“Who are you?” Vashante asked coldly, her hand tightened on her sword, the blade still undrawn. She needed information as much as vengeance. “I thought this place abandoned. But here you are, skulking amongst the dead.”

  He issued a clicking chuckle, moving a few paces along the wall with a hideous undulating motion.

  “And here you are, delivering at last your pledged offering. The grandchild as tribute to destined death. Fate has a relentless hand, ever taking and ne’er returning. Has it not?”

  His voice was high and rasping, carrying a mocking civility.

  He knows Bee, Vashante thought. He must. Likely, he had been hiding, waiting for an opportune moment. Perhaps he’d even seen her come in. She knelt and set Bee down carefully in the shadow of a column.

  “I’ve had enough of freaks in the shadows,” Vashante called out. “If you mean to serve your Pilgrim, come down and face me. Or are you too afraid of a ‘false progenitor’ and the last Eidolon?”

  She was goading him deliberately, stepping forward into the centre of the hall to draw him away from Bee’s alcove. The star-metal sword slid from its sheath with a keen whisper, its polished surface catching the stray light.

  Trishek’s mandibles widened in a facsimile of a grin. He did not seem eager to charge at her; instead, his many legs carried him in a spiralling descent around the hall’s perimeter, staying out of direct reach.

  “A bold challenge, dear Eidolon,” he cooed. “But you misunderstand. I’ve no need to serve the Pilgrim. Our interests align. Oh yes.” Trishek’s eyes darted to Bee on the ground. “He did give me one ask, however. Can you guess what that is?”

  Vashante’s heart thundered, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Trishek’s movements had brought him lower; his coiling had filled the hall and blocked an escape towards the main doors she had entered through. He kept a distance, clearly wary of her sword.

  Her helmet’s optics tracked the subtle coil of his centipede body. If he lunged, he could strike from several metres away. She’d have to time her move just right.

  “Perhaps he told you to lick up his leftovers,” she spat back. “All the little scraps of flesh he left behind.” She inched sideways, trying to position so that if he attacked her, then his back would be to Bee. “Or maybe to cower here and hide now that justice comes for your rotten sort.”

  Trishek hissed, a staccato burst of anger.

  “You know nothing, traitor knight,” he snarled. “The Pilgrim will soon reveal the truth. He will cast aside the pretenders and their institutions of deceit. He will peel back the false sky and take us all to Paradise upon the carriages of the ancients.”

  Vashante thought of Bee. The tuition in witchcraft she had so often vaguely overheard, so offered by that acolyte of wires, Slashex. The muttered secrets that she did not understand.

  “I have seen first hand the great beneficence of the Pilgrim,” she said, gritting her teeth. “His saviour and his care. Cruelty boundless. Murder uncounted. Children devoured.”

  Trishek’s eyes seemed to flicker with anger at that. Perhaps even he had not expected the Pilgrim’s cruelty to extend to his own family.

  But Vashante knew not his bloodline.

  “Collateral,” he spat, his tone dismissive though a tremor belied underlying unease. “Yes… The world will not be saved through inaction. Better that a million lives are lost than Humanity be lost, forever. Grand designs require sacrifice. ”

  “Sacrifice,” Vashante repeated with disgust. “Is that what you call butchering babes, you miserable cur?”

  He seethed, coiling in the shade. “Such objections from the one who so readily served once she was brought low. Morals so easily set aside when it was your life under the blade.”

  Enough talk. Vashante needed him drawn in.

  “Your Pilgrim is nothing but another tyrant who feeds on the gullible,” she shouted. “And you are but a sycophant scratching at the crumbs of his table. Did devouring corpses in dark shrines teach you nothing? The Paradise you promised these freaks is ash.” She flung an arm out toward the doors, indicating the silent carnage beyond. “Look at it!”

  Trishek’s head twitched, and his segmented body tensed. For a moment, Vashante thought he might actually look, but instead, he coiled inward with rage.

  And he lunged.

  A streak of grey and black.

  He swept metres through the ruins of the old order, talons outstretched for the Lady unconscious on the floor.

  Bee did not stir.

  Vashante moved first. Perceived time slowed as bioenergetics ramped up. Bioaugmentations strained to the limits of genetically enhanced flesh and cybernetic potential. Wires and embedded circuitry routed their electric charge. Nervous relays in muscles and brain tissue released ionised matter. Photonic cores of a neural lace channelled light inwards, ever inwards.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Trishek’s madness glinted in his faceted eyes, his scar-knotted hands reaching out covetously for that ultimate prize.

  Vashante twisted in place, throwing her weight. Sliding footfalls on stone; friction was not enough for their impossible velocity. The air, a heavy, cloying pall weight upon them. The bend of her arm caused the atmosphere to snap and pop. The raising of her fist was more than whip-sharp as it slashed through the long moment, stilled.

  Vashante had to be faster.

  She couldn’t fail.

  Not like this.

  Not again.

  He was there. He was there. The ancient Keeper, reaching upon Bee, over her. Mandibles spread in predator delight.

  —then her gauntlet slammed into his face.

