They took the winding steps of Ymmngorad one after another, in silence that thickened as each lap of stone and bone gave way to the next. Vashante Tens followed behind, eyes scanning the rear for uninvited guests whilst Bee, Jhedothar, Slashex, and Yonmar Free forged steadily upward. Through every level of the tower’s twisting ascent, the air grew thinner, the corridors narrower, and an unsettling gravity weighed on their shoulders.
At intervals, these claustrophobic stairwells emptied into passageways chiselled of old bone yet lined with shelled plating: a testament to countless centuries of adaptation into first an industrialised space and then a place to be lived in. Freakish servants, guardians, and rare newly arrived pale attendants scattered before them, pressed themselves into alcoves or dropped into pious bows of discipline. Some cowered in fear, recalling the devastation the Eidolon had visited upon the tower Ymmngorad not long past. Others stood tall, eerily motionless, as though to reassure their masters that loyalty reigned in this domain.
From her vantage, Vashante observed the hush that fell whenever Bee came into view. It was born of awe and dread in equal measure. She caught glimpses of it reflected in the shifting eyes of these watchers, be they mutated freak or once-proud pale, scurrying from her line of sight as though fearing a silent culling.
Thus was the threat of a woman who could—and had—killed with but a thought. Purposeful or not, the end result was the same.
On and on they ascended, each flight of steps narrower than the last, each new gate or portal parted with respectful haste by rattling guardians. Despite all the eagerness, Vashante could see Bee’s pace beginning to flag. When they were, at last, nearing the highest levels of Ymmngorad, Bee’s shoulders tensed in suppressed exertion—her breathing coming faster, a faint tremor evident in her steps.
They emerged onto a broad landing formed from steel and living cartilage that had fused over centuries into one seamless structure. The walls here were smooth, but for the creeping vines that so overgrew both the tower and the realm below. This was a seldom-travelled place, close to the secrets enshrined at Ymmngorad’s heights. Bee stopped, bracing herself with her single hand against the cold plating.
Jhedothar set his hooves with blunt impatience, shifting the ruby spear against the floor. Though his manner was silent, Vashante recognised his frustration in the way he gripped the spear’s haft. Slashex stood aside, arms folded over mismatched steel limbs, silent as always. Yonmar Free, bent in quiet concern, hovered a pace behind Bee’s left shoulder—yet it was Vashante who moved first.
She stepped forward and placed a light palm against Bee’s back, metal plating brushing Bee’s black gown. Her gloved fingertips tapped softly: “Is it getting worse?” Though voiceless, Vashante willed the question to show her worry. Bee shook her head slightly, still catching her breath, but Vashante knew it to be a lie. Bee was trying to be strong for them.
“I’m fine,” Bee muttered, though her voice wavered. Before anyone could press her, another bell rang out from deep beneath them, resonating through Ymmngorad’s living trunk—a sonorous toll from Acetyn’s heart. Bee visibly flinched, her face tightening. She quickly pressed on, stirred by the sound, leaving the group behind to follow.
They advanced through a short corridor leading to an abandoned engineering lab at the tower’s apex. Vashante knew this place, having stormed it once on her march to the Rose of Thorns, though she had spared it little thought then. It was long deserted, a cold, silent recess of dead screens and half-disassembled machines. Now, as they slipped through the parted door, the overhead lights flickered uncertainly, and one corner of the lab glowed with the faint luminescence of a console that pulsed in a strange rhythm.
Bee froze first, gaze drawn to a flashing beacon set amid a tangle of wires and dusty data cables. A tiny shrill ping rang out, the light blinking in time—a sound unfamiliar to them but not entirely unknowable.
A call was coming through. A call for her.
Together, they drew near cautiously. The Eidolon felt her heart quicken, scanning the corners for any more surprises. After a moment, she realised that Slashex was no longer at their side. He had vanished, though the corridors they came through had no new turnings, no shadows large enough to conceal him. Where did he slip away? She wondered, unsettled.
Behind her, Jhedothar huffed suspiciously, the red gleam of his spear casting dancing lights across the machinery that filled the chamber as it caught the flashes from the machine. Yet it was Bee who stepped to the console, that pulsing light seeming to grow in urgency with every breath they waited.
Vashante tensed. She recalled how once, in some dark control room, she had seen the Witch’s disciples interfacing with archaic networks. But that involved whispered codes and invasive neural jacks. Here, no such ceremony preceded Bee’s action. She simply extended her single hand, pressing a button or switch near the blinking light—and the console rang once with clarity.
