A heartbeat—thick, heavy, insistent—slammed Vashante awake. Her eyes flew open in shock. The world spun around her in smoke and chaos, lit by the flicker of distant fires. Every joint screamed with a symphony of crushed metal and torn sinew, agony sheathed in liquid heat as constructive nanomaterial forced her broken limbs into alignment.

  She gasped sharply, tasting blood and scorched metal. Each heartbeat hammered in her chest with painful intensity, impossibly vibrant, impossibly alive. Her heart—the heart her Lady had given her—beat powerfully, resurrecting her again from the brink. Flesh stitched itself beneath ruptured plating, dermal layers knitting together as cells surged with augmented regeneration. Nanites swarmed through fractured servos, sealing and binding, mercilessly restoring her. A young Goddess' blessing of life beyond death, indeed.

  Vashante clawed at the broken stone around her, fingers spasming with raw pain. Crushed marble tiles shifted beneath her. She dragged herself upright, vision swimming with ghost light and sparks, blinking rapidly to clear the haze.

  “Bee..?” Her voice cracked, raw and brittle. Silence answered her.

  She staggered to one knee, camera eyes recalibrating through bursts of static. Around her, the Basilica was a ruinous tableau: shattered marble, smoking wreckage, torn limbs, and crimson pools. The acrid scent of burning flesh mingled sickeningly with oil and coolant.

  Her optics focused—Jhedothar’s remains lay grotesquely opened, viscera spread like some ghastly mosaic. The ruby spearhead rested quietly nearby, shimmering mournfully amid the gore. Beside him, Lady Hash’s guardians lay torn apart, their proud forms reduced to barely recognisable wreckage.

  “Bee..!” Vashante’s voice rose again, desperation tightening her throat.

  Her frantic gaze swept the rubble and the smoking ruin, searching—begging—to find Bee, but the Lady was nowhere in sight. A sickening dread surged within her.

  Movement dragged her attention sharply to the dais. The Pilgrim towered there, exoskeletal armour gleaming like an executioner’s mantle. Beneath his colossal foot, the Wire-Witch writhed, pinned and helpless. Her skull-like face was twisted in agony, chrome teeth parted wide as she howled in torment.

  The Witch’s cry cut sharply through the cavernous Basilica, echoing from pillar to shattered pillar.

  The Pilgrim was merciless, slow, inexorable. He pressed downward, millimetre by millimetre, crushing the Witch’s legs beneath him. She clawed desperately at his greaves with her titanium-nailed fingers, each attempt to free herself pathetic, futile. Her screams rose into shrill, unrecognisable agony, a piercing sound of pure torment.

  The Pilgrim’s helm tilted slowly upward from the tortured figure of the Wire-Witch beneath his foot. His emerald laser flickered, its ghostly beam cutting through the swirling dust and ruin, seeking out the hunched figure on the distant tiers. High above, slumped in his throne of brittle bone, the Lord of Bones trembled. He raised one withered hand, fingers extending weakly, a silent plea. Still, his strength faltered—his arm dropped, limp and powerless, defeated by its own failing musculature.

  A heavy silence stretched between the two ancient figures: the Pilgrim, resplendent in merciless might, and the Lord of Bones, helpless in his ruin. For one infinitesimal moment, hesitation flickered like a faint star within the Pilgrim’s expressionless visor. Then, the moment passed.

  The Pilgrim’s helm descended once more, gaze returning inexorably to the Wire-Witch pinned beneath his colossal foot. His voice boomed, deep and seismic, shaking the very air:

  “Better this scheming sorceress die and be forgotten.”

  His massive greave pressed downward with slow, cruel deliberation. The Wire-Witch screamed anew, her cry splintering into pure anguish, body arching in helpless spasms as her titanium fingers clawed desperately at the unyielding armoured limb—

  Clang.

  A thrown spear, grasped from the fallen soldiery, glanced harmlessly off the Pilgrim’s helm, ringing hollowly against the impenetrable star metal before clattering uselessly to the floor.

  With ominous deliberation, the Pilgrim turned, the servos of his exoskeletal armour humming with ponderous menace. Across the broken expanse, Lady Isbet Hash stood defiant amidst the fallen ruins, her azure gown streaked with grime and gore, yet regal as ever. Her delicate fists clenched at her sides, mandibles grinding audibly with the fury that blazed in her faceted eyes.

  “You will not so easily overlook the Hash dynasty,” she declared, voice ringing with a cold dignity that belied her trembling shoulders.

  The Pilgrim shifted fully to face her, his immense weight grinding down on the Wire-Witch as he turned. Bone splintered beneath him, the Witch shrieked a final agonised note, her legs shattered and useless as the titan stepped free, leaving her broken and bleeding.

  Lady Hash did not waver. Her jaw set in a line of quiet defiance, she watched the Pilgrim approach. Every step he took toward her resounded like the tolling of a bell, each stride measured with a chilling inevitability.

  “If you would claim our lives,” she continued, voice firm though her throat tightened, “You will first learn that we are not mere pawns.”

