The holographic image of the Immortal vanished, and the Pilgrim laughed at her command, his mocking voice reverberating through the Ossein Basilica, thumping off of stone and bone alike. Yet Djay barely heard him.
Instead, some cold consciousness penetrated her network, seizing her entirety. Locks lifted. Signals flashed out. Responses came in quickly — more quickly than she could decipher. Her limbs shuddered and convulsed, a gasp escaping her as she seized and fell onto her side. Through the pain, Djay realised she was being used as a proxy, a relay for some weaponised signal deployed against the Pilgrim. Script flashed — burning hot behind her eyes — as a daemon settled into her lace and crept out its digital spider legs to touch the systems around her.
It had all been a show. Djay held no power here. She had no say in the matter. She would be made to fight to the death for her mother’s vainglory and to keep the myth she had built alive.
At the head table, the Iron Warriors lurched to life. Flashing red from their silverline skulls, they scanned the Pilgrim and raised their weapons as he turned his visor to meet them. Bright light emanated from the barrels of their guns, and flashes of charged particles snapped out, setting fire to the air and impacting the Pilgrim’s titanium armour in a shower of sparks, blindingly bright. Taken off guard by the sudden violence and the alien weaponry, the Pilgrim shielded his helmet with his armoured arm. No sooner was he put on the defensive than the bladed legs of the Wire-Witch’s cyber platform lunged at him from behind. Locking its sharp legs around his neck, its servos and hydraulic rams strained tight, and one of the sharp blades began to stab at his neck in an attempt to penetrate gaps in the armour.
The ancient master was not so easily overcome, however. His massive gauntlet grabbed the cyber platform from around his shoulders. Crushing it in his unstoppable grip, he hurled the wreckage at one of the Iron Warriors, which broke under the massive impact.
Thunder shook the air once again, kicking up dust and ash spilling in from outside the hall. Matching the cacophony, the Pilgrim raised his left fist and fired his cannon. Multiple rounds struck the second iron warrior, and its upper body exploded into a shower of metallic debris. Exposed power cells flashed hot and then ignited with the touch of air. As the remains of the mechanical custodians fell around him, the Lord of Bones turned his mask away, barely flinching. His concubines, however, snarled. With sharp teeth exposed, they crawled onto the table. They lopped around the Lord of Bones, hissing both defensively and possessively.
A roaring cry. The Pilgrim looked away from the concubine weapons long enough to witness the Damnation of Cruiros entering the battle. The massive beast threw himself out of the crowds, inspired by the will of his Goddess, and stamped forward, talons raking the cold floor. Then, raising his axe over his horned head, the Damnation brought it down in a heavy blow. The Pilgrim blocked the strike by hooking the deactivated shaft of his glaive against the weapon’s throat, just beneath its snarling, chain-biting head.
“That’s more like it!” The Pilgrim cheered before shunting his weight through his arm, his massive armour and cybernetically enhanced body behind it. He forced the Damnation back one step, then two, before flexing his arm and sending the beast falling back in a staggering display of strength.
Using the distance between them, the Pilgrim raised his left gauntlet to aim the cannon at the Damnation. He was stopped, however, when Abstrek Hash dashed in, seizing the ancient master’s forearm in a biomechanical grip that sparked and lashed with barely-contained electrical charge. Now, the Pilgrim turned to face the second commander, dressed in the azure and sable hues of a dead royal line. They pitted their strength against each other, leaning in, exoskeletons and bioaugmentations straining, bulging with raw force. The old shell of the floor scratched then cracked under their heavy footholds as they shunted each other back and forth, gaining only centimetres as they tested one another.
A sudden blow struck the Pilgrim in the back as he vied with the scion of Hash. The Damnation of Cruiros bit into the joints upon the Pilgrim’s flank with his roaring axe. Still, the Pilgrim’s artefact armour held fast, and the weapon’s teeth screamed as they found no purchase. Grunting, the Pilgrim swung his free arm. The Damnation ducked his massive body under his giant opponent’s swing, the deactivated glaive passing just over his horns. Now the beast pounced, seizing the Pilgrim’s right arm with all four of his own, using the shaft of his axe to lock it against his carapace.
Now, both generals pushed with all their might. Each with a vice-like grip on one of the Pilgrim’s arms, they forced him back one entire step.
A snide laugh. The ancient master locked his knee. The ground shattered as his heel dug deep. Trying to catch the Pilgrim off guard, the Damnation opened his maw. The beast sprayed two jets of volatile chemicals from auged glands, the mixtures turning hypergolic and igniting in a stream of fiery breath, engulfing the Pilgrim’s entire head in molten ruin.
The Pilgrim relented another step back, a bassy, crackling hiss escaping his helmet. Through the fire, only the beam of his laser belied a sudden shake of his head before he roared and threw the commanders away in a sudden fit of rage. They fell back, cast off effortlessly as the Pilgrim ended his games. Still, they both took precarious and vaulting steps aside, narrowly but deliberately avoiding trampling upon the Wire-Witch.
