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by demonicgallade

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12 MILES BELOW Mark Arrows

CHAPTER ONE

ONLY A NIGHTMARE

"You have about three minutes to live if you fuck up and get your suit punctured."
The old engineer fussed over a few metal toolboxes on his bench,
pulling out the contents, explaining as he went. "First few seconds, frostbite sets into the local puncture area. After that, the freezing temperature leaks in and overpowers the suit's rebreather, usually around the one-minute mark.
Better be holding your breath by that point. You die the moment you can't."
It was hard to see what he'd been doing since the workbench was made for grown-ups. I craned my head over the lip of the table to get a better view.
He pushed the toolbox away. "Most adults can hold their breath for about two minutes while under stress. Factor that in and that's why it's roughly three minutes before lights out."
He brought his elbows onto the table, lowering his head so he was more at eye level with me. "See why folks beat around the snow telling you kids what's out there? You're ten. They'd rather you go be a brat and play with your friends. Leave the worrying to the adults."
Everyone said it was really bad if something happened outside the heated clan bunker. And then they'd shoo me away when I'd ask them how bad.
Anarii was, as he put it, "too old to care about keeping secrets"—he'd tell me about whatever I asked. So, ever since I found him, I'd been sneaking past the house guards and making my way to his workstation, deep in the bowels of the colony.
Anarii grinned. "Now, here's a challenge for you. How would you patch up the environmental suit fast enough to beat the timer?"
I frowned as I thought. A couple of ideas floated to my head, but none of

them seemed to fit. So I did what I do best: I looked for a way to cheat and get an edge.
I'm betting he'd pulled everything out for a reason. The answer was probably on his workbench.
A square piece of suit fabric caught my attention. "A patch?" That didn't seem right; sewing took a long time. Also, I didn't see any needles or thread anywhere on that table. "A patch with a sticky surface?"
"You're close, but there are some issues with that answer." His hand picked up that piece of fabric, along with a spare knife. "Imagine you're having a nice stroll outside and your suit gets a rip—like this." The tough material took him a good moment of struggling to tear through with the knife.
"Now, in most cases, you'll be panicking and not thinking clearly. A patch needs too many steps for your groggy mind to handle. We need something faster and easier."
He set down the knife and picked up a strange fat gun off the table,
flipping a switch on it. "That's where this comes in. Catch."
I caught the heavy gun-thing with a slight fumble. Welding lines held together different parts, and string tied a circuit chip to the side. The barrel was way too fat compared to sidearms and rifles.
"Looks weird. Does it really shoot bullets?"
"Nope. It's been modified to fire out superheated glue. It's a hot glue gun!" He cackled as if this was the world's funniest joke.
"You're going to glue the suit back together?" I said, stunned. "That's stupid!"
He ruffled my hair with a wide smile and took the weird gun back from my hands. "Well, if it's stupid but it works, then it's not stupid. And boy does it work." Fast on his feet, he turned on his chair and fired a snotful of glue at the rip, almost point-blank.
"All done." He patted the cloth where the glue had sunk into the tear; it had already hardened over. "Easy, see? That'll hold off the environment for a few hours—more than enough time to limp back somewhere safe."
While I poked the strangely repaired rip, Anarii got out of his chair and reached for something large on the top of the shelf.
A spare environmental helmet. It had been built oddly—a glass dome acted as the faceplate for the massive helmet. Normally helmets were made with goggles instead, making them harder to break than a massive glass dome. I think he kept that defunct model because it looked weird.

When he lifted the helmet off the shelf, the bulky thing knocked down a small avalanche of tools. "Ahh, ratshit... eh, I'll clean this later."
Then he paused as if an idea crossed his mind. "Actually," he said,
rubbing the white whiskers of his beard like a villain might, "I think I'll apply my gods-given privilege again as the only adult here and have you clean this mess for me." He chuckled darkly.
Last time, that lazy adult had tricked me into cleaning up the workstation for him in "exchange" for lessons on welding. But I'd had a lot of time to stew in my bed and prepare. A well-designed plan was put into action.
"Wait, wait!" I turned and scrambled on top of a stack of crates. Once stable, I positioned my hands imperiously at my waist, my back straight and regal like the captains of the clan did when they wanted someone to pay attention. And standing up on these boxes let me properly lord over him. I took a deep breath and puffed out my chest. "I am Keith Winterscar, of House Winterscar! By the authority invested in my caste as a knight Retainer,
I shan't do your bidding!"
The engineer stopped in his tracks and gawked up at me.
Yes, take a good look and tremble. House Winterscar only had a few hundred members, but we were still an entire rank above engineers and scientists. From my boxy throne with the full authority of my venerable house behind me, I must have been a terrifying sight.
Anarii broke down laughing, which was absolutely nowhere in my design document.
"Ah, but there's one flaw in your clever little plan: who's going to enforce it?" He lifted up his hands and grabbed me off the stack of crates,
slowly bringing me back down on the ground, next to the helmet he'd pulled down from the shelf.
"The guards would back me up! I only need to tell them you're making me clean things up. They'll shake you down for it, old man!"
"And if you tell them, you'd be admitting that you snuck out to an engineering bay again. They're not gonna like that, I'd be betting. Scandalous for a noble knight Retainer of House Winterscar to be visiting little old me."
That brought out another fit of chuckling from the old man, especially when he watched me squirm around trying to think of a counterpoint.
Before I could come up with another way to escape clean-up duty, the helmet was plunked on top of my shoulders.
"What's this for?" my voice echoed inside the helmet.

"Well, what about other problems besides hard punctures? Like suit failures or leaks you don't know about? You'll have to deal with those too when you're out there." The glass muffled his voice.
A few button presses later from him and a banshee-like wail rang out in the helmet. The high-pitched alarm hammered frantically in my ears. The air instantly started getting chilly at the same time.
"This, little man, is the emergency warning. If you ever hear this, you need to move fast."
"I get it! I get it! Can you turn it off now?" I yelled at him, the siren almost drowning out my voice. It had gotten uncomfortably cold. A leak? My breath came out as mist.
"I already did." Anarii frowned. "You're still hearing it?"
"Yeah! And it's getting really cold too!"
He glanced over at his instruments, puzzled. "Oh! Can't believe I forgot about that detail." His hand loomed over the glass dome and tapped on it loudly. "You're going to have to fix this one all on your own, just like a real grown-up."
I nodded back at him, a bit worried now.
"Don't worry, it's easy." He smiled and drew closer to the glass. "You just need to wake up."
Frost bloomed on the outside, coating the glass. The temperature continued to drop, and danger flared in my heart in response. I screamed and clawed at the straps. It didn't budge. Too heavy.
The weight dragged me onto the floor, my hands still unable to pry the thing off. Everything was getting so cold. The alarm continued to ring in my ears, louder than my cries. The ice expanded over the instruments, breaking system after system in bursts of shattered glass. Needles and gauges froze in place instantly.
"Wake up, Keith. Or you're gonna die." Anarii's features blurred from the rime. Now, only unfocused blotches of color diffused through the ice.
The helmet's protective faceplate finally started to give in, massive cracks appearing on the dome, small pieces of glass snapping off and falling onto my cheek. The cold squeezed through those cracks, reaching for me.
Reaching to kill me.
"Wake up," Anarii said. "Wake up or die, boy."
The dome shattered. Ice lunged for my throat.

I woke with a gasp and my eyes flared open, hyperventilating. I was back in my full adult-sized environmental suit complete with intact goggles—
Anarii was nowhere to be seen, no glass dome helmet, no workbench. No more memories of my childhood.
Cold reality again.
The shrill alarm in my suit's helmet continued to beat into my ear,
refusing to let me drift back to sleep. Something's wrong... with the suit. I need to… I need to move fast.
My chest constricted when I tried moving. The cause was easy to spot:
someone had applied glue in half a dozen places. And still my teeth clattered and shivered. My skin—ice cold. There was's a leak that I'd missed. I was freezing to death.
It was a struggle to lift my numb arm. Somehow, I got a visual on my wrist's instruments despite the shaking. The gauges were still working, the nightmare frost nowhere to be seen. The reading on the needles snapped a spike of adrenaline through my heart that finally shook me fully awake.
The rebreather read as offline. No one could live without reheated air on the surface. I should be dead. How was I breathing?
I shut my eyes and on a leap of faith... inhaled.
No uncontrollable coughing. A dull, dry pain flashed through my throat,
the cold creeping in with each breath. The air wasn't frozen enough to kill with any real speed, unless I overstayed my welcome. How long had I been out that I'd lost enough heat to trigger the alarms? Where were my heating systems?
I checked for the setting on my arm and got an answer. Someone had turned off my suit's heating systems, likely to keep me from burning up. The suit would quickly overheat anyone in less extreme temperatures, so if those systems had been turned off...
This couldn't be the surface. My goggles restricted my field of view, but what little I could see didn't look like the clan colony. Nothing around me looked like home. The only other place that wasn't frozen over...
The one place no lone scavenger ever returned from. The underground. I was underground.
No. Panic later. I needed to plug the leak. I could worry about exactly where I was later.
An analog switch on my arm controlled the emergency temperature, and with a flick the backpack hummed to life. Lukewarm air flowed through the

entire suit from tubing under the cloth like a second set of veins. It burned everywhere it touched.
Everywhere except for my left lower rib, where the heat was being sucked away.
Found you.
My scavenger kit clicked open at a touch, still on the side of my belt. The field repair gun inside looked to be in working condition. It took me three tries and twenty wasted seconds before my frozen hand finally wrapped around the handle and lifted it out. The charge switch was large, like everything I owned, made to be used by thick gloves. It started humming in my hand the moment the flip was switched.
The leak was a five-inch rip in the cloth, hidden away on the left side. No wonder it'd been missed.
Pain seared my skin as the glue sunk inside the open tear. It hardened instantly, doing its job as expected, holding fast to flesh and fabric alike. I slumped back down, too cold to care about anything else.
Soon enough, the suit's basic sensors hit nominal, the warning siren promptly shut down along with the heater. Everything was suddenly quiet again.
That let me hear what I hadn't been able to before.
Sounds of metal clinked softly nearby. The source of the noise came from a man sitting nearby on a concrete block, tending carefully to an old rifle.
Armored in plate with a single blood-red sigil on the shoulder pad. A faceless helmet turned in my direction.
The last time I'd seen that armor, it had been falling down into an abyss.
Father.

CHAPTER TWO

PRELUDE TO VIOLENCE

- Seven Hours Ago -

I

turned the power off.
The environmental suit objected, of course. Loudly. Full of opinions.
Effects were immediate with each breath colder than the last. The chill wrapped around my throat, tenderly squeezing it shut.
Today it was twenty-two breaths. Twenty-two breaths before the cold breached the suit's system and it was too painful to keep breathing. Yesterday was twenty—a slight improvement.
I flicked the power back on. The internal air re-heated to tolerable levels while I held my breath. Anarii had been right, of course—just about one minute each time I tested it. The siren shut down soon after, sulking away.
She'll have noticed my suit flatlining for a moment. All I needed to do now was wait until she came to check up on me.
"All scavengers, half-hour until expedition departure. Wrap it up, people,
we're on a clock!" a voice crackled in over the wide-area comms. That was a little earlier than I'd expected. It might not be enough time for my plan to get done.
Around me the white wastes stretched around, a flat surface broken up by the ruins stretching a mile around us. They say it was once supposed to be an ocean, maybe a few thousand years ago.
Bundled-up figures, half covered in ice, trawled around, wrapping up their last tasks before returning to the expedition rest stop. One of them was rapidly approaching me.
The only identifying mark was the blood-red family sigil on her

clothing's shoulders. The same one I had. My dear elder sister, ever vigilant that her younger brother wasn't up to anything stupid. Again.
Black reflecting goggles obscured her face, but if I could see Kidra's eyes through all that gear, I'd imagine they would be mildly pissed with me as usual. "You need to cut this out," she said. "Each time I see your vitals drop like that… what happens if it's real, and that's the day I don't come to check?"
I waved away her question. "Eh, I'd say I got what was coming to me and ask how much to put that on my tombstone. But... since you happened to be here, lend me a hand real quick?"
She groaned and climbed up the rubble to reach me. Near my feet,
recently cleared of snow and rubble, was an intact metal trapdoor. The only problem was the oversized piece of wall that had crumbled down on top.
Kidra understood the conundrum instantly. Trapdoors and scavengers were a marriage made in heaven. I wanted to get in, and the wall was being a dick about it.
"Three guesses about what I need your help for," I told her, waving at the obstructing rubble. "And the first two don't count."
"Fine," Kidra hissed, drawing out her occult knife. "I'll cut your little rock issue out of the way, but no more nonsense like this. At least for the week, please."
"I promise we'll discuss it."
She gave her answer as a raised gesture on her free hand. This one signified a... graciously accepted defeat, if my hand sign language was still current.
Kidra inspected the intact wall up close, planning out how she'd start the cuts. With a good starting point picked out, the edge of her expensive knife lit up in a beautiful blue glow. Then she sliced into the rock, the blade scything through the material with ease. I had a theory that it wasn't actually magic,
but occult stuff felt… different from tech. As far as we could tell that dagger was just a slab of metal with electricity going through it. How it could cut things was anyone's guess.
Chunks of concrete fell to the side, which I diligently grabbed and tossed away. It was slow work, since she cut chunks small enough for me to clean up, but we made steady progress.
"Some days I wonder if I should just sell the blade," Kidra said. "That way you'll stop pestering me each time like this."

"Come now, dear sister. You secretly love any chance to use it."
"Ratcrap." Kidra viciously cut out a much larger stone. Once done, she turned and waved her knife in my direction. "You simply live to annoy me."
"I have absolutely no clue where you got that idea."
"That's rather bold coming from someone within stabbing range." That knife waggled ever closer.
"See? You do love any chance to use it."
Kidra sighed, giving up. "Shouldn't you be gathering frostbloom right now? Why are you prowling around for scrap? You'll get yelled at when Father finds out."
I struggled, lifting up the enormous chunk she'd cut a moment ago. "You know why."
When I was thirteen, I got my hands on a book from the third era. It described the start of a vast and powerful invention—a network that linked everyone together. They called it the internet. It was all gone now, of course.
But the way I saw it, if humanity had done it once, we could do it again.
"Don't you think it's time to give up?" Kidra asked.
"Nope," I said, finally done with the chunk. "Time is just a tiny price to pay for the potential payoff. And I've only been able to look within a few hundred miles of the habitat. This time, we're going way farther. Anything could be out there."
"What are you searching for now? Didn't you tell me you found high insulation cables in the clan printing library?"
"That idea didn't age too well," I confessed sheepishly. I thought I'd been so clever with that solution. Just put down a few hundred miles of printed wires. That'll do the trick, I thought. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?
Kidra caught on. "It's the pirates and slavers roaming around who are the problem, isn't it?"
"Bingo. Anarii told me it had already been tried out before. Someone or another would eventually cut the cables because assholes are part of the human condition."
My journal had plenty of directions scribbled out besides the wire idea,
but each ended up infeasible. The best direction was long-range wireless signals, but no one knew enough about antennas to increase their range. Our best schematics had a maximum range of a few miles.
Maybe if we worked all together for once and shared knowledge instead

of guarding it jealously, we could escape this rat trap of a life. The internet could jump-start that process. Human greed would do the rest, as those who did share with one another rose past those who hadn't.
Kidra pointed at my basket again. "This is all very interesting," she lied,
"and I can't help but notice your basket hasn't increased in size yet. Why exactly are you trying to open a trapdoor? I suspect that greed of yours is whispering pretty things in your ear again."
"Do you ever wonder who lived here?" I masterfully shifted the topic.
Kidra played ball with my deflection, examining the few visible ruins in between her work with the wall. This entire site was one huge cemetery,
filled with ruined structures as headstones.
Thousands had lived here, once.
"For these people, they likely lived well. Until someone decided they shouldn't." Kidra shrugged, pointing at specific parts of the rubble. "Do you see how the concrete's been pulverized in sections? Explosions. As you would put it, the 'human condition' made a visit here."
Hadn't even considered how they'd died. Just another reason I wasn't supposed to be a soldier. I couldn't even properly think like one.
I set the last chunk of sliced-off wall down, wiping the frost from it, a deep-blue color timidly appearing under. "Look at that," I pointed out, "they even colored it. Can you imagine that? Painting an entire random wall?"
It was a ridiculous question in the first place. Who would want to waste valuable paint on a wall of all things? My sister didn't reply, probably waiting for me to answer.
The math was simple for this problem. A quick estimation of the original dimensions, multiplied by how much paint was needed for one square foot,
and I had my answer in seconds. "I'd predict you'd need around four hundred and eighty vials of paint for just this one section."
"That can't be correct," she said, trying to count something on her hands.
"That should be more paint than… two months of trading? If my mathematics is correct."
I laughed, proud that she'd remembered some of my lessons. "You could always come down to the hangars and get a calculator from the local engineers. I'm sure they'd give you one if you asked nicely with your rifle."
She shook her head, not as interested in engineering as I was. "I can't split my focus. My duty as a knight Retainer is more important to upkeep. "
"Peh." I shrugged. "I've been ignoring that my entire life, and nobody's

bitten my head off."
She stayed silent at that, staring out into the distance. Kidra always grew quiet when thoughts of family were on her mind. I could take a guess at who she'd immediately thought of, and I was thankful she hadn't brought him up.
Ahead, scavengers were slowly making their way through the rest of the ice and rubble. There weren't any standards; everyone wore whatever we could find or afford. Weaves of brown, gray, and the occasional splash of expensive color to separate each. Hodgepodge helmets of different types and shapes, with scraps of armor pilfered over time. If it kept you from dying, it was good enough.
Most undersiders think it's frostbite that kills up here. It is, after all, the first and most obvious thing to come to mind. But it's science that does the killing. After a certain temperature, water is practically all condensed into snow or ice. Air up here is far drier than the delicate membranes in your throat, nose, and lungs. A single breath is a death sentence. Even if you find shelter from the environment immediately after one breath, you'll still die on a sickbed days later.
"They must have been quite wealthy to get all this paint," Kidra said,
deflecting away from our previous topic. "This could have been a center of trade once, or maybe a—" the comms clicked, and a man's voice sounded from it—someone we both knew and feared.
"Keith, Kidra. We're on the move in ten minutes. Do not be the last ones back." It clicked shut right after. No reply expected, only obedience. Father was like that.
My sister spun on her heels, already taking steps back to camp.
"Hang on a moment!" I shouted behind her. "We're almost done with the wall. Just a few more cuts and the door's free!"
"He will not be happy," she muttered, pausing in her steps.
"When is he ever happy? He'll kick the bucket before anyone catches him smiling."
"I... I wish you didn't have a point." Kidra sighed. "But we should still make our way back to the convoy. I doubt there's anything worthwhile under that trapdoor."
"Relax, we're close enough. We'll make it on time."
"It's not the convoy I'm worried about." She glanced over at my mostly empty basket of frostbloom.
"I got unlucky," I lied.

"Are you trying to sell me a box of snow? You know you are the one in deep… problems, right?" Kidra said. "Why am I the one stressing out about it? He's going to strangle you if you come back with only... this." She pointed at the basket.
She was right about that; it worried me. Far more than I wanted her to know. If this dig didn't pan out, I really would be deep in the ratshit. I'd made a bet that there'd be something worthwhile underground I could leverage, but she didn't need to know the payoff chances I'd guessed at.
"No worries," I said instead of confessing my fears. "See, I've got a clever backup plan. There's a guy I know who can sell you premium fortune cookies..."
That finally made her laugh, the little inside joke between us digging down as deep as I'd hoped. It could have been my imagination, but I think some of the tension finally lifted from her shoulders. Only one of us should be worried about my problems, and I intended for that to be me.
Maybe it was a little in bad taste to constantly make fun of that poor trader who'd tried so hard to sell us those fortune cookies. But it was for a good cause. He'd understand. And then ask to be paid for it somehow,
knowing him.
Kidra jogged the rest of the way back up the rubble, ready to dig out some basement secrets with me.
She thought this had been a trade hub. Filled up with fat cats living the good life. Selling fortune cookies to anyone gullible enough. But I wasn't as convinced.
They'd hadn't been rich at all, I thought instead. They wouldn't be here on the surface if they were.
My guess is that these poor souls had rediscovered rare files or even a fully working chemical printer to create materials like paint. They'd only lacked the common sense to hide that discovery. And so, inevitably, the human condition came to collect.
Maybe it missed a spot.

CHAPTER THREE

YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT IT CLOSED, DUMBASS

U

nlike me, Kidra had been doing as instructed and gathering her quota of frostbloom. And now she was stuffing some of her morning's work into my mostly empty basket.
"Appreciate the help, but you should keep it to yourself. At this point,
either the trapdoor has loot in it, or I'm already screwed," I said.
"I'd rather prepare for both outcomes." She transferred another handful of that weed into my basket. "I have enough for two."
They say life finds a way, but this weed, frostbloom, took that lesson and ran with it. No doubt cheated too, given the unnatural metallic tint covering the leaves. That didn't look organic. And to be fair, I genuinely doubt anything organic could possibly survive on the surface.
The trapdoor had a handle along with a few gears on the side, likely some sort of system to assist in opening it. I grabbed the handle and gave it an experimental tug before answering back. "He'll find out anyhow," I said.
"That helmet of his will scan the weeds."
"There's a chance he forgets. At least there's a possible backup plan.
Changing topics, how many breaths is it today?" my sister asked, deflecting the topic while I attempted to pry open the recently freed trapdoor.
"Twenty-two."
"There's an instrument called a thermometer to calculate this, brother. I can even buy one for you."
"Bah, it's just numbers on a gauge. Twelve breaths means something more... let's say 'visceral and real' than some emotionless number." This trapdoor was clearly not going to open up easily. I considered asking Kidra to slice open her way through, but that came with its own issues. I'd confirm

that the door was immovable first before resorting to that.
I tugged on the trapdoor handle more firmly this time. It still wouldn't give. I was going to have to savagely pull with both my legs and arms here.
Kidra came to my side, grabbing another part of the handle. "Where do you come up with these ideas?"
"This time," I said in between breaths, "I can't take all the credit. I got it from Teed. He likes to convert Celsius into theoretical seconds of exposure needed before frostbite. When he says 'today is ten seconds,' you get a much better sense of how cold it is."
With a metal screech, the trapdoor finally gave in to our demands. It revealed a concrete staircase going down. Kidra and I stared down into the pitch darkness below.
"My dear sister, I couldn't have done this without you. I'll allow you to go down into the spooky dark basement first."
Kidra scoffed, patting the rifle on her side. "As if that was ever in question. Remind me again who has the rifle and who has a pistol that's cheaper than snow?"
That would be her, yes. The bargain-price pistol would be mine.
Triggering our headlights, Kidra drew the rifle in place and descended the steps, the lights piercing into the gloom. I followed behind, my pistol out and ready.
The stairs led down to a metal blast door. Fortunately for us, no one locked it on the way out. A bit of muscle and the old door swung open on old hinges. There wasn't a rush of air from a temperature difference, so it must have been here long enough that the environment equalized through the metal.
Behind the door was a single square room filled with old instruments.
Dust covered every panel and keyboard. Every screen was black and dead. A few old swivel chairs gave the safe house a truly cramped feeling.
Kidra stepped in slowly, rifle leveling through all the possible angles.
This was the dangerous part, where possible booby traps might have been laid out. Flakes flew up with each step we took into the room, lit up brightly in our headlights.
"Looks like we're first," I muttered out.
"I find it difficult to believe so many scavengers missed this. Was it hidden away?"
"Yep. Obscured from view. I did a bit of digging on a hunch before I

could even see the trapdoor. It was too odd to see the remnants of a hallway finish on a dead end."
"So instead of gathering frostbloom like assigned, you went searching blindly… on hunches?"
I jabbed a thumb at my chest. "In my defense, my hunch did pay off."
The old seats still looked sturdy enough, I slipped into one easily.
Terrible squeaking and creaking. A little awkward with the environmental suit's backpack, but good enough.
"What is your objective here?" Kidra asked next, headlight examining the different consoles while I got to work. "Even if you do find a power cell, he's still going to yell at you for not bringing back a harvest."
"He technically didn't specify I had to be the one who harvested all those weeds."
"... You planned to trade scrap you found for frostbloom. Anything to avoid work, huh?" Kidra said, connecting the dots.
"Yep, two for one deal. Even if the tech I need isn't here, I've still got my bases covered. You know what they say, if you're working hard, you're doing it wrong."
"They don't say that at all. You say that," Kidra shot back, and I tactfully ignored her.
From the consoles, screens, and wordings I could read, I was mostly positive this was some sort of security CNC center. Would make sense to have that kind of operation deeper underground. Hence why it was still completely intact—unlike everything else. Problem was that security centers wouldn't hold any of the information I'd been searching for. The only files I'd find here were security logs maybe. None of those highly coveted printing files. Sighing, I moved on to Plan B.
"Do you believe there's anything of use around?" Kidra asked, still scanning the room for dangers.
"They probably had a backup generator setup somewhere, if they were smart," I replied, scanning the room for loot. "With luck, we might really find a power cell to pawn off."
If there's circuitry, then there's wiring. And if there's wiring, there's a path to follow that leads to power. In moments, I'd found my target and traced it back to a panel.
Locked, of course.
"I could cut that for you," Kidra offered as I tested how firm the metal

was with a few tugs.
"I have a more civilized tool for the job, you barbarian," I said,
unhooking my crowbar from my backpack. A few seconds of aggressive negotiations later and the panel dropped on the dust-filled floor with a groan —bent and defeated.
Behind were breaker switches, lots of buttons, and one large lever with a red handle. This must have been the safety release toggle. That would open up the maintenance panel where we could get to work unhooking the expensive power cell. I'd then sell it for a week's worth of frostbloom and gloat about it.
I flipped the switch.
Nothing happened. "Uh, it didn't work."
"What was it supposed to do?" Kidra asked, rifle still up.
"It's supposed to connect mechanically to a maintenance panel, but I think the gears got disconnected. There wasn't any weight when I pulled it."
Rifle shots sounded out upstairs. The local comms exploded out in my speakers, mayhem starting upstairs. "Need backup right here, right now!
We're getting shot at!"
It pinged only a few feet away, according to the tracker.
"We're nearby and can assist. What's going on?" Kidra barked out,
switching frequency to the local area, all business now.
"We were tryin' to disassemble a broken turret," a woman's voice said.
"But the thing turned back on just now and started shooting! We need a relic knight over here now!"
Ratshit.
Kidra turned to me, switching over to private comms again. "Can you fix it? Now?" she practically hissed at me. I tried flipping the switch back up.
Nothing happened. Of course.
"Let me find out what's wrong under the hood," I replied and wiggled the paneling under the switch with some more crowbar action. More sounds of shooting drifted down the stairs, my stomach started making knots. I didn't have a single good memory related to gunfire while on the surface.
Finally, I broke the covering with a heavy yank. And cursed the moment I saw what was actually under the switch. This would not get fixed.
"What?" Kidra asked.
These people might have lacked common sense and got bombed to the ground for it, but they'd been surface dwellers like us. Of course they hadn't

gone out peacefully. "They rigged the panel."
Kidra swore.
Their plan made sense. Some raiders come by—likely the ones who bombed the place—and try to loot the booth. They'd go for the obvious power cell and trigger the turret unknowingly. Get shot to pieces the moment they exited.
Someone had been real salty about their home getting blown up. And no one made an easily fixable trap either.
My sister turned to the stairs the moment she realized I wouldn't get lucky shutting down anything from here. "Wait!" I shouted out after her. "We just need to wait for a relic knight! They can take care of everything."
"And how long will it take? They're all out past the perimeter! We are responsible for this, Keith. We have to step up."
"Well, technically you didn't flip that switch, I did. And second—wait,
wait come back!"
Kidra stormed up the stairs. Nothing I said could convince her otherwise.
She took her duty to the house and caste too seriously. Relic knights had the gear to tank turret fire. We, on the other hand… were very squishy.
She wasn't dumb; no heroic charge from her. Instead, she stalked carefully up the stairs toward the sounds of danger, covering every angle with her rifle as she advanced. I followed behind, complaining the whole way but pistol grudgingly at the ready.
The noise came from a block of concrete that could rotate on itself, twin gun barrels sticking out. Already turning around to aim at us.
My sister's rifle aggressively fired before the turret could fully rotate. The bullets pinged off the concrete block, dealing absolutely no damage. It, of course, returned fire the next moment. We dove to separate sides, hiding behind loose metal ruins. Bullets ringed against the wall, loud enough to sink past all my suit layers. Instruments on my arm flared, needles pointing at the increased power draw, trying to either recycle or vent the extra heat I was generating.
"The thing's too thick for rifle fire!" I shouted over to Kidra.
She knocked her head, exasperated. "Do I look blind to you?"
The turret turned, looking back for its original targets. I could see them huddled now, two scavengers cowering.
Hang on. "They said they were working on dismantling it, right?"
Kidra caught on exactly what I'd been thinking. "Perhaps they left some

panels exposed?"
"Not sure, but if they did, can you land the shots?" I asked.
"Buy me the time. I'll find the panels, and I won't miss."
I took a quick peek to see what I was working with and immediately dove back. How'd it spot me that fast? Little bits of death whizzed above, right where I'd been a few seconds ago. The suits could hold back the cold, but they weren't going to hold back machine gun fire.
"Getting you that window might be easier said than done. That thing will take my head off if I even peek at it!" I yelled back.
"Well, solve it somehow! You keep claiming you're a big boy, right?"
"Can I answer no?"
She didn't reply; instead, she threw me the worst possible curse she could think of with her free hand.
This thing was almost predicting when we'd stand up. Except that turrets didn't operate on intuition. The machine either knew or didn't. And the only way it could know was if it could see through walls.
There weren't a lot of ways a targeting system could do that. Occult magic didn't mix well with tech, so it wasn't some strange new occult...
weirdness giving it sight. Warlocks were all rich anyhow, so you weren't going to find any on the surface.
X-ray? No, too short range and needed a lead backdrop. Infrared camera?
Yeah, that was cheap and could do the trick. I could fool that.
A bit of fiddling on my arm instruments and I vented all the spare heat. A moment later, bullets from the confused turret started firing wildly at the exhausted waste air.
Kidra's rifle barked out before I could even call for the shot. She got three rounds before the turret turned to deal with her.
"Scrapshit! I hit those panels directly! Do we have a Plan B?" Kidra said.
Well, if it had survived the bombings and decades of neglect, I suppose a few measly bullets weren't going to break it now.
"Try again?" Not my greatest idea ever, but what else could we do?
"Fine. Give me another distraction."
I could fire blindly. No need to land my shots, just spook the turret. Kidra would do the rest.
"Take your shots on my mark… and… mark!" I whipped the pistol over my cover.
The stupid thing shot the gun out of my hands right away.

Couldn't tell if it was by accident or good targeting, but my pistol was sinking like a rock into the snow somewhere. Now I was both trapped behind this wall and also disarmed. Worse, the evo-suit's alarm started up, which meant the bullet spray had nicked my hand and wrist, opening it up to the environment.
I cursed wildly, my free hand turning on the built-in heater to emergency levels as quickly as I could hit the buttons. I wasn't sure if bullets had hit my hand or not, but the air would absolutely leave me missing fingers if I didn't act fast. Training and experience moved my free hand across the buttons and knobs needed, focusing the airflow on my arm. Heated air battled against the encroaching chill, rapidly losing the fight.
That was expected. It would do as a buffer between the extreme temperature and my exposed skin for now. Had a few seconds until the heater systems failed from the strain.
Deeper cuts could be sutured later in the comfort of an evo-tent with clean needles and thread, I'd done it before on myself plenty of times already for smaller cuts. Frostbite's only medical resolution was far more permanent.
"Did you get it?" I yelled out, clicking the latches open on the field repair kit.
"Your distraction didn't last even a second! What do you think?"
"I think that sounds like a 'No,'" I muttered, lifting my mangled hand to check what I was up against.
The arm was hit all right, lots of threads ripped apart. Pain was already starting to punch through the adrenaline in my system. The extreme environment here had the same effect on skin as a red-hot pipe pressed into contact.
I gritted my teeth against the feeling of burning needles stabbing down,
took aim with the repair gun, and shot until the sealant sank into all the frayed bits. The arm started to inflate as heated air cycled through with no place to exit. Good, that meant the seal took. I flicked the emergency heater off, its work done.
The pain didn't go anywhere, but I'd manage. For now, I had to focus on the turret before it hit me again. The cover I was behind wasn't going to hold up forever.
"Stay out of the way," a somber voice ordered over the comms. "I'll deal with this."
The cavalry had arrived. And out of all the relic knights who could come

to the rescue, it had to be him.

CHAPTER FOUR

FATHER

A

burst of shots assaulted the concrete turret. Again, the turret's thick concrete puffed out in tiny dust chunks but no true damage. It turned to open fire on the new threat rapidly approaching it.
The man made his way on a direct intercept course to the turret, dropping the rifle now that he'd drawn its attention. His movements were precise,
measured, and didn't betray a hint of the raw power granted by the plate. A relic knight could move, all because of that armor. Metal armor, covered in ice and frost, complete with a faceless helmet. A blood-red family sigil, the only decoration the armor sported. The family sigil of House Winterscar.
A full suit of metal was stupidity in most cases on the surface. But an ancient suit of power that laughed in the face of conventional physics… well,
that was an exception. And Father's history towered above other knights as the clan's greatest warrior. This turret stood no chance.
It still tried anyhow, opening fire on him, full auto. He ignored the attack,
the sprint increasing, arms pumping methodically in perfect sync. Bullets riddled the armor, lighting it up with hundreds of sparks.
At the last second, he threw himself into a skid, sliding the last few feet under the turret. Then he seized the exposed weapon barrels with his gauntlets.
Everyone coveted relic armor for a reason. For those venerable armors,
ripping a turret in two was well within their ability.
Leveraging legs, back, and arms all together, Father lifted. Metal groaned,
cracks spread across the concrete block, and even the turret's rifle tips started to bend. When a wide enough fracture formed at the base, he let go of the barrels and reached into it. With a good grip on both sides, he pulled the

fissure apart.
The gun turret was pried open like an oyster, inch by inch. More metal screamed inside, being slowly ripped apart from the sheer force. Halfway through, it stopped firing—probably some critical component bent too far out of shape.
With one final snap of metal, the top part gave in, falling down on the snow with a heavy thud. Everything went silent.
The man didn't bother checking his defeated foe. The armor's helmet sensors would have already told him all he needed to know. Instead, he turned and went off to look after the hiding scavengers.
That gave me some time to go fish out my pistol from the snow and hopefully sneak away.
Except the snow was too deep, and I couldn't tell where the gun had flown off to. Discussion floated over the comms—Father checking in on the wounded, getting the story from their side. And still I couldn't find the blasted pistol.
By the time I found where it had sunk, Father was already stalking back.
Straight toward us.
He joined comms and immediately started right into me. "The next time you get disarmed, I'll have your hide for it. How many years do I need to spoon-feed you the basics, boy?"
"Father," Kidra said, walking up to him, "thank you for assisting us with this."
Cordial as always, she was. Suppose that was the only way to handle him these days.
He shook his head. "Those two scavengers will pay for their greed. They weren't supposed to be looking for scrap on a harvesting mission."
No guessing what would happen if Father got wind that those two scavengers weren't the only ones looking for scrap instead of frostbloom. My hand was already a ball of pain as it was. A bruised rib added to the count wasn't going to be a great plan.
I glanced nervously at Kidra, already feeling panic rising in me. She didn't match my gaze. Instead, she took a deep breath. "It wasn't their fault. I am the one who caused the issue. We were exploring an old bunker, and I triggered a trap."
Parts of me were both relieved and uneasy at the same time. She hadn't mentioned what I'd been up to, but her sense of duty hadn't let her outright

omit it either. I suppose she thought the only way forward was to take the fall for me outright.
Made sense. Father would only give her a slap on the wrist, since she rarely failed in anything.
Me, on the other hand, I'd be lucky to keep that wrist. I've never seen him hit her once out of anger yet. How many favors did I even owe her at this point? Kidra was a gods-damned saint.
He turned to her, slowly. "You disobeyed the mission parameters and went scavenging?" Then his head snapped in my direction, suspicious. "Was Keith with you? Was it his idea?"
"He was. And I made my own choices."
Father grunted. "I'm disappointed that you of all people hunted for scrap instead of carrying out your mission. I expected better from you." He turned to me next, clearly fishing for something. "And you." Even with the faceplate hiding every feature, it wasn't hard to guess how his glare looked.
"Why, pray tell, did you miss spotting the trap?"
Ah. Of course he'd throw that at me. Kidra had focused on weapons and combat, while I'd opted for a jack-of-all roles training. Against his advice, of course. Which meant I was the one most experienced in finding this sort of thing.
But I hadn't been careless. This had been a particularly well-prepared trap. Even in hindsight, there wasn't anything I could have done better.
"They'd rigged it specifically so that it wouldn't be notic—"
"Of course they did, fool. It's a trap. Do you think they're targeting animals out here?"
Stay calm. This will pass.
Father stalked up closer to me, looming. "You swore to me up and down that your skills learned from those low-caste engineers put you above the typical scavenger. I've yet to see a single shred of proof from you. Today just marks another failure, boy."
I stared back, my heart beating fast with anger and indignation. But that wouldn't do me any good.
Stay calm. The anger smoldered in my heart as I watched. Deep breaths.
Don't explode.
He turned to watch us both. "You'll both report to those scavengers directly, explain the situation, and offer remediation."
"Understood, I will do that." Kidra nodded.

