Published at 18th of December 2025 8:49 am

Chapter polymechanus 17.1

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Iriko was a fool. Neglectful! Delinquent! Fool, fool, fool!

Pheiri was in trouble. Pheiri was going to get hurt no, Pheiri had already been hurt. Only a small wound so far, a few fistfuls gouged out of his beautiful white armour. But even a single scratch on Pheiri was too much for Iriko to bear, when it was all her fault. She could have stopped it, she should have been there. If only she had stayed by Pheiris side, she would have melted those Necromancers into sludge before a single one of them could touch him with their filthy claws.

But Iriko had wandered too far. She cursed herself for a fool.

Earlier, as they had been leaving the tomb together, Pheiri had tried his best to get Iriko to hang back, to stay behind, alongside the column of trudging zombies who didnt dare venture out until the storm was gone. Iriko hadnt liked that very much; she knew Pheiri was only worried for her safety, but she wasnt about to let him go speeding off into the unknown all by himself, no matter how many trusty zombies he had stowed away inside his body. Iriko told herself she would follow him wherever he went. Whatever happened next, Pheiri would not be by himself.

But then she had slid out of the tomb, back beneath the roiling black skies, still whipped by storm-winds, yet no longer pounded by hailstones and concrete debris. Temptation sang in every cell, a yearning Iriko barely understood, a call to spread herself out once again, to catch the wind and

Fly!

Iriko had taken a running leap from the edge of the tombs outer walls. Before she knew what she was doing, she had taken to the skies again, riding the last of the storm up, up, up, into the freedom of the open air.

She made herself into a flexible membrane, a sail to cross an ocean in the sky. Her heart sang with a million smiles, her mind buzzing with a sensation she couldnt remember ever having felt before. How could she resist this feeling? The sheer rush of rising over the concrete and steel, the absolute freedom of movement, liberated from the ground, the perfect angles as she cut and dived and swam on the updrafts, surfing each gale-gust, shaping her body into a funnel or a scoop or a razor-edged dart, zipping and zooming, swooping and soaring.

Iriko had spent lifetimes skulking in holes and nosing through the dirt. Now she had a taste of the sky, and she couldnt get enough.

When the storm finally died away and the winds could no longer support her weight, Iriko accepted her return to the earth with a grudging pout. Did all good things have to end, truly? She sent messages of frustration to Pheiri, capping her feelings with an experimental poem.

to soar is divine

gravity the worst tyrant

freedom so fleeting

She assumed Pheiri would be too busy minding his zombies to make a proper reply. Elpida and Howl and Kagami and Serin had all explained the plan to her; Iriko knew that eventually some nasty Necromancers might appear. But that was okay, because Pheiri was going to be gallant and genius and blow them all up.

To Irikos surprise, Pheiri not only found a moment to acknowledge her poem with a receipt ping to which Iriko replied with another ping, and kept doing so until Pheiri stopped the chain but he also passed her a fresh mass of data down the tightbeam uplink. It was a new set of geometric puzzles and mathematical problems for Iriko to chew on with her mind. At first she thought he was just trying to distract her, so she replied with a fresh pout. But when she began to play around with the puzzles, she discovered that they unfolded into the most beautiful structures multi-stage wings and balance equations and aerodynamic calculations.

Pheiri was trying to satisfy her desire for flight, though it was so difficult for her body, without the aid of the wind. Iriko could have squealed in delight.

She kept pace with Pheiri as he pushed deeper into the changed landscape of crushed concrete and twisted steel, as it began to blossom with mats and stalks of glistening black mould. He had told her to keep her distance, but she didnt take that too seriously.

His warnings were not why she had wandered. No, it was the empty desolation that had drawn her away from him.

For the first time in longer than Iriko could remember, she was truly alone.

Except for Pheiri, of course, but that was okay. And his zombies, but they were tucked away inside Pheiri, where she couldnt see them right then. And yes, more zombies were pouring out of the tomb, now far to their rear, but they were so far away they couldnt hope to catch up for a long time. And, yes, fine, there was the graveworm up ahead, towering over the landscape, but who cared about that? Hope was somewhere distant, up in the sky, always watching, but Iriko tried not to think about Hope.