As the chemical fire burned out, the Pilgrim growled and leaned forward. He regarded the Wire-Witch as she stood up, her body language contorted and alien, a form worn by an entity that was not used to the humanoid shape. As she stood, a hundred Ossein guardians reinforced the trio of the Wire-Witch, Abstrek Hash, and the Damnation of Cruiros, their lances charged and raised.
“Clever,” the Pilgrim boomed as he realised it was all a manoeuvre just to get him out of reach of the Witch. “But not enough.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” Abstrek said, catching his breath and widening his footing.
In rebuttal, the Pilgrim raised his left arm, brandishing the cannon built into it — just as the Wire-Witch’s armoured crawler exploded into the hall. The massive vehicle bounced over the rubble, and the corpse of Otz Garzed before lashing out and seizing the Pilgrim from behind with a pneumatic-driven limb. It tore him out of the hall and back into the thunderous dark beyond.
Both commanders charged, their armed forces following suit, crossing the threshold of ruin and pursuing the Pilgrim into the Pate Gardens. The Wire-Witch, however, staggered and lurched along, her legs not quite moving correctly, with steps that didn’t fit her skeletal structure. As she reached the fallen stone and bone that demarked the hole in the wall, she was intercepted by their chancellor’s panicked, wormy form.
“Your Ladyship,” he wheezed. “Djay. Do not go out there. Please, I—”
The thing that wore the Wire-Witch turned to face him, and its silence made him falter. Her head tipped as the thing inside it inspected the spineless house servant. Overcome, he swallowed nervously, oily perspiration dripping down his face before his body suddenly seized under digital invasion. The chancellor screamed as his body twisted against his will, his few limbs lashing out, then pulling tight. Then, crying wordlessly, his hands produced a key from his raiment, which he used to unlock the Wire-Witch’s bound wrists before he dropped to the ground.
Giving his ravaged and contorted body only brief regard, the Wire-Witch’s body took lurching, barefooted steps onto the rubble. The soles of her bare feet cut by sharp and jagged stones, she made her way up and over into the Pate Gardens just in time to witness the actual battle.
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Shafts of light broke their way into the vast chamber. Above, the roaring form of the Wire-Witch’s great dragon drove its head into the grand vault, shattering its ceiling further with each successive strike. Then, as it shunted its body further into the city, its wings and engines tore slabs of stone and concrete apart, which fell down onto the mausoleum space below, dragging down with them tumulting clouds of ash and dust. Its invasion cut sharp the burning sunlight, invading the depths, and its engines roared as it forced passage down into the city.
In the gardens themselves, calamity: The Wire-Witch’s armoured walker had already been torn limb from limb, and its body was broken in two as the enraged Pilgrim used his mighty gauntlets to forcefully dismantle the machine from the inside out. The sharp crack and flash of lance fire rang out a hundredfold as an army surrounded their adversary and let loose their armaments. Flechettes glanced off the ancient master and embedded themselves hot and bright in the ground and the vehicle’s chassis that he was still tempestuously eradicating.
When the dragon finally broke through, it was enough to attract the Pilgrim’s notice. Riding its engines down into the gardens, it descended on a column of shock diamonds that ripped up the tombs and mausoleums that filled the vast open space.
Directed by the daemon in digital space, the flying machine circled the Pilgrim and let loose its mounted guns. Thousands of rounds blasted out of it in a minute, tearing up the surroundings but accomplishing little more than scoring the Pilgrim’s weighty plated armour. Two lancing missiles broke off from its wings, lashing out. However, sharp laser light from the Pilgrim’s helmet made the missiles spiral in the air and explode early. The metal remnants of the walker were still blasted out in all directions from the strike, casting up a cloud of rubble and debris high into the air. Redoubling its rage, the dragon fired a dozen other winding projectiles from its back. They snaked all around before exploding over the column of destruction, casting down bright white phosphorus, which burned wicked hot in a wave of infernal death.
Still, the gunfire continued, ripping up the area now filled with a cloud of thick white smoke. However, the smoke turned crimson from a terrible light cast within. A trio of cannon shots lashed out of the smoke in quick succession, striking the dragon in the side and making it turn in the air. The rounds struck the fuselage of the dragon and then exploded into bright, hot metal showers. As it did so, the gleaming hardlight glaive flashed out, extending impossibly over fifty metres to carve the flying machine out of the air before retracting back into the cover of the smoke.
The dragon entered a flat spin, out of control. It rapidly lost its altitude and collided with the upper reaches of the Ossein Basilica. A portion of the high structure collapsed — spilling its fractured skeleton downwards, burning. Still, its bioengineered guardians continued their assault, firing from all directions down into the gardens. From his cratered position, the emerald laser of the ancient master turned this way and that, beaming out from the choking phosphorus smoke. In its wake, rounds fired out, finding the groups of the pale warriors in their cover. Explosions from the munitions cast them spinning apart, and those who were not killed broke from cover and began to flee.
When the Pilgrim emerged from the smoke, it was with an arrogant stride, his wicked glaive reactivated. The bravest Ossein guardians, who had not yet begun to flee, struck him with a salvo of lance fire. He responded in kind, firing true. The explosions from his cannon rounds penetrated the rubbled remains of the garden’s tombs, used as cover, and levelled the makeshift fortifications in moments.
