Wax coated chitin slid across jagged stone with more familiarity than the embalmed had for anything else. It twisted around a narrow corner and jerked to a stop. Both antennae pressed against the wall.

Two sets of footsteps.

Intruders.

They moved quick; a speed the embalmed would need to match. It threw itself back into motion, rushing through the servant passages that wove between the great noble halls. It was a disgrace for one of its kind to enter prestigious ground, but the alien presence was of greater concern.

The embalmed couldn't remember why outsider presence was a desecration, only that it was true. Its fractured mind barely knew of anything besides the aeons of silence. Bits and pieces surfaced every now and then. The heavy grinding crunch of wagons; a sound similar to that which followed the intruders. Its community, with names and people not twisted.

The descent of God.

It no longer remembered its name. It no longer knew how to speak, or dance, or praise the beauty of the sky with its colony. A colony it did not remember. All it knew, was that this tomb must be protected. This tomb must remain eternal, for when the promised time came, their immortal bodies would be liberated by the true Eidolon.

Their Pharaoh would transcend eternity, and bring them into the new age. For that is why all were sacrificed.

No intruder could be allowed to impede that. Even a slave, rotten to the core from uncountable years left waiting, understood the yearning of his deathless Pharaoh. None could reach the summit: Their most honoured vault.

The embalmed dropped from the ceiling. Hidden door sliding away without a sound. Its jar of life clung between claws swung for the alien intruder; moments from bludgeoning her head.

A blade of foreign metal pierced its jar before its antenna even registered the weapon. A precise strike between copper chains. The embalmed felt both fatigued relief and unrelenting horror as its beating heart, the container for its soul, was ruptured.

It would not join its colony in ascension. It would not witness the rise of their god.

❖❖❖

Nyxil slipped under another embalmed corpse as it fell from the ceiling. Not once did her pace slow. It was too difficult to spot each triple crack keyhole at speed, so she didn't bother. With a higher heart-rate, she sliced through the jars of any embalmed that ambushed her before they could land a strike.

The pace made her anxious of how much ability she was showing Su'Baar, but that was tossed aside in favour of the much greater concern; Lysyra knew of Nyxil's mutations. At least one of them.

No longer could she accept treading through this Trial at the Worshippers sluggish pace. She needed to reach the top and deal with Lysyra before the girl could tell her masters.

Even if it meant putting herself in the firing line of the micro-tank's cannon.

There was a crunch followed by a pop that announced the two were falling behind, but still close. Nyxil wasn't sure if she should keep the charade going with him. She trusted her own ability, and was sure things would get messy if he got caught up in Nyxil's attack on Lysyra. The girl was bound to say something. Then Nyxil would have two she needed to kill.

She didn't dismiss him immediately, because the thought of Su'Baar's machine blowing up Lysyra from a distance was very attractive.

When another flight of stairs came into sight, Nyxil didn't hesitate to leap up them four steps at a time. Reaching the top, the walls widened and the ceiling rose. No longer were they in a labyrinth of branching halls, but a grand chamber that stretched a hundred metres.

Yellow light filtered through a narrow crack in the ceiling, illuminating the tall embalmed standing before the next set of stairs. These insectoids were no mere servants. With copper armour and longswords, they posed an intimidating presence. Especially considering they were twice Nyxil's size.

The two bulky figures were a direct copy of the statues of the entrance hall. Or, more likely, the opposite. Huge, segmented arms looked strong enough to hold up the sky. As did their legs. Where copper didn't protect, a natural chitinous exoskeleton offered no weakness.

Each wore a helmet. It resembled a shell more than anything a human would wear. While the insectoids had eyes — wide, unblinking things — the copper design made no effort to free their vision. Instead, the only openings in the shell were wide gaps on the underside for mandibles and a pair of slits for antennae.

As Su'Baar arrived behind her — along with his noisy partner — both warrior insectoids stepped forward. Their motion was united; so ingrained through their being that they seemed more robotic than the machine behind Nyxil. Despite all the armour, both heavyset insectoids barely made a sound. Wax covered their bodies. It was like that of the slaves, but clean enough to see the sheen as light filtered through, and filled each gap between metal and chitin.

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They were embalmed, but much care had gone into their preservation.

Well, even if they were in a far better state then their slave equivalents, the method of embalming remained the same. Behind the two warriors, flanking the stairs were a pair of pedestals holding porcelain jars. Both were larger than the chained ones, and held far better artistic depictions along their ceramic face, but they were still clearly heart jars.

The tall embalmed halted halfway through the chamber, swords at the ready and eyeless faces holding their gaze steady on the two invaders, but not approaching.

Nyxil turned to tell Su'Baar to target the jars, but he was already ahead of her. Buddy's cannon erupted before she could cover her ears. As she tried to rub out the ringing, she noticed both pedestals remained untouched. What wasn't so untouched, was the wall to the side of the chamber.

One of the warrior embalmed pulled their outstretched blade back before their face, where its antennae twitched. The longsword had bent. It was only slight — a few degrees — but as the insectoid had battered the cannon shot off target, the projectile had warped the blade.

