My heart slammed into my gullet, when a blast shook the world around me. That had to be some movement of the Pylon, as it couldn't have been any earthly weapon. I steadied my breathing and pressed myself against the wall so I could take a peek around the crumbling wall.

Without the jutting shape of the Tower of the Seven Corners, I would have been thoroughly lost in the maze of inhuman architecture. None of the streets went straight, as if deliberately designed to hamper traffic. Overall, the span of the alleys was short, but not narrow enough utilise the upper rubble as a consistent route across the ruins. I was lost yet at constant risk of being spotted.

At least Vesija remained as safe as he could be on the mountain. The Jaan wouldn't harm unarmed civilians, especially a physician who could keep their prisoners and own wounded alive. At least that was what I hoped. There was no knowing what sort of knaves in uniform Motsa might have procured.

Potential death waited at every firing avenue, yet the foolish craven couldn't make herself hold either of the two pistols in her hand. I wished the ordeal to be over, not just to avoid the pain and struggle, but also to escape the weight of my inevitable decisions, should I have the chance to commit to any action.

'Shall you pull the trigger?' I asked the presence in my mind. Only my own thoughts answered. 'Does it matter? The responsibility shall be shared regardless.'

Debris, collapsed passageways and oddly angled intersections kept steering me towards the fighting, strongly enough for it to be the work of a malicious will. At this point I wasn't quite ready to dismiss such nonsense out of hand. By conventional logic, towns couldn't move, but that had been proven false.

Behind the next bend in the alley came a wanton scream that must have agonised the throat it escaped from with its raspy volume.

With my ear almost against the ground, I peeked around the corner. In the middle of an otherwise abandoned street stood a tall man, jerking and trembling in obvious pain. He wore the uniform of a Jaan marksman, but the tissue between the armour plates had stretched and ripped to accommodate his lanky frame. He might have been an Iwunian who had looted the armour suit, but the rifle in a death-grip was of a Jaan design. A security measure unfamiliar to me might explain the violent reaction.

I glanced about to find a way around, but no route save backwards presented itself. I'd have to circle around, delaying myself for longer than the Iwunian rebels had time before utter defeat.

The erratic movement of the soldier had distracted me from the pile laying at his feet. A pile of fresh viscera and meat only recognisable as a man by the shreds of a combat suit.

Like a marionette in crude hands, the head of the marksman jerked towards the corner where I hid. I suppressed the first instinct to flee, as that would only lead to a pursuit and unaffordable delay. He did seem to have calmed down, enough not to shoot an unarmed civilian. The folds of my gown hid my weapons at a hand's reach.

I stepped to the alley, casually, with my hands up and visible. The marksman's posture straightened, and he kept his rifle towards my general direction, but I needed only to walk sideways to avoid its direct line of fire.

Perhaps he and his partner had been hit by some concussive weapon, which might explain the ragged appearance and behavioural abnormalities. My mind raced to come up with the right lies that'd smooth-talk my way past this sentry.

"I'm unarmed", was the only thing I could come up with. "You should capture me." That way I should be able to get past the battlelines and perhaps even all the way to Motsa.

The man's long finger squeezed the trigger, yet he jerked the rifle aside, away from me. Training pulled my nerves, and without cover available, I rushed towards the marksman.

Even with the suit, I wasn't fast enough, and I came to halt with the sharpened barrel right at my face. Instead of the familiar click and wheeze to herald a deserved death, my ears filled with a scream. The marksman pulled his gun up and shot at the sky. I took a step backwards but did nothing else, as I was entranced by the performance in front of me.

The man gripped the barrel with one hand and with the other clutched at the valve machinery of the rifle. Screeching like pulling out his own tooth, he tugged at the bolt, until it and the slimy innards connected to the bolt poured out off the gun.

"Kill me..." The words gurgled in his throat and left his lips as seething whispers. "Kill me..." Instead of giving me even a moment to consider the request, he stabbed at me with the eviscerated needler.

My own reflexes were enough to avoid the wild attack and the following thrust. Though my heart hammered with the frenzy of a fight for survival, my mind held only confusion.

