Within the bunker’s dim confines, the echoes of their footfalls fell flat against the reinforced concrete walls, each step choked by the lingering hush of stale air. The Eidolon trailed behind Bee and Slashex in measured silence, her ringed eyes scanning each corridor, each angled brace of steel, each ceiling beam for hidden threats.


    At the threshold, Slashex paused before an Iron Warrior—one of the ancient mechanical guardians set long ago to guard the Wire-Witch and her domain. Its massive frame stood inert, no flicker of recognition in its dulled optics. Slashex clicked his many mismatched steel limbs in vexation as if offended by the machine’s unresponsiveness. Bee watched him, arms crossed, before stepping on. Vashante merely shifted her stance, ensuring she kept the pair in her line of sight. When Slashex failed to rouse the Iron Warrior, he gave a low hiss and followed Bee deeper into the bunker.


    The internal architecture bore nothing of the City’s living sinews and bone. Instead, here lay austere corridors of poured and polished concrete, walkways that did not breathe nor shift, and metal plates bolted into place by hands long dead. Bee glanced curiously at strange apparatus lining the passage—rusted consoles, inert panels, and dormant alarms. Slashex occasionally whispered at her where to continue, but Bee pressed onward with purpose regardless of his urging. She moved with a familiarity that surprised the Eidolon. Had Bee truly entered a daemon vault before? Vashante wondered silently.


    Soon, they emerged into a chamber humming with a faint electric drone. Servers—racks upon racks of computing assemblies—stood in the gloom. Tiny diodes of ancient design flickered in patient rhythms. Bee halted and turned to Slashex, voice low. “What are they really for? The computers.”


    Slashex leaned in, a dozen slender steel fingers tapping at a console’s keys. The monitor’s screen glowed pale and weary, displaying endless strings of machine code. He took his time, searching the lines as though prising secrets from a miser’s grasp. Vashante wondered how he read what was contained therein without eyes. Some profane witchcraft, no doubt.


    Then, after some hesitation, Slashex said, “These daemon vaults serve as hosts for the Immortal’s unliving servants. They act as their physical bodies as they prowl ghost space, obeying Her commands.”


    Slashex glanced at Vashante; Bee quickly mirrored the gesture before he continued more quietly. “The Wire-Witch was long ago instructed to maintain these sites for Her.”


    “The Immortal,” Bee quietly confirmed. Slashex nodded once.


    Then Bee’s lips pressed tight, and though she did not speak her doubts, something in her gaze darkened. Without a word, she nodded and turned away.


    “We need to go this way,” Bee said simply, leading them on with quiet certainty.


    They pressed onward, leaving the hush of the server chamber behind. The corridor ahead was tighter, its concrete walls splashed with rust-brown stains where leaking fluids or old lubricants had dried. Vashante watched Bee and Slashex closely, her voiceless gaze sweeping over the floor and ceiling in turn. The dim lamplight flickered, and a rancid smell drifted through the enclosed space—something organic and decaying. The Eidolon’s artificial muscles coiled, pneumatic hoses taut, braced for ambush.


    They found him a few dozen paces on, slumped in a cradle-like apparatus mounted to a wall recessed behind panels of torn plating. Vashante halted sharply, raising one arm to signal Bee and Slashex to stop. The figure was humanoid—at least, he had been once. A pale robe of tattered cloth clung to his gaunt frame, and a dozen ropey, tumourous growths of fleshy conduit had pierced through the deep walls and insinuated themselves into his skull, chest, and spine. He drooped in a half-seated position, limbs limp, head tilted back so the vacant eyes stared blankly into the ceiling. Thin tubes and arterial vines pulsed softly, feeding and draining him in equal measure.


    Slashex stepped closer, mechanical limbs clicking, keeping a careful distance. He made a slight sound that might have been a hiss of pity or disgust.


    “Behold the manifold rewards of hubris,” he said quietly, his voice harsh in the stagnant air. “He must have tried to interface directly with the City.” Slashex lifted a slender, metal finger, pointing to where the growths sank into the acolyte’s skull. “Acetyn has claimed him—repurposed his body, keeping him alive only to harness his neural lace and bioelectric faculties. He is but another processing node now, a part of the City’s vast and merciless network.”


    Bee scowled, her remaining hand balling into a fist. The acolyte’s eyes showed no recognition, no spark. Just the blank emptiness of a mind scoured away.


    Vashante flitted her gaze between Bee and the inert acolyte. The Eidolon could offer no words to calm her. So instead, she put a hand, plated with metallic bone, onto Bee’s shoulder. The Lady stirred, looking back to Vashante, gaze softening.


    Slashex folded his secondary limbs close, stance rigid. “This is the consequence for any who commune directly with Acetyn’s ghost space without the proper defences. The City does not welcome such meddling. It desires living nodes, obedient and silent. This acolyte is neither dead nor alive—he is a data conduit, no longer the creature he once was.”This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Bee looked back at the acolyte, staring at them for a long, tense moment as if silently cursing him for his folly or pitying him for his fate. Perhaps both.


    “But what about the Vat-Mothers?” Bee asked.


