The holographic image of the Immortal vanished, and the Pilgrim laughed at her command, his mocking voice reverberating through the Ossein Basilica, thumping off of stone and bone alike. Yet Djay barely heard him. Instead, some cold consciousness forced itself into her network, seizing her entirety. Locks lifted. Signals flashed out. Responses came in quickly, more rapidly than she could even decipher. Her limbs shuddered and convulsed, a gasp escaping her as she seized and fell onto her side. Through the pain, Djay realised she was being used as a proxy, just a relay for some weaponised signal deployed against the Pilgrim.

It was all a show. Now Djay held no power here. She had no say in the matter. So instead, she would be made to fight to the death for her mother-creator’s vainglory and to keep the myth she had built alive.

At the head table, the iron warriors lurched to life. Flashing red from their silverline skulls, they scanned the Pilgrim and raised their weapons as he turned his visor to meet them. Bright light emanated from the barrels of their guns, and flashes of charged particles snapped out, setting fire to the air and impacting the Pilgrim’s titanium armour in a shower of sparks, blindingly bright. Taken off guard by the sudden violence and the alien weaponry, the Pilgrim shielded his helmet with his arm. No sooner was he put on the defensive than the bladed legs of the Wire-Witch’s cyber platform lunged at him from behind. Locking legs around his neck, their servos and hydraulic rams strained tight, and one of the sharp blades began to stab at his neck to penetrate gaps in the armour.

The ancient master was not so easily overcome, however. His massive gauntlet grabbed the cyber platform from around his shoulders. Crushing it in his unstoppable grip, he hurled the wreckage at one of the iron warriors, which broke under the massive impact.

Outside the hall, through the dust and the rubble, thunder shook the air once again. Matching the cacophony, the Pilgrim raised his left fist and fired his cannon. Multiple rounds struck the second iron warrior, and its upper body exploded into a shower of metallic debris. Exposed power cells flashed hot and then ignited with the touch of air. As the remains of the mechanical custodians fell around him, the Lord of Bones turned his mask away, barely flinching. His concubines, however, snarled. With needle teeth exposed, they crawled onto the table and lopped around the Lord of Bones, hissing both defensive and possessive.

A roaring cry and the Pilgrim looked away from the concubine weapons long enough to witness the Damnation of Cruiros. The massive beast threw himself out of the crowds, inspired by the will of his Goddess, and stamped forward, talons raking the cold floor. Then, raising his axe over his horned head, the Damnation brought it down in a heavy blow, which the Pilgrim intercepted by hooking the deactivated shaft of his glaive against the weapon’s throat, just beneath its snarling, chain-biting head.

“That’s more like it!” The Pilgrim cheered, before shunting his weight behind his arm, massive armour and his body following with it. He forced the Damnation back one step, then two, before extending his arm and sending the beast staggering away.

Using the distance between them, the Pilgrim raised his left gauntlet to aim the cannon at the Damnation. He was stopped, however, when the biomechanical fist of Abstrek Hash dashed in, seizing the ancient master’s forearm in a grip that sparked and lashed with barely-contained charge. Now the Pilgrim turned to face the second commander. They pitted their strength against each other, leaning in, exoskeletons and bioaugmentations straining, bulging with raw force. The old shell of the floor scratched then cracked under their heavy footholds as they shunted each other back and forth, gaining only centimetres as they tested one another.

A sudden blow to his back and the Damnation of Cruiros bit into the joints upon the Pilgrim’s flank with his roaring axe. Still, the Pilgrim’s artefact armour held fast, and the weapon’s teeth screamed as they found no purchase. Grunting, the Pilgrim swung his free arm. The Damnation ducked his massive body under his giant opponent’s swing, the deactivated glaive passing just over his horns. Now the beast pounced, seizing the Pilgrim’s right arm with all four of his own, using the shaft of his axe to lock it against his carapace.

Now both generals pushed with all their might. Each with a vice-like grip on one of the Pilgrim’s arms, they forced him back one entire step. A snide laugh and the ancient master locked his knee. The ground shattered as his heel dug deep. Trying to catch the Pilgrim off guard, the Damnation opened his maw. The beast sprayed two jets of volatile chemicals from aug’d glands, the mixtures turning hypergolic and igniting in a stream of fiery breath, engulfing the Pilgrim’s entire head in molten ruin.

The Pilgrim relented another step back, a bassy, crackling hiss escaping his helmet. Through the fire, only the beam of his laser belied a sudden shake of his head before he roared and pushed the commanders away in a sudden fit of rage. They fell back, cast off effortlessly as the Pilgrim ended his games. Still, they both took precarious and vaulting steps aside, narrowly but deliberately avoiding trampling upon the Wire-Witch.