The marksman stopped in place save the trembling that went through his disproportionated limbs. He let the rifle slip from his fingers and repeated his earlier plea in a sorry whine. Without lifting his gaze to me, he dropped on his knees, grabbed his own head with beastly intensity and pulled.

I ran before I was forced to witness the outcome. My pace was much too fast to sustain, but I rushed on, heedless of the danger. The terrible situation would only grow worse. I needed to end it, even if I didn't know why, or how.

'Stop and breathe, girl!' The voice of the Lady soothed my mind stronger than any words could. 'To the left here!'

My feet slipped on the smooth stone, as I twisted myself to take the turn. The ancient gown didn't let me fall on my side; it kicked the ground with enough for to hurl me towards the tight corridor betwixt the teetering buildings. The gap accommodated me only sideways, yet I didn't slow down until I was deep into the crevice, scraping the armour plates of my gown on the walls on both sides.

With the ancient building block between me and any potential pursuit, I finally stopped to lean against the wall. The hammering inside my chest threatened to drown my thoughts.

'Are you there?' I asked. 'What was that?'

'Calm down. I am here. Open your mind so I may reset this involuntary flight response directly.'

'I can calm myself, thank you very much.' After a couple of deep breaths, I concentrated my thoughts again. 'What is going on?'

'I have been mistaken.' Her voice fell silent.

'If you are waiting me to think up some snide remark, I must disappoint you. There really isn't time.'

'It's not that.' The Lady paused for long enough that I thought her gone again. 'I might sound unperturbed, but almost all of my will is shackled in a fight for our survival.'

'Against the Bellicose?'

'No. The Bellicose Measure is... dead. Has been for quite some time.'

'Odd. I didn't think your kind could die.'

'Well, that is true. He's more of permanently indisposed, having had his innards subverted until what wears his skin is nothing but a hollowed-out puppet."

As nothing moved behind me, I continued at silent jog towards the Tower.

'I shan't explain our internal politics, even if there was the opportunity', the Lady said. 'Our matters are no business of your kind, just as your petty quarrels concern us not. The proscribed materialists, however, disagree. They wish to re-subdue the vulgar realm, perhaps even hoping a degeneration back to its filthy embrace. I considered them deleted, yet instead they have amassed influence over all our interfacing systems. Slowly, over the aeon, they have worked their treachery in secret.'

'And Motsa serves them, then?'

'Yes. He is become the locus of a Vaddic legate, of one which titles itself the Hylarch.'

'Another god aiming to rule over us humans. How does it differ from you and the Bellicose?'

If a mere thought could scoff, the Lady did so. 'These materialists deny the superiority of our sublime existence and yearn to touch your obscene reality. They must be stopped before they assert control over all under heaven. You should want to help me, lest you wish to enslaved.'

'More than I already am?'

'You jest, but indeed yes.'

Around the corner I saw a Jaan marksman laying in wait, but his attention was focused away from me.

'Why don't you keep your gun in hand?' the Lady demanded.

'I might shoot someone.' With the enhanced padding of my boots, my footsteps were silent, as I dashed across the road into the cover of dusty shadows.

'That is the intention.'

'What's so important about the Tower of Seven Corners?'

'Buried underneath is the main interface nodes between our nation and the vulgar systems. It was thought that the presence of such mutually important infrastructure could protect us from the wrath of those above. In the end, they didn't even hesitate. The ballistic mantle of the Pylon managed to protect the vulnerable insides, but barely any of the equipment on the surface survived.'

'Our archaeologists could kill for the chance at a chat with you.'

'And that is exactly why they shan't be granted such an opportunity. To stumble in ignorance befits your kind.'

'Here I thought you were on our side.' Sarcasm was futile in such a direct discussion between minds, but I did my best to shift the tone of my inner voice.

'Of course I am not on your side. But I am sympathetic to your blight, even if its to an a mild extent.'

'Like a driver making sure his wagon remains operational by taking care of its well-being.'

'Just so. You are the assault carriage I am driving into the breach.'

I hummed my absent-minded acknowledgement and ran up a mound of gravel. After a surprisingly easy climb, I flattened myself on top to gaze at the open stretch between me and the tower. Parked battle wagons former a perimeter around the courtyard in front of the main door. A few forlorn souls in partial combat gear shambled among hastily set up military shelter, but though my eyes caught no fighting-ready troops, they must have lain in wait somewhere.

