A spike of pain rushed through Nix’s back, but she ignored it. Growing pains were nothing.

Beneath her robe, her feathers fluttered involuntarily. Nix grimaced, knowing that to get to the mutation she wanted, she would need to let those stubs at the back of her ribs make their reappearance.

Another spike struck her spine and she nearly collapsed mid-run as her lowermost ribs reshaped themselves. Her spine adjusted to compensate, and soon she had two new nubs pressing her feathers outward.

Nix huffed in frustration that she actually had to allow such changes to occur, but that only forced her to open her name wider. She needed this over, now.

The aches of growth spread through her arms, and prodded at her fingers. That lasted only a few moments before the sensation disappeared entirely. Her sense of touch, gone. Like last time, the disappearance of her touch would only be brief. Only long enough for the mutation to complete.

Before her eyes, her skin flaked and peeled. Like a snake moulting. She now wore a glove of dead skin that crumbled when she ran her fingers over it.

When this first happened, the change lasted long enough that her skin flaked naturally, and she barely noted when the last of her skin was gone. This time, she had to peel off her own skin to reveal the stone-hard chitinous claws beneath. It all remained the same colour as her skin, and the chitin of her knuckles slid over each other so perfectly you couldn’t even tell they were separate plating.

If it wasn’t for the change to her fingernails, and the rest of her fingertips, the mutation might not even be noticeable. Well, it wouldn’t be until you shook her hand.

Nix tensed, and like a bunch of pistons, sharp claws slid out from within. Her fingers locked, and she could no longer bend them, but when she clenched her fist, they snapped closed with such force that the snap echoed all around her.

It echoed, and twisted, and morphed into a scream that rang in her ears.

The corruption of the Dark Star Event messed with her perception. It made her senses feel alien, but when she felt the lumps in her back press against her robe, she knew she wasn’t imagining it. Quickly, she released her touch from her name to halt any further changes.

Seeing her sharp claws once again was both daunting and welcome. Her captors used to file them down on a regular schedule, as they would constantly grow back but they would never cut away more than where her fingers once finished. It had been almost like they were obsessed with keeping her in a human form, despite how clearly her body was trying to move away from it.

She shook her head and snapped her claws. This wasn’t the time. Nix had now sacrificed months for Ari, she wasn’t about to let it be for nothing.

An amalgamation was already rushing towards her ward-mate; its lack of limbs the only thing slowing it down. Two serpentine heads continually slapped their heads into the ground to drag it forward. Between its scorpion stinger and toothy tortoise shell, it had enough to kill the girl in moments. But despite its size — twice her own — and vicious appearance, Nix was glad it was slow.

She dashed up to its side before it could react and grabbed one of the serpent’s heads. Her hands clamped, and flesh splattered. One of the snake heads fell limp, its spine severed and black goop spilling everywhere, but the other snapped towards her, fangs bared.

Nix raised her hand on instinct, and the creature sunk its teeth into her arm. Or, it tried to. The moment the fangs impacted the hard chitin of her pincers, they slid right off. She raised her other hand, and wrapped it around the second serpentine neck, before gifting it an identical fate.

Her hands had become like the pincers of a crab, only sharper, and with five points instead of two. She’d always imagined it would be less effective than the crab’s natural pair of scissors, but these were undeniably more dangerous.

Now without the pseudo-limbs it had been using to push itself forward, the amalgamation began to convulse. Its toothy, inverted maw of a shell flopped around in a desperate attempt to discover some way to move. Behind it, the scorpion tail twisted, but each of its movements seemed to go against the efforts of its shell.

She couldn’t be wasting time, so she leapt forward, intent on severing the tail before it became a problem. But it was just as she was about to clamp her hand around the base of the tail — where it poked out inelegantly from the bottom of the shell — that the amalgamation finally seemed to discover how to move.

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When it twisted its body, its teeth sunk into the ground, giving it leverage. That shouldn’t have even been possible considering the unreasonably hard alloy it was built of, but the corruption had already seen that the earth acted more like soil than the hardened metal it was.

The amalgamation spun, and its protruding teeth dug into the now soft metal and flung it forward. In a matter of seconds, the monster went from a crawl to a sprint.

A flesh-wheel for my second ever monster fight. Nix thought. That’s surely a common sight.

