All this suffering. All this ruin. For what?

You killed them. They were innocent. Does that mean nothing to you?

Was it worth it?

Did you get your taste of paradise?

My shape, my kin, trauma is immortal. You cannot kill it with your moonlight blade...

CHAPTER 5: KISS THE BLADE

The Pate Gardens burned. The rubble of the mausoleums was piled high with the corpses of the dead soldiery, those brave souls who had died defending a fallen order, now set ablaze. Thick black smoke tumbled into the air, blotting out the wicked light of the day star, which invaded through the broken sky. Those who hadn’t died had turned out their coats instead in a desire for survival or belief in a fable. They had thrown themselves down supplicant before a mad titan who, according to myth and legend, had once led their city to rule the world millennia ago, before this age of inequity and misery. Now he had returned.

A freak in rags climbed upon a collapsed shrine, his talons defacing an old monument to a fallen culture he lacked any knowledge of. Like all who clung to this depraved mythology, he was nameless, eschewing the letters printed into each of their genetic memories and digital beings, and he shrieked mad song.

“An electric glow in the city’s streets,

revealing where power and lies meet.

Beneath the towers whence they cower,

we shall seize from them their power!”

He cried out in delirium, jubilant as crowds of the poor and downtrodden overtook this realm once claimed by a rotten master. They were emboldened by the strife and rallied on by zealotry.

“The elders plot, careless, slow,

and ignorant of their serfs below!

Electric lights, shining eyes,

suffering in the umber, their demise!

Now the people shall rise rightly!

Annihilation will shine so brightly!

A new dawn to usher in paradise!”

At the periphery of the chaos, at the garden’s edge, an ancient elevator ascended, dragged metre after metre on old chains, thick and hewn of metallic bone. Even before it reached its destination, though, the roar of the crowds reached the three freaks within.

Two fat grubs, young children of an overthrown noble, trembled in fear.

“I’m scared,” Inmi Hash said.

“It’s okay,” her brother, Betan, tried to reassure her. He pressed his swollen side against his sister. Slightly older, slightly larger, it was his job to protect her.

Waiting before them, a tall humanoid warrior looked back. Wearing shining star metal armour with a pristine black cloak and tabard, her expression was guarded by a stalwart great helm, but her posture was cold and in control.

“You have naught to fear,” she said lowly. “You have my word. I shall never allow harm to come to you.”

“Thank you!” Inmi blurted out, still trembling, mandibles fidgeting nervously.

The rising elevator found its level, and a ratcheting snap of its mechanisms resounded. The gateway of its cage groaned open, and the warrior stepped out to meet a cadre of guards, who had removed their white and wore now only piecemeal armours, forgoing their anointed position beneath the Lord of Bone.

“My shape, my kin,” they uttered together.

“My shape, my kin,” she said, stepping from the cage. They had all long planned for this day, for a treasonous revolution arising from faith. At her heel, the grubs carefully crept with their stubby legs, speechless of the havoc beyond the checkpoint growing by the minute.

“Dame Vashante Tens,” the guards’ leader dipped his head.

“I have brought the children of Abstrek Hash, as His messenger demanded. Will the Eidolon be receiving me?”

The guards shared a look.

“The Eidolon is dead,” one of them said.

“He gave his life to restore His Grace, and has joined Him in eternity,” their leader corrected, clinging to the minutia of some evolving dogma.

Dame Vashante stared until he continued.

“It’s not good. Without the Eidolon, all those converted are going feral. They’ve got no-one to follow, except...”

None of them spoke for a painful moment. The calamity beyond was oppressive in its rising volume.

“His Grace isn’t interested in them,” one of the guards said with great hesitation.

“Charming. Well, we didn’t work towards this day for naught.”

“Well said, Dame.”

“Open the barricade. I shall escort our guests to His Grace, myself.”

So they pushed away the debris they had piled high to brace themselves against the tide. The armoured figure stepped out to breach the faithful, head held high. The impudent masses scattered around her, forming a wide perimeter outside her reach.

Waiting patiently, she raised a hand to usher the two children. Inmi and Betan followed with lopping strides of their fat wiggling bodies.

The warrior could see contempt in the eyes of the masses for these two helpless children and what they represented. However, they faltered. A great killer stood before them, and individually they were easily frightened. She could see them for what they were, the desperate, the destitute, and the starving. For them, the revolution was survival, that order must evolve, or they would die. Thus the Axiamati faith was fostered in the depths.

It was a careful march, the crowd parting before them and closing in their wake. Vashante held her head high and, from the depths of her helmet, met the eyes and scintillating scales of any who looked bold or foolish.

The upper levels of the Ossein Basilica had collapsed. Perched upon the highest floor that remained was a great dragon, but it was wounded and bound down with chains and stakes. It raised its head and screamed as skin welders used their needled devices to close great gouges in its armour and replaced pieces of its meat and aug, careless of its agony.

In another direction, the great hall was punctured and collapsed inwards. In the rubble, the corpse of the colossal turret Otz Garzed was being butchered for parts, electric cutters hissing and spraying gore as it was dismembered.

“Don’t look,” Betan tried to protect his sister, who turned white from fright.

Then, amidst the crowd, fervour grew. Finally, one of the starving retches screamed invectives and hurled a handful of rot and excrement at the children.

“Damn you!” The freak cried out as the muck hit young Inmi, and she screamed.

Vashante turned, extending her arm, and cast out her black cloak to shelter the child from their vitriol. More grew bold and pelted them with filth, howling their rage and putting all the pain and hate that had been thrust down upon them into these two children. Still, though, none dare stand before the warrior, and together they made slow progress up into the waiting gates and dead halls of the Ossein Basilica.