'Do you happen to have any other tools at hand than me?' I asked.

'No. I've spent my resources to get you here. Nonetheless, do not consider the weight of the world to be on your shoulders. Each and every decision by everyone has culminated to what ever happens next.'

'You don't have to evoke fatalistic lack of free will to keep me calm.' While I didn't explicitly speak my thoughts inside my mind, the Lady could feel them.

'I know what you are thinking', she said. 'You should know I don't condone such a plan.'

My lips curled in a smile. The very thing that had got me into this mess would be what got me inside the Tower.

If I were to recount my approach to the Tower of the Seven Corners in a chip dreadful, one partially based on reality, I'd describe the deep sanguine hue of the heroine's dress, the swish of her damselfly skirt and the indomitable confidence evident in her prim posture.

That was the image I hoped I projected outwards, as I walked between the battle wagons into the ramshackle camp of the Jaan marksmen.

Two vaguely corpse-shaped lumps had been covered under a bloodstained gossamer sheet. When I walked past, a dull-eyes sentry didn't curl up from his tight crouch. He only regarded me with watery eyes, which fear ––of me–– filled. My lips curled in that Jaan smirk my cousin favoured, and it might not have been just my role asserting itself.

'You must act quick', the Lady commanded. 'I can't keep your mind ours for long.'

'Is this Hylarch that powerful?'

'No. He merely has lowered himself low enough to have his full concentration on the vulgar realm.'

The few men at the camp slouched and lay in such a sorry state that no doubt they could have done little to stop me. If their limbs weren't gone entirely, they had twisted and elongated, or the muscles had bulged out like massive boils.

I avoided their gaze. 'What's wrong with them? The Plague?'

'In a sense. The Hylarch has utilised that same vector to experiment on his pawns.'

'Could that be done to me? Through that antidote, I mean.'

'Perhaps. However, the process currently going through your abdomen has hogged the interfacing medium inside your body, somewhat insulating you from any potential endosomatic assault.'

'Thanks, I guess. No doubt that protection can only be temporary.'

'Just so. Your actions must be decisive.'

The main entrance was blocked, but not by the gate. In its place was a wall of silk and pulsating raw tissue with no obvious means of ingress.

'So... How am I––' The thought was cut short by rapid movement above in the rafters of the canopy. Though my hand reached for a pistol, I managed to will myself to suppress that impulse and take a step back instead.

A massive form of all too long limbs and makeshift metal armour landed in front of me with eldritch nimbleness. It unfurled up into a man taller than proper even in his hunched posture. Instead of wielding any weapon, the bones of his fingers had stretched into glistening bayonets.

My role kicked in before I could panic. "Ah, Pitti. Still guarding your master's door."

"Brave of you..." His voice was a loud and hoarse whisper. "To come here after cutting off the boss's hand."

With a scoff and crossing my arms Nerutaara signalled her disregard for the implicit threat. Yet inside my head, all those reflexive neurons flared with the need to pull my gun and shoot this godless beast in front of me. "My new cover needed to be needle-proof for re-infiltration. Now I return with fresh intelligence."

"It's already over." He regarded me with his huge predator eyes on the face that while not ugly was sleekly inhuman. "It's all over."

"As far as you need to understand. Now, open this..." I gestured at the blocked entrance. "...door."

Pitti shifted his massive claw and sunk it into the fibrous wall. The silky gossamer resisted his tug until the muscles in the man's arm bulged sickly vascular. Slowly ripping the tissue, a sheet rolled out to reveal a fleshy doorway. Its walls seeped like a fresh wound.

"Someone might have followed me", I said. "Keep watch."

The guard beast grunted, and I stepped over the slimy threshold. The door closed behind me, leaving me in a near-darkness that was broken only by a faint glow I knew to be that killing light beyond visible illumination. Only select few could see it, and myself only barely enough to know it was there. The unlight emanated from strange rows of double lamps on the walls.

The air had a stench cleaner than purity. A hum boomed through the unnatural gloom; a chant of thousand voices with the movement of the mountain its rhythm.

'What is that?' I lifted my hand and willed its photophores to light my way.

'Don't!'

