Desherik was a home. His daughters spawned off of his broad shoulders. They grew and grew high into the city. Then his daughters had daughters, larger still. Eventually, he died, gasping for breath, crushed beneath the weight of generations, scratching for answers. Why?

CHAPTER 1: TWIN FATES

The ribs of the great hall quaked. A muscular diaphragm that passed as its ceiling shivered in its death throes. The only light came from the hot, equatorial sun, still low in the dawn, invading through a wet puncture high on the wall. The buzzing of a patcher, made up of compound eyes and thorny proboscis, filled the air. Its dumb instincts had it spit up concrete and metallic gel around the wide wound, emptying its stomachs in an attempt to seal it before taking off into flight once more. The horns of the palace beyond groaned low in agony, fleshy towers and boney parapets shuddering against the bronze sky.

Inside, only one vat still lived. Its flesh rippled and distended, bulging with amniotic fluid and new life. The progeny within was very nearly ready. Yet it was almost too late.

A plug burst. Waters sluiced out, sloshing over the filthy, chitin-shelled floor, foaming at the edges as it picked up dust and turbulence. Lips split apart, and out fell a body, all tangled limbs and confusion. Her three arms clutched at her own naked form and her mouth opened wide to splutter and cry.

Her cry turned from surprise to panic as the agony of the waking mind took her senses. Long legs, twitching, flexing, were clumsy, and the arms didn’t seem to be wired up correctly. She couldn’t stand. It was hard to peel back the lids that covered her sensitive eyes. The light made her body protest. It was too much, too soon, and it hurt.

“Bee,” a dry, rasping voice called out. Called out in language, something that she recognised, somehow. “Come here. Come to me. Please.”

She did not know how long she had laid there, wailing. The hot air began to dry her with time, leaving her smooth skin and plates sticky, hair congealed over her eyes and lips.

“Bee, please. Please listen. You have to come to me.”

Bee managed to tame a limb, reaching up to wipe slick hair back over her shoulder where it was out of the way. Then, she managed to calm her breaths with open eyes, looking around her dying place of birth for the first time. In a dark corner, amidst rotting machinery, was a fallen figure. No, it was the rotting machinery.

“Yes. Come here, my sweet. You can do it. Come here.”

She tried. Three arms. Three legs. No, that wasn’t right. But there were hands and feet. Bee couldn’t support her own weight yet, so she dragged herself. Her plates slid over the cool chitin of the floor. At first, the spilled waters made it easy. But as she made it metre after metre across the ground, it became dirty and harsh and abrasive, scratching at her skin where it was exposed.

“Good. Good. Yes. You’re doing so well. Come here, Bee.”

In the dark, Bee could finally make out the voice source. A fallen woman, her mother, stitched into a network of arterial hoses and slick nervous wires that trailed out, linking her into the dying building itself. An almost skeletal hand reached out, trembling. Bee was close enough now that her mother could run a hand over her cheek.

“I don’t understand,” Bee slurred, somehow finding words, her tongue clumsy, her throat tight.

Mother hushed her, taking Bee’s body in her arms and pulling her close.

“Save your voice,” Mother rasped. Her body felt so cool to the touch. It made Bee shiver despite herself. “I need you to do something. Can you hear me?”

Bee swallowed a lump in her throat, retracting her lolling tongue back into her mouth and nodding.

“Good. Oh, look at you. You’re so small. So almost…” Tenderly, Bee felt herself being pat down, checked over. It was reassuring in a way. She looked around, and they were definitely alone. The walls shuddered again.

“Bee, my sweet. I need you to get up. You have to get water.” The dying mother turned Bee’s head with a gentle hand, meeting the child’s confused eyes with her own empty sockets. The giver of life took a hoarse breath before she continued, voice working its way from between lipless teeth and a silvered jaw. “I need you to be strong and do exactly what I say. Can you do that for me, Bee?”

The vat-born child nodded again, this time with greater apprehension. Something was thudding in her belly, filling her with giddy anxiety, but she had to try.