No zombies, no monsters from beyond the graveworm line, nothing but her and Pheiri. Alone together in a landscape of pulverised concrete, rapidly sprouting with more nanomachine mould than Iriko could ever hope to eat, not all by herself.

Iriko was so used to hiding, staying tight to the shadows, squeezing through the guts of ruined buildings, armouring herself close and secure, making herself as invisible as possible. But this new landscape was empty, with wide flat vistas of crushed concrete in every direction, and not a zombie in sight.

For the first time ever, Iriko was free to lounge in the open and wander without caution.

She had gorged herself on the thick stalks and plush mats of spreading black mould, following her gut and her nose wherever they led. She had dived through the pools and streams of storm-water, her body flowing around tangles of twisted steel, ejecting crumbs of concrete accidentally ingested, smashing and splashing and skimming through the murky rubble.

She was having such fun, eating all the while. She didnt worry too much about Pheiris warnings to keep her distance, for her own safety. Silly boy always worried so much!

But then the Necromancers had sprouted like evil mushrooms.

They had chased Pheiri, lunged at him, landed on him. One of them, a flying thing like a bundle of knives, had torn chunks from his hide.

Flying! Like Iriko wanted! Using that gift to hurt Pheiri! Her Pheiri!

The moment she saw it happen too far away, too far to help Iriko went cold all over and vomited up the black goop shed been chewing. She didnt want to eat any more. She felt sick. She was a bad friend, a bad ally, a bad

Bad girl?

Iriko felt like such a fool. If shed had eyes right then, she would have manufactured tear ducts just to weep. If shed had a mouth and lungs, she would have screamed. If shed had a heart, it would have stopped.

But she didnt. Those would be wastes of time, biomass, and nanomachines.

Pheiri needed her help, not her hysterics.

Iriko exploded from within the pool of black gunk on which shed been grazing, hurling herself up the bank of shattered concrete and into the open air. She abandoned the vestiges of her stealthy habits, shedding the mirror-finish on her refractive mail, slicking her surfaces down smooth, folding away her more sensitive sensory organs, optimising her body for speed and power, adding muscle to her underside and a spike-ram of rock-hard bone to her front. If only the storm was still blowing, she could have taken to the air and been at Pheiris side in seconds! The best she could do now was streamline her body and turn her front into a battering ram, to slam the world aside as she powered through the broken landscape.

She leapt from a high point of ragged concrete, dived through tangles of broken building, smashed aside shivering copses of black mould-trees. She turned her body into a linear machine on a straight-line course back to Pheiris side, throwing up a torrent of debris in her wake.

But she was so far from Pheiri, it would takeminutes to reach him like this.

Pheiri blared at her down the tightbeam.

NEGATIVE escort remove DANGER CLOSE

no no! Iriko spat back. shut up shut up shut up! stupid pheiri stupid stupid!

NEGATIVE NEGATIVE escort remove convoy procedure compromised DANGER CLOSE

pbbbbbbttttttttt!

She spat denial pings at him; Pheiri took them all and repeated his message. Why wouldnt he accept her help!?

Iriko watched the dirty little fight unfold up on Pheiris outer deck, his zombies struggling to protect him. She ached at the sight, little things scurrying around to do what she couldnt; Elpida and Shilu and Serin, she owed her new friends so much! She wailed when it seemed like the horrible Black-Iron Necromancer might stride down inside Pheiri without resistance, then cheered when Hafina emerged and knocked the horrible little bitch off Pheiris back.

The Black-Iron Necromancer landed in a tangle of metal limbs and torn flesh; Pheiri pounded the crater with his best guns, then accelerated away, leaving the stricken Necromancer behind. Iriko extended flesh-trumpets from her back and hooted a war cry, redoubling her efforts at speed. If she could not help protect Pheiri, she would punish anybody who hurt him.

She was going to eat that Necromancer! Yes she was!

Up on Pheiris outer hull, the zombies went forward, Elpida among them. Iriko watched the Black-Iron Necromancer start to pick herself up. She adjusted her course, hurtling through shattered concrete, rearing up so the Necromancer would know exactly what was coming for her.

And then a very bad thing happened.

A tidal wave of black static boiled up and over the horizon, pouring from beneath the distant grey curve of the graveworm, far away to Irikos right. Interference scrambled even the most finely tested of Irikos sensors, jabbing the core of her mind with nausea and disorientation, hiding the true nature of the onrushing wave. But Iriko didnt need properly functioning senses to know what was charging across the ruins.