  The Pilgrim did not reply. The glaive in his hand pulsed softly, its blade thrumming with lethal intent. Lady Hash stood her ground, poised in the wreckage, regal features trembling almost imperceptibly beneath her mask of bravery. Yet she held firm, defiant and unyielding, as death itself advanced upon her.

  After all, she need only distract him for so long.

  The Pilgrim loomed above Lady Isbet Hash, shadowing her trembling form, his voice booming through the City itself.

  “What a misbegotten heritage you claim.”

  The Pilgrim lifted his glaive high, the weapon’s lethal edge casting a dire glow. Lady Hash flinched despite herself, lowering her head with an air of tragic dignity, refusing to flee yet unable to face the final blow.

  A blinding flash of crimson.

  Vashante Tens surged forward, reassembled cybernetic limbs screaming with impossible velocity. Clenched tightly in her hand was the ruby spearhead of fallen Jhedothar, blazing brightly, fuelled by fury and grief. In an instant, she had carved molten gashes into the backs of the Pilgrim’s colossal legs. The star metal glowed white-hot, buckling and bleeding sparks.

  With a thunderous groan, the Pilgrim stumbled. Pivoting sharply, he swung his glaive in a devastating arc. Lady Hash threw herself aside, stumbling into cover amongst shattered marble. Vashante, in turn, leapt, her body a blur, somersaulting narrowly above the blade’s lethal trajectory. She landed nimbly on the Pilgrim’s vast upper arm, her augmented grip clutching his immense pauldron.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  With a relentless snarl, Vashante began hacking and stabbing, driving the blazing ruby spearhead into the intricate machinery of his armoured exoskeleton. Massive gouts of steam erupted from ruptured pressure valves, mingled with oily coolant spurting in desperate arcs. The Pilgrim roared, swinging one massive arm to dislodge her. Still, Vashante pivoted around his back, a lethal dance of precision and rage.

  She stabbed fiercely into his opposite shoulder, the spearhead searing through layers of reinforced plating until the Pilgrim’s other arm fell limp, useless. A howl of ancient fury burst forth from beneath the Pilgrim’s helm.

  Vashante, relentless, turned her wrath towards the Pilgrim’s gorget, ruby blade blazing as she carved ruthlessly at the thick metal shielding his throat and sealing his helm. The plates buckled and melted with every strike, revealing glimpses of vulnerable machinery beneath.

  Vashante’s fingers found the underside of the Pilgrim’s visor, clamping down with relentless purpose. Her muscles burned, augmented fibres weaving tight beneath her skin, servos shrieking in protest as hydraulic actuators strained under immense load. Even as she fought to tear apart the armour, constructive nanomaterial swirled and swarmed, knitting together the Pilgrim’s ruptured plates, struggling to undo the molten wounds she’d carved almost as quickly as they were inflicted.

  She heaved with her full weight, heels braced against the Pilgrim’s breastplate, back arched, arms trembling with effort. Metal howled—a keening of star-metal and tortured alloy—as Vashante poured every ounce of strength into the desperate motion.

  With a rending scream, the visor tore free. The Pilgrim’s helmet sheared away, sparking violently, cables and tubes snapping loose and spilling spurts of viscous coolant. The broken helmet flew clear, skittering across shattered marble.

  Exposed beneath was a face—or what passed for one. A polished skull gleamed, featureless as the Wire-Witch’s own visage, chrome teeth clenched in a furious gnash. A single, scarred socket marred the skull’s symmetry: a deep gouge, the scar carved by Ser Ohmax, the Forty-Third Eidolon, so long ago.

  The Pilgrim’s fury erupted as a primal howl, a sound steeped in ages of rage and betrayal.

  Vashante released her grip, springing clear just as the Pilgrim’s armoured limbs juddered back to life, nanites surging to repair and reconnect damaged actuators. She landed in a swift, agile roll, momentum carrying her out of immediate reach.

  The Pilgrim whirled violently, his grasp on his weapon renewed as the glaive arced with catastrophic force. A singular stroke cleaved through the floor, gouging deep furrows of molten stone. Walls fractured and exploded outward, and structural supports splintered. The vast blade rose inexorably, expanding and carving through ancient architecture in a wrathful ascent until it reached the ceiling itself.

  With a calamitous roar, the Basilica fell inwards. Columns fractured, ornate masonry ruptured, and great swaths of the ceiling collapsed, raining stone and debris down upon them in another cataclysmic cascade.

  Within moments, the Pilgrim inexorably strode through the wreckage of the Basilica, a colossus amidst the remnants of devastation. Only the perimeter walls remained defiantly upright, a hollow monument to the shattered grandeur within. Great slabs of the ceiling lay scattered, their marble intricacies lost amidst choking dust and twisted metal.

  His faceless skull turned slowly, its gaze sweeping across the ruin. His empty eyesockets scanned through smoke and shadow for any sign of Vashante amidst the desolation. His voice resonated, deep and relentless, echoing across the broken stone.

  “Your struggles are for naught,” he intoned, his steps sending tremors through the ruins. “You will die like the rest.”

