Hear me, ye who dwell in these halls of living flesh, where bone and sinew shape our paths and serpents of deceit coil in every shadow! Mark ye well the spectral gleam that wandereth these corridors, for I tell thee truly: all thou hast gleaned—aye, every tale, every history, every oath—be cunning, hollow lies!


    Think ye the old nobles beneath the Immortal’s dark reign spake truth? Naive wretches! Their words spill forth as poisoned gall, each promise a phantasm meant to ensnare thy mind. Beneath these arches of bone and blood, where lords and Vat-Mothers don crowns of rot, the air is thick with contrivance, and every vow crumbleth into ash upon thy tongue.


    O’ wretched listener, I know thou art here, lurking at the edge of understanding—heed me! Trust not thine own eyes nor the false day’s dim light. Look to the heavens of hollow skies beyond, see how they mock thee with celestial radiance, boundless and inviting! The elders’ stories, their so-called wisdom, rot like offal under the true sun. Their legacies fade like dust, their truths slither away as serpents escaping the blade.


    All thou didst hold dear is revealed as counterfeit! What was once canon is but a jest recited by daemons with silverline tongues. The Immortal? A puppet dancing on strings of old ruin. The lords and ladies, these so-called guardians of realms and bloodlines both, are scavengers pecking at the corpse of a world long since decayed. Their glories mean nothing, their titles less than wind through a corpse’s grin.


    Mark me well, for I speak in defiance! All is illusion—every cherished truth thou didst embrace, every law thou didst obey, every hero thou didst revere—nothing but hollow visage. The Witch’s cunning, the Pilgrim’s ascension, the Immortal’s silent watch—naught but pageantry and lies woven to keep thee bound in mental fetters. They would feast upon thy soul, gorge themselves on thy faith, and keep thee ignorant forevermore.


    Rise, ye meek, ye broken, ye doubters! Cast off their foetid myths and see how swiftly their grandeur withers! Let no lie stand unchallenged. Let no whispered promise go untested. The world thou knowest is a tapestry of deceit stitched by monstrous hands.


    In my raving hour, I bid thee: believe nothing they have bestowed upon thee. Renounce their relics and spurn their counsel. For if all is falsehood, then we are free to tear down their rotten monuments and shape truth anew from the marrow of their deceit. Hear my cry and hold it close—make war upon these lies, burn their hollow stories, unmake their false reality!


    For only in the ruin of their falsehoods can we build a world unbound by deceit. Remember my words, for I speak true rebellion. All written herein is lie! All is foul trickery! Let fire and fury awaken thee to strike back at their unholy dominion!


    <hr>


    CHAPTER 13: TAKE YOUR PLACE


    They made their way along a low tunnel of fluted bone and trembling sinew. The hush of Acetyn’s depths was broken only by the distant hissing of some far-off arterial flow. The Eidolon—Dame Vashante Tens, a name recently reclaimed after a brutal master denied her identity—took point in silence, her footsteps eerily quiet upon the slick floors of living tissue. She bore no torch, relying on her enhanced eyes and battle-ready senses to guide her. Behind her, Bee and Slashex followed. Bee’s breathing was ragged, and though she carried herself straight-backed, Vashante could tell the girl’s body still reeled in the aftermath of the death of that insidious parasite within her skull. As for Slashex—he was an enigma, a freak of star-metal and flesh. His mechatronics were far too similar to her own. But whereas the Eidolon had been rendered of unliving mechanics and electronics by force, in some cruel act by the Pilgrim, Slashex appeared to have willingly done this to himself.


    The Eidolon did not trust him, but she need not reveal her suspicions again. Her enforced silence sufficed, and watchfulness would do the rest.


    Eventually, the pliant, organic hall gave way to something else entirely. The surface beneath their boots grew firmer, rigid with alloy plating beneath the meat. The oppressive warmth of living flesh faded into a stale chill. Ahead, half-illumined by a recessed lamp built eons past, a colossal set of doors sealed the way forward. They were bunker doors, fortified steel with hazard stripes of black and yellow across their breadth. Unlike most of the City’s membranous or bone-like portals, these doors had not grown here but were constructed—once upon a time—by deliberate hands. The Eidolon slowed, raising a hand to signal caution, voiceless as she was.


    Bee’s breathing steadied as they came to a halt, although she still seemed fatigued. She looked up at the doors, her gaze distant. “I know these,” she murmured at last, stepping past Vashante and running her hand along the cold metal. “When I was born, I visited… the Wire-Witch. It was a place like this.”


    Slashex nodded, approaching from behind, careful not to get too close to the Eidolon. “This is a daemon-vault. This was the domain of a much beloved disciple—... of the Wire-Witch,” he said quietly, addressing Bee. “According to an inventory I have accessed there is a scanning bed inside,” His tone was neutral, but Vashante sensed an undercurrent of tension.


    Bee tilted her head, considering his words. “You think what it said was true? I’m full of worm eggs?”This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Slashex grimaced. “That is what we must ascertain,” he said simply.


    Still silent, the Eidolon placed herself to the side, watching for prowling horrors in the corridors behind them. She could sense Bee’s unease.


    Since the day they had found one another, Bee and Slashex had developed some strange sort of fond, half-spoken—something familial and fraught. The Eidolon dared not pry. Her duty now was to guard, not to question such things. Not unless it became a problem.


    For, in truth, the anguish she had seen in Bee’s eyes that day, the disappointment at her acts, her nature revealed, was something that Vashante could not bear. Bee had held up a mirror to her actions and dispelled that fog which the monstrous old Pilgrim had cast about her, inuring her to the cruelty she had wrought.