Worm-guard. Hundreds, thousands, more.

Iriko faltered.

She skidded to a stop amid the concrete and rubble, throwing up a little wave of her own, debris raining down around her.

Iriko was terrified of worm-guard. Buried somewhere in the surviving memory fragments of her life before she was made small and vulnerable, she knew that she had been torn apart by a wave of worm-guard once before. When she had been massive and powerful and almost unstoppable, when she could range far beyond the safe zone of any graveworm, she had fought for the chance to feast on a worms innards. She had thought herself invincible and she had been, against everything but the limitless number of worm-guard, with their specialised weaponry, their fire and their chemicals. That was when she had ceased to be whatever she had been before, when she had become Iriko, a small piece, a leftover, a fragment which hid from the destroying swarm.

She had to run.

It was the only option, the only choice. Her body jerked, trying to flee. Her biomass shivered and vibrated, trying to sink into the soil, dig her way into a hiding place. Her refractive mail flickered through camouflage patterns, mirror-finishes, and a dull heat-reflecting black, all to keep those billion eyes off her tiny, vulnerable form.

Run or die. Run or die. Run or die, now!

But the worm-guard would be on Pheiri in seconds. Iriko had no time to think, no time to weigh her options. Would she rather be dead alongside Pheiri, or alive and alone and a coward forever?

Iriko hurled herself forward again, smashing aside drifts of concrete and throwing up showers of shredded black mould.

She extended a dozen trumpets of flesh from her back and hooted her defiance; if she didnt scream, she was going to sob.

Iriko was going to die. Against seven Necromancers, she might prevail. But against a wave of worm-guard, she was nothing. She would come back, of course. She would resurrect again, in a coffin. She would be different, even smaller and more vulnerable than she was already, more like a zombie than what she was now.

Would she be pretty again, if she died here and came back? Would she return as something small enough to shelter inside Pheiri? Would he like her better that way?

But Iriko didnt want to change. She didnt want to be different now. She wanted to be Iriko. She wanted to fly!

The onrushing wave of worm-guard made it so hard to see. Half her senses were scrambled by their interference, no matter what she used visible light, heat-maps, echolocation, predictive terrain-scanning algorithms, they jammed it all, as if they were inside her head. She knew the Black-Iron Necromancer was right in her path, but she could barely see. She felt herself veer off course, disoriented by the worm-guard, her insides shaking with terror, with the certainty of death and

ping? ping ping ping?

A tightbeam contact, but not from Pheiri. From up and away and over the horizon, from a direction that Iriko had refused to acknowledge.

Hope was calling, knocking on Irikos communication protocols with a polite little handshake package. So neat and tidy, prim and pretty.

Iriko wasnt sure about Hope, the machine-thing up in the sky. Hope was the daughter of that questionable person, Thirteen Arcadia, who had gotten a little too close to Pheiri for Irikos comfort. But right now, Iriko didnt care who was helping, as long as the help came quick.

She accepted the handshake. A new tightbeam connection took shape. Hope and Iriko exchanged basic communication normalisation, packets flickering back and forth in a split-second.

what what talk fast talk pheiri help need help pheiri talk

k!

Hope burst through every layer of Irikos defences as if they didnt exist. Comms firewalls, viral loop-back traps, the inner encryption spheres around her mind, all of it was paper before Hopes smiling barrage. It happened so quickly that Iriko could not even respond, her walls falling before she knew. If Hope wanted her dead or hurt or enslaved, she could have done so without even trying.

In the centre of Irikos mind, Hope planted a direct sensor feed, and let it flower open.

Iriko spluttered and gasped under a flood of data direct real-time video feed from Hope, hanging up there beneath the ceiling of clouds, in greater clarity than even the most delicate of Irikos own eyes. Real-colour, false-colour, thermal readout, wind speed, nanomachine density, simulated topography, predictive sub-surface mapping, IR scanning, and more, dozens more ways of seeing and thinking than Iriko knew, most of which she had never even considered before, some of which hurt and burned if she looked too hard.

Irikos mind bulged with the sheer weight and density of data, the edges of her consciousness flickering black with inevitable collapse. Too much, it was too much! Iriko scrabbled for a handhold amid the chaos, tried to choke off the sensor feed.