  Stone shrieked. Air burst. The blow struck Trishek’s skull centre-mass, and the corridor detonated around him. Sound arrived a moment late, a concussive crack that rattled the Basilica’s ribs and made the chandeliers shrill in their chains. Trishek flew backwards through two walls and a support buttress, flesh rending, bone-steel frame splintering. He kept going until the fourth wall caught what remained of him and folded.

  The dust had not yet settled before he came again, spider-fast despite the ruin of his face. A faceted eye, shattered, mandibles bloodied and crushed. Vashante met him at the threshold of the hall.

  He lashed at her, claws gleaming.

  She stepped around, cloak whorling in the syrupy air, tearing in her wake.

  One hand found the knot of the spine at the back of his neck; Vashante gripped it between her gauntlet-clad fingers until the flesh yielded with a wet pop. She slammed him into the floor. Marble became powder.

  She ground his face into the dirt, inch by inch, until the stony plates spider-webbed and the mosaic saints commemorated therein screamed apart.

  “Did you forget who the fuck I am?” her metallic voice rasped, raw.

  She wrenched him free, lifting the Keeper like a broken banner. Trishek’s lower body—hundreds of metres of serpentine, mechanised carrion—convulsed, dragging itself away, instinct overruling oath. Vashante hurled his upper body after it. He sailed in a whimper of shattered flesh, skidded once, and the monstrous tail coiled around him, hauling his mortally wounded upper body into the high gloom beyond the vault.

  A final howl dwindled into the darkness.

  Silence fell hard. Dust snowed about her in a cascade, disturbed from a dark millennium at rest by their hyperaccelerated passing.

  Vashante stood alone. Shoulders heaved; actuators spat sparks. Muscles ached. The taste of copper lingered in the recycled air. She looked down at Cartaxa’s sword in her hand. She hadn’t even needed it.

  Not yet.

  Bee lay where she had fallen, untouched and safe where Vashante had laid her down. The knight knelt, arms shaking, and gathered her up. Across the nave, the grand double doors gaped—beyond them, the Pilgrim’s dark.

  Vashante looked that way once. Then she turned her back. Bee hung limp against her breastplate—wings twitching, pulse a thin flutter in the hollow of her throat. Vashante’s aug-motors whined as she tightened her grip.

  She took one step.

  A static pop cracked overhead. Dust rained from the rafters. All at once, every dormant vox-horn in the hall sputtered back to life with a howl of feedback.

  “All too predictable, Dame Tens.”

  The voice—smooth iron edges over a failing circuit—rolled through the hall like the toll of some half-forgotten bell. Vashante froze. Bee’s head lolled against her pauldron, unconscious, wings limp.

  “Predictable, yes,” the speaker continued, settling into a conversational register, “but at least that makes you somewhat reliable.”

  Vashante halted. Her visor swept the rafters, the wall conduits, and the ragged air vents.

  “Slashex?” Vashante asked. “How—how are you speaking to me here?”

  “Security sub-grid. The new master of this house never revoked my root access. Convenient.” A faint chuckle. “You were very foolish, bringing the her to the Ossein Basilica alone. This place is certain death.”

  Vashante shifted Bee’s weight, scanning the vaulted gloom. No sign of movement.

  “Bee needs treatment,” she growled, louder than she meant to. “The infestation is killing her. She could not wait.”

  Silence answered—long enough that Vashante’s augmented hearing began inventing threats in the gloom. Somewhere far off, a titanic vertebra groaned, and she imagined she heard the Pilgrim himself moving in the bowels of the palace.

  At last, Slashex spoke again, softer and almost tired.

  “Very well. For the girl’s sake I will help.” A skirl of data tones burrowed through the speaker system, then resolved into words. “Take the western transept—service lift A-Nine. It descends to the infirmary, two decks below the reliquary vaults. You still remember the way, do you not, Dame Tens?”

  “There are security locks. You will guide me all the way,” Vashante demanded.

  “When one owns the locks, the doors are never shut. Was your intention to force Bee to witness your inevitable death, here, today?”

  Vashante ignored the barb.

  “Move quickly, Dame. If the Pilgrim finds you…” The sentence trailed into a hiss of interference.

  Vashante’s visor flashed a threat glyph—biometric spike: Bee’s pulse falling. No time for dread. She turned on her heel, cloak brushing pools of Trishek’s blood, and strode for the transept arch. Behind her, the blown gates resettled with a wet clank; somewhere overhead, vox relays fizzed.

  Slashex’s voice returned in a final burst, low, resigned. “What you will learn today will change everything for you, Vashante. I hope you are ready to think before you act.”

  Vashante set her jaw. “Hold on, Bee.”

  Hydraulic pistons engaged, and she plunged into the western passage. The lamplights there guttered then stabilised into a sickly amber. Far below, machinery stirred—as though the Basilica itself were waking to weigh this intrusion.

  Around a bend, the service lift waited: a cage of corroded star-steel hanging over a throat of black air. Vashante stepped inside. As the gate clanged shut, she spared one look back along the corridor, half-expecting a colossus in living armour to fill the arch behind her.

  Only darkness watched.

  She thumbed the controls. Chains shrieked; the lift dropped, swallowing both women into the Basilica’s heart.

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