    Slashex gave a slight nod, dipping his segmented limbs. “You are observant,” he said, words quietly echoing in the cramped chamber as he stepped around them. “The Vat-Mothers wield a power that sets them apart. They resist the City’s predations. They can interface and survive, unconsumed and unbroken.” He paused, metal joints whining softly as he turned to regard Bee. “And, if you truly spoke to Acetyn and survived, perhaps you share in that gift…”


    Vashante’s attention flicked to Bee, searching for a reaction. Bee did not show any relief. Instead, she set her shoulders back and gestured for them to move on, stepping away from Vashante’s hand.


    “... Or perhaps you were merely lucky,” Slashex remarked as he followed.


    They left the acolyte behind, his body swaying slightly in its cradle of arterial hoses, as indifferent to their departure as to their arrival. Vashante followed, her silence unbroken as Bee brought them to another set of blast doors.


    Bee set her shoulder against a lever and pulled hard with her single hand. Vashante paused, offering her hand to do it for her. The Lady shook her head, and Vashante stepped back again, but not after inspecting the mechanism, half-expecting some foul contrivance. Finding none, she watched as the doors parted with a laborious groan.


    Beyond the blast doors waited a medical laboratory—sterile and chill, lit by ancient lamps still powered by reserves unseen. Slashex’s mechatronic steps clicked heavily on the plated floor, echoing in the emptiness. Bee approached a scanning bed at the room’s centre, its surface cushioned but designed for bodies unlike hers. Adjusting her wings and siphons, she settled onto it, struggling to find a comfortable position.


    “Do you know how this works?” Bee asked quietly, eyes on Slashex.


    “I do,” Slashex affirmed, extending a jointed limb to a console where an old keyboard waited. Vashante took position near a wall, watching them both, her posture guarded. She cast her gaze toward the corridor they came from, fearful that the silence might invite hounds or worse. Earlier, she had thought she heard something at a stairwell—the tread of a beast, perhaps—but she had not dared stray far from Bee and Slashex. Now, ensconced within these ancient halls, she would not allow distance to weaken her vigilance.


    As Slashex tapped commands into the console, an armature descended over Bee. A thin beam of structured light swept across her form, reading every contour. Bee flinched slightly as the beam passed, then lay still. The clack of Slashex’s mechanical fingers and the hum of the scanners filled the silence.


    Slashex broke the tension with a sour jest: “At least, Lady Bhaeryn, you need not fear bearing that brute Jhedothar’s offspring.” His voice dripped with mocking reassurance. “You lack the biology for it.”


    Bee gave a nonchalant shrug, murmuring, “I know. But he didn’t need to know that… And I told you I hate that name.”


    Moments stretched into uneasy quiet as Slashex studied the monitor. Vashante edged closer, narrowing her gaze at the screen. However, the shifting images meant nothing to her beyond vague flashes of what might have been the shapes of Bee’s body in outcast. She caught the shift in Slashex’s posture—a tightening of shoulders, a hiss of breath.


    Bee, perched on the scanning bed, asked softly, “What have you found?” Her voice carried a note of resignation. She knew. Vashante could sense it.


    Slashex looked at her, the monitor’s glow reflecting on his metal plates. “It is as we feared. The worm that died within you… it laid eggs. Hundreds, perhaps.” He pressed one jointed limb against the screen, highlighting strange internal masses shown in rendered detail. “Each egg will hatch into another parasite, like the one that infested your brain.”


    Bee closed her eyes. A faint tremor ran through her slender form. The Eidolon saw her jaw set—a calm acceptance on the surface, masking deep turmoil. Slashex cleared his throat, metal rasping. “Your resilience is rare, but their sheer number will overwhelm that. They will kill you by weight of number if left unchecked.”


    “How do we fix it?” Bee’s voice was steady, if quiet. “You promised to help me fix it.”


    Slashex sighed, a sound of mechanical frustration. “We have only so long before they hatch. We must seek counsel at the Ossein Basilica. I know of minds there more learned in such matters than I, who might attempt a cure. Without that, it is futile.”


    Bee said nothing, a drawn-out silence enveloping them all. Vashante saw Bee’s lips press into a thin line, her eyes distant, waging some internal war. The Eidolon felt the weight of Bee’s plight as tangibly as if it were her own.


    When Slashex’s grim prognosis trailed off into silence, Bee sat there, uncertain. Her wings shifted, chest heaving softly as she tried to steady her breathing. Vashante watched, heart heavy, and then, in a gentle move that belied her formidable presence, she approached.


    Vashante tentatively stepped forward, her armoured feet careful to avoid wires and broken machinery scattered on the floor. With deliberate care, Vashante reached out and took Bee’s hand with her own—first one, then the other—cupping the girl’s slender fingers in her own steadier grasp. For a moment, Bee did not meet her eyes. But at the subtle urging of the Eidolon’s gentle squeeze, Bee raised her gaze.


    They locked eyes: Bee’s dark, uncertain stare met Vashante’s ring of unblinking eyes and the stillness of her jawless visage. Though Vashante could not speak, she needed no voice. She tapped a quiet message against Bee’s palm, each tap a careful press of reassurance spelt out by gentle touch:


    We shall face this together.


    Bee’s eyes widened, softening with understanding. Her breathing steadied, and her posture eased. In that silent communion—flesh against flesh, simple and honest—they shared a vow. Whatever dangers loomed in the Basilica’s vaulted halls, whatever horrors awaited in the City’s chasms, they would not walk alone. And that promise, given silently and accepted in quiet relief, lingered in the stale air, as potent as any oath uttered aloud.