This time, when the Damnation of Cruiros dared charge him, the Pilgrim did not play with his food. Instead, the roaring beast heaved his axe with all his might, only for the ancient master to deftly step to one side. He punched the monster in the torso with enough force to collapse his carapace and pulverise the organs within. The Pilgrim continued his stride as the Damnation collapsed and writhed on the ground, his six limbs struggling to clutch at his own body, not yet realising that he was already dead.
Abstrek Hash lasted only moments longer. In an attempt to intercept the Pilgrim as he climbed back into the collapsing Basilica, the commander attracted his attention by firing a simple lance into the back of his now battle-scarred armour. Turned upon, the two collided. Abstrek’s biomechanical fist immediately gripped the Pilgrim’s glaive. Again, they tested their strength. This time, however, the ancient master did not indulge the ambitious neonate. Instead, Abstrek was pressed down into the rubble until his legs gave way with a pained roar.
“Damn you!” Abstrek hissed through his teeth.
“Tell me why you give your life for this fallen order,” the Pilgrim said, leaning over his adversary.
“I came to deliver justice—”
“Then you were born a millennium too late,” the Pilgrim rumbled before tearing Abstrek’s right arm from its socket. Casting aside the augmented limb in a tide of blood, the Pilgrim then delivered a massive kick to the commander’s chest, sending him crashing back down the rocky incline with tremendous force. Hitting the debris hard, more of the structure collapsed upon Abstrek, burying him.
The Pilgrim was stepping back over the rubble and into the hall when the thing that wore the Wire-Witch lunged at him. He caught her skull between his thumb and two fingers, lifting her off of the ground even as she snarled and lashed out at him with long, titanium nails and feverish limbs. Ignoring her thrashing, his laser gaze turned ahead once more, and he carried the snarling woman back inside.
“Let us see what humanity you actually possess,” the Pilgrim said, voice once again echoing through the hall.
The ancient master approached the head table, where the two concubine weapons closely kept the Lord of Bones. The Hand of Zolgomere, who had thus far avoided the engagement, stalked closely with needle-like blades extending from his right arm. Those Ossein guardians, still alive within the hall, nervously stepped back, weapons barely raised.
The Wire-Witched stopped struggling, falling limp in the Pilgrim’s grip with a guttural groan. He held her up to face the Immortal as the computers sang, and the hologram flickered and returned. She frowned, looking down upon them both, eyes dark.
“End this illusion,” the Pilgrim commanded the Immortal. “Show them what you really are. Disavow yourself, or I shall consume your precious gene stock.”
The Pilgrim lightly squeezed Lady Djay’s skull between his fingers to emphasise his point. Her jaw cracked and dislocated. Blood poured from her head. Desperately, she kicked and screamed, hands impotently gripping at the thumb and fingers that were destroying her.
“Mother,” Djay screamed, voice drowned by her broken jaw and the blood welling in her mouth. “Please!”
“Mother,” the Pilgrim snorted with amusement as the Immortal stared silently.
It was not Djay’s mother who made an attempt to save her. The Lord of Bones gave a subtle look aside, eyes intense beneath his old mask. Then, the Hand of Zolgomere finally stepped in. Catching the hissing, crawling concubines off guard, the assassin’s blades impaled the first through the head before his serpentine body quickly rolled over the table and decapitated the second. Their blood splashed over the Lord of Bones, who coughed and then dabbed at his mask with a gloved hand.
This the Pilgrim watched with glib amusement. He watched even as the Lord of Bones struggled to find the strength to stand up from his seat, setting both hands upon the surface of his table for balance.
“The rulership of Acetyn is yours,” the old, rotten Lord managed to say, hoarse voice little more than a whisper. “I surrender absolutely. All I possess is yours to do with as you will. I beg only one favour — not from your rulership but our shared bloodline.”
“Is that so?” The Pilgrim indulged him.
“Please,” the Lord of Bones lowered his head in deference. “Spare my beloved wife.”
The colossal and monolithic form of the Pilgrim fell still as he seemed to consider this. Djay whimpered under his grip, her arms weakening as she still tried to pry his fingers apart. Eventually, he released her, and she dropped six metres to the hard floor, landing sharply and gasping in pain.
The Hand of Zolgomere quickly stepped in, keeping his form low, to attend to her, fearful beneath the sanguine light of the ancient master’s wicked glaive. She barely recognised him through her bloodied eyesockets and the burning agony of her fractured skull. Yet he was soft of hand for a murderer and quickly ushered her to one side to lay down.
“Thank you,” the Lord of Bones wheezed, “Grandfather. I would hear it if you would share the truth. The truth of what happened all those years ago, when the sky fell, and the accursed Genekeeper took you from us.”
At that, the Pilgrim advanced upon the old Lord until his shadow enveloped him. Still silent but with eyes filled with rage, the holographic image of the Immortal vanished, and the peaceful serenity of death returned to the Ossein Basilica.