Unrepentant

Nyx’s talons gripped the man’s neck with a quiet but satisfying scrunch, the texture beneath his claws drawing immediate thoughts—''Soft. Slick. Viscous sweat.''

He barely gave the moment to linger before yanking the man backward, his wings blurring into shadow as he propelled them both toward the wall behind them.

As they reached the dark surface, Nyx dissolved, merging with the shadow and enveloping the man in a thin, undetectable film. The alley had been empty, but precautions never hurt.

To the slum dweller, the world shifted violently, as if he’d been dropped into a well, the light snuffed out above him. His feet skidded uselessly along the ground, but after a brief struggle, he went still. Disturbingly still.

Nyx hovered all around him, feeling the man’s pulse steady in unnatural calm. His dark form materialized as a pair of onyx eyes, floating in the blackened space between them. A cacophony of voices erupted—deep and shallow, male and female, high-pitched and low—swirling around them like a storm.

"Three questions. Three truths and you survive. One lie, and you die."

The man's eyes began to roll unnervingly, searching for the source of the voices, darting so far back into his skull that Nyx wondered if they might not return.

His hair hung in brittle clumps, unnaturally uniform, and the lack of cleanliness wasn’t enough to explain the condition. ''Something’s cocked with this one,'' Nyx thought, narrowing his gaze. The man’s stillness, the lack of fear, the absence of any instinct to struggle or flee—it set Nyx’s feathers, or rather shadows on edge.

Instead of pushing back, the man’s limbs sagged as if deadweight, his legs scraping feebly along the cobblestones. Nyx’s talons squeezed tighter, his shadowy form solidifying just enough to apply pressure.

The voices in the air hissed their question.

"What kin are you?"

Nyx’s thoughts flickered, half-mocking. ''I'd rip off my beak if this is Mortalkin… No features of Elementkin… Beastkin, maybe?'' The man didn’t respond, his mouth slackening as thick drool and snot began to ooze out, sliding down his chin in long, disgusting streams. Nyx hissed in irritation, his claws tightening around the man’s throat. ''Deadmeat no matter what.''

He pressed on, the voices asking their final two questions in unison.

"Why are you here? What is your purpose?"

For a split second, Nyx indulged a vain hopeful extravagance—''Maybe this one will simply spell the answers out instead of making me work for it… at least for once.'' But the hope shattered instantly. The drool sliding out of the man’s mouth turned acidic, burning through the rags he wore and sizzling against the cobblestones. Worse still, the acid dripped onto Nyx’s shadows, burning through his ethereal form with a sharp, stinging pain.

''Oh, you fucker.''

A growl reverberated through the alley as Nyx reacted swiftly. The shadows around the man’s head shifted, forming black hands that gripped his nose and clamped his jaw shut, cutting off the acidic flow. ''No more drooling for you.'' In his irritation, Nyx scooped up some of the leftover burning fluid, feeling the sting but ignoring it as he moved the acid toward the man’s ears. ''You heard the questions, you don’t need ears anymore. I'm sure your friends here can follow up.''

He forced the man's head to tilt slightly, and without hesitation, he pressed the burning fluid into his ear canal. But as he did so, something odd happened. The man wasn’t reacting as a living being should.

His body didn’t convulse with panic or thrash in desperate attempts to breathe. There was no cold sweat, no skin flushing, no color change. Just minor, meaningless movements.

Nyx felt his talons dig in deeper, fascinated and disgusted at once. ''No reaction?'' The man’s body twisted, but in a way that seemed more like an act than true suffocation. He kept trying to breathe but never seemed to actually need to. Still, Nyx followed through, closing the man’s nose and mouth, choking him to what should have been the brink of unconsciousness before letting go.

What happened next stupefied even Nyx.

He pressed the acid into the man’s ear, expecting resistance or at least pain, but the shadows kept going. Deeper. And deeper. Nyx's dark hands slid through the ear canal, his ‘fingers’ touching one another inside the man’s head. ''What the—?''

Suddenly, he felt something else—thick, slick tubes, unnatural to the touch. Eyestalks. Nyx’s shadowy hands wrapped around them instinctively, giving them a slight tug. The man’s eyeballs retracted, rolling inward as if being pulled into his skull. His hollow eyes stared back at Nyx, black voids where once there had been pupils.

''The fuck?'' Nyx’s mind echoed with the same words of bafflement Silas occasionally spoke when something strange happened.

As soon as the eyes were gone, the real thrashing began. The man’s body came alive, his torso and pelvis jerking wildly, twisting and bucking in violent convulsions. The limbs, though, remained oddly inert, dragging uselessly along the wall and ground as the rest of him spasmed.

Nyx withdrew his hands, half in disgust, half in worse disgust. This wasn’t a man, not by any normal definition.

Plants melted, turned to mush. They always did when he touched them, seeping into the earth like they were nothing. Food had been good then, fresh, strong, the taste rich. Meat tasty, melts nice. But the more he ate, the bigger he grew. Big now. Food bland.

And then the two meals came. One naked, one full of hair. The one with whiskers—it was haughty, like it didn’t care. The naked one, though, he hurt me. Hurt bad.

The pain bit deep, a new kind of sting, not like fire, not like rot. It pierced, drove him down. But something changed. Master become, life better. The hurt stopped, and after that, the naked one was no longer an enemy. He fed him, gave him meat, made him stronger. And the whiskers... that thing annoyed him. Always hopping, always looking at him with those eyes, like it owned everything.

But Master likes when I melt things he doesn't like. The food came, and it was good. Not as sweet as it used to be, but good enough. Master liked when he got rid of things, things that annoyed him. Master feed, me happy. The days of pain were forgotten, and life was simple. Follow the Master, eat what he didn’t need, melt what made him angry.

