The hunter made good time through the Crawling City, from the Vat-Mother’s domain of Enelastoia in its forward cavity and then through its undulating continent-body. The chaos of the unformed regions was easy to get lost in. The inexperienced would often die alone, set upon by predators in the dark, or obliterated by the city’s own unpredictable biological processes. Ay, however, knew his trade well. He would not be stopped.

Pressing ever onwards, the hunter had crossed a staggering distance with the aid of the captive freaks, bound to a carriage of bone by steel and wire. Days passed before he descended into the desert by a giant mechanised elevator affixed to one of the colossal legs of the megapedal city.

The sun and the stars circled overhead, visible high above, through the cracks of Acetyn’s great plates and between its titanic legs. Even despite the haste, Ay was not pleased. He knew it was always quicker to leave the Crawling City and cross the desert to the Trailing City than it was to return. This job demanded both.

Worse, the rumours of Sestchek’s pall fate still swirled, and Ay was left concerned. He was ever aware of the fragile grip on life that a freak without a living city possessed. The hunter didn’t know the fate of his quarry. After these long days, was he left merely chasing a ghost?

When he first crested the dunes and found the great city slug straddling the horizon, his every fear was proven to be true. The dead metropolis of Sestchek was in a far worse state than he had dared to imagine.

Ay arrived at dawn’s light. Reins in hand, he yanked the freaks that pulled his carriage into line. They wailed, trying to turn away. The stench choked them. The streets under their hooves and claws and feet peeled away, rancid. Around them, the structures of the trailing city had collapsed, weighty flesh sloughed from bone, steel, and cement.

Nothing stirred — not a native in the streets, not a drone in the chutes, nor a patcher in the sky. Only the smallest and most mindless maggots and worms infested the meat, slowly consuming the city from within.

The hunter rode his carriage with his weighty beak open. He tasted the air as he went. The fetid odours did not bother him the same way it turned the stomachs of the freaks he had bound. In his trade, he had become inured to death. Still, he shifted in his seat with every lurch as the bone cage that he rode upon lopped over knots of rotting growth and exposed bone. His wet gaze was deliberate, discerning.

There, he saw the deep punctures dotting the landscape and imagined the rosette of ruin delivered from a great, gunned dragon, strafing the city slug from above. Digesting the scene, Ay wondered if it was that which ruined the city or if it was merely done in the carnage of evacuation.

So many dead. Their bodies filled the streets, twisted and broken, blown apart and beaten. Some were contorted of back and limb, a tell-tale sign of cognitoviral weaponry. Who would be so cruel to slaughter an entire city? There must have been thousands — no, millions dead.

Ay pawed at the seat next to him and picked up the map. He was close now.

No.

There.

Movement caught in the corner of his eye, a little waif trying and failing to tap water from a ditch. Just beyond, some insectoid vermin scurried away into the dead ruins.

“Stop,” Ay croaked, tugging hard on the reins. His bound freaks obeyed.

It took Ay’s raised voice to make her look over. The child must be hard of hearing, Ay supposed. Now he met her eyes, wide and curious. Ay turned his huge snake-like body in his seat, twisting towards her.

There was no doubt. This bright-eyed, silver-toothed freak was the one with the face.

Ay didn’t reach for his weapon — not yet.

“Only hounds try and tear apart their city for food,” Ay said slowly, wrestling with his mouth within a mouth.

The child looked unsure — a good sign. She was trying to think instead of running. Ay hated it when they ran.

“Come here,” he said, reaching out a broad hand.

Then, the child grabbed an empty bowl and hugged it close to her body, stepping closer. Ay watched as she clambered out of the ditch, slender legs fawn-like and clumsy, immature gossamer wings dragging in her wake.

Perhaps she was too dumb to try and escape, Ay thought. Not all freaks had much of a mind to speak of. Some lacked any sense of self-preservation at all. She didn’t even stand as tall as the wheels of his carriage when she reached it.

Nervously, the child looked between Ay and the ones that pulled him.

“You speak to me,” Ay told her, realising that she really didn’t know.

“Um… Are you from the Crawling City?” she asked, her voice quiet but perfectly formed.

“I’m from Acetyn,” Ay confirmed.

“Okay. I’m Bee.”

“Ay.” He realised he had never said his own name before.

“There’s no water left,” Bee said. A long tongue dropped from her mouth. After a moment, it retracted, running over her dry lips.

