“You will learn to walk as a Goddess — like the powerful, the named, and not like prey.”


    Bee felt those words, tapped into her arm, as trembling aftershocks long after they returned to the unformed chaos of the depths. They soon discovered that they were both right. The hounds stalked them in the dark. So, the Eidolon taught Bee how to evade them.


    At one fork in the tunnels, the Eidolon crouched low and uncovered a coil of metal bound into the silicon flesh of the City. She took iron scraps, scavenged from nearby, and dropped a piece into the tight coil. Some invisible force caught the debris there and held it levitating. Then it began to twist and turn, sparking red hot, then white hot, and Bee had to look away.


    Learning from experience how freaks mastered fire in this rotten world, Bee blinked between her different visions as the Eidolon silently gestured around. The heat from the induction coil slowly baked the passage and erased signs of their footprints in the infrared.


    Then the Eidolon turned sharply to where the City’s waters breached into the tunnels proper. Inviting Bee to climb down into the surge, without warning, the Eidolon pressed down Bee’s head until she was under the water, then pulled her back up. It tasted foul and had the cloying, caustic scent of the City’s oils.


    Holding Bee close as her instincts were to struggle, the Eidolon tapped on her shoulder. “There is a hound close. I will help you climb.”


    And climb she did. Rather than crossing the rushing river of nutrients, the Eidolon firmly grasped Bee’s damaged arm. She helped her reach higher and higher until, together, they balanced on a small outcropping, high in the air, above where the river breached through the passage.


    Crouched there in the dark, Bee turned her vision back to the infrared haze. The hot light from the spark rendered the way they came fuzzy, bright, and indistinct, so she flicked back. Despite seeing nothing, her hair began to stand on end, and a shiver crept up her spine.


    Then it appeared.


    A claw wrapped around the corner, and the tall, gaunt monster crouched into the chamber, its shape casting sharp shadows from the light. Its long head turned, lips peeling back to expose its silver teeth as it tasted the air, searching for them.


    Bee couldn’t help but whimper and shake. The Eidolon wrapped her arm around her, put a hand over her mouth, and held her close.


    The hound waded into the surging water. Long-limbed, it quickly crossed and dragged the front of its distorted head over the ground on the far side, tasting the flesh of the City. It was searching for them.


    The Eidolon’s free hand tightened into a fist. Bee’s dark eyes looked at the hooded warrior, and she knew at that moment that the Eidolon would have readily confronted that monster here and now if she had her weapon. Or, perhaps, if she was not there. If it would not put her in danger.


    Too long, the hound searched, dragging its face over the passage’s floor ahead. It was thinking. It was deliberating. Bee could see it. Then, with a hiss, it turned and threw itself back over the river and into the heat of the previous chamber. Bee could hear it furiously charging down the other fork in the tunnel.


    Without delay, the Eidolon dropped back down into the rushing filth. Then, helping Bee climb down, the silent warrior urged her ahead, where the tunnel turned into a short ramp and freedom.


    Vast open space at last, but this time, the bone sky was supported by broad spinal column towers and colossal disfigured titans, not living but grown to bear the weight in the memory-likeness of freaks that came before. All above them, the towers and the titans were overgrown by massive vines, thorny and mottled, which had grown deep enough to shatter concrete and weave through the silicon flesh of the City. The overgrowth spread outwards from the highest point of two towers, bridged together, far overhead. Bee realised her mouth was hanging open, witnessing the immensity of this interior space, a world unto itself.


    But the streets they walked through were scored, cracked, and littered with rotting bodies and refuse. The buildings that filled the space around them were damaged, bleeding or broken, leaning and crumbling.


    “What happened here?” Bee whispered.


    The Eidolon put a hand on her shoulder to answer. “This is Cruiros, a city in the City. The Lord of Bones, ruler of Acetyn proper, once gave it to a cruel hound — the Damnation — to keep the people here in line. But the beast was slain, and the Lord was supplanted, so the people returned to anarchy, and civilisation here collapsed.”


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    “That’s awful.”


    They walked side by side through narrow alleyways and gutters. The Eidolon consciously avoided the broader streets and, Bee noticed, kept her eyes on the skyline, where shadows crept against the bladed silhouettes of the rooftops and amongst the endless knots and boughs of the overgrowth. There was not a soul walking in the open. Bee wondered if this place was deserted or if the inhabitants kept themselves hidden. Graffiti was scrawled across shelled walls and screamed in silence.


    SESTCHEK HAS FALLEN


    WHERE ARE YOU MOTHER?


    PARADISE AT LAST!