My suit obeyed me faster than I could react to the Lady's warning. The small lamps reflected my bioluminescence and turned towards me in pairs. Around them were faces, contorted not by agony but numbing bliss, in spite of the the tendrils piercing their skulls. The growths of the walls had subsumed their bodies.

'Are... Are they alive?'

'In biological terms, yes. As for mental or spiritual life... I can't say.'

Their mouths opened in time with the noise that slowly coalesced into an ecstatic hymn in a tongue I didn't recognise.

'What do they sing of? Is that even a real language?'

'It is an exultation in the voices of the void. Delusional prattle from a heresiarch; the heavens are barred to us. To not understand the lyrics is a blessing.'

My hand jerked towards my gun, but I wrangled in the impulse.

'You should take your gun', the Lady hissed.

'When it's time. If I saunter in there a pistol in hand, they might consider me an immediate threat and shoot me on sight.'

The voice filled my brain with an indignant huff. 'Very well.'

I shone the light brighter to examine the newly flesh-vaulted ceiling. 'The Vaddic artifice is miraculous, I know, but where did they get the raw material?'

'By pilfering it from our organics storages, obviously.'

My curiosity got the better of me, and I pointed the light across the enraptured faces. 'Organic––'

A familiar visage was among the congregation. The cleric Hrisda had been subsumed into the monumental machinery. An alien fury pulsed to fill my inner senses, blinding my consciousness long enough for my hand to have picked up the pistol. I stopped myself, just as my finger moved to the trigger.

'Kill him!' The Lady's voice consisted of molten metal instead of words.

'He's your faithful servant!'

'Exactly! Grant him the mercy of ceasing this blasphemy.'

I managed to force my hand down. 'When you regain control in here, shan't there be something you might do to help these people?'

'That is all too sensible.' The Lady hissed with a reluctant sigh. 'We shouldn't imply that our hopes are lost, if for no other reason than to maintain your morale.'

At least she was willing to drop the matter for the moment, even though the extensive rootworks going through the skulls of the victims made any recovery inconceivable. But my understanding was only that of a mortal.

The soft ground yielded wetly under my footsteps all the way to the glistening closed orifice at the other end of the vestibule. There was no obvious way to pierce the fleshy door.

'How do I open this?" I asked.

'You don't. I see the pneumatic switches connected to the Tower's system, but once I trigger them, the safety measures shall kick me out of all control. You'll be on your own.'

'Very well.' I took a deep breath. 'Do it.'

'Brace yourself. This shall tingle.'

Incandescent lightning filled my skull. My scream was just as short as the agony. As the faint light returned to my field of vision, the door had begun to crack open.

A constellation of double stars illuminated the cavernous dome of the hall, with the glow seeping down from the central stairway as its solar disk. That light cast stark shadows on the massive trunk circling around the pillar. From the tip of that colossal worm grew the upper half of a man with his arms spread in an embrace of the world.

For a long while the form up high remained stationary like the captive choir, before bioluminescent lamps flickered alive on its segmented flanks. The worm began to uncoil.

The moment I could be sure it was Motsa, I should have taken the shot. But the unnatural might in its ponderous movement showed any action in my feeble power to be futile.

Its length whipped across the wide chamber and came to hover in front of me. The tip blossomed out into seven jaws, and the Jaan gentleman stepped out.

Outwardly, Motsa remained how I had last seen him, save that the hand I had removed was back with its fingers longer and mercilessly sharp.

"I thought you'd be taller by now", remarked my role with utter confidence.

"Why ruin perfection?" His leg began to take a step, as he reached for me. My pistol lashed out. This close I didn't need to aim before pulling the trigger. The suit amply withstood the recoil even in one hand, and Motsa's head snapped backwards.

Yet he didn't fall, though I almost did from all the shivering my body experienced. The man lowered his face back and smirked at me. Between his eyes was a small scratch where my needle had hit him.

He licked around his mouth to test that his teeth were all in their places. "The little thing does pack a hefty punch. Holster than gun, please."

I could have shot directly into his eye, but if the soft tissue hadn't been reinforced, the skull behind would be. Teuna's weapon might have been enough for the work, yet Motsa's twisted arm had almost reached me and now I lacked the advantage of surprise. I let my gown claim the pistol and stepped back to get a bit of room.