Hope was babbling at her in an endless stream.

##loop sector rform single -m -5

partial exclude /iriko/self/frag 48271

size unknown -o -m

##loop not found

-def #loop /iriko/self/main?

##loop not found error size

##loop sector rform multi -m -eBv

Hope guided Iriko back to one of Pheiris geometric puzzles a simple thing, one of the earliest hed sent her, a flower of mathematics that unfolded at each stroke, with more space inside than outside. Hope drew all of Irikos attention to that puzzle. She needed Iriko to do something, something Hope herself could not.

Iriko felt her mind reach breaking point. She was going to burst and die, and forget who and what she was.

But she was dead anyway, wasnt she? The worm-guard would kill her and Pheiri.

Iriko pushed her mind, like the flower.

And opened.

ask and you will know,

but wait and never come to,

els fail and forget!

Iriko did not have time to think about what happened to her, what Hope had just forced her to do. Her mind suddenly felt bigger, as if a vast inner space had opened up within herself. She could grasp all of Hopes sensor data at once; it was so simple! Had she not been looking at it from the right angle before? Suddenly she saw herself, a racing dot of shimmering metal amid the broken concrete and black mould-spires and twisted steel wreckage. She knew exactly where she was, seen through Hopes eyes, and exactly how fast she was moving. She saw the rolling wave of worm-guard, revealed for what they were, wriggly masses of black tentacles and muscle, bound inside diamond armour. She saw a lead scout crashing into Pheiri as he tried to turn, the worm-guard clambering up on his hull and plucking a zombie from his open hatch Elpida!

She saw the Necromancer barely fifty feet away the Black-Iron Necromancer, the flyer with the beak and the wings, the dirty slut who had hurt Pheiri.

Iriko slammed ahead, tossing chunks of concrete aside. The Necromancer was wounded, but the wounds closed quickly. She straightened up and looked toward Iriko, eyes like chips of obsidian in a face of black metal.

Iriko extended a hundred trumpets and hooted at maximum volume, loud enough to shake the air and scatter chipped concrete. She squealed in a language she thought shed forgotten.

Iriko eat you!

The Necromancer opened her beak and clacked it hard, laughing in her throat.

Iriko was almost upon her rearing up, spreading out, no escape! The Necromancer stood her ground, raised a hand of claws and knives, a show-off gesture.

Moron zombie, the Necromancer said over open radio.

Iriko crashed like a falling wave. She felt her body start to freeze, stutter-stopping in mid-air; she was not totally immune to Necromancer trickery, as she had learned during her first encounter with a Necromancer, alongside Serin. But there was simply so much of Iriko, so many places within her own body for her to run and hide, too many places where she could think, too many for one Necromancer to freeze all of her all at once.

Part of her froze, then another, then another, but always a part of her could move forward. She was a crashing wave in slow-motion, still inevitable.

The Necromancer, the Black-Iron hussy who had touched Pheiri, cocked her head in mild surprise.

halt one tide alone,

but still see the wrath and storm

of oceans beyond!

Iron-Face winced, clacked her beak, and

And Iriko froze entirely, body held still in place, a wave turned to ice on the edge of the shore.

The Necromancer opened her beak. How how? How now, zombie cow? How did you do that? Whos been teaching you nasty tricks? No answer? None. None is none is none. Lets take you off the stage. Get done!

The Black-Iron bitch clicked her fingers.

Iriko felt her insides twist, as if a seed of destruction had been planted in her core. One cell, just one, collapsing into nanomachine gunk, pure potential without form. The effect spread, one cell to two, two to four, four to eight, eight to sixteen, accelerating upward.

She was being unravelled. Slow at first, but the end would come all at once.

Iriko tried to struggle, to extend just one single pseudopod or tentacle, to force her body sideways, to escape the runaway collapse inside her own flesh. If she could isolate and eject the compromised cells she might survive, but the Iron-Faced horror was staring at her and she couldnt move! She couldnt move and she couldnt even fight! Pheiri was so close, he needed her so much, a worm-guard clambering all over him, and Iriko had failed, she was worse than a fool, she wasnt worthy to be anything but a carrion-eater and a bottom-feeder and a coward and

A pillar of white erupted from the concrete next to the Black-Iron Necromancer, flowing up from within the ground, taking shape from raw matter. A fluttering white dress, a golden fall of wild hair, a single hand outstretched to grab the Iron-Face by the side of her metal skull.

