Conspiracy abounded in the dark demesne of the Lord of Bones. From shadowed corners and hushed chambers, the debased freaks infiltrating the Ossein Basilica thought that they worked unseen. Yet, how could that be so when the revolutionary work of the Axiamati cult was overseen by one of the Sisters themselves, unbeknownst to them?


    The Wire-Witch softly exhaled as her cyber platform carried her through the Ossein Basilica. She was already tired of the pretensions of her station. Each step perfectly needled across the plates that constituted the floor, and the cyber platform’s flat surface remained level as it descended a flight of stairs and then turned to enter a skeletonised corridor. Her two mechanised iron warriors did not move with such grace in their escort, one ahead and one behind. Instead, they loped down the stairs with deliberate intent, scanning each corner and ceiling cavity with a sweep of sanguine light, their rifles raised.


    Beyond the iron warriors, ossein guardians kept vigil at each arching doorway of the main corridors. They bowed with her passage — bipedal, symmetrical, holy in form, a paragon of virtue approaching purity, just as she was designed. The Basilica, much the same, was carefully grown, pressed, and sculpted into shape centuries ago, a portion of the chaos of the city dominated by the Lord of Bones as a symbol of his power. Or, more precisely, the power of those sworn beneath him, together.


    Returning to the public eye, the Wire-Witch looked away from the freaks that lived in this place. However, in her path, two guardians led a filthy, eight-limbed freak through the Lord’s halls. They stopped before the Wire-Witch, bowing with respect. Then, shrieking from its vibrating hind limbs, the mutant threw itself down to its many knees in a gesture of subservience, daring not to raise its gaze towards the noble.


    Skull turning down, the Wire-Witch looked the freak over. With an unspoken command, she had her iron warriors grab it by its forelimbs and drag it mewling to standing again so that she could get a better look at it.


    Provoking the Axiamati required a level of cruelty, after all.


    “It is of the Lord’s subjects who emerged from the depths seeking to serve,” the guardian escorting the creature said, unprompted. The Wire-Witch fixed the servant speaking out of turn with a steely gaze.


    “Look at me,” the Wire-Witch commanded, crouching toward the mutant for a better look. The freak did so, towered over by the noble and her iron warriors, as alien to their bipedal forms as they were to its parasitic shape. Lacking a mouth, the freak touched its proboscis and then clasped its small hands together in supplication.


    “Are you vat-born?”


    Trembling, the freak touched hands to its proboscis again before striking its hind limbs together. Rubbing them back and forth, it produced a sharp, keening sound whilst it spat out communication pheromones from glands on either side of its squat head. Finally, it formed words from gestures with its hands and its proboscis. In three distinct languages, it said, “I am a child of the Vat-Mother.”


    The faceless, eyeless skull of the Wire-Witch bore down on the freak, speaking through grinding, chrome teeth. “Then you have betrayed my sister. Will you swear a solemn oath as a servant of the Lord?”


    It signalled the affirmative, trembling.


    So the Wire-Witch raised her right hand, placing it upon the shoulder of the genuflecting freak. The shock from even this light touch staggered it. However, it was not well-intentioned, and she squeezed its shoulder a bit too hard for comfort, titanium nails working against the skin. The soft illumination within the Basilica turned deathly pale, fitting for their high order.


    As the Wire-Witch let the silence draw on, the vat-born started to grovel beneath her, as if it would do anything just to survive the encounter. Then, as it began to weep, she released it and stood up once again.


    “Then I personally welcome you. May your flesh be purified through the crucible of your devotion,” the Wire-Witch intoned without enthusiasm, gesturing for the freak to rise. It did so, stunned, head bowed in subservience.


    “Get it out of my sight,” she then told its escort.


    The ossein guardians joined the mutant as it resumed the long procession deeper into the Basilica. All the way out of sight, the freak kept its mottled head bowed, filled with abject shame, as the Sister, with her pure form, averted her gaze from its passage in turn.


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    Two servants whispered at the far end of the corridor, eying the exchange with contempt. They departed before they thought they were seen.


    Focused anew, the Wire-Witch moved on, entering an audience chamber two halls removed and a level below the throne room. Its pale liveries and prestigious decorations had been removed, torn down quickly, and replaced by the cold machines dedicated to artificial life support and the analysis of still-living meat. With a silent command, her iron warriors barred the door, and the Wire-Witch joined a crowd, nearly two dozen in number, filling the chamber.


