With each step Bee took, more blood oozed out from the wound on her back to run down her legs. The pain increased as her adrenaline faded, an electric scream throughout her body. Her determination kept her upright, resisting the agony in her back and the quivering in her chest. A hand fixed over her heart tensed into a fist as she struggled to hide her weakness before these strange beings. They brought her through the tunnel system until it opened into a much wider ascending chamber whose floor comprised of shallow steps. There was no bioluminescent lighting here, but from up the passage shone a bright glare broken by dark silhouettes and a roaring cacophony of voices calling out in language. Bee saw hastily constructed signage, assembled and not grown, marking this chamber level as Ascending Junction 101-58.

“Stop. There. Don’t move.”

The two enforcers pressed around Bee, and the one ahead of her shunted her into staying still with a strong arm. Her attention turned from the lights above, and she realised they were not alone. A company of warriors dressed in similar pale raiment to her captors trudged up the vast stairway. They were battered and defeated. Nearly every one of them was scoured and blackened, carbon scored with flesh weeping and burned. Some were missing limbs, and each moved with a posture that had lost all hope.

In contrast, the pair that held Bee comported themselves proudly. A score of the injured troupe passed before one of their leaders stopped to regard the three. Its body was encased within metal shells and possessed a hard-jointed carapace between the gaps in its armour.

“‘Ware,” the commander hissed, compound eyes affixed on Bee as it addressed the two beside her. “The Warrens are lost, and the City has shown its ferity this day.”

Bee looked away, overcome with another wave of nausea, mouth salivating uncontrollably. Her squirming was met with a hand seizing her by one of the fluted siphons upon her back, forcing her to stand straight and still.

“We won,” he barked, presenting Bee like a prize. “The Eidolon will be here soon.”

“Nay,” The commander replied, though it seemed distracted, glancing up at the rising glare from beyond. It took several breaths before looking down again at the child and speaking to the others. “I will not wait any longer. My company has sacrificed too much already. However, know this. The hated Mother acted in concert with the wicked depths. I fear no corner of the realm is safe now. The peace is shattered.”

“Peace?” The second captor leaned in to insist, “The Pilgrim will scour this place.”

The company continued their haggard march from the depths, and a few met Bee’s inquisitive glances as she gulped down mouthfuls of air to calm her stomach. Then, finally, the commander turned their compound eyes on the two enforcers. It grunted assent while a murmur ran through those that had paused to witness the proceedings. Some turned their mandibles and feathery antenna to signal concern for the girl, but they did nothing to assist her. Others recognised her and wore their contempt openly.

“Your sentiment will well ingratiate you amongst the Eidolon,” the commander said. Bee glanced at her captors, who looked pleased with themselves, but she wasn’t sure it was a compliment. The commander turned to leave and said, “Do not fail them.”

“Bye,” Bee said, rebellious and not really expecting an answer. Instead, she was ignored by the war leader and shoved back into the alcove of the tunnel by the enforcers, a small shelter from prying eyes.

“Be quiet,” the first enforcer barked.

Bee leaned against the wall and slid down until her head rested against it, confined in this narrow space. A strange coolness came from under her hand when she held onto the hard bone. Then, whilst waiting for the worst pain to subside, Bee couldn’t take it anymore. She turned aside and wretched, vomiting a weak emission from her already emptied stomach.

“Look at that,” one of her captors muttered as the floor sizzled and turned pale. “Some kind of phage?”

“Paradise if I know. Don’t touch it.”

Spitting onto the floor, trying to clear the bilious taste in her mouth, Bee noticed the iconography grown into the silverline bone she leaned against. A wash of stars. Spheres within rings. Rings broken. Spheres shattered. Stars winking out. There was history here, but the child couldn’t understand it. How could she? This was an old place. It lived. It remembered but failed to pass on its warnings to each generation walking its halls. Bee closed her eyes and asked herself what her Mother would do. Then she thought about running away, but she was already so exhausted. Her captors argued with one another, and the turn of their light told Bee she was still being watched without looking back.

“It’s not our problem.”

“Look at it!”

