“Come on,” Ay managed to say. The last of his strength ebbed away as his wound slowly aggravated even his augments. His voice was just barely audible in the cacophony around them. The crowds were still shouting out at the dragon’s sighting. Their desperation, being trapped outside of the city, was setting in. “Dangerous after dark.”

They stumbled along the ramparts leading onto the leg, choking on dust, keeping low to avoid attention. Then, suddenly, it was raining. The water was acidic and came in stinging bolts from the city’s underbelly, mixing with the dust and the sand, leaving a thick muck coating nearly every surface.

Ay’s body ached. His skin itched. It felt like he was being stabbed by tiny needles all over. Finally, instinct took over, and regenerative augs manipulated the damage to close the wound. Every muscle in his body seized with the acute strain of forced recovery, bio enhancements surging into overdrive, causing him to grunt and fall still as all of his strength was sapped towards this crucial task. However, the gouge from the molecular blade was tenacious. His machine enhancements struggled to close the nano-aggravated injury, the pain almost too much to bear. Every moment, countless microscopic machines, designed for an ancient war, fought to simultaneously heal the wound and tear it wider. All he could do was drag himself along, body coiling behind Bee’s every step. Looking up at him with confusion and worry, she slowed and put a hand on his arm.

They stole space in the hollow shell of a transport crawler within a seized up elevator trapped in the lower reaches of Acetyn’s rear leg. Despite climbing aboard with all the subtlety they could muster, the beast rumbled, and Ay knew they couldn’t hide from the sight of overseers for long. He told himself that he just needed to buy a little time to think.

Bee stood over him, still holding his lance, face concealed beneath her rags. This time, she dumped the waterskin on him. The Hunter took a gulp with his massive beak before hissing with a pained noise.

“You look like you are dying,” Bee said.

“Well, I’m not,” Ay croaked.

Bee turned away, peeking out of the giant beetle’s shell to see the clamouring masses of freaks outside. Two prominent tusked enforcers pushed back the desperate creatures at the elevator controls, trying to bargain their way above. Frowning, she turned back to Ay and asked, “How can we get into the city?”

Ay didn’t seem to be listening. Twitching, all three of his arms held his own body tightly. Bee could hear the grisly and wet sound of his wound, mending and rending open again, under the dulled cries that pierced the hull of the cargo crawler from beyond.

Looking down to the chitin plated floor and then around the resin containers that filled the beast of burden, the child sighed resignation. She sat next to Ay, bringing two of her knees to her chest and hugging them. For a time, she waited, the feeling of apprehension feathering her heart.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Ay managed to say.

“Like what?” Bee muttered, staring at him with her dark eyes.

“Like that.” They met one another’s eyes. Holding the look, Ay grunted, “Like I’m just another dead freak. What do you even want, now? Go on, run away. Don’t let me hold you back.”

“Maybe I just want you to stop calling them that.” Bee sat down upon a large, blunt piece of star steel wreckage in front of Ay.

“What?”

“Freaks,” Bee said slowly. “Stop calling them freaks.”

“And call them what?”

“How about people?” Bee said witheringly.

“People? Where did you even hear that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted but didn’t break eye contact.

“People? Listen to yourself.” Ay wheezed and coughed, spluttering as his ribs seized. “Just because you’re some Godsborne... Think you’ve got special genes... Doesn’t put you above all this.”

“Shut up,” Bee muttered.

“This is reality. Freaks die in the muck, every day.”

“Shut up!” She shouted.

“You’re lucky. Nrgh... You don’t know how easy and safe you’ve had it. No-one’s taken you for meat. You get to say what you want. You have no idea.”

Bee scowled at him. Retching, then gasping for air, Ay held his wound, then turned to lean on his other side. The Hunter looked away. Silence hung between them. Seeing that the child wasn’t leaving, that he had failed to drive her out, he sighed and muttered.

“How... did you know?”

“Know what?” Bee asked after a short pause.

“I told you... About the nobles and the city. You said... Can’t be right.”

“Yes.” Bee turned her eyes down, lips compressed into a tight line. She drummed her claws on the metal wreckage before stopping herself. “I did.”

“How did you know?” He asked quietly, heaving with pain.

“Most of my mother’s sisters worked to kill the city. Sestchek, I mean,” Bee explained carefully and quietly. “My mother told me she tried to stop them, but it didn’t work.”

Ay seemed to think about this, wet eyes becoming dazed and unfocused, deep inside his beak. Eventually, he sighed.

“I never... Really knew anything, anyway...”

Regarding him with sorrow, the child offered quietly, “If you die, it’s alright. Everyone dies. You’ve brought me to the city.”

Ay’s wet eyes turned inside his beak to regard Bee. He said nothing, managing only a wordless gurgle.

“What you do is very dangerous... People die doing it,” she paused before continuing, “My mother told me to be strong. Do you know why my mother wanted me to come to the city?”

Perhaps the smallest and weakest freak that Ay had ever seen looked at him with a force of will behind her eyes that burrowed deep into his mind. He met her gaze again and held it, even as his vision dimmed.

“The Immortal betrayed my mother. I’m here to make sure her city dies too, that she dies, that everything she has ever loved dies...”

Ay wheezed into a laugh, body rocking at first with sardonic humour and then with pain.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Bee said quietly, gently inflecting her own introspection. “I don’t even really know who The Immortal is. But I have to do my mother proud.”

Ay might have managed the faintest of nods. Perhaps it was just a spasm, and Bee only imagined he was still listening.

“The one thing I wonder, really...” Bee began to ask but stopped, voice trailing off.

Bee looked over the stub of her arm and then back to Ay. He shuddered, muscles wracked and cramping, involuntary seizures overcoming his body. Then, standing and taking a step back, she watched as Ay collapsed to one side, coiling and thrashing with enough force to knock over crates and the wreckage around him. The contents fell upon him with weighty, bludgeoning force.

When Ay finally shrieked and fell still, Bee looked over him with pity. Tears formed in her eyes. So many monsters she had seen dead and dying, yet none she had spent so long with. The thought of this one passing took something from Bee. She gazed down and then back to his supine form, wet eyes concentrating on his serpentine body.

The sounds that emanated through the cracks and creases of the insectile, armoured hull kept vying for her attention. Taking a deep breath, Bee traced her broken arm along the length of the lance, the thick haft of iron and bone resting comfortably in her grasp. A single crack on the side of the shaft broke her captivation.

“What did you want out of all this?” Bee asked Ay quietly, not expecting an answer. But, instead, Ay’s limbs quivered, flaccid and slow, unconscious. His rasping breaths slurred wordlessly, and his chest heaved.

“I never really thought about it. Really, I just wanted to get out of the desert,” Bee said to herself, taking one last breath before looking through the opening to the chaos outside. “I think I would’ve liked to have known.”