So few understood the truth of this world. Yet, whilst the Wire-Witch was ignorant of many things — a fact that she was painfully reminded of each time she tried to walk shoulder to shoulder with the rotten and ancient entities that had carved out their own pieces of this planet for themselves — she had a gift. A strange thing, in this world of psychoses, saturated with freaks that could barely understand themselves, that she could see behind the veil.
With her sight, the Wire-Witch saw the world had long ago devoured her. These cities were an amalgam of disparate technologies, assembled to approximate a vast creature that had rejected its biology in the pursuit of perpetual motion. She saw the cities as cancerous masses that stole the forms of animals, the aspects of a people and culture, breaking them into grotesque caricatures. They were meat masses that dragged themselves along, bleeding and consuming everything in their path.
Her sister-clone had long ago become just another victim of Acetyn, sacrificed then swallowed whole and transformed into some hollow simulacrum of her bright-eyed former self. The parasites that swarmed the Vat-Mother — as much a part of the city as living entities by themselves — were just another facet of her prison.
When asked about their achievements, most of these parasites looked to the stars’ gifts and their base repurpose. They might profess these fallen artefacts as a divine gift or profane curse that would fall planet-side and change the world forever in their passing. Even the greatest of their minds suffered from this terrible affliction. They were obsessed with the preconception that greatness had to be stolen. As a result, most never dreamed of creating something for themselves. The Wire-Witch had convinced herself that she suffered from no such illusion.
Giants always towered above the helpless, dragging their steel bones inexorably, forcing themselves upon her — vast clanking predators, stalking eternity in search of domination. The parasites’ accreted carapaces together moved with the same groaning, unstoppable motion that the cities used to push their way across the land. On a large enough scale, they acted as one. They were only crude imitations of thought, vaguely aware of their own situation, enslaved by their biological and mental urges.
This plagued the Wire-Witch, her mind becoming increasingly unstable over a century spent in various degrees of isolation. In her time alone, she had grown calloused and prejudiced of any creature that could not see the world as she did.
This belief system was not just born from a lifetime of contending with the brutal and short-sighted predators that roamed the dark. The Wire-Witch knew the ancient and alien works that would fall from the stars all too well. She had spent her years learning their workings and operation, building upon the knowledge gifted to her by her creator.
This investment had reframed her entire understanding of the world she lived in — a view of the accomplishments of the so-called progenitors coloured by the nihilistic implications of their fate, for she knew the remnants of star metal were not detritus nor meagre cast-offs. Unthinkable destruction had been wrought upon the forebearers in an age of technological wonders, and it also remained an existential threat to the world. Whatever danger lurked in the dark of the cosmos that visited the end upon the progenitors must still be out there. Whatever force slaughtered humanity could come for them at any moment.
Despite their presumably gruesome end, humanity were true masters of technology, of that the Wire-Witch had no doubt. In her years of experimentation, she had catalogued the types of technology that fell from above. In time, she had noticed certain similarities between the interfaces of computer wreckages recovered from the sands beyond and the at-the-time poorly understood neural laces that most mutants grew within their skull cavities. It was a so-called universal augmentation possessed by nearly all who lived. The Wire-Witch discovered that compatibilities existed, a shared design language between the wreckage and the lace that could not have arisen by chance mutation. So she followed the trail, and her obsession turned to her own body.
Working with salvaged devices, the Wire-Witch discovered that, using arcane language taken from the digital vaults in these wrecks, her lace could be used to influence her bodily functions. Soon after, she used these devices to transmit data directly to and from her lace. This led to her being thrust into artificial experiences that felt more real than the physical world, sequestered deep in some of the recovered artefacts. The discovery led to her building a stronghold in the trailing city of Sestchek. There, she could delve into these cyber-worlds without interruption. It was all in an attempt to discover the nature of their predecessors. Unfortunately, she lost more time to these distractions than she dared to admit.
In truth, she would have been there right now if not for the threat posed by the reawakening of some insane and age-old threat. How she loathed this. To find herself again all but collared, bound to the destiny of her creator, who by all rights should be dealing with this situation herself.
The Wire-Witch felt the soft skin of the carpet underfoot. Its quivering under the bare sole of her feet brought her attention back to the present. Was it frightened? Perhaps it recognised her. She turned her skull around, looking at the courtiers and the monsters that filled the Vat-Mother’s throne room. To their credit, those musicians — ululating and singing, hidden in the mists — only stopped their performance momentarily before trying to hide it by changing to a different song.
Parasites pretending at greatness turned, the baroque and ostentatious fashions of their flesh swinging around them. It was ever at odds with the Wire-Witch’s nudity, dressed in nothing more than her coils and wires, which served their own practical function. She preferred to celebrate her body, holy and half-human as it was. Let them see. Let them covette her flesh.