    Inside was the Chancellor, a throng of bone monks surrounding him. In the presence of the Lord’s loyal hands, the Wire-Witch expected to be given a heralded introduction immediately. Instead, however, they were focused on a grisly task indeed.


    A sizeable hosting table had been dressed with a cold plastic covering, and upon this rested a near-dead freak, air pumped down its throat and a series of arterial hoses connected to its body. It was not dead yet; for all intents and purposes, it was comatose and unaware of its own dissection.


    The crowd parted for the Wire-Witch’s entrance. Those bone monks who moved aside looked up to her with admiration and poorly concealed fear. Drawing to a halt beside the Chancellor, she folded her bare arms and nodded for them to continue.


    The still-living cadaver was being pulled apart. With wet pops, cartilage and sinew yielding, its thorax parted. The exoskeleton cracked beneath the manipulation of the three biomechanical arms of the bone monk examining it. The prosthetic arms emerged from its dark robes, an augmentation transplanted into his back. The monk’s long face peered down at the unconscious freak dispassionately, lenses flicking in front of its eyes.


    Gluts of biogel stemmed the bleeding and reduced the trauma. Syringes carefully extracted fluid from the freak’s organs. Stamping and cutting biopsy devices nicked at the living tissues within, all worked with an automaton’s precision. Chest cavity open, the nearly-dead freak’s lung inflated and deflated, pumping with the rhythm of a machine.


    “What is this?” the Wire-Witch asked, not removing her gaze from the macabre work.


    “A test of a biological weapon,” the Chancellor answered, fat eyes looking on keenly. “We are identifying the damage it will do upon the general population.”


    “Dangerous — for you — to bring it here.”


    “It is no threat to us, Least Lady,” the Chancellor muttered the diminutive term that the Wire-Witch had been burdened with since her genetic failure.


    The crowd stirred around them, uneasy with the tension between the Lord’s witch-bride and one of the heads of his court. Yet, most eyes remained upon the dissection as more tissue was cultivated. Their friction was not new, and her skull upturned, pleased that the Chancellor had a spine, after all.


    “How long have you been hiding this?” She asked.


    “Hiding, quaint. We are on the same side, lest you forget that,” the Chancellor said, his tone scathing. “Whilst you hide away and play with your little wrecks, doing whatever it is that you do, we continue to work for the good of all.”


    The Wire-Witch laughed, then tutted.


    “There is no need,” she said. “My sister will deal with him.”


    “Will she?” The Chancellor asked. Though their gazes had not yet met in the dark room, the macabre work ahead of them was already forgotten.


    “Your great Mother did not even deal with him, it seems,” the Chancellor observed, oily eyes narrowing. “And since we cannot count on her oh-so-glorious assistance, then we need to know how much damage will be done if we are forced to defend ourselves.”


    “You are a belligerent, little worm. Aren’t you?”


    “Come now. There is no need to lose your temper. We should both freely admit that it is all above our heads, as it were,” the Chancellor said, a smile playing at the edges of his voice. “Neither of us are really Gods, after all. Are we? You might even say that we’re only human.”


    One of the bone monks jerked with a fearful gasp but made every effort to crush down his response in a failed attempt to hide his eavesdropping. Slowly, the Wire-Witch turned her skeletal gaze to the wormlike creature at her side. She was met by a self-satisfied look and a spray of smug pheromones. She was about to speak when he preempted her and waxed with faux-contriteness.


    “Yes, I am a fool. We are obscene. We are corrupt. We are sinners. May our souls find Paradise and our flesh be purified,” the Chancellor said drolly, watching as disintegrating organs were lifted and cut from the body of the freak, examined, and returned with staples and gel.


    But then he turned to her.


    “Why don’t you go and prove me wrong, hmm? And whilst you do that, I will gather the oldest families. Perhaps they might have something that could help,” he concluded, looking directly at the Immortal’s creation, which was so thrust upon his Lord, a lover and a leash.


    “You know, I rather like you, even though you make it so difficult,” the Wire-Witch said quietly.


    The Chancellor folded his bloated hands together and chuckled. Attention briefly shifting to the sterile crew of bone-robed and exoskeleton-suited life support technicians, the Wire-Witch then turned and let herself be carried from the chamber, servants throwing themselves out from her path. After all, not all were given the same leeway as that blasphemous worm.