Nence crept quietly, always just at the edge of a warband’s flickering torches or the hum of an improvised generator. He had left Blachaeus Tem Etal behind—left that monstrous abomination devouring everything in its path. It had been a terrifying break, casting aside the sanguine cloak gifted by the Xenozygote, letting its rich folds slough off his shoulders so that he might blend into the ragged black-and-gold ranks.

  He tried to slip unnoticed among Lady Bhaeryn’s motley host, a swirl of vat-born soldiery, pale veterans, and half-augmented freaks forming a coalition that defied easy order. Nence pressed himself into the background for hours, letting the heaving chaos of rushed tasks and barked commands overtake him. He lent a hand where needed—hauling crates or helping fit armour—and few paused to question a silent freak with no voice in that constant, clamouring swirl of activity. Strange though he was, the City was full of strangeness. That made his infiltration both exhausting and, alarmingly, all too easy.

  There was a moment of panic when the Nesta Barshaum roared to life, tearing a great rift in Acetyn’s vast vaulting heavens. Nence felt the thunderous tremor in his bones and saw the chunked debris falling like deadly hail. Rivers of blood poured from that wound in the bone sky. Half of the lowly folk around him scattered, dropping their meagre tasks to flee the scorching sun-beam that cut into the City. He, too, cringed away from the searing white glare, pressing himself into the shadows of a collapsed arch while the rest scurried for cover. Only after that terrible light receded and the gloom reclaimed the City did the bustle resume, albeit with a new dread gnawing deep within him.

  When the order came to ascend at last, Nence joined the throng of battered infantry, sullen labourers, and restless thralls. Together, they filed onto the hastily assembled elevators—makeshift platforms bound with lashing of thick cable. Tremors rattled their frames, and gear-laden crawlers jerked above them as everything rose in precarious concert.

  As they neared the jagged lip of the City’s upper crust, Nence clung to the rim, antenna trembling, compound eyes startled. The starry sky, infinite and quiet, opened before him. He had never seen such vastness. For one silent, trembling second, awe replaced his fear. Then the moment passed, and he remembered his purpose.

  That arcane dagger, hidden away.

  Vengeance.

  Somewhere behind him in the depths, Blachaeus still feasted—and Nence had parted ways with that horror. For how long, though, remained to be seen. Their agreement was that Blachaeus would feast on the fringes and then begin his assault to create an opportunity for Nence to get close to the traitorous false Lady.

  Again, Nence lifted his compound eyes to the sky above, finding that he could not tear them away. The stars glittered like shards of glass in an unimaginable expanse, an endless sweep he had never truly believed in until now. He caught his breath, letting it out in a hushed trill from his mandibles and chest. The air tasted different here—thinner, cleaner, free of the dank warmth that clung to Acetyn’s bowels.

  He trudged on with a group of sullen labourers, hangers-on, and other lowly freaks, all lined up behind a makeshift banner. None of them wore any official crest, but the black-and-gold patch slapped onto ragged sleeves or battered plates, indicating that they belonged—however tangentially—to the Lady Bhaeryn’s cause. Those that had them, their eyes, too, were drawn to the starlight more than they cared to admit, uncertain if this was to be the last wonder they might see before the war took them.

  “Hurry up and wait,” the surly foreman growled, repeating a soldier’s adage. Indeed, though the forces had ascended in a flurry of alarm, now they paused, half-lost as commanders reorganised ranks for the final trek. The leviathans carrying heavy weaponry needed reloading. Soldiers whispered about the battles that had been raging below, uncertain if they had truly escaped or merely been hoisted into a worse fate yet.

  Nence let his antenna swish softly, noting the tension in the group around him. They were fearful—who wouldn’t be? The open sky was a terror all its own, so different from the City’s confining walls. Some muttered half-remembered stories of an ancient pilgrimage where leaving the City meant ascending to Paradise. Others glanced around, hearts drumming with fear that the hated day-star might reappear at any moment and take them unawares.

  Eventually, a harried soldier in scratched armour slogged over to them, pointing at one of the large biocrawlers—a lumbering hulk of chitin and steel stacked high with crates of ammunition and personal gear for the warbands. The soldier rattled off instructions: They were to travel alongside the crawler, manage the supply loads, and keep it running if anything broke down. Worn as they were, no one dared refuse.

  Nence joined the others in sorting out positions along the crawler’s flank, his eyes still slipping skyward. The hush of wonder and dread clung to them all, and even as the Knights barked for them to keep pace, no one moved quickly. They had soared from the labyrinth below in haste. Yet up here, with the stars on full display and the wind swirling the ash about their ankles, their every footstep felt uncertain.

