Fuck.

  That was Ep’Nanorschi, wasn’t it? It definitely was.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Of all the people to have seen Nyx, it had to be her.

  At least she hadn’t chased her down. That was the only relief Nyx had. If the woman had been determined to capture and punish her for messing around with the Bodytwisters, then she would have done so. Easily.

  She’d heard all sorts of things about the woman in her time with the Bodytwisters. Seen just as many. The cultist had replaced so much of her body with otherflesh that it was impossible to call her human. She was the type to play with her food. Instead of stabbing a sacrificial lamb in the heart to let it die out quick, she preferred to tear out their necks with her own jaw. Considered it more effective to have the sacrifice die in pan and terror. Not that she’d ever been able to prove it.

  Nyx panted as she slowed to a walk. There was no point running any further when she had only made it this far because the woman had let her go. As much as she’d love to think that meant Ep’Nanorschi took no interest in her, Nyx had a bad feeling about her future.

  Her breath returned to her much quicker than she expected. Looking back, she’d run further than she ever had as well. It was great to see that the sacrificial ritual truly had benefit her body. Considering she was puffed, it was unlikely she’d be able to run that marathon, but she was much closer to her ward-mates level of fitness now. Exercise was no longer off the table.

  Finally calming from her — entirely reasonable — overreaction, Nyx glanced around the dark tunnel she found herself. The light strips that should run along all underground hallways were only lit in brief segments, leaving her surroundings dimmer than they should be. That was on top of the corruption that made the tunnel appear to extend infinitely in both directions.

  “Eyeball, could you lead me back to the trolley-stop near Tarchon’s place?” She wasn’t ready to call it quits for tonight, but she also wanted to know where here was. And… she wasn’t comfortable returning to the surface right this moment.

  Little God nodded, and immediately began leading Nyx through the tunnel. She was thankful for his presence. Without him, she didn’t know how long she’d be wandering around, lost.

  With a few u-turns that didn’t make sense, the eyeball led Nyx through a series of large hatches that always shut behind her. By the time she went through the third — one that she thought would be impossible to have noticed considering its position behind a set of long forgotten scaffolding — she was too late to question the wisdom of her decision to have a god with no sense of what was dangerous to guide her path.

  Suddenly surrounded by a lush forest with countless birds screaming in her ear, she spun to go back the way she’d came. Only to find herself too weak to stop the hatch shutting, then locking her in.

  Using all the strength of her new hands, but lacking any leverage from the rest of her body, the large manual locking wheel refused to budge. She sighed and glared at her small companion. Little God had the audacity to act unbothered.

  He’d brought them right into the Biovault.

  The place was absolutely massive. Well, she knew it was massive, but the plants blocked most of her sight. Living trees rose dozens of metres overhead, creating a thick overhead foliage that filtered rays of light that Nyx knew came from no comprehensible source.

  She’d entered this place through a rather wide room, and yet the hatch was attached to a metal box that was little more than a shed in this vast rainforest. Taking a few steps away from the locked vault, Nyx caught sight of a gap in the foliage. Beyond, was a mirrored forest hanging from the ceiling a few hundred metres above.

  “Shall we continue?” Little God asked, still waiting to lead her.

  Considering she had no other option, she moved to follow, only to stop after a single step.

  “No,” she said. “Is there anyone… any human observing us?”

  “No.”

  “Then I think this is the perfect opportunity.” Nyx pulled off her ugly gloves and shoved them in the pocket of her robe. “I just need you to tell me whenever there is a person coming, or about to observe me, and this place will be exactly what I need.”

  She would need to avoid veering into the uncharted sections of the Biovault, or towards the less corrupt farming section, but with how many creatures this place held — that actually had bodies she could strike — it was perfect.

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  Nix lowered the skulk shroud binding her chest enough for the gem to peek over her robe. It immediately began observing the trees. When she pulled up the back of her robe’s top, her wings struck her arms as they shot wide, as if punishing her for hiding them away so long.

  She would need to think of a way to bring them out easier. She could hardly leave her top hanging over the base of her wings. It left her midriff exposed… which didn’t sound like that much of a problem now that she thought about it; what was a bit of exposure compared to her wings being spotted?

  The way her robe bunched up at her back left it tighter than it needed to be at the front. She wanted her clothes to fit properly and not get in the way while she was trying to fight. Maybe she could cut some lines through the back. Nyx wasn’t exactly a talented seamstress; how could she do that without revealing her feathers to the world?

  For now, it was an inconvenience. Another problem she would somehow have to solve on top of finding a suitable weapon or the funds to buy it.

