity.

  The name was tiny. Smaller even than a single name component. Despite the slightly fuzzy border that clearly differentiated it from normal names, Nyx struggled to believe this was a curse. Comparing it to her own curses was like standing the shadow of a marble against the Darkness of the black hole. The scale was simply on different planes of existence.

  Her ethereal finger touched it, and the thing collapsed.

  The woman sneezed. She rubbed her nose as if there was a particularly bad itch, but she soon returned to her work, unbothered.

  Was that… a curse of sneezing? Nyx thought, incredulous. Who the fuck curses someone with the need to sneeze?

  She groaned but moved on. That wasn’t the only curse the woman had, and Nyx was determined to rip open them all.

  The next two were equally unimpressive; mere nuisances. Nyx would open the gate and unleash the full effects of the curse, only for the cultist to show a slight bit of discomfort before one additive or another smothered the source of the irritant.

  She finally gave up when she opened a slightly larger curse — still as indecipherable as any other — only for a cough to be stifled before it even rose through the woman’s throat.

  She’s a fourth creed cultist! How are the only curses she has so impotent and ineffective?

  Ignoring the woman’s suspicious lack of curses, Nyx had discovered that yes, she could interact with curses besides her own. This was… well, it was promising. Usually, if anyone had a curse they couldn’t deal with, there were rituals to get rid of them; ones that required a greater sacrifice. But sometimes they were strong enough that the sacrifice wasn’t worth it, and they simply learnt to deal with whatever effect it brought them.

  Exactly what was it she was doing by tearing open the curses? She wasn’t breaking or removing them, that was clear. Was it simply unleashing their full power all at once? Did that mean the curses would disappear afterwards, would they stay at full power, or would they return to a dormant state?

  Well, there were plenty of cultists here to test on.

  ???

  For the next half-hour, she skimmed every Bodytwister’s name in search for curses. There were a few like that first woman that seemed to go through immense effort to rid themselves of any curse they received, but for the vast majority, they simply took the blows. Most figured a curse that snapped their elbow backwards was reasonable when they could just replace the joint with flesh that didn’t have a problem being bent in non-standard directions.

  Of course, not all curses were exactly horrible, despite never being beneficial. She snapped open one man’s relatively large curse — compared to others around, not hers — only for the cooked chicken he was eating to suddenly come alive in his hands and run off down the street. While annoying, Nyx could see why he wasn’t willing to sacrifice any name of worth to get rid of it.

  The sudden flaring of everyone’s curses hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  While they had yet to consider an adversary, many of the cultists spoke with each other where before they’d remained more isolated. They didn’t suspect the young girl sitting down the street. Nyx couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she was sure they were tossing up theories related to the Dark Star by how they kept tossing glances towards it. Nobody actually knew how the masses of corruption worked, after all.

  Even if they hadn’t considered it could be a person giving them all these annoyances, she would be pushing her luck sticking around much longer.

  But… just one more.

  She had just found an upper creed. Her name immediately screamed seventh, or eighth evolution. Thousands of components. Nyx could feel a curse somewhere in her name, so she veered from the base, and shot down the chain in search of it. The woman had dozens of names with hundreds of components by themselves, but she didn’t focus on that. The only thing that mattered was the curse.

  Finally, she found it; a large, indistinct curse equal in size to a name with a hundred components. At least that was the feeling Nyx got after experiencing so many other curses. Didn’t help measure her own, though.

  As she reached for it, she suddenly felt her soul brushed. Nyx froze. Somebody looked at her.

  Her eyes didn’t even need to move to discover who; the cultist she’d just been reaching for stared at Nyx out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes swirled with the depth of someone who gazed into her very soul and saw what she hid.

  Nyx panicked. No longer keeping her air of nonchalance, she ran for the nearest tunnel entrance, and dove into the depths. She sprinted until her legs burned and the light of the Great Iris was gone.

  ???

  “Shall we chase her?”

  “No. It was just a child trying out a new toy.” The high-creed cultist straightened her back as she watched the teen flee into the depths. Cracking the kinks out of her spine, she reached a full three heads taller than the next largest. “A rather interesting toy, at that… Say, when are the next Trials?”

  “Six months, I believe,” her assistant stated.

  “Have it pushed forward. I believe we might see something interesting.”

  “The Technocult will oppose.”

  “When do they not? Do it anyway.”

  As the man ran off to fulfil her desires, a slight smirk crossed the eighth creed cultist’s mouth, revealing fangs meant for no human.

  Ep?'N?an?o?r?sc?hi?? looked forward to her first Trials in decades. She would not be disappointed.

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