A tireless march upon mechanised joints. The walking craft stepped through the mists, dragging them as a tide in its wake as it moved. A moving fortress, built with every threat of battle in mind, the groaning transport shed not a glimpse of its royal occupants as it broke from one deep tunnel to the next — and then out, out to a vast expanse deep within the City of Acetyn. In this depth, arteries and veins coiled and came together in a dense and oppressive weave, which had to be carefully navigated.
Its every movement was a mask, a suite of sensations extended just before the pilot’s skull. It felt as intuitive as the turn of her hands as she lifted each mighty leg, seizing the ground and pulling herself forward. Each link was a full-scale neural invasion, replacing sections of the machine core with slivers of her own lace’s code. A handshake between machine and organism turned embrace. It was intimate, but not by choice.
The Wire-Witch was not in control here. No. The Vat-Mother’s geneworked puppet sat in the control seat.
“I can see why you spend so much time playing with these toys,” she said, swaying in the cradle-like chair as they navigated the steepest reaches of the mediastinum.
Opposite her, a comatose freak was wrapped in a fleshy cocoon, grown from a palatial seat, which itself was bound in place by steel brackets. Her exposed skull hung weakly, the slick wires connected to her brain swinging with the inertia of their advance. With a quivering jaw, she groaned, a trail of drool running from between her teeth and dripping down onto her lap. The Wire-Witch — Djay — was pumped full of a narcotic daze by the mutated and newly formed subling she was inescapably cocooned within.
A screen snapped to life. The bloated image of the Lord of Bones’ Chancellor appeared, his wormy body leaning close to the camera as his mouth twitched, tasting the air. His visage was stained purple and white, muted and low contrast by the transmission. Then, the image cracked in two. Besides the Chancellor, the withered mask of the Vat-Mother’s Agitator appeared.
“Your Ladyship,” the Agitator spoke in flowery but aged tones — a devotee’s nature made saccharine by officious politesse. “His Lordship’s lowly court asks when the misguided Lady Djay shall be returned home.”
“His heart breaks,” the Chancellor spoke without pretence. His oily eyes narrowed with cunning. “A meeting of all the old bloodlines has been arranged to discuss the return of the old Pilgrim. She will be expected at the head table, to receive their pledges of loyalty, as per the old oaths.”
The Vat-Mother’s puppet turned her towards the screen. Her head tipped to one side as she leaned in, considering the digital device up close for its novelty.
“Pity,” she said, the ruby lips of her half-mask turning into a cruel smirk. She found the button and ended the call with a heavy click. Besides her, Djay groaned, finding it in herself to weakly struggle against her confinement.
“Nearly there, dear sister,” the puppet said under her breath. “Nearly there.”
When the Vat-Mother returned her puppet’s gaze to the screen, the asymmetrical shape of a vast City chasm appeared upon it — a low-resolution bloom of flickering void and distant lights. As the ground they moved over levelled out, the camera became steady, and the image became clearer. The image panned upwards, following vast winding arteries that throbbed and pulsed with the colossal forces contained within them. Finally, it resolved — distant and titanic — Acetyn’s forward heart, which fed the City’s highest functions. Its train of chambers contracted with violent force, channelling vast amounts of blood and constructive materials outwards.
There, eclipsing the heart, was home — or at least their place of birth. The head of a great spear, kilometres in length and suspended in the vast network of connective tissues that had grown around it over the centuries, the sharp starmetal shape reached through the darkness as if to threaten to impale the heart of mighty, old Acetyn.
The freaks of this age, who did not know the truths of ancient times, believed this to be the remnants of a battle fought so long ago as to be forgotten by waking minds — a weapon that could slay a city, still embedded deep in the depths of their great host. So they rightly gave it a wide berth, and not even the most violent and insane monsters dare to nest beneath it. They were right, of course — not about its origins but about its threat, for this was the Immortal’s home.
Too frightened to advance further, the woman behind the puppet looked away from the screen. Instead, she unclipped herself from the seat and stood. At her bidding, the cocoon enveloping her sister began to twist and contort, unfastening itself from its bracket and walking ahead of her.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The transport groaned to a halt. When it stopped, the twin Narshepsalles lopped out of the darkness, their long limbs slinking through the mists. The giant predators strode around, circling the steel beast that they escorted, tamed by the mother, as the head of the transport rolled back and a ramp extended from its throat. First, the walking cocoon shuffled down to touch the City. Then followed the Vat-Mother’s puppet, who took a deep breath of the humid miasma.
