So few understood the truth of this world. Yet, whilst Djay was ignorant of many things, a fact that she was painfully reminded of each time she tried to walk shoulder to shoulder with the rotten and ancient entities that had carved out their own pieces of this planet for themselves, she had a gift. A strange thing, in this world of psychoses, saturated with freaks that could barely understand themselves, that she could see behind the veil.

With her sight, she saw the world had long ago devoured her.

To Djay, these cities were an amalgam of disparate technologies, put together to approximate a vast creature that had rejected its biology in the pursuit of perpetual motion. She saw the cities as cancerous masses that stole the forms of animals, the aspects of a people and culture, breaking them into a grotesque caricature. The cities were meat masses that dragged themselves along, bleeding and consuming everything in their path. Her sister-clone had long ago become just another victim of Acetyn, sacrificed then swallowed whole and transformed into some hollow simulacrum of her bright-eyed former self. The parasites that swarmed the Vat-Mother - as much a part of the city as living entities by themselves - were just another facet of her prison.

When asked about their achievements, most of these parasites looked to the stars’ gifts and their base retooling. They might profess these fallen artefacts as a divine gift or profane curse that would fall planet side and change the world forever in their passing. Even the greatest of their minds suffered from this terrible affliction. They were obsessed with the preconception that greatness had to be stolen. As a result, most never dreamed of creating something for themselves. Djay had convinced herself that she suffered from no such illusion. Giants always towered above the helpless, dragging their steel bones inexorably, forcing themselves upon her - vast clanking predators, stalking eternity in search of domination. The parasites’ accreted carapaces together moved with the same groaning, unstoppable motion that the cities used to push their way across the land. On a large enough scale, they acted as one. They were only crude imitations of thought, vaguely aware of their own situation, enslaved by their biological and mental urges.

This plagued Djay, her mind becoming increasingly unstable over a century spent in various degrees of isolation. In her time alone, Djay had grown calloused and prejudiced of any creature that could not see the world as she did.

This belief system was not just born from a lifetime contending with the brutal and short-sighted predators that roamed the dark. Djay knew the ancient and alien works that would fall from the stars all too well. She had spent her years learning their workings and operation, building upon the knowledge gifted to her by her creator. This investment had reframed her entire understanding of the world she lived in - a view of the accomplishments of the so-called progenitors coloured by the nihilistic implications of their fate, for Djay knew the remnants were not detritus nor meagre cast-offs. Unthinkable destruction had been wrought upon the masters in an age of technological wonders, and it also remained an existential threat to her world. Whatever danger lurked in the dark of the cosmos that visited the end upon the progenitors must still be out there.

They were true masters, of that she had no doubt. In her years of experimentation, Djay had catalogued the types of technology that fell from above. In time, she had noticed certain similarities between the interfaces of computer wreckages recovered from the sands beyond and the at-the-time poorly understood neural laces that most grew within their skull cavities. She discovered that compatibilities existed, a shared design language that could not have arisen by chance mutation. So she followed the trail, and her obsession turned to her body.

Working with salvaged devices, Djay discovered that her lace could be used to influence her bodily functions. Soon after, she used it to transmit data directly to and from her lace. This led to her being thrust into artificial experiences that felt more real than the physical world, sequestered deep in some of the recovered artefacts. The discovery led to her having built a stronghold in the trailing city of Sestchek. There, she could delve into these cyber-worlds without interruption. It was all in an attempt to discover the nature of their predecessors. Unfortunately, she lost more time to these distractions than she dared to admit.

In truth, she would have been there right now if it was not for the threat posed by the reawakening of some insane and age-old threat. How she loathed this. To find herself again all but collared, bound to the destiny of her creator, who by all rights should be dealing with this situation herself.

The Wire-Witch felt the soft skin of the carpet underfoot. Its quivering under the bare sole of her feet brought her attention back to the present. Was it frightened? Perhaps it recognised her. She turned her skull around, looking at the courtiers and the monsters that filled the throne room floor. But, to their credit, those ululating and singing, hidden in the mists, only stopped their performance for the slightest moment before trying to hide it by changing to a different song.

Parasites pretending at greatness turned, the baroque fashions of their flesh swinging around them. Even more profane than The Wire-Witch’s betrothed’s halls, where they at least knew decorum and peace from time to time, she saw the veneer of civility thinner than the skin of their skirts. They salivated as if she was an outsider. A dream - that they could feast upon her. Hostile pheromones turned bitter in the air as the Wire-Witch advanced towards the altar of the Vat-Mother. Uncaring of protocol, she did not bow or sweep in deference. Instead, she stood at the edge of that cumbersome table planted before her sister-clone and looked up to the trapped, mutated woman with her own suite of senses.