"It is wonderful that you decided to return."

"To where exactly? What are you doing?"

He shook his head in mock disappointment. "An intelligencer such as yourself should have figured it all out already."

"Enlighten me."

"That I shall. But first, I do know that Bitch is listening on through you. She is not as furtive as she might like to think. Not as furtive as I am."

"You, as in Motsa or the Hylarch?"

The man grinned. "Well, I always did consider you to be less dense than immediately apparent."

"At times I manage to surprise. Why are you riding this mountain towards our homeland?"

"What a pointless question. Are you stalling, perhaps?"

"To what end might I be? You hold a literal mountain in your hand."

Motsa gestured around the dome. "The maidservant of the Vad is busy squirming through her old systems. She shan't find an edge over me, of course. I've been as careful as I've been patient. I am the tree that splits the rock over an aeon.

"Perhaps she intents to find where I've hidden the Bellicose Measure, to gain a temporary ally against me. By now she should realise the Measure never existed. It was pitifully easy to tell the indolent unseeing ghosts of the Vaddites what they wished to hear about this... vulgar world of bounded possibility."

As the man laughed, his gaze didn't quite concentrate on me with the constant intensity of a predator on the hunt. No doubt the Hylarch saw with other eyes than those of Motsa, but surely physical nerve-connection was required for reflexive actions.

That feeling of making a mistake during the action itself was no stranger to me. It didn't make me hesitate, didn't slow down the hand, which took the anathema pistol. Yet the creature wearing Motsa's face was faster than a mere mortal in fancy evening wear.

The darkness screamed as it split in half. Though my aim was true, Motsa had began to dodge the first rapid twitch I had made. His form twisted, yet not fast enough to shift his head entirely from the way of the beam. He became a blur, and the air cracked like a giant whip. Though my instinctive parry snapped hard enough to hurt the bones of my own arm, Motsa appeared behind my defences and hoisted me up from the ground by the neck.

I would have screamed, had his grip not sent a lightning bolt of pain through my neck. The wound cutting through the side of his skull had already clotted, leaving scintillating bone visible. The gun fell from my grasp.

"You should have gone with that one first." Motsa let go off me. I fell on my knees, gasping through an acutely mangled throat. My first reflex was to reach for the gun on the floor, but the man put stop to that insensible attempt by stomping on my hand.

"Had you shown such determination earlier in your life", he snarled. "You might have made something."

The man took a step back, and I huddled the hand against me, even if the rigid structure of the glove had prevented the worst of the damage.

He squatted to bring his grin at my eye-level. "You don't even know, what we are trying to accomplish here."

Whatever combat cocktail the suit had pumped into me had sent my heart racing madly, yet my mind remained dead calm.

"I've seen enough of your work..." I wheezed. "...to know the end goal can't be anything good."

"What you have seen is only... destructive creation. The world is in dire need of reordering. Did you know that the sea used to reach all the way to the Pylon?"

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it felt glued there.

"The water is mostly in glaciers now. That's why I'm moving this Pylon, closer to what remains of the global transport infrastructure. Of course, higher concentration of servitors is obviously welcome."

"And you shall sit in the middle as the ruler of an empire. How terribly pedestrian, as far as grand ambitions go."

His smile didn't falter, yet he stood and walked a few step away from me. Though his back was towards me, I lacked any illusion that I had a chance to pick up the gun and shoot.

"Oh, believe me, the work is certainly cut out for me. Your kind hasn't been much of a steward to this world. Perhaps, in a few of your generations, I can break the heavenly ban and cut down the cycles of decay."

"Ah..." Though I felt out of breath, there was no accompanying light-headedness. "What does Motsa get out of being a vehicle? A slave?"

For moment the false light of the chamber dimmed. The man turned with fury twisting his attempt at a smirk. "'Slave'?"

"I don't know, what the deal is between you two. But Motsa is getting the worst of it. Giving up his autonomy... the autonomy of his people, for what? To feel like a monarch?"

"To avenge our kin", he snarled.

"No..." I licked my wet lips and tasted my death. "Our grandparents knew what they did, when they placed the best of the nation over their own lives. That's what a Jaan does. What Motsa should have done, had not a senile ghost whispered in his ears, tickling his oversized arrogance. My cousin was often a fool... but he never was a traitor."