“I have water,” Ay offered carefully, trying not to frighten her away. “You’ll have to come with me, though.”

“To Acetyn?” Bee asked, face brightening into a smile.

Ay nodded his tremendous beak, looking down at her from over the edge of his bone cage.

“Okay. Um… I was going there anyway.”

“Is that so?”

“I have to meet someone.” Bee smiled again.

“Yes,” Ay said, considering her enthusiasm. “You do.”

“I need to bring my sisters, though!”

Ay leaned back after hearing that. He wasn’t aware of any sisters. The job was just her, but if these supposed sisters had the genetic makeup to form a face — or remnants of whatever depraved genetic experiment this Vat-Mother might have performed — they would be equally valuable.

“Where are your sisters?” Ay asked.

“Home.”

“The Vat-Mother’s domain?”

“Yes,” she said, eyes squinting, voice unsure.

The cry of his servants, restless in the rotten atmosphere, stirred Ay. He swallowed back saliva and nodded again.

“Get in,” Ay told Bee. So she did, clambering up and taking a seat next to him.

“Is this a map?” Bee asked, turning it over.

“Yes,” Ay said, watching her handle it as he slung the reins and drove the freaks onwards.

“Is its leather from someone?”

“Must be,” Ay reasoned, not giving it a second thought. His gaze returned to his surroundings, a careful eye out for danger. This was too easy. He didn’t like it.

Bee, however, wasted no time. She was already rummaging through his satchels and bags — one flask was opened. Sniffing its contents, nose wrinkling, the child quickly returned it.

“Water’s skinned in the back,” Ay croaked. “There isn’t much.”

Bee looked up to Ay sheepishly. He didn’t spare her another glance, so she clambered over the seat to find the water whilst the waggon lurched and bounced. Behind him, Ay could hear her unseal a clasp and suck from it.

“Careful. Needs to last us,” Ay told Bee without looking back.

Bee hesitantly closed it again before struggling back into the front seat. Ay thought she looked helpless, eyeing her underdeveloped body as she climbed around before refocusing on the rotten road.

Some freaks just have no luck, he supposed.

The Vat-Mother’s estate had held up well, all things considered, the hunter decided. They passed between the corpses of the fallen towers that once made up her palace. There, they came upon the remains of what was once a grand court, a surface vessel for the genetically profound, comfortable even when exposed to the sun’s radiation. Ay looked it over, a stark opposition to the profane depths of Enelastoia, but no less hostile for its exposure to the evil sky.

This was the place that the young Bee was so eager to reach. No sooner had they stopped did she jump from the carriage with one of the water bags in her arms.

“Oi!” Ay shouted after her.

It was no use.

Bee disappeared inside the hall. Ay didn’t chase her, though. Her run was pitiably slow, and she left an obvious pheromone trail he could taste. First, he ensured the freaks knew not to run, tightening the bolts that secured their legs and spines. Then, whilst they still moaned in agony, he slithered over to the dead building, lowering his head to squeeze in through one of the massive gunshot wounds in its carapace.

Inside, Ay’s attention was dragged in two directions at once. Here he was in some terrible mirror of the vaults he had left behind. Here, though, above, sunlight breached in through another wound in the sagging ceiling. Across the chamber, he could hear whining and chirping.

“No. No, El, Em,” Bee said. “Don’t bite mother! No! Drink this.”

Ay crept over to see it for himself, snaking between slumped biomass tumours and deflated fleshy wombs. He saw Bee pouring a drink for a gaggle of discarded offspring — the mindless, excess meat from a vat-birth.

And there.

It wasn’t every day that you got to see a dead Goddess, laid out, amputated from their city — the Vat-Mother of Sestchek set out peacefully against the wreckage of her own creation. Her lifeless skull looked almost serene, yet her emaciated body was already half-devoured by her own young.

“These are your sisters?” Ay asked, standing over Bee. She looked up to him, nodding.

“Were they born with you?”

Another affirmative nod. The child looked ready to plead with him, but Ay swallowed down a lump in his throat and returned the nod.

“They can come,” Ay decided. If there was even a chance they had some of her scrambled genes, then Ay would be set for life.

“Thank you! Thank you, Ay!”

He grunted it off, sweeping his gaze around, looking from the fallen deity to the wounds in her domain.

“When did this happen?” Ay asked, gesturing up.

Bee followed his attention with her eyes up to the hole in the roof, half swaddled in concrete, its repair unfinished.

“Um— I’m not sure, actually?”