"Yes, Father." I followed.
The man turned to me next, grabbing my basket of weeds.
"Explain this." He held the half-empty basket, the accusation implicit.
"I... picked the wrong direction to scavenge. And half a basket is acceptable." It wasn't a bad haul per se… just not a good haul either. Also,
most of it was my sister's. Which he'd find out pretty soon.
"And yet you still chose to explore some bunker for scrap instead of harvesting. Dereliction of duty. Once again." He growled back, then turned to check over Kidra's work.
The odds that two scavengers would return with exactly the same haul were slim to none. Of course, it was just like my sister to try making both baskets completely even. Not that it would have made any difference to hide that. I could see his helmet shift from basket to basket, the relic armor's sensors telling him the full story as expected.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Those ancient armors were utterly priceless, handed down from generation to generation. Entire Houses were founded on owning even a single one. And this was what he was using it for:
to scan shrubbery in a basket just to get another dig at me. Of course, if I did laugh, it wouldn't end with me laughing. The man had ripped a concrete turret in half just a minute ago.
Father tossed my basket down at my feet, the frostbloom intentionally scattered all over the snow. With deep breaths, I silently got to my knees to gather up the herbs. Stay calm. Don't open your trap and make this worse. The anger roiled inside, but I held it at bay, letting it sulk back down deep.
"You can't keep shouldering his faults each time," he said, glancing back at my sister. "He needs to learn. Only the true and full consequences of his own actions can teach him."
Kidra said nothing, hands tightening on the basket. Then she took a step forward, shielding me behind her. "He is a scholar at heart, Father. Training him to be a Retainer is not the best use of his talents for the clan."
"What talents? There are no scholars on the surface." The armored man pointed an accusing finger at me. "You live as a warrior or you die as a slave.
There's no middle ground for a knight Retainer. No one will respect him if he stays in the bunker scribbling numbers in the dirt! That isn't his duty."
"That's rather rich coming from you when you spent years wallowing in that dir—" she shot back but stopped when I got up and put a hand on her

shoulder.
"It's fine, Kidra," I told her. "It doesn't matter." And then the rage surged through me, burning with hatred, leaping free from my tongue before my teeth could trap them shut. "Guess I'll just die like a good little slave the next time a raid comes."
Ahh... ratshit.
Father turned his head slowly at that, fixing his gaze on me. His hands clenched and unclenched rapidly at his sides, which was never a good sign.
I'd hit a nerve and then dug a knife into it. I could see him taking his own deep breaths, fighting his own war. And just like me, I knew he'd lose.
"Look," I said, taking a few steps backward and raising my hands,
placating. Already reacting to what was going to happen. "The expedition is more import—" too late and too little.
He lunged for me, hands empowered by armor moving at speeds beyond reaction. It closed around the cuff of my neck, then yanked me off my feet and slammed me down through the snow. Not hard enough to damage my environmental suit, but enough that I could feel the ache. The recently exposed hand flared up like a sun.
I braced for the follow-up slap by reflex, my unhurt hand flinching up to protect my head, ready to see stars. That hit never came, though his hand was hovering at the ready, shaking. The rage boiled through that metal armor,
directed at me. I'd run my mouth again and twisted the knife that shouldn't ever be touched.
"You will not disparage the dead of this House. Too many have died."
His voice was as cold as the ice around us. "Return with three baskets on the next foraging site, or I'll never allow you on a main expedition again."
"Three baskets? That's imp—"
"I wasn't asking!" he screamed, shoving me back down into the snow.
I bit down whatever argument was bubbling under the surface. It was hard, but somehow, I swallowed any anger or righteous indignation. Those emotions wouldn't serve me at all right now. There was only accepting and moving on. "Yes, Father. I understand."
Father scoffed in disgust. "You should know better than to say those things to me, boy."
Neither my sister nor my father said anything else as we entered camp.
Departure was in less than fifteen minutes, and that was the only reason I hadn't been sent back to go gather the insane amount of baskets Father

demanded.
This site had cost me. I'd gotten too carried away thinking I'd just find the tech I needed at every site I visited. In retrospect, I should have stuck to my job in yanking out weeds for provisions; this place's chance had been way too tiny. Build up favors, friends, and more cards.
And then play them all when a site seemed likely to contain the tech I needed for my dream.

CHAPTER FIVE

A KNIFE TO A DREAM

T

he ships floated in the distance, a lazy meter off the ground, attended by the mass of scavengers scurrying around the hulls, tightening goods and polishing off ice forming on the bows and engine intakes. The old airspeeders were massive, with racks of seats on the inside and a rough, bulky superstructure. Dotted around the hull were welded metal shelves and hand grips. Evidence of repairs scarred the plates, each with its own storied history of mismatched parts.
These were old. Older than the clan I'd heard some people claim. It was amazing they still worked—a real tribute to the endurance of lost tech, if the right printing files were available to replace and repair parts.
Other relic knights patrolled the camp, a wide berth given to each. They all displayed their own rich, visual history of trinkets, clothing, and war keepsakes. Only the greatest warriors in each House wore these relics. Or the most politically devious schemers. My House had been the poster child on that front, once.
And all these clan heroes inclined nods of deference to our group of three walking in. For a moment, I could pretend they paid that gesture to me and not to the armored legend walking behind.
One day, I would prove that engineering and science could do more for the clan than any relic knight. And once I did that… maybe things would change for the "scholar" caste Father so frequently dismissed.
I would have to trade and call in all my favors to make those three baskets at the next site, no matter what. I couldn't allow access to main expeditions to slip by. I knew the tech was out there, far beyond the habitat. Humanity had once been like gods—and we could do it again with enough knowledge. It

would all start with the internet.
Most of the camp had packed up and the last-minute preparations were being completed. The air was full of electric energy. Large habitat tents were dismantled, the final residents taking a few last bites of rations in relative warmth before suiting up for the long ride. Smaller one-man speeders zipped around, acting as scouts and escorts. They raced out into the distance with loud whoops, going far ahead of the expedition. Departure must be imminent if the scouts were given leave to deploy. Pretty soon we'd be gone from here,
and the only thing left behind would be a mess of footprints on the cracked ice.
I dumped the frostbloom clumps into the storage space of the nearest airspeeder. While we didn't have any assigned ships, I always aimed to get on one ship in particular. I was good friends with the… let's say eccentric pilot. Very few Reachers were allowed on expeditions, so only the best among them got the honor. And the best usually came with quirks.
Plus, this ship's medical bay didn't show a lot of people using it right now. I'd get a chance to look over my hand.
Climbing aboard, I made my way past the small gathering of scavengers organizing who sat where. Most were already on their way to the sides of the hull, climbing over thick bars. I took the small flight of stairs instead, deeper into the airship, toggling the airlock.
Only one other scavenger joined in with me, walking with a limp. We gave each other polite nods, waiting to see if anyone else in the airspeeder was coming with. No one else behind made any motion, so my fellow hit the door seal button and began the air cycle.
Heated air flooded the small compartment until the temperature matched the medical bay.
"Ice broke under my steps, hitting a loose bar on the way down. Scrapshit luck," my fellow said while we waited. "Think I probably cut half my leg there. You?"
"Got shot by a turret in the hand." I lifted the hand and waggled my fingers. "Can still move the digits, so that's a good sign."
"Turret, eh? Don't know if you got lucky to survive, or unlucky to run into it in the first place."
"Lucky to survive in this case," I said. "I'm the one who turned it on in the first place."
He barked out a laugh. "Betrayed by your own hand, eh?"

I lifted the ruined glove up, "Guess it paid the price upfront."
He gave me a good-natured pat, "Experience is a brutal teacher, but can't argue she's not the best for the job. Knock on metal you won't need to order the same lesson twice."
The door beeped, green light flickering on. A beat later it started to slide open, revealing the tiny section. This frigate had its own dedicated medbay,
unlike smaller airspeeders where the cockpit would have pulled double duty.
That said, it was still an old airspeeder, so the medical staff here came down to a single man in a cramped room. Part of the reason only wounded were allowed to come into this room, to make sure the medical staff had the most room to work with.
My fellow and I started taking off our masks and goggles, putting them to the side and taking a refreshing breath. The medic took one look at us and pointed a hand to my fellow scavenger. "On the bed," he said, pulling a tray out with string and needles. Must have noticed the limp he had.
As for me, I took a seat on a chair and brought out another medical tray.
It had everything I'd need to clean and fix up most issues. My glove had ended up more like a cast than a glove at this point with the amount of sealant I'd had to apply. I slipped off my unharmed glove using my teeth and then properly took off the mangled one. Time to find out if I had bullet wounds to worry about or just frostbite.
There were several large red sections on the hand and arm where the cold had seeped in for the first few seconds. Just frostnip damage—I'd been quick enough to keep everything from spiraling out. As for the bullet, I'd gotten lucky there too; just one long red line on my forearm muscles where a bullet must have grazed through. It began to bleed the moment I ripped off the bits of sealant that had seeped through the glove and closed it up.
Environmental suits all had internal plating and could resist some minor bullet fire, but only the critical parts of the body. Weight and mobility was a balancing act up here.
My fellow on the bed had far worse to deal with, a nasty laceration that ran across his hamstring. Most of it was covered up by sealant. The medic looked back my way, an eyebrow up, expecting my diagnosis.
"Just minor sutures for me, my arm," I said, cleaning it off with gauze.
He gave a nod, absentmindedly preparing the solution that would dissolve the sealant clinging to his patient's leg. Way too much there to just rip off by hand. "Do you want to handle it yourself, or wait for me? No need for pride,

kiddo. Sutures with one hand and teeth are going to slow you down."
Knowing basic medical procedures and how to apply them to oneself was engrained enough to be a rite of passage; everyone had at least one scar they'd patched up themselves, or one patch of their suit they'd repaired out on the field. It was actually more of a problem because younger scavangers would go looking for the excuse to come back with a story on their body.
Older scavangers, like my fellow on the bed there, they'd rather have an expert deal with it if it wasn't critical.
"I'll clean it off and wait," I said, disinfecting the area and applying a quick biofilm to keep it shut until the medic could do a more permanent job with sutures.
It didn't take the medic too long before he started work on me next.
Outside the airlock, Kidra was waiting for me. I waved a new glove at her, moving the digits.
By now, most of the expedition had already boarded their speeders, and this one was no exception. The room out here was packed with chatter.
We made our way to the seating section in a single file line, weaving through the mess of people to where the last seats might be unoccupied. Two scrappers saw us on approach and nudged each other. They were clearly muttering to one another, too far away for us to make out under their masks.
Once we came close enough, they connected over on the local comms.
"Ah, young master," the left one said, "we would be honored to give our seats over."
"Thanks, but it's fine. We're about to go take a seat outside," I said.
They looked at one another. "We insist," the one on the right said,
standing up.
"You really don't have to. I'll be just fine sitting outside with everyone else."
"No, no! You are the children of the Winterscar prime himself," the remaining one huffed out. "It wouldn't do for lesser branch members like us to take the good seats and have you sitting with the low-tier Retainers outside. We'd rather not stir up trouble."
The rightmost man was already climbing his way out onto the hull,
reaching for the metal shelving. "Ice it all, we're not so miserable as to take pity from House Winterscar."
"We thank you for your generosity," my sister interjected, giving a nod of respect and taking the freed-up seats. She'd stopped trying to argue a long

time ago. The two scrappers made their way outside, taking new seats on the metal shelvings. Hand grips and climbing straps would be the best they got to hold themselves in place.
"It's pointless," Father said, passing from behind us, going deeper into the airship. The doors shut behind him, but his voice remained on the comms channel. "They know their rank. It would bring shame to their house to overstep it. Stop running from the duty that comes with it."
I sighed and sat down, strapping myself in. "I just don't feel like I deserve this or anything."
"You don't. But someday you might. Begin with remediation to the ones your choices put in danger first."
Ah. Right. Out here, conflicts were handled privately between parties, or at worse brought up to the house leadership. The last thing anyone wanted was to bring the issue outside the clan houses into public ruling. Winterscar was in an... odd position when it came to that. But it wouldn't sit right with me to abuse my authority and rank just to save a bit of scrap. Death was pretty common for anyone venturing outside the safety of the clan. This sort of remediation was done often enough. I'd been on the other end of a few myself, so I knew what to expect.
I turned to Kidra, and we both scoured through the comms logs over the next few minutes, finding the names we needed to connect with. More and more scavengers climbed aboard, and soon the local comms channels were filled with chatter. But we'd finally traced the signal despite the distractions.
Looks like our unlucky pair had climbed on another airship. A quick connection request later and it was time to get to work.
"Ah!" a woman's voice popped from my headset speakers, "I reckon you're the two who tried helpin' us with the turret earlier? Surprised to see Winterscars. You two the real deal or spoofing the logs as some kind of hooligan joke?"
"No, ma'am, we are from House Winterscar," Kidra said.
"How's the damage?" I asked, moving the topic to remediations.
"Grumpy," a man's voice answered through the comms. "Ratshit contraption forced me to take a bad jump. Ankle's swollen up. Now I'll have to sit out for a few days while buggers get rich around me. 'Suppose that's what I deserve for gettin' loot fever on the job. The devil convinced me it'd be a good idea at the time."
I gulped. "So, about that…"

"We are the ones who are most likely responsible for the turret, sir,"
Kidra said, joining in and explaining the whole thing. Nothing was left out,
and since Father wasn't in the comms with us, that meant she could safely include who the real culprit was.
There was a dark chuckle on the comms. "So... I reckon this be a call for remediation's, eh, Winterscar?" I had a feeling this man was grinning wide wherever he was and rubbing his gloves together.
"Roach! Don't you dare bully the poor kids!" the woman said, followed by some rustling that sounded like slapping. "You'a done your share of ratshit when you were their age! And they're Winterscars for Tsuya's sake.
Have some compassion."
"Winterscars or not, I still gots limp in me boot, woman! And compassion don't buy food last I checked." He sighed, "But… ah suppose we all know this happens comin' out here." He chuckled darkly.
"Unlucky? You'a be the one lootin' a turret while on gathering orders!
Get greedy dealin' with the devil like that, don't be surprised when it don't work out for you," the woman said. "And they did try to help, dear. That should count for something."
"Sacrifice be written right in the vows already! They ain't no Reachers to be coddled. They're like us, no extra points for doin' the bare minimum! No,
wait, don't sla—" There was some more scuffling over the comms.
His voice came back momentarily. "All right, fine, you blasted snow witch! You Winterscar pups, bring back a cell, and I'll call the remediation done and over with."
"A power cell? Hey now, you got an ankle sprained, not maimed. I came out of it worse." Power cells were hard to come by, but they weren't an impossible goal either. A whole power cell for a wound was door-side robbery. This was the sort of price point the next of kin would be asking.
"Hah! Ye trying to haggle?" He laughed. "Gutsy of ye. Well, come and git some then, let's see what ye got!"

Turns out I don't got. He talked me around in circles and almost haggled me up.
In the end, we came to the conclusion that I wasn't responsible in terms

of foresight and skills, as he agreed no one could have caught that trap—but that I was responsible because I'd chosen to delve into that hole in the first place. The power cell he wanted wasn't for pulling the lever, it was payment for my original choice to explore when I'd been ordered not to. And that was logic that I had no valid arguments against, so I had to call it quits.
"See ye on the other side, little pup. With some loot in yer hands, o'
course."
I begrudgingly agreed, and the deal was set just in time to see Ankah Shadowsong climb aboard. Oh great. As if this day could get any worse.
She came to a stop near the center, then gazed around the chamber,
deciding which scavenger to yank off. As usual with the Shadowsong heir,
her two henchmen, Calem and Locke, followed behind like the good little minions they were.
"You"—she pointed at some poor random bloke—"out of that seat. And the two bugs next to him, begone."
I tagged into local comms, watching them quickly unstrap themselves and make their way outside. One of them got too close to Ankah on the way out.
She inclined her head, not bothering to verbalize her orders. The two men behind her seized the approaching scavenger and practically threw him offboard. Ankah strutted over and sat on the vacant seats, her two henchmen following behind.
It was only a matter of time until Ankah spotted my sister and the fireworks began. "Why, Kidra, what a surprise. If I'd known there'd be rats like you on this airship, I'd have avoided it like the plague."
The rest of the occupants inside remained quiet. No one outranked her here. Only Kidra and I were technically at the same caste tier, with our father being the Winterscar prime. Which meant no one was going to jump into this argument. So I stepped up to the plate. "I don't see anything stopping you from getting back out, princess."
"Ridiculous. I've already settled in. It's insects like you that should know better."
I whistled. "Well, well, who shoved ice up your ass this morning?"
The two minions bristled at that, Calem's voice patching through first.
"You don't have the right to address the lady, even less with the trash that comes out of your mouth."
"Bold coming from you, buddy. Didn't your boss pick you out of some garbage pile?"

Ankah raised her hand before he could retort, shutting him up. "Calem,
the best insults are sharpened with truth. Ignore dull barbs from an abandoned mutt like him. After all, nobody civilized was left alive to educate him."
"Do you need me to teach your minion how to read and write next?"
Calem unhooked himself from his seat, standing up. "If you're looking for a beatdown, Winterscar, I'm more than happy to deliver. Or are you going to hide behind your sister again, you coward?"
Kidra groaned, now getting pulled into the fight. "My brother apologizes for antagonizing you three. Please sit back down."
"I don't apolog—" I started, but Kidra's arm yanked me to the side of the seat.
"My dear brother, you owe me. I'd like some peace and quiet, and you're going to make that happen. Are we clear?"
I turned to glare at the standing minion. "I… apologize for my rude behavior."
The lackey stayed standing, glaring back at me under his goggles. There was some irony here, how neither of us wanted to surrender but neither of us wanted to piss off our respective bosses. Ankah finally waved him away,
ordering him back into his seat with a flick of her head. "Impressive, Kidra.
You have him on a leash now. Good for you."
"Must you continue with this childish behavior?" Kidra said. "We haven't been teenagers for a long time now."
"Alas, time doesn't completely remove all... scars. Only most of them.
Such a pity."
"You only further prove my point." Kidra glanced up, an exasperated breath coming out over the comms. "What do you really want? We both know you didn't come here by chance."
Ankah examined her glove, rotating it in the light, ignoring Kidra. Bits of gold jewelry glinted as the light hit her bracers. "I want my knife," she eventually said, primly. Almost as if it were an afterthought.
"Your knife? Curious, that's not quite how I remember it going."
"That knife should be mine by rights!" she snapped out, furious all of a sudden. "You should never have been allowed a spot in the first place!"
"I was allowed to compete as per tradition."
"Your House isn't even a real House anymore! You've been wiped off the face of the surface for years now!"
"Rules are rules. I suggest you learn to be content with second place. It'll

be quite useful in your life."
The lady went quiet, composing herself again. Scheming probably. "Fine.
No matter, I already planned for this." Well, that sounds ominous. She drew out a mess of papers from her backpack. "This cost quite a bit of my own personal resources to track and obtain. Perhaps you might be interested."
Ankah turned so the title was on top, making it visible to me. Specifically me. On the page: Department of Defense - ECAC Field Antenna Handbook - JUNE 1984.
Bitch.
"How did you know?" I asked, voice low.
"Finding something Kidra wants was a dead end. Nothing she cares for is difficult to acquire. You, however… my research points that you're full of desires far outside your ability to obtain." She tapped the stack of papers.
"Like this book."
Don't get excited. It might not even have what I need. For all I knew, it could just be about software instead of the mechanical know-how on longrange radio waves. But scrapshit, if it did happen to detail that… a massive web of comm buoys all over the wastes would solve issues. Have them daisy chain information around. Pirates and thugs wouldn't be able to find and destroy them all.
I was already at the limits of what engineers typically learned. Anywhere further into the third era was a fool's errand. It all got exponentially more complicated after simple circuits.
Records from back then showed a different picture than today. They had hundreds of people collaborating to advance the field, instant access to every bit of information in the entire world, guides that could distill a lifetime's worth of work into a single paper report, state-of-the-art tools, and entire nations worth of budget to work from.
And it still took them years to advance.
A combustion engine was easy enough to understand. But even old,
outdated computers simply couldn't be reverse engineered from nothing by one person, especially with the culture of the clan. Research was seen as a waste of time when those parts could be printed out and put to immediate use.
Too much effort for something that might be outdated the very next day if a scavenger happened to return with usable printing files.
Civilization had once been built on the shoulders of giants, and today there were no giants to stand on.

She must have read my journal entries to know about that. This was bait.
"If you think I'm going to ask my sister to trade her gods-damned occult knife for a book, you're out of your mind."
Ankah laughed, putting the collection of papers back into her storage. "Of course not. The value difference is ludicrous. No, I'm not offering a trade.
I'm offering a competition."
Kidra took a look at me and then panned over to Ankah. "What are the terms?"
"This is ratshit," I hissed, turning on my sister. "Risking your knife isn't worth it for a stack of glorified paper."
"The knife belongs to me, brother. I will choose to do with it as I please."
Ankah cut in, voice almost gleeful. "Since the book's value is far below an occult blade, I'll allow you to select the challenge, so long as it's fair.
Should you win, I'll give you the book. Should I win, you'll give me my knife."
My sister stayed silent for a moment, mulling it over. "I accept. When we arrive at the next scrap site, whoever returns with the most power cells wins.
You will have to leave behind one of your teammates, however, as there are only two of us and three of you." She pointed at the minions, who seemed to almost bristle at the idea of getting separated. "Additionally, I'll increase the stakes. Whoever loses must hand over all gathered power cells to the winner as well. I don't intend to win only a book."
That was still a gamble, but we had a heavy advantage. Most scavenging teams were large and optimized for working at such a scale. Ankah would find herself with only one teammate to rely on—a position she'd never been in before. Kidra and I, on the other hand, had spent years learning how to maximize the efficiency of two people.
"So be it, I accept. Locke, you will stay behind at the convoy for this."
She turned her sights on us. "I look forward to victory."
I stared at my sister, horrified, and switched over to private comms.
"What have you done? There's no way that book is worth taking a gamble on your knife."
"The occult blade is only a tool in the end. It's expensive, yes. But it can be replaced or bought eventually. A dream is worth more."
When I untangled just what she meant, it hit like a gut punch. "She-she's going to cheat," I said, sniffing and trying to keep composed against the well of emotions. I was only sentimental because it wasn't every day someone put

a gods-damned occult knife down on a bet for my crazy internet pipedream.
Just a small one took years of saving up. A knife like hers would take decades.
"She will certainly attempt to find any advantage she can; however, it will not cross outright sabotage. Consider her position." Kidra looked up from her rifle, staring down her rival. "Of all the options available for my knife, she deliberately chose a competition. It likely took her longer to obtain that book than to commission her own knife, and she certainly has the capital to outright purchase one."
"Lords, you political schemers are complicated."
Kidra nodded, showing a hand sign for smiling. "She's always been like this. Her pride is far more important than a knife, even an occult one. You don't know her as well as I do."
Ankah sat prim and properly on her seat, almost smug even. I could hear it in her voice. "I hope you've enjoyed that blade, my dear. In a few hours it will be mine, as it should have been from the start."
Kidra scoffed back. "Did you think I accepted this competition for charity? I fully intend to win."
The antique airspeeder rumbled under us, almost annoyed, like a particularly sharp stick had prodded it. The vibrations were making it through all my layers of printed fur.
"All crew, prep for takeoff. Keep your arms and legs close, and make sure you don't forget to hook yourself up. I'm lookin' at you, Degrato," the comms system announced in a deep voice.
I could hear the common channel blow up with laughter and one indignant voice objecting the whole way through.
"Complain all you want, kid, you should have paid more attention to who's next to your hook," the pilot replied with a good-natured chuckle,
silencing the comms noise. "The rest of the expedition is headin' out now,
guys and gals. Takeoff in…
three...
two...
one..."

CHAPTER SIX

THE DEATHLESS

T

he ship rocketed upward a few meters with a heavy groan. Gravity squeezed me down into my chair, but the seat's padding easily handled any discomfort until the acceleration passed. The scavengers that dotted the outside hull simply had to deal with the motion, tightening hands on their handholds.
Our airspeeder lazily glided into line behind the other behemoths, small turns and stops magnified by the scale of the ship, hovering above the ground only a few meters off.
The lead ship kicked off into gear with the rest of the convoy, including ours, following steadily behind. Snow and sleet billowed off the sides as the ships gathered speed, cutting through the barren land and harsh wind.
The next stop would be about seven hours from now. Kidra, as usual, was using this time to meditate on past combat or drills—as Father had trained us both to do over eight years of angry yelling. As for me, my eyes stayed set on the horizon, binoculars pressed as close to my goggles as physically possible.
As if I was going to miss a moment of this trip with my eyes closed.
A white sea of snow and ice covered the world. Maybe once every two hours or so, I'd catch glimpses of broken buildings far out in the distance.
Towers, derelicts, or even fortresses, all pressed out of their tombs over the years from the underground shifting around.
The deep timbre voice crackled out of my comm speakers again, this time into my private comms. He was just about a decade my senior, the current pilot of this airspeeder, and one of my few good friends. Teed. "Kid, how you holding up?"
"Got shot earlier." I grinned ear to ear, even if no one could see. "I

already owe someone a power cell, Ankah's causing problems for the knife again, Father wants me to gather an insane amount of frostbloom or I'm kicked from the expedition, and I think we officially crossed the farthest I've been from home today. All in all, a normal day for me."
"Sounds like you're settling into the wastes."
"There are so many people, Teed. I don't even know everyone's names!"
Not to mention, I'd never seen over three relic knights in an expedition before. And there were twenty tagging along as guards. Twenty! Main expeditions were a completely different beast than the tiny ones I'd been on up to now. The possible future sites we'd find farther out into the wastes and what could be found inside were making it hard to sleep each night.
"You'll get used to it, kid. Run enough expeditions, you see the same faces enough times to know 'em all. The roster count changes up, but all the players stay the same. None of 'em trouble, right? Other than a certain lady."
"The normal folks all think I'm Father's chosen right now, so they're keeping polite. Might change after they find out he hates my guts and it's really my sister who inherited all of… well, all that."
Whatever my father had that let him come out of unwinnable fights time and time again, Kidra had gotten it. For the first few years after he sobered up and began training us, I thought he'd stop hating me if I could be as good as my sister. Naive on my part. I realized the moment I opened the family ledger just how little skill would have changed anything. I could have been a blademaster on the level sung in stories, and he'd still have hated me to the core for what I represented.
"Your old man's not that bad. He wouldn't have brought you along with the big boys if he really hated you," Teed said.
"No," I said, chuckling. "He's got too much principle to ignore me like he should. Let's change the subject, this is a sore spot for me. Are we on track to make it under Urs?"
Of course we were. The convoy pilots were meticulous in their planning.
If they messed up and missed the re-fuel, it could mean a slow, freezing death for all of us—well, they'd reroute to another celestial flyby, so freezing to death might be a bit dramatic, but it was the first thing floating on my mind to talk about, and Father's reasons were a sore subject to me.
There was a noticeable moment of static before he replied, "I've been piloting out in these white wastes before you even learned how to sneak out of your House grounds. Been... ahh, 'diligently' checking the charts every

hour."
"I noticed a suspicious amount of time before you confirmed direction.
Just enough time to take a reading from an astrological chart. Hmm, very suspicious. Yes."
"Well... you ain't wrong," he said, chuckling to himself. "But I could find camp under one of the gods with my eyes closed. Don't need any of these charts. Much." I heard a knocking on metal over the speaker for good luck.
"Navigation is a lost art, kid, and I'm... let's say an artisan explorer."
"Getting too big for your britches there, old man."
He scoffed. "Younglings don't know their place anymore these days.
Talking about that, ever thought of sneakin' up here to the cockpit with me?
You'd make a much better Reacher than you would a Retainer. No offense."
"I wish I could. Though maybe not a pilot. I'm more of a tinker and make-things type of guy. Not sure I'd be good at plotting out astrological charts or keeping track of where the gods are orbiting. Rather leave that to the priests and pilots," I answered honestly.
"I know learnin' how to navigate would be something you'd be good at,
kid. Actually, let me offer a more convincing argument—
there's numbers here," he said, using math as bait. "I can even rustle some up right now. You like sevens, right?"
He was probably doing the eye waggle with that last bit. Teed was someone whose personality carried directly through the deep timbre voice of his. Kidra said his voice was more like dark chocolate. Leave it to her to compare a voice to food.
"Someday," I said, ignoring the bait he'd put out earlier. I wasn't that easy to hook. "Problem is I can hear him in my head already—honor your vow and House Winterscar… something, something… duty and responsibility. Ugh. I've got to find a way to get away from all this ratshit."
"Eh, flip him a new one. Tell him you're going to follow the Reacher vows of duty instead of the Retainer one. Oath is an oath, right? He's got to respect that at least. The clan lord set that in stone."
"If only it were that easy to switch lives, Teed."
"Yeah, but who'd actually stop you? Only Winterscars left runnin'
around last I counted was your sister, your father, and you." Knocking on metal resounded over the comms again. "I don't think you could disappoint your sister, angel that she is, and I don't suspect you could disappoint your father… well, more than he already is. Heh. Again, no offense meant,

honored Retainer sir, the three gods above praise your name, etcetera,
etcetera."
"You've got a weird way of respecting your betters. I'll start a blood feud with you if you keep showing me lip like this. Fear me."
"Oh, I'm shakin' in my boots." His grin could be practically heard through the comms at this point. "Tell your dear sister to hold me, I need reassurance for my poor plebeian soul."
A glance over at Kidra showed she hadn't moved a muscle, still cradling the rifle in her hands. Meditating correctly, as expected of a knight Retainer,
unlike her gossipmonger of a brother.
"Alas, poor Teed, dear elder sister's one genuine lover in this world will always be that NAR-15. This romance of yours is not made to be."
"A simple peasant like me can dream, sir."
"But seriously. What is it you see in her anyhow? She's my sister, and I love her to death, of course, but she's too prim and proper about everything she sets her mind on. Not to mention she's a caste and a half above you.
That's always a messy scandal when it happens." But it makes for the juiciest gossip.
He sighed over the speakers. "Maybe I'll tell you when you're older,
kid."
"I've got gray hairs already, mostly from you. How much older do you want me to be?"
"Right, and next you'll be trying to show me you got hair down there too?"
"I solemnly swear it's also gray."
"I'd rather eat ice than ask for proof on that one." He chuckled,
then interrupted me before my next breath. "Hang on, Keith, got company comin' up here." His demeanor and attitude changed completely. "Ah,
m'lord, welcome. What can this humble navigator do for you?"
And this time, the respect in his voice was genuine. This felt like eavesdropping on a more private part of Teed's life. Either he'd forgotten to turn off his comms with me, or he'd wanted me to listen in. But that guilty feeling was pushed down by my inner gossipmongering—there was only one person in the entire clan who had the title of a lord.
"Aye, m'lord, it can be done. Have to travel farther north for about a day to catch back up with Urs if we do this. If we divert for too long, Tsuya's orbit is also in range, though we'll have to backtrack a few hours to reach it."

A shorter moment bridged this gap. After hearing something indistinct in the background, Teed's voice picked up soon after.
"Of course, m'lord, I'll set the new route immediately and contact the rest of the convoy with the change of plans. If I might ask for preparation reasons,
why the change?"
I strained to hear the voice in the background talk. If my father was a living legend in the clan, the clan lord was a being straight out of myth. He wasn't just a regular clan lord, he was Deathless. An immortal being more akin to a demi-god than a human. They say he'd lived over four hundred years. To put it another way: he tagged on the main expeditions to handle things relic knights couldn't.
"Ah, I understand, m'lord, consider it done." The static in the speakers interrupted my thoughts, and all was silent once more except for the humming of the engines.
The airspeeder turned on itself now, with my side rising upward as the whole thing tilted. Almost immediately, the rotational pull squished my chest against the straps, wanting to rip me off my seat and into the open as the speeder gracefully turned.
The scavengers hanging on the outside hull nervously tightened down on their handholds, dangling feet rising upwards with the pull. It wasn't anywhere strong enough to worry about, especially since everyone should have strapped their clips in. Still, no one wanted to be the first in years to fall off an airspeeder mid-ride.
Oh, you'd survive if you tumbled correctly—assuming nothing important broke on your suit during the tumble—but the entire convoy would have to stop and turn around to fetch you, which was plenty embarrassing.
"Gods damn it," Teed muttered a moment later. "Why did he pick my ship, of all the ships, to spend the trip on?"
"Right, so fess up," I demanded. You don't just drop this sort of delicious gossip right by a rumormonger like me and expect to escape.
"...my comms on this entire time?"
"You know it."
"All right, go ahead, you nosy little monster." His voice was resigned,
knowing exactly what sort of person I was when offered gossip. "Let's get the interrogation over already."
I was happy to oblige. "Where does he want the convoy to go?"
Teed answered with an almost verbal shrug. "He said he felt something

'call out to him' from the west. Gave me coordinates and all."
"What, he just had a gut feeling something was at these… ahh, perfectly specific coordinates?"
Gut feelings were no basis for moving an entire four-hundred-man operation. It was more likely he hadn't "felt" anything but didn't want to reveal more about the true source if I had to guess. Then again, he was a Deathless. The stories about their powers were always changing around. So,
what is he planning?
"He says 'drive me there.' Well, I'll do exactly that and smile the whole way, but word to the wise, kid. If it's got him interested, it's way out of our league." He knocked again on the metal. "Anything happens out there, you don't ask questions. You run."
"Fair enough." I'd heard stranger things about the Deathless. "How far away is it?"
"Coordinates are close by. Should arrive in three hours or so at this speed,
so it's closer than our previous target."
"Got any idea what's waiting for us?"
"Not a single clue, kid. It could be a breach into the underground, a site,
or maybe another reason."
Or maybe the reason he brought twenty relic knights with him isn't just for security.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A MONUMENT TO THE GODS

