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Gods for the Machines 51: Irregulars: Nyx
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Chapter 51: The Irregulars: Nyx
Nyx’s muscles burned. She had been running and fighting for longer than she had thought possible. She could feel each and every muscle complain to her as she twisted and swung her sword through the most recent batch of demons. A part of her wasn’t fully sure how she was still moving, no matter how tired her muscles felt they never actually disobeyed her orders to keep going. Was the, for lack of a better word: ‘magic’ that she was working with affecting her body in some way?
The answer to that question was almost certainly yes of course. Right from the get go she could see her liquid gold whereas it seemed that no-one else could. She didn’t see how that could be possible without something having been altered in her eyes, or her brain, a conclusion the few scientists working in the new department of thaumaturgy seemed to agree with. She had gotten more evidence of the possibility as her experience taught her what worked on the demons.
One of them had managed to knock her copper sword aside once, she didn’t have anything left but the small pile of gold so she turned it into a tiny dagger and got to stabbing. The demon had seemed scared, actually scared, in a way it didn’t with the copper sword. Sure her enemies would block or avoid being cut up with the sword, as one would expect, but they didn’t generally backpedal and give such a wide birth to it as they did with the gold. It had confused her for awhile, the demons being able to see the gold wasn’t so surprising to her, but as far as she could tell she could morph the copper and the gold into equivalently sharp blades and her test cuts on tatami mats had not shown any meaningful difference in their cutting ability, and field tests against actual enemies were very hard to do scientifically, at least till she got some silver.
Back at the lab they had tried all sorts of metals, and most were inert to her save the gold, the copper and now the silver. A colonel had dropped some off per her request. She wasn’t sure where he got it but decided not to worry too much as yet. The silver had reacted right away to her attempts to incorporate it into her arsenal. Unfortunately, it had reacted by essentially exploding in her face.
More specifically it had rapidly increased in volume to hundreds if not thousands of times its original size with no increase in mass. The result was a small pile of silver no larger than brick had turned into a room sized cotton ball-esque mass of fibrous material. Nyx, not to mention the others in the lab at the time, were trapped and almost suffocated before Nyx had figured out how to get the ‘aerogel’ as the scientists called it, to shrink back down.
She now carried it in a spool and in enclosed spaces could fire it at the demons and trigger the expansion to quickly immobilize them. It wouldn’t work on the ones with enhanced limbs, or just the especially strong, they could tear through it, but those operating on normal muscle systems would be stuck. That was how she learned WHY the demons feared the gold.
She had been fighting a speedy little shit that liked to throw daggers, and bits of its own body at her. Half its head was gone, so no way to ‘save’ this one even if she caught it, she would just kill it. The little fuck had lead her on a chase all over the commercial district, leaping from balconies and skittering up onto overpasses, all while dodging behind panicked locals to make shooting at it hard. It had taken hours but eventually she caught it when it had darted into a café. The patrons panicked and started to scatter of course, but all movement was stopped pretty immediately once Nyx had filled the whole damn restaurant with silver.
The thing had tried to give her the evil eye and the finger when she got close, but she could see its countenance change when the liquid metal slid out from under her clothes and formed into her sword. She didn’t have much gold, at least yet, so making a full sword out of it wasn’t possible, but she could still line the edge of her copper sword with it. The ruddy reddish copper blade glimmered around the edges with the shine of the gold. Noone but her and her target could see that part though, but it didn’t matter. She lifted the sword for a strong thrust through the things head and froze.
Something was coming out of it. Something that didn’t seem fully there. The thing melted out of the cyberware that had replaced a good chunk of her target’s skull and started to try to pull away. It seemed to have a hard time pulling out though and could disentangle itself only so fast. Bit by bit it appeared to grow larger and writhed as it slowly but surely freed itself from the metal and circuits it had been living in. As it grew in size it stared to appear to develop features, twisted as they were. Stunted arms and fingers flailed around as the distorted thing freed itself. After a long moment the thing started to develop what looked like a face. The instant she saw the black sockets where eyes would be and the bend hole of a mouth her muscles unfroze and Nyx thrust her sword forward, not into her target, but into the face of the thing.
It started to boil, or at least that’s the best description she could come up with. Where the golden edges to her sword touched the spectral entity, it seem to be annihilated, obliterating into mist and fading from reality. And the screaming. So much screaming. Whatever the little twisted blob was it had a pair of lungs on it for sure. She winced and folded her ears back to block it out as much as she could. Mercifully as soon as it started it ended as the thing fully faded away and the cyber zombie collapsed, hanging limp and lifeless in the silver cage.
A few witnesses, once they realized the danger had been dealt with, had asked her if she was ok. Nyx had evidently fallen to her knees when the thing screamed, but the others, normal people, evidently hadn’t heard it at all, probably hadn’t seen it either. She rolled her silver back up, freeing the captured bystanders and staggered to her feet as what had happened slowly dawned on her.
She hadn’t just smashed the cyberware, breaking it, hadn’t just killed the body that was being controlled. No, nothing so simple this time. She had gotten one. Gotten one for real. It didn’t just escape to possess then next innocent they converted, no it was gone, whether she had sent it back to hell, or killed it outright and erased it for good, she couldn’t know, but she had bloody got it.
Nyx didn’t feel tired anymore, her muscles no longer hurt, even after running all day, all the stress and strain was gone in an instant, and even if she had cared to stop it, she would not have been able to stop the wicked grin from spreading wide across her face.
