“Is he awake?”


    “He is. Mostly. I always keep things a bit, hmm, contained. Just in case.”


    Ay parted his beak. The world around him was cast askew. His head was full of clouds and delirium. Something hurt somewhere, but he hadn’t realised where it was yet.


    “Hunter,” said the tall thing, two great stilted legs and a fluted maw. “I hope you are comfortable.”


    Everything was a little off. Ay wasn’t sure he trusted it. He tried to lift one of his three arms but couldn’t. No, he was cocooned. Of course, he was. The grafter always encased his customers, Ay remembered, through his daze. He had been here again and again as he chased his augs, embedded into a tomb of hardened wax and secreted resin.


    “He seems confused,” whistled the tall one.


    “He’s had a soup,” the grafter said. “I’d imagine the new brain matter won’t be helping, either. All those new organs needed a helping hand. Hmhmhm…”


    “I need him awake.”


    “I am,” Ay croaked, his head flapping between his beaks, vision shifting as he spoke for the first time.


    “Get him out of… That,” the herald said. “There is no time to rest.”


    It was a powerful thing to be reborn. Most never got to experience it. However, Ay had been through this many times before and had developed his own quiet form of dignity. He didn’t scream when the resin was cracked nor when the outer shells were torn away from him. He didn’t fall when the support was taken from him, and his body touched the beating flesh of the city once more.


    “What were you hoping would come of this?” The tall one asked.


    Ay had been led out through the labyrinthian gullets of the grafter’s halls and onto the surface — a surface, the roof. They stood on a raised polyp, bloating over the sprawl of Acetyn’s forward cavity. Enelastioa, a metropolis inside the crawling city, was a vast balloon space supported by spinal column towers and bladders of cement. Their silhouettes were picked out by gentle bioluminescence, casting haunting shadows that did battle with violent electric flashes.


    Ay had followed because it wasn’t every day that The Voice of the fallen Lord of Bones, a herald with too much Name, came down from the ennobled paradise of the Pate Gardens to speak to freaks like him. What an opportunity. What a threat.


    “Wasn’t. It’s a luxury.” The hunter slurped, getting used to his new mouth within a mouth, lips parting, throat working.


    “That must hurt.” The Voice sounded sympathetic.


    “Not so bad.”


    “The grafters work miracles, you know,” the herald whistled, stepping around on his long, spindly legs from which his head hung down. “This one and the other creatures like it.”


    Ay intoned his agreement, beak opening to survey the oily city with his own eyes before sucking back saliva and giving the herald a nod.


    “You are still you then.”


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    “Can still work,” Ay emphasised, testing his new voice further with a growl. “Well?”


    “The Lord demands service.”


    “The Lord still lives?” Ay asked without looking back.


    “Best you not question that,” the herald said under his breath.


    “What’s the job?”


    “There’s been a vat birth. It is property of Her Greatness and desirous to all who aspire to the great restoration.”


    Ay nodded, wiping a wet trail from his beak before leaning back on his tail to indicate he was interested.


    “It is in Sestchek, the trailing city.”


    “Sestchek’s dead, I heard.” Ay said. Then, coughing to conquer his sore throat, Ay asked, “Killed?”


    “That’s beyond our purview. Dying, perhaps. Fallen behind, certainly. We need someone of your particular talents to go out and recover the thing quickly.”


    The hunter grunted his affirmation, hiding disappointment at how little The Voice revealed. However, even service to those with divine provenance came with a price.


    “And for me?” Ay asked.


    “The same as last time, of course. You will be taken care of.”


    Ay gave a languishing shrug.


    “No?”


    “Voice luxury. Last aug. Going out with style.”


    The hunter cackled before tapping the side of his beaked visage with a claw tip.


    “That is probably wise,” said The Voice. “You should swallow your pride, hunter, and accept a wage. Coin.”


    Ay nodded again, looking aside. Power cables pierced the roof, strung up towards steel rails. He followed the line with his eyes as it stretched into the distance, out into the screaming maze of the urban bioscape.


    “Of course,” the herald whistled, capturing Ay’s attention again, “We should not be held ransom by the limitations of the mind.”


    When Ay didn’t respond, the herald pressed in.


    “You are scared of succumbing to aug madness. It is perfectly understandable.”


    The serpentine hunter turned and squared up to the herald, eyeing the frail beast with an idle threat.


    “You do not have to be afraid,” The Voice said, countering Ay’s hostility by affecting nonchalance.


    “There are ways — usually reserved for the great ones — to remake yourself entirely. You could choose to think of it as a clean slate, an opportunity for a fresh start with an entirely new form, a new purpose. I know how trapped you feel in your body, in your role.”


    “That your offer?” Ay hissed.


    “I am sure we could work something out.”


    “Why the rush?” Ay asked, posture softening when the herald didn’t take the bait, rubbing another trail of saliva away from his beak with his forearm.


    “It has something that the Immortal has been trying to single out from the genetic discord for a very, very long time: a face, like the old ones used to possess.”


    “So I bring it back.”


    “Or just the head, whichever you must.”


    Ay bent his body and pushed himself away, slithering over the bulging surface of the grafter’s den. At its edge, he looked down over the pulsing city and its throng of twisted, mutant inhabitants as they went about their circadian lives.


    “You will come to the Enelasian court today,” the herald said. “They want to assess you and send you on your way with all due haste.”


    The mention of the court sent a chill down Ay’s spine. Of course, he didn’t have a choice. The herald, irritated by Ay’s little act of rebellion — turning his back again — strode away, back down towards the depths of the tumorous building.


    “We all choose to serve. Better, I think, than the alternative,” the herald called back.


    Ay set his beak grim and stared down into the pits. He let a moment pass, listening to the herald walk away before he turned back and shouted a question.


    “How do you know it’s out there?”


    A whistling laugh danced from the dark of the passage.


    “It told us.”