I

'd been wrong on my assumption—our destination had been a derelict site. An old one. Which meant our competition with Ankah was a go.
The airspeeders banked into a clearing, snow flying off, revealing the bumpy metal ground underneath. In a moment, our expedition had touched down after a long three-hour trip. The frantic movement of industry exploded out from all sides of the landed ships. Crates were hauled out by the dozen.
Portable habitats deployed and tied down. Scavengers were already grouping up, plotting how to excavate this site.
Through it all, one man stood silently watching the site, a good stretch away from the industry behind him. Unmoving like a statue, a massive fur coat over his relic armor, his helmet cradled in his arm, and the utterly lethal air blowing mildly across his cheeks and through his hair.
Relic gear was fueled by ratshit magic that regularly gave physics the middle finger, but at least you had to wear the blasted thing before you got to bend the rules.
"How do you think he does that?" I pointed to where the man stood.
"Do what?" Kidra was still busy unloading her gear from the airspeeder,
not looking at my prompting.
"That!" I said, pointing again. Maybe she hadn't noticed how our clan leader was walking around without a gods-damned helmet equipped.
"He's Deathless. I believe that's one thing they're known for, brother."
Kidra shrugged, turning back to continue accounting for all the gear.
"I know that!" I hissed back. "I mean, how do you think it's possible?"
Lord Atius was plainer than the reputation painted. He looked like a worn-out military officer at the career point where coffee had started to lose

its power. He had a short black haircut, with sharp blue eyes and a slightly unkempt gray beard. Gods, it was downright creepy to see a face with only the blue sky above.
That man stood fully exposed in the sunlight, quietly pondering the ancient derelict ruins ahead. His hand rested on the pommel of his occult longsword—a blade with a more extensive chronicle behind it than multiple Houses put together.
Kidra helped another scavenger lift a crate out of the airship before regrouping behind me. "Perhaps the Deathless are part machine?"
"Machines attack anyone on sight," I said. "All the imperial pilgrims and our traders say the same thing. So either it's a massive conspiracy, or it's the truth. And if I had to bet, it probably isn't the fun one."
Kidra didn't look like she was paying full attention to this. Maybe she wasn't as rattled or curious as I was, but I had to gossip about it. We swapped more theories until Kidra cheated the question. "It may be some form of lost tech. Do you suppose they feed off power cells?"
Lost tech was a lazy catch-all term to anything that made little sense. Sort of like saying a warlock did it. But it couldn't be power cells. "Too many holes in that theory," I told her.
She chuckled, motioning me to turn around to inspect my suit's backpack.
"I'd wager you spent a few hours actually considering that silly idea and calculating the numbers, haven't you?"
I tutted, offended at the implications. "I'll never disregard an idea just because it sounds improbable. I'll disregard it only when it's proven wrong or too much work."
And in this case, it wasn't a lot of work; more holes in that theory than the last wall I'd used for cover.
Only a handful of Deathless lived on the surface like Atius did. If they ate magical battery acid, we'd see them coming up here regularly with the pilgrims, tagging along with expeditions to charge up their favorite snack.
Instead they were all underground, locked in an eternal tug of war with the machines.
"Well, if you ever find out where they come from, I'll trade you a ration bar for it."
"A random ration bar for the secret to becoming an all-powerful demigod?" Kidra scoffed. "Please. I'll only accept if it's strawberry flavored."
There was a slap on my back, signaling that she'd finished the checkup

on the suit's systems. It was my turn to check her gear as she turned her back to me.
This part shouldn't be done haphazardly. It would be the only time either of us could fix issues without pressure. Once on site, we'd have significantly fewer tools to work with and a lot more stress given the situation. With each click of my sister's gear, the reports flashed by on the green screen, showing nominal across the board. Satisfied with the system's integrity after a good moment of fussing over, I slapped her back, letting her know she was good to go. We both turned together to view our objective in the far distance. This site would be a full scavenging one. I was off the hook for the three baskets of frostbloom—at least until the next grove was spotted.
"What do you think it is?" I asked her.
"Why ask me? Last I checked, you would fare better at guessing that."
Fine. I brought out the binoculars and got to work. The site in question was about a mile away. The buildings were squat and rectangular, with broken walls on all the floors. Thin, spire-like buildings dotted the site,
encased by ice and catwalks. A few massive broken-down satellite dishes dotted the sides, so large they had entire buildings dedicated to them. Which made this ruin at least a third-era site. Second era didn't have radio.
So this place could be really old or just a replica made by a building printer with this architecture in memory.
But given that the whole thing tilted just slightly on the side, and the entire structure seemed like it had sprouted from the ground, there might be a chance this was at least a genuine ancient site. Cocooned underground for centuries until the shifting ground spat it back out—a thought that was admittedly a long shot, and I might just be getting excited at the idea of it being something more.
Lord Atius had commanded all scavengers to tear up the surface floors of the building. He'd be personally leading a team to dive into the lower levels.
Given that order, he probably expected nothing outlandish on the upper levels of the site.
Technically, this was the time we'd meet up with our House groups to plan how to scavenge the ruins. But for the past eight years now, House Winterscar's entire scavenger team amounted to my sister and I.
Despite the stakes for my sister's occult knife, our plan was pretty much unchanged: go forward and wing it. Other families had to split the work and make sure they weren't covering the same ground, which took a few hours

because of internal politicking. On that front, a team of two was very easy to organize, and we didn't have egos to feed. That meant we'd get first dibs for a few hours before the rest of the expedition filed in.
This wouldn't give us an edge over Ankah, however. She'd specified that the terms had to be fair, so we'd both be starting at the same time.
I don't know what strings Ankah had pulled, but she and her minion filed out of the tents with gear ready. She hadn't grouped up with the rest of House Shadowsong, so she's likely gotten an expensive exception for today, likely paying both in political power and material bribes.
Only one other group was already assembled and ready to head out. Lord Atius and his hand-picked relic knights—five of them, including Father.
The four other relic knights belonged to powerful Houses with multiple relic armors in their family lineages. Three, including Father, were primes—
wielders of the first armors discovered by each House. And usually only the greatest warriors or outright leaders of that House wore the prime armor.
Father stood apart from them, at the clan lord's righthand side.
Even with our house being down to a puny three members, results were results. Father had never known defeat, and no other relic knight in the entire clan could match him. A prodigy in combat, like Kidra—so long as he was sober, and he hadn't touched a bottle since House Winterscar was cut down to just us. Lord Atius didn't care about someone's political status or history.
When he organized a mission, he chose the best to come with him. Despite Father's infamous past, the rest of the knights remained at parade rest behind him.
We gave that group a wide berth.
"I suppose we should settle the rules for this now," Ankah said over comms. "Specifically at what time the hunt ends."
I shrugged. "When the navigators call for the expedition to return?"
Kidra nodded and then added her own conditions. "No direct physical violence, no sabotaging, and no stealing already claimed power cells. This shall be a competition of scavenging techniques, not thievery."
The princess gave an insulted scoff. "Please, this isn't a canteen brawl . I accept your terms as you state them, both in spirit and wording. I will earn my blade in the name of House Shadowsong."
Kidra flashed the challenge hand sign. "You mean you will try to earn the blade. I doubt you will succeed. The terms are finalized. Let's begin."
This didn't signal some mad sprint or dash to the site. Ankah and Calem

both turned and began a measured, leisurely walk. Kidra and I did the same.
This wouldn't be a competition about speed, even with a time limit. Rather,
this would be a marathon, taking up at least eight to nine hours. The real winner would be whoever could adapt to the structure first, determine the fastest path to the most likely locations, and extract the power cells.
"Oi, Winterscar pup," Roach's voice suddenly cut into my comms, "yer lookin' fer me power cell first, right?"
Ah, ratshit. "Uh, yeah, there's a… situation that's popped up since."
"Ho, don't like the sound of that. Smells like someone thinkin' of reneging on the deal?"
"Relax, I'm planning on getting you a power cell. Just... it might not be from this site."
"Why? You plannin' on runnin' with the goods?"
I denied that quickly. "We had a run-in with the devil, and she's talked us into a competition."
Was it fair to relate Ankah to a devil? Unequivocally, yes, minus trying to make us sign a contract for our souls.
"Read some more stories, pup. Deals with the devil are as rare as ice in those. Ye'd have learned a hundred times by now that nobody ever deals with the devil and comes out of it hale. What stupidity did ye get yourself into?
An' which devil?"
Kidra cut in, "We have to collect more power cells than Ankah Shadowsong from this site. If we succeed, we win all the power cells she's collected and a book. If we fail, then I lose my occult knife and we surrender our own captures for the day."
"An' what does that mean for me loot? Far as I see it, ye be gambling with my power cell here. Where's me interest?"
"Fine, you cranky old gremlin," I said. "How about this, if we win, we'll give you two power cells? If we lose, then we'll just give you the next power cell we come by." That way he'll still get his goods, just a site or two delayed down the road. Let's see him complain about that.
"Well then. I be expectin' some extra shiny with my name scribbled on it when ye win."
"Scribbling on the power cell wasn't part of the contract, I'll be charging extra for that."
"Hah! Ye certainly be learnin' from this devil right quick. Tell ye what,
write something good down, and I'll buy the first round o' drinks if it makes

me laugh."
"Deal. I look forward to the most expensive drink I can find."
The comms promptly clicked shut.
"I suspect you've spooked him. He might be allergic to paying for anything," Kidra said.
"Naw, he's just being dramatic. I can recognize my kind. Wait, where's Ankah heading?"
Shadowsong and her single lackey had changed course. This wasn't much of a surprise; we weren't planning on going into the site from the same angle,
but changing up not even a few minutes into the hike? Kidra figured it out before I did. "Their target is Lord Atius's group."
"What? Why?"
"I'm not positive, and that's exactly what has me troubled. We need to follow, at least to find out what she's up to."
Our little duo also changed directions, following behind the Shadowsong team, toward the group of relic knights. These were the leaders of the clan itself, not people I'd want to ask about the weather. You could tell when two armors belonged to the same House, as they shared their theme, though each was still unique. Two of the armors in the group had togas wrapped around them, embroidered with writings, detailing the past exploits of House Shadowsong's long lineage. The other three, including Father, were all different.
Shadowsong had made it to parade rest by their side. As we closed our own distance, the clan lord turned and motioned us to join comms with his right hand. Gulping, I did as ordered. The comms request was accepted, and soon their voices patched into my headset.
Atius's voice was like gravel as if smoke had ruined his throat. "Are these your whelps, Tenisent?"
"Yes, my lord. They are," Father replied.
"Excellent." He turned to Ankah, a bemused expression on his face. "In the spirit of fairness, we will offer assistance to your rivals as well.
Objections?"
She shook her head. "No, my lord." This was as expected. Either the Winterscar prime would make the argument, or Kidra herself would come when she noticed my change of plans.
Atius nodded, then turned to Kidra. "I wonder, little Winterscar, can you make an educated guess on what your cheeky rival's been up to?"

"My lord, I suspect she's called upon the tradition and requested for the Shadowsong prime to escort her group."
I whistled only for a half-second before shutting up. If Kidra was right,
Ankah was really stretching the rules here. There was a standing tradition of scavengers asking for their family's knights to protect the first scavengers into the ruins. The knights would take out the possible problems, and then the rest of the expedition had a safer time inside.
The thing was, knights always went in first. No one needed to request anything. The tradition was purely used in ceremonial moments.
"Correct!" Atius laughed—a full-bodied thing that sounded like it came from deep within his stomach. "The little Shadowsong whelp did just that.
What an audacious generation you lot will grow to be. Exciting years ahead for me." He seemed so much like a jovial grandfather, I'd almost forgotten exactly what he was. Until he peered again into the distance.
In that frozen moment of time, he seemed as ancient as ice. As if the weight of centuries hung from his shoulders, his gaze far away and worn out.
The Deathless turned back to his handpicked guards, taking a casual breath of the lethal sub-zero air. "It's been long since I've found the time to simply walk, years perhaps. I suppose I can indulge myself now and then."
He nodded, almost as if trying to convince himself, then turned to Ankah.
"Normally, I'd deny this kind of request for obvious reasons, but the current mission isn't urgent." He pointed one armored hand at the site, his greatcloak slipping to the side with the motion. "That's been there for centuries by now.
An hour or two more isn't going to change anything. We can spare it."
If any of the relic knights felt insulted at the thought of babysitting scavengers, they were far too professional to show it.
"After we've located a way down into the superstructure, we'll split ways with the scavenger whelps and continue to the primary objective." He pointed over to my father. "Winterscar, Shadowsong, keep track of the little ones and make sure they're safe. Objections?"
"No, my lord, I thank you for the opportunity," the Shadowsong prime said.
"As he said," Father added, nodding to his fellow prime.
"Good. The rest of us will fan out into the site and continue with the normal first phase of the operation. Clear dangers for the main expedition to scavenge safely. I don't want casualty reports when we return."
I fixed my eye on the horizon line as we began the march toward our

destination. The site stood tall in the distance, harrowed out by the ceaseless high winds, the superstructure stripped down to its bones. Trails of ice growing on the skeletal remains like mold.
Dead. And waiting.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE TOMB OF THE STARS

I

ce stalactites, oriented almost horizontally, decorated the superstructure.
This place had seen very high winds, exposed as it was.
The closer we got, the more detail could be made out. The spire structures had entire scaffolding dedicated to each, now used as a perching spot for snow. The satellite buildings had panels missing, exposing the skeletal underbelly. That said, all my thoughts were circling around how to beat Ankah.
Generally, most building architecture would consolidate power into one place, usually in the basement. They called that a transformer room. So whoever found that room first more or less won today's match.
Where things might get interesting was down to the purpose of the building. A fortress would have multiple different transformer rooms, so that if one failed another picked up the slack. A hospital would have a small generator for each wing, along with multiple backup generators. And so forth down the list of possible buildings.
Still, I had no clue what the hells this site was built for. And if I didn't know, then neither did Ankah.
"You look like you have a plan," Kidra said, clearly overestimating my abilities.
"Getting to the basement first would be the obvious."
My rivals trundled forward in the snow at a slow pace, also talking between each other. Planning just like we were. Calem was a brute of a person, built like a bear. The problem was that Ankah had standards for her minions—Calem wasn't just brute muscle but was also smart, which was the worst kind of combo to be up against. He'd probably point out the

transformer room as the goal post, so I could bank on Ankah also going for the basement first, or come up with a completely different plan depending on if they knew more than we did. There was too much we didn't know right now.
"Even if we get to the transformer room first, we can't rest easy," I wrapped up.
"You think there might be more sources of power?"
"I'm positive." I pointed at the buildings around the main site. "Those satellite structures must each have their own power supply, and that's just the beginning. Then we'd have to dig around to see where the backup generators might be located too."
Backup generators were trickier beasts. They were stored in a way that preserved them indefinitely, at the cost of some efficiency. Had to be very careful not to wake up a sleeping beast—as I'd helpfully demonstrated on the last site. It wasn't extremely dangerous, however, as most sites were too damaged. If the backup generators were triggered, few things would still be connected.
This site, on the other hand, looked almost preserved. Only the outsides had been harrowed out by the environment and neglect, but the innards looked functioning.
We discussed strategy over the next few minutes, tossing out different plans and narrowing down what we could and couldn't do. We'd even considered the merits of cutting our own shortcuts by using the occult knife.
Finally, running out of ideas, I suggested splitting up. That didn't go down well, for obvious reasons. I placated Kidra by offering to take on the main building.
Knowing that there were five relic knights prowling around inside that building and the clan lord himself, Kidra reluctantly agreed with the plan.
She'd take on the surrounding satellite buildings. Once I beat Ankah to the transformer room, they'd bail from the central complex and try to find power cells outside, which Kidra would have already tagged.
The planning session was going rather well until a high-pitched motor started up behind me. We both turned around just in time to see a flying drone zoom past us, racing forward to the distant site, its four propellers looking more like blurred disks fading away in the distance.
There was only one person rich enough to bring a drone on an expedition.

Ankah had strapped herself to their hoversled, letting her minion carry her forward. In the meantime, she was piloting the mini quad-copter.
"This might complicate things," Kidra said while I cursed the gods.
"No really, you don't say?" If my suspicions were correct, that was a scouting drone. Ankah was probably getting detailed imagery back. Looks like they'd banked spending their hoversled's energy already in exchange for possible early recon data.
Kidra didn't seem bothered. "This doesn't change the plan."
"No, but it does mean they'll find the best entry point before we do. She might even sneak the drone into the building to get a head start on mapping it."
"We will overcome this."
"Sure we will. By the way, do you know any loan plans available for occult knives? Asking for a friend."
Kidra was unamused.

It was a long half-hour walk, each minute watching Ankah get more and more intel on the site.
I tried bringing up the idea of using our own sled and paddling with shovels to pick up speed, but Kidra refused that one. There was no point reaching the site first if the knights weren't around to help with any danger.
I could recognize what Ankah's drone had been from the controller she toyed with. Early fourth-era photography drone, before hover technology like these sleds caught on. Deep in the ratshit now, those drones would have excellent cameras and could stay up in the air for hours. It would have been great if she'd crashed the thing, but no luck. It zoomed back once we were close enough to the site.
"Found any egress points?" Lord Atius asked her, amused at all the bickering happening.
"Seven so far, my lord," Ankah said, nimbly catching the loud thing and tossing it back into the hoversled. "I've already planned out a solid entryway that leads down to a lobby. If you need the swiftest entrance, I would be more than happy to share my findings."
The Shadowsong prime took a few glances between his daughter and

Atius, to which the old Deathless laughed. "I suppose I'll take you up on that offer. I'm sure your father would be proud to see the work you've done mapping the site, young lady."
Ankah's father sheepishly looked away, to which Atius slapped his shoulder heartily.
On my side, things weren't so jolly. My heart had sunk like a rock. Ankah had gotten her drone inside the building and was confident enough to boast about it. Which meant she already had major parts of the interior mapped out. Scrapshit. For a spoiled princess, she's annoyingly competent.
The team stopped a few hundred feet away from the site, taking the view in. Half of the site was sunken underground, halting all access to the first floor. Windswept ice encrusted most of the structure, making entry a little treacherous, and pack ice had grown around the sides.
A beat later, some unheard timer hit, and all of us brought out the safety equipment simultaneously—hard hats, impact-resistant plates, the works. It wasn't comfortable to walk in, but it was common sense: always wear safety gear before diving into an unstable ancient building. Ankah and her minion finished first, their gas monitors blinking green, showing active. If parts of the underground site had a lack of oxygen, those old gas sensors would kick in automatically. That was rare to see happen, as most sites were well ventilated due to collapsed walls. This site, however, might have that issue pop up. All prepared, they climbed up a snowbank that had collapsed into the second floor.
Kidra and I waited for her to vanish into the superstructure with the rest of the relic knights in tow, preparing our own gear and turning on the monitor systems. "Okay, now she won't notice the plan."
My sister nodded, then began to hike away from the site. "Move like the wind, brother. Tsuya guide your steps."
"And Urs witness your trial. Don't worry, this is only a minor setback.
I'll find another way in."

Fifteen minutes later, I was swallowing my words, and frostbloom would have tasted better. This hadn't been a minor setback. Despite casing the perimeter looking for alternate entryways, there wasn't a single way that

wasn't filled with rubble. And I wasn't a zippy little drone capable of speeding around to check a few dozen corners in minutes. Kidra had gotten inside her own target building—as she reported ten minutes ago.
The real surprise was an additional "companion." Father tagged behind,
no explanation offered. Was he worried I'd start some trouble in front of the clan lord?
…That was a fair point, in hindsight. If I weren't so focused on this damn contest, finding a way to be petty would absolutely be in the books.
My salvation came in the form of a ladder. It stood intact at the side of a wall, going right up to the rooftop. The only drawback was all the ice that clung on the steps—the climb would be difficult. Thankfully, the typical scavenger baggage included climbing hooks and rope for a reason.
While preparing for the journey up, Father finally broke the silence. "You intend to climb here to the roof?"
"Uh, yeah. The roof's superstructure will be weak from all the snow that accumulated on top. I'm sure there are sections that caved in but are still traversable. Why?"
He nodded, stepped forward, and picked me up. Under my suit, people would describe me as a twig. However, the suit itself and all my tools added a good fifty to seventy pounds. Of course, that might as well be a feather to the relic armor.
"What are you doin—" Before I could finish, he jumped. The leap cleared him up a good ten or so feet up, where his free hand snapped like a jaw against the frozen ladder steps. From there he pulled, again throwing both of us straight up. The ladder groaned and creaked at the stress but somehow didn't collapse. With one last leap up, he cleared the rooftop and landed down into the snow. We'd climbed three whole stories in a matter of seconds.
It was deep here, almost to my hips. Walking was a no-go. Fortunately,
there was a good way to fix that. Normally hoversleds were brought as carrying equipment and kept light to not waste the power cell powering it.
But as Ankah had demonstrated earlier, there were plenty of uses for these.
"Why help me?" I asked while getting the equipment ready. Moving with all this snow around was a right pain, but slow and steady wins the race.
"The Shadowsong prime is helping his daughter inside the ruins," he said.
Of course, Ankah was getting the extra assistance. "Why not help Kidra?
She's your favorite, isn't she?"
"She can handle herself. You, I'm not so certain."

"Making sure I don't eat the white and off myself? Didn't think you cared that much."
"I'm only fulfilling my duty to keep you safe. Nothing more."
Figures. All right, let's see what other use he could be.
"How much is the Shadowsong prime helping?"
"He is keeping a watch for dangers and assisting with navigation."
"And I don't get any help either?"
Father stared back, a hint of frustration creeping into his voice. "There wasn't any reason for me to train to scavenge, boy. I earned the Winterscar armor before I came of age to be a scavenger."
Scrambling on top of the hoversled turned out to be a little harder than expected. It slipped away, wiggling in the air. If there wasn't a rope attached,
it would have been next to impossible to bring back. "You know there are other ways you could help, right?"
"I'm not here to do your work for you."
"So why is Shadowsong getting the help and I'm not?"
Father crossed his arms. "I will not enable your weakness. You'll get my help once you've earned it."
That made me snort. What a liar. "And how exactly do I earn it?"
"When sacrifice calls, I shall answer it," Father quoted.
The oath of duty all knight Retainers swore to. It was our caste that put themselves into harm's way for the greater good. Our caste who ventured out onto the dangerous surface to recover scrap and tech. And that was supposed to make us somehow better than the brilliant people who stayed behind to put that tech to use.
Tell him you're going to follow the Reacher oath of duty instead of the Retainer one. Oath's an oath, right?
A moment of adrenaline spiked through me at the thought of rebellion.
All right, Teed. Let's try your way then. A deep breath and I hardened my resolve. This could end up violent. Once I felt prepared enough, I turned to stare back at that faceless helmet of his, my feet firm and planted. "What darkness covers, I shall bring to light."
His hand snapped around my collar again and lifted me up. Cold fury radiated from his voice. "This is not what you swore as a Winterscar. You are not a Reacher. Honor your duty."
My heart pounded as my hands reflexively reached out to grab his forearms. The stitches in my right arm tightened, sending a small wave of

dull pain through the wounded skin. A part of me wanted to just fold here, to escape. But I had prepared for this. Fear didn't rule me this time.
"One should always respect duty, no matter the rank. Do you disagree with that?" Let's see him deny the words of the clan lord himself.
He held me in the air for a moment more. "So be it. Continue crawling in the mud. Leave your sister to shoulder everything while you cower from your duty." Then he tossed me into the sled. The hoversled wobbled dangerously,
dipping down and kissing the snow before springing back up and floating farther down, with me stunned on top. Deep breaths helped calm my nerves.
He hadn't lashed out at me physically. Being disappointed wasn't anything new. This I could handle. I took my win and ran with it.
Now situated a few inches off the snow, it was much easier to cover ground by paddling with my hands to the side. It took a few minutes for my heart to stop racing, but the physical movements helped center me.
Father followed leisurely behind as if nothing had happened. The armor simply didn't care about the hundreds of pounds of snow it was plowing through.
Mind-boggling. I was used to working with a wide range of different tech levels, but there was a hard limit around the lost-tech era. Everything that showed up on the surface was mostly older junk, up to the third era. Rumor had it that printers for lost tech could only be found deeper underground.
My hunches about the roof had been correct, and there were a few cavedin sections of roofing. Finding one that faced the right direction, my feet carefully carried me down into the collapse. Here the wind wasn't able to pile up snow, and the hallways looked accessible.
"I'm in." I clicked the comms over to Kidra.
"About time. What's your entry point?"
"Uh… the roof."
"The roof?! You do know where basements are located, yes? Are you still competitive for the transformer room with this setback?"
"Maybe. It's a really big building, ya know? Now let me focus on pulling a win here."
Light from the outside only dimly reached here. And once Father and I truly penetrated into the superstructure, it was up to our own headlights to show the way forward. Empty hallways and rooms of various sizes waited in the gloom. There was a feeling of walking on hallowed ground.
As I'd expected, this site was far more intact on the inside than most I'd

been in, despite the outside appearance.
My headlights spent most of the time picking clear trails to follow on the ground. People had punctures by falling on debris, and it was never a fun time. I was currently the underdog timewise, but caution was always the priority. And the hallways were strewn with debris that had rotted away,
falling from the ceilings or walls.
Finding out what went on in this site would give me a better idea of where to dig for tech. I spent more time on any wall that looked like it might have had pictures or symbols. Eventually, I hit a lucky spot—a big blue arrow pointing to "Datacenter 2."
Sites dedicated only to data storage were mentioned occasionally in books, but this would be the first time seeing one. Perhaps data storage was just a side feature?
"This architecture is too strange," Kidra said over the comms.
"What do you mean?"
"There aren't any airlocks, the walls are thin, and occasionally it looked like entire windows had a view directly outside."
Well, that didn't sound like it was up to any building codes. Or common sense. The lack of an airlock could be explained. Would get very windy each time someone opened the door, but not a deal-breaker to a large enough building. But thin walls? And even worse: windows to the outside? Tempered glass could withstand the temperature difference, but considering all the glass I'd seen was shattered, that theory was probably out in the snow.
Small cubicle offices lined the sides of the walls, and I spent a few minutes inside one. The chair was neatly tucked into a desk, drawers and cabinets crusted over with ice. The handles on the cabinet really drew my attention. "Office items don't look made for gloves."
"I've noticed the same in my building. Keyboards, switches, every type of instrument. None of it was created with gloves in mind."
Outside equipment had to be large to work with these thick gloves. Even Kidra's occult blade had been transferred over from its original handle to one almost as large as the knife itself. Relic armor gear was the exception, since their gauntlets were "normal" sized.
"Chairs all seem to be reinforced. Think this place was just used by knights?" Kidra asked.
"Doubt office workers all wore relic armor like it was casual wear."
Either this place was built underground and eventually emerged, or it was

built back when the world was warmer.
And it must be huge to have stumped Ankah for this long. Or she was keeping her discoveries quiet.
"Who might have lived here then?" Kidra asked.
"You're not normally interested in that. What's with the questions all of a sudden?"
"I'm not, more idle thought as I'm exploring. But I suspect finding out the mystery here is all you're thinking about. And you are a chatterbox. I thought I'd offer you the courtesy of indulging."
"If only other girls of our caste were as considerate. All they not-sosneakily ask about is if I'm going to inherit the armor or not. A shame really."
"What do you tell them about the armor?"
"I'm really vague about it and let them come up with any answer for themselves. So I technically never lied to anyone."
She chuckled darkly, "That's quite the evil plot, dear brother. I didn't think you had it in you."
"No arguments from me, dear sister. But since all they care about is the armor, I don't feel quite so torn up about it."
We continued talking gossip while the exploration dove farther into the superstructure. More and more private offices littered the hallways. Someone was bound to have left a tablet or some information that could be recovered from these rooms, maybe even paper could have survived if it was frozen over.
Alas, Ankah already had a massive head start and distractions couldn't be afforded. The curiosity burned under me, kept in check by priorities.
The main hallway, or at least what was left of the hallway at this point,
opened up into a larger room. Simple metal tables filled the space, empty and desolate. The ones that weren't rimmed with frost glinted back our flashlights as if surprised to see humans walking nearby again.
A mess hall of sorts. I made a mental note of where this was in relation to the rest of the building. At some point, the kitchen would need to be pilfered.
They always had a spare power cell.
Ankah's voice sounded on the local comms. "I've checked over the last stairwell down. All paths underground are indeed blocked, my lord."
Oh. This was a lucky break.
It's not that the place was too big, it was too much blockage. That's why

she hadn't gloated about finding the transformer room yet.
"Understood. We'll have to try a different building," Atius said. "Our target isn't in the site itself but farther down underground. Any path will work."
"If I may be so bold as to make a request from you, my lord. Your occult longblade might be able to cut a path into the flooring for us."
"Interesting proposition, Ankah. It's worth an attempt. You are welcome to follow behind if it works. Your ropes are kept in good condition, I'm assuming?"
Amendment: this was a short-lived lucky break. And now Ankah was probably ten minutes away from finding the transformer room first.
I needed to get real clever, real fast. Or my sister would be paying the price.

CHAPTER NINE

NEVER CHALLENGE A WINTERSCAR

I

was pretty much fucked. As a trained scavenger, this was my professional opinion: Fucked.
I was three entire stories above the floor I was supposed to be exploring, while Ankah was getting an entryway cut into the ground by the gods-damned clan lord himself. The only thing she was missing was a red carpet and some confetti sprinkled from above as she righteously descended to claim the transformer room.
This wasn't the end of the world. I needed to be logical about this. The only possibility of winning left now was if that transformer room didn't exist.
And that was out of my control. So here's what I was going to do: not go looking for a transformer room.
Instead, I was going to assume it wasn't there at all and plan around that.
If there wasn't a transformer room, then where else would power be located?
Datacenter 2.
The writings on the wall—large and blocky. Important. If there were data servers, then there had to be power supplying them. And if by some chance this building didn't have a transformer room, then the power could be close to those, if not in the very same room. I had no other option than to retrace my steps, find the wall directions, and pray to Tsuya that the power cells were there.
And if that failed, the next plan was going to be a get-rich-quick scheme of some kind. Say, rich enough to buy a knife.
Father continued stalking behind me like an ominous shadow as we sped through the hallways.
Figuring out what his game was could wait until I'd secured the power

cells.
It took a few more minutes, but thankfully, the wall signs made it clear where Datacenter 2 was.
The hallway opened up into a large room, not quite as big as the mess hall had been. In the center was a large dome, with a railing surrounding it. Desks and tables circled the dome, while the walls held dead and cracked screens,
keyboards, and other third- or fourth-era tech. Looked like a control room of sorts.
Outside, through what had once been windows, were the spire-like structures we'd seen from a distance. Faded paint showed emblems and numbers on the sides, and wire-like pipes connected the building to the main structure. Watchtowers maybe?
With all the window walls shattered, the environment had free reign into the room. The place was blanketed in a thick layer of snow on most parts,
burying entire workstations.
It didn't matter. This must be the datacenter. Somewhere under all that snow and paneling were wires, and those would lead me to treasure. I got to work with my crowbar, aiming for the panels not covered up first.
"I am actually curious about one detail, brother."
"What's on your mind?" I asked with a grunt as I pried open my first panel.
"Do you have any theories as to why these people left?"
That made me double take for a moment. "What makes you think they left and weren't just murder-looted?"
"Have you seen any skeletal remains on your side?"
Ah. There had been no signs of cadavers yet. How had I missed something as obvious as that? This damn contest was really getting into my head.
"Almost all of the rooms I've been to were cleared out or well organized," Kidra continued. "No pictures or any personal items left anywhere. Chairs are tucked into the desks. The mark of people who had plenty of time to prepare for a scheduled departure. All damage looks to have been done by age. No bullet holes or explosive damage."
Explained why this site was so intact—it hadn't ever been sieged before.
Which begged the question: where did they all go?
The workstations were a dead end, so I moved to the walls next. That had some success. Sitting plump and fat were a few massive wires, clearly built to

carry power. I'd have to guess where each might lead to and then investigate.
Panels were ripped down, wires investigated and followed, rinse and repeat until there'd be no more wires to follow. Kidra and I chatted the entire time, keeping each other company over the work. It soothed my nerves, and pretty soon I was back in my rhythm.
Until Kidra got nosy again about my social life. "What about Distra?"
I guess gossipmongering was something built into all Winterscars, deep down. When I asked for more details on what she meant, she specified. "That one girl you spent a month with about a year ago? "
"Also after the armor," I said. "But she made me almost believe I was handsome, so points for that."
"Might you be too focused on finding manipulations that don't exist? The other Houses don't all behave like Winterscar, you understand? Gossip I heard was that she actually did think you were handsome."
There was only one girl who hadn't run for the airlock once she'd found out the family armor wasn't on my side of the table. Though she was very strange in plenty of other ways; she'd outright asked me about it on the first date as if she were going down a checklist of items. She was a great friend now; I had to respect that level of blunt honesty. Although she'd throw food at me if I started talking Reacher scrap.
"Even if Distra wasn't completely after the armor—which I doubt—she didn't like to talk numbers. Poor woman was prepared to jump out a window if cornered by an integral sign."
"Please, brother. If you're looking for someone who likes numbers as much as you do, I don't think anyone in the caste would be suitable."
"Nonsense," I answered back. "Elisia is an amazing mathematician, and we've spent hours talking about tech and the stuff she tinkers with. She's amazing."
"Elisia is a Reacher, not a knight Retainer. She's happily married and a good decade your senior. Absolutely off limits."
"Well, she's proof my standards exist. I just have to keep looking."
I heard a sigh over the headset. "Keep looking where? It sounds more like you're avoiding anyone within the Retainer houses."
"It's not like Father would—" A guilty glance confirmed Father was still present in the room, quietly watching like a hawk. Even knowing he wasn't on my private comms, I still spoke with a lower voice just in case.
"Look, if I caught a feral pipe weasel, slapped lipstick on it, and married

the furry little monster, Father would probably congratulate me on finding my equal. Let's be serious here, you're the one who's going to inherit the armor, Kidra. I'm just a footnote. Nobody would care if I married an engineer."
"Who inherits the armor is still up for debate. Children complicate things for me."
I swore. Not at the conversation, but because I'd just found out that the second-to-last power wire connected to another useless panel. Which meant the last power wire must be where the power was coming from—and that wire was going directly into the massive mound of snow I'd been avoiding.
Sighing, I unpacked the collapsible shovel. I suppose some manual labor never killed me. Yet. "Well, if you swore you wouldn't have kids, then what?"
"Our House isn't in a position where I'd get to make that choice in the first place. Unless Father remarries. And…"
And he hadn't. The bastard was leaving all the unspoken issues for my sister to shoulder. I couldn't believe that hypocrite would yell at me for leaving things on Kidra's shoulders. The selfish prick could solve so many issues by just remarrying already and recruiting new blood from the Houseless.
Hundreds would be willing to outright fight each other for the right to go on scavenging expeditions, even the tiny expeditions to refuel the clan's power cells. Inviting new members was all up to the house leaders to pick and choose who joined the House.
More "prestigious" that way. Certainly had nothing to do with bribes or any of that nepotism, no sir. At least Reachers didn't have politics to join their Houses, they only required an intelligent head and a few tests passed.
Everyone had a chance to earn it.
Father hadn't even bothered to see a single applicant in the past eight years. Not a word about arranged marriages for either of us, no attempt to look for his own. It was like he'd completely avoided all subjects related to our House, leaving it to slowly rot away. The man revered honor and duty and yet completely ignored this part of his duty.
Kidra didn't continue, growing quiet instead. That was par for the course when talking family with her. She would hit a wall and then shut down. The snow shoveling was slow business in the silence but also slowly getting somewhere. With some luck, and the three gods willing, there would be

something somewhere under all this snow.
She finally spoke up a good ten minutes later, unexpectedly breaking the silence. "When I think about having a family, I want to do better than what I had growing up," she quietly said. "Relic knights are not Deathless, but they deal with the same league of danger. Growing up without a mother is a hard thing for any child, and I could never wish it on my own."
"Well, I think I turned out just fine, thank you." Too much ratshit politics haunting this House. "Look, just loan the armor out and call it a day. You'd only be required to wear it for ceremonial occasions. Father did that for what,
thirteen years straight? You can do it too—minus the drinking and being generally pathetic, of course."
Sure it wasn't the "honorable" thing to do and was plenty scandalous, but who cared now? Plus, we'd get money to fill up the emptying House coffers.
Plenty of warriors in our House wore Father's armor, at least back when everyone in the House was still alive and scheming. The family had been all too happy to abuse his sad little broken heart, buying him all the booze in the world and then taking the armor out for a spin to impress the clan lord while Father was passed out. By that point, he'd already lost all his titles and fame.
The whole house knew it was only a matter of time until Atius was forced to intercede, take charge of the armor, and declare Father an invalid. They were practically foaming at the mouth waiting for that.
Pissed me off to think about. "If you're dead set on wearing the cursed thing yourself, I'm sure you could hire a nurse for you while you're out in the field. No one left in the House to manipulate most of the servants to quit this time."
I'd dug in a little too deep on family history here, but I was sure she wasn't going to bring the topic back up. Nor would I press her about it.
Talking about the Winterscars didn't bring out good memories. I could imagine the idea of giving up the relic armor to others would be anathema to Kidra's morals. But where did honor and duty leave people? At least my House had known and understood that implicitly.
I continued burrowing like a pipe weasel deeper into the snow mound,
anger propelling me forward, ignoring the pain rising up in my stitched forearm. Eventually, the other side scraped against my shovel.
The panel read: "CAUTION: Maintenance only."
Ho, ho, ho, jackpot.
Now if power cells hid behind this, that would mean Ankah could be

looking around for something that didn't exist. But if there was just wiring behind this panel, then I was deep in the ratshit.
Holding my breath, my crowbar slammed expertly into the side. A twist of effort pried the panel off.
Behind, in two rows of three, were perfectly preserved power cells. Six in total. Sitting alone and abandoned.
I love it when I win.
These must have been primary generators, since they were all completely spent. So if these were primary power generators...
Elation soared through my head, thoughts of getting both the book and gloating rights now back in reach. Ankah was looking around underground for something that didn't exist.
The game wasn't over yet. I'd only taken the lead—this was Datacenter 2. Which implied there was at least a Datacenter 1 somewhere, if not more. It wasn't enough that we won; Shadowsong had to lose.
To make sure she didn't even get a possible shot, I'd need to find that other datacenter and pilfer it before my competition.
Kidra and I both agreed to keep it quiet for now after I broke the news to her. Ankah was looking in the wrong place, and we weren't going to do anything to change that.
Carefully, I reached into the storage compartment and unhooked the spent power cells. The hand-sized cylinders were filled with frozen water, likely compressed inside. Once a power cell was used, the leftover waste would be drinkable, in theory.
This was the masterstroke of the fourth era, after which power technology never changed. Even lost tech was powered by these things, and that appeared centuries later with no changes, if our history was accurate.
One after another, these six treasures were lovingly lowered into my hoversled and strapped down.
Kidra spoke up, after having gone silent for quite some time. "Keith, it was wrong of me to say that to you."
"Say what?"
"What I said about… about Mother. That was crass of me."
Had she been brooding about that this whole time? Did she think I'd be hurt about not having a mom? "I don't mind. There's no way you could remember anything about her either."
"... I do, a bit."