“I am glad to see you well,” Djay whispered to her sister-clone.

There was an alien countenance to the Vat-Mother. Her head tipped. The milky dome over her skull hid whatever spark of life had once been there. The soft mask over her teeth twisted, red lips contorting into a frown.

“You have not been invited here, Witch,” a monster hissed from the court.

The Wire-Witch turned back to face him. Jhedothar the Lance leapt from an alcove, velvet cape billowing around his shoulders. She recognised the now-veteran killer - though she had not seen him since he was a whelp and still all too eager to please his betters. With a four-legged stride, he summoned the court’s warriors in his wake, and the thugs and freaks who bore arms became emboldened by his grandiosity.

“Golcothia should never have allowed you entrance,” the Lance continued in his approach, lifting his infamous ruby studded spear and pointing it at her skull.

“Golcothia knows his place,” the Wire-Witch spoke quietly, gaze fixed on that weapon.

At Jhedothar’s flanks, the freaks lopped and crawled, joining his advance. They gripped their brass rods and bone blades, ready. The Wire-Witch kept her head held high, holding her breath. She gave it until the very last moment when their limbs were tight, coiled, ready to strike and just out of reach.

Those cyber-worlds contained instructions. Sometimes, they broke down things of such complexity that Djay could never even fathom their purpose. Nevertheless, she would stumble across a subject she recognised from time to time. In so doing, the machines would occasionally demonstrate the completed forms of the wreckage recovered from the desert. Even more remarkably, she found instructions on using and maintaining living body parts.

In studying these, Djay noticed a commonality between herself, the freaks the city shed, and the information recovered from the stars. Their DNA had been cleaned up, the noise removed, and functions made organised, all according to the instruction manual’s formatting. Moreover, each cell of their bodies had been engineered to possess an organelle capable of producing targeted synthesising enzymes and another capable of conveying a representation of its genetic structure as an electrical signal on request. Much like the software of the stars, their base code could be read, and it could be written.

Since time immemorial, the freaks had known that their bodies were chimeric. The common parlance referring to these disparate portions of biology was ‘augs’. But all this time, the parasites had missed the most fundamental truth of their nature. To Djay, it was clear that they were all just as artificial as the wreckage that would fall from the stars.

The Wire-Witch was the master of that technology.

A simple radio pulse was issued from the Wire-Witch’s skull. It penetrated the local system through the neural laces that every freak present possessed. Through this vector, she injected them with a virus. Unfortunately, they had little to no meaningful digital immune system. So she overwrote large portions of their minds. It was as simple as that.

They collapsed, limbs and necks contracting sharply, spines contorting to their absolute limits. Their joints cracked with the suddenness of their assault, and they gasped and croaked as their chests refused to breathe.

“Need I remind you who I am?” The Wire-Witch barked at the freaks, using the only language that they seemed to understand - pain. Then, pointedly, she cast her gaze around the chamber. The revellers either stopped to stare or fled out of a sense of self-preservation. No matter who they were or how they felt about her, they were irrelevant if she wanted to visit her blood.

“Enough. Eye, I am here as a gesture of courtesy.” The Wire-Witch’s gaze returned to the Vat-Mother, in her shelled prison. “The Pilgrim has emerged. He used to rule these cities long before we were born.”

“I know who he is,” the Vat-Mother of Acetyn finally spoke, miserable and loathing.

“Then I have to know, are you capable of recreating the weapon that our mother used to defeat him?”

“If I was, would I share it with you?”

“I hope so.”

One of the hardest things to learn was to truly understand herself. Most creatures, even intelligent ones, did not understand themselves fully. Djay tried her best to get by in a twisted world where technology, the mired memory of the past and the great dream of the future became a grotesque parody of evolution and the nature of life itself. Nevertheless, Djay held onto her vision of how things were and how they could be, refusing to give up hope. She knew this would be her only brilliant work, desperately shoring up the ruins of all that was. After all, without hope, life has no meaning, and all will be washed away.

Silence held between the two sisters. Neither wished to be the first to break it. But Djay surrendered first, lowering her head, letting loose a sigh.

“Then I shall ask her.”

The Wire-Witch turned and walked away. She was nearly out of the throne room when her sister finally spoke.

“Be careful,” Eye called out.

Looking back, Djay nodded. Raising her hand to wave, she then returned to the mists that filled the palace, venturing into the darkness in which she was so at home, and through them, she left the Vat-Mother’s demesne never to return.