As the chemical fire burned out, the Pilgrim growled and leaned forward. He regarded the Wire-Witch as she stood up, her body language contorted and alien, a form worn by an entity that was not used to the humanoid shape. As she stood, a hundred Ossein guards reinforced the trio of the Wire-Witch, Abstrek Hash, and the Damnation of Cruiros, their lances charged and raised.

“Clever,” the Pilgrim boomed as he realised it was all a manoeuvre just to get him out of reach of the Witch. “But not enough.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that,” Abstrek said, catching his breath and widening his footing.

In rebuttal, the ancient master raised his left arm, brandishing the cannon built into it, just as the Wire-Witch’s armoured crawler exploded into the hall. The massive vehicle bounced over the rubble and the corpse of Otz Garzed before lashing out and seizing the Pilgrim from behind with a pneumatic-driven limb. It tore him out of the hall and back into the thunderous dark beyond.

Both commanders charged, their armed forces following suit, crossing the threshold of ruin and pursuing the Pilgrim into the Pate Gardens. The Wire-Witch, however, staggered and lurched along, her legs not quite moving correctly, with steps that didn’t fit her skeletal structure. Then, as she reached the fallen stone and bone that demarked the hole in the wall, she was intercepted by their chancellor’s panicked, wormy form.

“Your Highness,” he wheezed. “Djay. Do not go out there. Please, I-”

The thing that wore the Wire-Witch turned to face him, and its silence made him falter. Her head tipped as the thing inside it inspected the spineless house servant. Overcome, he swallowed nervously, oily perspiration dripping down his face before his body suddenly seized under digital invasion. The chancellor screamed as his body twisted against his will, his few limbs lashing out, then pulling tight. Then, crying wordlessly, his hands produced a key from his raiment, which he used to unfasten the Wire-Witch’s bindings before he dropped to the ground.

Only giving his ravaged and contorted body brief regard, the Wire-Witch’s body took lurching, barefooted steps onto the rubble. The soles of her feet cut by sharp and jagged stone, she made her way up and over into the Pate Gardens, just in time to witness the actual battle.

Shafts of light broke their way into the chamber. Above, the roaring form of the Wire-Witch’s great dragon drove its head into the grand vault. Then, as it shunted its body further into the city, its wings and engines tore slabs of stone and concrete apart, which fell down onto the palatial bioscape below, dragging down with them tumulting clouds of ash and dust. Its invasion cut sharp the burning sunlight, invading the depths, and its engines roared as it forced passage down into the city.

In the gardens themselves, calamity. The Wire-Witch’s armoured walker had already been torn limb from limb, and its body was broken in two as the enraged Pilgrim used his mighty gauntlets to forcefully dismantle the machine from the inside out. All the while, the sharp crack and flash of lance fire rang out a hundredfold as an army surrounded their adversary and let loose their armaments. Flechettes glanced off of the ancient master and embedded themselves hot and bright in the ground and the remains of the vehicle he was still tempestuously eradicating.

When the dragon finally broke through, it was enough to attract the Pilgrim’s notice. Riding its engines down into the gardens, it descended on a column of shock diamonds that ripped up the tombstones and mausoleums that filled the vast open space. Then the flying machine circled him and let loose its mounted guns. Thousands of rounds blasted out of it in a minute. Two lancing missiles broke off from its wings, lashing out. However, sharp laser light made them spiral in the air and explode early. The metal remnants of the walker were still blasted out in all directions, spilling the dust and rubble from the ground high into the air. Redoubling its rage, the dragon fired a dozen other winding projectiles from its back. They snaked all around before exploding over the column of destruction, casting down bright white phosphorus, which burned wicked hot in a wave of infernal death.

Still, the gunfire continued, ripping up the area now filled with a cloud of thick white smoke. However, the smoke turned crimson from a terrible light cast within. A trio of cannon shots lashed out of the smoke in quick succession, striking the dragon in the side and making it turn in the air. The rounds struck the fuselage of the dragon and then exploded into bright, hot metal showers. As it did so, the gleaming hardlight glaive lashed out, extending over one hundred metres to carve the flying machine out of the air before retracting back into the cover of the smoke.

The dragon entered a flat spin, out of control. It rapidly lost its altitude and collided with the upper reaches of the Ossein Basilica. A portion of the high structure collapsed, spilling its fractured skeleton downwards, burning. Still, its bioengineered guardians continued their assault, firing in from all directions into the gardens. From his cratered position, the emerald laser of the ancient master turned this way and that, picked out of the phosphorus smoke. In its wake, rounds fired out, finding the groups of guardians in their cover. Explosions from the munitions cast them spinning apart, and those that were not killed broke from cover and began to flee.

