“What Eidolon fuckery was that?”

Nix ran through the streets to get away from the ritual chamber. If anyone found it, she couldn’t have them tracing it back to her. It would ruin her.

She’d merely opened a crack in her name and corruption had flooded the room. There was so much compressed within. Her curses, however many there were, were all hidden away within her name and held impossible levels of corruption ready to burst out into the world.

So this is what makes me the perfect sacrifice. She thought. Would have been a real nice thing for the cults to explain. Then I wouldn’t have to terrify the next poor person to use that ritual chamber.

It was a startling thing. Her mutations weren’t what made her the perfect sacrifice — they were just a symptom the cultists could recognise — it was the core of corruption that sat within her soul.

No wonder her base name had a different description than everyone else. The thousands of curses Nix’s parents had left her had consumed that name and left it unrecognisable as anything besides a bundle of corruption.

What loving parents I had.

It made much more sense why she was considered an attractive sacrifice now. A sacrifice, whether it be the giving up of life, a part of your body, or simply the offering of material wealth, was a powerful thing. There were many well known aspects that improved a sacrifice.

First, was the personal attachment. Many cults gave up parts of their bodies in their rituals to enhance them to incredible degrees. Removing your eyelids — as the Cult of the Everseeing Eye did — might power a ritual enough to give someone an additive, or empower a ritual of equal capability. Material wealth also fell mostly into this category. Beasts of the Darkness didn’t care for gold or currency; they cared for the intangible value a person placed in it.

The greater significance placed on an object of sacrifice by both individual and community, the more powerful its effect.

Then there was age. The longer something had been in existence, usually, the better it was as a sacrifice. Contradictorily, the effect was often opposite in living things. The complexities of this, as well as with many other factors, made estimating the value of a living being at any one point in its existence extremely difficult.

Some cultists specialised in sacrifices, and they had determined that Nix’s prime sacrificial date landed during her twenty second year. That was the sole reason they’d waited so long. Well, besides giving them more time to perform the rituals that improved her viability.

The last aspect that valued a sacrificial candidate was both the most important, and usually the one cultists could do the least about. The power of the sacrifice’s name.

It didn’t apply to non-living things, but the amount of strength one had accumulated in their life massively amplified the effect they would have as a sacrifice. Because of that, goats and lamb were usually given some time to grow through the foal stage before they were sacrificed. Rats particularly were used in excess because they matured and consolidated a name far faster than most animals.

The corruption in Nix’s name would count towards that.

Curses were power that worked against the afflicted, but they must still count as power. With just how much corruption had overtaken Nix’s name, the effect of her sacrifice might as well be identical to one of the cult leaders. But those ageless cultists would never give up their lives.

Even if their words were true, and Nix’s death would bring about an age without problems, the pinnacle four — and some from the smaller cults — had been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Never had they considered offing themselves.

It’s only okay when it’s anyone but yourself.

Nix panted as she slowed to a walk. Didn’t matter how attractive these curses made her as a sacrifice, she just wished her body wouldn’t consider a minute of running a challenge.

Whoever found the ritual room would hopefully think it was just some high-creed cultist leaking corruption and not look into it further. They’d call in a cleansing crew, and the corruption would be gone by tomorrow.

This… this was usable. It might not be the most effective way to fight, but if she could overpower rituals with the corruption generated by her curses, then she could descend into the depths. Nix only knew the basic rituals everyone had access to, but if she could flood them with corruption, she could redirect the backlash towards whatever monster she faced.

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Hopefully.

“I wonder if I have enough time to go down before first fog?”

Her words were intended for herself, but of course, her phantom tail had to answer.

“The seeping of the fettered god will begin in an hour,” Little God said.

She eyed the creature. “Fettered god?” Nix couldn’t help but ask.

After acknowledging the creature in the bath with that outburst, it hadn’t gone and acted any more obstructive. Plus, she had no idea what it was talking about.

“Yes,” it said, its eye rolling back and forth in a strange mimic of a nod. “The fettered god.”

“What is the fettered god?” Nix asked, trying to elicit a proper answer.

“It is the god that is fettered,” Little God said, to Nix’s rising ire. Before she could swipe at the annoying oversized marble, it continued. “The origin of the ‘first fog’.”