  With her convenient guide always by her side, there wasn’t that much worry about becoming lost in this forest, but as it just showed, Little God had no awareness of what was too dangerous for her to handle. After she was done hunting, she would need to figure her own paths to follow.

  As her wings stretched, her claws extended to their fullest. The hard chitin clicked into place and the dexterity of fingers disappeared.

  The first wingbeats sent her stumbling. For an instant, her feet left the undergrowth covered soil and she was airborne. But that hadn’t been an attempt to fly; she’d just wanted to get the feel for the motion that seemed to come so naturally. Nyx’s claws sunk deep into the earth to stabilise.

  She righted herself, and prepared properly this time. Her wings slammed down besides her, striking through the air of the Biovault with intent, and she was immediately moving.

  Ten metres in the air, she struck a branch and it sent her off-kilter. She beat again, and found herself backflipping. The long black wings snapped wide on instinct, and while she was on a downward course for the earth, her descent was controlled. Another beat, and she was moving horizontal, flitting through the trees.

  Nyx brushed the bark of five trees and destroyed countless branches before she started to get the handle of flight. It was incredible how quick she was moving. Exhilarating. Now that she was in one of the few sections of Coral with air, the feeling of it whipping past her was amazing.

  But… something didn’t feel right.

  After her initial clumsiness, she’d taken to flight as if she’d always been able to do it, and yet it didn’t feel right. Nyx couldn’t figure out whether she was supposed to fly with her head forward, or upright. Both worked. Both felt equally wrong. It was like she was missing something to make gliding actually work properly. The human body was simply not designed for the task.

  With her wings positioned almost perfectly in her centre of mass, they were essentially inviting her to try out acrobatics. They felt right. Twists and flips and lurching herself one way or the other all felt natural. But gliding did not.

  It was as if her wings weren’t complete.

  They were fully grown, and none of her subsequent evolutions had anything to do with her wings — that she knew of — so she didn’t know why they felt incomplete, but there was no shaking the sense that the way she was flying was… limited.

  Well, even if it felt slightly off, it didn’t detract from her newfound ability to defy gravity. Acrobatics felt better than gliding, so Nyx leaned into that. She used her wings to leap from tree to tree. She performed flips that her body would have collapsed attempting to perform only days ago.

  All too quickly, her body grew tired. Her wings may focus more of her weight at her core, making it easier to twist her body through the air, but even her recently improved body could only handle so much strain. She pivoted back to flight, regardless of the slight discomfort it brought. Her wings had not yet felt the slightest exhausted.

  Considering the trees didn’t seem creepier than normal, she was rather confident she wasn’t in any place with excessively powerful beasts, but still, it would be best to keep aware of her surroundings.

  What she was after was something to fight. Something that would actually strike back, but not be so much of a challenge that she was sure to die to any unlucky blow. Nyx was after a vitiate beast.

  As she flew in search, she fingered her name. After messing around with all those cultists, it hadn’t really become any easier to tell what a curse did at the touch of it, but she could recognise some that were rather common. None of those were similar to her own curses, but the very fact that there were similarities between them gave her hope that reading them — and eventually her own — was possible.

  The three magnetic parts to ‘N?x’ were more than likely parts of her old curse and where they’d integrated into the one. She was worried about opening any one part because she was worried that the effect might be different from before. An evolved curse was going to be stronger than what she had previously, after all; what if it took less effort on her part to ignite another Dark Star Event. Or her changes decided they wanted to push their way out once the door was ajar.

  They were all unlikely fears, but she didn’t know for certain they wouldn’t happen. She would need to test it out eventually, but for now, there was no need. Nyx already had all the weapons she needed in the claws of her hands.

  If she needed to push her mutations further than they already were, then her future already looked dire.

  Nyx swung her wings and jerked to a stop, her claws crashing deep into the trunk of a tree to hold her in place. There was a doe running her way. Or, it had been until she’d made all that noise and had it run off to her side.

  She watched it flee, her chest eye accidentally burning a hole through the fur of its rump before she could focus on something else. Something less living.

  The creature looked uncorrupted. A normal animal running through the forest.

  It was supposedly not a rare sight down here, but Nyx hadn’t exactly come down here often. And the one time she’d found herself lost here, she’d been in the depths of vitiate land.

  Before she could jump off the tree and resume her flight, the reason the doe had been running crashed through the underbrush. An oversized fox with glowing purple veins foamed at the mouth as it stomped through the bush. At first, it looked determined to follow after the deer, but it paused. Its nose twitched, and an instant later its head twisted to land on Nyx.

  Well, her wish had been fulfilled. A vitiate beast had come to her.

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