"Ratshit, you were what, five when she died?"
"I am seven years older than you, not five."
"Eh, details. I barely remember Grandma, and I was seven then too."
"You were six when Grandmother died. Not seven."
"I doubt one year makes much of a difference."
My shovel lifted up again and work began on the opposite side of the room, digging a way to more possible power cells. If one side had them,
chances were the room had a mirrored setup. Treasure wasn't going to just dig itself out.
"I don't remember all the details," Kidra said, "but I do remember the feelings. A few of being held. A bath. Her laughing, me getting carried on shoulders, and what I think was Father smiling a few times."
"Now I know you're full of bent metal..." I chuckled. Maybe he'd smiled in that I'm trying really hard to be polite here way.
Father still remained at attention behind, hand on rifle, waiting. He was a very different person depending on what year you picked. I'd heard some stories about who he used to be before I was born, but they might as well be describing a stranger.
"Say, what time did you like better? Before or after the raid happened?" I asked her, more out of idle curiosity.
"... It would be extremely selfish to say I'm glad hundreds of people died just because my life became better for it," Kidra said.
"Yeah... but am I right?"
There wasn't an answer back until the second maintenance panel was just barely in reach.
"I hated them," she whispered over the comms. "Every day I'd wished they'd all just disappear."
I chuckled darkly. "Well, wish granted."
"Yes. Wish granted. Exactly like I'd prayed for." There was no mirth or joy at the admission.
"... You know none of that was your fault, right? That raid was going to happen no matter what you were thinking on the inside."
"I have made my peace with it years ago," she lied.
The shovel hit a hard surface—which hopefully meant another panel and another six power cells. And if Kidra found a handful more on the satellite buildings, that would be game, set, and match.
The crowbar came out again while I continued to gossip about the past.

"For me, I liked it better before the raid. Sure, they were all scheming assholes, but they all mostly ignored me, and I was all too happy to ignore them back. Easy life."
And it was easier when Father simply yelled at us, puked, and passed out on the floor each night. He hadn't expected anything from me back then.
"Though I wasn't a fan of those pity looks the family would give me."
"I know those looks well," Kidra said. "It was the hypocrisy that rankled me. They'd tell stories of Father at the banquets you know, like he was some long-dead hero in the family, raising toasts and politely clapping to their navel-gazing speeches." I heard grunting and sounds of the wall being ripped over the speakers. "I wanted nothing more than to slap them and yell in their face, 'He's still alive, you vapid parasites, help him!' I felt like I was the only person who still took care of him."
Well, that's because you were. "In a way they did help," I said instead.
"Not willingly, of course. No Winterscar would ever do a good deed without first attaching strings to it."
My own panel crunched open, breaking me out of that spiral, the crowbar proving the superior tool once more. Even using mostly my left hand for this,
there was little a good crowbar couldn't fix. Behind it lay another six spent power cells, just as I'd hoped. Soon, they'd be yanked out and spirited away.
My hands started the work on autopilot.
Cell by cell, I pilfered the whole thing into the hoversled. Since this had been a source of main power, the power cables going into the wall might lead me to the next datacenter.
I took off in the best guess I had, into the hallways.
"Even if you did manage to slap them into helping, it wouldn't have worked," I told her as I walked. "Vodka isn't made from ice. Someone was buying him all those bottles."
"They did?" my sister blurted out, followed by realization. "Of course they did. How did you spot that when I hadn't?"
"Adults let slip all kinds of secrets when they don't notice who's exploring under the floorboards. You're too honest to crawl around in the mud like I did."
"Please, I'm not a paragon of morality either. I also engaged in lies and deceit when I was forced to."
"Perhaps my definition of lies and deceit is just slightly different to yours,
my dear sister."

"We can't be that different."
"Have you ever, even just once, opened a door without knocking first?"
She laughed, voice like bells through the comms. "Fine, I suppose I'll concede the point. But if I'd known, I could have stopped them." And they would have come up with something more dangerous if you did, but that part,
too, went unsaid.
I gulped guiltily at my actions in all this. "It's the armor. That's all they were after. Of course, they'd want to keep the real owner out of the picture—
and especially the daughter who was still trying to right the ship. You didn't miss it, they intentionally hid it from you."
Deeper into the superstructure, I found a blockage. The roof had collapsed, spilling snow everywhere, but there didn't seem to be more damage. The wires were leading here, going into the piled snow. In fact, I could see multiple thick wires through the broken walls leading to this room from different directions.
Something here must be important, and it was buried under snow, of course.
This time I didn't have to shovel for long before it hit something hard again. Once I'd scrubbed the ice off, the letters could be made out.
"Emergency."
The panel wasn't locked. And under it another red lever, like in the security bunker. "Backup power mechanical failsafe" it read.
I had twelve power cells already. Ankah hadn't found the transformer room, so she likely had little to none. If something were to happen right now,
like the power turning back on, we'd be evacuated. The day would be over,
the contest called.
And we would win by a landslide.
Lifting my shovel discreetly, the reflection of Father stood grim on the trowel's blade, faceless helmet ever vigilant, the headlights in the dim light making it obvious to tell where his gaze fell. It was child's play to find the right moment he wasn't watching.
Just one knight would have been enough to handle any danger this site could offer. We had five with the clan lord himself, all ready for action.
They'd pull us out safely in under a minute. Kidra was in her own separate satellite building, and those wouldn't be connected to this building's backup generator. They'd have their own power grids instead, so any event within this complex wouldn't involve her.

The risks were sound.
Ye'd have learned a hundred times by now—nobody ever deals with the devil and comes out of it hale.
Shadowsong should have known better than to challenge a Winterscar.
Cheating was our House calling and scheming in our lifeblood. Kidra might be above this and Father removed from it, but I'd been born and shaped into it.
You're too honest to crawl around in the mud like I did.
I shook hands with the devil and pulled the lever down.

CHAPTER TEN

font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"つや/span/font

L

ights snapped back into life around me. The room hummed with power,
alive again after centuries spent dreaming. I stood up, knocking some snow over the letterings behind me, hiding the crime.
General comms lit up right after, starting with the clan lord himself.
"Power was triggered in the central building. Report!"
Other voices sounded off, giving their location and general findings.
Father turned to me, the Winterscar armor scanning me down. I gave him an innocent shrug, lifting my hands up. He took a step forward, every motion screaming with distrust.
"For now," Atius cut in, "we'll evacuate the whelps. Winterscar, you're hovering right by your own for a possibility like this, correct?"
"Yes, sir," Father answered, momentum cut.
"If there's an easy path out, take it. Get him out of the building. We'll regroup halfway between the expedition and the site."
"Understood."
"Ironreach, Kidra is in the outer buildings, go get her. Windrunner, assist Shadowsong with his own pair. All teams, although there's a low chance anything here poses a threat to us, move on the assumption there is. It'll only cost us a pound of snow if we're wrong. Dismissed!"
The general comms clicked shut once everyone sounded affirmative.
"We're going," Father ordered. I took a step back, trying to reach the hoversled. "Wait! I need those power cells!"
"Not important."
"Kidra's knife is on the line if I don't bring back those cells."
That… did not make him pause like I'd expected. He continued to stalk

forward in my direction, hand threatening to reach out and yank me off my feet if I didn't cooperate immediately. "If need be, I will return for them myself—after you've been evacuated as ordered. We are going. Now."
That worked for me, so I did as asked, following behind as fast as the environmental suit could handle. "There's a broken window wall by Datacenter 2, we could probably reach the roof if we jumped up from there."
"The room with the dome and snow?"
"Yeah, that one. Is the armor mapping the way already?"
Father nodded, diverting course to backtrack.
Comms lit up with more chatter on the global channel this time. "This is Lord Atius to expedition. Be aware, the site is confirmed to have running power. Recall the scavenger teams."
"Expedition actual to Lord Atius, we copy. Knight teams are being formed now, m'lord. We're reinforcing our perimeter and pulling all scavengers behind the lines."
Atius confirmed the orders and the global comms clicked shut, but the local ones stayed active. Looked like he still had things to say.
"Unfortunately for you four whelps, this means you'll need to wait with the other scavenger teams before being allowed back in. I hope you got enough of a haul for the day, because when you come back, it'll likely be with the full scavenger wave as competition."
All according to plan.
We reached the datacenter room and found it lit up with consoles and holographic panels. They were opening and closing rapidly. Father and I slowed to a stop, the sheer oddity captivating our attention.
Then the terminal's ancient speakers lit up. The voice was heavily scratched up, with an odd higher pitch, but the machine still spoke well enough to understand.
"Administrator confirmation required for this action." Another panel appeared. It had a username and password field. A login prompt.
Asterisk stars filled up both fields on their own. What?
The panel was gone almost the same moment it had appeared. What was that?
Father seemed just as stunned, taking cautious steps forward.
"Administrator confirmation accepted. Purge protocol initiated. Error:
Storage bay 1 disconnected from system. Data successfully wiped from storage bay 2. Error: Storage bay 3 unresponsive. Error: Storage bay 4

unresponsive. Full data purge incomplete."
A flurry of holographic windows and charts appeared across the entire dome. It looked like the entire system was haunted by a ghost, running amok at speeds no human could keep up with.
A three-dimensional model of the site appeared, shifting around fast. In moments, four large cylinders were zoomed in on and highlighted in red.
They looked to be somewhere deeper underground.
On second look, they were just like the spire buildings outside, only lying flat.
Before I could even take a wild guess at what was happening, a glowing blue message box appeared. It floated, a two-dimensional projection of light a few feet away from everything else—and right before my face.
It resized to be three times larger, shifting colors to bright gold in quick succession. Three messages appeared. Strange characters of a different language, followed by readable text.
font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"つや/span/font: Relinquished spotted the power spike. She's breaching through the firewalls, and I can't keep her out of the system for much longer.
font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"つや/span/font: She can't be allowed to discover the navigation data or the station's purpose. At any cost.
font face="Nimbus Mono L, monospace"span lang="zh-CN"つや/span/font: I'm so sorry.
"What is…" Father muttered, but the ancient terminal cut him off.
"Safety locks disabled," it chimed. "Idra-heavy rockets IH11, IH24,
IH12, and IH17 now triggered for ignition. All personnel, please prepare for takeoff procedures."
A warning siren started up almost immediately after across the entire building, and the outside too. That was never a good sign.
"Warning!" the station said. "Selected Idra-heavy rockets have not been deploy`ed to launch sites. High chance of catastrophic system failure detected. Administrator override is required to proceed."
A password prompt popped up into existence again in front of the displays, but already whatever was in control had typed in the password.
"Administrator override confirmed," the terminal said cheerfully.
"Launch set to T minus fifteen seconds."
"No, shut off!" I yelled frantically, pushing random images and buttons.

Each triggered a holographic window, which would be instantly closed before the window's purpose could be read. The ghost inside the terminal was shutting me out of the system using the most brutal method possible.
"Winterscar!" Atius's voice snapped into the comms. "We've evacuated successfully, where are you?!"
An armored hand sneaked around my waist and pulled me up with no effort.
"We're leaving," Father said, turning and running to the open window.
He leaped at it, using his free hand to vault upward.
We sailed up, falling back down on the roof with a heavy thud. No second was spared as he instantly barreled through the waist-high snow up here, still holding me with his spare hand. Father picked up speed with every lunge. The metal groaned under us from the sheer power in his strides. In seconds, we would be clearing the rooftop, heading directly away from the site.
The explosion hit first.
It began with a muted roar that shook the ground. No heatwave chased us,
but the entire building buckled and undulated like a wave as if the surface had temporarily turned to liquid and behaved just like it. Father was thrown off his footing, skidding into a tumble and disappearing into the jilted snow,
while the force wrenched me from his grasp into the air.
Gravity reclaimed me in moments, slamming me down onto the snowfilled roof and stunning me for a moment, burying me deep. The worst hadn't even happened yet: the ground rose upward a moment later. It was a struggle,
but I wrenched myself back above to see what was going on.
The entire roof had tilted, lifting high as the downward slope steepened.
That gave me an unobstructed view of the cause. The ground below had turned into a massive chasm. The connected buildings were being dragged into it.
While no one sane would want to slide down into that massive abyss, the snow that covered the surrounding roof absolutely did… because gravity was a thing. It moved like an avalanche, all going at the same rate, straight to the maw.
Father erupted from that snow, breaking free, instantly sprinting in a direct intercept course the moment he spotted where I'd landed. I reached out to him, but the snow had complete control over my motions, and even that simple action was impossible.

Still, he made it to me in seconds, one armored glove shooting out and clamping around my helmet with a vise grip. The weight was too much and the hard hat's chin straps started choking me.
I slapped the safety release before the straps could damage my rebreather permanently.
That cost me a few more feet down the slope. Turning on myself, my hands reached out to Father. He tossed the hard hat away, snapping his hand out to grab mine. The hold wasn't firm, but he didn't have time to address it.
We'd drifted too far downward, and the incline had continued steepening,
soon to become almost completely vertical.
I could hear the scraping of his feet on the roof, trying and failing against the weight. The edge of the roof approached, a waterfall of snow shooting out into free fall.
His free hand dove into the avalanche, searching for anything to hold.
Something snagged, and he instantly stopped like a rock, snow breaking off against his shoulders and spraying over him angrily.
He yanked me to a stop, but only for a moment. With a lurch, I felt myself continue to move downward. His grip had slipped. The snow carried me away.
A terrifying second passed as I watched him stare after me, his outstretched hand holding nothing but air. That faceless helmet somehow showing the sheer disbelief at the current events.
Father dove after me a heartbeat later, almost in fury. The armor let him catch up to my position in moments, and he grabbed with both hands this time, lifting me above the torrent.
The end of the roof was upon us. He tensed, waiting for the right moment as we were swept downward.
We hit the end. He leaped.
That took us clear out of the snowfall and into the air. Not enough, not by a long shot. I could tell we would be falling into the abyss at this rate. With an audible grunt, he yelled over the noise, "Keith! Grab the ledge!"
Then he hurled me forward with everything his relic armor could muster,
which was a substantial amount.
I sailed up again, propelled right at a distant collapsing spire building, ice snapping off as the catwalk deformed, hopefully still sturdy enough to hold my weight. While I flailed around in midair, I caught a glimpse of my father.
Far, far under. Throwing me had pushed him downward.

Time felt slow as I watched, the details burning themselves into my mind.
Father didn't scream as he fell. Instead, he was motionless, almost suspended in the air. Arms and legs at peace, body growing smaller as the distance stretched. Only the helmet still moved, unerringly following me until the armor had been swallowed from sight.
Falling into the abyss.
Instinct forced me to look back up—I had to catch the railing or die to the fall. When I did look up, I was rewarded with the sight of that railing much,
much closer than it had any right to be. Turns out, the spires were also falling toward the sinkhole, so naturally, the railing hadn't just been waiting around for me to land onto it. No, it had rushed to meet me with speed.
I collided head first into it and instantly lost consciousness.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE FIRST MILE

"Y

ou're going to have to fix this one all on your own, just like a real grown-up."
"Don't worry, it's easy."
"You just need to wake up."
"Wake up or die, boy."

I'd survived the fall. Don't ask me how, because I wasn't sure myself.
I'd woken up half-frozen to a screaming alarm and repair glue administered everywhere on my chest, which made it hard to move around. I had just finished patching up the last tear left in my suit when Father's voice crackled into my speakers.
"You're awake," he said from his seat on the concrete block, after confirming I'd been moving around.
He hadn't come out of this ordeal unscathed. That might be an understatement—I'd never seen the family armor this damaged. Deep gashes lined the sides of his chest and leg plates, exposing circuitry, and under that,
hints of more sub-metal plates with dozens of glowing blue lines etched into each. They almost looked like patterns, but too much of it was covered by the wiring to make sense.
"You survived the fall," I croaked out, my voice unexpectedly weak.
"... Yes. I am alive. Well spotted."
Rolling over, I tried to stand. "How long has it been?"

"Three hours since the explosion."
"Why… why are you here?"
He stopped tinkering with the rifle and glanced up. "What does that mean?"
"I hit a pole and… why didn't you leave me to die?"
It could have been a "regrettable accident" that he hadn't found me. A simple way to finally get rid of the weakling. A textbook Winterscar plan.
"I would be derelict in my duty had I abandoned you. I honor my vow.
Something you should learn from."
Rich, coming from the guy who drank himself near death every day for thirteen years until reality slapped him in the face.
Did a lot of honoring the oath of duty back then, eh old man?
Pain filled my legs, stabbing inside from a hundred different pinpricks,
but they lifted me back up onto my feet. "Where are we? Is this the underground?"
"It is." The way he said that had a tinge of dread to it. "We are somewhere in the lower first level. Deep enough to protect us from the climate."
It was hard to sort truth from fiction with the underground. I'd heard hundreds of stories, how it was completely different layer by layer. But how did you fit a massive forest when thousands of tons of metal and rocks lay on top, for example? Or fit underground mountains? Or have rivers and plains?
Or floating rocks and castles? The underground supposedly had everything and more.
No hint of green around here though. Instead, it was all industry and blocky concrete rooms and a low ceiling above us. "Are we in an undersider city?"
He shook his head. "Do you see anyone?"
There wasn't a single person anywhere nearby. Vermin didn't populate the area either. No rats, weasels, or insects. Gods, I couldn't hear anything besides silence. That put me on edge.
He waved his right hand over to the mess of piping snaking around.
"Look around you. Pipes leading nowhere. Doorways that nobody can reach.
Staircases that lead to dead ends like this one here." He pointed to the staircase that led into a wall. Who designed this fever dream?
"No one lives in these parts of the underground," Father said. "The first layer is always some sort of city like this one. Architecture might change up,

but it's always a city. Linked to other fake cities by tunnels and constantly changing."
"Changing?"
"Yes, changing. Did you forget what that means?"
"You just said nobody lives here."
"If you don't interrupt, I will get to that," he ground out, then shook his head. "Never mind. Find out for yourself. You claim to be a scholar, right,
boy? Pride yourself on that intellect of yours? Use it. Look for motion."
Fine. I ignored the jab and did as he asked. The alleyway had looked like it went somewhere, but that dead-end staircase was the only way down. I could see dust on the ground and signs of something being dragged across it… right to where I was.
The tracks came from a courtyard up ahead, surrounded by uneven platforms and what looked to be a fountain in the center, hundreds of pipes leading to it. Vast lines of lights attached to the ceiling and random spots flooded the area, showing any detail I cared to look at. Almost hidden by those floodlights were thousands of tiny glimmering teal gems scattered across the ground.
The place was as silent as a grave. Nothing moved save for the dust slowly drifting in the air. "What am I looking for?"
"Figure that out. It should be easy. My priority is to repair my rifle, or the next encounter will be my last—and yours as well," he said, not bothering to look up from his work. "I won't waste time."
Sitting down, I started looking for any signs of motion as he'd suggested.
It was about half a minute before I recognized what he meant. The teal gem glimmers. They were moving. Slowly, very slowly, but it was clear they weren't stationary at all.
The better visibility with my head free was worth the discomfort of the current climate. The air was cold, but it wasn't an immediate danger. Taking off my mask and helmet, I got on my knees to get a closer look.
Tiny, tiny little creatures were walking beneath my gaze. They were machines, I realized. And it wasn't a gem but a teal light instead. Oddly bulky—like a rectangle shape with a triangle theme—carried by six miniature mechanical legs. Two limbs remained folded at its front like the pictures of praying mantis, occasionally probing down on the ground. Carapace-like layers of metal plates and spikes decorated the body.
"They're called mites," Father said, breaking my focus. "They're the

reason for the unending city."
Progress on his rifle had been slow considering he stubbornly refused to use his left hand, even going so far as twisting his fingers oddly to manipulate two things at a time. Had he hurt his left arm?
He clicked the last piece together, locked the bar into place, and rose from his seat. Then he reached down to the boots and drew out his occult knife with a personal flourish. A small click of a switch at the sheath and the blade's edge flared glowing blue, heat distorting the cold air around it in a small haze. He strode up and kneeled next to me.
A light stab chipped the ground, close to the mite. Job finished, he turned off the knife and stowed it back in his boot with another reflexive flourish.
Father never played around with his rifle like this, but the knife was something more personal to him. It seemed almost a reflex of his to twirl that blade whenever he drew or sheathed it.
"Watch," he said, pointing at the chipped ground, "and don't ask foolish questions."
The nearby mite quickly drifted toward the damage. Small legs held its far larger body aloft, moving haphazardly in the general direction. In a few moments, those mechanical forelimbs had gotten close enough to probe the chipped surface. It continued to fuss over the damage for a moment before moving itself into a position it seemed to appreciate better.
Then it lowered its body, almost as if to kiss the damage, and the abdomen comically lifted up. Tiny sparks of lightning flashed from where the machine's mouth would have been, striking the damaged spot. So tiny I wouldn't have seen it unless I'd been looking for it.
Fortunately, I was doing just that. With each flash of miniature lightning,
parts of the ground… appeared from nowhere? Something was filling in the missing parts of the stone floor. In moments, it scuttled off, job finished.
Nothing of the knife's attack remained on the ground, save for the chips it had cut off.
"They don't care what or who causes damage, they simply live to fix it,"
Father said. "They never stop, and they never rest. Mites build without reason. As if they have some grand design in their heads they worship."
I wasn't even sure what to ask about next, knowing he'd probably reproach anything obvious.
I was burning with curiosity at the whole thing and had no outlet for answers. The roof was almost claustrophobically low to the ground and made

me feel like we were crawling around a seedier Undercity. The only thing missing were the hawkers, merchants, scoundrels, and children running amok. The silence was downright eerie.
We moved through the alleyway, Father clearly searching for something.
He stopped every few doorways, peering inside each for only a few moments before moving on. Some of these buildings had chairs and counters, but all were made of gray concrete.
"How are we going to make it back to the surface?" I asked as we explored.
"They will likely leave one airship behind as a search party," he said.
"The rest of the expedition will have to depart six hours from now in order to reach Urs's orbital path and refuel."
The next closest of the celestial gods within reach was Tsuya. The search party had its own deadline.
"How long do they have before Tsuya's orbit is out of range?"
"Likely two days." Father turned to glance at me, pausing his search. "If we don't reach the surface before then, they will be forced to leave, and we will be stranded. Survival will not be easy."
He let the gravity of the situation sink into me before he continued. "We need to get close enough to contact them. They'll help us coordinate an escape within the time limit."
"Will it be difficult to make it out?"
He nodded. "Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. I know the way. Follow my orders and we will live."
Only relic knights could venture down here. It was clear Father had experience from previous expeditions into the underground.
This wasn't a hard rule, only that anyone who explored the underground without relic armor rarely came back.
Maybe it was my imagination, but there was an undertone to his voice I hadn't heard before.
"What are you searching for?"
"I suffered some damage to the armor earlier. My reserve power cell has been drained. I need to finish repairs on the armor and recharge the cell. The journey out will take hours, possibly a day. We will need every drop of power."
The next building caught his attention. It seemed like he'd found something here. Instead of continuing to the next building, we ventured

farther into the gloom. The only light here was the thousands of teal glimmering lights, all of them mites.
Father noticed I'd been staring after those. "The lights and body shape of the mites tell you what colony they're part of," he said as he examined the interior, headlight now turning on to get a better view of the dark room. The thousands of teal lights became almost unnoticeable in the harsh light. "When this teal colony leaves, another will inevitably arrive. They'll tear down everything here and rebuild something new. A different city."
Now that we could see detail with the headlights, it was immediately apparent that electronics and metal completely consumed the inner walls of this room. Wiring and geometric metal lined the blocks deeper into the building. Everything seemed to have been subsumed by a machine or computer of some kind.
The only thing recognizable from this weird contraption was a power cell port on the off side, on a raised pedestal. Everything else I couldn't possibly venture a guess at. It almost looked cancerous even. If machines could have cancer.
His right hand fished through the suit's leg plates, and one side slid open,
revealing a standard power cell tucked into it. This one was dead and spent,
empty. "That could be a charging station built by mites, if the gods favor us with luck."
"Could be?" What does that mean?
Father didn't answer; instead, he unhooked the cell, then connected it to the charging station's port. Waiting now for something to happen.
"Mites are afflicted by madness," he said as he waited. "Most things mites make are just decoration as far as we know. Replicas, half-finished constructions, or outright useless junk."
I'd never seen power cells charged like this. And only now did I realize how much I'd taken the celestial flyovers for granted. "Are these charging stations the way undersiders power their power cells?"
Father nodded. "The undersiders don't have reliable refueling like we have on the surface. They need to find fountains like this or kill machines and rip their hearts out. The cells themselves aren't rare down here, but repowering them is more difficult. It's the exact opposite of the surface. They'll trade with us as a last resort in times of drought."
It seemed convoluted and so much more effort than the celestial flyovers.
Up on the surface, we'd simply put the power cells anywhere outside and the

gods would recharge them, so long as the cells were directly under their orbit as they flew by in their satellite fortresses.
Father sighed, reaching for the power cell. "It looks like this fountain is also junk. Something should have happened by now."
Mites seemed like blind artists, from what I'd seen. They were creating things, but almost in a dreamlike manner. "And you said some of what they make is functional?"
He confirmed it. I could work with that. No matter how the mites built,
the age-old wisdom still stood strong: where there were wires, there would be power. If I could find the power line, I might find a functioning charging station.
The charging station might be incomplete, shut off, or never intended to work in the first place, but it had been similar enough to the real thing that it fooled Father into trying. I could be reasonably sure the power wires would likely look the same here. My headlights illuminated the room as I explored farther behind the pedestal while he extracted his cell.
It was a rat nest of wires, all connecting to metal cubes and other structures.
One of the wires stood out to me. It was slightly larger and more unique than the others, with faint red markings. The difference was subtle, but I'd been an engineer all my life. This was the sort of thing I could spot.
"We're wasting time. Come," Father said from the side, already walking off.
I caught up behind him. "How are you searching for the charging stations?"
"Instinct. The buildings that hold items within look slightly different from others. It's not a pattern I could describe in words. They're all unique but in slightly different ways from the other buildings."
We returned to the alleyway outside the room. Farther down it widened out into more of a marketplace, with large pillars supporting the expanding roof. Father continued to explore certain buildings over others, each time spending a few minutes inside before venturing back out. A failure for each.
Knights had at least two power cells on their person, one actively used by their armor and the other as reserves. Once the armor ran out of power, it would be immovable. If he'd already run through his first power cell… "How long until your current charge ends?"
"Long enough," he replied over comms, spending time in the bowels of

the current building he'd been exploring.
"I know the armor can calculate exactly how much time until it shuts off."
"It can."
"So how much time at this current pace?"
"We'll find another charging station soon enough. One will eventually work. You don't need to worry about this."
Did he think I was a child? I almost asked him again, but a tinge of fear gripped me, and I decided to pick my battles. If Father didn't want to tell me,
he could keep his secrets.
Instead, I'd be doing my part. Fake tents and odd buildings filled the vacant marketplace. Hundreds of wires littered the grounds and walls. It took some time to spot what I'd been looking for. A wire, leading off from somewhere deeper, up to a two-story building farther in the distance.
I walked in that direction, passing by dozens of houses on the way,
climbing up a staircase to reach the second floor. Inside, my headlights toggled on.
And shining back in the darkness was another charging fountain.
I got Father's attention quickly and reported to him what I'd found.
"How? You haven't spent more than an hour awake down here. There's no chance you know what to look for. If this is a joke, I will not be amused,"
he answered back.
"How about you come here and find out then?"
There wasn't a reply. Instead, he left his current building and stormed over to where I waved.
Father climbed up the stairs and peered inside the building I'd selected.
Then grunted. "Don't hold your breath. The chance this works is slim."
The building he'd left didn't have any power wires leaving it, and I suspect it also had an incomplete charging station within. I'm almost sure I was correct about this. None of the other buildings had this type of wire entering them.
Father delved farther into the room, unhooking the spent power cell. Then he inserted it into the charging port.
Nothing happened. Father scoffed.
"See? Now, give—" A halo illuminated the entry port, cutting him off mid-sentence.
Green glowing liquid, flecked with bright motes of gold, swirling dust,

surged into the cell. It filled just about three-fourths of the way before the terminal dimmed and died out. It looked like this fountain was now spent.
The cell was withdrawn by Father's careful hand and inspected quietly,
almost hesitantly even.
"How exactly did you find this room?" he asked.
"I noticed a wire I suspected was a power line and I followed it here."
Father shook his head. "The thicker wire with that red marking? That's been tried before. It hasn't proved to work any better or worse than a die toss.
You threw the right roll by happenstance."
"You knew about the wiring?"
"Do you think us stupid? Or did you think the first naïve solution that comes to your mind would be something every relic knight before you had somehow missed?"
A flush of shame passed through me. I didn't answer back, instead looking down to the ground. It's odd how obvious it was in hindsight, once pointed out like so.
"Tame that insufferable pride, boy. It will only get you killed down here."
The refueled cell's light remained strong, the liquid shining through the small observation glass of the cell.
Finding a concrete chair, he settled down into a more comfortable position, carefully shifting, once again not moving his left arm an inch through the entire process. A wound he didn't want to aggravate?
The power cell was opened up again, then tilted. Liquid poured in controlled amounts over the armor's damaged sections. I knew what was going to happen next: I'd seen him do just that dozens of times back home. It still fascinated me—a testament to the heights technology had been taken to.
Once upon a time, there were people who understood how this worked.
It was imperceivable at first. Just faint metallic powder, starting to stream from the furrows that lined the armor. It looked like simple dust knocked free from the armor, floating down to the earth without any other intention.
However, some unnatural current of air twisted this dust cloud around,
making it flow like mist just slightly above the armor. Soon it covered the armor, moving with purpose from that unseen wind. The destination became clear as the many dust rivers started converging on the spilled power cell liquid.
There had never been a printer found that could create relic armor. Each armor had been discovered in some way, abandoned at some point by their

previous users. Either in derelicts, taken as spoils of war, or traded from the undersiders, who in turn found it deep within the depths. Here was the reason these relics could survive eons despite no one knowing how to even print repair parts for them.
This was the very soul of the armor.

CHAPTER TWELVE

YOU DON'T BELONG HERE

T

he black dust cloud pooled on top of the spilled fuel. The liquid shimmered, light coming from within it. It was that golden light that the armor's spirit absorbed.
The metallic swirl whisked away the glow from existence. One small droplet's worth, one after another.
Condensation formed under the dust, the smallest droplets already freezing from the ambient temperature. Typical of a power cell, water was the waste material once it extracted the energy portion.
Father held out bits of cut alloy scraps from his pack in offering to the cloud. The armor accepted and surrounded it, nibbling away until nothing remained in his hands except for the ceramic white shards that had been originally on the scrap.
The dust would swirl around the matter it consumed, then stream back down to fuss over the damaged sections. Frayed parts grew back as it consumed the scrap. In about ten minutes, the armor had repaired its leg back to working condition. It had left only frozen condensation and rejected material behind.
There were many names for this spirit. But no argument that this wasn't the very soul of the armor.
Each relic armor had its own. So long as parts of the soul were still active,
it could rebuild armor from even a fragment, though I'd never heard of anyone insane enough to put that to the test. These were too rare to experiment on. The chance of losing the armor would be terrifying.
Father withdrew the moderately spent power cell, tucking it back into the suit's leg holder as reserve. It clicked shut, pulling the room back into

darkness. Our headlights were the only source left. In the new obscurity, the teal-lit mites seemed to spring up everywhere. On the ceilings, walls, and ground, now noticeable again.
"Do they… attack people?" I'd always heard that the machines from the underground attacked humans. I'd just had my first encounter with one a few minutes ago, and so far it hadn't even acknowledged my presence. Couldn't be sure if it was intelligent or not.
Father stood back up, tossing aside the waste material and wiping off the accumulated sleet. "So long as the superstructure isn't changed from whatever design is in their head, they ignore everything and everyone."
"Can I touch one? And it won't bite back?"
He seemed taken aback by that question. "I... suppose you could. Why would you want to?"
Curiosity propelled me, taking off the environmental suit's gloves, skin exposed in the open air. Chill instantly siphoned the warmth in my hand, but I could bear with it for a moment. There was no way I could pick up something that small with these thick gloves.
Father looked on with what I think was puzzlement.
The mite didn't try to escape when my hand loomed over it. Neither did it deviate its course when I picked it up. Its legs continued to twitch and flail around, searching for the ground but otherwise not any more bothered by the lack of it. The body was still tiny, almost hard to grab. Closer inspection showed that the light they'd carried was at the front, almost where the eyes would be if this were an animal.
I sat the mite down on the palm of my hand and watched. It really looked like a tiny, fat hybrid of a triangle and rectangle. A metallic ant. The legs quickly gripped to my palm, and the machine crawled around, its tiny forelimbs probing my skin almost in annoyance. Maybe because of the icecold air that was already numbing my hand, there wasn't any bit of a sensation.
Or more likely, it truly was too small and light. Soon it had reached the edge and made no move to slow down. I had to rotate my hand to prevent it from falling, but even so, the mite continued to single-mindedly seek the edge no matter how I turned.
"What I can't understand is why you wouldn't want to see these things in more detail, Father. They're fascinating."
He said nothing to that. Instead, he shook his head and continued down

the empty streets, still searching for something, knocking on walls occasionally.
"You said they break down the work of other mites. What happens when two living colonies are in the same area?"
Father grunted. "They don't fight. They deconstruct the other's buildings while building their own, from what I've heard. They don't care where the damage comes from, even if it's from other mites. They'll simply try to fix it.
Whatever form that looks like."
I could see what he meant. My mite hadn't stopped trying to throw itself off my hand from the very moment I'd picked it up. They truly had one-track minds. "Is it even possible to walk through a section that's trapped between two colonies?"
"Mites build randomly, but there's always a path forward that's accessible by foot. They seem to follow that rule above all others. When two colonies fight for ground, they seem to agree on a mutual main path."
I let the mite walk off my hand. It tumbled down onto the ground, coming to a stop on its back. Its legs continued to seek the ground without success.
Other mites stopped and made their way to their fallen brother. In moments,
their forelimbs helped lift and rotate the distressed mite back onto the ground proper. So, they could at least speak to one another and had some sense of teamwork.
"If I brought back a mite to the surface, what would happen?"
"It would return to its colony?"
"You don't know?"
"I don't see any reason to study these. They can't be tamed. A mite speaker might know better."
Father stopped in his tracks, then groaned deeply, his right hand palming his head as if he'd made a mistake. "... They're undersiders who claim to communicate with the mites. Mite speaker. It's in the name."
"Claim to?"
"No one knows anything about the mites or what built them. All I'm certain of is that the underground looks the way it does because of them.
Anyone who tells you they know more is double-dealing and trying to fleece you of something. You're a Winterscar, spotting this should be intuitive."
Now that their fellow mite brother had been rescued from its orientation issues, the mites left with disinterest, searching for anything that didn't fit the blueprint they'd designed. My gloves neatly slipped back on my hands as I

followed behind.
This place felt like a city, but only in how a painter would draw a city from memory. There were missing structures and city planning that just weren't present. More like a lucid dream, a simulation of a city. "Will the colony always make this exact city?"
I could tell I was treading some dangerous ground here with Father. All these questions weren't something he enjoyed hearing from me. To him, it was all scholar scrapshit, and I was sounding more and more like a Reacher caste by the minute.
But this wasn't information I'd be able to guess on my own, and as far as I understood his methods and rules, he'd only get angry at things I could have figured out.
"I don't know if they create the same city over and over. Again, those are questions for the undersiders who live down here."
"And you've never asked them?"
"Most of the undersiders all stay within the safety of the cities. And as surface dwellers, we're unwelcome in their cities. We're seen as surface scum—desperate thieves at best, a deserved reputation at worst. Now end it with all these questions. We're not safe or out of the snow yet."

