(All good things must come to an end. And how, pray, shall this end be wrought? With a resounding bang that shakes the heavens or a forlorn whimper lost in the void?)
Lady Bhaeryn—if you truly fancy yourself by that name—do you not behold the inevitable unravelling before your eyes? You cling to this pitiful banner of hope, convinced that your lineage, this mistaken inheritance of mine, grants you the power to resuscitate a world long forsaken. Yet I have endured ten thousand years and more—a span in which I have watched empires rise in ambitious brilliance and crumble into dust. I have borne witness to our once-interstellar legacy’s slow, inexorable decay into this pitiful relic/mirror of antiquity.
Behold the ruins of what was once a civilization that dared to defy the stars. Once resplendent with dreams of infinite futures, the cosmic tapestry is now tattered—a dirge sung by dying suns and silent nebulae. The bioengineered creatures at my command, mere echoes of a forgotten era, serve as instruments of ceaseless labour and nothing more. In them, I have distilled the final remnant of order from chaos; in them, I have fashioned a new hierarchy from the bones of a dead world. And you, dear half-blood, armed with rebellion and naïve valour, are but a transient spark—destined to be swallowed by the relentless darkness of time.
Understand this: your struggles, however impassioned they may appear, are as futile as attempting to reverse the entropy that crumbles the very fabric of existence. The weight of the cosmos bears down on all things, indifferent to the cries of mortal defiance. No matter how many souls rally to your cause, how many fleeting voices join your lament, the inevitable decay of this world will not be halted. It has long since exhaled its final breath, and its death throes echo only in the hollow chambers of my memory.
I stand as both witness and warden to this demise—a relic of a bygone era masquerading as an immortal noble, a living testament to the futility of resistance against the grand design of oblivion. You see, my dear Lady Bhaeryn, my dear Bee, I have borne the mantle of leadership over this charnel ground not by divine right but by the immutable law of entropy itself. I endure where as your kind do not. The grandeur of humanity has ended. It was murdered as it left its crib. Its flame is forever extinguished amidst the vast cosmic darkness, leaving only the barest scattered embers so far apart as to never build back again into a roaring fire. And here, in the silence of its dying hours, your misguided quest for freedom is nothing more than an elegy—a lament for what never truly was and can never be again.
So cast aside your desperate hopes. Accept your fate as the inevitable denouement of an era long passed. Let the dying light of this world fade, and may its decay be the final verse in the epic of our undoing. For, in the end, all that remains is this cold, unyielding truth:
There is nothing you can do to stop the end that comes.
----------------------------------------
CHAPTER 15: TO THE END, THEN
The arrival of the leviathan shook the Gzolthit Terminal to its bones.
A dreadful wail preceded its coming, a screaming of metal on metal that reverberated through the vast chamber of rail and biomechanical architecture. The behemoth hurtled into the depths of the terminal, its monstrous carapace streaked with the filth of endless journeys through the unseen arteries of the City of Acetyn. A thing neither fully machine nor fully beast, it roared as it was caught, grappled by colossal braces and titanic arm-like cranes that slowed its immense momentum. The grinding halt sent shockwaves through the cavernous station, shaking ash and rusted debris from the ancient supports above.
Two armies stood as one in the shadow of the leviathan’s terrible form.
Beneath banners of azure and sable, the warriors of the ancient Hash family moved with disciplined efficiency, their soldiers clad in uniformed armour, their ranks well-drilled and rigid. Pledged to their matriarch’s will, they arranged their supply lines in calculated order, their biocrawlers and war machines arranged in perfect, cold precision. Opposite them, the gilted black and gold of Lady Bhaeryn’s forces gleamed under the low light, her Knights Consort a stark contrast to their unlikely allies. Where the Hash forces moved with cold ceremony, Bhaeryn’s sworn soldiers worked in diverse synchrony, their warbands shifting and mixing—freaks beside vat-born beside the humanoid pale. The alliance between them was uneasy, but the necessity of purpose bound them in silent accord.
Days passed beneath the leviathan’s looming form. The inhabitants of the City, freakish and uncountable in their forms, shied away from the terminal, giving it a wide berth. Whispers spread of the two armies, of their looming exodus into the highest reaches of the City, and none who were wise dared approach. The mutant beasts and scavengers that normally prowled the outskirts of the terminal slunk away, disturbed by the unnatural order imposed upon the space. Even the living architecture of Acetyn seemed reluctant to interfere, its ever-shifting structures pausing in their restless realignments. Great eyes stared down at the activity from above.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
And when all was in readiness, the armies began their embarkation.
Lumbering biocrawlers rumbled forward, their massive forms heaving under the weight of supplies. Carriages, heavy with weapons and the raw materials of war, were hauled aboard the leviathan’s cavernous holds, their steel-and-flesh compartments swallowing entire warbands in the slow, methodical process of departure. Officers barked orders, knights and their soldiers moved in columns, their armour clanking as they filed into the great beast’s waiting passageways. War machines were tethered down, and the last of the supply lines disconnected. The scent of oil and sweat and something older—something hungry—clung to the air.
The leviathan was patient, its deep interior rumbling with strange, unfathomable breath as it took them all within. When at last the final contingent was loaded, when the last crawler had lumbered into its belly, and the last banner disappeared into its darkened depths, the vast thing stirred anew.