That was enough confirmation for Nyxil. No need to bother fighting these things if their weakness lay behind them.

The hulking insectoid's antennae stilled and it lurched forward the same time Nyxil bound into a sprint. She skirted around the embalmed as its thumping strides reverberated through the ground and up her legs, but the beast didn't bother with her. It had its target.

That was not to say she had a free run on the pair of hearts. As she ran past the first, its companion lumbered into her path; intent to stop her.

While Su'Baar was busy taking the brunt of the insectoid's charge, Nyxil slid beneath the swinging blade and ignored her Talent's demand to drive her rapier through a gap between armour and exoskeleton segments. The moment the embalmed realised it was going to miss her, one of its three digit hands released the blade and snapped out at her. Kicking off the ground, she rolled out of reach.

An instant later, Nyxil had her feet under her again and was sprinting for the jar. She didn't need to turn to feel the heavy footfalls of the insectoid giving chase. It would be too slow.

Nyxil didn't hesitate to drive her blade through the jar.

She expected some resistance — the slave embalmeds' jars were all harder than any normal porcelain — yet her rhythm shattered the jar with enough force that the pieces struck opposite walls before she could blink.

Click.

Even with a racing heart, Nyxil wasn't sure how she reacted in time. One moment, her blade was outstretched through the remains of the strangely heartless jar. The next, her back was folding over and her spines clattered against one another.

Her hands touched stone as an explosion of dust knocked her off balance. Earth struck her chest and she slid, disoriented. Nyxil wasn't sure what had happened, but the moment she heard the heavy thump besides her head, instincts ingrained after years of close calls had Pushy slip free from her robe and shunt her to the side.

And not too soon. The huge longsword of the embalmed struck stone within arm's reach of her head, shattering it and spreading fissures beneath her.

In an instant, she was on her feet and making distance. Pushy slipped back inside her robe. Nyxil's eyes drifted to the pedestal, where a thick cylinder of black stone now took its place.

A trap? Half the damn ceiling had fallen!

She bounced out of range as the embalmed moved in to bisect her. This one was still alive, but a glance to the Worshipper revealed that the other insectoid remained unharmed as well.

The jars were nothing but a ruse. Shown off in the open after Nyxil and Su'Baar had to fight through dozens of slaves that relied on them to survive. Were the preserved hearts of these warrior embalmed hidden somewhere else… or was the method to kill the smaller insectoids simply there to frame the trap?

A heavy twang rang through the hall as the bent blade slammed into Buddy's metal frame. The sound lasted only a moment before it was engulfed in the cannon's bang. One of the embalmed's arms was flung free. Despite the sudden lack of an arm, Su'Baar's opponent didn't slow down. It jerked its arm towards the boy, swinging the massive weapon in devastating speed.

Nyxil didn't have the luxury to watch longer, as her own insectoid attacked. She ducked the swing. It pivoted into a cross-guard blow that barely missed her temple as her flexibility was pushed to the limits.

Listening to her Talent, she allowed her body to roll forwards, positioning her blade to yank through the creature's leg joints before the roll was even half complete. There was a clang of metal on metal. Her arm was knocked outward, and she barely kept a hold of her rapier. The embalmed had managed to swing its massive blade around to block her dainty one with precision and timing she'd faced from none before. It's sword kept moving. While she only just got her feet under her again, the mass of copper fell on her again.

Her legs yearned to throw her away. Keep her out of range of the weapon that could kill her in a swing. But Nyxil's Talent said something different. It guided her to ever so slightly divert the weapon's path.

She did so, and the brunt of the blow buried the blade in stone, but the weight staggered her regardless. Off kilter, she couldn't follow through with the demands of her name. The embalmed's weapon struck again, and she leapt back as her nervous heart demanded.

As the insectoid straightened itself and reset its stance, Nyxil hardened her gaze. Both demands had been wrong; that of her heart, and Talent. She could have slipped past the weapon and struck while inside its guard. The first was solved easily enough; she slowed her heart. Sacrificing some of her reaction speed to suffocate that hesitance.

Dealing with her Talent was a bit more troubling. The few exchanges with this clearly exceptional swordsman revealed the current weaknesses of her additive. It could not predict enemy reactions, and the delay it caused between deciding to follow its guidance and the act itself. She shouldn't be surprised. Talents were a learning tool, after all. Not something to rely on in the heat of battle.

This fight, she needed to ignore its guidance entirely; rely on learned instinct.

The embalmed stood at the ready, antennae twitching. It waited for her to move. If all participants needed to defeat these to reach the next Trial, then Nyxil didn't imagine more than a couple succeeding. She glanced over to Su'Baar's fight, where his embalmed had grasped its severed arm and pressed it back into place.

Unless fighting them isn't the point.

The stairs to the next floor remained open and unblocked. Would these warriors follow them if they skipped the fight and ran onwards? Surely.

Nyxil raised her blade to the insectoid. She had no intent to run. How could she gain the strength to take on the cults if she ran from a challenge right before her?

Now the only question… how do you kill an embalmed without a heart jar?

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