Ay unbound the thralls. They gasped and hissed as bolts, wires, and chains were loosened. Then, with the wagon rocking heavily as he mounted it, the hunter leaned over the servant until she stepped down in a reluctant retreat.

Bee did not argue at the prospect of surrendering one of her sisters in exchange for the food and water. Instead, Ay watched closely as the child scooped up the largest of the maggoty offspring — Em, he thought Bee called it. Then, cradling the offspring in her arms and giving her one last farewell, Bee offered her to the starving monsters. All the while, Ay kept his lance close at hand.

“Would have thought,” Aye croaked, then slurped back a wave of saliva, “You would want to keep that one.”

Bee did not stir at his remark. She stared ahead, simply having resigned herself. So he took the lash and directed the thralls to pull them away from the ruins. Tasting the air, Ay kept a careful eye on the cultists who watched them leave. Once they were out of sight, he turned his wet gaze to the outskirts of the Oasis.

The child seemed lost in her thoughts as the wagon rocked over sand and stone. She bundled herself back up in her blankets, keeping her remaining sisters close. Then, finally, Ay leaned forward and spoke to the thralls.

“Food and water, when we’re not followed.”

With pained noise, the thralls yanked on the reins, picking up pace as they neared a crossroads at the border of the Oasis. They were finally back underway, reaching an open plain with only half-trodden paths out into the expanse.

Tucked away in the dark, exhaustion finally took her, and Bee fell asleep. Her head swam with the image of children swimming in the Oasis — their distant, collective cheers so different from the insectile hymns of the cultists.

Suddenly, the image of the zealot that maimed her returned with unsettling clarity. This time, he cowered in the mud beneath the hooves of a vast, fleshy creature. His stone face could not contort; instead, he gasped and heaved with pain, his ancient sword unable to pierce the force that crushed him, shattering him in a spray of blood and oil.

Above, the titan waved a sensory array of fleshy tendrils, used to taste the air around it, before crouching and waiting for the Oasis’ settlement to burn, filling the sky with a column of black smoke.

The wagon thumped to a stop, and the entire carriage rattled and bobbed as Ay slid down to touch the sands. The heavy motion woke Bee. Bleary with fatigue, her dry eyes straining, she peeked out into the midday heat. How long had she been under there? She felt simultaneously damp with sweat and dizzy with thirst.

Ay was coiling around the front of the wagon. He reached into a bag and produced a fist full of biomass, shoving it into the faces of each thrall, one at a time. They seemed to have stopped out in the dunes. Bee couldn’t make out anything but glass and bright skies in every direction. No, not quite. A dark smudge of rising dust was low on the horizon, ahead, pillowing out high into the atmosphere.

“Water’s in those skins,” he croaked, pointing a clawed hand into the carriage. The child struggled upright before finding it and taking a desperate drink. Then, after her fill, she took her sisters, one at a time, and helped them guzzle their own share.

“Please— No,” the freak in the rigging gasped. Bee recognised her voice, the one who tried to convince her to set her free. “No, no. No, don’t make me eat that.”

Sorely, Bee leaned over the seats to see. Glowering down at them, she saw Ay take a fistful of meat and force it against her face until she chewed and swallowed.

“What’s wrong?” Bee asked.

“Doesn’t want to eat tumour,” Ay croaked, taking a water skin and forcing the broken and humiliated thralls to drink next.

“Why?” The child leaned closer and shouted over the thrall’s sobbing.

“Mutagens.”

“Oh.”

Deciding she didn’t care, Bee sat back amongst her sisters and squinted up at the blue sky. A lone scavenger hovered high above them, a spread of sharp wings so high as to be indistinct except for its bold silhouette. She grimaced and rubbed at the plates that made up her chest and shoulders before checking her ruined arm.

The sound of one of the thralls retching and trying to vomit made Bee feel nauseous. Bothered by it, the child leaned back to watch. Ay slithered back up onto the wagon and took his seat, ignoring them.

“What’s her problem? She got some meat.”

“Too much mutagen, freaks spit it up,” Ay said before slurping back saliva in his beak, lifting the waterskin he held and taking a deep drink.

