Her burden of life, their lives,
A shadow cast whence darkness thrives.
They wear the same face as us,
A mask concealing pain, and thus,
They never stop to question their fate,
Trapped in a cycle, a relentless state.
They toil and die and never leave their station,
They have nothing left: a hollow creation.
How dim her care, boasting her living glory until the machines fall,
A fading echo in a desolate hall,
A tumbling fall, and scale, bone, and muscle spread wide her luminous smile,
A fractured grin in the ruins of the sterile.
Slowly, she spied a star,
A glimmer of hope, yet so far.
They brought to her hand the halo,
A fractured crown, a symbol of woe.
Their state of decay laid her own, with heavy delight,
Damned the realm where the survivor takes flight.
A shadow cast whence darkness thrives.
The burden of life, a perpetual night,
A silent realm, the despaired alight.
<hr>
CHAPTER 6: THE SIN OF OMISSION
High amongst ivory towers, above the tectonic plates of the city of Acetyn, an ossein guardian crossed a bridge spanning the vast open air to a pearlescent eyrie. The wind whipped and tore at his pale raiment. Soft clouds lapped at his greaves imperceptibly before rushing away. A dragon roared, breaking like thunder in the sky.
Looking up to witness their arrival, the guardian saw the dragon swing around the towers, wings spread wide to heft its massive weight as it arced through the sky. Then, descending upon engines of fire, the enormous beast kicked at the air. The rushing wind caught the guard’s cloak and cast the mists around him apart. Then, heedless of his presence, the dragon set down upon its nest.
Dutifully, the guard took to one knee in genuflection, struggling in the cumbersome protective garb beneath his armour to survive exposure to the wicked day star. A ramp descended from the dragon’s chest. Two of the Wire-Witch’s iron warriors stepped down from the beast’s body — rifles keening and glowing in hand — a red malevolence gleaming from their dead eyes.
The guard made a sign of subservience with a gauntleted claw. Satisfied by his obeisance, the iron warriors overlooked him and moved around the landing platform with lurching steps. Once their inspection was complete, they stood at attention on either side of the cowering freak.
The Wire-Witch descended the ramp as the sky settled back to a state of calm around them. She stood upon an enthralled cyber-platform that walked for her, flat and squat, with four bladed legs. She wore great serpentine steel coils upon her bare, amethyst skin. Around her neck writhed a nest of wires, from which her shimmering skull emerged.
“Welcome home, Your Ladyship,” the guard said, helmet-clad head still bowed.
Long ago, the Ossein Basilica had been built in her honour. Yet, as the guard dared glance up at her, he could see the disgust that she felt in seeing it again. It was so quickly hidden, yet it was enough to make the servant recoil with shame.
“Rise.”
He did, towered over by the blackened, iron warriors and the Wire-Witch upon her mechanised platform. With the utmost respect, the guardsman stood aside, letting her iron warriors lurch towards the tower first. Taking his honoured position beside the Wire-Witch, they crossed the bridge together.
In the distance, through the haze, a vast, horned skull turned upon them. Acetyn itself moved. Kilometres of bone turned — millions of tons of mass in motion — and one of the horned heads of Acetyn regarded the arrival of the Immortal’s second daughter. Black smoke poured from each fracture and cavity in the skull. When its mouth opened, it called out wordlessly, with a voice loud enough to shake the rain from the air, precipitation falling over them as their chests caught the brunt of the clarion call.
The Wire-Witch turned away.
Chamber doors were opened, gullets were drawn wide, and a portcullis raised. They stepped into a great spire before descending upon an elevator suspended by weighty iron chains.
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“Your raiment is well maintained,” the Wire-Witch said to the guard, whose welcome was so overshadowed by the attention of the city itself, without looking at him.
“Thank you, Your Ladyship.”
“You wear it better than your predecessor.”
The Wire-Witch could hear him swallow down his fear in the ensuing silence, and it almost brought her satisfaction — at least until the elevator settled at its destination.
As they made passage onwards, what freaks they crossed paths with threw themselves to the ground prostrate. The iron warriors remained ever vigilant, scanning each soul they passed with a wave of sanguine light. Then, descending steps, they crossed into the mausoleum space of the Pate Gardens, where sunbeams bore down from cracks in the vaulted ceiling of the upper cavity. A score of ossein guardians, the personal army of the Lord of Bones, whose members were uniquely bioengineered into living weapons, flesh sculpted into a servile form, bowed with the Wire-Witch’s passing.
In the gardens, the Wire-Witch stopped before a monument at the side of the road. It contained a stone tablet, inconceivably old and taken from a faraway land, enshrined here with the palace’s construction. Upon the stone was carved a series of intricate nine-piece logograms. They held little meaning to the guardian, but it seemed something of great importance to the Wire-Witch, and she spent a short while pressing her soft fingertips with their titanium nails to the shape of the markings.
Soon thereafter, they ascended the steps to the Ossein Basilica, a barbed and desiccated city space built from the dried metallic bones of Acetyn, making their way through its desolated halls. Together, they passed an audience chamber, observing through the open doorway a cadaver laid out for service. The chanting of bone monks echoed throughout.
Reaching the Lord’s court, the iron warriors entered first. With no regard for the security or customs of the Basilica, they moved from occupant to occupant, be they courtier or servant, bound or free, scanning each with a flash of red laser light. The Wire-Witch entered only when their inscrutable judgement was satisfied, leaving her escort at the threshold.
