“Come out, My Lady!”


    Bee held her breath as she heard their footsteps echoing through the nave. She pressed herself closer to the wall, hidden in a crease of the stoney, silicon flesh behind the Vat-Mother’s altar, trying to make herself as small as possible. She silently pleaded to her mother to stop them from finding her, even though she knew that made no sense.


    It had been days since the Eidolon’s departure. The worm had become more bold.  “We have to eat,” they whispered in Bee’s ear. “We need biomass, Sweetness.”


    “It’s dangerous out there,” Bee had muttered.


    “Oh, but I want to give you to the Eidolon. She’s perfect.”


    Bee had frozen from those words, a bolt of fright shooting up her spine.


    “I’m going to lay so many eggs in your thigh muscles," the parasite cooed. “Oh, then we can make you smell so sweet, for her. She''ll eat you up. We’re going to be a mother.”


    “I—” Bee faltered, not knowing how she could possibly respond to that. “I don’t want her to eat me. I don’t want to be a mother. Why would you even do that?”


    But the worm rolled around inside her skull, squirming and churning forcefully enough for the wet slurping of her brain matter to reach her ears. “Oh, but you’re born to be a mother, Sweetheart. And it’ll feel so nice.”


    Suddenly, Bee felt warm again, fear melting away. Warm and so very hungry. She resisted for a while, but eventually, the hunger became so intense that it hurt. Bee had crept out of the temple in search of food. She had been careful, keeping to the dark, shrouding her features in a scarlet cloth snatched from the Vat-Mother’s many offerings.


    The worm lead her to a dead body. It looked fresh enough.


    “Eat for me,” the Worm said, still rolling around inside Bee''s skull.


    It was another newly shed child. They had been beaten, by the looks of it, and left in the gutters.


    Bee whimpered as she managed only a sliver of meat, torn from their arm with her teeth. She couldn’t swallow it, retching, and ran all the way back to her hiding place. Ironically, only when Bee returned to the temple did a small creature praying to the Vat-Mother see her. They ran away in a panic when she tried to say hello. After all, she had a face, a scarlet hood, and blood on her lips.


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    A fell omen before the Vat-Mother’s altar.


    After that, things escalated. Drawn by the rumours of a thing with a face wearing the colours of the Xenozygote, more and more of the diminutive creatures congregated outside the temple. Yet, they hesitated to breach its threshold, and conversely, Bee refrained from venturing outside to confront them. She observed the growing crowd through one of the temple’s stained windows when the ones with the weapons arrived.


    They argued at the threshold for a long time. Some accord, some inkling of tradition, bade them stay back. It was, as far as Bee could discern, a terrible thing for them to enter this place with violence in mind. Yet some among their numbers were resolute, and the arguments escalated until they were all decided. When they barged their way inside, Bee had already hidden. So now they paced around the shadowy hall, still bickering, antennas waving as their sunken eyes struggled with the candlelight Bee had helped to maintain.


    “Come out, come out, wherever you are...”


    “‘Ware! She could be feral.”


    “Oh, Great Mother, forgive us.”


    “Now where is this lost little Goddess..?”


    Unable to help but whimper, Bee pressed further back, squeezing into the crack in the structure until her body was tucked between the cold stone slabs. Quiet footsteps betrayed someone’s approach.


    Bee held her breath.


    Mirror white eyes flashed into the opening. The twisted skull of one of the ragged freaks peered inside.


    “There you are!” His hand reached inside and took hold of Bee’s ankle. He pulled and pulled. Bee kicked and screamed, her single hand scratching at the stone for purchase. It was of no use. “I have her!”


    “Stop!” Bee begged. “Please! Let me go!”


    Her assailant dragged Bee’s legs out before taking a firm hold of her chest plate. Still kicking, Bee scratched at his eyes in her panic. So, with a grunt, he turned and hurled her down onto the hard floor, where she crashed into the stone, head cracking back against the ground with a hard smack.


    “Feral bitch,” he snarled.


    The others rushed across the temple at the sound of the commotion. A tall bipedal freak dressed in ragged brown robes held out his hand to stay the others. He was not their leader, but they respected him enough to give him heed as he hefted a bone stave that clattered and scraped against the stone floor with every step.


    Bee groaned, dizzy and winded, curling into a foetal position, as the bone monk put a hand against her captor’s arm and ushered him back a step.


    “I can’t believe it,” the bone monk said with a wheeze. “You’re real...” His gaze swept over her fallen form. Then, decisively, he grasped the scarlet fabric Bee had wrapped around herself and removed it with a swift motion. A collective gasp arose when they beheld Bee’s visage for the first time.


    Through the haze of her concussion, Bee lifted her eyes to meet the monk, his gaze, obscured by a dust-covered mask, fixed intently on her. “Please give it back,” she mumbled, her speech impaired, her tongue heavy, as dizziness clouded her senses. She extended a weakened hand towards the red cloth he had removed from her grasp.


    Then, with a sneer in his bleeding eye, her original assailant stepped forward and stamped his armoured boot down onto her face.