The cold sting of a knife touched the Witch’s throat. She seized up, taken by fright. The scaled and starmetal-armoured arm reached around her from behind. Whoever he was, he was already in the room. He'd been hiding.

  "Djay, Djay, Djay..." The Vat-Mother, somehow free, stepped inside. She pressed close in the narrow doorway, moving around the Witch’s frozen body.

  “Your Ladyship.” The Hand of Zolgomere hissed his sibilant tongue beside the Witch’s ear. It was him. The Lord’s own assassin, his personal murderer. And, the Witch knew, a traitor himself — a secret Axiamati. “Why don’t we sit back down?”

  The Hand placed another square on the middle of her back. Keeping the blade to her neck, he pushed her back towards her seat. Reluctantly, the Witch moved. All the while, her gaze flicked, keeping the Vat-Mother within her sight. But it wasn’t her. No. It was a puppet controlled remotely by a brain-machine interface. Though it resembled a Vat-Mother, its low-quality gene work left her limbs and neck too long, her skull slightly too small. The star metal piercing the back of her neck glimmered tastefully, matching the gown that she had grown.

  The Lord of Bones watched all this from his place on his deathbed. He released a disappointed sigh before speaking, “It is a shame that we have come to this, My Lady...”

  The Witch didn’t respond. Instead, she kept her gaze firmly on her assailants as the Hand pushed her down back into her seat. Carefully, he retracted the knife. So she lashed out.

  An electromagnetic pulse emanated from the Wire-Witch’s crown. The Hand grunted, the musculature of his body coiling tight, even as he shook violently in an attempt to resist it. The Witch met her sisters’ gaze and watched as the Vat-Mother cast a signal of her own, protecting the Hand from attack, a blessing of security given to the murderer.

  The Witch’s Iron Warriors stamped inside from their positions at the sentry. Giving them only the most cursory look, the Vat-Mother met their threat in turn. As they raised their rifles, the ground beneath them tore wide open and dragged them down — swallowing them up in a wet tide of slick red gore and lashings of fluid metallic mutagen.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  The instant of chaos left the sanctuary in silence. Both Sisters slowly looked around the room and considered each other in turn. The Witch was desperately trying to think of a way to escape. The Vat-Mother’s posture dared her to try. The Hand groaned as he recovered, his breath knocked from his lungs by the electromagnetic assault. Yet, he found it in him to grip his needle-like blade once more.

  “My Lady,” the Lord managed to say before coughing weakly. “Let us speak of what comes next with dignity.”

  So she looked to her husband, gripping the arms of the chair until her knuckles turned white.

  “Lady Eye has come to me and told me of your deeds. She presented very compelling evidence... very compelling indeed.”

  As he spoke, she locked her gaze on him. Everything else seemed to bleed away in a wash of panic.

  “Yet I wish to hear it from you, My Lady. Is it true... you have betrayed your own family and mine trust? You have shepherded the return of mine grandfather?”

  The Hand’s grip on his weapon tightened in the corner of the Witch’s vision, dragging her attention back to her surroundings. She glimpsed him, hiding his surprise, but they both distracted from his realisation as the Witch answered.

  “Yes, My Lord,” she confirmed quietly, her heart burning. “It is true.”

  The Lord of Bones sank into his bed, his head rolling away. Beneath his smiling mask, his eyes closed tight, the sting of betrayal finally hitting him.

  “My Lord,” the Witch leaned forward. The Hand of Zolgomere made no attempt to stop her, but both he and the Vat-Mother watched closely. “I did this for our future — for us! We cannot continue to live like this. This world is poisoned by my mother. It isn’t right. You have to understand-”

  “Enough, Djay,” the Vat-Mother finally interrupted, relishing this moment. “You could no more move the stars than you could stand before our mother. I did not realise that your many failures had taken you so low. I should have known.”

  “How dare you?” The Witch moved to stand up — to scream her rage at her depraved sister — when another flash of invisible radiation from the Vat-Mother stirred the room to life. The chair she sat on contorted and twisted, binding her hands and feet.

  “Don’t you dare!” Djay howled, “Eye, don’t you fucking dare!”

  It changed nothing. The mass of the sanctum came to life, revitalised after untold centuries of stillness. Its beating flesh undulated, mutated, and lashed and hissed, even as it warped around the Witch’s struggling form and dragged her screaming down into the dark.