    A young, newly shed freak lay in an alley, dead. Bee averted her eyes, tears stinging them. Then distant voices bounced down the street, and the Eidolon quickly changed avenues, leading Bee away, around a longer route to their destination, but one that proved safe nonetheless.


    Ensuring they remained undetected, the Eidolon cautiously guided Bee across a deserted plaza. Their path then took them up a rampart, leading onto an elevated theapolis. As they progressed, the surroundings transformed from the wild and neglected to the meticulously crafted and dutifully maintained. Bee found herself pausing, captivated by the sights they encountered. They moved past serene sanctuaries and dedicated shrines, beside orbs that floated with a mesmerising glow, and around elaborate fountains that remained untouched and pure, spared from the chaos that reigned below.


    Shortly after, the Eidolon led Bee between fluted columns capped with crenellated arches, supporting a massive stone roof. The monument sheltered smaller buildings, but only by comparison. Each was still grand in its design. The centremost had a rise of steps to enter its arched entryway, a heavy double door already pushed open as if to welcome their arrival.


    Inside, the pungent smell of burning incense touched Bee’s nose. It was dark but not black like the depths. Instead, it was warm, marked by candlelight, and inviting.


    “Hello?” Bee called out.


    The Eidolon didn’t stop her, but no reply came. Walking around the temple’s nave, Bee found it was separated into three distinct wings. A black iron statue stood in its centre, seats pushed aside for its haphazard introduction.


    The statue had the likeness of a giant — armour-clad, with a sharp wedge of a helmet. He held a glaive aloft, and inside, he burned with fiery oil, which belched black smoke from the cracks in its iron workmanship. Bee didn’t recognise it. She knew it must have been a recent introduction because it didn’t fit the interior. The floorplan of the place of worship seemed like it still needed to be adapted to suit the central position that the statue had been placed.


    Bee started at the left aisle, walking until she found an alcove with the familiar, naked visage of the Wire-Witch rendered in stone, standing tall. It was placed in an old nook that had been recently scoured. Someone had defaced the iconography and taken what Bee assumed to have been metal treasures from around her neck, hands, and altar, leaving divots and chipped stones where they were once mounted. Still, paper scraps had been left here, and Bee peered at the prayers on top. They were all much the same, variations on the same questions, pleading. Why did you abandon us? Are you really dead? Please help us.


    Bee turned away, frowning. She crossed the chamber to look into the alcove on the right side, opposite the Wire-Witch. There, she found the familiar image of her Mother. But, no, it was wrong. Bee’s frown intensified when she saw the lips this Vat-Mother’s statue wore over her skull. Also nude, she was hanging from the wall as if supported by countless bony spurs and taut ligaments rendered in stony detail — the sacred bondage that marked her, that Bee saw as the trappings of a dying figure. It made her stomach ache to see. There were still offerings here, and this altar did not seem defaced. Bee marvelled at flowers, picking them up, surprised at their smell. She did the same with a vessel of fragrant perfume, unstoppering it, then giving a puzzled look back to the Eidolon, who waited by the doors, keeping an eye out.


    Finally, Bee approached the ultimate section of the temple, the sanctuary at the furthest forward. Glancing back to the fiery statue that occluded view of it from the entrance, Bee wondered what statement might be made there. She came face to face with the bright image of a holoprojection, eyes widening in surprise at the technological wonder. It depicted a human woman in dark clothes, rendered in crisp detail. She had a warm smile, dark skin and curling silver hair.


    Bee stared at the hologram’s face. It was different from her own, the dark browns of her skin a shade apart from Bee’s purple undertones and silvering tan.


    “A forebearer?” Bee whispered to herself in askance, remembering her Mother’s words. “The Immortal?”


    If this was the Immortal, it didn’t hurt to look at her, unlike the encounter in that ghost space. Bee considered the sight for a time, folding her arms, wings flicking with unspoken anger. Eventually, her eyes turned down from the brightness to the platform from which the image was projected.


    It emanated from the upper surface of a broad two-metre arrowhead, made of metal, cracked, dented, and stained with age.


    A gentle hand touched Bee’s shoulder and made her jump. She turned to see the Eidolon, who gently tapped. “Is everything alright?”


    “It’s fine,” Bee mumbled. “I was just looking around, that’s all. My Mother said the Immortal did all this. Ruined everything, I mean, and killed her.”


    Bee looked back to the arrowhead. The platform she stared at resembled statues in the depths below. Bee reasoned that it was supposed to tell her something, some detail that yet escaped her. The Eidolon’s hand squeezed her shoulder in gentle reassurance as they both looked over the Immortal’s effigy.