Amidst bridges held aloft by skeletal arms, insane and cyclopean structures called out to each other in the dark. Baroque recreations of fleshy martyrs wept, grown into the walls. The city remembered them, even if its inhabitants did not. Unable to die, mere simulacra shaped by the city itself, they lived a second life that was perhaps even more miserable than the first.

The eidolon emerged from one of the countless throats that lead into this lowest thoracic cavity. Here, the air was tainted with the smell of infection and pneumonia. Given no choice, he waded ankle-deep in the warm fluid, committed to a route well memorised but never before taken. The lack of light here forced him to navigate through the infrared haze, his surroundings hot, humid, and indistinct.

The chamber was so vast. The sky was bone. Construction modules moved high above, distantly crawling amidst spinal towers and arching ribs. Endlessly in motion, each possessed its own purpose, servicing this profound realm of blood and cold machinery and metal rebelling limbs. They worked, oblivious to the creature that crept far below them.

Here, the buildings were grown upon twisted columns and stilted legs. The eidolon had to navigate a half-submerged and labyrinthian undercroft, ever rolling streets and sunken passages to find his destination. Permeated with rot, it was a long-forgotten reach - significant once, so long ago as to be forgotten, and now a city segment that those On High were happy to let die.

Climbing steps, struggling against the flow of infectious bodily fluid, the eidolon stopped to regard nets that swept across the waterfall, catching the smallest and most mindless creatures caught in the downpour. The traps were woven of lace, delicate and fine, glistening in a crystal way that the eidolon had never seen before. Then, curiously, his yellow eyes turned to find a freak sitting upon a wall above. It was weaving a larger sheet from many smaller filament bundles using four broad hands.

Ignoring the twisted silhouette below, the net weaver hefted a skull in its heavy hand, snatched from desiccated bodies that were cold and black in death. The defiled corpse, one of the countless disposed of down here by those who could not bear to eat them, was formerly entombed amidst the forgotten. First, the freak cracked the skull with a bone tool and pulled at the rotten brain meat. Then, it squeezed and wrung out the neural lace from the cerebral tissues with a rough motion. Finally, the lace was worked into the next net, still speckled with the brain matter, proving more robust than the finer-than-hair fibres had any right to be.

Atop the sloping steps, rows of columns and keels oozed scum and blood, staining the passages below. Climbing to meet them, the eidolon finally reached his destination. A tall spire pierced the vaulted sky high above. The tower stood in a wide-open forum. Its mass was nestled into the city’s flesh with tendrils, anchoring buildings and supports with long, thick cables. Translucent glass, thick and solid and far more resistant than anything crafted by freaks, marked its walls. Lined with flesh and snaking arteries, its surface was warm, pulsing and sluggish.

The forum itself was lit, a dim sanguine glow. A dozen torsos were displayed, growing from narrow columns, bound where their heads and legs should have been. Their heavy chests were pendulous, and their bellies bulged with a red bioluminescent glow. Slender arms and small hands cradled their wombs, swollen with their only purpose, to bear light into this doomed world. They surrounded a single monolithic head, illuminating its smooth surface.

The eidolon took a moment to look over the monolith’s featureless bone shape, one that his own distorted head had been carved down to resemble so long ago. The eidolon’s pale body stood before the spire’s gate. Sealed fast, it showed no signs of granting passage. Turning his pale eyes to the second level of the forums, an expansive terrace surrounding its perimeter, two warriors stood at guard.

Battling a sea of violent emotion, he climbed to the second tier, walking upright as if he had never crawled. Now, he played the part of so many others from the court. He aped their enunciation and exaggerated obsequiousness, seeking acceptance if not trust. It was learned, structured, delivered in the perfect pitch of others on the court, excellent and synthetic in its knowledge. Like him, the creatures he found were bipedal, maimed and cut down into approximately the right shape. They wore plates of star metal over their clothes and hefted artificial blades alongside fire lances to combat the unworthy.

“My shape, my kin,” the eidolon growled, and they echoed it.

They saluted the eidolon, giving him pause. After all, it was not so long ago he swore to the same duties as them. But, although their distorted faces were emotionless, their withered hands betrayed the aggressive fear they still felt at their station.

“A hound has breached the necropolis,” the warriors said, grim and clipped. “The shrine is sealed. We await your command.”

The eidolon did not waste words. As an idealised representative of their number, his sole duty to the Pilgrim and the progenitor’s shrine was to end its enemies. The warriors took to his side with a single gesture, and then together, they turned away. Then, moving as one, they descended around the monolith before continuing down towards the infected depths that spilt out around the tower, ready to face a serpent in its domain.