And then the unimaginable occurred.
From a recessed projector emerged a swirl of amethystine luminescence. It coalesced into a tall figure—a woman, unblemished and undeniably human, cast in purple-tinted holographic lines. She wore a simple, functional uniform with no insignia or crest. Her hair, silver and curled, framed a face possessing neither scars nor mechanical grafts.
Jhedothar recoiled, eyes wide. Yonmar stiffened with a choked intake of breath. Vashante felt the hairline seams of her own plating tighten in alarm, that ring of eyes focusing incredulously on this holographic woman. No horns, no mandibles, no plating. Simply a creature of pure, clean flesh. It went against everything in their world of mutagen-churned freaks and monstrous hybrids.
It was a progenitor.
It was a human, hale and whole.
They all recognised who this was. But it was impossible, here and now. It could not be. How could this be?
A speechless atmosphere settled over them. The holographic figure’s gaze flicked across them all—Bee, Vashante, Jhedothar, and Yonmar—before it landed again on Bee.
“Hello,” the woman said softly, speaking in a mellifluous yet resonant voice with an ineffable presence. A mortal voice, and yet it carried a weight that cast echoes in Vashante’s augmented ears. “It’s nice to finally meet you… Bee.”
Bee stood transfixed, her fingers slowly sinking from the console’s controls. A heavy air bound the space, the moment crashing down on them with sudden clarity.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Slowly, Vashante realised: The Immortal.
The Goddess of the Ages.
The living pantheon’s apex.
The one who had shaped entire lines of Vat-Mothers.
Who seeded the Cities.
Who allowed the noble lines to reign.
Who watched all from her demesne in the heart of Acetyn, ruling through ghost space far beyond mortal reach.
The last human.
With holographic, amethyst eyes sparkling with mild amusement, the Immortal studied Bee for a moment longer, then smiled gently. Vashante, heart pounding, stepped back a fraction as if to ward off the intangible radiance of that presence.
No one else dared speak. Even Jhedothar, typically proud in his anger, lowered his spear a fraction as he exhaled with fright. Yonmar Free’s posture stiffened like a worshiper before an idol. He muttered old scripture to himself feverishly.
Vashante felt the press of a thousand questions pent up behind her voiceless teeth, questions about her life, the nature of the City, curses, and the unending cycle of life and death. Here was the progenitor of all—the one who created the world as they knew it, who knew their purpose for being above the mire, who—they were told—created Acetyn and the other Cities so that they might live.
Bee exhaled in a trembling breath, drawing her shoulders straight. “You’re—...” she began, but then the words died on her tongue.
Once again, the Immortal turned that quiet, strangely comforting smile on Bee, her image shimmering in the cold, ghostly colour of the projection. “I am,” she confirmed simply, as though reciting an old name.
And Ymmngorad trembled. The titans above Cruiros howled, shaking the world: a warning, perhaps? Or abject despair.
A faint hum pervaded that abandoned engineering lab at the highest levels of Ymmngorad, the amethystine projection of the Immortal still shimmering in the half-light. Her presence alone felt heavy, as though the very air bent beneath her gaze. Then, suddenly, the City of Acetyn rebelled.
A groan, deep and cataclysmic, rumbled through the corridors, and the floor bucked as though some colossal hand had seized the tower. Chitinous joints, bone buttresses, and layered sinews all convulsed in wrath, and for a moment, the world seemed to tumble. Vashante Tens lost her footing and pitched forward into Bee before pulling her close beneath herself in some vain effort to protect the Lady. Jhedothar, proud centaurian limbs braced, skidded and nearly toppled, whilst Yonmar Free crumpled to the floor with a pained gasp. Ancient shelves rattled, sending old instruments clattering; metal beams squealed as the tower’s living marrow twisted.
From beyond the walls, through the sundered windows and ventilation ducts, came the dull roar of cataclysm. It was the voice of a realm undone: the muscle of Acetyn’s continent-sized form shifting in its bed, avalanches of flesh and debris coursing through Cruiros’s labyrinth. Distant shrieks, inorganic and bestial at once, fused in a nightmarish chorus. A quake in truth—Acetyn’s fury manifested, waging war against the Immortal’s interference.
Then, with a single quiet word from the holographic figure—soft but irrefutable—came the end of that thunder:
“Enough,” the Immortal said.