Paypal:https://www.paypal.me/AMKibbe
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My Books for sale on LULU:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amk1954
Chapter 51: The Irregulars: Nyx
Nyx’s muscles burned. She had been running and fighting for longer than she had thought possible. She could feel each and every muscle complain to her as she twisted and swung her sword through the most recent batch of demons. A part of her wasn’t fully sure how she was still moving, no matter how tired her muscles felt they never actually disobeyed her orders to keep going. Was the, for lack of a better word: ‘magic’ that she was working with affecting her body in some way?
The answer to that question was almost certainly yes of course. Right from the get go she could see her liquid gold whereas it seemed that no-one else could. She didn’t see how that could be possible without something having been altered in her eyes, or her brain, a conclusion the few scientists working in the new department of thaumaturgy seemed to agree with. She had gotten more evidence of the possibility as her experience taught her what worked on the demons.
One of them had managed to knock her copper sword aside once, she didn’t have anything left but the small pile of gold so she turned it into a tiny dagger and got to stabbing. The demon had seemed scared, actually scared, in a way it didn’t with the copper sword. Sure her enemies would block or avoid being cut up with the sword, as one would expect, but they didn’t generally backpedal and give such a wide birth to it as they did with the gold. It had confused her for awhile, the demons being able to see the gold wasn’t so surprising to her, but as far as she could tell she could morph the copper and the gold into equivalently sharp blades and her test cuts on tatami mats had not shown any meaningful difference in their cutting ability, and field tests against actual enemies were very hard to do scientifically, at least till she got some silver.
Back at the lab they had tried all sorts of metals, and most were inert to her save the gold, the copper and now the silver. A colonel had dropped some off per her request. She wasn’t sure where he got it but decided not to worry too much as yet. The silver had reacted right away to her attempts to incorporate it into her arsenal. Unfortunately, it had reacted by essentially exploding in her face.
More specifically it had rapidly increased in volume to hundreds if not thousands of times its original size with no increase in mass. The result was a small pile of silver no larger than brick had turned into a room sized cotton ball-esque mass of fibrous material. Nyx, not to mention the others in the lab at the time, were trapped and almost suffocated before Nyx had figured out how to get the ‘aerogel’ as the scientists called it, to shrink back down.
She now carried it in a spool and in enclosed spaces could fire it at the demons and trigger the expansion to quickly immobilize them. It wouldn’t work on the ones with enhanced limbs, or just the especially strong, they could tear through it, but those operating on normal muscle systems would be stuck. That was how she learned WHY the demons feared the gold.
She had been fighting a speedy little shit that liked to throw daggers, and bits of its own body at her. Half its head was gone, so no way to ‘save’ this one even if she caught it, she would just kill it. The little fuck had lead her on a chase all over the commercial district, leaping from balconies and skittering up onto overpasses, all while dodging behind panicked locals to make shooting at it hard. It had taken hours but eventually she caught it when it had darted into a café. The patrons panicked and started to scatter of course, but all movement was stopped pretty immediately once Nyx had filled the whole damn restaurant with silver.
The thing had tried to give her the evil eye and the finger when she got close, but she could see its countenance change when the liquid metal slid out from under her clothes and formed into her sword. She didn’t have much gold, at least yet, so making a full sword out of it wasn’t possible, but she could still line the edge of her copper sword with it. The ruddy reddish copper blade glimmered around the edges with the shine of the gold. Noone but her and her target could see that part though, but it didn’t matter. She lifted the sword for a strong thrust through the things head and froze.
Something was coming out of it. Something that didn’t seem fully there. The thing melted out of the cyberware that had replaced a good chunk of her target’s skull and started to try to pull away. It seemed to have a hard time pulling out though and could disentangle itself only so fast. Bit by bit it appeared to grow larger and writhed as it slowly but surely freed itself from the metal and circuits it had been living in. As it grew in size it stared to appear to develop features, twisted as they were. Stunted arms and fingers flailed around as the distorted thing freed itself. After a long moment the thing started to develop what looked like a face. The instant she saw the black sockets where eyes would be and the bend hole of a mouth her muscles unfroze and Nyx thrust her sword forward, not into her target, but into the face of the thing.
It started to boil, or at least that’s the best description she could come up with. Where the golden edges to her sword touched the spectral entity, it seem to be annihilated, obliterating into mist and fading from reality. And the screaming. So much screaming. Whatever the little twisted blob was it had a pair of lungs on it for sure. She winced and folded her ears back to block it out as much as she could. Mercifully as soon as it started it ended as the thing fully faded away and the cyber zombie collapsed, hanging limp and lifeless in the silver cage.
A few witnesses, once they realized the danger had been dealt with, had asked her if she was ok. Nyx had evidently fallen to her knees when the thing screamed, but the others, normal people, evidently hadn’t heard it at all, probably hadn’t seen it either. She rolled her silver back up, freeing the captured bystanders and staggered to her feet as what had happened slowly dawned on her.
She hadn’t just smashed the cyberware, breaking it, hadn’t just killed the body that was being controlled. No, nothing so simple this time. She had gotten one. Gotten one for real. It didn’t just escape to possess then next innocent they converted, no it was gone, whether she had sent it back to hell, or killed it outright and erased it for good, she couldn’t know, but she had bloody got it.
Nyx didn’t feel tired anymore, her muscles no longer hurt, even after running all day, all the stress and strain was gone in an instant, and even if she had cared to stop it, she would not have been able to stop the wicked grin from spreading wide across her face.
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