Days passed in unsteady procession, each one burdened by the inevitability of what must come next.

  The Nesta Barshaum that remained towered inert above the ruin—silent giants, no longer coaxed into motion by living hands, their bared hulls a callous monument over a place of slaughter. In their shadows, the infected portion of the City, killed by Bee’s psychic plague, withered into a festering mass of sloughing membranes.

  Dawn after dawn, rusted metallic dust and scorched ash drifted like a pall over the dead. Bee had retreated from it all, seizing on that new, forbidden power to spin a miracle from constructive nanomaterial.

  Her soldiery watched as, piece by piece, a shining dome rose about her—silver arcs grown out of old code that Bee, in her desperation, commanded. That shining edifice locked away the heart of the dead land, sealing her secrets behind lustrous, crawling plating.

  Those remnants of her so-called army—those few who had chosen not to flee—found themselves barred outside that dome. They traded unease and confusion. Rumour abounded, and they were unsure whether Bee’s plan was still to resurrect the lost or to entomb them all in monstrous witchcraft.

  The City’s slow rot pressed them on one side while the dome offered them no reprieve.

  Even so, the small band that remained faced pockets of resistance from zealots who clung to the Pilgrim’s name. These fanatics prowled the outskirts, occasionally launching hopeless strikes at the Lady Bhaeryn’s scattered defenders or daring to challenge Lady Hash’s retinue.

  Yet each skirmish ended swiftly under Jhedothar’s sentinel guard.

  He confronted them personally more than once, his augmented arms and ruby spear bringing a swift end to any freak that dared raise a blade against him. That ruby armament still crackled with savage promise; no lesser soldier could hope to match him. The zealots would lie broken in mere moments, disbelief and fear catching their last breaths. His followers, who had followed him since he cast off the sanguine raiments, looked up to him as a hero. Their champion, their protector, the true Lord of Cruiros, even though such titles had been torn from him in the changing of the ages.

  Inside her sanctuary, Bee turned her gaze from the machinery that Slashex and her had worked tirelessly to assemble.

  Beyond the dome, a wet wind blew, carrying the stench of rot and acid. Even sealed in, Bee smelled it—the reek of the City’s innards cooking in the heat of the day, combined with the charnel miasma of the battlefield. It seeped through microscopic pores in her construct, filling her nose with a bitter metallic tang.

  It didn’t help her nausea.

  She tasted bile and forced it down.

  Bee extended her perception outward through the haze of pain and odour. Though she could no longer see the outside world directly, she sensed movement just beyond the dome’s skin by spinning up cameras on its external structure, controlled remotely, just as Slashex had taught her.

  A familiar presence paced tirelessly—Sir Jhedothar. She could picture him clearly in her mind’s eye, the image conjured by those cameras and communicated to her neural lace: centaurian body braced in vigilance against the beyond, the infamous ruby spear shining in his gauntleted fist as he warded away any fool zealots who might try to interfere?.

  He had promised to protect her work, and Jhedothar was nothing if not a creature of his word and honour.

  Bee’s attention drifted. Somewhere near Jhedothar’s imposing presence hovered another, quieter figure – Yomnar Free. Bee saw the old monk in filthy robes, fretfully observing the dome from afar, his withered mask revealing only his eyes creased with concern.

  He had always been gentle with her.

  He must be praying for her now.

  And Lady Isbet Hash and her remaining retainers waited out there, too. Bee had caught a glimpse of Isbet’s face as the plating closed—the noblewoman’s eyes had been fixed on Bee with an intense, unreadable look, her lips set in a thin line.

  Bee knew little of the Lady of Hash, but she felt the weight of Isbet’s gaze even now, as though it pierced the dome. Not judgment, not exactly… something else. An expectation? A knowing. Lady Hash’s silence spoke volumes that Bee had no time to decipher?. Bee clenched her jaw. Let them watch and wonder. Everything beyond this dome—friend or foe, God or bystander—would just have to wait.

  She turned back to the task at hand. At the centre of the enclosed space, the ground was a scorched mess of blood and ashes: the very spot where Blachaeus had been unmade, cleared aside. It was here she had chosen to attempt the impossible. Around that site, arranged with the help of Slashex, were the bodies of the fallen.

  Four corpses lay spaced evenly in a circle on the reclaimed ground. Despite the heat, each was covered with a layer of frost-rimed plastic sheeting—emergency preservation tarps scavenged from the medical stores. The sheets were connected by coiled tubes to a humming refrigeration unit that Slashex had repurposed and dragged inside. Cold mist snaked out from the edges of the coverings, delaying rot.

  Even so, the stench of death hung heavy over them.

  Bee moved to the nearest corpse and slowly drew back the pall of crackling plastic. Her hand shook as she did so. Beneath lay the still form of Toshtta Yew—the Knight-Protector who had once escorted her through the halls of Ymmngorad. Toshtta’s golden plate armour was rent open at the chest, cleaved by some tremendous force. Through the jagged tear, Bee glimpsed dead muscle and shattered ribs where she had been torn in two. Dried blood blackened the thorns and vine-like embellishments that wreathed Toshtta’s body. Her eponymous helmet was gone, and for the first time, Bee saw the stem-ridden head beneath, which was a serene mien of pale flesh and knotted growth. Once, Toshtta the Blade had been proud and fearsome, her presence a reassurance to Bee in a hostile court. Now her sightless eyes stared skyward, milky and unblinking.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Bee bit back a sob at the sight.

  She crouched and, with great care, slid her hand over Toshtta’s eyes to close them. The lids were cold and stiff. How long had it been since Toshtta fell? Two days? Three? Time had blurred.

