“Your Highness,” the giant rumbled, voice booming throughout the chamber from high above. “It shames me to inform you that you cannot enter the Vat-Mother’s company, armed as you are.”

Golcothia slowly turned towards the Wire-Witch. Growing massively from the structure’s floor, his truncated head leaned down to meet her. The mirrors behind its eyes cast back a sharp yellow light through the mists and vapours that filled the chamber. In return, her iron warriors silently raised their weapons, ready to mete out justice. Yet, considering the enormous aberration, the Wire-Witch raised a gentle hand. Her guardians lowered their arms, stepping back at her wordless command.

“You do us a great honour,” Golcothia planted one trunk of its arms down against the chitin-shelled floor so that it could bow. Then its other arm swept out, gesturing deeper into its master’s demesne.

The Wire-Witch stepped down from her mechanised walker and proceeded on foot. Walking through the mist-laden halls, she moved between tall urns of glass and steel, alight and filled with half-grown shapes suspended in biogel. Arteries snaked between them, bulging with pressure as they pumped fresh solution throughout. The scent of clean water lingered in the air, bursting from a font out of sight. She paused to briefly regard a gestating aerial defender-type drone, stolen somehow from the city and interred into one of the urns. Its arms and legs curled close to its slender body, and wings twitched between the siphons on its back.

Then, through the haze, she could see a vat-born being decanted. The upper plate of its nurturing vessel was pried off by a slithering beast. It snarled at the effort, a rod of bone in its hands working against the seams. Before long, the lid was removed entirely and let fall to the floor with a heavy thump. Working chains upon chains, the creature then used pulleys and levers to tip the urn until its contents began to spill and splash. Eventually, the newborn within came tumbling out. It coughed and screamed, confused, as its neck was collared and bolted fast.

It was not alone. The Wire-Witch found the palace filled with newborns, emerging fully grown, testing their weaponised limbs and dangerous augments through trial and error. Their dumb, language-limited vocalisations belied their confusion. More experienced thralls brought a rod to them and taught them the meaning of discipline and obedience. Finally, she recognised this riotous congregation for what it was - the creation of an army of freaks, preparation for the chaos to come. However, their disorganised practices and lack of rigour let her wander the halls unrecognised. Djay found a shallow thrill in the shadows.

Ascending to an upper rampart, the Wire-Witch watched from a distance as the crimson-robed servants of the Vat-Mother dragged a freak towards the court proper. The freak kicked and screamed, pleading for them to let her go. Her abdomen was swollen with her crime, her womb marking her as a true breeder. Hauled into the open and thrown down onto a fleshy carpet, the freak struggled to kneel upon the edge of a dais. When the freak dared to raise her gaze, she cried out at the sight of her Vat-Mother, who grew here, from a central colonnade of this living palace and the machinery that filled it.

The lips of a Goddess’ mask twisted into an amaranthine sneer. Through the milky dome that shielded her skull, the cavities of her eyes darkly lingered upon the freak. The thin skin of her baldaquin undulated around her and then drew back. So standing, the Vat-Mother of Acetyn bore down upon the lesser creature thrown supplicated before her. Leaning forward, the arterial hoses and thick tendons that coupled her to the palace pulled tautly.

The head of the procession stepped forward, announcing, “Mother, your children beg for your intervention. Our sister has been found fornicating with her kindred, unrepentant in her conception of an incestuous child.”

Through tears and heaving, sobbing breaths, the freak screamed out.

“I’m not your sister,” she gasped and shook before looking up to the Vat-Mother, shouting, “I’m not your child. Please, please just let me go!”

Many a wise mind might argue the nature of the twisted monsters that dared to call themselves Gods. Yet, there was one thing that even the most agnostic beings would never doubt. That was the petty wrath of these deranged rulers when denied. From high above, the Wire-Witch watched as a craven assembly threw itself upon the helpless woman, all at the command of her sister-clone. Mendicants and Skinwelders bound the freak to a crawling hulk and bisected her abdomen, heedless of her screams.

The Wire-Witch’s hand tightened around a bone railing, knuckles whitening, witnessing the woman being bound onto the table, arms and legs splayed, helpless. So anointed in her blood, the child was taken from the freak’s womb. Pierced by the many-needled hands of a grafter, it was presented to the Vat-Mother for inspection. Reverently, with Her wordless approval, the procession ushered the foetus away. It was to be placed anonymously in one of the countless thousands of urns within Her labyrinthian palace.

Its real mother was excised of her reproductive organs before her bleeding was stymied. Then, carved from the hulk to which she was bound, the freak was brought within reach of the Vat-Mother. The Goddess sighed, skeletal hand taking a firm grip of the insolent creature’s hair. The lips of her mask moved as she whispered to the tragic, traumatised animal, reproachful, feigning understanding and establishing total domination. All the while, the Vat-Mother held the freak against her lap, letting her kneel as she trembled and wept.

Having eventually had enough, the Vat-Mother pushed the weakened freak aside, letting her fall and crawl away out of sight.