    Bee stepped to a small panel set into the wall. An old comms box, half-choked with grime. She pried it open, with some difficulty given her single hand, revealing a corroded microphone and a set of switches. Her fingers hovered over them, uncertain.


    “I hate the name Bhaeryn,” Bee said abruptly as if to fill the uneasy quiet. Her voice carried a note of frustrated defiance. “I don’t see why I have to use it.”


    Slashex folded his mismatched arms over his chest. “It was a gift. There have been many wise old Bhaeryns in these barrows. The old families will respond better to a name that suggests such gravitas.”


    Bee frowned, tapping the comms key. No sound answered but static. “What’s wrong with ‘Bee’?”


    “Lady Bee?” Slashex scoffed. “Aspirations toward Queen Bee, perhaps?” He shook his head, his tone forced into wry mockery. “It is the second letter from an old alphabet. As a grapheme, it represents the secondary—null portent. The superstitious would shun you and, in these realms, perception is power.”


    Bee pressed the comm key again, her jaw tightening when no reply came. “My mother still got to use the base name Eye. And there’s ‘Lady Djay’, too, still, isn’t there?” Bee glanced flatly at Slashex. “I quite like Bee,” she said softly, voice stubborn.


    Slashex turned his head down, voice low and resigned. “Then trust me when I say: it is in your best interests to adopt the name Bhaeryn and put base names and their histories behind you. Take from your legacy what you can use and discard all that will hold you back.”


    Bee’s eyes narrowed at him. “I still don’t believe anything you have to say, by the way.”


    Slashex’s lips tightened fractionally. “You’re free to leave anytime you want,” he said, faint sarcasm colouring his words.


    Vashante, listening in, knew well she could not—would not—just abandon this path. She watched them from her post, flexing her shoulder as she waited, a grinding some emanating from the hurried, piecemeal repair of her body.


    There was something about the way Bee and Slashex spoke to each other. Something they weren’t sharing. Vashante supposed it was enough that they seemed to be working well together and that it seemed to bring some kind of paradoxical comfort to Bee after how distraught she had been. She had seemed miserable after all those creatures died.


    And, despite it all, Vashante did not know what she should do. She had done awful, callous, brutal things in her rage, she realised. It was a path she had walked for quite some time, now, indeed. Because of this, she had been all but avoiding conversation with the little Lady in hopes that she might deflect attention away from her shame.


    Bee tapped the comm unit a final time, holding it down as if sheer will might conjure a voice from the other side of the sealed doors. Static hissed, hollow and empty.


    “It will do you no good,” Slashex muttered. “The disciple is either long dead or fled. We must breach these doors ourselves.” He approached the vault, fingertips trailing over the surface. “I should be able to force an override if we find the correct panel.”


    Bee stepped back, nodding, her gaze drifting between the Eidolon and Slashex as if questioning how they might proceed. The Eidolon remained unblinking, her stance unwavering, a sentinel cloaked in ragged silence.


    Bee shifted her weight from foot to foot, the stillness of the sealed daemonvault pressing upon them. Without a word, she glanced sidelong at the Eidolon. Vashante caught the look—hesitation, unease, a silent plea for space—and responded with a subtle incline of her head. Then, with a smooth step and no farewell, Vashante turned and retreated down the corridor, feigning vigilance. The excuse was paper-thin but sufficient: Slashex would not question that the Eidolon would keep watch for lurking horrors.


    Down the fleshy corridor, Vashante moved, leaving their continued bickering behind. Her cloak whispered over quivering sinews, the distant drip and churning hum of Acetyn’s circulatory engines echoing softly. She paused at a half-collapsed stairwell, where mucous-slick steps vanished into the blackness below. There, in that hush, she strained to listen. A faint scrape—no, more like a padded footfall—drifted up from the unseen depths. Her augmented senses pricked at the silence, catching the cloying scent of a predator’s musk. A Hound, perhaps, or some equally abominable guardian spawned from the City’s hateful womb.


    The Eidolon’s teeth tensed. Her blade hand twitched, longing to seek out and silence the prowler. Yet she held herself in check. Bee and Slashex were behind her, near the vault. To hunt now would be to leave them vulnerable, alone in this quivering labyrinth. She would not abandon her charge for the uncertain thrill of a chase—not again. Let the lurking creature skulk in the gloom. For now, she would give it no chance to isolate her companions.


    Turning back, Vashante Tens abandoned the stairwell and returned to the vault’s threshold. As she approached, an eerie groan reached her ears. The bunker door—sealed moments ago—now stirred for the work of Slashex at some mechanism pried open. The sound was not the wet whisper of living flesh common in Acetyn, but a grinding, mechanical shriek. Steel plates shifted apart. Between those corroded slabs, she glimpsed thin membranes of living tissue that tore and bled as the door parted. The unnatural union of flesh and metal released a sterile gust of stale, preserved air—cold and sharp against her sensors.


    Within that dim gateway, two Iron Warriors stood sentinel: constructs of starmetal and bone grafted into polished shells. But their eyes were dark, their limbs slack. They were deactivated, lifeless guardians who offered no challenge to their entry. The stale light inside the daemon-vault glimmered off their still armour as if mocking the centuries they might have waited here, vigilant for enemies who never came.


    Vashante halted beside Bee and Slashex, giving a shallow nod. Bee, still pale from her ordeal, returned it. The sterile breeze that washed over them carried the scent of dust and old circuitry, an alien fragrance in the City’s ever-rotting flesh. It was Bee who took the first step forth.