The Hunter made good time across the Crawling City, from the forward cavity and then through its undulating continent-body. Pressing ever onwards, he had crossed a staggering distance with the aid of the captive freaks, bound to a carriage of bone by steel and wire. Days had passed before he even descended into the desert by a giant mechanised elevator. The sun and the stars circled overhead, visible high above, in the cracks of Acetyn’s great plates and between its titanic legs. However, Ay knew it was always quicker to leave the Crawling City and cross the desert to the Trailing City than it was to return.

Ever aware of the fragile grip of life without a living city, Ay chose to forgo stopping for food and water on the outward journey - always a risk, but he didn’t know the fate of his quarry. Upon arrival, he found the dead metropolis of Sestchek in a far worse state than he had dared to imagine.

Ay arrived at dawn’s light. Reins in hand, he yanked the freaks that pulled his carriage into line. They wailed, trying to turn away. The stench choked them. The street under their hooves and claws and feet peeled away, rancid. Around them, the structures of the trailing city had collapsed, weighty flesh sloughed from bone, steel and cement. Nothing stirred - not a native in the streets, not a drone in the chutes, nor a patcher in the air. Only the smallest and most mindless maggots and worms infested the meat, slowly consuming the city.

Ay rode his carriage with his weighty beak open. He tasted the air, and the fetid odours did not bother him the same way it turned the stomachs of the freaks he had bound. He shifted in his seat with every lurch as the bone cage that he rode upon lopped over knots of rotting growth and exposed bone. His wet gaze was deliberate, discerning. He saw the deep punctures dotting the landscape, imagining the rosette ruin delivered from a great, gunned dragon, strafing the city-slug from above. Then, digesting the scene, Ay wondered if it was that which ruined the city or if it was merely done in the carnage of evacuation.

He pawed at the seat next to him, picked up the map - close now.

No. There. Movement, caught in the corner of his eye, a little waif trying and failing to tap water from a ditch, and some vermin scurrying away, insectoid, into the dead ruins.

“Stop,” he croaked, tugging hard on the reins. They obeyed.

It took his voice to make her look over. She must be hard of hearing, Ay supposed. But now he met her eyes, wide and terrified. Ay turned his huge snake body in his seat, twisting. There was no doubt. This bright-eyed, silver toothed freak was the one with the face. Ay didn’t reach for his weapon - not yet.

“Only hounds try and tear apart… Their city,” Ay managed. “For food.”

She looked unsure - a good sign. She was trying to think instead of run. Ay hated it when they ran.

“Come here,” he tried, reaching out a broad hand. The child picked up an empty bowl and hugged it close to her body, stepping closer. Ay watched as she clambered out of the ditch, slender legs fawn-like and clumsy, immature wings dragging in her wake. Perhaps she was too dumb to try and escape. The freak didn’t even stand as tall as the wheels of his carriage. Nervously, she looked between Ay and the ones that pulled him.

“You speak to me,” he told her, realising that she really didn’t know.

“Um… Are you from the Crawling City?” she asked, her voice quiet but perfectly formed.

“I’m from Acetyn,” he confirmed.

“Okay. I’m Bee.”

“Ay.” He realised he’d never said his own name before.

“There’s no water left,” she said. A long tongue dropped from her mouth. It retracted, running over her dry lips.

“I have water,” he offered carefully, trying not to frighten her away. “You’ll have to come with me, though.”

“To Acetyn?”

Ay nodded his tremendous beak, looking down at the freak from over the edge of the bone cage.

“Okay. Um… I was going there anyway.”

“Is that so?”

“I have to meet someone.”

“Yes. You do.”

“I need to bring my sisters, though!”

Ay leaned back, considering her. He wasn’t aware of any sisters. He was told just to bring her, but if they had the genetic makeup to form a face, they would be equally valuable.

“Where are your sisters?”

“Home.”

“The Vat-Mother’s domain?”

“Yes,” she said, eyes squinting, voice unsure.

The cry of his servants, restless in the vulgar atmosphere, stirred Ay. He swallowed back saliva and nodded again.

“Get in,” he told her. So she did, clambering up and taking a seat next to him.

“Is this a map?” she asked, turning it over.

“Yes,” he said, watching her handle it as he slung the reins and drove the freaks onwards.

“Is its leather from someone?”

“Must be,” Ay reasoned, not giving it a second thought. His gaze returned to his surroundings, a careful eye out. However, Bee wasted no time. She was already rummaging through his satchels and bags - one flask was opened. Sniffing its contents, nose wrinkling, the child quickly returned it.

“Water’s skinned in the back,” Ay croaked. “There isn’t much.”

Bee looked up to him. He didn’t spare her another glance, so she clambered over the seat to find it whilst the waggon lurched and bounced.

He could hear her unseal a clasp and suck from it.

“Careful. Needs to last us,” Ay told her.

Bee hesitantly closed it again before struggling back into her seat. Ay thought she looked so helpless, eyeing her underdeveloped and malformed body when she wouldn’t notice, before refocusing on the rotten road. Some freaks just had no luck, he supposed.

The Vat-Mother’s estate had held up well, the Hunter decided. They passed between the corpses of the fallen towers that once made up her palace and came upon the remains of what was once a grand court, a surface vessel for the genetically profound, comfortable when exposed to the sun’s radiation. This was the place that the young Bee was so eager to reach. No sooner had they stopped did she jump from the carriage with one of the water bags in her arms.

“Oi!” Ay shouted after her. She disappeared inside the hall. He didn’t chase her, though. Her run was pitiably slow, and she left an obvious pheromone trail he could taste. First, he made sure the freaks knew not to run, tightening the bolts that secured their legs and spines. Then, whilst they still moaned in agony, he slithered over to the dead building, lowering his head to squeeze in through one of the massive gunshot wounds in its carapace. Inside, Ay’s attention was dragged in two directions at once. Above, sunlight breached in through another wound in the sagging ceiling. Across the chamber, he could hear whining and chirping.

“No. No, El, Em. Don’t bite mother! No! Drink this.”

Ay crept over to see it for himself, snaking between slumped biomass tumours and deflated fleshy wombs. He saw Bee pouring a drink for a gaggle of discarded offspring - the mindless, excess meat from a vat-birth.

And there.

It wasn’t every day that you got to see a dead God, laid out, amputated from their city - the Vat-Mother of Sestchek set out peacefully against the wreckage of her own creation. Her lifeless skull looked almost serene, yet her emaciated body was already half-devoured by her own offspring.

“These are your sisters?” he asked, standing over Bee. she looked up to him, nodding.

“Were they born with you?”

Another affirmative. The child looked ready to plead with him, but Ay swallowed down a lump in his throat and returned the nod.

“They can come,” he decided. If there was even a chance they had some of her scrambled genes, the right ones might be worth anything.

“Thank you! Thank you, Ay!”

He grunted it off, sweeping his gaze around, looking from the fallen deity to the wounds in her domain.

“When did this happen?” he asked, gesturing up.

Bee followed his attention with her eyes up to the hole in the roof, half swaddled in concrete, its repair unfinished.

“Um… I’m not sure.”