  Bee whispered hoarsely, “I’m so sorry…”

  Her vision swam, remembering Toshtta alive—a steady hand on Bee’s shoulder, a quiet word of encouragement before an uncertain meeting… a flash of gold armour at the flank of a battle formation…

  The second body, just beyond Toshtta, was Cartaxa. Bee moved to him next, folding back his shroud. Cartaxa’s dense and armoured frame was heavy against the ground—it took Bee bracing her knees to peel the tarp off his broad chest. His star-metal armour was still intact, polished star-metal smeared with gore where his meat had been torn from the small spaces between the plates of his armour. His helmet, shaped to accommodate the pair of compound eye clusters of his phenotype, remained on, the visor dark. Bee hesitated, then lifted the helmet from his head. It came free with a click of disengaging neuro-spikes, revealing Cartaxa’s face: grey, leathery skin and a mandible jaw set in an expression of grim finality. In life, his compound eyes had shimmered a brilliant emerald. Now they were dull, facets cracked, half of them gouged out by what looked like a knife wound.

  Cartaxa had been a seasoned strategist and an unwavering ally once he’d chosen to side with her. It was he who first knelt and called her Lady Bhaeryn in front of the troops when even Bee was unsure of the title, granting her a respect she wasn’t sure she deserved.

  That memory pricked at her now.

  He understood how service and fealty worked. How to inspire those around him with quiet duty. She sensed he had seen much and had learned countless lessons untold from his lifetime of struggles.

  Bee turned away.

  Instead, she steeled herself and went to the third corpse. Even through the frosted tarp, she could see the twisted angle of the limbs, the unnatural concavity where the torso should be.

  Sar-ek.

  The sheet stuck as Bee pulled it back, catching on congealed fluids beneath. With a wet slurp it gave way, revealing the mangled remnants of the knight who had saved her life mere days ago. Bee’s breath hitched.

  Sar-ek’s once-powerful body was scarcely recognizable. Blachaeus’s massive fist had crushed him into pulp; much of his armour had exploded outward from the force, now just shards littering the gore around what remained of his ribcage and spine. They had gathered what pieces they could—but seeing them laid out, Bee realized with despair that Sar-ek was essentially a collection of butchered parts. One of his arms was entirely missing; his lower half was… Bee closed her eyes sharply, tears forcing their way out.

  She remembered Sar-ek as he had been: rough, gruff, contemptuous of her at first—but by the end, the very moment of his end, he had roared defiance on her behalf. She could still see him in her mind’s eye, hurling a scavenged sword into Blachaeus’s eye to save her?.

  The image of that brave act contrasted with the memory of his last moments—Sar-ek under the monster’s gargantuan appendage, crushed with a wet crunch?.

  Bee had been too slow to save him.

  A strangled noise escaped her throat.

  She owed him her life. She used to hate him but she owed him her life. He probably saved her in more ways than she would dare admit, after all was said and done. Tears pattered onto the torn metal of his armour.

  She rose on unsteady legs and stepped back, wiping her face with the back of her left hand. These three Knights Consort—Toshtta, Cartaxa, Sar-ek—had followed her to damnation. They had died under her command for a cause she herself only barely understood. Important, for sure, but which would have consequences beyond what anyone could truly comprehend.

  Bee felt a wave of dizziness and a rush of feverish heat. The worms writhed within her skull as if responding to her anxiety.

  I have to make this right, she told herself. I have to.

  She would bring Paradise to them herself if she had to.

  A fourth figure lay at the centre of the circle of bodies, and this one was not under a shroud. It was not necessary. There were no pieces of her biology left. Nothing meat. Nothing real.

  Vashante Tens—the Eidolon—or what was left of her.

  Bee’s heart constricted at the sight. Carefully, she knelt beside Vashante’s remains. The ground here was a heap of Blachaeus’s stolen flesh and implants; that mound was the pieces of Vashante Bee had found in the battle’s aftermath?. She had gathered every piece of Vashante she could find and carried them here with her own hands.

  Before Bee now were arranged Vashante’s severed limbs—still clad in sleek exoskeletal armour—-and the sundered halves of her mechanical torso. The star-metal reinforcements of Vashante’s frame were bent and caked with clots of gore from Blachaeus’s feeding. Cables and pneumatic tubing hung out of the wreckage of her body like spilt entrails.

  Most poignant of all, on a clean cloth atop a salvaged crate, lay the dark metal faceplates that Bee had carefully crafted for her. Bee had scrubbed them free of blood and viscera, polishing the onyx-toned surface until it gleamed. Two eye lenses—remarkably unscratched—stared up blankly. Behind those plates, Vashante’s head, the organic parts of it, had been completely torn away.

  Bee reached out and ran her fingertips over the largest plate—the one that had formed Vashante’s left cheek and brow. Only days ago, that plate had been attached to a living being. Bee could recall Vashante’s voice reverberating from beneath it. She took every opportunity to speak when she got her voice back. And Bee delighted in hearing it: curt and firm in command, or soft with uncharacteristic gentleness during their rare private moments.

  Her vision blurred with tears again. How many conversations had they shared while Vashante was hidden behind this metal shell? Now, it struck Bee as cruel that although she had given Vashante the ability to smile, she did not remember what was beneath the mask.

  Bee’s hand tightened around the plate. Her reflection wavered on its dark curve: a grief-stricken woman with damp black hair clinging to her cheeks, eyes ringed by exhaustion. Bee looked away.

  She couldn’t bear to look at herself this time.

  So sick.

  So desperate.

  “Vash,” Bee said quietly. “I’ll fix this.”