The Nashepsalles watched, looking down on the scene with bright, mirror eyes. One caught movement in the distance and prowled off to find its next victim. The other followed their dash into the darkness with an idle purr, contented and lazy, massive paws padding silently.
The cocoon split and the Witch’s weakened body fell onto the moist ground. The puppet stood over her, scowling, waiting for her to come to her senses.
“Go.”
“Don’t do this, Eye,” the Witch begged, still sprawled out on all fours.
“You have lost all respect for your betters,” the puppet said through her chrome teeth. “Go. Explain yourself to mother. Do not make me make you.”
With a pitiful whine, the Witch started to crawl. Inch by inch, she crept forward. It didn’t take long. When she crossed some perimeter unseen, she was immediately noticed. It started as a flash of light in the periphery of her vision, a sound in colour-scape.
“No,” the Wire-Witch whispered as her lace was invaded and script burned behind her eyes. It bypassed every single part of her digital immune system. She was helpless. Despite her every attempt to master the old technologies over these long years of her life, she was helpless.
“Please.”
>>> UDT sync confirmed - 31,541,361,001,932s <<<
>>> Lace Adapted Interface, Handshake Complete - Confirmation signed T01 @ L001,933s <<<
>>> Pre-refereed security clearance granted - Ref. Daughter & Genekeeper Systems, “Hope for Humanity”. <<<
>>> Signal Murder Protocol, disabled. <<<
>>> Signal Sequence log unlocked, disabled. <<<
Warning: chemosensory feedback, via: Lace Adapted Interface, Shell Opened, potentially arbitrary code execution detected.
>>> Packet Filtering, disabled. <<<
>>> Stateful Inspection, disabled. <<<
>>> Deeper-Level Inspection, disabled. <<<
>>> Circuit-Level Gateway, disabled. <<<
>>> Signal Sequence Fixity Assessment, disabled. <<<
Thank you. Proceeding:
Internal format significant properties readout Access.: Daughter & Genekeeper Systems, “Hope for Humanity”.
>>> Internal format obsolescence assessment initialised. <<<
>>> Trusted Digital Repository Model adoption initialised. <<<
Warning: chemosensory feedback, via: Lace Adapted Interface, Note Well: Attention: Hot model repository detected. Substrate refreshment may result in alteration of engram data.
>>> Migration warning readout aborted. <<<
>>> MUSE systems coterminousity, disabled. <<<
Be Quiet.
>>> “TextTrans” Record Event function disabled. <<<
Time was lost to Djay. Distantly, she recalled exhaustion and pain, her hands and feet blistering as she summited climb after climb over cartilaginous vaults and across spires of connective webbing. Higher then, struggling, her hands reached the railing of the grand stairway, now raised so far from the surface of the world whilst simultaneously having been entombed by the City’s relentless growth. Both of her feet took the grated steel walkways and the gaps in the scaffolding slowly, mindlessly, bridging the manifolds she once ran through to play as a girl.
A vast port in the superstructure, cylindrical machinery securing it marked with the image of a pentagram. It rolled, inverting and opening, and once unsealed, belching out scorching dry air. She entered alone.
Walls wept rivulets of black oil. A golden candelabra with a single remaining fat, waxy candle ignited. The fire burned bright, sending a chill up Djay’s spine despite her possessed state.
The gaps in her experience grew wider, a whirlpool of amnesia pulling her under, drowning her, until finally, Djay fell to her knees upon a smooth silicon floor. It was hot with electrical processing. Pain flashed inside her as her weight pressed down on her knees and toes against the burning die. She grabbed her skull between her hands and screamed.
Mother.
Creator.
Please!
Her image, a cascade of light, the shape of a woman picked out — not against the eyes, but against the mind. When she moved, it was a stain on memory and space, advancing but never letting go of the area she once inhabited. The Immortal reached forward and touched Djay’s mind.
Is a mother not entitled to the achievements of her daughter?