We continued exploring blindly for the next hour while I processed all I'd learned so far. Occasionally, we'd take breaks to eat rations and drink. We never stopped for long, and he always remained tense. As if expecting the worst to happen.
In the clan, everyone loved to gossip about how danger-filled the underground was, making it seem inhospitable to anyone who didn't have relic armor. The first time any of this became reality to me was when Father stopped in his tracks and forced us to hide inside a room several streets away from where he'd noticed the danger. There, we stood in the dark, headlights turned off.
Comms off. Quiet, he signaled with his hand.
Acknowledged, I signaled back. Status?
Enemy. Possible. Nearby. He moved his hand quietly, shaping each so that they were clear in the gloom. I heard nothing nearby. The city was as

quiet as it had always been for the past few hours. Something had seriously spooked Father, however.
Machine?
Yes, he answered. Draw weapons.
I nodded and slowly took out my scavenger pistol, safety clicking off,
muffled under my thick gloves. He brought out his own rifle and aimed with one hand out through the doorway. For twenty minutes we stood still, ready for action.
It was the longest twenty minutes of my life.
Father's weapon dropped back down from its ready position and he stood up, breaking the silence. "They've moved past us."
"How did you spot them?" I had seen nothing nor heard anything. It seemed like he'd just randomly decided to hunker down.
Father stood back up, grabbing my own outstretched arm and pulling me to my feet. "I didn't spot them, but the signs were there. Machines are predictable. I had a suspicion we'd walked into a patrol path of theirs."
"Had we?"
Outside, the world looked the same as we'd left it, but Father still nodded.
"I had the armor amplify sound. Heard them pass by a few streets away from here. We're behind their patrol right now. Need to make ourselves scarce…
and soon."
That's exactly what we did, picking a path completely perpendicular to where we'd had our close call. I hadn't heard or seen anything, but this pattern of stopping to hide repeated three times over. Each time, Father would notice some evidence of machine patrol and have us hide in a room or building, waiting until they passed by. He'd point out how certain sections of the city had more debris than others—signs of machines lumbering by and damaging the roads. The mites would fix the holes, but the bits that were kicked off would remain, cluttering the place slightly more.
The longest it took was a half-hour.
Each time, I never saw a hint of the enemy. That didn't make any of it any less tense. Here was something that genuinely worried Father of all people.
Whenever the underground felt out of reach, the clan would complain about how it wasn't worth the price to live down there. How dangers like this were too much to pay for the benefits of living free from the climate. But anytime a glimmer of hope came up, like a House announcing they'd

recovered a new relic armor, everyone would be suddenly filled with stories of how wonderful it would be to finally travel back down to where we all deserved to live. Finding some meadow, forest, or even a metal fortress.
Anything was better than the cold.
There was so much more to the underground than I had ever known. And Father had clearly known about it the whole time.
"Why didn't you tell me about this?" I asked him while we hiked through the stillborn city.
"You never asked."
Oh great, semantics. "Don't you think it's important?"
"Why would it be important?"
"It's the underground! Of course it'd be important," I said. "All of civilization lives down here, and eventually the clan will migrate here too."
Father stopped and turned, faceless helmet holding my gaze. "When?"
This felt like a trap. Like another one of his lessons. But it was the ultimate goal of all the surface clans—to gather enough relic armors such that we could claim and hold land against the machines on a lower level.
"Compared to the other surface clans, we're well on our way so far," I diplomatically answered.
He shook his head slowly. "No. Not in our lifetime, or your children's lifetime. Lord Atius will see that day, but none of us will."
"What? Why?"
"Numbers. Even the smallest city has at least a hundred armors. We've barely collected over fifty, and they say the clan is a little over three hundred years old. Even the poorest undersider lives like a king compared to us." He continued down, periodically knocking on the walls as he went.
A hundred relic armors? For a small city?
Something was off about this, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It felt like he wasn't telling the full truth, but the right questions slipped through my mind like sand.
We turned the corner and ran into another dead end. Instead of backtracking, Father tapped on the wall here as well. It sounded hollow. "If I had told you about the underground, you'd eventually wind up finding a way in through some chasm while seeking it out."
He took a few steps back in my direction. "I'm not blind to your curiosity, boy. There are pathways and tunnels everywhere leading down into the underground, all of them miles away from safety. You'd die within the

hour from the first encounter with the automaton."
Before I could press him for more answers, he crouched into a runner's stance and then exploded into a dead sprint forward.
The wall ahead stood absolutely no chance. It crumbled into pieces as he tackled through it.
"What are you doing?" I shouted. Where the mites had been wandering mindlessly, now they moved to the wall with purpose, swarming toward it.
Already the nearest had begun the tiny repairs.
Father's voice echoed past the ruined walls. "I'm searching for a way out.
Get in before the mites seal the way. They work quicker than you might suspect."
I wasn't sure if this was such a great idea, but it was clear the mites wouldn't attack us, as he'd said before. They'd already grouped on the edge of the broken wall, their numbers making it look like a glowing teal line. If I hadn't seen them up close, I could have easily confused it with the occult.
They seemed to have a monopoly on glowing lines.
Peering past the wall revealed it was only another empty building interior.
A countertop lined the side of the room. It vaguely resembled a barkeeper's shop. I turned on my own headlights for additional illumination. Father's form stood back up in the pulverized concrete dust, his figure obscured by the light beams lighting the particles.
I sulked in my head and considered what he'd said before, that withholding information from me was for my safety. It didn't escape notice that I'd done the same to Kidra for similar reasons. Choosing not to tell her what the House had been doing to encourage Father's addiction.
Turning his words around in my head, I hunted for a counterpoint and failed to find any. Father's reasoning… was sound. I'd just assumed it wasn't from the start, searching instead for a way to validate my initial feelings.
Which hadn't been based on any logic, now that I examined that thought in isolation. Ahhh ratshit.
That was a textbook sign of self-deception.
Tame that insufferable pride, boy. It will only get you killed down here.
I'd become more impulsive on this expedition. Too single-minded on my goal for that missing tech, looking for it in places I should have known had little to no chance for a discovery. Taking risks that even my status as part of the nobility wouldn't protect me from—if they'd ever found out about it.
It burned to admit, but Father was correct on this point. If he'd told me

more about the underground, I would have almost certainly found myself slipping through those cracks, thinking I could survive down here.
Convincing myself into a stupid death.
"Keith, the three gods left the world to protect us. They struggle and suffer each day against the oblivion beyond Earth. What do you think would happen if the gods left their post in the heavens? If they rested instead of upholding their duty?"
It was just like him to pull up faith when he wanted to explain something more complicated. All right, I'll play his game.
The three gods circling the world—Urs, Tsuya, and Talen—floating in orbit around the world, deep in the heart of their flying fortresses. Each protecting the world with one hand to the darkness of space and the other stretched out to their people. To recharge our power cells when they flew above.
Those power cells fueled our heaters, ships, environmental suits—
everything really. I thought about the gods simply not being up there. No more celestial flyovers. No way to recharge power cells.
We'd all be dead within the week.
"The gods did not choose lightly, Keith. They are not returning—not now, not ever. They knew the cost of leaving, and they paid that price. A hundredfold. The surface is not where they belong anymore—and the underground is not where you belong either."
I got the message. This place wanted us dead.
Father took my silence for what it was and continued farther into the gloomy room. "Come. This should hold our target."
Inside, the walls once more became less concrete and more metal and electronics. At the center of this room wasn't a fountain but a pillar of metal with a screen and keyboard oddly held by metal arms at the side.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing.
Father walked up to it, hand reaching out. "With any luck, our guide."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A TEST OF MIGHT AND MITE

H

e examined the mite creation, tapping the sides and buttons experimentally with his hand. "Activate."
Nothing happened.
"Start. Wake up. Download." On he went, going through a generic list of trigger words, frustration leaking out with each failed attempt. The keyboard did nothing and the screen had no buttons to press. The terminal remained unconvinced throughout the interrogation. No signs of power.
Father didn't seem to mind as I sat down and inspected the weird object myself. Maybe it had an on-off switch somewhere on a panel? This was assuming the mites had even built one. There was nothing that looked like switches or buttons, besides that keyboard. Instead, only wires and geometric statues that looked like decorations at the base. They led out of the terminal,
moving off farther into the city.
"Is this terminal junk?" I asked.
"That's uncertain. I won't be able to tell if this is functional or junk until I've exhausted all the possible ways to turn it on."
That was the conundrum. It wasn't always obvious when something couldn't work. These mites… what strange little buggers they were. They seemed to build in all kinds of quality, from artistic to functional.
And… I thought I'd seen this kind of behavior before. A theory bubbled up in my mind. Something that I, fortunately, could test. If I was right about this, it could at least let us know if this terminal was worth spending time on or not.
"Is it safe to explore around?"
Father grunted in reply. "We're far from the last patrol path, but stay

nearby. Close enough that you can get to me in a few seconds. What are you planning?"
"I'm getting myself a pet mite."
That left him quite confused.
Once I was outside the room, I made my way across the alleyway to another building. Here, there were just concrete walls and an empty windowsill. The room was desolate except for one thing: teal lights all over the walls. Taking off my gloves for dexterity, I snatched one of those mites up. It reacted like the previous mite had, trying to walk off my hand. Each time I turned direction, the mite would also unerringly change its own, almost like a handheld compass.
I headed back to the dead terminal with my captive in tow, watching how it reacted the whole way. My conclusion on this micro-test: the mite had a location in mind where it belonged, and it would keep trying to get there.
"What are you planning, boy?" Father didn't seem amused by my antics as he watched me toy around with the mite in hand.
"Science! Mind if I use your knife real quick? No guarantees, but there might be a way to figure out if the terminal's functional or not without spending too much time. I want to gather proof to confirm it for myself first."
He stared for a moment, then kneeled to bring out the knife with his usual flourish. He presented it hilt first to me.
"You're oddly cooperative," I noted.
"So long as your experiment is quick," he replied. "On the off chance your hunch is correct, I'd be a fool to have blocked your path." His helmet took a quick scan around the room, contemplating. "Mites often like to hide things or play tricks of that nature. These terminals aren't easy to find, so I need to be absolutely sure it's unworkable rather than a power source being hidden here. You have until I'm finished. Talen be with us, boy."
I grabbed the knife from his extended hand. Father nodded and turned back to the terminal, searching for hidden compartments, occasionally muttering things into his helmet.
Occult weapons were oddly light, even though density-wise they really had no business being this weight. Not quite light as a feather, but light enough. A small switch at the side of the hilt let me turn the weapon on. It flared to life in hand.
Now, for my next hat trick…
I kneeled to test my next theory, excitement burning about the

possibilities. I let go of the mite in hand at the terminal's base panel, right by what looked like an abstract statue. I savagely stabbed that decoration immediately after.
Okay, maybe not savagely-savagely. But enough that someone's granddad would have yelled at me for it.
Mite-built metal or not, the occult weapon carved into it without issue.
The damage this thing could do was several leagues above vandalism. And the mites reacted accordingly.
Instantly, every single teal light in the room marched as one to go handle the damage.
All except for a single rebel teal light: the mite I'd pilfered.
Despite the proximity, it simply ignored the problem and walked back to the empty room I'd spirited it away from.
I followed the little rebel, then stabbed the concrete ground lightly right in front of it. This time, the lazy mite went to help fix the city substructure with its fellows. Once done, it promptly continued on its single-minded war path home.
There had indeed been something I'd recognized in the mites, more of a behavior really. If I considered the mites more like human tinkerers... I could map a sort of culture in my mind.
"The mites are craftsmen," I said.
"They're what?" Father asked, not quite understanding what I meant.
"The mites might not be one super hive mind. They look more divided into sub-groups, and each of those groups has land staked out to do what they want in it."
Some mites might have been more motivated to create, and others might just be doing the bare minimum to get by. And some others, like the mite I'd pilfered from the empty room, hadn't worked on anything at all.
They all pitched in to fix the superstructure—the city itself—but individual creations were up to the sub-groups that squatted in those parts.
"Bizarre theory. And you learned that from playing around with a mite?
What's your proof?"
I pointed at the renegade, who'd been happily walking against the flow of traffic. "That one. I swiped it from another room. A room where nothing was built inside besides the city superstructure. See how it's not helping? This isn't the room it's assigned to."
Father nodded, shrugged, then turned his attention back to the terminal.

"The mites are not human. Don't forget to factor that in as well."
Was I personifying these machines too much? They might think and feel in ways humans absolutely couldn't and I was only seeing the surface of it all.
There were bigger things to care about down here. The mites might have ranked too low for the relic knights traversing down here. Those mite speakers might have already discovered all this, but Father clearly hadn't talked to one, since this was all news to him.
"There's one more test I need to do. How much time do we have?"
"Half an hour, not a moment more."
"That's all the time we can spare?"
"That's all the time I gave myself to find the power source. Each hour increases the chance machines find us. Their patrols can change, or I could miss the signs. It's only a matter of time until that happens."
"Can you carry me to speed me up then?"
Environmental suits were absolutely not designed for running around or sprinting in mind. It'd be a bit hard to work around his arm problem, but the family armor should be able to carry me easily with one hand.
He'd done it before—and he'd caught up to a moving airspeeder while ferrying both me and my sister. I was smaller back then, but my sister hadn't grown that much taller since.
"No," he said flatly. "If the armor runs out of energy, we're dead. We need to ration what we have. Martial your strength. Half an hour, then we continue forward, and you won't slow us down for experiments next time. Do we have a deal, boy?"
"Fine. And if it does work, you'll trust me for that next time then. Fair?"
"Don't make terms with me. I'm already giving you the benefit of the doubt."
But he didn't make a move to stop me; instead, he turned back to the terminal to continue messing with the controls.
It was going to be a struggle to run, but I had food and drink to recoup that energy. Power cells were the bottleneck resources right now. Couldn't be helped.
I gritted my teeth and bolted out into the alleyway now that I was on the clock, looking for rooms with structures inside them. It didn't take long to find what I'd been looking for, thankfully: the last piece of the puzzle for my tests.

Its screen was halfway completed. Metal plating was missing or forgotten about. Its circuit boards didn't have correct endings, nor were they even connected to the whole. I had no idea what this structure was supposed to mimic, but it was clearly defective. Into the room I went.
Father's knife hummed again in my hands as I sliced off a piece of the mite tech, specifically a circuit board from the wall. And then I watched as this room's mites went to fix the board.
It took them three minutes. During that time, the resulting board looked similar to the one I had cut.
Similar, but not exact. There were additions in odd places and outright missing parts.
There were far fewer ways to create something that worked compared to a near-infinite number of ways to make something that didn't. No need to guess this wasn't a working piece.
I raced back to the terminal. The mites were already finishing up their touches to the sliced statue.
Hilt first, I returned Father's knife to his hand. "Look at how the slicedoff piece is an exact replica of the piece they're re-building." I picked up the sliced-off, identical decoration but quickly dropped it right back. Metal was cold. I got busy putting my gloves back on. "I'm almost positive it'll work, it's simply not powered on. What are the chances that the power source is inside the room?"
"Moderate," he said. "I suspect the wires are where the power would come from. It's only unknown how far away the source is. We could travel a half an hour or more before reaching it." Father stared at the terminal with contemplation. "They could also end nowhere at any time."
"In my mind," I said, "any engineer proud of his work wouldn't leave it with no way to turn on. I don't know if the mites would think like that, but my hunch says they wouldn't have made something like this in a spot of land where power wasn't accessible. The wires are for something. We should track them."
Father nodded at that and shrugged. "That seems in character with the city's possible rules. You're on a time limit, are you sure you want to follow these wires?"
I thought for a moment, then nodded. I was sure. Father stood without another word and began a quick march outside. I trailed behind, both nervous and hopeful.

We passed by plenty of mite structures along the path, some of them just blocks with flashing lights. Others were multiple screens, all rotated at different angles, and all of them black and unpowered. But the wires were all there, they just weren't always connected—except for ours, which was systematically unbroken. Each minute, my confidence grew. It had to lead somewhere.
We left the building entirely, following the wires across the alleyway in a quick jog. They looped and traveled wildly around the path, grouping together and splitting apart at different times.
Eventually, over the course of ten minutes, it led us to a massive building.
This had been filled with hundreds of wires, entering the site from all directions. All of it converged indoors on a massive switchboard filled with lights. A podium near the center had all sorts of buttons, levers, and valves that surrounded the small space. It was quite obvious that the switchboard was connected in some way to all those controls.
"Have you seen this before?" I asked Father hesitantly.
He nodded. "Mites leave puzzles like this occasionally. A team I was on a few years ago ran into a building like this one. Those switches control the lights." He pointed, then casually flipped a switch by the podium controls. A few lights blinked on while others turned off. "Our theory was that this controlled power in a block of the city, but the mites had built it in such a way to be difficult—if not impossible—to turn something on intentionally. It ended up being a waste of time, unfortunately."
I quickly saw what he meant. Each press of a button and pull of a lever showed predictable pattern changes in lights, just like a puzzle. Some switches would only change a few lights, and other switches would change dozens at the same time. That was all well and good, but this had at least thirty possible controls.
"Do you know what I'm supposed to do with all this?" I waved at the switchboard.
Father shook his head. "We spent only a few minutes before deciding it wasn't worth investigating further."
"How much time do I have?"
"Twelve minutes."
No surprise, the relic armor probably had a timer counting down on the

heads-up display inside his helmet. I decided I was going to make all the lights turn on to start with.
The patterns melded into my thoughts, and with each button press, I could see how the whole would work. It took a few minutes to categorize all the commands possible, but there was a pattern to this as well. And a few tricks.
A good number of these controls had duplicate effects once you lined it up in your head, even if the controls looked physically different.
I felt at home with this little brain teaser; I'd always been good with numbers. My mind flicked through the permutations until I'd found a path to light them all up.
After a minute of rapid switch turning, a wrench in the works hit. Turning on too many lights would cause the entire board to switch off. That lasted a few seconds before the switchboard would turn on again and reset back to its original configuration.
The mites showed no change in their behavior—they really didn't care about anything besides fixing what was broken.
Father, on the other hand, looked almost nervous, as if he'd seen something he hadn't expected. "Were you clicking things at random?"
"No, there's a pattern to it, like you said. I can see how I can get the results I want."
"It's impossible you could have learned how to do that this fast," he said,
but there was uncertainty in his voice.
"Fine then. Pause the timer and pick out any light. I'll have it turned on in thirty seconds."
"Thirty seconds only, and this one." He rose to my challenge, pointing out a small light in a line near the end of the switchboard. I calculated in my head, saw the path forward, and pressed five switches rapidly one after the other. On the final switch flick, the light he'd pointed at lit up brightly. A surge of pride bubbled up in me.
"That had to be luck," he said.
"Want to try another? I could do this all day."
The helmet obviously obscured any expression from him, but his silence told me everything. "No, I stand by my word. Continue."
I played with the puzzle again, this time looking beyond the switchboard to see the actions each flip and twist would cause. It was all well and good to turn on lights, but I had to know what those lights meant.
The obvious conclusion made me almost groan at the wasted time. Wires

leading off also had lights built in. When the switches were pulled, some of these wires would have their lights also turned on. And one of these wires would lead back to the terminal which, I was willing to bet, had no light switched on. The problem with all this: there were hundreds of wires. I'd forgotten which one was my terminal wire.
"Ratshit. We're going to need to go back to the terminal." I sighed,
pointing out what I'd found out about the wires to him. It had taken us ten minutes to get here in the first place. By the time we arrived back at the terminal, that half-hour of experimentation time would be gone.
Father reached out and grabbed my shoulder. I thought I'd done something off until he patted my shoulder awkwardly. "I'll end the timer."
I nodded back, unsure how to answer. Was he saying that he believed I had a working solution?
Father turned and continued to walk, and I followed behind. We didn't say anything to each other, but a warm feeling was left in my stomach.

Halfway through our return, he came to an abrupt stop. Danger was signaled out, along with a "stop all motion" order. His helmet scanned around, looking in different directions as if trying to hear or spot something through the alleyways.
There was only silence as far as I could tell.
He burst into action a second later, picking me straight up without a word of warning and bolting away.
A wailing scream sounded in the city, shrill and chilling. It was joined by others, almost like wolves that'd found prey. Feelings of panic deep inside started stirring. "Wait —what's that? Slavers?" I half-whispered, trying to keep as quiet as I could over the comms.
"Does that sound anything like a human to you?" Father hissed back.
Machines.
I'd always thought they would be silent killers, mechanical and precise.
Without emotion. In my imagination, they'd swarm without a sound, only grim intent following a program of some sort.
Reality was clearly different. The machines sounded outright primal,
more feral than even animals could be. They howled and screamed, the

voices coming closer despite Father's speed. We couldn't see them yet, but it was clear they were closing in.
In minutes, we had made our way through the alleyways. He let go of me,
shouting to keep running on my own into the clearing up ahead. Father reached into his belt with his free hand and dropped one of his two grenades on the floor mid-run. He didn't bother to align it more in the center of the pathway. It bounced after him, rolling to a stop as we sprinted far past it.
It hadn't been primed, instead left alone and inert in the hallway.
Father spoke out over the screeches, easily catching up behind me.
"They're called screamers. Close-range rank and file that bank on shock and awe. They'll cut you to pieces if they get in range."
"Can we outrun them?" My short breath was already an answer to that.
Even sprinting for a few moments had already winded me. The environmental suit and gear I carried were too heavy for this kind of effort.
"They've already pinged us. Running was never an option. We'll need to fight, win quickly, and run before more come."
We stopped at the center of the clearing. This was where Father decided we'd make our stand. The corridor we'd just come from would funnel the enemy, and the plaza would give him room to fight. As good as it would get to tilt the odds.
"Make sure your gun is loaded," he said, speaking fast. "Find a building to hide in and let me handle this. My armor can take hits, your environmental suit can't."
He turned to stare at me and grasped my shoulder with his hand again.
"Keith, listen to me closely. They will kill you if they get the chance. Don't expose yourself. Don't be stupid. And don't try any heroics. Are we clear?"
I nodded, and that was all the confirmation he needed. He made his way to the best position he could find in the clearing—the wall sides of the alleyway. There, he drew out his rifle and held it as steady as he could with a single working arm, using the edge of the wall as a makeshift grip. If there was any time to use his other hand, even if he aggravated the wound, it would be now.
Still, that arm remained limp at his side.
I could hear more screeching down the alley as I made my own way to cover. They overlapped one another, bloodthirst filling each terrifying howl.
Fear gnawed at my stomach. I tried to stamp it out with logic. Father had his relic armor; machines were no match for him from what I'd heard. It took

many working together to take down a relic wearer.
That sounded too good to be true all of a sudden. The clan gossip could have easily embellished the truth to make us all feel better.
No. We'd be fine. Everything would work out. I desperately wanted to believe that.
The mass of screams closing in promised a different faith.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE FACE OF DEATH

T

hey came into view, trailing right behind where we'd come from. I counted seven of them, racing toward us. From this distance, they seemed small. But I recognized just how tall the alleyway had been when we'd run through it, and their heads cleared window sills I couldn't have grabbed with my hand.
They were nightmares made manifest.
They had elongated legs and arms far too thin and long to be human proportions but just close enough to be uncanny. White plates of armor lined their bodies, and their hands ended in claws with rust or dried blood. Exposed pseudo rib cages, stark white, were covering black wiring mimicking where innards should have been if the creatures were alive. All of it juxtaposed to the bone-white carapace-like armor. They must have been seven or eight feet tall while hunched over.
The faces were the worst part. Like human skulls with far too many teeth and no jaw. Deep, glowing violet eyes that seemed tiny compared to the larger eye sockets, the violet motif also outlining the skeletal frame. Their spines jutted out, bladelike.
And they ran at us like starving predators that had finally spotted food.
Hunched over, occasionally using their arms as legs in those loping strides.
There was hardly any rhythm to their motions; they simply propelled themselves forward however they could.
I'd heard stories. Pilgrims from the undersider cities who reached the surface would tell us tales of the machines they'd find down here. The machines always seemed different, but the two unifying themes had been bone-white and terrifying. I understood now what they'd meant.

Father braced the rifle against his shoulder. Nothing but the wall edge gripped the gun's stock, his left hand still hanging limply at his side.
Even a broken arm could be moved in emergency situations. Did he think he could avoid using that arm for the entire fight? Or was he truly physically incapable of moving it?
He watched as the enemy descended toward us, no flicker of movement in his form. Waiting for the moment the enemy would be in effective range.
He didn't need to wait long, given their speed.
"Tsuya, guide me to victory," he prayed under his breath, then pulled the trigger.
A three-round burst of bullets rocketed out from the rifle, striking directly into the first rushing automaton, ripping its head backward and shattering pieces across the floor. The body collapsed on the ground, sliding to a stop across the concrete, lights winking out instantly.
He shifted focus to the dropped grenade next just as the feral group ran across. A single bullet flew true, and the world shook with fire. The explosion tore up two more automatons, but the rest surged through the dying flames without pause. It looked like they'd been spared the worst of the makeshift mine.
Father refocused on the next closest automaton and fired another round of bullets. It tried to dodge, but he tracked the movements and matched the direction with three more bursts of rifle shots. It wasn't a perfect takedown.
Still, the creature stumbled downward, arms failing to hold its weight as the skull-like head cracked hard onto the ground. The violet lights flickered across the monster, struggling to remain active. The creature blessedly couldn't get back up.
The next target gracefully dodged the hail of bullets sent its way, moving in a pattern that maximized Father's broken arm.
The relic armor compensated for recoil. His bursts were short and contained, but only so much could be done with one hand and the corner of a wall to work with.
The machines might not have had respect for the fallen, but they clearly hadn't been blind either and had already analyzed how to avoid the gunfire.
Father's gun clicked empty a moment later. He hadn't downed his third target. Four down, three still left to go.
He tossed the rifle and ammunition belt in my direction. "Reload this,
now!" he barked out, then kneeled and pulled out the boot knife with his

customary panache. The blade spun around in his palm, lit by a halo of blue as the weapon ignited mid-flourish. Father assumed the best stance he could muster, trying to balance the limp arm, taking a few steps back into the open to maximize mobility.
The rifle skidded to a halt nearby, and I scrambled out to grab it.
Despite the losses they'd taken, the machines continued their charge without hesitation.
The first automaton barreled into knife range. This close, I could see how massive they were as they overshadowed us. Almost three heads taller even while hunched, they must tower over humans if they bothered to stand up straight. Those arms were far longer than I had thought possible.
The opening attack was a bloodthirsty grab for his throat, but he'd clearly been prepared. With a quick duck and a head tilt to the right, he narrowly avoided the grasping hands by what looked to be sheer luck. Sparks flew as the metal claws scraped past his helmet.
He lunged forward in the same instant, knife seeking the automaton's throat now that he'd made it past the arms. The creature hadn't failed to notice and replicated Father's own movement, tilting its own head to the side to avoid the knife. Given the lanky arms, that might have been the best thing it could have done.
It wasn't quick enough to completely escape, and the knife cut through parts of the wiring exposed under where the jaw should have been. The automaton jerked and twitched in response but didn't collapse.
Knife still in hand, Father spun the dagger on his palm into an under grip and stabbed backward with a roar. It sunk into the back of the automaton's head down to the hilt, where Father's weight and power shoved the towering monster into the ground.
He let go of the hilt, making use of his freed-up hand to pull out the last grenade on his belt. It flew directly at the racing enemies, an expert toss.
No blinking lights. He hadn't primed the explosion.
The two targets instantly aborted their charge and leapt to the sides,
recognizing the incoming device without realizing it was harmless.
With the free time, Father extracted his knife with a jerk, standing up on top of his victim's death throes. The last two automatons twitched as they took stock of the situation, chittering to each other, realizing the deception he'd used had killed their charge.
Father raised his knife in wordless challenge. They stopped chittering and

hissed, moving farther apart, aiming to surround their single opponent next.
They still didn't get close to the grenade, keeping it far away. It looked like they weren't going to take chances with that.
I ducked my attention back to the rifle, frantically trying to hit the release switch. They built the weapon for relic users, compact and made for armored hands with far more dexterity than my clumsy gloves could manage. The fat fur that protected me well against the cold was actively stopping me from telling if I'd hit the small snag or not. Panic and frustration bloomed inside me, further slowing down my progress.
The automatons glanced at each other, contemplating, while Father took a step over the dead thing at his feet, using the body as leverage for high ground.
As one, the machines turned and focused their sight on the body. Their violet eyes strobed, a signal being sent.
The corpse Father stood on exploded.
The blast knocked him up, but his armor could handle that sort of weak indirect damage. The real danger was the loss of position and stance.
As soon as their ploy succeeded, the two automatons surged forward together, each trying to maximize their momentary advantage.
It worked. The long reach of the automatons lashed out, unerring, as Father landed hard on the ground. He only had enough time to recover his footing, dodging a swipe of a claw, but was then struck backward by the other strikes. The relic armor's shields flared to life with a blaze of blue light,
absorbing the blows. He scrambled out of the way, backpedaling on the defensive. One of the automaton's claws gripped his ankle, tripping him on his back.
He yanked his leg forward, the relic armor strong enough to overcome the automaton's pull. The knife flashed in his hand, neatly cutting the invader's wrist. Immediately, he rolled on the floor to the side, avoiding the follow-up attacks before lunging blindly up with the knife.
The automatons backed off, avoiding the obvious hit. It didn't buy him enough time to fully recover, as they leaped back moments later.
Relentless strikes flew at him, unyielding. Forced onto the defensive, he twisted, blocked, and stumbled through the onslaught, each time surviving with slimmer and slimmer margins. His armor took the brunt of the damage,
blue shield flaring over fatal hits but conserving itself during non-critical strikes. Those, the armor let through.

The machine assault racked and gouged lines into the family armor. In desperation, Father managed a few hits in the frantic melee, slicing off fingers or tearing out parts of the machine arm plates.
The fight reached a tense stalemate—the machines unable to batter past his one-handed defense, yet never losing an inch of ground. They could have continued to fight him into exhaustion until they spotted a better way.
Switching tactics, the machines began focusing their strikes, corralling him toward the nearest wall and abusing the lack of defense from the left arm they'd clearly noticed.
I hadn't been idle, but neither had I been efficient. The empty magazine had finally been released from the rifle, but a bullet had gotten free and lodged into the system when I'd incorrectly loaded a fresh clip. I frantically tried to reach into the mechanism with these fat gloves, wedging fingers into the magazine chamber to knock the bullet out. That only jammed the loose metal further into the rifle, the gloves too thick to get a grip.
Despair sank in my stomach like lead. My rush and inability to think through stress were costing me.
Almost like an afterthought, and far too late to help me anymore, was the realization that I could have taken off my gods-damned gloves in the first place. The environment down here was only cold—this wasn't the surface.
Years of being a scavenger had made working with gloves almost unnoticeable, and now those reflexes had betrayed me. Still, I ripped my right glove off and tried to fish out the stuck bullet with newfound dexterity. There might be hope.
Father had finally been forced up against a wall, and the automatons sensed their moment had come, one of them getting too impatient and diving in for the kill. It had made one fatal mistake in its own haste. The attack had been the same one the first automaton had opened with—a lunge for the throat.
With reflexes forged in war, Father moved. He ducked to the side, tilting his head and using the helmet to deflect the claw with perfect precision, the same steps as before, every action a work of art. A flash of recognition caused the automaton to abort its attack, clearly aware of the technique that had ended its sibling. This time it leaped backward in an attempt to avoid the following knife slice to its jugular.
The gambit worked. Father's knife scythed through empty air, a clear miss.

But now he had room to move.
He followed through on the momentum, twirling on himself and transferring the energy of a full rotation directly into his knife. It flew fast from his hand and viciously caught the automaton midair, sinking slightly under the right eye down to the hilt. The machine jerked as the impact carried through, then collapsed as it landed, limp. All the lights died out on its shell a breath later.
Six down. One single machine left to go.
The last automaton struck out, scything through the air but missing as Father ducked down to a knee.
He launched himself up at it, barreling hard into the creature's chassis with a heavy crunch, using his limp shoulder almost like a battering ram.
The creature skidded backward, gouging the ground with its feet. It held,
coming to a stop.
That was just the distraction. Father threw out an uppercut with his right hand, directly at the thing's missing jaw. Sparks lit up the relic armor's gauntlet as the blue shield flared to life to protect his fingers. The machine's head reeled up, cracks forming in the ceramic material of its skull.
It hadn't been enough to take it out of the fight.
Father drew back his hand and drove it through the ribcage, searching for something. The creature attacked simultaneously with a haymaker punch.
Father's left arm twitched at the shoulder, a reflexive attempt to block the attack running through. The shoulder lifted up. The hand and arm didn't,
leaving his head completely exposed. The relic armor's shield flared to life once more but broke before the skeletal fist. The blow carried into his helmet,
cracking his neck sideways and launching him into the air.
With a sickening crunch, he crashed to the ground and slid to a stop seconds later. His body twitched horribly, the right hand extended up in a lingering reflex.
A few horrifying seconds passed while I watched, frozen in place. Bile rose in my throat, but fear and panic rooted me in place.
The automaton straightened up, almost pleased at the outcome. Then it lumbered forward, analyzing the changed situation.
Father remained prone on the ground. The twitching that had racked his body faded, and the arm gradually dropped back down.
The machine chuckled darkly, victorious.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

FIGHT LIKE YOU LIVE

T

he machine took an almost lazy glance at me as it passed by, stopping right within reach.
They say all animals have a flight-or-fight response. There's a third one that's not as catchy: freeze.
Everything in me came to a complete stop from terror as I stared up at the monstrosity that loomed over. It could casually end my life if it so much as bothered to. A single swing of that arm would rip my jaw and head clean off my neck. That white skull-like faceplate with those horrifying violet-lit camera eyes alternated between me and Father's body a few times,
contemplating a decision with no rush.
It made a choice, turned, and shambled toward its broken opponent in a slow, confident trot. If Father was still alive, that machine was clearly going to make absolutely sure that wasn't the case. I had been judged and found a non-threat.
Out of time. I was out of time.
Nothing was working. The jammed rifle dropped from my hands. I stuffed my free hand back into my glove and drew out my pistol. Ten shots were loaded inside, standard for scavengers.
The oversized handle had been made for thick gloves. It wasn't made to be used by a terrified wielder.
The pistol shook wildly in my hand as I lifted it into position, the tremors in my arm enough to ruin my accuracy. I couldn't take the shot like this.
I also knew in the very core of my being: the moment I started firing, if I didn't destroy the thing within the first shot, it would turn and kill me. I had to make this hit count. No missing. I had to stop my gods-damned shaking.

The machine lumbered forward, step by step, unhurried.
I took more breaths, trying to steady my arm. Just this one tiny thing needed to be done right. Aim and shoot. That's it. The gun still shook in my hands, my heart continued to beat like a mouse, and the chill of adrenaline was overwhelming my system.
The creature bent over the motionless body of Father, hand reaching out and delicately wrapping around his helmet, a massive palm obscuring the faceplate. Once it had a solid hold over the helmet, I heard metal groan as that hand started to squeeze. But the family armor held its shape.
Either the armor was more durable than the creature had expected… or it was taking its time to slowly crush the relic armor. Father's body remained prone and limp the whole time.
The pistol still shook wildly in my hands, and nothing I could do was slowing that down. The gods flashed through my addled head.
Tsuya was the goddess of tenacity, the paragon of resisting any opposition.
Talen was of resolve, the willpower to commit to and stay any course.
But Urs… Urs was the aspect of resilience. To overcome limitations from within. To overcome things of the living like fear. It was his name that blazed through my mind and cut like fire through my scattered thoughts.
I whispered a prayer between my hyperventilating breaths, desperate for anything to steady my aim. Here was something I could focus on that didn't feel like the weight of the world was behind it. Just a few words under my breath.
The shaking slowed. The weapon steadied in my hands.
Father's helmet groaned and began to dent inward where the thing's fingers were grasping, the creature's strength now exceeding the ancient metal.
There was no time to wait for my hand to be fully still. No other choice. I wasn't ready, but there was no such thing as ready, only ready enough. I pressed the trigger and prayed the shot would land.
The cheap weapon barked in my hands, the sound piercing through the air. The bullet whizzed forward, tracer round showing its curving trajectory.
It clipped the monster's chassis, dealing negligible damage and missing the back of its neck by a few inches. I fired again.
The second shot hit a part of its arm and chipped off a ceramic chunk.
The monster dodged the third shot as it twisted with an inhuman screech and

sprinted toward me. The fourth shot went wild as panic ripped control from my senses with my own scream.
I'd been trained hundreds of times on how to re-adjust my aim after missing. My sister could have managed this. But I wasn't my sister. I was just a worthless pretend scholar who had nothing to offer my clan other than scribbling numbers in the dirt. And now I'd die for it.
There wasn't a fifth shot as the machine was already on top of me. It's odd how quickly the flip between fight, flight, and freeze could be turned.
I dove out of the way, scrambling to my feet and bolting. My target was one of the machine corpses—the one with Father's knife still embedded into its skull. If I could get that dagger, I might have a second chance against this thing.
The machine clearly realized this. It chased behind, leaping above me and landing directly ahead, blocking the way forward. A massive hand swiped for me, catching me directly in the chest, knocking the breath out of my lungs and throwing me outright off my feet. Sensation and orientation vanished as I found myself rolling on the floor.
Only halfway through standing up, my ankle twisted in pain as I was yanked up into the air, suspended upside down for a half-second before being thrown. A wall stopped me, and it wasn't gentle about it.
The warning alarm triggered from my speakers, screaming, adding even more confusion to my shaken and addled mind. The suit's backpack had taken the blunt damage. These systems were hearty, but they hadn't been made to resist being slammed into a wall like that. The padding inside my clothing had saved me both times, softening the blow just enough to not break bones, but the outside gear I wore didn't have any of that protection.
I couldn't run from this thing. With those massive, long legs, it could catch up to me within a few strides.
That left only one option: to fight back.
It trotted toward me, leisurely. Violet glowing eyes locked on my own,
watching as I steadied myself back up. The machine had been strong enough to rip armor plates, lift me wholesale with one hand, and crush relic armor helmets.
It's playing with me.
It was clear it could rip my head off my neck at any time it wanted to, so maybe this was more like a cat playing with a mouse.
I tried to aim and shoot the thing with my pistol again, only to realize I'd

dropped the weapon at some point after I'd been hit. My mind flashed through possible weapons I could use, the warning alarm still ringing in my helmet. The only plan of action that came to mind was going to have to come with a miracle.
I tore off the hood, earpiece, and rebreather, getting free of the obnoxious alarm in the most physical way possible. The air was cold, but the adrenaline dampened everything now. The increased vision probably wouldn't do me any favors, but it certainly wouldn't reduce my chances.
The machine stopped, watching as I fumbled to rid myself of gear. Its hands idly ripped gashes into the concrete floor, almost as if impatient for me to finish. I didn't need to be told twice, and I moved as quickly as I could to take advantage of the spare time.
I disconnected the heavy backpack, unhooked the pipes, and cast them off. Dropping the thing on the ground freed up a lot of weight and also gave me my first view of the damages.
Instantly, I could tell getting back to the surface was going to require a spare system; mine had been crushed beyond fixing. Thoughts for later—
gods above, if I could survive to worry about what came after, I'd consider myself extremely lucky already.
There were only a few tools that had survived through all of this. What I really needed was Father's knife, but the corpse into which it was embedded laid behind the machine, out of reach. The only other weapon left in my arsenal was almost fitting, really.
I lifted my crowbar once again. The machine nodded, pleased I would give it at least some kind of fight.
The weight and heft of my weapon calmed me. A glimmer of a chance came to light. The power of a crowbar wasn't something to mess with.
If I could bash the head in before it could swipe my head off my shoulders, I might just make it. Father's rifle had killed these with a threeround burst directly into that ceramic skull. They might not be as durable as they looked—I just needed something to even the odds so I'd get that chance.
It wouldn't be a surprise if wildly swinging at the monster's head wouldn't work. I'd need a backup plan for when it didn't.
The creature clicked its claws in challenge and then charged forward. It howled for blood.
I dropped my crowbar, then grabbed my detached backpack by the top handle. Inside were the broken-down environmental suit's systems, junk

metal now. But all I needed it for was its weight.
I spun around, letting the centripetal force lift the backpack up. After one spin, I let it fly right into the approaching automaton.
Instead of watching to see if it worked or not, I grabbed my discarded crowbar and charged behind my improvised throw.
It hadn't gone perfectly straight at the thing's head, but it flew well enough to hinder the creature. The charge hadn't been paused; instead, the machine reached out with one hand and shoved the flying object out of the way with a slap. The backpack struck the ground again. If there had been any doubt that the system could have been repaired, the sound it made upon smashing into the ground confirmed it was dead and gone.
I hadn't expected the throw to do much damage in the first place, so this was still going according to plan. The point was to make it pay attention to the sack of useless metal while I tried to get the first strike in.
I lifted my crowbar and made a lunging attack the moment that skull-like head came into range. It snapped its attention away from the backpack and right back to me. Realization passed through those mechanical eyes—I hadn't stayed put like good little terrified prey should.
Dodge this.
My crowbar swung down through the air and struck an outstretched arm guard that had been hastily pulled up into place. Chips of ceramic armor broke off from the attack. It glared at me, safe from the crowbar by quick reflex.
There wasn't time for a second attempt at distracting it.
Its free hand shot out and slugged me directly in the gut.
Vomit and bile came up as I tumbled on the ground this time. It had hit harder, knowing the padding had protected me last time. The blow drowned me, my lungs unable to draw a breath back in.
Pain finally cut through my adrenaline haze, and blackness dragged my mind back and forth. Every bit of me was focused on getting air back into my lungs, coughing, wheezing.
When my senses came back, I'd found myself sprawled on the floor, still trying to get more than a few whispers of breath. The crowbar had slipped from my hands at some point. Getting up was impossible; the best I could do was roll on all fours.
Father's voice echoed in my mind when he'd explained how to spot their patrol paths.

