“Come on,” Ay managed to say. The last of his strength ebbed away as his wound slowly twisted — not opening wider but corrupting the meat around it, even seeping into his augs. His voice was just barely audible in the cacophony around them. The crowds were still shouting out at the dragon’s sighting. Their desperation, trapped outside of the city, was setting in.

“Dangerous after dark,” Ay said rotely, blinking softly, taking in this moment.

They stumbled towards the ramparts leading onto the leg’s superstructure, choking on dust and keeping low to avoid attention. Suddenly, it was raining. The water was acidic and came in stinging bolts from the city’s underbelly, mixing with the dust and the sand, leaving a thick muck coating nearly every surface.

Ay’s body ached. It felt like he was being stabbed by tiny needles all over. Finally, instinct took over, and his regenerative augs kicked against the damage to force the wound closed whilst starting to shut down his other bodily systems to conserve energy. Every muscle in his body seized, bio enhancements surging into overdrive to fuel a futile repair, causing him to grunt and fall still as all of his strength was sapped towards this crucial task. However, the gouge from the molecular blade was tenacious. His machine enhancements struggled to close the nano-aggravated injury, and the pain was almost too much to bear.

“Ay?” Bee asked, stepping back as he struggled not to cry out in pain.

Every moment, countless microscopic machines — designed to fight an ancient war — battled to simultaneously heal the wound and tear it wider. All he could do was drag himself along, body coiling behind Bee’s every step. Looking up at him with confusion and worry, she slowed and touched his arm.

A series of resounding, ratcheting cracks boomed over the footfall. They both looked up to see an elevator descending. It seemed impossibly empty as it lowered down slowly into a waiting armed force. Bee scowled as she saw an assembly of warriors clad in white at the base of the elevator’s shaft. Their bodies — bipedal like hers — were shrouded in long raiments and plated in shining metal.

Ay’s body coiled. He hissed and turned to Bee, putting two hands on her shoulders in turn.

“Listen to me— Ngh...” Ay grunted, trying to resist the wracking of his body.

“Ay?” Her dark eyes widened, looking up at him with worry. “What is it?”

“Some freaks have no luck,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I did you no good. These freaks are going to eat you. Hear me?”

“What?” Bee’s jaw dropped. She looked back towards the assembled armed forces and that crawling elevator as it finally set down.

The metallic bone cage of the lift unbolted itself with a series of loud mechanical snaps. The silicone flesh of its walls pulsed, and muscles worked, tense. All around, the desperate crowds turned to see, praying for salvation, having been resigned to the sands by the occupying force.

Bee looked over, confused.

“You have to run. You have to find another way into the city. I thought—” Ay spluttered a cough. “I don’t know what I thought.”

The doors of the elevator opened, revealing its wide bay — reserved for massive transportation loads and heavy industrial biomachinery — stunningly empty. Empty, apart from one lone figure clad in a sweeping brown cloak.

That figure stepped out into the night and towards her waiting battalion. They took to a knee in unison, even as the countless freaks held at bay stepped back. Some even ran, dispersing into the wastes, accepting any fate would be better than this.

“My shape, my kin,” echoed on the wind, chanted by a hundred voices.

For the first time in a thousand years, an Eidolon touched the desert.

Bee scowled and looked back to Ay from their vantage over the crowds.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said quietly.

Ay laughed. He laughed, even as he dropped his bag and clutched at the furs pressed over his wound. Together, they hid amongst the crowd and moved towards the waiting caravan of salvage. When they were confident that they moved without notice, here amongst the lost, they stole space in the hollow shell of a transport crawler.

Despite climbing aboard with all the subtlety they could muster, the beast of burden rumbled, and Ay knew they couldn’t hide for long. He told himself that he just needed to buy a little time to think. Bee stood over him, still holding his lance, face concealed beneath her rags. This time, she dumped the waterskin on him. The hunter took a gulp with his massive beak before hissing with a pained noise.

“You look like you’re dying,” Bee said.

“Well, I’m not,” Ay said in little more than a whisper.

Bee turned away, peeking from the giant beetle’s shell to see the clamouring masses of freaks outside. Two warriors wielding gleaming swords pushed the desperate creatures away from the elevator controls, even as they tried to bargain their way above. Frowning, Bee turned back to Ay and asked, “How can we get into the city?”

Ay didn’t seem to be listening. Twitching, he slumped back against the crates that filled the crawler. All three arms held his body tightly. Bee could hear the grisly and wet sound of his wound, mending and rending open again under the dulled cries that pierced the hull of the cargo crawler from outside.

Looking down at the chitin-plated floor and around the resin containers that filled the beast of burden, Bee sighed in resignation. She sat beside Ay, bringing her knees to her chest and hugging them. For a time, she waited, the feeling of apprehension feathering her heart.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Ay managed to say.

“Like what?” Bee muttered, staring at him with her dark eyes.

“Like that.” They met one another’s gaze. Holding the look, Ay grunted, “Like I’m just another dead freak. What do you even want, now? Go on, run away. Don’t let me hold you back.”