  Amidst the destruction, the Pilgrim came upon the Wire-Witch. She had managed, impossibly, to drag herself into a kneeling position, her shattered legs folded uselessly beneath her in grotesque ruin. Blood pooled thickly around her, mingling with ribbons of meat and shattered bone. Her skeletal visage lifted slowly, defiant and trembling, empty eye sockets meeting his own vacant stare.

  Silence hung between them, fraught and heavy.

  With a shuddering breath, the Wire-Witch raised one shaking hand. Titanium-nailed fingers curled protectively around a small, strange phial. Viscous ink swirled sluggishly inside it, iridescent in the half-light, pulsing subtly as though alive.

  A brittle, victorious smile seemed to shine from her chrome teeth.

  The Pilgrim halted, pausing as he regarded her with disdain and suspicion. The Witch tightened her fist abruptly; glass shattered in a sharp crack, the phial splintering in her grip. Black droplets sprayed out, some splattering across her trembling palm, others vaporising instantly upon exposure to the air, drifting upwards upon air currents unseen.

  The Pilgrim’s gaze inclined fractionally downward, fixing upon the broken phial and its freed contents.

  The Wire-Witch let out a ragged breath of bitter triumph, voice rasping but steady.

  “Eye never failed,” she declared, her words laden with grim satisfaction as she hurled that broken vessel onto the ground between them. “My sister has won. Acetyn cannot protect you.”

  The Pilgrim remained motionless, locked in place by recognition and horror.

  The shattered glass gleamed faintly amidst the blackened residue on the foundation between them. Recognition came slowly, terribly—this was the bioweapon, the genetically encoded virus woven deep within Bee’s DNA upon her birth. The very weapon designed explicitly to annihilate the Pilgrim, all the old orders, and the City entire, carried secretly within Bee, stolen from her by Acetyn upon her arrival to the City, and finally, recovered and smuggled within by the Wire-Witch herself.

  Its lethal promise hung ominously in the air, drifting invisibly upwards in tendrils of ruin.

  The Pilgrim stared, and for the first time, hesitation rippled visibly through his colossal frame.

  Across the hall, Bee kicked desperately, struggling beneath slabs of collapsed marble and shattered stonework. Dust choked her throat, stinging her eyes, clouding her senses. With a gasp, she managed to shove aside a heavy fragment, crawling out painfully from beneath its oppressive weight. She coughed violently, expelling grit and debris, rolling onto the ruined floor as her vision blurred with tears.

  “Ngh—!” she groaned, collapsing onto her hands and knees amid the wreckage. Her limbs trembled, muscles screaming in protest, yet determination burned fiercely beneath her exhaustion. Her ears rang a shrill tone, distorting her equilibrium.

  Bee staggered unsteadily to her feet, swaying as dizziness threatened to pull her down again. Gritting her teeth, she stumbled forward, picking her way through the demolished great hall, plated feet crunching across fragments of ancient masonry and shattered iconography. Smoke curled lazily upward, drifting through shafts of dim light that pierced the broken ceiling.

  She halted abruptly as her blurred vision cleared, gaze locking onto the towering figure of the Pilgrim. He stood motionless, a titan cast in cruel, implacable metal, his polished skull bare and glistening in the smoky air.

  At his feet lay the Wire-Witch, reduced to a trembling, bloodied ruin. Her skull-like visage was twisted defiantly, her chrome teeth bared in bitter mockery. Even in near death, her voice remained sharp and poisonous, hissing vehemently up at the towering figure.

  “You have failed,” the Wire-Witch spat, words edged with contempt. “You will never rule Acetyn. Everything you fought for was for nothing, you monstrous creature—you base hound.”

  Bee’s breath caught sharply. Her eyes widened, flickering rapidly between the Wire-Witch’s ruined form, the Pilgrim’s looming presence, and the shattered phial lying ominously amidst the gore-streaked rubble. Recognition struck: it was the sample taken from her when she visited the Wire-Witch’s bunker so long ago. Was it the released bioweapon hanging invisibly in the tainted air between them?

  She stared, frozen in shock and dawning horror. The Pilgrim’s gaze was fixed unwaveringly on the fractured glass and its deadly payload, realisation visibly dawning upon him in slow, terrible comprehension.

  The ground shuddered violently beneath their feet, a deep, tectonic groan rumbling through the shattered Basilica. Greater cracks splintered open across the marble floor, revealing dark voids beneath. Stonework cascaded from the fractured walls, and broken columns toppled to the ground, pulverised into choking clouds of dust.

  Bee staggered, struggling for footing as the City itself bucked beneath them, earthquake-like in its violence. The Wire-Witch slumped sideways, bracing herself weakly against a fragment of fallen masonry. Only the Pilgrim stood utterly unmoved, colossal feet planted, immovable as a monument.

  He stared down at the shattered phial with silent intensity as though calculating some hidden variable. Then, abruptly, his chrome teeth ground audibly together, jaws clenched in a metallic snarl. A chilling, mirthless laughter erupted from deep within his armoured chest, a terrible, cavernous sound echoing cruelly through the ruined hall.