Chrome teeth bared in the dark. Killers moved into the alcoves of the court. Even more profane than the Wire-Witch’s halls — where they at least knew peace and decorum, from time to time — she saw the veneer of civility thinner than the skin of their skirts. They salivated as if she was an outsider. A dream — that they could feast upon her. Hostile pheromones turned bitter in the air as the Wire-Witch advanced towards the altar of the Vat-Mother. Uncaring of protocol, she did not bow or sweep in deference. They were equals. More than that, only they knew the reality of this world after all these generations in the mire.
The Wire-Witch stood at the edge of that cumbersome table planted before her sister-clone and looked up to the trapped, mutated woman with her own suite of senses, some biological, some electronic.
“I am glad to see you well,” Djay whispered to her sister-clone.
There was an alien countenance to the Vat-Mother of Acetyn. Her head tipped. The milky dome over her skull hid whatever spark of life had once been there. The soft mask over her teeth twisted, red lips contorting into a frown.
“You have not been invited here, Witch,” a monster hissed from the court.
The Wire-Witch looked back over her shoulder towards him. Jhedothar the Lance leapt from an alcove, velvet cape billowing around his shoulders. The centaurian galloped astride into the centre of the court. Rather than the darker shades, touching umber, of most of the Vat-Mother’s guard, Jhedothar wore the crimson of his allegiance with bolts of gold cloth. It was his own personal standard, earned through conquest and war.
The Wire-Witch recognised the now-veteran killer — though she had not seen him since he was a whelp and still all too eager to please his betters. With a four-legged trot, he raised a hand and summoned the court’s warriors in his wake. The thugs and freaks who bore arms became emboldened by his grandiosity.
“Golcothia should never have allowed you entrance,” Jhedothar the Lance continued in his approach, lifting his infamous ruby-studded spear and pointing it at the Wire-Witch’s skull. “I shall have to remind you that you are not welcome, heresiarch.”
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“Golcothia knows his place,” the Wire-Witch spoke quietly, eyeless gaze fixed on that weapon.
At Jhedothar’s flanks, the freaks lopped and crawled, joining his advance. They gripped their brass rods and bone blades, ready. The Wire-Witch kept her head held high, holding her breath. She gave it until the very last moment when their limbs were tight, coiled, ready to strike and just out of reach.
Those cyber-vaults contained instructions. Sometimes, they detailed things of such complexity that the Wire-Witch could never even fathom their purpose, leaving her awash in a tide of information that seemed inescapable. Nevertheless, in those infinite digital depths, she would occasionally stumble across a subject she recognised. She might sometimes glance upon the completed forms of the wreckage recovered from the desert, wonders she could not even hope to approach. Even more occasionally, she found instructions on archaic and seemingly irrelevant schools of biology and medicine. They were disciplines dedicated to using and maintaining living body parts. There was a preoccupation amongst the progenitors to ensure that death and disease were forever overcome. It was an odd and divorced perspective for the Wire-Witch, as she and all around her were seemingly inured to these alleged pathogens and genetic diseases by virtue of their universal augmentations. There was more than that, though. Through their battle with death, they came to an understanding and through understanding control.
In studying these, the Wire-Witch noticed a commonality between herself, the freaks the city shed, and the information on humanity recovered from the stars. The Wire-Witch and the freaks native to her world had their DNA cleaned up, the noise removed, and functions made organised, all according to the formatting of these ancient instructions. Moreover, each cell of their bodies had been engineered to possess an organelle capable of producing targeted synthesising enzymes and another capable of conveying a representation of its genetic structure as an electrical signal on request. Much like the software of the stars, their base code could be read, and it could be written.
Since time immemorial, the freaks had known that their bodies were chimeric. The common parlance referring to these disparate portions of biology was ‘augs’. It was simple and known to all. But all this time, the parasites had missed the most fundamental truth of their nature. To the Wire-Witch, it was clear that they were all just as artificial as the wreckage that would fall from the stars.
And the Wire-Witch was the master of that technology.
A simple radio pulse was issued from the Wire-Witch’s skull, bright like an electromagnetic halo. It penetrated the local system through the neural laces that every freak present possessed. Through this vector, she injected them with a virus. Unfortunately, they had little to no meaningful digital immune system. So she commanded their laces to overwrite large portions of their autonomous systems and disable their augmentations. It was as simple as that.
They collapsed, limbs and necks contracting sharply, spines contorting to their absolute limits. Their joints cracked with the suddenness of their assault, and they gasped and croaked as their chests refused to breathe.
“Need I remind you who I am?” The Wire-Witch barked at the freaks, using the only language that they seemed to understand — pain. Then, pointedly, she cast her gaze around the chamber. The revellers had either stopped to stare or fled out of a sense of self-preservation. And right that they should flee. No matter who they were or how they felt about her, they were irrelevant if she wanted to visit her sister-clone.
