Voices. A flash of colour.


    “Is the Lord not the heir of the Pilgrim? Is this not his city?”


    Another flash. Elsewhere.


    “How could the Sisters challenge him? He’s their elder, returned.”


    No. There.


    “What of Sir Enhash and his men? What of Ohmax?”


    A pal eye turned, sunken into the desiccated city stock.


    The Ossein Basilica, long dead, still possessed a network. It still held that vital line of arteries and nerves, screaming in agony, bent to obey a Lord. Through them, through electric wires and fleshy impulses, ghost space could be touched, even here.


    It was said to be an impossible thing. The Pate Gardens were said to be murdered, excised from the rest of Acetyn, a gesture of strength, fortified against the Immortal and her daemons. However, this was not just the Lord of Bone’s demesne. It was made for the Wire-Witch, after all. It was her’s as well.


    What did it mean to be a God, to shape the world as they saw fit?


    Through a pal eye, sunken into the basilica, she watched. Two pale-clad humanoids — so certain they were alone — conspired in a locked armoury. The ranking servants kept hush their betrayal.


    “I must know their fate, Cartaxa,” the Voice whistled.


    “And how would you have me find out?” The old soldier asked, leaning against the wall as the herald paced.


    “Losing contact with them is not acceptable. How can we know what the Pilgrim wills of his children?”


    Cartaxa shook his armoured head, looking away.


    “If he wanted ought, he would have asked. He would have sent word.”


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    “Then what use is our cause?” The Voice’s own trembled, panic touching his weak and helpless form. A rising realisation that he had no control after all, despite working in secret for so long. It was out of his hands — if he had them, at least.


    “He is returned. You have seen the records. You have seen the messages,” Cartaxa grunted, looking back to him. “We can only hope it is enough. We can only hope we were right.”


    How could these debased freaks hope to challenge their betters? The Axiamati, having worked in secret for generations, had finally brought about their every goal. Through a plot of murder, intrigue, and subversion, they had finally found a way to supplant the Lord of Bones, who made their eidolons kneel. Now, they were realising that it meant nothing.


    Blinking away, the Wire-Witch disconnected from her network and stepped out of the basilica just in time to witness the redeployment of the Otz Garzed. She lingered at the top of the courtyard steps, by the weeping gates, to watch the massive war machine, forged of cold iron flesh and embedded with plates of star metal, take to the air.


    With no engines nor wings, it slowly turned, building beneath itself a tower — a spiral of translucent layers of hard light beneath itself. It then burned, terrible and hot, cladding itself in equally impossible post-physical field armour.


    So the Otz Garzed loomed over the Pate Gardens. Its five limbs, long ago replaced with wide-diametre cannons, turned forward in a wicked threat, a giant all but impervious to any threat that could rise in the city. Well, almost any threat should Trishek Hash play his part well.


    At its base, bone monks worked at handheld consoles connected to the tortured weapon with braided cables. They fumbled as they double-checked and triple-checked their inputs.


    The Wire-Witch did her best to restrain herself. Let them struggle — such matters were no longer her concern.


    It was so long ago that she built the beast, now. Otz Garzed was meant to be her proof-perfect that she was equal to the Vat-Mothers, to her sister in Acetyn, who sired the giant Golcothia as her own personal guardian and symbol of power.


    The Wire-Witch remembered well, trying to reconcile her uplifted brain matter with prosthetic memories, pushing the envelope of what she was allowed to do by her creator. Eventually, though, she acquiesced to the pain of her neural locks and set aside gene craft for the relics scavenged from the wastes beyond, those that fell from the sky.


    Despite it all, the Wire-Witch still believed this was an opportunity, not damnation, when she was given to the Lord of Bones. Thus, there was some hope in reclaiming those gifts of the stars.


    In her naivete, what better thing was there to engineer than a monster to defend her new home? Better these miracles are tamed, made to protect her and her own, rather than be wild and beyond control. That was what she once told herself. However, such platitudes didn’t soothe her anymore.


    Slowly, the Least Lady — Lady Djay, the Wire-Witch — turned her skull away from the Otz Garzed. Her cyber platform walked on, carrying her, together with her iron warrior entourage, departing the Ossein Basilica entirely.