  A quiet fell over in the group as they settled in line. Nence could not speak, yet the swirl of emotions rose in him like a quiet tempest: awe at the naked sky, fear of the unknown, guilt for the phage-blade he secretly carried, and a faint thread of hope that—... No, not hope. An imagined retribution, and the distinct possibility it would soon become real.

  Then he emerged.

  Nence saw the first sweep of the serpent from afar, a rolling mass of flesh slithering over the expanse like a nightmare dredged from the City’s blackest pits. Even from a distance, he could glimpse the carnage—a wave of limbs, steel, and shrieking freaks torn into the maw of Blachaeus. The serpentine abomination loomed in the moonlit gloom, devouring swathes of warriors beneath the starlit sky.

  He stood among a knot of labourers well removed from the initial fight, uncertain watchers caught between fear and disbelief. They recoiled at the echoes of muffled biocannonfire and discharged lances, the acrid tang of blood and burning flesh drifting on the high wind. A horror fell over them as the serpent’s silhouette reared fully into view, blotting out the horizon with a hideous, twisting coil.

  The labourers broke and ran, pushing and jostling in their desperation to escape. Nence hesitated, half-lowered against the ash-strewn ground, antenna twitching in alarm. The scattered cries of suffering and the thunder of weaponry felt strangely distant, muted by the vastness of the surface. He drew a breath, tasting the air.

  Then, with silent resolve, he reached behind him, retrieving the hidden phage-knife. The unnatural blade churned in his grip, exuding a faint buzz of malice that vibrated through his six-limbed frame. He held it tight, one of his hooked tarsus flexing around the handle. From the corner of his compound eye, he watched as the serpentine horror continued to devour the armies, but that was not his concern.

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  No.

  Nence had a mission. Sliding low across the ashen ridge, he advanced—seeking out the Lady Bhaeryn’s carriage, determined to end her life before the night was done.

  So he advanced, each step a careful scrape across the ashen ground, antenna quivering with the din of combat. Ahead, the monstrous serpent that was Blachaeus coiled and lunged, rising above the throng in vast arcs. As he swept down, screams cut through the night. Storms of splattered gore rained down on those who tried to stand firm, unwavering against the unstoppable tide.

  The Grafter had grown impossibly huge, the slithering trunk of limbs and stolen flesh shuddering with a hunger that refused to be sated. Entire pockets of the black-and-gold or azure-and-sable forces were consumed in maddening seconds, reduced to shrieking lumps caught between jaws and metallic scalpels. Some soldiers broke rank and fled, stumbling over the debris and the dead in their panicked flight. Others pressed forward with a doomed bravery, lances raised in futile defiance.

  Keeping himself low, Nence slunk around the fringes of the chaos. No one noticed his silent passage—the battlefield demanded all attention. One surge from Blachaeus wiped out whole squads; the clatter of gear, the final bellow of dying men. One of the Lady Bhaeryn’s own Knights Consort was snatched up and crushed in Blachaeus’ cybernetic jaws. Furtive, skittering movements carried Nence onward, too small and inconspicuous to warrant a second glance.

  At last, he spotted the Lady’s royal biocrawler through the gloom. It lay on its flank, one side battered and caved where the serpent’s assault had thrown it. Its legs twitched, scraping at scorched earth and broken bone lattice, trying in vain to right itself. Oil sprayed from cracked valves, and the metal plating of its armour had bent in ways that would not easily be repaired.

  Even from a distance, Nence detected no movement in the carriage. Perhaps the Lady was unconscious, or had already fled. The ground shook anew from an impact behind him, rattling the broken crawler. Nence forced himself to press on, heart pounding a staccato beat in his chest.

  He edged closer, taking cover behind scraps of twisted plating and collapsed scaffolding. Each step brought him nearer to his objective. With the phage-knife clutched tight in his clawed hand, Nence steeled his nerves. Behind him, the serpent’s roar dissolved into the cacophony of raw slaughter. There was no turning back; if he meant to end her, it would be now or never.

  Nence clambered up the side of the overturned biocrawler, each of his six limbs seeking purchase on twisted plating and a half-crushed walkway. The wind still carried the shrieks and metallic howls from the battlefield, but here it was subdued. Thunder behind closed doors. His focus was on the here and now. He paused, antenna flicking warily at the sounds of muffled movement within the carriage.

  He wrenched at the hatch, bent and jammed in the crash until it finally gave way with a creak of protesting metal. A gust of stale air washed over him, tinged with sweat, stale perfume, and something sour. Carefully, he squeezed through, dropping into what was once a plush cabin for the Lady.

  The interior lay in disarray. Fine sheets and silken pillows tumbled across the angled floor, cast about by the violence of the carriage’s fall. Gilded ornaments and half-burned incense scattered between lumps of upholstery, turning the once-opulent chamber into a rummaged tumult. Nence steeled himself, drawing a slow breath into his segmented chest.