Jhedothar groaned on the ground, struggling to his elbows. His flesh turned mottled and dark as the biomechanical augmentations died beneath his skin. Unlike the others who had dared to assault the Wire-Witch, he still had some fight in him. It was not enough. He struggled to lift his weapon, all his strength gone from his massive limbs. Bravado was not enough to overcome such a crippling force as this. Even as he gasped for breath, the Wire-Witch turned away again.
“Enough. Eye, I am here as a gesture of courtesy.” The Wire-Witch’s gaze returned to the Vat-Mother in her shelled prison. “You know who comes for my Lord-Husband’s seat.”
“I know who he is,” the Vat-Mother of Acetyn finally spoke, miserable and loathing, hanging from her position of sacred bondage. For a moment, their networks contested, flashes of information arcing between them with unthinkable precision. They could both kill with a thought. But their defences were both strong, and their probing proved evident they were each untouchable in the electronic realm.
“Then I have to know, are you capable of recreating the weapon that our creator used to defeat him?”
“If I was, would I share it with you?”
“No,” the Wire-Witch looked up to her sister-clone. Without a face, she could not express the turmoil within her. “I ask that you do not. I beg you do not.”
“Why?” The suspicion poured from the mouth of the Vat-Mother. “Why the sudden concern, Djay?”
Those few courtiers who remained stared, even as they cowered. It was unheard of to see two of the Sisters themselves speaking to each other so directly, face to face. The mention of the Pilgrim, too, meant that this was a day of days.
“He will kill you if you interfere.”
“And what else?” The Vat-Mother leaned forward, head tipping to one side, body swinging in its prison. She pressed what passed as her masked face through the thin curtains of her baldaquin, taking a deep breath of the air beyond it. “What game do you play now?”
The Wire-Witch looked down to the ground momentarily. How she wished she didn’t have a game. How she wished this wasn’t a ploy. How she wished she could make Eye believe she cared as deeply as she still did, despite every reason and every ounce of self-preservation. She did care. But it wasn’t about that, now.
“I have lured them out. The Axiamati. The Pilgrim.”
“... Ah...” The Vat-Mother smiled in realisation.
“I acted the blind fool and allowed it.”
“Then you are thrice-traitor, dear sister. Does your darling husband know you are sacrificing him?”
“Not yet.”
The Wire-Witch looked up to the Vat-Mother. She seemed to sink with shame beneath her older sister’s immensity.
“You hope the Pilgrim can free you from Mother’s control. You want to play the innocent victim in all this. Am I right?”
Around them, the remaining few threw themselves down to their hands and knees, babbling at her mere reference. The Vat-Mother’s Mother, the Creator; the only surviving progenitor, the Immortal. They shrieked and grunted feverishly at the blasphemy implied here.
“We can’t go on like this, Eye,” the Wire-Witch whispered through her chrome teeth.
“Who else have you pulled into your scheme?” The Wire-Witch bore down on her. “Tell me.”
One of the hardest things to learn was to truly understand herself. Most creatures, even intelligent ones, did not understand themselves fully. The Wire-Witch tried her best to get by in a twisted world where technology — the mired memory of the past and the great dream of the future — became a grotesque parody of evolution and the nature of life itself.
Nevertheless, she held onto her vision of how things were and how they could be again, refusing to give up hope. She knew this would be her only brilliant work, desperately shoring up the ruins of all that was. After all, without hope, life has no meaning, and all will be washed away.
Silence held between the two sisters. Neither wished to be the first to break it. But the Wire-Witch surrendered first, lowering her head and letting loose a sigh.
“No-one.”
“And you expect me to remain complicit with your betrayal? Perhaps you want me to stand by meekly whilst you plot to kill our Mother, next?”
“Look at what she did to us, Eye. We deserve better. You deserve better.”
Their gazes met again, eyeless, faceless. Only the Vat-Mother’s prosthetic lips twisting into a scowl revealed the gulfs of pain between the two sisters.
“How dare you?” The Vat-Mother whispered in return, trembling with quiet rage. “Did I ask for your help or your judgement?”
The Wire-Witch broke away. She pushed down her despair. In her rush, she was nearly out of the throne room when her sister screamed after her.
“You do not get to decide for me!” Eye howled out. “I am my own master, now! I am the Vat-Mother! I am a Goddess! This city is mine!”
The Wire-Witch wanted to look back, to say something, perhaps wave or find a way to console her. It was futile, though. It was futile, and she was afraid. She then returned to the mists that filled the palace, disappearing into the darkness in which she was so at home, and through them, she left the Vat-Mother’s demesne never to return. It was the last time that she ever saw her sister in the flesh. The anger and the bitter contempt in her voice haunted her evermore.