The man raised his deformed hand like the sabre of a carnifex. I closed my eyes.

"What absolute drivel..." The short burst of his laughter turned into a scream.

That forced me to look at him again. His body twisted with an aimless rage, which he slowly to reigned back into a twitchy stillness.

The familiar confidence melted off Motsa's face. His voice wavered at the brink of tears. "I might have made a mistake." With a pained grimace, the man fell on his knees in front of me.

"Nerutaara", he croaked. "Do what you came here for. I shan't die a traitor."

"I'm sorry", I said as I picked the anathema.

"Thank you", he smiled through the blatant pain. "Quick... I'm myself only... Use both––" He groaned and squeezed his hands in defiant fists.

With guns pointed at his head, Motsa still managed to a smile. "At least the last thing I shall see is Jaan beauty."

The enhanced bone couldn't stop a point-blank blast of two powerful sidearms. I dropped the pistols from my already limp grip, but my body was physically unable to sigh in relief or sob. Instead, I fell on my back, legs twisting underneath me.

Though I had hated Motsa, his death was scarcely a victory.

'You... insect...' The loud boom only existed in my head. It intensified into mind-consuming pain, yet my screams failed to relieve the pressure.

'We made a mistake leaving our servitors with any will of their own.' Without Motsa's voice, the Hylarch sounded like the roar of flames. 'You have only used your volition in folly.'

Every part of me flared with icy spikes, and my spine twisted rigid.

'I shan't...' The Hylarch's words boiled into my brain. 'I shan't return to be consumed by those indolent solipsists. This vessel isn't optimal, but it can always be altered...'

The intangible grip of the primordial intelligence slithered into the recesses of my mind, pulling at nerves and blasting my senses. In middle of the dazing pain, one thought crystallised: I couldn't let my body be used by this 'Hylarch'. That husk would endanger my family, my country, my Vesija. I wouldn't allow it.

My gown still obeyed its true mistress. It furled open its front at my command. The replacement nerves ripped off my neck, sending one last pinprick from every point of my body at once.

The Hylarch cursed with the hatred of melting neurons. 'What are you doi–– No! You'll die!'

'With you. That's the idea.'

The presence tried to retreat from my mind, yet was evidently hampered in one direction, before slipping off to another.

'No, I shan't.... return there, I shan't... be subdued to... the ennui of aeons!'

'Welcome home.' The Lady's words ended in a deep silence. The lights of the dome had gone dark, and around me the world stood still as a forgotten mausoleum. My suit must have maintained the vitality of my blood, because I didn't lose consciousness. There was no last ditch panic to survive. I had done what I could, and succeeded. I had taken a life, that of a kinsman no less, so it was only just that I gave up mine also.

My consciousness had dulled. I didn't quite register the new burst of sound until new movement appeared inside my hazy field of view. Even in the shadow of death, I recognised Vesija's burly silhouette. I could hear him utter my name from a distance further away than the stars.

I tried to smile, but my face didn't quite obey me. There were men with him, but my Iwunian spoke to someone else, someone I couldn't see. His adept fingers wrapped the gown around me, and his huge arms picked up my numb frame. He took me to the central stairway, and didn't slow down in spite of the load. How wonderfully strong he was! I found myself glad to climb towards the light above. Much better than the alternative, as far as afterlives go, I thought.

Even in the bright illumination of the upper ring, it was hard for me to see more than blur of muted colours. Vesija placed me to sit on a bench, though I could only guess that based on the feeling on being upright. A small shift my head told about a new weight on it. I preferred to think it was his hand in a last caress.

A piercing argent light robbed me of any awareness of my surroundings, yet my mind ran free from the limitations of blood-starved meat.

I found myself in this jarring absence of distinct sensation. This jarring whiteness fills my mind at every moment, and I fear eventually it shall fill my memory, pushing out all of my past experiences. Before I am erased, I have hoped to inscribe my story into the empty aether, but I doubt my thoughts can be read, or heard, or felt.

Yet I dare to hope that this message can reach you, Vesija, against all the sense I have left. If nothing else, please hear this:

I do love you.