The Bodytwisters had a god bound in their temple? How did they manage that? Gods were so far beyond a human’s ability that any ritual related to them were expressly restricted. To think that they not only summoned one, but bound it to their temple was absurd. It’s like they were asking for a disaster on a scope greater even than a Dark Star Event.

But… that fog had been seeping out of their temple for as long as Nix remembered. Apparently, it had been doing so for a hundred years.

And they weren’t the only cult to have a corrupt mist seeping from their temples every night.

Nix shook her head, realising who exactly had suggested such a thing. It was simply a figment of her imagination. A fragmented explanation to one of the eternal cult mysteries. Why was she taking Little God’s statements as fact?

“You come up with some strange things sometimes,” she said, unsure whether she was speaking to the floating eyeball or herself. Well, they were one and the same.

Little God just stared back.

The temptation to dive down into the depths immediately and earn herself a name was intense. Ever since she’d returned, she’d known the path of a harbinger was her only option. She’d known the only way she would ever reach the pinnacle was by diving deep into Coral and slaughtering monsters wherever she found them.

It was the only option fast enough that would bring her to enough strength that she could defend herself once her mutations became known. It was dangerous. Almost suicidal. But the alternative of working her way up from the bottom of a cult only to be bestowed a better cultivating ritual every few years wasn’t an option.

Besides, Nix despised the idea of working for the men and women who killed her.

“How many skitter-spawn do you think I’d need to clear out to receive an additive, you think?” she asked Little God.

“I… cannot see.” For the first time, an emotion besides curiosity worked its way through the static of its voice. It sounded distressed that it could not answer Nix’s question. Like the very idea of not perceiving the path ahead of her was a failure worthy of agony.

Out of curiosity, Nix took her new Feat-given sense, and brushed it through the eyeball’s body. She spent a long time simply poking around, blindly feeling for its name. Eventually, she found something.

The name she found was… well, massive didn’t fit because a name couldn’t hold size, but it felt worthy of the word. Even a slight touch — without feeling for each individual seam — was enough to tell there were at least a thousand components. Feeling overwhelmed, she spread her touch outwards, and soon found another name part nearby. This too was just as dense. No matter how far she searched, she couldn’t find the end of its name.

She felt woozy. But beyond even that disorientation was frustration. She had hoped to use this Feat to distinguish between fact and reality, but her insanity had to twist her perception of this new sense, too.

Nix’s eyes traced every entrance into the underground she passed. As great as it would be to try for a new additive, it was almost certain to make her evolution arrive later. It would be far more beneficial to increase her proficiency with this Feat to the point where she would get an evolution, rather than tempt fate with an additive that might not solve any of her current physical issues, and delaying her chance at evolution a few months.

Or years. It depended on how long each name took to grow into and learn. A lot of people didn’t achieve an evolution until their thirties. Some never did because they found themselves lugged with too many additives and couldn’t gain access to the cults’ forced evolution rituals.

When the first wafts of fog began to seep over the buildings to the east, Nix sighed. It was so frustrating that every time an option seemed to land before her, it was something she had to hold back on. First her sudden control over her changes. Now, having to return to the ward when she’d finally found a way to fight.

The most likely reward she would get for fighting was not worth putting off her evolution, after all.

Damn, here I am complaining about having to evolve soon. All of my ward-mates will have at least a few years ahead of them before it becomes an option. None will have the required four names, after all.

Nix had been walking around a long time today, and that alone made her tired. Not as tired as she’d been yesterday, but still her body felt weighed down. She hoped her evolution solved it. Or at least her increased activity would make her more fit, but she wouldn’t hold out hope. Even if she could never run as far as anyone else, she would simply twist the track with her newfound corruption until the finish line found her.

The Rearing Ward soon found its way into her sight. She might have wanted to recklessly dive into the depths, but she couldn’t be late another night in a row. Not when she knew K’tan was taking sacrifices even without any indication of mutations. It would be horrible if he took her six months early because she’d been out and about too much.

Despite now knowing what she did about the overseer, it didn’t change a thing. She was going to kill him. It was just a matter of when.