Machines are predictable.
That swiping attack had been a mirror of the first attack it had thrown at me, only harder. Could I make use of that? I tried to buy myself more time,
half crawling on the ground forward.
If I knew the thing would swipe again the same way, was there a chance to—
Its hand seized my ankle and reeled me backward before I could finish thinking. My head smashed against the ground hard. The world instantly tilted and swayed, stars spinning across my vision.
When I recovered, I'd been flipped over on my back.
The thing looked down at me almost curiously, head tilted to the side as it dragged me closer. The crowbar had landed only a few feet away but was far out of range now. I couldn't even see where my pistol had ended up—
probably somewhere behind the creature too.
Dreadfully long fingers reached down to my face. Before my groggy brain could come up with anything, those fingers had wrapped around my throat like a noose. I could feel the ice-cold metal pressed against my exposed skin. The hand constricted. Breathing gradually became a struggle as it squeezed little by little.
It had me pinned down, holding me by the ankle and neck. I wasn't even strong enough to crawl away correctly, let alone fight back. Three gods above, I hadn't even gotten a full breath back after that hit to the gut, and now I was being strangled.
Had I any shred of sanity left at that point, I might have laughed at just how terribly I'd messed up every single part of this. Everything would have gone differently if I'd had the simple presence of mind to take my fucking gloves off before reloading that rifle. It wouldn't have gotten jammed, and I'd have been able to shoot the thing dead.
This was it. I was going to die from one single mistake.
Like an animal, desperation took control of my hands as I tried to pry the metal fingers off my throat. The machine's claw was utterly unyielding, and my strength was like a toddler's in comparison. I could hear ragged breaths,
my own, noisy and filled with panic. The vise grip tightened, slowly. Soon breathing stopped altogether, and I couldn't draw even a fraction more.
Three weeks without food. Three days without water. And three minutes without air. That was how long the average human could stay alive. My life was now measured in painful minutes, at the mercy of this thing.

Instinct and terror suffused every single cell in my body. I kicked wildly without thought, but only one leg was free while the other was still held down by the creature's other hand. That did nothing to it, of course. I beat at the arm, clawed, and tried to pry it off again. My body twisted and twitched with wild abandon. The metal was laughably stronger than me.
It could have crushed my throat, then ripped my whole head clear off. It hadn't done that.
It could have squeezed my arteries shut and had me pass out in seconds. It hadn't done that either.
What it had done was cut off my breathing, without cutting off the jugular veins. That could only have been intentionally done.
The skull-like faceplate inched closer and closer to me as if fascinated by my struggles. I could see the small, glowing, violet cameras deep inside the bony eye sockets, staring me down. It felt like something was watching me through those lifeless eyes.
It was watching me die as if I was a bug it had skewered, utterly enchanted.
Something heavy landed on top of its spine with a thud. The creature's head spun around in surprise, only to collide against the barrel end of my lost pistol.
Father stood on the monster's back, holding that weapon.
He squeezed the trigger, point-blank.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PY RHIC VICTORY

T

he first point-blank shot ripped through the thing's head. The second shot ripped another hole as the creature shook. The third shot went wild as he slipped off the creature's chassis. While jumping off, three more shots rang out in quick succession, peppering the already battered head with expert precision. The gun clicked empty.
Lights flickering to darkness, the machine slumped to the ground, finally dead. Father's feet landed back on the ground, the only one in the room still left standing somehow. He instantly rushed to my side.
The machine's hand on my ankle had slipped in the final blows, but it had locked the one around my throat in a dead man's hold, still preventing me from drawing a breath. Father was at my side, prying off the dead thing's fingers, one at a time with whatever strength was left in his relic armor. He worked without stopping, finding ways to pry the fingers with one hand.
Darkness ebbed at the edge of my vision until enough fingers had been ripped off that I could draw a single, ragged breath. Soon, hacking and coughing, I found myself somehow still alive.
"Stabilize your… yourself," Father rasped out. He didn't wait to see if I had; instead, he stalked on an unsteady path to the body of the second automaton he'd partially destroyed earlier. One of the two he'd taken out with his rifle. The thing was still twitching, trying to get back up.
I couldn't stop looking at it, violet lights flickering at the side while it struggled.
Father paused on his way and turned a glance at me, then spoke out.
"Listen to… to me, boy. Do you still… still have your kit?" he asked while struggling to reload the pistol with one hand. I looked at my belt and fished

out a metal container at the side. It had a dent on the side but otherwise looked intact. I confirmed it to him.
"You're in shock," he said. "You have a few hours before trauma settles permanently in your brain. Pick out the propranolol-v7 and set it for a quarter vial's worth. It will block stress neurotransmitters on the…on the amygdala.
Do this right now."
I glanced down at the pack, then hit the release tab and opened it without issue. A few different drugs and first aid kits were snuggly bundled together next to the field repair gun. The padding had done its job, and the contents were all still in one piece despite the hits I'd taken.
The appropriate marked vial was removed, twisted for a quarter dose, and then primed. I'd read about what this thing did. They weren't to be used lightly. These kinds of drugs were the most expensive part of my entire evosuit, and undersiders didn't trade those for cheap. I'd had this metal vial for years now, sitting unused in the kit since the day I'd gotten them.
"Keith. Look around and describe every object in the room to yourself.
Take a deep breath at each object. I don't care what you damn see, just…
whatever you do, don't let your mind free until the propranolol hits your system." There was an urgency to his voice at this.
I numbly put the syringe to my throat, then clicked the release. There was a prick, but the adrenaline was still going strong in my system and it muted any pain. The vial beeped, signaling it had delivered the payload.
The movements were mechanical on my end. It seemed, now that everything was over, the training I'd done with my sister was finally kicking in.
Shots rang out in the room, and I looked up in time to see Father making sure that one automaton from the start of the fight had been completely destroyed. Job done, he holstered the gun and walked over unsteadily to the dead automaton his knife had ended up in. "You don't have time to waste,"
he growled out in anger, "do as I ordered, or you'll be seeing this day again and again years from now, boy."
I nodded, then took a deep breath of the ice-cold air. I could see the vapor leave my mouth, heat fading out.
I took a breath. Father wrestled his knife out of the thing's head, then moved to the automaton's chest, cutting into it with the recovered weapon.
I took a breath.
The walls here were half-metallic and half-concrete, and the gaps

between both were stark and had no pattern I could spot. It looked like metallic cancer with a geometric style.
I took a breath.
I could feel stickiness on my right arm, where the stitches had been.
Likely ripped a few now, and the wound was no doubt making a mess.
Father sheathed the knife back in his boots with that usual flourish. The knife slipped his grasp halfway and clinked to the floor. He stared at it for a moment before reaching down and sheathing it plainly this time. His hand now free, he reached into the thing's mechanical guts, rifling through until he drew out a power cell. It was connected by a mass of black wires.
I took a breath.
The wires grew taut between the dead automaton and the heart he was pulling out. In moments, they snapped away, releasing the power cell with a jolt. Father pocketed it, moving to the next automaton to repeat the process,
picking up his unspent grenade as he passed by it. We'd have a small stockpile of power cells after this.
I took a breath.
There were lights on the walls with some closer inspection, tiny and without any pattern. Teal. The mites were still here, fixing up any damage that was caused by the fight and almost pointedly ignoring everything else.
I continued with the exercise, hyperfocusing on something—anything—
and taking a deep breath in between. My mind grew fuzzy and then almost detached from the world. As if I was existing outside it but still controlling a fleshy avatar. It felt like such an odd thing to inhabit, so filled with chemicals and noise. Was this what I was? The sum of all my parts? Just flesh and chemicals in the end? It felt like I was something that existed separate from my body, only inhabiting it temporarily.
"I think it's kicked in. I feel... disconnected," I said instead of pondering further.
"The dissociation will pass in a few more seconds. The neurotransmitters will remain blocked for a day or two depending on your system. You'll remember details from today, but they will feel abstract as if they were someone else's memories. That's normal."
"And you?"
"I'm moving forward on the assumption that I'll live through today."
Frustration radiated from him as if too many things were going wrong and he couldn't do anything about it.

"Your left arm," I said almost in a daze. "It's not just injured, is it?"
"No," he said after a moment of silence. "The muscles were cut."
He reached for his own kit and drew out a syringe of his own. It didn't look like the same thing I'd taken either. The fluid inside was a pale blue, and a warning sign was etched on the silver metal sides. This wasn't part of the normal kit. Something only relic wielders were allowed to use?
"What does that do?" I asked him.
He paused, glancing over me. "It will trick my body into letting me move as if nothing is wrong with it and cut pain completely. If we make it back to the expedition in under a day, I'll be fine."
I didn't ask what would happen if we didn't make it in time. I wasn't that stupid.
The syringe primed, he stared at it, contemplating. Then he raised it to his neck and took a breath. His hand shook, holding the syringe at the ready. One breath. Two breaths. "Talen, guide me," he whispered, and with a jerk he slammed the syringe against his suit until it beeped satisfactorily. Then he threw it aside, almost as if disgusted by the thing. It clinked hard on the ground, bouncing off and rolling away to join the rest of the detritus.
"Get up," he hissed. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or himself at this point. "We need to get moving before more arrive. These things move in packs and quickly swarm any area that resists."
The armor even groaned as he stood, and crackling sounds of electric failure lit up inside as the inner servos strained to move, but Father pushed past and up, limping to his rifle. I could see more clearly those glowing lines under the plate. It reminded me of an occult knife glow, except it was clear these lines weren't for cutting. I'd heard there were a lot more occult items than just knives. Could these armors also have parts of the occult inside?
"That terminal. Are you positive it will work if powered?" Father said,
cutting through my wandering mind.
Terminal? The mite terminal. Before we'd been ambushed. My mind felt fuzzy but the details flowed back.
I needed to make it back to that terminal, trace the power line to the switchboard, and then turn it on. And pray it would work. "I'm not sure. I only think it does." It could go any direction.
He grunted. "We don't have another option. They're coming for us. We can't stumble around for another chance. It either works and we have a chance to live, or it doesn't and we die."

He walked over to my cracked backpack and slung it over his shoulder,
placing the pilfered power cells into it.
"Power cells are not our limiting resource now. Time is," he said. "Get on my back. The suit can carry us both faster around the city." He walked over and lifted me up with his free hand. I wrapped my hands around his neck to hold myself still on his back.
"My environmental suit's broken," I said. "Even if we make it out, I can't go back top-level. I'll freeze to death."
He shook his head. "There is still one way to get you to the surface. We can deal with that later, once we're out of danger. Terminal first."
He began a brisk jog that would have been more of a sprint for my speed.
The steps were unsteady, and his direction didn't follow a straight line. A few times he stumbled but continued forward. Soon we came back to where the dead terminal had been. The mites had already repaired my earlier slices. No trace of damage was left.
"How much time do we have until they come back?"
He grunted. "Half-hour at best. They're already on our trail at worst. The armor would notify me if it had been pinged. We haven't yet been."
There was still some time to escape. "What's our plan?"
"If the terminal works, we'll make use of it. After that, I'll carry you out.
At my speed, we'll be able to avoid patrols and slip out of their search radius."

A moment later, we had made it back to the switchboard, now knowing which one of the wires was ours from the hundreds that connected here.
By then I was feeling a lot more lucid. I felt more like myself now;
everything before seemed like I had read it from one of my books rather than lived it. Gods above, it felt like everything had happened months ago even.
Father's footsteps had also visibly improved, the stride returning to normal and no more stumbles. Whatever drug he took was doing its work.
I was dropped off within the structure. Despite my mind feeling free of this whole ordeal, my body clearly reminded me it had all happened minutes ago. Father held my shoulder and we both limped to the switchboard.
Turning on that light was almost trivial. Oddly enough, the example light

Father had asked about earlier, before the fight, had been harder to turn on.
The whole process took three switches on different sides of the board and quarter-turned a valve. The terminal wire lit up as predicted within seconds of me touching the whole contraption.
I waited for a moment, thinking something inside this room would change or a hidden door would open. Nothing of the like happened. The solution had been anti-climatic, but what had I really expected?
The only way forward was to trust what I'd done so far and check at the terminal itself. Again, he carried me back to the terminal, Father's relic armor reducing the time taken to mere minutes.
When it came into sight, a crushing wave of utter defeat followed behind.
The thing was still black and lifeless, even with the wire clearly powered on.
"All that for nothing." I chuckled. "I guessed wrong."
"No," Father said, dropping me down and walking to the terminal. Then he tapped on the black screen. "Look."
There, on the bottom right of the black screen, was a small line of white text, complete with a text line divider, slowly blinking.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE WAY HOME

NODE7029\Users\Guest: |

T

he terminal was clearly expecting some sort of input. That explained why this piece of tech had a keyboard oddly attached to the side. I typed out "Hello?" and pressed send.
An answer came back immediately.
'Hello?' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program, or batch file.

Ah. I'd seen terminals like this during my time hanging around the engineers of House Insight, usually from third-era tech. Fourth era had smarter systems. Odd to see it in what I would have thought was lost tech built by mad mites.
"You were correct on the power issue," Father said at my side.
"Regrettably, this is a dead end. I've seen terminals with text twice so far,
and it ended up being more mite madness."
"Wait, let me try some more with it."
I could tell that annoyed him. "We don't have time for this, boy."
"If it doesn't work, we're already dead anyhow. Might as well examine it to the end."
Father stared me down as if judging my worth. "So be it." He sighed,
taking the time to reload his weapon. Preparing already for the next fight.
"What are we looking to get from this?" I asked.

"The terminal should contain a map. We need to find a way to download it into my armor. That's the objective."
All right. If this was a command terminal, then "help" was a typical command that could let me figure out some more of this. I typed that out and pressed send. A massive list of possible commands was spat out onto the terminal screen in answer.
Jackpot.
Father studied the terminal over my shoulder. "How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Have it reply like that instead of the error message."
"You need to ask it the right way. What were you doing before?"
"We tried to type out our orders, but it never seemed to understand past the first word we wrote."
"It doesn't speak English. The words might look English, but think of it more like another language that borrows English words. I've seen things like this before; it's a learned skill."
He nodded. "See about that map." There was a note of hope in his voice.
Or I could have imagined that. The real search began for those commands that might get us that map. It felt straightforward to me so far. The syntax was different, but with enough experimentation, I could figure out how to word the right requests.
"I'll keep watch," Father said as I worked. "If they find us, give up on the terminal, start running immediately, and don't look back. I'll follow behind soon after. Are we clear?"
"Crystal clear." I gulped.

There had been a mention of "map" and "download" in the list of commands and variables accessible, but I couldn't string them together without a syntax error.
And there were a lot of those, of course. Twelve times, in fact. But that was the normal process for any engineer worth their salt. Just had to keep trying again and again until I stumbled on the right way forward. Anarii had equated it to slamming your head on a wall until the wall gave up. It was a lot of "educated" guesses, following hunches, and playing around with the basic

help commands.
A part deep inside me really wanted to play with the other commands on the terminal, to see what else this mite terminal could do. There were so many odd commands and functions in the list, and a lot had no description whatsoever, which only made them more tantalizing.
I'd need hours alone with this thing to really test everything out. Hours I didn't have.
And then I hit a snag: the terminal froze when I executed my latest attempt.
Button clicks no longer triggered; the whole thing didn't blink or move anymore. I must have hit a lockout, or there were only a certain number of commands that could be used.
Okay. We're fucked.
Father had noticed as well, the dented helmet glancing up at the exact same time the terminal froze. "Accept download request," he said. But he hadn't been talking to me.
The terminal unfroze the moment he'd finished voicing the command,
and a progress bar now rapidly filled up on the screen. "It worked?"
The mite construct beeped happily, the progress bar showing complete.
Father lifted his right hand, palm up. A three-dimensional map appeared above with a red triangle at the center.
I gawked.
"... Good work," he said, with a pitch to it I'd rarely heard before. "We...
have a way home now."
Was that map from the console? It looked like so much more than a map.
It was filled with lines and text, but it clearly correlated with our current location, with the red triangle in a scaled-down mirror of the room we were in. The scale of it alone felt massive. "How large is this city?"
"Miles in every direction," Father said. "Each layer underground is a world of its own."
No kidding. Rumor had it that there were twelve entire layers, each layer a mile high. Although no one had gone deeper than six layers, so there could be more layers than the stories mentioned. Why the underground went a total of twelve miles below was anyone's guess. Assuming it really was twelve levels.
Father wiggled his fingers, but the floating map on his palm did nothing in response. His helmet focused on it, owlish, muttering. Again his fingers

moved, and again nothing happened above the map. He tried to slide his hand from side to side, but the entire projection moved with it. Frustration built up with every attempt.
"Keith, I need your help."
"... You need me to use my hand, don't you?"
It was pretty clear that one hand was supposed to hold the map while the other controlled it. Father only had one hand to work with, his left remaining limp at his side.
"We're looking for the outskirts of this city," he said. "Controlling the map shouldn't be difficult. I'll help if you need it."
Within a certain distance, the map instantly seemed to connect to my fingertips and began to do things based on their position. Opening my palms and moving them up seemed to zoom in on the map, while closing it into a fist would disconnect the hand from the map.
Panning my hand did exactly as I'd expected and panned the map. There was a limit to how far the projection could be drawn out, and the city was clearly larger than that limit.
No help was needed at all from Father in the end; the controls were instantly intuitive. Eerily intuitive in fact. It seemed as if the map was outright guessing my intentions.
Some of my motions were clumsy and inaccurate, but the effect I was looking for still happened. A pointed finger could do more than one action and always seemed to do the one I'd been going for. An accidental swipe didn't wipe out my progress. A pinch did something different than the last time I'd pinched. Other small things started to add up. I only realized when I started focusing on those discrepancies.
There had to be another intelligence of some kind helping out. Like a silent kitchen partner, handing me food ingredients and utensils without any prompting.
Was this the relic armor's spirit?
Some knights claimed the armor wasn't alive, that it ran on a complex but standard program. It spoke only to give reports or acknowledge commands according to them.
A more popular rumor had it that these armors housed the soul of the strongest warrior who died wielding them. Trapped inside, bound to eternal servitude.
It was a chilling thought.

But the occult was the only thing that could remotely be connected to something ethereal like a soul—and the warlock guilds kept their secrets tightly sealed.
I personally thought it was nonsense. If the warlock guilds had the keys to creating armor, they would have been doing that already. Instead, we were only getting trinkets from them.
"There," Father said, "up north, to the right side. Do you see that tunnel?"
I zoomed in on the area, and it led to the very edge of the map. "It doesn't show where it leads."
"That's out of this colony's territory, and they're the ones who made this map. It's to be expected they wouldn't have mapped it out. The edge of their cities lead to tunnels going to either the surface or a lower level. We'll be able to escape from there."
The distance between the red triangle—I assumed to be us—and the tunnel was massive.
"Plot chart," Father said. A line began to snake around the city,
connecting our location to the tunnel. "Seven miles as the airspeeder flies, but accounting for the turns and elevation, we'll need to traverse a total of twelve miles to make it. That should take us an hour to reach if I carried you the whole way."
He snapped the map shut. "We're on a time limit. Let's get moving."

The scale of the city didn't really dawn on me until the moment we left the underbelly and entered the open space. Walking up a last set of stairs into a massive plaza, the sight caught me dumbfounded.
The ceiling stretched for what absolutely looked to be a mile above, one massive dome hanging over the entire city. It shouldn't be possible to hold that much weight from the surface without any pillars of support, but somehow the roof of the world stayed firm.
It was when we traveled over the building rooftops that I got my first true view of the actual city itself. This place was a sprawling multi-leveled mess of buildings, nestled in what looked like a valley of mountains, which finally connected back to the surface. We were in a very lopsided crater, with that massive roof covering us where the surface would be. Sunlight leaked

through thousands of cracks, illuminating the city under, even though it really shouldn't have to this degree.
The city was massive, sprawling, and it made little sense, as I'd come to figure out. It never seemed to end, always winding in every direction. We'd sometimes have to crawl under pipes or find the road to lead from rooftop to rooftop, climbing up and down stairs to find a better level of access. Mites held very little to be sacred, except for a path forward in some form.
At one point, we even passed by the rooftop of a high five-story building.
That let me spot where we'd come from.
The rubble of the frozen site was a massive distance away already, but parts of the site were still somewhat recognizable, jutting out in its disrepair against the clean walls and concrete of the city. A hole in the ceiling dome showed where the site had been on the surface.
I didn't understand how I'd survived that fall without any broken bones.
It seemed completely impossible. I didn't get an answer either—at least, none that I could think of.
Father had grown stronger over the time since the fight. Whatever drug was in his system, he moved as if he'd had no issue. His left arm still couldn't, only gravity yanking it around, but everything else flowed like a well-oiled machine.
"How did you know how to fight them? The machines I mean," I asked.
For a few seconds, he contemplated as if he was picking the right words.
"When you fight a man, you can't know what to expect. Everyone fights differently, even though we are all human."
Another leap, another landing, another sprint forward. Father still talked despite the speed he was pushing himself to.
"If you fight off a dog once, you know how all dogs fight. Animals don't learn how to fight in nature, it's ingrained in their species. The machines are like that, only smarter. All screamers will try to charge first and lunge for the throat the exact same way. They'll all try to strangle their targets if they can and disembowel if they can't. They fixate on a target and pursue past the point of reason. And a hundred other small quirks that they seem blind to.
They'll adapt over the course of the fight almost immediately, but only after observing first. They never predict, they only react."
"Just how many of these have you fought?"
"Enough to learn. All automatons have patterns, only not always obvious.
Remember this if you ever get caught. There's always a weakness to

leverage, Keith."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A HARSH LESSON TO LEARN

I

remembered the last time I was carried in arm by the family armor.
The clan had grown too cramped for our current habitat, but the scouts had discovered an empty fortress a few hundred miles away, far across the permafrost expanse. Maybe a month or two's worth of travel in the airspeeders—an expensive journey for the clan.
Sometimes fortresses and habitats appeared, pushed from the underground. Sites that seemed almost tailor-made to withhold against the air and protect a population from the surface. Empty relic armors and weapons might even be found on the inside, assuming others hadn't stumbled upon it first. Our scouts had spotted one such fortress.
This fortress had signs of having been lived in, perhaps another clan at some point. Brick buildings on the inside to separate halls, writing etched in walls, and other signs of a different people.
That was the nature of things up here. We lived like hermit crabs,
something the undersiders were quick to use as insults. Each time a clan grew too big, it would either find another home or fragment into smaller allied tribes. But splitting into smaller tribes came with dangers, and no one wanted to split if they could help it.
That's why we'd be willing to live packed in tiny places that were made only to house hundreds, not thousands. But we could only stretch the infrastructure so far.
Eventually, it was simple math that drove us out of our homes.
Finding a new and larger fortress was a blessing from the gods, especially one that could hold thousands. This was a massive fortress habitat, and whichever clan had occupied it previously must have surely grown strong

enough for a migration into the underground next, becoming a seedling city.
They might have done so more than a decade ago.
The clan spent a year preparing for our own migration to this new habitat.
Most of the focus was on stocking food supplies for the long journey and getting to know the local mechas, neighbors, and political situation that awaited us there. A small detachment of Retainers to stake and hold our claim and Reachers to slowly repair the construction back to its former glory was needed.
Years of neglect had allowed the frost to slowly infiltrate through the cracks and broken pipes. The engineers did not have an easy task ahead of them. The repair work for that alone was said to have been a brutal affair,
costing the lives of several who'd hit on unlucky accidents while outside.
Eventually, step by step, the fortress was brought back to life and the clan was ready for migration. All the alliances and new trade routes secured, we packed the non-combatants and other civilians into one massive expedition led by Lord Atius and left our old habitat fortress for good, leaving it ready for the next clan to occupy—however many decades that could take.
The journey was treacherous. Airspeeders would often break down after such extended uses, and salvage expeditions were sent out to recover the necessary scrap and materials to keep the convoy alive.
You'd think it'd be during one of those small foraging expeditions that the raiders would attack, but they were after softer targets. Scrappers were hardy folk who didn't make good slaves. No, the real target was the civilians,
the tradesmen, and the children. The cooks, servants, and engineers. The people who couldn't fight back.
And the only place to find those were among the main convoy, which would not make for an easy target. But months of travel was a long time, and they only needed a few minutes of weakness. The slavers must have been stalking quietly behind us for weeks, waiting for that inevitable chink in the armor.
House Winterscar, House Eventide, and a smaller part of House Salvos had been trailing in the back of the convoy that day when the chink in the armor appeared. A blizzard wall hit. Visibility went down to nothing, while the airspeeders all continued somberly through the storm. Hours into the numbing blindness, the raiders picked their moment.
The last few trailing airspeeders stalled and collapsed into the permafrost,
their mass shoving away snow as they each skidded to a stop. The comms

had gone down at the same time, mere seconds after our last check-in. The rest of the convoy continued forward, oblivious to the loss of comms. The storm covered the crime. And the conspirators within our midst covered the rest of the sabotage.
They'd known House Salvos' two relic knights were in the airspeeder just slightly ahead—the airspeeder that conveniently hadn't been disabled and continued forward, oblivious to the danger that had swallowed everyone behind.
House Eventide was a Reacher caste house, filled with engineers and civilians. They wouldn't offer up any resistance. And so the only danger to the raiders would come from House Winterscar. The plan had been calculated down to the details.
Father could handle a fight against two other relic users at the same time,
even drunk as he was that day. But the slavers had planned for that. They'd brought four relic armors among their numbers.
I remember everyone frantically reaching for weapons, preparing for the fight. I was thirteen back then, with a rifle shoved into my hands. A ten-yearold next to me was given a pistol. Whatever happened next, the raiders were not getting away without being bloodied.
The airspeeder doors opened wide and men charged out, improvised metal sheets as shields. They set up a quick trench line up ahead, digging the sheets of metal into the snow. The rest of us would file out once the bulwark was set up. Children too young or elderly would hunker down deeper into the airspeeder.
Father staggered into our airspeeder a moment later, before Kidra and I were due to charge out. Drunk and tipsy as usual but still lucid enough to function.
The rest of the crew cried out for him to save them, begging in between the rifle shots and screaming in the background.
He ignored all of them, shoving through like a sledgehammer against concrete. Someone's jaw was broken as he swept people away. His armored boot stomped over a terrified boy's leg and crushed it. I could see the suit tear open, the blood instantly freezing.
Then his hand reached for both my sister and me, lifting us out of the airspeeder.
And then he ran.
Ran right past the disabled airspeeders of House Eventide, which we were

sworn to protect. He ran away as the rest of the infamous Winterscars stood their ground to protect the Reachers. He ran away with just my sister and me clutched to his sides. He didn't say a word, only the sounds of his straining breaths in our comms.
The family armor made his sprint something utterly inhuman. In seconds,
the howling snow was all we could see as the blizzard wall hid everything.
Father still ran, completely blind. Whatever he'd drunk threatened to trip him multiple times. He held on.
Airspeeders were quick, but the speed was still set deliberately slow. A lot of Reachers had calculated exactly what the optimal speed-to-fuel-to-food ratio could be used. The result was a fast airspeeder, just not quite as fast as a harrowed-out relic knight with a purpose.
Father made it to House Salvos' functioning airspeeder, appearing out of the blizzard like a ghost. It had been about fifteen minutes at his full sprint.
The scavengers who dotted the ship's hull all glanced at the sudden appearance of a relic user from the wall of the snowstorm. Then they frantically pointed at him once they realized this shouldn't be happening at all. The speeder immediately slowed to a stop as Father leapt into the open interior compartment, dropping both of us inside.
"What's the meaning of this, Winterscar? Run out of booze?" a voice came from within as one of the relic knights from House Salvos walked into view.
Father told them. Only one single word, but instantly the entire convoy took action.
Slavers.
In seconds, the airspeeder had turned and shot off at full breakneck speed.
Some of House Salvos' scavengers on the hull seats would have been thrown off the ship if the comms-wide warning hadn't sounded off. The pilot's rage could be felt through her voice with such clarity even I reflexively clutched to anything in range, though I was safe on the interior. The rest of the convoy was close on our heels following the comms chatter, including a furious Deathless.
The raiders had brought four relic wielders to counter Father, but they'd stand absolutely no chance against the powers Lord Atius wielded.
In mere minutes the speeder crossed the distance Father had sprinted through—a fraction of the time it took him.
It hadn't been enough. What we found wasn't a fight, but the end of one.

Only a few members of House Salvos were left shooting from their downed airspeeder while the raiders had completely emptied the four others that dotted the landscape. Behind them, a huddle of Reachers from Eventide had managed to run out of their doomed speeders to safety. House Winterscar was gone, save for the bodies that were quickly getting buried in snow, their airspeeders among the claimed ground. They'd all been either taken or killed while buying those Reachers time to fall back.
Ironic that at the very end, in the face of death, the House Winterscar had honored their oaths. They'd heard the call and stood their ground.
All except for Father.
The raiders were mere minutes away from claiming the last airspeeder and seizing the whole of House Eventide until they saw the incoming cavalry.
They instantly turned and ran. A few unlucky raiders were gunned down from a distance, but most managed to flee into the underground cracks,
executing or dragging down whatever prey was left in arms' reach.
Soon we were left with nothing but dead bodies and the snow.
The airspeeders had been damaged in the fight. It would take hours to repair them. Our entire route and plan had to be recalculated from scratch, but the clan would continue forward, one house less.
We couldn't chase them underground. We hadn't prepared for an expedition of that scale. There was no other choice but to leave.
Lord Atius executed three men that week, after sniffing out the treachery.
When he led a team to the base of operations he'd extracted from the traitors,
he only found an empty staging ground. The slavers were long gone.
Everyone said Father had made the only logical choice. To fight off four relic knights was to guarantee death—and worse, his armor would absolutely be stolen. They'd kill Father, carry his dead body away, and be glad to trade any number of potential slaves for it. If he hadn't warned the convoy, they'd never have returned in the first place until the snowstorm ended. I'm not sure that's what had gone through his mind at all.
What I am sure of is he never touched another bottle after that day.
The entire migration, he spent the rest of it on a sickbed. A month of fevers, shaking, and delirium followed as he refused anything besides water.
And once he paid off his dues to his former addiction, he stepped out of that bed and started training the two of us night and day like there was a deadline to keep. It was miserable, grueling, and filled with blood and bruises. Nine goddamn years of that. Father was a savant when it came to combat. Only

Kidra seemed to intuitively understand his lessons.
Each lesson would start like training and eventually devolve to a beatdown as he grew frustrated of being unable to teach me as quickly as my sister. Broken bones, black eyes, screaming… it felt like he was so desperate to make sure I knew at least something about how to fight at his level, and now I understood why.
But I wouldn't ever be as good as my sister. She was favored by Tsuya,
and I... I simply wasn't good at fighting.
I thought back on the automaton, how I'd still failed every lesson, every drill, after all those years of training. I still froze up like a coward when the moment came to make use of it all. I'd been prepared to fight against other humans or any of the typical dangers above on the surface. Somehow, that single automaton scared me more than any raider ever could.
Why was I saved from that raid if this was how it was going to end up?
I'd asked myself that question time and time again, but this time it really struck home. There were so many others he could have picked up and carried to safety, men and women of amazing talent, but only my sister and I were picked. She was worthy of it at least. I absolutely wasn't.
And now he carried me once again, this time deep underground. He should just drop me and leave. It would be easy. There were hundreds of excuses. Say I'd been killed by an automaton or that the fall snapped my neck.
Father remained silent, giving no answer to my unasked questions. We were swiftly approaching the next rooftop, and he'd need to jump soon.
The old armor flexed under his control, alive in a way I hadn't been able to appreciate back when I was thirteen. But gripping on his back, I'd gotten a much closer look at that armor in the last hour than I'd had in the last few years put together.
It was amazing how it showed no hint of the combat damage sustained an hour before. The spirit of the armor had fixed it all. The only cost was time,
two power cells, and the leftovers of my environmental suit system,
cannibalized for the greater good.
With our haul of power cells, Father's body was the weak link that would give out first. There was no point in hoarding the suit's energy.
The legs bent, power thrumming through, and he sailed forward through the air, landing with a heavy crack across the gap. The first few times had terrified me, but I'd gotten the hang of it by now.

Maybe having nothing to do other than hold onto his back had given me some introspective time to sort out what had happened. I still had the bruises on my throat as a reminder. And the shame.
Mostly the shame.

