Bee struggled with Em, worming on her lap. Between the writhing of her sister and the jostling of the wagon, Bee couldn’t get comfortable. She looked back - the rest of her sisters were still quietly tucked beneath a blanket. Being blinded seemed to soothe them. Not Em, though - she was too big for that and chirped for attention whenever Bee stopped petting her wormy back or wasn’t feeding her. Sometimes she demanded both.

“Watch out,” Ay growled. “Steep bit.”

Despite her better judgement, Bee had found herself looking up to Ay. He seemed so sure of himself, capable and independent, venturing between the cities when Bee had only struggled to survive. Her gaze flicked from him to his servants, pulling them down the fetid streets. As the wagon surmounted a crest, her eyes moved over the iron rigging that bound them together, screwed through their flesh and bones.

A foul updraught brought a terrible reek from the city’s underbelly. Retching, Bee clasped both hands over her mouth and nose. Corpse-stench filled the air. But there, ahead, beyond the mountainous foothills of the great slug, stretched a glass desert.

Bee marvelled at the sight, even as her eyes watered from the decay.

It felt like an eternity passed before they moved beyond the rotten swell to something resembling fresh air. The desert winds were hot like a furnace, though, and the freaks at the lash struggled even as they were driven forward.

“Help us,” rasped one of the enslaved.

Bee leaned forward to see. Meanwhile, Ay didn’t deign to break his vigil of the bright horizon.

“Please... Help.” It was the smaller one, struggling on five legs, of all of those bound together in their iron rigging.

“How did you get like this?” Bee asked, curious.

“They tricked us,” she answered. “A few days’ labours for water and meat, they said. Never said we’d leave the city. Let us go. Let us out...”

“Huh.” The child sat back against her seat. She held Em close.

“Please...”

“Well, you really shouldn’t just agree to do things,” Bee helpfully informed the woman, reduced to a beast of burden. “No one has your best intentions at heart.”

The enslaved freak wailed. Ay pulled the reins tight, silencing it.

“A few days old... Already smarter than you lot,” he croaked.

“You’ll let them go when you’re done, right?” Bee asked him.

“Of course. Freak of my word. Put them back where I found them.”

The child accepted that, leaning forward to say to the woman, “See? You shouldn’t try and go back on a deal.”

Ay laughed, though Bee couldn’t work out what was so funny and eyed him sidelong. They rode on, out past the last chitinous building, onto the very lip of the dead slug’s great foot. There, a forest of spines stretched up into the sky. Sharp and craggy, the city’s barbed defences were the only parts that still stood tall, pikes of shell and steel ready to guard it against something unfathomably colossal in death, despite failing it in life. The hot wind carried traces of the wasteland beyond. Sand sparkled like infinitesimally shattered crystal, and the gales blasted it into steep dunes that crept up towards the city itself.

It was over the first sandbank that they caught him. An eight-limbed beetle was frantically kicking its legs, struggling with the loose ground and trying not to fall into a roll with its squat, flat body - overburdened as it was with a tall and heavy pack. The carriage summited the dune above, rocking and bouncing as it crested the hill and began to descend.

“It’s Heych,” Bee said quietly.

Ay stirred when she spoke. His peak cracked open a fraction, and his head turned into the wind to see the freak slip and kick, falling down the rest of the way, clumsy with exhaustion. The beetle’s form was not designed to travel the wastes.

“You know this freak?” He rumbled.

“Um… Yes. I met him when I was born.”

Ay’s gaze shifted to Bee.

“So he knows who you are?”

“Yes?” Bee answered, unsure of where Ay was going with this. She looked up to him curiously as he lifted a lance from the side of the carriage, where it was hidden amongst the bones.

“What is that?” She asked as Ay pointed the lance towards Heych, still struggling in the sand and spitting pheromone panic.

A flash of fire. A crack of noise. Bee felt it rock her bones and her ears screamed at her.

Heych broke in two, his body sent spinning in two separate directions before they hit the sand and rolled the rest down the dune. Blood and viscera sprayed out in their wake.

Bee screamed.

“No!” Far too late, she reached for the weapon, trying to pull it from Ay’s hand. But unfortunately, it was far too large for her to hold onto properly, and she couldn’t even bend the Hunter’s massive grip.

“Let go,” he croaked at her. Still, Bee struggled against him, so he lifted the lance from her reach with a simple pull of his arm.

“Are you done?” Ay croaked as she wailed before slithering off of the carriage. The bone cage rocked as his weight left it, and the Hunter met the sands once again. Left behind, Bee clung to the wagon’s sides, watching Ay slither smoothly down the sands and towards Heych’s destroyed body.

She watched as he picked over both halves of the dead freak - her only friend. Tears flooded her eyes. Her heart beat too hard. She felt sick, trembling, then vomiting over the edge of the carriage. Her waters mixed with the heavy crystal sand, pouring down the bank.

When Bee could look back over to Ay again, he hefted the heavy packs that Heych struggled with up with a single hand. Then, gracefully, Ay snaked back up the dune to meet her. Even stood upon the sandbank, he towered over Bee.

“Just another dead freak,” he told her, slamming down Heych’s supplies into the wagon next to Bee. “And if you keep doing that….” He pointed a claw at her face and the mess she made below. “... You’re going to end up the same way.”