When the Pilgrim emerged from the smoke, it was with an arrogant stride, his wicked glaive reactivated. The bravest Ossein guardians, who had not yet begun to flee, struck him with a salvo of lance fire. He responded in kind, firing true, the explosions from his cannon rounds penetrating the rubbled remains of the garden’s tombs, used as cover.

When the Damnation of Cruiros dared charge him this time, the Pilgrim did not play with his food. Instead, the roaring beast heaved his axe with all of his might, only for the ancient master to deftly step to one side. Then he punched the monster in the torso with enough force to collapse his carapace and pulverise the organs within. The Pilgrim continued his stride as the Damnation writhed on the ground, his six limbs struggling to clutch at his own body, not yet realising that he was already dead.

Abstrek Hash only lasted moments longer. In an attempt to intercept the Pilgrim as he climbed back into the collapsing Basilica, the commander attracted his attention by firing a simple lance into the back of his now battle-scarred armour. Turned upon, the two collided. Abstrek’s biomechanical fist immediately gripped the Pilgrim’s glaive. Again they tested their strength. This time, however, the ancient master did not indulge the ambitious neonate. Instead, Abstrek was pressed down into the rubble until his legs gave way with a pained roar.

“Damn you!” Abstrek hissed through his teeth.

“Born a millennium too late,” the Pilgrim rumbled before tearing Abstrek’s right arm from its socket. The Pilgrim then delivered a massive kick to the commander’s chest, sending him crashing back down the rocky incline with tremendous force. Hitting the debris hard, more of the structure collapsed upon Abstrek, burying him.

The Pilgrim climbed back over the rubble leading into the hall when the thing that wore the Wire-Witch lunged at him. He caught her skull between his thumb and two fingers, lifting her off of the ground even as she snarled and lashed out at him with long, titanium nails and feverish limbs. Then, ignoring her thrashing, his laser gaze turned ahead once more, and he carried the snarling humanoid back inside.

“Let us see what humanity you actually possess,” the Pilgrim said, voice once again echoing through the hall.

The ancient master approached the head table, where the Lord of Bones was closely kept by the two concubine weapons. The Hand of Zolgomere, who had thus far avoided the engagement, stalked closely with needle-like blades extending from his right arm. Those Ossein guardians still alive, still within the hall, nervously stepped back, weapons barely raised.

The Wire-Witched stopped struggling, falling limp in the Pilgrim’s grip with a guttural groan. He held her up to face the Immortal as the computers sang and the hologram flickered and returned. She frowned, looking down upon them both, eyes dark.

“End this illusion,” the Pilgrim commanded the Immortal. “Show them what you really are. Disavow yourself or I shall kill and consume your precious gene stock.”

The Pilgrim lightly squeezed Lady Djay’s skull between his fingers to emphasise his point. Her jaw cracked and dislocated. Blood poured from her head. Desperately, she kicked and screamed, hands impotently gripping at the thumb and fingers that were destroying her.

“Mother,” Djay screamed, voice drowned by her broken jaw and the blood welling in her mouth. “Please!”

“Mother,” the Pilgrim snorted with amusement as the Immortal stared in silence.

It was not Djay’s mother-creator who made an attempt to save her. The Lord of Bones gave a subtle look aside, eyes intense beneath his old mask. Then the Hand of Zolgomere finally stepped in. Catching the hissing, crawling concubines off guard, his blades impaled the first through the head before his serpentine body quickly rolled over the table and decapitated the second. Their blood splashed over the Lord of Bones, who coughed and then dabbed at his mask with a gloved hand. This the Pilgrim watched with glib amusement. He watched even as the Lord of Bones struggled to find the strength to stand up from his seat, setting both hands upon the surface of his table for balance.

“The rulership of Acetyn is yours,” the old, rotten Lord managed to say, hoarse voice little more than a whisper. “I surrender absolutely. All I possess is yours to do with as you will. I beg only one favour, from your greatness.”

“Is that so?” The Pilgrim indulged him.

“Please,” the Lord of Bones lowered his head in a display of deference. “Spare my beloved wife.”

The colossal and monolithic form of the Pilgrim seemed to consider this. Djay whimpered under his grip, her arms weakening as she still tried to pry his fingers apart. Eventually, he released her, and she landed sharply after dropping six metres to the hard floor, gasping in pain. The Hand of Zolgomere quickly stepped in, keeping his form low, to attend to her, nervous beneath the sanguine light of the ancient master’s wicked glaive.

“Thank you,” the Lord of Bones wheezed, “Grandfather.”

Still silent but with eyes filled with rage, the holographic image of the Immortal vanished, and the peaceful serenity of death returned to the Ossein Basilica.