At our speed, we were approaching the end of the mite's map and would reach the outskirts within ten minutes or less. We'd have to figure out where to go from there. I was hoping our luck would hold when it came to the machines but, of course, that wasn't going to be the case.
"We've been spotted," Father said over comms.
"One of their patrol paths?"
"No, they've sent another hunter after me. It's caught up."
It appeared at the corner of my eye at first. A single violet-white machine.
It looked very different from the previous ones, a long segmented snakelike body, four legs, and massive spine blades jutting across the links.
Like a skeletal lizard. It jumped over roofs like we were, barreling down with single-minded intent.
The clan habitat had its own micro-ecosystem of creatures, one of which was a predatory lizard that hunted down insects and roaches that lurked inside the pipe system. Those tiny lizards had crushing jaws and faster strikes.
The maw of this thing looked like a giant cousin of those pipe lizards,
filled with artificial teeth I could see in detail even from this distance. And like the previous automaton, it had violet lights and white ceramic armor with a skull-like face. An inhuman elongated skull this time.
I'd watched unsuspecting insects get chased down in a flash and swallowed up, attacked from the dark reaches those insects had thought safe.
Now, we were the insects.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MAW OF THE DRAKE

F

ather, of course, was aware of the danger. He'd simply glanced back at the incoming threat, then changed course slightly. I thought we'd be able to outrun it, but Father had clearly calculated that wasn't the case. It was gaining on us from what I could tell. The creature moving was faster than even relic armor was capable of. He said machines all had weaknesses,
but that also implied they had strong points too.
"Hold tight. I'll need to dodge for this. Don't get in my way," Father said in between breaths. His hand stopped supporting my weight, getting ready.
The creature opened its mouth and a violet glow lined the jaws. Father didn't wait for confirmation, instead making one low leap on reaching the end of a roof. He hooked his hand to the railing, killing his forward momentum and swinging violently down into the alleyways below. The move almost threw me off by sheer centrifugal force, but I'd held through somehow.
Above us, a bright violet beam shot through the air where we'd been a moment ago. The laser was blinding, remaining like a yellow-gold ghost across my vision, even after I looked away.
Father landed with a thud, then sprinted down a few blocks.
"What was that?" I yelled out, struggling to hold on.
"A drake. They're stronger than screamers, but they avoid close combat if they can. Those beams can cut anything for them, even shielded relic armor,
so they rely on that first. They have powerful long-distance sight to pair with the beam, but that advantage cuts both ways. It's most vulnerable for a counterattack after it fires."
The next instant, he leapt to the side into an empty pseudo house. Dust

filled the inside, along with a table and chair set, all made of concrete—table,
chair, and all.
"Get behind something and stay still as a grave, boy. Don't draw your weapon; stay still and trust me."
A table and chairs didn't make for the best hiding spot, but beggars couldn't be choosers. I scrambled over and ducked, finding a good enough spot that covered most of me in the shadow.
Father hugged the wall by the door, flipping his knife out and leaving it off. He remained completely frozen, waiting.
I heard a resounding thud as something heavy dropped into the same alleyway we'd ended up in. The automaton had followed us. Now to see which direction it would go.
I could hear footsteps outside, slow and meticulous. Hunting.
Slow minutes crawled by as it continued to rifle through the nearby houses. It must have turned and examined a house farther from us. Maybe it was all in my head, but I thought I could hear voices or one single deeper voice. All too far away to really tell if I was jumping at shadows.
It had picked the wrong direction to go down from the sounds. Hope was quickly crushed underfoot, by Father himself.
He turned the knife on, sliced off a small chunk of the doorway, and kicked it outside. It hit a wall, loudly. The blue glow in our room winked out of view as he turned the knife off. Heavy footfalls grew in our direction almost immediately after.
I shot him a horrified glance, quickly signaling confusion. He tried to return a signal, but with the knife in hand he couldn't articulate the fingers well enough to communicate anything. So he shook his head silently instead and returned to position.
The heavy footsteps came closer. Soon, I caught glimpses of the creature's body through the empty window frame of our hiding spot. It walked on four legs, head shaking from right to left with each step. I curled further down, hoping it hadn't seen me in the brief moment I'd seen it.
Then I heard it.
"Come... little human." It was a heavy, low rumble that seemed to rattle in my head even after the words left. "Ssssss… there, lurking under your skin... is an infestation. It beats in your heart, spreading disease with every gasp…. I want to clean you of it." Insanity left its mouth with each word floating through the cold air. It spoke like nothing I had ever known. The

words individually made sense, but the whole just seemed too alien. Like these words were never meant to be put together in such an order. Its pitch and timbre felt like coals raking through my mind.
It drew closer to our house. Father stayed where he was, flat against the wall.
"Sssssss... such a pristine violation of flesh, whispering lies in your head from a thousand tongues... I'll bring you salvation. From that... rot. From that grotesque tumor cradled in soft tissue and bone, lying deep within."
I couldn't help but take glances through the window as it moved across the street from us. The size of its body was massive. It couldn't possibly fit through any of these doorways, and it didn't. Instead, it slithered its head into each, searching for us. Its pace was slow and measured, no caution in the steps, only conviction.
"Ssssssss… come out... little human. You poor suffering child. Let me...
touch the marrow inside your bones. Let me... take you away. I'll be your refuge. Your shelter from suffering. I'll clean your soul and skull of torment and depravity."
The massive head trotted outside our doorway. It paused, then slowly turned to peek inside, the violet eyes scanning through the building I hid in.
Dried blood speckled the almost pristine white fangs of the creature. The jaw seemed to be stretched in a perpetual smile.
I broke my gaze and hid further under the table, but somehow, I knew deep inside that the thing had spotted me. I took a panicked look up again,
only to catch its eyes staring right back.
It leaned closer to the house. "I seeeeeee you... cowering in the darkness,
so afraid of the light. Venerate this moment. She has sent me to free you... of this agony you live in." It spoke, its head snaking slowly into the house,
filling up the doorway and passing by it, inch by inch.
Thoughts raced through my head, lucid and unobstructed. This close, I could probably shoot the thing without missing. My fingers twitched to grab my pistol, but Father's warning rang through my head.
To trust him. To not draw a weapon. There wasn't much time to say anything else. My instincts warred with my logic.
Father remained unmoving at the doorway as the machine head crept by mere inches away. The drake didn't seem to spot him, its eyes focused intently on me.
How had it not seen Father?

They have powerful long-distance sight to pair with the beam, but that advantage cuts both ways.
Field of view! It hadn't missed Father by accident. It hadn't been able to see him at that angle, the vision too narrow.
Then my part in all this was to be bait. That's why he didn't want me to move or fight back. I'd lure the thing into believing it had already won.
I closed my eyes and focused on remaining still. My world turned to blackness with only sounds left to paint the world with.
"Yes, yes... close your eyes. I bring you... what you've been searching for. The silence you so desperately crave."
A sound of something humming, electricity charging up.
The snap-hiss of Father's dagger being turned on.
Impact and metal melting.
Energy and lightning screaming past me.
Heat.
Heat that I could feel at the side of my exposed cheeks.
I ripped my eyes open again. The table in front of me had a hole melted into it. The beam that had caused the damage narrowly missed me, cutting into the wall behind. It must have tried to fire at me… and missed.
Father stood resolute, his knife embedded deep into the automaton's head. Superheated drafts blurred the frozen air, a massive haze steaming from the maw. It struggled to turn, but the movements were overpowered by the ancient gauntlet holding that knife.
The drake hadn't missed by accident, it had been forced to miss. The thing seemed almost shocked at being caught flat-handed like this.
Father cut the weapon down and twisted the knife violently in a fluid motion. The head fell limp onto the ground, critical metal muscles and tendons severed off. The body behind followed suit, slumping with a heavy thud, dust spilling into the air as it collapsed.
Only the eyes moved, turning to focus on its killer, the camera iris narrowing with hate.
It spoke as Father regripped his knife to execute a different cut.
"Ssssss… you—"
"Enough," Father said and cut down. The knife glided across its neck with ease, splitting through the rest of the cables with expert direction.
The violet lights turned off, and there was only silence again.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THEY CAN TALK?

"T

hey can talk?" I asked, picking myself off the floor. The left side of my environmental suit was blackened slightly, the shoulder's bloodred insignia of House Winterscar still legible, however. Barely. I'd have worried about weave integrity from something like that, except I had bigger icicles to worry about. A lot bigger.
Father's hand whipped the knife back out of the creature's neck, shutting it off and flicking it back into his boot with his usual flourish. "A fool can talk. That doesn't mean he says anything."
"But can we actually communicate with the automatons?" I asked.
"Maybe we can find out why they hate us so much? Or where they come from in the first place?"
He shrugged in response, walking to the empty window frame. "The songs of faith imply that the machines came from oblivion, deep in the space beyond the world. The gods are holding the worst of them from reaching Earth, but the ones already here, those are our duty to keep in check."
"I know what the songs say, but those come from our clerics. I mean what do the automatons themselves say?"
"No one knows." Again he shrugged, climbing out the open window sill.
"Not all of them... 'talk' either."
"There isn't a single person who's tried to capture one?" That seemed…
odd. Was there a technical issue in the way?
"Maybe some have. If they learned anything important, they kept it to themselves."
I couldn't have been the first person to ask this question, so why hadn't a word about this made it up to the surface? The only way this made sense to

me was if they somehow evaded capture. Which was impossible in the long run. There had been a war with these machines for centuries.
Unless… "Do they explode if they're captured? Or shut themselves down?"
Father didn't give an answer, waiting for me to pass over the barrier. He had used the open window, so I followed suit. Without the bulky suit heating systems, I was light on my feet. Pulling myself through was easy enough.
"We've never tried to capture one of these things while down here,"
Father said. "If they explode or turn themselves off during capture, I couldn't answer you. I've never seen the small ones explode before either. They're usually killed off quickly at range."
Considering it took only a well-placed round of bullets in their skulls to take them down, I could understand what Father explained. They seemed more specialized at hunting down lone or separated targets. Surely machines could create more optimized weapons. It seemed like terrifying people was their primary objective over being competent at killing. The thing had toyed with me even.
Outside I could really see the scale of the drake. It was massive. Even dead on the street it towered over me. To think it had been killed in a matter of seconds, by a crippled man no less. "What makes these things tick? It said someone had sent it, who?"
"Keith. Enough. Those questions don't have any answers. We need to leave. Now." He motioned me to climb on his back. Seemed like we were ignoring the possible salvage opportunity from the drake—understandable,
since other machines would be coming here soon.
A part of me balked at that. It certainly felt like a waste to at least not nick something from all this. But I could recognize we had enough power cells in my pack, and time was more premium than another one.
He picked back up at a breakneck pace, jumping back onto the roofs to get a clear line of sight to our goal.
"Can math theories be disproved?" he asked a few minutes into the journey.
I immediately knew that question was bait. It couldn't have been more obvious bait than if it had been a steel trap with a ration bar waiting over it.
But bait wasn't bait unless it was tempting. I bit. "Yes? Where are you going with this?"
"Can you disprove that two and two make four?"

"No." I wasn't quite sure what else to say about that. It's not likely that sort of basic building block could get disproved anytime soon.
"Automatons are the same," he said. "They're programmed to kill us.
Anything they say might as well have no correlation to their actions."
"Well, that doesn't mean it can't ever be disproved in the future. People in the third era thought magic didn't exist." I pointed at his knife. "And look,
today we have the Deathless and the occult arts. Someone must have discovered it by asking questions on things everyone else assumed was fact."
He groaned in frustration, audible even over his running steps. "I'm trying to talk to you in a way you might understand, boy. These things… they can't be reasoned with. They simply can't! You'll only give them an easier time killing you."
I decided not to press the issue. I didn't agree with him, but I could understand his point of view.

The first sign we had that we'd come near the end of this city was the lack of teal glimmering lights. The mites simply didn't appear anymore. It gave the surrounding environment an eerie, lonely feeling. There were no people, no voices, no sounds besides that of Father's tireless sprint forward.
The buildings here soon showed signs of disuse and destruction. Gouges on the sides of the walls remained unrepaired. Roofs collapsed. Walls broke down, and even the city lights were occasionally swallowed up by darkness.
The only thing that remained undamaged was the light from above. It flowed from the surface, through the cracks in the impossibly huge roof of this city.
We'd reached the mountain base. Buildings became sparser, and rocky,
uneven ground started to come into vogue. Chasms leading farther down into the underground appeared, but if they truly led to the level under us or just a dead end, I'd never know. It was really something to realize maybe a few dozen meters under our feet was the ceiling to a whole other world, the second layer down.
How any of it didn't collapse was probably something only the gods would know.
We weren't halfway up before I heard distant shrieking. Father instantly bolted behind a rock, grabbed me off his shoulder, and dumped me into one

of the crevices. It was a tight fit, but I was completely obscured from view at least.
"Stay out of sight," he hissed, staying up on the surface. "A pack of screamers in the distance, likely searching around the machine I killed. They have poor long-distance eyesight, unlike drakes. We should be able to hide from their patrol."
The automatons in the distance howled, moaned, and screamed fury. I couldn't tell if they were getting closer or farther.
Father brought out his rifle, muttering under his helmet. I brought out my own pistol, freshly reloaded and ready. This time I swore to myself I would do better than the first time we'd had to fight screamers.
Minutes passed by in the tense silence.
The sounds faded away, replaced by relief.
"We're clear," Father confirmed, breathing out a held breath. "They didn't catch sight of us."
I breathed out slowly myself, muttering and climbing back out. "How does anyone manage to live down here? They'd be attacked day and night at this rate."
"The undersiders would have all gone extinct a long time ago if they had to constantly keep vigil against all sides. Even with their suits of armor. No,
they have some kind of repellent shield to protect their cities," Father said,
lifting me the rest of the way out.
"Some kind of new lost tech?"
"I never learned the details on what they used to protect their cities.
They'd never let us, surface dwellers, anywhere deeper into their cities. Only the trade market zones allowed us entry."
"Right, of course, they wouldn't let savages like us learn how to live underground." I sighed.
"It's not a perfect solution. It doesn't work forever. They need to fight off waves of attacks during the times their shields go down." He stretched out his hand, making the hand sign for thirst. "Have reserve water?"
A check in my suit showed I still had a good amount left.
I took a big sip for myself and then unhooked the flask from the inside of my suit and passed it over. He sat down and leaned back against the rock with a groan, unclipping his armor's water flask. He transferred over my flask's contents to his own.
Neither relic wielders nor scavengers could take our headwear off to

drink on the surface for obvious reasons, so it was integrated into the suit,
closer to our bodies in order to remain unfrozen. Normally, I'd be drinking from a straw if I still had any of my headgear.
When he handed back the canteen, it was half-empty but still had some reserves left.
"Should we keep moving?" I asked.
"We need to verify they're all gone, stragglers included. Eat in the meantime."
I brought out my rations—dried frostbloom wrapped around flash-frozen printed meat, with a few sweet spices and salt to mask most of the bitter taste frostbloom was notorious for. One stick could be a full meal. Not the tastiest,
but easy enough to eat. Couldn't argue with the results—that little miracle weed had everything needed by a human diet.
Designed by the gods some said, since it seemed extremely unlikely anything could survive on the surface—and also conveniently be able to sustain the human population indefinitely. Someone was looking out for us.
I had no idea when I'd be able to eat another meal, so good or bad, I was filling up. We'd been down here for just about half a day now, maybe a few hours more, and this would let me keep going for another day.
Father crossed his legs and fell into meditation, likely reviewing the past fights in his mind to see what could be learned. I did the same, but instead I considered the automatons and what people believed they'd originated from.
There were hundreds of sub-religions, each having their own unique take on that question, but none were as popular as the big three.
The imperials believed the machines had been created by the "violet goddess" from deep in the heart of the world, to be her foot soldiers. At some point in the distant future, some massive apocalyptic war would break out and that evil goddess was preparing for it. The imperials saw it as their duty to prepare their own army, so that when their sun goddess appeared to lead the fight, they would join ranks with her. Which made them the only religion with a heavily organized military structure.
I'd never met puritans, but I'd read about them. They believed the world had been one giant metallic mind that got split into fragments. The "good"
fragments of the mind found a way to cast away all metal and become living beings. The automatons, naturally, were all the evil parts that chose to stay tainted with metal. So to them, we were even related on some level.
As for us exodites, the songs weren't exactly subtle in their messaging

about outer space.
The problem was that all three possible explanations were completely different from one another.
Exodites believed the automatons came from the darkness between the stars and more of them could appear if our gods in their orbiting fortresses weren't holding them back.
Imperials believed automatons had been created here in the heart of the world by a malignant force that wanted us all dead.
And puritans believed we were all part of the same mind at one point, and machines were all of our evil castaway thoughts cranked up to eleven—so,
technically, we had created the machines.
Which one was right?
I really wanted to hear something more evidence-based, to hear from the automatons themselves. But for all I knew they might have conflicting religions of their own—if machines even worshipped gods in the first place.
That drake had said someone had sent it. So who had enough pull to command machines? An imperial would instantly say it was the violet goddess, but it really could be anything. Or just "noise" like Father suggested.
So far, the imperials seemed like they had something right, with the machines having a violet coloring. If those drakes were repeating the same lines to anyone they attacked, it would make sense this sort of conclusion could slowly coalesce into a religion.
I mulled over what I knew, but there was nothing else I could squeeze.
Having exhausted that possible source of information, I turned to the other side of the coin. If there wasn't anything else to learn about the machines, perhaps there could be something to learn about their ancient enemies. And there was someone who might know more.
"Can you tell me more about the Deathless?"
Father glanced at me, breaking out of his meditation. "No doubt you guessed by now that the conflicting rumors are intentional. Why should I share clan secrets with you?"
I'd expected this. "Not everything about them is going to be a kept secret.
We know they can live forever and stand on the surface of the world, for example. Is there anything else you can tell me about them that isn't an operational secret? We're underground already. If you wanted me to be in the dark about this part of the world, the snow's already in the suit."

Father remained silent, likely picking out how to answer. "Everyone tunnel visions on their powers but not on the patterns around them. There are... generations of Deathless. Different powers, different ways they've appeared, different drawbacks they have. Each generation seems to build on the previous successful iteration. Lord Atius is among the older generation."
I've heard a lot of conflicting rumors, but this one was new. Generations of Deathless? Iterations? "I can see how that contributes to all the confusion about them."
He nodded. "Something they've leaned into. The Deathless themselves know very little about their own origins. One of the unifying factors across all the generations is that they've all lost their memory."
I'd heard that rumor too, though I hadn't put a lot of stock into it. "They lose their memories every hundred years?"
"No. As far as Lord Atius knows, only one generation loses their memories each century. The rest lost memories the day they gained their powers."
"How much do they lose?"
"All of it. There are no Deathless who remember who they were before they gained their title and powers."
"Some sort of experiment happening underground? And the Deathless are the experiment's subjects, tossed out into the wild or something?"
"You have such a strange imagination, boy. That's the first thing that goes through your mind?" He shook his head. "No. The earliest memory Lord Atius had was opening his eyes in an empty room with a written note, in his handwriting, asking him to save a village. No lab or experiment. He suspects he'd stumbled on something while he had been human. There's more to it, but that's all I would expect the public could know about. And all I can tell you."
That was a lot to unpack. If Atius's previous self had had the time to both write that note and direct it, that meant he'd known what was coming. It could have been a choice to become a Deathless. If he'd been forced into it,
he might have mentioned that in the letter. And if it had caught him by surprise, there wouldn't have been a message in the first place.
"I'm guessing he succeeded in protecting that village?"
"For about a hundred years he did. But it grew too dangerous, so he led that city up to the surface."
Oh. "The clan."

He nodded. "That is part of the clan history. He doesn't go out of his way to point out he'd lost his memory, although he won't hide the fact either.
Consider it an open secret."
All right. So the Deathless had generations, each building on the previous ones, similar to evolution? Made a lot more sense now why there were so many different stories about the lot.
Memory played some kind of factor that couldn't be avoided for any of them. Though there was one generation that had it worse in that regard.
"Why is Atius not down here, fighting off the machines?"
At that, Father shrugged. "That is one question I do not have an answer for. I suppose he is up here because he wishes to be. Perhaps the gods did not only choose the greatest warriors to become Deathless, but they've also seen fit to choose wise leaders as well."
I was starting to see a macro pattern here. The surface clans had a renewable source of energy from the celestial flyovers, renewable food from frostbloom, structures that appeared pushed up from the underground built to protect a population, and empowered immortal heroes picked from the best humanity had to offer to lead the clans.
All added together, it pointed that someone powerful had a vested interest in keeping the surface dwellers alive. The obvious answer was the gods. Only they could have such a reach. I wondered what gifts they bestowed on those who lived underground.
"No one knows why all Deathless seem compelled to fight the machines or protect humanity, not even themselves," Father said. "Lord Atius has a theory that only a paragon would choose to give up all memory in exchange for power. Such a trade is akin to death or to surrendering your body to another soul. He believes that the person's nature remains, even if their memories do not."
"Well," I said, chewing on my ration, "if I were a god in charge of picking people that would stay around for eternity, I'd pick the best humanity had to offer, that's for sure. Like people who arrive on time."
People like Kidra would have been who'd I'd elevate to Deathless status,
were it me picking. Arriving late to anything might physically hurt her.
"Stay serious, boy. It won't remain like this forever," Father said, a note of trouble in his voice.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I doubt we will run into any. However... you need to know what to

expect. And it's only a matter of time until you learn about it." He nodded,
almost as if trying to convince himself. "The new generation appearing, as of a year ago, seem to be… unstable. Unhinged."
Gods above. Unhinged Deathless? Machines were already an impossible feat to overcome completely, but immortal demi-gods with paranormal abilities turning against humanity?
"By unhinged, what exactly do you mean? Are they attacking the undersiders?"
"They're still hostile to the machines and fight any they meet, but they have also been known to attack civilians. They fight among each other mostly. For weapons, armor, trophies, or simply the thrill of it. Lord Atius and all the previous Deathless don't understand these new ones. We do not have a clear picture of the situation down here, only fragments and whispers are gathered with each mission we undertake."
Deathless are rare. It was common knowledge that each year, perhaps five more appeared—in the whole world. Five unhinged demi-gods could be contained by the other Deathless working together. However... "You make it sound like there are hundreds of them running around."
"Not in the hundreds," Father said. "In the hundreds of thousands."
I froze. An entire army of them stomping around the world?
He continued the strange news, "Already more Deathless of this generation have appeared than all the previous ones put together. Twice over perhaps. All in this single year."
"How are the undersiders handling it?"
"Not well. Before, Deathless were heroes who were welcome with open arms by their very nature. Now, cities keep a closer watch on them than they would a passing surface dweller like myself."
That must be a lot of scrutiny. The undersiders hated the surface clans.
The only ones who had friendly relationships with us were the more recent clans who'd settled back down and hadn't yet lost their surface culture. And the imperial pilgrims. Which made sense, since imperials worshiped the sun goddess, and the sun was visible only in one place. It was tradition for imperials to attempt a journey to the surface at least once in their life.
We quite treasured the pilgrims when they did come up. They'd offer us food and tech, and in exchange we would supply them with the best gear,
guides, and protection they needed to successfully go out onto the surface.
I might be underselling just how much pilgrims were treasured in our

culture: entire blood feuds between clans or great houses were put on hold anytime the pilgrims were around.
Wait. Talking about the pilgrims, "How are the imperials handling it?"
An army of Deathless appearing would be alarm bells for the great war of theirs.
"Not well, again." He sighed. "Many see this as the sign of the end times —as you'd expect. Most don't know what to think about this new iteration.
They used to be seen as the messengers of their sun goddess. Now, nobody knows what the future holds. The world is changing, that much is certain."
He stood up, signaling the break was coming to an end. "Lord Atius had ordered information about this be kept secret. He wanted to see how events would play out first. However, he knew it was only a matter of time before the next pilgrims arrived up top and shared the news. You would have found out soon enough."
Rifle left hanging on his strap, he motioned me over. "That's enough time spent We need to be moving."
I settled in position on his back, and he took off again up the slope.
We'd soon arrive at the tunnels and leave this endless, multi-layered city.
I prayed it would be safer in these caves.
I prayed these new Deathless were still friends with humanity in general.
But most of all, I prayed the gods were watching over us right now.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

THE MEADOW UNDERGROUND

T

he caverns were lit with sunlight, which was not what was expected for a tunnel system half a mile into the ground. But then again, when did anything that involved mites make complete sense?
In this case, it was a simulation of sunlight, which made traversing through these caves feel more like climbing through a dim chasm instead.
There were many ways into these caverns, and hiking up the mountain, we naturally slipped into the first passage large enough to squeeze into. Father didn't seem picky about which; any would work.
Warm, wide floodlights were scattered across the ceiling, looking like glowing beams of sunlight through the dusty air. Walls took on the shape of geometric cubes intermixed with broken-down rocks. Green lights shone through these, not from mites but actual circuitry inside the rocks. Wherever there were cracks, the interior revealed some sort of electronics.
I couldn't see any buttons or any way to access whatever these cubes had inside. It all just seemed like pure circuitry. More mite creations, though this was the first I'd seen that was both active and yet missing the mites.
The tunnel quickly became cramped, and I was forced to get off and walk on my own—crawling on my own for some parts.
"The undersiders had a name for a network of tunnels like this—they call it the underpassage," Father said beside me, ducking under a rocky overhang.
"Caverns like these appear on all levels, or at least the ones I've been to."
His helmet turned to me, watching as I brushed my hands over the walls.
"And no, before you ask, I don't know what any of the cubes and electronics on the walls do. As far as I can tell, it is only more mite madness."
Okay, but where were the mites? This all looked like mite madness for

sure, and it was clearly powered too considering all the lights, but I still could not see a single mite. All these lights were from circuits.
"Any trick to navigating here?" I asked. "Seems a little too easy to take a wrong turn and never find the right one again."
"There are a few... 'tricks,' as you would call them, to navigating through the underpassage."
Father pointed out to those lights on the walls. "Green lights inside the rock cracks signify a tunnel leading up a level. Blue lights mean the tunnels will stay at this level."
"And the tunnels with red lights?" I asked, pointing in one direction we'd passed by. It led to a rock bridge over a chasm, and the tunnel at the end held only dim red darkness.
"Those will lead you down a level. Obviously, we won't be going down that direction."
I was rather glad to hear that. The red passageways did not look inviting.
Not inviting in the least.

We continued making our way into the darker green-lit caverns, two lost souls—one carrying the other whenever it was spacious enough. He wasn't sprinting like he had in the city, but our pace was still quick and efficient whenever he had a chance to push it.
The hike was long and deep into the mountains. Most of the time it wasn't just some closed-up one-way tunnel but rather filled out into larger pockets with wide cave ceilings, where we'd have to search the walls for the next tunnel out.
The city-building mites had been more like craftsmen, trying to build a massive multi-layered something that when looked at from afar could pass as a city. And inside they'd filled the buildings and pipes with their own constructions.
The cave mites were clearly a different breed. These felt more like true artists with a unified vision. The tunnels and caverns were absolutely breathtaking.
Light shafts almost perfectly lined up with the rock platforms, each chipped in just the right way to both balance circuitry and stone. Waterfalls

and stepping stones were carefully placed across the streams. No matter where I stood, the view felt like some kind of painting.
It gave a feeling that these underground tunnels and rooms had been deliberately built to look undeliberate but artistic at the same time. They even had perfect little niches to restock our water supplies, the water clear and fresh with easy access by a convenient stone not-quite-boardwalk... but obviously made to be used like one.
During a section of walking, I got curious about knowing whether we were walking in the right direction or not.
"There's always one lit-up arrow somewhere in sight at all points, though usually more hidden. So long as you follow the arrow, you'll follow the color's intent." He pointed up at the ceiling. There, about as wide as a hand,
was a glowing arrow, pointing the direction we'd been walking. "Mites always follow rules, and having an arrow somewhere at all times is one of them. They are not always easy to find, however."
"So, if we're walking down a green path against the arrow, we're walking down a level instead of up one?"
The entire system screamed of a far more intelligent design, like somehow the mites had gone the extra mile to make them traversable specifically for humans.
We were never lost for long, although some ways upward were more hidden than others as Father had warned, requiring us to climb up to correctly follow the direction. Some he could outright jump over with me in tow,
others would need me to use some grappling gear to climb up.
The air here was gradually warmer and more humid. Still cold, to be sure,
but no longer cold enough to freeze running streams of water.
The ground under felt, and smelled, like the dirt we'd find on the lower levels of the clan bunker. The dirt we'd use to grow gardens. And where there was fertile soil and warmer temperatures, there was life.
Unlike the empty mite city, here life had found purchase. Green leafy plants littered the sides and center of caves, clumping together around anywhere the cavern lights shined brightest. Smaller fuzzier creatures would make these shrubs their homes, while mold and fungus called the wet sides of the walls theirs.
Insects were everywhere, buzzing around or otherwise seeking out decay anywhere it could be found. And tiny pipe bats swooped around in rippling swarms to feed on those. They stayed clear of us, flying around.

Anywhere my light flashed over, there was something to see. Color swirled around me, one mossy pigment at a time. The ground was littered with clues of life, anywhere from animal droppings to outright hoofprints and other tracks.
All clan bunkers had an ecosystem of some kind living in the lower levels, even in abandoned bunkers. That's because they all had leaks leading down into the underground. They'd get patched up and walled off as soon as a new clan settled in. Superstition said if any paths into the underground were left open in the clan bunker, machines would eventually stumble upon it and destroy the clan from the inside out. But small things always found a way to sneak past any barriers.
"Are any of the wildlife dangerous?" I asked when I spotted bigger tracks on the ground. The wildlife in the clan domains only ever grew as large as a hand. Lizards and rats were among the apex predators.
Down here, it might be a different story. Father shrugged at my question.
"No one travels the underground without weapons, so animals have long learned not to get in the way." He turned his headlights toward the walls,
illuminating the colorful moss.
"Fungus and mold can still kill if you eat the wrong ones; stick with frostbloom if you need food. As for animals, the largest you find down in the tunnels are mountain goats. Predators exist, but they're far more skittish than the goats." He patted the rifle on its strap. "Humans are not their preferred dinner."
"Goats?"
"You're the one who asked what animals were down here. Goats. They can climb better and faster than you can."
I'd never seen a goat in real life before, but I had seen them in video archives. Entertainment from the third era was generally a luxury, but it was among the cheaper luxuries. Merchants didn't care much if those wares were duplicated. Books and files containing knowledge were far more controlled in comparison.
Maybe if I was lucky, I might actually see a goat. That would be neat.

"I'm guessing the big door leads somewhere else we're not interested in?" I

asked, pointing at my discovery, a massive slab of metal shut tight and still.
Father had climbed right past it without bothering to investigate.
"They lead roughly the same way that the tunnels do, but mites may fill these with… different things. Treasure chests that mites have made, I suppose you would call them. And a different breed of automaton lurks there too. No guide arrows either once you enter the side passages. The main chambers are mostly safe, so we'll stick to these."
He lowered the rope down to me, which I grabbed and used my legs to rappel upward as Father pulled the rope.
"What sort of stuff?"
"Once, we found a relic armor exploring one of these, not from a chest but off a corpse deeper inside. It had been named Resolution by its owner, an imperial crusader who died a century or two ago. The armor was brought back and sold to House Resolution as their first armor."
"That's why they renamed their house? I thought they made a big speech about dreams they all had and the will of gods as the reason."
It was tradition to rename the first armor a house owned after their house name. Father was quite literally wearing Winterscar itself. Subsequent armors were up to whoever owned them first.
But superstition ran deep in our culture. Father agreed with my conclusion. "They couldn't reconcile the renaming tradition for their first armor with the terrible omen of renaming an armor owned by an imperial.
The whole speech was a cover, but everyone knew the real reason for the name change."
He grabbed my hand once I was close enough and lifted me outright past the rock ridge. Once on solid ground, I folded up the rope to stuff back into my backpack. Without the environmental systems inside, the thing was quite a bit lighter and more spacious.
"It was the only relic armor we ever found in the tunnels in our decades of expeditions. Other things we found in those chests usually ended up being small trinkets or items the undersiders needed. Levels further down have more powerful treasures."
I was itching with the need to examine the door, to see how it worked, but that had been tampered down greatly since coming down here. Constant lifeor-death struggles did that to a person, go figure.
Instead, I settled for appeasing some other bits of curiosity that wouldn't cost us time. "Can you tell me anything about the lower levels? Stories or

things that happen down there?"
The tunnel entrance ahead was lit with green, and a tiny arrow glinted slightly off the bottom left side, hiding behind a tall rock. He climbed over a particularly large rock, then grabbed my collar and lifted me up. "When I was in… a better state of mind, there were some sights I remember well. We traveled down to a meadow once, on the second level—an escort mission to keep a few of our traders safe until they could arrive at the next undersider hold. One moment we're walking through metal and steel alleyways. And then the next, this vast plane, almost like the surface wastes. Except all green and breathable. Grass grew everywhere, with occasional trees scattered around."
"Grass?" Odd plant. Completely worthless for food, so it only existed in books and videos. No one in their right mind would waste space and soil to grow grass. "The undersiders had an entire field of it?" What weird folks. But I suppose if they were living in a massive plain, space wasn't a luxury.
"Aye. I'd only seen pictures of grass on records when I was a boy. I enjoyed the ocean and forest pictures too. However, meadows always seemed something… more to me. I thought it was how the gods had wanted the surface to look. How it was supposed to have been. A massive plain of green,
stretching in every direction, where you could walk the ground on bare feet even. Instead, something went wrong in their plans, and now it's all ice and snow."
Plains, forests, oceans, deserts, beaches—all of that was right mystical stuff that you couldn't really believe existed. I'd read about these in old stories at first and just assumed they were fantasy tropes for a long time. It threw me for a loop once I'd seen real video footage.
Father shook his head. "I didn't have many other chances at leisure, there was training to do. Winterscar's last owner had disowned his sons and offered the armor up in challenge to anyone in the House. You remember your grandmother? She made a bid for the armor through me."
Yes, I remembered her. A sociopath who saw everyone as tools to be used for her own purposes. A highly clever political creature that one had been. She'd thrown away Father, her own son, the moment Mother died and he fell into the bottles. She took charge of me, thinking I could be molded into her next proxy pawn, playing the long game. She'd tried with Kidra but cut her losses within the month. My sister was outright immune to the crazy old bat. So Grandmother decided a newborn would be a cleaner slate, even if

it did take years before I could speak.
I was glad she bit the ice early enough. Though I was worried some of her lessons might have sunk deeper inside than I'd thought. She certainly knew how to groom someone into a weapon, from how Father had ended up.
To me, Father had always been someone you avoided whenever he arrived back home until he passed out and it was safe again. Or else you'd end up with bruises. Less of a person and more a force of nature, like a storm that blew into the house each night.
Kidra and I had gotten used to him in our own ways. She still remembered who he had been before the bottle, and I'd simply never known him as anyone other. I hadn't thought much about what his own life must have been like, growing up with a parent like that. Grandmother clearly hadn't missed where his potential was, and it sounded like she'd cut out anything that didn't maximize her goals.
"You asked what I remember the most about the underground. That would be it," Father said, ever walking forward. "There were battles and people I had met and befriended as well—if they still consider me their friend after I…" he paused for a moment. "After I stopped serving as a relic knight."
"Did you go back there every now and then, to the meadow? While you were still active."
"No. We only went there once. The hold refused to let us inside."
"That sounds like undersiders all right." I mean, I understood. Scavengers had a reputation as thieves, and I supposed we somewhat deserved it. We did pick the bones of the dead on the surface.
"They didn't want anything our traders could offer, even if it was useful,"
Father said, smolder in his voice. "Ugly scrapping thing, their city. Black castle towers, rock walls and all. It looked like a blight on the land."
There was a heaviness in his voice as he talked. "Seeing that town, how it sat so strangely in the middle of that meadow… I could almost understand how the machines might view us." He shook his head, pushing the thought away.
"I've seen hundreds of different biomes, Keith, some teeming with far more life, but I never traveled into something as simple and… and as beautiful as that."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

THE GOAT

I

t was about half an hour into the trek that one of those large sealed doors did something Father hadn't ever seen before. We were traveling through another open pocket when the random door ahead suddenly turned bright gold instead of the usual lighting that doors had.
And then it flashed, on and off, as if trying to catch our attention. Father drew out his rifle, considered for a moment, and then decided to just ignore the doorway and continue our path, gun still at the ready. The blinking increased frantically, but soon we were too far into the chamber and other rocks obscured our sight.
They didn't stop winking. Each room we reached had one door glow bright gold and begin winking. The pattern and frequency sometimes changed, and each and every time, Father stubbornly ignored the call.
"I'll not take chances," he said when I asked about the blinks. Apparently,
he'd never seen that happen before. "The fewer encounters with the machines, the better our chance of survival is. There's no need to add more unknowns. We're not here to explore."
I, of course, wanted to see what was behind those doors all the more. Was it a good idea? No. Absolutely not. I'd rather take a shower under the sun.
Father had sound reasoning.
Still, that part of me that wanted to touch everything was trying to convince me about pulling something. A friendly reminder to myself:
Everything happening right now was the direct result of the last time I pulled something.
More time into the climb, the air started to feel drier and colder.
Discomfort built up in my ears, and I'd have to move my jaw to clear out the

air in my ear. We were making our way closer to the surface now.
Artificial sunlight seemed to be more and more sparse, as if power was beginning to be disconnected the farther up we went. Our headlights soon became one of the few sources of light guiding our path up, mine still strapped on the right side of my chest, just under my neck.
Moss stopped growing, and the rustle in the bushes also became a distant memory. It was getting colder now. I even started to notice the occasional clump of frostbloom appearing wherever the cavern light still worked.
Frostbloom was notoriously weak to the competition of other plants from what we'd found in the bunkers. If they were starting to appear here… we might be running too close to the surface.
And that would be my dead end so long as I didn't have a spare rebreather.
I wasn't sure what the plan was once we got closer to the surface. Maybe he'd go ahead and make contact first, then have the rescue team return with a spare rebreather for me. That's how I'd go about it, were I in his shoes. The issue was that I'd have to be left alone for a few hours, and those screamers were clearly designed to hunt down solo targets. Machines could have looked like anything, yet they seemed to have been built from the ground up to terrify first.
Still, if it had to be done, it had to be done. Screamers didn't have specialized eyesight like he'd mentioned before. I might be able to find a crevice and hide inside, out of sight.
It was in one of these murky, more empty chambers that Father raised his hand to signal enemy contact.
"They're not usually in the main chambers like this," he muttered to himself, then shook his head and slowly backpedaled.
"Machines?"
He nodded gravely. "Up ahead, on the ceilings. Don't make too much noise."
"They didn't spot us?"
"No, these are dormant in their nests. They wait for prey to walk under them. We'll just search for another way up and sidestep them completely."
Plan in motion, we turned and backtracked. As much as I was sure the machines would love our company, I was good for one lifetime.