Another Necromancer. This one, Iriko remembered. Lykke!

Hiiiiiiiiiii! Lykke screeched in the other Necromancers ear.

Irikos body was free. She ejected the compromised cells with enough force to crack concrete.

She crashed into both Necromancers, slamming them to the broken ground and sucking them into her core. She flash-formed a tough pocket of electromagnetic cage and armoured flesh, triple-layering it with iron-laced bone so thick that even a Necromancer would take a few moments to break out. Then she flooded it with the strongest digestive fluids she could metabolise, cranked the pressure up, and heated the result, right to the limit of her own tolerances.

The pair of Necromancers fought for a few seconds, biting and clawing and slicing at each other then kicked away from the fight. The Black-Iron Necromancer scraped and dug at the walls of Irikos improvised ultra-stomach, morphing her limbs into drills and picks and levers. Iriko turned the pressure up, repaired the damage, and kept the Necromancer pinned. Simulated flesh melted from fake bones, and then the bones dissolved too, every last cell of Necromancer flesh rendered down into neutralised nanomachine soup.

Iriko flexed the limits of her new mind. She decided to try Howls trick again, unprompted and unguided.

She opened specialised sensory organs deep inside her body, pushed them wide at the exact moment the Black-Iron Necromancers body finished turning to liquid, and peered into a stratum of the world she had not known existed.

The network, Howl called it.

She saw a spark.

A dense tangle of data, squirming in every direction like a fractal explosion as it tried to crawl back into the network, trapped momentarily by the electromagnetic cage in Irikos guts. The body was not the Necromancer; this was the Necromancer. A soul made of raw data, no different to a zombie, just with more network access.

Iriko formed a new kind of stomach, a stomach in her mind, where this Necromancer could truly be snuffed out. Death, real death, with no escape back into the network, back into resurrection.

Nobody touches Pheiri!

But the moment she attempted the transfer, the chaotic spark slipped through her cells, squirming out though the tiniest gap in the electromagnetic cage. Before she could re-adapt, the Necromancers data was gone, shot out of her body like a greased bullet, vanishing into the ground, dissipating back into the network.

Iriko would have been frustrated, but the other Necromancer Lykke was doing something very odd.

She had curled herself up into a ball of flesh, to resist Irikos digestive juices for a few more seconds. And she was pinging Irikos internal comms, asking for a handshake.

Hope suggested she take the call.

what what melt you melt you what???

Lykke laughed. Heyyyyyyyy there beautiful! Appreciate the assist? Hows about you do me a sweet one in return, and not turn me into soup? Not that it matters too much, but it would take me, oh, a minute or two to get back to my feet, and time is of the essence when bitch-slapping a bunch of upstart cunts like this, dont you agree?

???

I know, I know, its so hard to pay attention to the little people when youre as beautiful as you are. I love what youve done with the place! Youre a little miracle, arent you? Cant believe Elpida didnt tell me about you. Which means she probably didnt tell you about me. Sigh sigh sigh, thats the fate of a guilty lover-girl, I guess. So, hi! Im Lykke, Im one of Elpidas special friends, and I just gave you a little helping hand with that bitch there. Id appreciate if you dont finish eating this body, so I can go help my darling Elpi, okayyyy?

Iriko didnt reply. She didnt know how. She queried Hope instead.

y! said Hope.

Iriko let Lykke go, collapsed he stomach-pocket, and purged her digestive fluids. She spent a second checking her internal integrity, but the collapse process had been halted. She was fine.

But, to Irikos surprise, Lykke didnt flop to the floor. She unfolded herself, no longer a tightly-pressed ball of flesh, but a woman with all of her skin and most of her muscle melted away, now rapidly reforming, raw nanomachines re-weaving themselves into golden hair and a white dress. She kicked free from Irikos biomass, up onto Irikos back, where she sat with her legs spread, atop Iriko like she was riding a horse.

Lykke spoke over comms, quicker than her mouth could make sounds. Mind if I catch a ride, you beautiful blob you? Were both going the same way, after all! And youre a speedy girl!

