Endsinger

  The air was freezing, walls glistening with moisture. Long paper amulets ran floor to ceiling, protective mantra scribed in soulless kanji. Daichi could hear motors thrumming through the floor, smell chi-stench curled in the air, clinging to the inside of every breath.

  They finally stopped outside another iris door, looming and black. The Inquisitors seemed distracted, watching the corners or staring into space, the leader actually sidestepping as if to avoid collision with something that wasn’t there. After long minutes, the iris dilated, opening out into a vast hollow of black stone. The room was too large to see the edges, a domed ceiling stretching overhead, the floor lit by strips of glowing halogen.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Daichi made out a granite pillar in the room’s heart. Ten feet high, riddled with fat lengths of cable, like boreworms in rotten fruit. The pillar’s base was ringed with thousands of mechabacii, chittering and skittering—the hum of some obscene hive. And atop the pillar, a figure crouched like a parasite king upon his throne.

  Red glowing eyes, a thin, pointed helm with hollow cheeks like a death’s head. Cables ran from throne and ceiling, plugged into his chest, legs, arms. His back was a cluster of metal shafts, like sea-urchin spines, glowing with scalding heat. Despite the brass shell, the cruel barbs and sharp lines, the figure seemed frail, old and thin and bent under the weight of his skin.

  Daichi could sympathize.

  The figure was watching the ceiling as they entered, staring at the impenetrable black above their heads. As Daichi was brought before the throne, it looked down on him, breath straining