“You’re not a freak,” Bee said quietly in turn.

“What?” Ay gave her an incredulous look.

Bee moved and sat down upon a large, blunt piece of star steel wreckage in front of Ay. It was still dusted with sparkling sands, a reminder that it was recently pulled from the wastes.

“You’re not a freak,” Bee said slowly. “You’re a person.”

“Person?” Ay scoffed. “Where did you even hear that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted but didn’t break eye contact.

“Person. Listen to yourself.” Ay wheezed and coughed, spluttering as his ribs seized. “Just because you’re some Godsborne... Got special genes... Doesn’t put you above all this.”

“Shut up,” Bee muttered.

“This is reality. Freaks die in the muck, every day. Me. Your sisters. Your mother.”

“Shut up!” She shouted. Quickly regretting it, she looked to the crack in the crawler. No one outside seemed to have noticed them.

“You don’t know how easy you’ve had it. Most don’t last a day. You have no idea,” Ay muttered, delirious with pain.

Bee scowled at him. Retching, then gasping for air, Ay held his wound and then turned to lean on his other side, looking away. Silence hung between them. Seeing that the child wasn’t leaving, that he had failed to drive her out, he sighed and muttered.

“How— Gah... did you know?”

“Know what?” Bee asked after a short pause.

“You knew I was coming. Saw that look in your eyes when we met.”

“Yes.” Bee turned her eyes down, lips compressed into a tight line. She kicked a heel back against the star metal wreckage she sat on three times before stopping herself. “I did.”

“How did you know?” He asked quietly, heaving with pain.

“My mother was very clever, I think.”

He watched her in his daze, so she continued.

“My mother disobeyed her creator, so her sisters turned on her. Had her city killed? Sestchek, I mean,” Bee turned her eyes down, expression haunted. “Then had her killed? She saw it coming. My mother told me she tried to stop them, but it didn’t work. So she made me.”

“And?” Ay grunted, suspecting there was more. His beak set with contempt, a rising apprehension filling him, overwhelming even his agony.

“So— Um...” Bee shrugged, looking guilty, dark eyes turning up towards Ay. “Apparently — I’m filled with an infectious weapon. It’s in my genes. They killed my mother, so she kills everyone else. It’s only fair.”

Ay seemed to think about this for a long moment, wet eyes slowly turning desperate deep inside his beak. One of his arms reached out towards the lance. Bee looked between him and the weapon in her grasp, and she pulled it another inch away. She knew he was too weak to get it. For an instant, his body coiled, but then, with an exhausted heave, he simply fell slack.

Regarding him with sorrow, the child offered quietly, “If you die, it’s alright. Everyone dies. You’ve brought me to the city. So you did good.”

Ay’s wet eyes inside his beak remained fixed on Bee. He said nothing, managing only a wordless gurgle. It was filled with hate.

“I know it’s hard,” Bee reasoned, perhaps mostly to herself. “My mother told me to be strong.”

Perhaps the smallest and weakest freak that Ay had ever seen looked at him with a force of will behind her eyes that burrowed deep into his mind. He met her gaze again and held it, even as his vision dimmed.

“The Immortal betrayed my mother. I’m here to make sure her city dies too, that she dies, that everything she has ever loved dies...”

Ay wheezed into a laugh, body rocking at first with cynicism and then with pain.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Bee said quietly, gently inflecting her own introspection. “I don’t even really know who The Immortal is. But I have to do it. I have to make my mother proud.”

Ay might have managed the faintest of nods. Perhaps it was just a spasm, and Bee only imagined he was still listening.

“The one thing I wonder, really—” Bee began to ask but stopped, voice trailing off.

Bee looked over the stub of her arm and then back to Ay. He shuddered, muscles wracked and cramping, involuntary seizures overcoming his body. Standing and taking a step back, Bee watched as Ay collapsed to one side, coiling and thrashing with enough force to knock over crates and the wreckage around him. The contents fell upon him with weighty, bludgeoning force.

When Ay finally shrieked and fell still, Bee looked over him with pity. Tears started to form in her eyes but then stopped. So many monsters she had seen dead and dying. What was one more? Taking a steeling breath, she gazed down at his supine form, wet eyes concentrating on his serpentine body until it stopped hurting.

The sounds that emanated through the cracks and creases of the crawler’s hull kept vying for her attention. Taking a moment longer, Bee traced her broken arm along the length of the lance, the thick haft of iron and bone resting comfortably in her grasp. A single fissure in the bone on the side of the shaft broke her captivation.

“What did you want out of all this?” Bee asked Ay quietly, not expecting an answer. Instead, Ay’s limbs quivered, flaccid and slow, unconscious. His rasping breaths slurred wordlessly, and his chest heaved.

“I never really thought about it. Really, I just wanted to get out of the desert,” Bee said to herself before looking through the opening to the chaos outside. “I think I would’ve liked to have known.”