Iriko didnt have time to negotiate terms, or to think about why Elpida had another, secret, annoying Necromancer friend. Lykke had helped her to crush the Necromancer who had hurt Pheiri, and that was good enough for Iriko.

Wheeeeeeeee! Lykke shrieked as Iriko slammed ahead at full speed; her hair whipped back, her eyes went wide, and her hands clung to Irikos hide.

Iriko laughed along with her, hooting from her trumpets, loud enough to make Lykke flinch in surprise.

The tidal wave of worm-guard was almost on Pheiri; he was stuck in a skidding turn, trying to twist away from the rising wall of black static, but one of them was already crouched over him, clinging to his armour, Elpidas limp body held in its grip.

Iriko was going to die; Lykke was probably going to die with her, if that mattered to Necromancers. But she would die protecting what mattered.

Iriko armed herself diamond-hard spears beneath her skin, ready to eject with force enough to shatter steel; pockets and sacks of superacid, pressurised and bulging; she extended tendrils of muscle and claw, packed half her biomass into them, and plated them with the best armour she could cook. She readied flash-grown factories in her core, because her first attack might fell a single worm-guard, but then she would face three more, a dozen more, a hundred more, and she would buy Pheiri the space to escape.

She hit the perfect distance only a few dozen meters out and sprang like an insect, launching herself from an outcropping of shattered concrete. On her back, Lykke whooped and cheered. Iriko hooted a war cry, extending all her weapons toward the worm-guard, descending in a bright streak of blinding flesh.

The worm-guard let go of Pheiri. It reared back, a black scribble in Irikos sensors, but clear as crystal in Hopes data-feed. It twisted away, trying to escape Irikos path.

Elpida was standing on its back.

Feet planted wide, left arm wrapped in exposed worm-guard muscle, stump of her right arm plugged into whatever the worm-guard used for a nervous system. She looked up, right at Iriko, at the arc of her fall.

She grinned wide. Elpida and Howl grinned together, but somebody else grinned with them, another set of movements in Elpidas facial muscles.

Hey blobbo! Howl roared at the top of her lungs. Get on board, girlie! Were gonna rip open some Necromancer!

Iriko was so surprised she fumbled her trajectory. She missed the worm-guard entirely, her weapons whipping back as she realised the thing wasnt targeting her. None of the worm-guard were targeting her. The wave was sweeping ahead of Pheiri on both sides, leaving a space for him to turn and run.

pheiri pheiri panic pheiri what do what do need land landing iriko fumble iriko fall iriko

minimum convoy range EXCLUDE. danger close approval

Pheiri fed Iriko a tidy package of angle and speed calculations.

Iriko twisted in the air, reaching out with her tentacles, her weapons absorbed back into her body, her flesh about to impact on the concrete. If she landed now, at this angle, she would be spread across meters of broken ground, and it would take precious minutes to pull herself together. Whatever miracle Elpida had worked with the worm-guard, they would still swarm over her, immobile and helpless.

But she followed Pheiris instructions. She made the angle right, she whipped out with her tentacles just so, flared her body to slow herself by just that fraction of a second. Pheiri slewed sideways, skidded across the concrete scree, right beneath her.

Irikos tentacles caught an outcrop of Pheiris armour, and Pheiri caught Iriko.

She landed with a jarring splat on Pheiris upper deck, losing fifteen percent of her biomass, splattering across Pheiris armour. She was spread out, slowed and wounded, dazed by the impact.

But she was safe, right on top of Pheiri, the closest shed ever been. And he was speeding away from the oncoming wave.

Lykke staggered free from the liquid mess, broken limbs cracking back into place, turning to gape at what Pheiri left behind. Iriko saw too, from her own eyes and Hopes data-stream, from Pheiris alarmed messages over the tight-beam, from the shrieking voices of half of a dozen zombies inside Pheiris hull.

The wave of worm-guard was not stopping; the other remaining Necromancers were turning and fleeing now, fleeing alongside Pheiri, though the wave made no spaces for them, not like it did for him.

Elpida and Howl and somebody else within, a blue flicker behind Elpidas eyes stood atop a worm-guard like it was a steed, riding the crest of the wave.

Iriko had no idea what was happening. She was too dazed to figure it out.

Pheiri told her not to worry, and hold on tight.

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