Bee’s stupor was disturbed by slinking shadows. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Her eyes narrowed, peering into the infrared haze. There was movement in the passage’s gloom; belatedly, she realised that these brutes with their electric lights could not see it. A quiet and unearthly hissing sounded above them, drowned out by the two freaks shouting. She took a breath to steady herself before stumbling back. Something was very close to where they were sheltered, a tall sinuous shape. Bee forced her eyes closed and turned away, whining desperately, hand over her mouth.

The enforcers shifted to face her as she staggered past them and into the stairway. The second shouted a warning while clutching at his lance. Unfortunately, his shout came too late as Bee lurched forward into the mass of warriors ascending the steps. The crowd of bodies crashed together in a chaotic tangle of limbs. Feeling someone behind her, Bee pushed off one of the thralls for balance when strong arms seized around her waist. Caught between her captors, she kicked and struggled against the weight pinning down all sides, clawing desperately for a handhold against those clinging to her.

The brief struggle was cut short. A concussive blast ripped up the stairway. The soldier who grabbed Bee was cast atumble, landing squarely on top of her, making breathing difficult with his cold iron grip. Shouting and cursing, then a blur of darkness, streaks of light, Bee was trapped under a hale of lance fire. She screamed and kicked again at the freak that held her down, only just managing to look up in time to see it.

The slender hound stooped out of the passage behind Bee’s first captor. Distracted, he took aim down the stairs, but the massive claw of the five-metre-tall beast seized him around the head and shoulders. Lifting him from behind, the eyeless monster grabbed his legs with his other hand and ripped the enforcer’s body into two pieces. The freak’s innards spilt out, cries cut short by the violence of his end.

The creature tossed the enforcer’s remains to the ground and turned to face Bee, her captor’s upper body still held in one of its claws. The eyeless hound bared its fangs in a silent snarl.

“Get off me,” Bee said under her breath.

“Shut up.” Her surviving captor pushed her head down against the filthy floor. “Stay down!”

Still struggling against him, Bee fell still when more cries filled the stairway. Then, finally, his grip faltered, and they both looked back together.

The second hound appeared, lunging from another dark passage onto the stairway. It tore apart injured and disoriented soldiers caught in its path. Then it stomped a raking foot on top of one of the heavily armoured war leaders and fired a biocannon down into them, casting up a shower of sparks and gore that speckled the chamber walls. The hound’s head reared back and roared as the shell of the war leader exploded outwards.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

The enforcer holding Bee down rolled off her, swearing in a panic, but kept a grip on one of her fluted siphons. Then a lash snapped out of the dark haze far below, and two whip-sharp tendrils ensnared his throat and dragged him screaming into the chamber’s depths. Bee rocked back as his hold on her broke, and she looked wide-eyed at the space he vanished into. A third hound emerged, a red glow beginning to emanate from beneath its broad crested skull. The chamber floor surged as all the injured and terrified thralls who had witnessed this moved as one. Bee scrambled too, her injuries forgotten, crawling then lurching to her feet and joining the masses as they attempted to flee. She was kicked and shoved, every larger body trying to force her out of the way, determined to escape. The air filled with blood and vapourised metal as a cannon shot tore into the crowd, then another and another.

Bee had just passed the first hound - the one she recognised, staring down at her - when the crowd suddenly parted. Bee slammed face-first into a woman’s body, who took a measured step back and wrapped a cloaked arm around Bee to steady her. Bee clumsily grasped at the stranger, who was bare beneath a ragged hooded cloak. Confused by the familiar humanoid-shaped body, soft skin and bony armoured plates, Bee leaned back to meet her gaze. The hooded figure had no face to speak of. Instead, a dozen small eyes circled a gaping mouth in the centre of her head that was ringed with countless prehensile teeth.

A protective and urgent hand pressed Bee back. The hooded figure moved between her and the hounds. They crouched and hissed, suddenly wary and readying their biomechanical weapons in the dark. Then the Eidolon produced a brilliant star-metal sword from beneath her cloak, and Bee’s eyes widened as it flashed out in an adroit grip.