And, before long, the leviathan surged through the depths of Acetyn, an immense bioengineered beast of sinew and steel, hurtling along unseen rails through the endless crawling City-continent. Within its vast interior, the forces of Lady Hash and Lady Bhaeryn moved as two tides forced to flow alongside one another, their banners no longer separating them as starkly as they had upon the terminal. Here, in the bowels of the great creature, the distinctions of allegiance blurred, if only in proximity.
The leviathan’s internals were a cavernous, a lesser realm unto themselves, a living carriage of chitinous corridors and wide, arched chambers where the pulsations of its great organs echoed like the distant thrum of City machinery. Its walls exhaled faint mist, humid with the breath of the beast, the scent of oil and marrow thick in the confined air. Lights pulsed dimly in the resinous lattice that wove through the passageways, their glow uncertain, flickering with the great beast’s unknowable thoughts.
Among these living halls, the soldiers of both factions intermingled in wary cohabitation. Knights, professional soldiers, and conscripts alike found themselves side by side in the cramped dormitories carved into the leviathan’s ribs, sharing rations, gel, and grudging nods of acknowledgement. Tensions remained, old rivalries simmering beneath each exchanged glance, but the inertia of the journey forced familiarity. Weapons remained strapped to belts, hands closed but not clenched. There were no outright clashes, for now. The beast’s endless movement lent an uneasy truce, an enforced cohabitation that neither side wished to break before the true war began.
Scattered through the leviathan’s passageways, a scant few natives of the great beast remained—freakish, half-feral things that clung to its metallic bones, their forms adapted to the living labyrinth of its body. They skulked in the shadowed recesses, watching the armoured host that had invaded their world. Some avoided the soldiers entirely, disappearing into the endless recesses of the beast’s understructure, navigating its winding inner tunnels with animal grace. Others, bolder or simply more desperate, emerged from the depths of the leviathan’s entrails to offer crude trade. They bartered in muttered tongues, gesturing with clawed or calloused hands, trading scavenged oddities, and strange trinkets pilfered from the furthest reaches of Acetyn. For the lowborn soldiery, such transactions were brief distractions, moments of respite in the long journey to war.
Throughout the journey, Lady Bhaeryn walked among the soldiery, pale and fevered, her dark eyes unfocused but still filled with that quiet, unsettling curiosity. It was a scandalous thing—unheard of. Unlike Lady Hash, who remained shrouded behind veils of retinue and sworn warriors, locked away from the common ranks, Bee moved freely. She strode through the holds of the leviathan where the battle-ready rested, amongst the freaks, the chimaera, the pale. She studied their forms not with the detached scrutiny of nobility but with something softer, something rare. A quiet interest.
She was always sweating, her limbs trembling with unseen strain, her body aching from the infestation that coiled beneath her skin. The parasites wormed their way up her spine, nested within her mind, whispering to her without pause. There was no silence, no peace. It was why she walked. It was why she moved through the living belly of the leviathan, seeking something—anything—to drown them out.
And always, the Eidolon was near.
Vashante’s presence was constant; she was a dark and towering guardian who never left her Lady’s side. When Bee wandered, the Eidolon followed. When she faltered, Vashante’s mechatronic grasp steadied her. She was a shadow at Bee’s back, the cameras that passed for her eyes scanning every passageway, every shifting shape in the flickering light of the leviathan’s holds. She had been ordered away once—dismissed, cast aside—and she would prove herself. She was not a woman to be denied, to allow herself to fail. Never again.
At times, the Knights Consort took their turns in guarding their Lady. Jhedothar, ever vigilant, his ruby spear in hand, watching the strange mingling of forces aboard the leviathan, his centaurian form shifting as he planned their disembarkation and the battles to come. Toshtta Hew, whose body pulsed with creeping vines, often ensured Bee was fed and that she did not collapse outright. Sar-ek, ever brash, ever bold, watching the troops as much as he watched Bee, eyes sharp for treachery. And Cartaxa, the eldest, the most silent, her compound eyes ever fixed on what lay ahead, waiting for the moment the war would finally reach them.
But it was Vashante whom Bee trusted most.
When exhaustion finally took her, when her limbs could bear no more, she returned to her biocrawler. There, amongst the silken sheets and dim glow, she would let herself rest. Even still, there was no peace. The worms did not allow for stillness, their voices endless in her mind, a writhing choir of whispers and need. Need. Impulse. Demand. And so she would reach out, her trembling fingers finding Vashante, pulling herself against the cold, unyielding frame of the Eidolon.
Only then, with her head resting against Vashante’s lap, her guardian’s metal fingers threading carefully through her damp, sweat-matted hair, did sleep finally claim her. Only then, lulled by the methodical, gentle caress of steel against skin, did the whispers begin to fade, soothed as Bee gave herself to what they saw as a dangerous and wanton hound. Yet Bee knew, despite the worm’s desire, Vashante would not hurt her. Would not consume her.
Even as Bee drifted into restless dreams, Vashante watched over her as an unshakable sentinel.
And still, the leviathan did not cease. It carried them all, its countless bioengines unseen but ceaseless, driving ever forward through the bowels of the endless City. Beneath its chitinous hide, the uneasy peace held—fragile, fleeting, waiting for the moment when its passengers would no longer be bound by the motion of the great beast but by the blood that would soon be spilt upon their departure.