Her arms and wrists halfway to her elbow might now be deadly weapons, but the rest of her was still the same weak teenage body. When the toothy wheel of a shell rushed at her, she leapt to the side, but not fast enough to avoid the fang tearing through the leg of her robe and slicing through her thigh. The stinger struck out, but already on the ground as she was, it simply sailed over her head. The amalgamation had yet to figure out how to aim the thing while rotating.

With the thick shell that protected the beast’s innards, Nix was doubtful her pincer claws could penetrate. They were sharp and strong, but could only do so much. Plus, she doubted her chances of catching that stinger while it was moving so fast.

So, Nix did the next best thing: she ran for the next Amalgamation.

The beast was too busy chewing on the corpse of some cultist to pay attention to its surroundings, but when Nix ran past it, it instinctively reached out for her. Only to be shredded by the spinning ball of teeth.

She never stopped running. Even as her lungs ached and chest heaved, she pushed forward. There was a second Amalgamation going for Ari now, and she ran for it.

As she passed the monster, she raked her locked claws through the throat of its humanoid form. It’s huge teeth snapped down on her in retaliation. They missed, but the heft of its crocodilian head hit her side and sent her sprawling.

The amalgamation wheel crashed into its brother, stinger piercing the back of its neck while the teeth shredded through the worm-like lower half.

Nix scrambled. The creature had come to a stop, so this was the only chance she would get. She flung herself atop the pair, and clamped her claws around the base of stinger before it could extract itself from the melting flesh of a dead amalgamation. There was a moment of resistance, but a crack sounded only an instant before the tail was dismembered.

The feeling of chitin losing to her own was wonderful. Like cracking open nuts, but somehow so much more satisfying. She didn’t know if it was some instinct that came ingrained with her pincers, but she relished in the feeling of crushing things beneath her fingers. This was something she’d missed out on for nearly seven years since she first grew in these claws… and summarily lost them to the file.

She was not done yet. The beast was still alive, and with each moment it tried to spin itself back into that wheel of death. If it did, she wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

Nix dove forward, her claws piercing through the fleshy innards where the scorpion tail had connected only moments ago. It avoided the teeth, and gave her a clear access for her weapons to tear up the inside of the shell. Her pincers snapped open and closed as she twisted her arm through the beast. Already she was shoulder deep, but the amalgamation continued to struggle.

Efforts to push her off, or return to its spinning motion while Nix was attached to it continually drove its teeth along her robe. Bloody scratches appeared all along her arms and shoulders. All it would take was a lucky strike to her neck and she’d be done.

Grasping the edge of the shell for leverage, she swept her arm through the innards of the shell, scraping along the hard inner surface and severing as much of it as possible. It was a desperate attempt, and nearly drove one of the amalgamation’s teeth through her eye, but finally, it settled.

The monster slowly faded into black sludge.

Nix pulled her arm free as she gasped. She wanted nothing more than to sit there for a while and catch her breath. To recover from the ordeal. But Ari continued to stand there, reactionless.

It was likely the only reason the girl hadn’t been attacked so far. She didn’t perceive or react to anything, so nothing decided she was worth the effort. But that was ending. All around her, Nix found amalgamations that were finished with their cultist meals and were turning their way. Her pincers might help, but even with them, she couldn’t fight through an army of amalgamations.

She needed to get herself and Ari out now.

Her feet were surprisingly steady when she raced to reach the girl’s side. She’d thought for sure, after a fight like that, she’d be wobbly and disoriented. More so than what the twisted landscape caused, anyway. But no. Instead, the fight seemed to have steadied her. It focused her mind away from the impossible things she was seeing, and guided her to her task.

As Nix slid to a stop besides Ari, her hand went to snatch off the fat worm chewing on the back of her head. Before she could, she paused. Did she really want to have her ward-mate aware right now? Not only didn’t Nix know how the girl might react to this horrifying, mind-twisting environment, but it would also reveal her mutations. Extended as they were, her fingers were clearly not human.

Instead, she decided to make use of the disgusting worm.

“Ari, follow me and keep up.”

Nix despised the action. While the worm simply encouraged them to continue dreaming and sleepwalk, it was too close to the forced enslavement she’d endured. She didn’t know how these creatures didn’t count in the treaties against mind-manipulation.

She turned to the eye. Little god was still where she’d left him, ready to guide her out.

But between them, was three more amalgamations ready to tear her apart. And a sea of boiling blood.

Nix couldn’t help a nervous grin. I did wish my life would change, but fate didn’t have to do such a good job fulfilling it.