  There, amidst the tangle of bedding, lay the Lady Bhaeryn—Bee.

  At first, all Nence could do was stare. She was a young woman—human in that beautiful way the old legends spoke of the progenitors. More human than the Vat-Mother, herself. She wore a black gown trimmed in gold, but its luxurious sheen was marred by tears and dust. Her skin—purpled and slick with sweat—twitched with writhing shapes that pressed and bulged underneath. Worms, living threads of parasitic flesh, coiling ceaselessly through her.

  She raised her gaze, unfocused and dizzy, as Nence came into view. Their eyes locked. She coughed or wheezed, more a pitiful gasp for air. Nence’s antenna stiffened, a tremor racing through him. She truly was a progenitor—everything the old orders and the nobility tried to become, tried to replicate. That raw humanity that existed only in myth. Infested but true.

  She had a missing hand, Nence noticed. That would make this easier.

  He gripped the phage blade. The twisted knife seemed to pulse with every quake of his body and lurched hungrily for its proximity to the Lady. Bee’s eyes shifted to the weapon. Nence tightened his hold, his heart pounding.

  The time had come. Nence had found the Lady in her most vulnerable moment. With a single thrust, he could end all this.

  So he did.

  Nence lunged.

  The phage-dagger trembled in his grip, roiling and hissing with an otherworldly hunger, pressing him forward in a single, vicious thrust aimed at the Lady’s heart. The desperate purpose, the vow to kill her, eclipsed all else in Nence’s mind. He drove the blade toward Bee’s chest, steeling himself for the final blow.

  Bee caught it.

  Not with the trembling hand Nence expected, the slender fingers he had seen half-buried under mounds of bedding. Instead, something metallic and fluid slithered forth where she had once been amputated. A glimmer of constructive nanometal—like the phage-blade’s own living substance—coalesced into a harsh, angular shape, forming an artificial limb in a heartbeat. That newly forged hand seized the knife mid-strike, halting it just shy of her plated breast.

  Nence’s antenna flared in panicked disbelief. He scrambled, pushing with all five other limbs braced against the crawler’s buckled interior, but he gained no purchase. The dagger writhed in his grasp, hungering to taste the Lady’s body, sparks of alien matter dancing against Bee’s prosthetic. Yet she held it firm, her dark eyes, dull with sickness only moments ago, now sharp with focus.

  He pressed harder, an animal snarl escaping his mandibles. But Bee, wounded and feverish though she was, did not yield. She bared her chrome teeth with a grunt. Her new metal hand refused to budge.

  It was then that she tilted her head, precisely as the Vat-Mother of Acetyn did when she regarded Nence on his knees—a slow, appraising motion that felt more like a condemnation than curiosity. Yet Bee had eyes—human eyes—and a face that was still heartbreakingly real, if not for the worms that writhed beneath her skin. She regarded him with an empty hatred deeper than anything the Vat-Mother’s bare sockets could convey.

  Nence’s heart drummed in terror. The phage-dagger shrieked in his grip, the edge spitting venomous sparks of fluid nanometal. But Bee didn’t waver. She had faced horrors beyond description. Who was he, some silent freak with a little piece of phage to surpass them?

  A violent yank upon the back of his neck tore Nence from Bee’s carriage. The world spun as he was hauled bodily through the narrow hatch, limbs flailing. Then came impact—hard and unyielding, ash biting into his carapace as he slammed down onto the ruined ground. Air fled his lungs in a wheezing cough, his antenna lashing in panic.

  He squirmed, chest heaving, trying in vain to catch his breath. The phage-blade was gone, dropped in the chaos. He twisted, searching for it, only to freeze at the sight towering over him.

  Sar-ek.

  The knight’s metallic bone cuirass stood battered and warped, creaking with every ragged breath he took. Blood—his own, or someone else’s—ran in dark rivulets down dented plating. The edges of his armour gaped where Blachaeus’ monstrous, cybernetic jaws had tried to crush him. By all rights he should have been dead, yet he stood tall, star-metal sword leveled at Nence.

  In the distance, the battle roared—Blachaeus rampaged. Still, the thunder of lance fire answered with furious shrieks. But here and now, Sar-ek’s gaze burned with a singular purpose, ignoring the serpent’s carnage. Only the would-be assassin mattered.

  Nence lifted his hands, feathers bushing in fear. His trembling mandibles parted in a mute plea. He tried to rasp an entreaty, but he had no voice, no way to beg for mercy beyond the frantic angle of his antenna, the rapid movement of his limbs. Sar-ek snorted, spitting a clot of blood to the side.

  Raising the heavy sword, the Knight Consort offered no words.

  In a single, brutal swing, he ended Nence’s life.