The City stilled as though struck by a killing blow. In a heartbeat, the floor settled, the monstrous tremors ceased, and the groaning fortress about them fell silent. A silence so stark, it stole the very breath from their lungs. Vashante, on hands and knees covering Bee, felt her augmented heart pounding in terror at the brief glimpse of Acetyn’s unstoppable wrath—and the Immortal’s power to tame it like some leashed hound.
Bee was the first to push upright, inhaling shakily as she crawled out from under Vashante’s shelter. The Immortal’s gaze shifted, her small smile growing as though noting the boldness of this battered young Lady who dared stand again when all else remained on their knees. Vashante swallowed down her fear, then moved to rise alongside her, ignoring the protest of her steel-laced limbs. She placed a gauntleted hand on Bee’s shoulder, an unspoken pledge of solidarity. Jhedothar stood more slowly on her other side, gripping his ruby spear with white-knuckled defiance, looming large but plainly shaken. Yonmar Free remained kneeling and pressed to the ground. His breath came in pained shudders, bruises likely blooming across his aged frame. Yet, his eyes were reverently fixed on the Immortal’s projection.
And whilst they stared in fear and rapture, the image of the Immortal slowly cast her gaze around the old laboratory. The gleam of her eyes noted the detritus therein, the ruin and collapse of untold years of abandonment and disuse.
“It’s been a very long time since I saw this place,” she said. “The years have not been kind.”
Then the Immortal regarded them again, her expression gentle yet beyond their measure. “You have spoken reckless prophecies,” she said to Bee, her voice calm. The echo of the City’s convulsion lingered in the walls as she spoke. “Words that threatened an end to me… and my children.”
Bee did not immediately respond. Vashante felt Bee’s body tense beneath her supportive hand. Despite the quake’s lingering tremors, persisting as fright in her limbs, the Eidolon took a step back, letting Bee stand foremost. Jhedothar, wearing his bruised pride, watched with a narrow glare, torn between awe and seething anger. Yonmar Free, still bowed, breathed softly but made no move to rise.
“All can be forgiven,” the Immortal continued, her tone so oddly warm it sent a chill through the chamber. “I know your illness drives you to desperation, and in that you ally yourself with questionable influences—” Her luminous gaze flicked, perhaps an unseen reference to the Vat-Mother who birthed Bee or the people at her side now. “But you need not follow that path to its bitter end. I can save you.”
Bee drew a breath, blinking. Vashante’s hand squeezed Bee’s shoulder in caution or encouragement, she herself uncertain which. Bee steadied herself beneath the Eidolon’s silent rapport.
The Immortal inclined her head in an almost maternal gesture, eyes never leaving Bee’s. “Do nothing more that you will regret, my dear granddaughter. Your life is short enough. Let me help you.” Her words came softly but with an edge that sounded less like gentleness to Vashante’s ears and more like an ultimatum slathered saccharine in honey.
“You’ve proven yourself so much already—beautiful and beloved. You need only come to me,” the Immortal said. “Come to the heart of Acetyn. Come to my garden. I will open the way for you. You can have a home, safe from these horrors with me.”
Still trembling from the shock of Acetyn’s rebellious quake, Bee exhaled. She said nothing at first, but in her dark eyes, a calculation took place—a clash of convictions. Her wings flickered involuntarily, shifting against her black gown as she took a deep breath through the siphons on her back. Vashante, for her part, moved her mechanical hand to lightly brace against Bee’s back. Her stance alone said: I will stand with you… whatever you so choose.
Bee took a steadying breath and spoke.
“No.”
“Do not be foolish,” the Immortal urged gently, and the hush of the lab made the simple phrase ring with crushing authority. “There is still time to turn away from ruin.”
“You’re not the Immortal,” Bee said quietly, voice trembling, hissing with contempt now that she found her voice. “I know what you are… You’re just another one of her daemons trawling through ghost space. You’re nothing like her.”
The hologram stared at Bee. All warmth gone, the eyes took in the young Lady, analysing her. Studying her. Judging her. The smile—dead—was replaced by an expressionless regard. Then, with a flicker and a flash, the call ended, leaving them in the otherwise dark of the abandoned laboratory.
Bee turned, glancing back at them, eyes turning between Vashante, Yonmar Free, and Jhedothar. He, in turn, offered his hand to help the old bone monk stand again with a pained grunt.
“We’ve got to hurry…” Bee muttered quietly, turning her eyes down to the ground. Her voice was a ghost in the still air, a whisper, barely there at all. “We don’t have much time.”
She only furtively raised her eyes to glance at Vashante, who gave her a firm nod. It was time, then, to change the world and start righting the wrongs of this age of inequity.