Then came the time Master hurt. Didn't like that. Master hated a lot of things, a lot of food. And when Master got hurt, his mood worsened. Hates list, long and ugly. But whiskers jumped on him. Made Master calm.

Master would sleep then, sometimes for a long time. Master sleep, whiskers sad. That thing, with its twitching nose, always sitting near, always watching while Master slept.

Sometimes it tried to act like the Master. When it thought no one was watching, it would order him, point its tiny paws. Whiskers wants to be Master while Master sleep, but no. Not Master. It never gave him food like Master did.

He slept near Master, waiting for the next meal. The scent of rot was in the air sometimes, but Master always had a way of calming him, telling him to rest, to eat. But then one morning, Master didn’t wake. Wake up, whiskers in charge now. It told him what to do. Its orders were weak, nothing like Master’s. No like.

Time passed. The homes changed, the walls grew legs, and it told him to stay in home. Simple. But no food. Where was Master? It had been so long, and he hadn’t fed.

Where is Master? Whiskers only told him what to do, never gave him meat. It played at being Master, but it wasn’t. It could never be. He searched for the real Master, slinking through the dark, waiting for a command that never came.

The days stretched into years. His belly ached. His body weakened. So hungry. So hungry. The walls moved, the orders stayed the same, but there was no food. The taste of anything was long gone, the sensation of meat forgotten. He melted the things the rabbit told him to, but they were hollow, tasteless. His mind drifted, searching through the haze of hunger.

Master?

No answer.

Master?

Nothing.

WHERE MASTER?

Whiskers say master be back soon.

Smell of morning. Faint, distant. Must do as said. Always as said. Master be back soon. Whiskers promised. Master be back soon.

The new home feels wrong. The walls are hard, too tight. Legs make, me no like. Better to crawl. So much easier that way, but whiskers say must use legs. Always legs. So, left leg, right leg, stumble forward. Too slow. Useless. Better to crawl. But no. Whiskers insist.

Do as said. Master come soon.

The routine. Always the routine. Follow the alleys, like before. Drop Ehrengy for whiskers. Master come soon. The others shuffle, too. They all do as said, moving like shadows in the streets. Master come back.

But the home feels strange today. The air, heavy. Thick. Neck itch. Can’t help it. Lift hand, scratch.

WHAT?!

Something’s wrong. Pull. The house—the body—twists, jerks to the side, hitting the wall. Legs wrong. Everything feels wrong. Night? It comes too quickly. Voices fill the space, bouncing off the walls, demanding things. Questions. Me no answer. House disposable. Whiskers will make another.

The voices, though. They keep coming. Annoying voices. Spit at them, but it doesn’t stop. It never stops.

Night move? It’s not normal. The darkness is alive, crawling, pressing in from every corner. Night come inside house?!

ACK EYES HURT! Pain, sharp, blinding. The night isn’t just darkness. It presses against the eyes, digs into the skull. NIGHT NEEDS TO MELT.

The hunger gnaws, deeper now. The need to eat, to consume, rages inside. So hungry. So hungry. The legs twitch, trying to move but failing. Weak. Always weak. The walls seem to tighten. The space shrinks around him, suffocating.

The hunger takes over, pushing the real body into spasms. MELT. But there’s nothing to melt. SO HUNGRY.

The walls crush in, mocking. WHERE MASTER?

The night presses harder, suffocating, until finally—BURST.

The body rips apart, the thin shell of the 'home' splintering. Flesh tears, skin shreds. Burst. Burst. BURST.

Out. Free. It bursts through the collapsing form, slick and writhing, the cold air hitting its flesh as it flops onto the cobblestones, wet and glistening.

''A fucking slug?'' Nyx's thoughts pulsed through the shadowy tendrils that surrounded the grotesque creature. He tightened his form around the slug as it flailed and writhed in the alley, acidic slime splattering everywhere.

The shell it had burst from had once looked human enough, but now, as Nyx inspected it, the truth was clear. A hollow chamber sat at the center, devoid of true organs. Tubes connected the limbs to the core, the apparatus that allowed the slug to puppeteer the human form, to simulate a heartbeat, to breathe.

The slug itself was unfamiliar to Nyx. He had seen beasts, spirits, and creatures twisted by the world’s darkest corners, but this was something different.

Its slime burned through Nyx’s shadows, sizzling like meat over open flame, but the pain barely registered. His eyes, or what passed for them in this form, locked onto the brand between the slug’s eyestalks. He committed it to memory, assuming the symbol might matter later.

The slug was growing larger, bulging grotesquely with each passing second. ''It’ll stretch me too thin if I don’t act.'' The creature’s lower body had transformed into a monstrous mouth, lined with serrated teeth, gnashing at the air as it thrashed. ''That’s disgusting'', Nyx thought. ''Well, I’ve had worse.''

The alley was silent, the outside world oblivious to the battle happening in the shadows. The slug twisted harder, desperate to escape, its body now oversized and unrecognizable. Rows of teeth gnashed wildly, snapping at Nyx’s tightening grasp. He could feel the thing pushing against him, struggling for freedom, its thoughts slipping into the void.

But then, something shifted. The slug’s frenzied thrashing slowed as the end of it approached. Nyx felt it pause, a tremor of weakness coursing through the creature. The confusion in its primitive mind sharpened into a single, mournful thought, a last desperate grasp at something that no longer existed.

''Where... Master?''

The thought was fragile, filled with yearning, but there was no answer. No connection to anything or anyone. Only cold emptiness. ''Master? Why no come back?'' A final pang of loss rippled through the beast as Nyx’s shadows constricted tighter.

''Whiskers lied.''

And with that, the creature gave its last shudder, collapsing into itself, consumed entirely by Nyx’s enveloping shadows.