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, crushed beneath the weight of generations, scratching for answers as he gasped his final breath. Why?

CHAPTER 1: QUEEN OF NOTHING

The ribs of the great hall quaked. Its ceiling — a muscular diaphragm — shivered in its death throes. The only light came from the hot, equatorial sun, still low in the dawn. It invaded through a wet puncture high on the wall. The buzzing of a patcher, an insectile creature 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 a failed attempt to seal it before taking off into flight once again.

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 nearly ready. Yet it was almost too late.

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

“Bee,” a dry, rasping voice called out in a strange language, yet the child recognised the words somehow. “Come here. Come to me. Please.”

The newborn’s cry turned from surprise to panic. She did not know how long she had laid there, wailing. The hot air dried her over time, leaving her smooth skin and plates sticky whilst her hair congealed over her eyes and lips.

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

Bee tamed a limb, reaching up to wipe slick hair back over her shoulder. Then, she managed to calm her breathing and open her eyes, looking around her dying place of birth for the first time. In a dark corner, amidst rotting machinery, was a fallen figure. But, no. The figure was the rotting machinery.

The child couldn’t stand. Her long legs were clumsy, and her arms weren’t wired correctly. She slipped off her elbows and collapsed back to the harsh ground.

Mistaking a pair of glassy wings for more arms, she tried to pull them around her body, and their newly shed biomechanical engines churned with a steely rattle before failing. It was hard to see, to peel back the lids that covered her sensitive eyes. The intensity of the light made her body protest. It was too much, too soon, and it hurt.

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

Bee tried, again mistaking her arms for legs, her wings scratching against the floor. Stopping, she realised that wasn’t right. She found her hands, looking down at her flexing fingers.

Unable to support her own weight, the child started to drag herself. Her exoskeletal plates slid over the cool chitin of the floor. At first, the spilt water made it easy. But as she moved 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.”

Crossing into the dark, struggling closer, Bee could finally see who was speaking. A fallen woman — her mother — stitched into a network of arterial hoses and slick nerve wires, trailing out of her body to connect her to the dying building. Her near-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 thick, her throat tight.

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

“Save your voice,” Mother rasped. Her body was cool to the touch. It made Bee shiver. “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’s mother patted her down and checked her over. It was reassuring in a way. The child looked around, and they were definitely alone. The walls shuddered again, fleshy and organic.

“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 the empty sockets in her own skull. The giver of life took a hoarse breath before she continued, voice working its way from between lipless jaws and silvered teeth.

“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. Her heart was thudding in her belly, filling her with giddy anxiety, but she had to try.