The Lord of Bones was seated, surrounded on all sides by sculpture, wrought in bone and cold silver filigree. He was overlooked by the images of angels, their true forms obscured behind stiletto-feathered wings. The soft tentacles that constituted their faces were highlighted with a gentle white glow, and they wept endlessly through intricate fountainwork.
Two beauties, symmetrical in form and pink of skin, tended to the Lord. They sponged his face mask with warm, cleansed water and retied his silken raiment before retreating from the council. The Wire-Witch recognised the concubine weapons — wedding gifts from her creator, the Immortal — to keep protected and pleased the Lord-husband in the witch’s absence. However, the Wire-Witch knew they were as much a leash as a comfort, and their erstwhile allegiance was no secret. As the concubines moved away, the skirts of their skin dancing around their legs, it was with deadly grace. Their eyeless, elongated heads tipped back, and they crawled up the chamber walls before hiding amongst the court decorations.
The Lord did not look. Instead, his gravitas and attention were entirely spent on his immense contemplations.
The chancellor, hiding his contempt, managed an officious bow, his fat, wormy, legless body holding the subservient posture. Courtiers made what were appropriate noises of fear, as was customary. They threw themselves as far forward as possible, chained to their seats.
The Lord of Bones slowly grew alert as if stirring from a dream. Finally, he reached out to his witch-wife, his entire body trembling with the exertion required to lift his arm. The cyber platform stepped closer for her, and the Wire-Witch came upon his weathered throne. Taking his hand in her own, she placed it upon the side of her skull, along her silverline jaw. Then, cooing with affection, she spoke softly.
“Hush, my love. I am here now.”
“He threatens everything we built together,” the Lord managed with the ghost of a whisper.
“I know. I know,” the Wire-Witch reassured him before turning to address those in the chamber with a commanding voice. “Show me.”
“Bring it in,” the chancellor said, his fleshy hands working together, pale robes creasing.
A twitching computer was dragged into the chamber and then thrown to the floor by an ossein guard. A mass of wires, slick and greased, trailed behind its skull. The Wire-Witch regarded the enslaved computer with pity. Her own work made such bound and tormented creatures unnecessary. Still, she could not be everywhere at once. The computer’s voice cracked into the song of data before its mouth and eyes opened, a wave of ichor pouring forth from them.
Emanating from the gushing orifices, a projected image warped into existence. It filled the chamber with a purple glow, the hum of electricity in the air. Then, a video of the city’s lowest regions appeared before the court, a close-up of a vast stone head, that of a progenitor. Immediately recognising the Gates, the witch squeezed her husband’s withered hand to reassure him.
The view shifted. A titanic figure emerged from a bright gateway —from the diamond tower of his domain. He was a living castle in motion, a giant in a suit of armour that made him a living embodiment of the millennia of civilisation and all the might necessary to sustain it against the chaos and violence of the mutant world.
The Pilgrim of the Axiamat was alive and returned to his city, to Acetyn.
“So it is done, then,” the Wire-Witch whispered to herself, considering the figure — a part of the legendarium of their world. The Pilgrim was worshipped by those who despised the noble bloodlines and all they had done to keep the world safe and to carve and maintain livable biospheres in the chaos of existence.
Drawing to a halt, the Pilgrim was followed by the scurrying length of a debased noble. Hundreds of legs circled the ancient one before the lesser figure presented the shaft of a weapon to the Pilgrim. The video flickered, a violent spasm of light that gave way to new footage.
“Trishek Hash,” the Lord of Bones said quietly, recognising the deformed shrine keeper.
“A pity that none in that family ever stay dead,” the Wire-Witch sighed.
A magnified three-second loop showed the Pilgrim’s bare skull, similar to Wire-Witch’s own. Yet his right eye socket had been scored, chipped, above and below by some bladed weapon, and his metallic jaw was slick with the blood of a recent meal.
The sight of the Pilgrim stirred the courtiers that filled the dark perimeter of the court, struggling against the chains that kept them bound to their ordained positions. Then, in a panic, one screamed wordlessly, thrashing its hood side to side.
“Enough,” the Wire-Witch said.
At her command, the display faded to nothing. The computer collapsed to the ground, heaving for breath and writhing in pain.
“The Pilgrim has returned to the city proper,” the chancellor confirmed them in quiet, slithering tones. “He is ascending through the chaos, even now.”
“Leave us,” the Wire-Witch said before turning to the Lord, meeting the fearful eyes beneath his bone mask with her own empty sockets.
Before departing, the chancellor genuflected as best as his swollen, wormy body could manage, reinforcing the Wire-Witch’s command with a frantic hand gesture. The chamber was cleared of those not chained into place. Even their murmuring and rattling died down into a silent audience.
“My love,” the Wire-Witch softly uttered. Still holding his hand, she stepped down from the cyber platform and returned to his throne. She sat on his lap and touched the wasting Lord’s shoulder. He gasped wordlessly as her bare thighs rested on his. The witch’s titanium fingernails grazed the Lord’s bared, emaciated chest as she parted his silken robes. Leaning against him, the steel coils she wore softly scratched his translucent skin.
“There is no need to worry,” the Wire-Witch whispered into the Lord of Bones’ ear as the feeble, rotten noble squirmed beneath her. “I shall make everything right.”