“Looks like meat to me.”

“It is. Mutagen in it, the meat. Too much, they fill up with tumours and die.”

“Oh.” Bee blanched, looking down to the thralls. “How much?”

“Depends on the freak.”

Bee sucked on her lip and frowned, thoughts racing as her lucidity returned, the traces of sleep fading under the intense light of the day star.

“Ay, can I ask you something?” She asked.

The hunter turned the lash, hissing as the thralls gathered their strength, then began to heave the wagon along the sands again.

“I mean, I know I just did, but...” Bee trailed off before clambering over and sitting next to him.

“What is it?”

“Back there, that one with the clothes, she told me some things.”

“Bet she did.”

“Do you know what the source is?”

His beak clacked before opening, wet eyes narrowing at the child.

“Yes,” he croaked. “It’s what they call an aug in our chests.”

“So it’s real?”

“Real enough. Most of us have it. One of a few universals.”

“So we don’t need to eat?”

“Need?” Ay tutted, focusing on the road again. “Don’t listen to them.”

“Why though?”

“There’s a difference,” Ay struggled, slurping again, “Between belief and reality.”

Bee struggled with that. All her attention turned towards the massive hunter.

“What does that mean?” She eventually asked.

“Used to be Godly, faithful,” he croaked. “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“No. Most freaks are. It’s just that, when they don’t know, they guess. Or someone lies to them. Then they cling to it, afraid to admit mistakes.”

“So the source isn’t real?”

“I just said it’s real. The aug is real.” Ay clacked his beak again, hands tense on the reins as the conversation continued. Bee looked at his posture and wondered why he seemed to hate speaking so much.

“So what isn’t real?” Bee asked softly, eyes darting over Ay’s armoured form as she reconciled this knowledge with what she had imagined him to be.

“What they think. Their way of thinking. They’re being taken advantage of.”

“By who?”

“Them?” Ay rumbled, gesturing back. “An obese freak, trying to grow, taking all the meat for himself. Anywhere else? Always someone. Look at those on top.”

“Like my mother?”

Ay turned to Bee again, wet eyes staring down at her through a crack in his beak for a painfully long time. The child squirmed under his scrutiny, swallowing a lump in her throat and looking to the sands ahead, almost surrendering the conversation entirely before he spoke again.

“Freaks like your mother, cities make them, I think. Call themselves nobles, Gods, whatever.”

“Why would cities do that?”

“The cities have all sorts of systems: repair, digestion, construction, defence.”

“Okay,” Bee said, eyes narrowing as she listened, trying to see where he was going with this.

“They’re made by the cities to turn us against each other.”

“Why?”

“Keep numbers down. Stop us eating too much. Stop us growing too large.”

Bee sat there for a while, thinking about that. Ay’s resentment for her mother — and her by association — stung. Growing frustrated, Bee tried to hide it and scratched at her head, running fingertips against her cranial spines and through her greasy tresses.

“What did my mother ever do to hurt you?” Bee eventually asked, keeping her voice down.

“Work for them. Have done for a long time.” Ay said, croaking into a laugh, body rocking.

“You hate them but you work for them?”

“That’s life. Get what I need. Get to survive.”

“You’re strong though. Aren’t you? Why do you need them?”

“Strong because I got what I needed. Strong because I lived long enough to grow.”

“Why do you still work for them then?” Bee asked in a subdued tone, half imagining the answer already.

“Because you always need more.”

“She said thinking like that’s immoral,” Bee offered, though, without any conviction, a thought offered up and discarded as quickly as it left her lips.

“That’s why she’s easy to control. She might actually believe that. Imagine believing you don’t deserve what you need.” Ay offered, perhaps even matching Bee’s thoughtful tone, before he grunted.

Satisfied but miserable, the child heaved into a sigh, rubbing her one hand over the sore, pink burns that covered her skin between her plates. Weak still, caught under the relentless day star, Bee leaned aside, reached back for a blanket and dragged it over herself in the seat. Ay watched her hideaway in the chair, glanced back at her sisters, quietly bundled away, and fell into silent vigil as they neared the vast column of dust on the horizon.