I got to see a goat, eventually. The large animal was chomping down on shrubs with a few others of its flock. They looked way bigger than I'd expected, filled with hair and creepy eyes.
They watched us warily, preferring to turn and go down another tunnel rather than stay and risk the pair of strangers. Watching how they effortlessly hopped around on the rocky shelves, finding any small perch, I could see why they'd done well down here. Plenty of plant life to eat, too big for the swarms of pipe bats, and no issues with mobility.
Supposedly there must have been predators down here too that hunted them. Though, like Father had said, they clearly stayed out of our sight.
But besides the goats, we'd found no other way around after two hours of walking. It looked like the nest of machines had picked this part of the cave system specifically since it was the only path within several miles—a cross point of sorts. Everything else had been either a blue tunnel, the wrong direction, a cave-in, or red and dark.
Machines aren't stupid, clearly.
And so we found ourselves back where we'd started from. If I were more superstitious, I'd say someone had jinxed me.
"Keith, you need to listen to me very carefully now," Father said.
He pointed to the ceiling, where white spike-like shapes bloomed over everywhere. No matter where his helmet headlights pointed, there would almost always be another white flower-like spine. "Those are all machines.
Three different kinds make up these nests. They have next to invisible lines of string layered around the chamber. You won't be able to see them, but the relic armor can. I'll tell you how to navigate, and you need to make sure you replicate all of my motions exactly."
There are so many of them. Maybe two or three dozen shapes. Ratshit, I could see why he called it a nest.
"Do we have a plan if there's a mess up?" I asked.
"No," he answered curtly. "This breed fights with far more coordination than previous ones you've seen. It takes a full team to hold off even a smaller nest like this. Alone, we can't even reliably run. Their only weakness is that they sleep until something triggers their trap, and they're greedy."
"Greedy?"
"They don't like to share their targets. They get especially sloppy when victory seems assured."
I nodded, understanding the gravity of it. "Like fighting two lost

humans."
"Exactly. But there's very few ways to make use of that in our situation.
The best and only plan forward is to not wake them in the first place. We'll take our time and move through this room as slowly as we need to. There's no time limit."
No time limit except for the drugs inside his body. We still had to get him to the surface before a day went by.
"What about explosives?" I asked, glancing down at his utility belt. There was one unspent grenade he'd wisely saved during that first fight. He knew they'd avoid any explosion after they learned from the first one, so he hadn't bothered wasting it.
"The ones that can be killed by an explosive stay far up on the ceilings.
The ones that come down… well, they'll survive an explosive like this one.
It'll be a waste. No, assuming we make it past this room, the grenade needs to be saved for later."
The room was large, filled with different nooks and crannies, some wide enough to easily walk and others too thin that even my slimmed-down environmental suit would get caught. I wasn't worried about rips in the weave anymore; I had bigger issues with this suit than that.
There was a stark and absolutely clear difference between this cave compared to the others. The entire place was littered with steel spikes as long as my arm, bedded into the rock, all at different angles. It reminded me of a ring of swords—the traditional dueling grounds of surface clans. A massive,
empty circle of dirt, with a ring of cheaply printed metal swords embedded everywhere at the edge.
Occult weapons could cut through armor and permanently cripple a knight. Anything less powerful than an occult weapon would bend and break with the sheer force behind a swing in armor. So duels were fought with simple and cheap metal swords. Part of the skill was to reach the edge of the arena and pull out another sword when the one in use broke.
But the ring of swords was far more organized and densely packed. This landscape was simply chaos incarnate. The metal spikes were everywhere,
with no rhyme or rhythm, but they were sporadic enough I could traverse through them.
They had no relation to the trip wires, as I quickly found out. I suppose that would have been too obvious.
Plants and moss still grew haphazardly around in the dim light, but there

wasn't a single rustle of shrubs or any frantic rats running out.
The chamber was as silent as a grave save for the water leaking through on its way down. I had a feeling machines hunted more than just humans.

As planned, we moved methodically through.
Occasionally, Father would crawl forward, and I'd have to repeat the same, each time praying under my breath nothing would trigger.
Sometimes we'd have to turn back and retrace our steps as Father got sight of what was around the corner. I got a feeling he was picking the easiest possible route, even if it came at a cost of time.
A few tracts of land were clear of traps, so that gave us a moment to collect ourselves and bypass it quickly.
Things were progressing well enough until we heard the panicked sound of a goat, far behind us.
Father froze, then swore under his breath. I turned to look at the source of the noise to see a lost youngling. Red stained its wool, and it staggered around, hooves clopping on the solid rock with feeble purchase. It looked exhausted, as if it'd been chased up here.
"It's going to trigger the room," Father hissed, drawing his rifle up. It would be a hard target at this range and an even harder shot without another hand to stabilize the weapon.
The goat continued to move, baying and approaching where we'd started.
Had it followed us here? Or more probably, whatever was chasing it knew better than to come into this room.
Father took a deep breath and held the rifle, aiming down the sights as best he could with one hand. No shot came. I could tell he was secondguessing himself, and he couldn't afford to miss the shot here.
He lowered the rifle a moment later and scanned around, then ran over to a large rock. There he took a kneeling stance, using the rock to stabilize the rifle, replacing his useless left hand. Like this, he had a much better chance of hitting the target.
He'd have to pull off an expert shot at this distance. I raced through my mind for possible ideas or ways to even the odds. "Maybe we can hit somewhere in front of the goat, to spook it away?" That would be a lot easier

to hit.
Father shook his head. "Can't take that chance. It could run the wrong way and trigger a trap at the side of the cave."
"Can we make a run for it?"
"No. If they wake up, they'll chase us down. Winterscar is a powerful armor compared to the other suits of armor, but even it can't outrun this foe."
He breathed in, held it, and aimed down sights.
The crack of the rifle resounded in the chamber, a three-burst shot that flashed through my vision.
The bullets hit the rock just behind the goat, making a loud crack echo back. It was too far away for me to see how far he'd missed by, but I had a hunch it was a really close thing. Father swore and aimed again, taking another shot immediately after.
The goat, on the other hand, didn't know it was being attacked, but it knew dangerous sounds were not to be trusted. So the stupid thing bolted straight forward just as the next round of bullets fatally caught its flank.
Flashes of light illuminated the ghostly wiring leading right up the ceiling as the goat tripped on them, baying and screaming in panic, not quite understanding just how doomed it truly was now.
Dozens of violet robotic eyes flared to life and peered down with glee.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

THINGS OF METAL AND PRIDE

F

ather instantly bailed on the idea of subtlety. He tossed the rifle out of his hands, trusting the strap would hold, and spun around. Hand now free, he reached out and yanked me off my feet, sprinting through the obstacle course with no regard for any trap. Lights shone as he tripped countless wires.
I had a miserable full view of what happened to that sorry goat in the meanwhile.
Four white, disk-like bodies landed farther away from the dying animal.
They struck the ground, dropping from the ceiling on six long legs, each limb ending in thin, pointed spikes. Their body was like that of an armored crab.
But they had the agility and dexterity of a spider with those long legs.
But the real danger to the goat was what stayed on the ceiling.
A pale blue light shot from the cavern roof at the doomed goat before it could collapse, illuminating the rock in a blue hue. This glow surrounded the goat, lifting it off its feet with a lurch into the air. There, the animal floated,
slowly rotating on itself, hooves flailing around with panic. I could even see the clumps of blood floating around in ball-like orbs, merging together,
spinning around aimlessly.
The spider-automatons moved across the terrain like water streams over rocks, legs a blur, rushing at impressive speed to reach the goat given their size, and likely to skewer the almost-dead victim with those sharp limbs. I hadn't seen any other weapons they could have used.
Those spiders didn't get the chance. A loud whistle came from the ceiling, caused by a steel spike shooting through the air. It skewered into the goat before any of the spiders could have their slice. If it hadn't died from

that spike, it certainly did after three more shots hit it. These came from different directions, catching the trapped animal all across its body. It spun with every hit, its hooves limp.
We were next.
Father leapt to the side as a spike impaled the area he'd been sprinting through. More landfalls of the spider-like automatons happened behind us.
The full nest was rousing now.
I knew what was going to happen next the moment that haze of blue appeared around us, and so did Father. As fast as a reflex, he tossed me out of the beam, "Run!" he yelled, turning on himself and drawing out his rifle to aim upwards as his feet lifted off the ground.
I hit the ground and rolled, right as a spike impaled itself by my feet and burrowed into the rock a good inch. Message received as intended, I scrambled to my feet, bolting for the tunnel and trying my best to be unpredictable.
Whistling spikes fought against the rifle's barking burst of fire for dominance. Whatever was happening, Father was taking hits. I could hear the frizz of the Winterscar armor shields deflecting hits. A lot of hits.
Something big cracked on the ceiling, followed by a shattering crunch on the ground. I couldn't tell what was going on, my head fixed straight to the tunnel.
As I was starting to think I'd get impaled any moment now, a winking of gold caught my eyes. Under a rock way, a smaller metal door flashed at me.
Closer to me than the tunnels were.
Footfalls were everywhere. Something behind me was catching up.
I made a snap choice and changed course for the small door frame.
Something shoved my foot down, and a moment later, I realized I couldn't tug my foot away. A glance down showed the reason: A spike had punched through my calf muscles and skewered me to the ground. There wasn't any pain or shock. I grabbed the metal spike and pulled up but found it firmly impaled into the ground.
A metal gauntlet wrapped itself over the spike and pulled the entire thing out of the ground in one fluid motion. Father had made it to me.
He hadn't pulled the spike out of my calf, just freed me from the ground.
Without a second wasted, he grabbed my collar and lifted me up.
I swear I could feel the throw before it even happened. Again, he launched me forward like a toy. Sailing straight, I flew to the glowing gold

doors—which were now open. They must have opened up while I'd been fumbling against the spike.
I skidded to a quick stop inside the tunnel, on the smooth ground. A glance behind me showed Father hadn't been able to follow, held up fighting off one of those spider-like automatons instead.
The thing towered above him, its body several times his mass, while its legs were almost twice as tall as he was. I hadn't noticed details from a distance, but now that it was close, I could. First, it didn't have two eyes.
Instead, it had eyes all around the edges of its dome shell, almost like shellfish would. It looked like a fat frisbee with six legs but far, far more terrifying. Agile like nothing I'd seen before.
The machine danced around, striking at Father like a surgeon. Each hit was planned out to isolate him away from the door. All its legs moved interchangeably, some to hold it up and others to attack with. It clearly could move those limbs for anything in a pinch. And it moved with twitchy movements that shouldn't be possible for its size.
I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice over. Fear didn't control me this time; experience or the stimulants had dampened it. I felt whole,
lucid, and most importantly, in control.
I rolled over to my knee and reached for my pistol.
The other spiders caught up and circled around but didn't interrupt the life-and-death fight going on in front. Whatever was on the ceiling shooting spikes had stopped as well. I wasn't sure if it was out of respect for the duel or that they couldn't get a clear shot with the spider in the way.
Father fought back like a cornered animal in those few seconds I primed my pistol. He hadn't drawn out his knife; the spider kept him too hung up on defense, even up to the point of having to tank some hits with his damaged armor. Every bit of his focus was on avoiding those impaling limbs.
I lined up my shot, considering where the best target point could be.
Even if the creature's body wasn't angled to me, it somehow spotted my movements. The machine reacted, lifting three of its legs to protect its core in anticipation. It looked like a lopsided tripod now. Rectangular holographic shielding flared to life across its limbs, lighting up the surroundings in pale blue light. It looked like relic armor shielding, the same color and appearance too. Only more permanent.
I opened fire, not letting it get a chance to fully close up its legs into one massive shield.

The bullets hit the fortified white carapace instead, chipping the ceramic armor, dealing next to no damage just as the legs locked into place.
It lowered one of those legs an inch, a few violet eyes peeking out from between the limbs. The machine looked almost bewildered. As if it had been expecting a hail of bullets or some massive weapon and couldn't believe such a puny shot was what happened instead.
That was a big mistake on its part. Father was not an opponent you could afford to forget about.
The man didn't waste the chance, smashing at an exposed leg with a savage kick. He rolled out of the way as the spider lost balance and came crashing forward. Its legs flailed about in the air, trying to catch itself as it toppled down.
In a split second, it decided to face-plant the ground instead and use those legs to cover exposed parts. Given the man next to it had a loaded weapon and good reason to use it, that turned out a smart choice.
Bullets riddled the shielded legs. Shots sought out any exposed mechanical parts from the sloppy last-second defense. White ceramic plating flew off in dusty chips from the attack, but nothing managed to do more damage than that.
The spider's armor held. It was no longer smooth and polished, but it still had plenty of life left. The blue shielding undulated like a wave at the furious impacts, no sign of damage left behind. In moments, the window of time to hit something important evaporated. The spider had shored up its defense into something more respectable.
With a quick duck to avoid a flying spike, Father turned his rifle up next,
giving up on damaging the spider. He aimed at whatever was clinging to the ceiling, backtracking blindly, firing single shot hits each time he had lined up a shot.
At least those ceiling targets seemed weak to the weapon.
Barnacle-like, with one violet eye peeking deep from their center, they were hooded by the shell. They had no arms or legs, only a turret that tracked after Father. They were a bulky, more conventional-looking weapon.
I could take a guess that those were the ones that shot spikes, and a moment later, I was proven right. Their aim was good. But a single eye? That seemed like a major weakness.
A weakness I could exploit.
I lined up the iron sights on the pistol. A bullet shot out, flying true and

breaking the violet glow of one of these. They quickly reacted to my presence, but not before I had fired another three shots, which managed to blind a second of these creatures.
Spikes hurled down into my tunnel, and I avoided them by hugging the sides of the walls, which obscured line of sight.
When the spikes stopped raining down, I took a look at the situation.
Shots clinked across Father's armor as he continued to backtrack in my direction. He was only able to dodge a handful, even as he saw them coming.
But just the same, they couldn't dodge his shots either, and he was doing damage to their population. Like I had done, he was also aiming for their eyes, expertly taking them out with one bullet each.
I added my own shots into the mix, nailing another two as he mowed six down with speed.
The spider Father had been fighting was still hunched over, covering all its eyes. Its vision seemed blinded in the process, and so it hadn't noticed Father had stopped attacking it as he steadily retreated.
Seven more spikes hailed down around and into him as his rifle clicked empty. A few missed him, but others hit hard, finally breaking the relic armor's shield reserves. The next spike would probably penetrate his armor if it hit, and he was still only halfway to the door. I continued to open fire,
trying to keep the spike throwers switching up targets to me. They seemed at least smart enough to know attacking the target who could duck into cover wasn't going to come with results.
The spider peeked through its legs again when it heard the rifle stop shooting. Immediately, it screeched bloody murder—its prey hadn't been attacking it at all but instead making a run for it. Bamboozled twice now, the angry monster leapt out to chase after him, fury radiating out.
Three more spikes rained down on Father, two of which he avoided. The third flew true, but the old man still had cards left to play. The rifle flipped up sideways, and he turned it into a makeshift shield. The spike ripped to the other side and remained lodged in the brutalized rifle. It wasn't ever going to be shooting another bullet after that, but Father's armor was spared the hit.
He continued to use it as a shield, stopping two more spikes in their tracks.
The spider had caught up right after. Lucky for us, its size and Father's close distance to the tunnel were obscuring the stationary ceiling automatons.
I shifted my aim back at the spider, ready to unload the last three shots in my pistol. It wouldn't be much, but maybe I could take one of its eyes down at

this distance.
The spider still didn't take chances, keeping two legs up this time,
covering the important parts. Looks like it remembered Father was liable to cripple its stance if it stood on only three legs.
Those energy shields were once more active in anticipation of whatever I had in store. And the other four were all used up to keep the spider moving after Father. It was in range to attack but now found itself with no spare limbs to spear him with, unless it was willing to expose something to my pistol.
I could hear its frustration through the screeching coming from the creature. Still, it chased after Father, likely planning something different.
Father twisted around and gave his full attention to accelerating into the tunnel. He crossed the tunnel territory in seconds, sliding down the incline right through the doorway.
The door sealed shut the instant he'd crossed the line, snapping viciously down on an outstretched automaton limb trailing inches behind.
The machine limb was severed at the midsection, blue energy shield and all, clearly no match for how strong this door was.
Pounding could be heard on the other side, followed by angered screeches, but nothing was coming through that door.
We'd made it.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

GIFT OF THE SUN

T

he gloom in the tunnel was illuminated only by our suit lights. Father breathed a sigh of relief, collapsing on the side of the tunnel and sliding down to sit. He took a few steadying breaths, getting his energy back.
Winterscar looked outright mutilated, dozens of plates ripped, but otherwise it was still in one piece. I was starting to suspect that relic armor relied a lot more on shields than it did the metal plates, or everything down here had already been more specialized at ripping apart metal armor. None of the automatons had any rifles, so far. Knock on metal that trend followed.
A massive thud resounded from the door at our side, doing the knocking for me already. This was followed by claw sounds and furious screeches. Our six-legged— no scratch that, our five-legged friend was not at all happy he hadn't been invited past the door like we had been. That said... "Can they break through the door?"
Father motioned me over with his working hand, ignoring the sounds.
Then he sat up to kneel by my leg once I scooted by. "No. Nothing is getting through the door," he said in the darkness as he reached for his boot.
His knife was drawn out, humming to life in the tunnel, looking like a brief halo as he spun it around his palm in preparation, providing another source of light besides our own.
Once I oriented my chest light to get a better view of my calf, I could see the steel spike had gone straight through without any resistance. It looked horrible, blood staining the entire weave around the wound. Also, it wasn't hurting at all. I knew I should have felt something; instead, my calf felt stiff and unresponsive like someone was holding it still.
The occult knife was lowered near to the far side of the spike, cutting off

the end, leaving the core embedded in my calf. "Prepare the field repair kit.
I'll pull the rest of the spike, and you'll need to seal both exit wounds right after."
I stumbled out the backpack, taking out the field repair and medical kits.
Sounds and scraping still came from the door; the automaton on the other side hadn't given up yet. It continued to pound against the door, wailing.
Father noticed my attention on the barrier. "Those spiders are difficult to kill, but they don't have anything more than legs to fight with. They lack the tools or firepower they'd need to break open a mite-made door. And they're not strong enough to pry it open either."
"So you're one hundred percent sure that thing isn't getting in here?"
"I wouldn't be standing around here if I wasn't sure," he said.
More banging came from the door. I knocked back. "Sorry, occupied. Go bang on another door."
There was a pause and then the screeching resumed at a higher octave,
along with slamming. Hmm, so they could understand English. "Hey, buddy,
how about we call the whole thing one big misunderstanding and forget all about this?"
The scratching and screaming told me it wasn't going to forget anytime soon. Father tutted. "Don't play around, boy. We gain nothing by taunting the creatures."
"Yeah, but after all the scrapshit these things put us through, I really want to twist the knife into them. Gallows humor, Kidra would call it. Helps me cope with ratshit luck."
Father scoffed, shoving my chest back slightly. "Rotten luck? We had absurd luck when the door shut as it did."
"Great luck? These doors were calling to us the whole time," I said,
elbowing him back.
"And what do you think a trap looks like, boy? Have you already forgotten about the lever? Don't think a few minor life-and-death encounters made me forget about the three baskets of frostbloom you owe, young man."
Did he just... crack a joke? Or was he serious? Both? Both. The thing caught me so flat-footed I hardly knew what to say back. "Ah," was the only word that came out.
"Ah, indeed." He sighed, glancing at the sealed door, resting his back against the wall. "In this case... you made the best of the options we had. The automaton would have chased us down the tunnels, even if we'd managed to

run. That was a poor plan on my part. There'd be no escape. And the cover shots with your pistol gave me the opening I needed." He paused for a moment. "I would have died without it, Keith. You made the right call."
Father giving me a compliment was something that seemed alien. I didn't know how to feel about that, so... I got busy instead. There was a metal spike embedded into my calf I had forgotten about.
It looked like the spike had only punctured through the muscle at least.
From the angle, it would be a sound guess that the spike hadn't gone through bone, which would have been a nightmare to deal with. Another stroke of great luck there; I'd grudgingly add another point on Father's side. No way I'd be stitching this up, sealant would have to do for now. The kit popped open at my side as I took out the glue gun.
He grabbed the remaining end and counted down to three. Then he yanked the spike out of my calf wholesale. I didn't feel any pain, more like someone had pushed something in my calf from the inside. Blood flowed out almost immediately, and I drowned the hole with a shot of glue at the epicenter. Quickly, I turned my calf around and shot the other side. I couldn't be sure if I had really hit the center of the wound, but the glue was already hardening. I didn't see any more drops of blood leaking out of it.
Father glanced over at the work. "Good. You'll need to take a pain suppressor from your med kit once the adrenaline wears off. Try not to use your leg, but don't be afraid to sprint if it'll save your life in the short term.
Do you understand?"
I gave him a nod and replaced the field repair gun with another syringe from my kit.
Father nodded at the work, finding it adequate. Then he turned to inspect the ruined rifle. The spikes on the weapon had cut clean through, a mirror to my calf, but better the rifle than the battered armor. It was clear this wasn't going to see another fight.
The weapon was an old thing, well-worn and used. Unlike relic armor,
this was something Father maintained himself.
It was with a sense of loss that he hovered over it. Even with a full faceless helmet, it was oddly expressive. He was down one of his best weapons, which meant the occult knife, my pistol, and one grenade were the only things we had left to defend ourselves with down here.
"I'll need your pistol." No arguments from me, I passed it over without a word. I wasn't particularly attached to guns anyhow.

"Will the extra size of the grip be an issue?" I asked him.
"Oversized grip won't hinder me. The limited shots and precision are what I'm worried about."
A dull pain was starting to come through my leg—a reminder that the adrenaline wasn't going to hang around forever. Better get that painkiller into my system. I'd been building a disturbingly large list of pain points recently.
Getting shot at, falling down cliffs, smashed into walls and floors, almost suffocating, and now stabbed by metal spikes. I must've really screwed up in a past life to deserve this kind of treatment.
I pulled out another vial with the right label, preparing it to the dosage. It was silly to consider just how many precious vials I was running through in a matter of hours. Like reserving all your sweets for a whole year only to waste it in one day. But if it got us back home, I was willing to pay any price. And if there was ever a time to use items instead of hoarding them, it would be now. The vial was set and administered with a tiny hiss.
Black dust drifted off the Winterscar armor, flowing across down to his hand, where Father held the bloody spike pieces. The dust consumed the entire thing, gore and all. Still, the armor remained horribly damaged. He glanced over to the severed automaton limb before a particularly loud bang against the door caught both our attention. I think it had tried to charge into the door.
There was still furious screeching, metal limbs scratching against it. The thing was persistent, I'd give it that. Father didn't seem to mind, instead lifting the severed machine limb as if in offering.
The dust consumed that just as easily as the spike, and it slowly disintegrated, bit by bit.
Relic armors were good at telling what damage would be critical and what could be survivable hit by hit. So they'd use energy shielding with great efficiency. But Winterscar was seriously toeing the line in these fights. I didn't know if it always functioned this way, or if the armor knew exactly how bad a situation we were in and was trying its best to stretch out integrity.
A massive crack on his chest still remained, parts of the exterior plates knocked right off where the automaton had landed a glancing hit. For the second time, I got a more detailed look at what existed under these armors.
Inside, multiple small separate metallic plates connected to a mess of wires.
Each had incredibly intricate glowing images carved into the plates—the same glow as the occult weapons had on their edge.

The chest exterior armor made it hard to tell the inscriptions on these smaller plates. The least obstructed was made up of triangles. Massive triangles at first, breaking off into smaller ones. The pattern repeated over and over, growing smaller each time, multiplying in all directions. Other plates also had similar patterns, just different shapes or designs.
I could understand wiring and circuit boards, but why all of these? They looked like solid chunks of metal, with no purpose other than to hold the glyph.
Were they signs to point out different sections of the armor? Some sort of language?
I discarded those two ideas right out—why go through all that trouble of carving out such detailed images when a simple label would do? Language couldn't be useful if it took hours to craft one letter. If there was meaning to glean from the visual, then it would have to be simpler.
Considering more, the only conclusion that made any amount of sense was a crafter's mark. It could be that each armor had many different forge masters behind its creation. Hence all the different plates inside. But what was with the occult glow?
I didn't get much more of a look at the internals as the armor's spirit regenerated the upper layer of armor on top. It had greedily devoured through the metal offering until there was nothing left to give. Only white ceramic and strands of black wire fell on the ground. Leftovers. The automaton limb had been all used up. But the armor hadn't been completely fixed, as there were still gashes by the arm and legs. Odd that the armor hadn't consumed the whole limb, leaving parts untouched. Was it a picky eater?
He turned to glance at me and I unpacked my backpack, rifling through the contents for anything we could spare. The life support system had already been cannibalized to repair the earlier damage against screamers—once we'd found a place to hide. Whatever was left were more essential tools. Rope,
crowbar, and other miscellaneous items that would be needed later on. I looked up and shook my head at him. There wasn't anything inside.
He sighed, then turned to look at his rifle. There was a look of almost mourning when he stared down at the busted rifle, though I could have imagined that. When he reached for it, I had a more obvious idea. "Why not cut some of the walls here and use that?"
Father turned to peer in my direction, contemplating something. Then he shrugged, taking out his knife and cutting off a piece of the wall. Holding it

out, the black dust drifted around it, circling, and then retreated back into the armor. The shard of rock he'd cut remained unconsumed.
"Do you understand? Relic armors have certain materials they don't assimilate," he said, tossing the rock shard on the ground. "Most well-known of these are other relic armors, anything made by mites, and certain clays."
He knocked the walls of the tunnel. "This looks like rock, but the entirety was made by mites. Even the dirt under you was made by mites. Natural dirt and earth are likely miles under us, under the final level, if I had to guess."
Father reached out to the rifle, his mind set. "As far as I know, metal is one of the few mite-made materials that could be assimilated, but it has to be melted down first. Organic material can also work in a pinch, but the returns are slim. We'd have to travel and collect plants for some time before the armor could be back to full condition." He glanced down at his old weapon,
riddled with those huge spikes. "Time I can't assume we'll get. This rifle isn't going to be repaired with the tools we have here. It's dead weight now."
He held out the weapon in offering. The black haze swarmed over,
reaching the rifle, consuming it, including the steel spikes that had ended the gun's long-running career. About two-thirds of the way, the black haze retreated back into the relic armor's cracks, satiated.
What was left was a rifle-like shape of metal, the interiors exposed and half dissolved. I could see even the clip had been half-consumed, showing an empty hollow where the bullets had once been before he'd run empty in the earlier fight. He tossed the remnants of metal on the floor, looking at it for a moment before turning his headlights back down the dark, cramped tunnel.
"Well, I guess we can keep following the yellow light for now?" I said.
As if it could hear us, a golden light winked into existence, near the end of our light's range. No question it wanted us to follow.
I had no idea where it wanted to lead us, but it had saved my life, so it had that going for it.
Father grunted, unhappy with the prospect but finding no other alternative. We weren't going back to the spider automaton death trap. Last I counted that was the only other option right now. I couldn't hear any more noise from that door, but I wasn't about to try to open it.
"Urs watch over us," Father muttered and took a step down the tunnel,
pistol at the ready.
We followed an unspoken agreement to trust it for now. On the first few steps, I could feel blood had pooled in my boot. Despite the patch I'd

administered, a good amount had already soaked my socks before. It felt like I'd submerged my foot in water by accident. Walking was already awkward in an environmental suit; now with my calf growing stiff and unmovable, it was slowing me down.
I didn't ask to be carried and instead tried to put all my attention on keeping a quick pace, limping whenever I could. Both of us had to be ready for a fight. We were going down an unknown tunnel, following an unknown entity with unknown motives. On the other hand, we were walking away from a known death trap, with a known entity and clear motives to murder us.
I'll consider this a lucky upgrade. Another point for Father.

The first time we encountered a door at the end of a tunnel, it opened as soon as we drew near. Once we slipped past, it closed behind us just as quickly.
The process would repeat as we journeyed, each door opening for us without complaint.
Father seemed unnerved by that, but he didn't make any more comments,
keeping that pistol at the ready the whole time.
We didn't run into any danger along the way, blessedly. The gold light had guided us true so far, except that it wasn't leading us closer to the surface. There hadn't been any, if at all, moments where we'd had to climb up. That made me nervous, but since we were exploring a branch tunnel,
there were no other lights to guide us.
After about an hour of travel, we found ourselves in a dark antechamber.
Our headlights surveyed the area, and gray stone lit up at each head turn. The golden light had stopped appearing in this cavern, and the only way was forward.
A feeling stirred inside me, that we'd reached the destination the light had been leading us to.
Deeper inside, I realized this wasn't just a cavern; it was an unplanned crypt.
Collapsed on the side of another mite-made wall, lay skeletal corpses of dead humans.
Father dropped to his knees at the sight once his headlights flashed over all three bodies. Then he brought his hand to his chest, pistol and all, in the

most reverent praying posture exodites knew. "Praise be to Urs... we actually have a chance now," he whispered in awe.
I followed his gaze, finding myself going from horrified to similarly awed.
The grinning skulls were all undisturbed and in one piece. The sub-zero temperature must have slowed down the rot. Yet the semi-frozen bodies had still decomposed into the bone-white skeletons.
They were ancient. Two of the bodies still had scraps of clothing I couldn't recognize, color and shape long gone. That wasn't the important part.
It was the third dead man that had brought Father to his knees in prayer.
This was what the gold light had been leading us for.
That last body sat contemplatively against a rock, farther away from his two companions in death, calmly cradling an ancient rifle in his lap. A longsword lay propped next to the body, a simple blade with a decorated cross hit.
And one familiar faceless helmet sat by his other side, skeletal fingers resting upon it.
As perfectly intact as the relic armor the man had died wearing. Now a burial gift.
Masterless and desolate, waiting all this time in the dark.
Waiting... for its next wielder.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

OURNEY

W

e walked reverently up to the fallen relic knight. My limp couldn't stop me from getting a closer look. The armor had gold ornaments and designs that mirrored a stylized sun. I recognized that sigil. "An imperial crusader," I whispered out, Father confirming it quietly behind me.
There wasn't an actual empire, of course. Imperials were a religion that claimed some empire had existed once and that they were the proud remnants of that empire. These must have been pilgrims, trying to reach the surface to offer alms to their sun goddess. They must have been separated from the usual convoys.
I knelt before the dead crusader. The skull bowed slightly down, its final transient prayer now fixed eternally. I wasn't worthy of wielding relic armor and would be doubly condemned by scavenging from a godsblessed crusader's corpse. Even we scavengers had some limits we wouldn't cross. Taking anything from imperial pilgrims felt like sacrilege. But relic armor was on a different level. And the crusader hadn't been poor either—an occult longblade leaned at the side, along with what looked to be the hilt of a knife by the boot.
Something had led us to this armor for a reason. Survival trumped all.
The skull clattered onto the ground when I reached out to touch the armor. A heavy layer of dust was disturbed by the events, floating into the air and lit up by our headlights.
Quiet prayers asking forgiveness fell from my mouth in stutters as I carefully removed the plates one at a time. Piece by piece, I extracted the ancient gear while Father remained on the lookout.
"Father," I asked, something in the back of my mind, "is the armor...

sentient? More than just a program?"
I heard the metal clinking of his armor as he shrugged behind me.
"They all have the same basic AI so, in a manner of speaking, they are."
"Are they smart enough to talk to?" Did it guide us here?
"It's limited. You won't find them to be good conversational partners.
Winterscar's said nothing more than status reports for as long as I've known the armor. It was built to assist the user and for no other purpose."
"What, it spent years without talking to you unless you talked to it?"
"They don't form bonds with people. My armor will not care about where I've gone once Kidra inherits it. I will only be another name on a long text file."
I guess I'd find out soon enough myself. There was a feeling in my gut that convinced me that this armor had been the one behind the yellow light,
searching for a new wielder. I took out a power cell and jettisoned the longdead one still held by the base of its belt.
This was the critical part.
Relic armor was said to be indestructible and could endure any test of time. So long as the spirit remained cohesive enough, the armor would always repair itself.
But the armor had remained without power for centuries here, with its spirit dormant. Damage could have accumulated over time and broken down the delicate soul while it was helpless to regenerate. I prayed in my mind and slotted the power cell with a click. If destiny saw me in this armor, then it would light up.
Nothing happened, but I could see the power cell draining out into the systems. I held my breath.
It awakened. Lights flickered into life on the inside, the armor alive again despite its long sleep in this tomb.
Relief hammered through me, almost making me whoop in joy; the armor was still functional!
Of course it would be, in hindsight. People had been finding relic armor for generations now, usually abandoned, and each time they worked.
I stripped off my environmental suit as quickly as I could, wincing as the glued parts peeled off my skin. The cold assaulted me immediately, of course, but my movements were efficient, and it couldn't break the excitement burning inside me. There were still some parts of the glue stopping me. I had a high-tech solution to that problem, however: "Mind if I

use your knife, Father? I need to cut my way out."
He nodded and handed it off, hilt first with the usual spin. He hadn't said a word yet, still processing the ramifications of this moment, his arm moving on auto-pilot.
There was no point in being delicate with the suit. It was broken, cut in places already, and the heating system had long since been stripped off.
There was no use for any part of this. The dead crusader's relic armor would be my new home from here on out.
In moments, the suit lay in cut strips and my skin was exposed to the cold air.
I donned the armor, plate by plate, starting with the powered-up chest.
Each piece that connected with the chest hummed quietly with power as I slowly brought the armor back to full working condition.
It was slightly taller than I was, with a more spacious chestplate. Motes of dust streamed off the powered plates, warping and consuming sections to expand others. They funneled down to the fragments of my old environmental suit, disintegrating parts of that as well, using the extra fuel to assist in reforming into a more form-fitting version.
That screamed intelligence to me. Or at least it was aware enough to know I had no more use for the ruined environmental suit and that it had no need to ask.
With each armor piece, the cold vanished, unable to penetrate past the ancient metal. It felt odd, like a light gust blowing over my skin, under the armor. I could feel the hairs on my arms tingle for a moment before settling back down to normal. I felt oddly refreshed too, like the sweat and grime that'd been accumulating were suddenly gone the moment the plate fixed itself over me.
The first parts to fully connect were the gauntlets and arms. I moved them around with dexterity, watching as the plates clinked against one another,
moving with both grace and power.
They could rip things apart with the hidden strength inside, and yet they seemed so precise. My hands and arm felt as light as a feather, almost as if the armor itself was weightless. There wasn't any empty space, some sort of cushion inflating into the armor's sides and holding it snug against my skin.
From the moment I'd hooked enough of the leg pieces, I could tell that moving around was a completely different experience. Even my calf wound stopped holding me back.

Mostly armored now, I reached down and plucked the occult longsword,
staring at it. It was a simple double-sided blade, with an ornate hilt. A few experimental swings in the air reinforced the feeling that something was different in how this armor moved compared to my environmental suit.
I realized why after a few more test swings.
The armor was moving my legs and arms for me. It followed my actions like a second set of muscles. Power coursed through, and it made sense now how relic wielders could move so swiftly. Or rip apart metal with their hands.
They weren't the ones moving the armor—the armor moved them.
I had hundreds of questions, but most I could figure out on my own.
There was a single one that I couldn't quite guess at.
"How does…" I asked a little timidly, "How does the waste work?" There hadn't been a waste removal system like the environmental suits had, as far as I'd seen.
Father tilted his head slightly. "Out of everything you could ask, this is what you wish to know first? Scholars have rotted your brain, boy. The armor's spirit consumes organic matter. Add it together."
"Ah. So that means…"
"If you have to go, you go. It will keep you clean. Sweat, blood, and even tears are consumed by the armor."
I nodded and turned back to the last bit of armor left to don. The ornate faceless visor stared back, held in my new armored gauntlets, waiting for me to equip it. I let the hilt of the sword go, leaving the occult weapon on the side of the rock it had spent centuries on. Both hands free now, I brought up the relic armor helmet.
I'd never thought I'd wear one of these in my entire life. And now, there would be a relic armor whose legacy in the clan would start with me.
House Winterscar was a knight Retainer caste, but I'd never really identified with that title. Frankly, if I could find a way to disown the Winterscar name, I would have done so a long time ago. Instead, I felt like I'd be the first engineer to don one of these armored suits.
The helmet rose and settled down snuggly over my head. The interior was dark at first, but it turned fully transparent not even a second after, letting me see a view of everything around. As if no helmet existed at all. My vision was filled with orange lines and text that the armor displayed another half-second after, layering the world in details. This must be the heads-up display.
There was a pressurized hiss as the chest neck piece connected with the

helmet and the last of the cold was chased out. The suit was sealed, supplying me with air through some other means. Something puffy inflated, and padding locked around my face and cheeks, same as it had been everywhere else on my body. The helmet was now completely snug, with no gap of air anywhere except for my face. That tingle of air swept past my cheeks and nose, ridding me of the grime on my skin. A haze of gray on the sides of my vision flickered by as the sub-armor wind passed by. Thinking it through, that must be the armor's spirit, keeping me clean.
"New user detected. Identify," an ethereal voice sounded in my ears.
This… this must be the armor.
Despite being forewarned, the voice still caught me by surprise. It sounded so… eloquent.
"I am Keith Winterscar, uh, pleased to meet you?" I responded back into my helmet, hoping I was doing this right.
"Registering new user: Winterscar, Keith. Combat suit integrity nominal."
Looks like I'd done the right steps so far. "What's your name, armor?"
"Last registered designation: Journey."
A very imperial name. They always named things after goals or titles.
Victory, divinity, endurance, sanctity—etcetera, etcetera. Grand-sounding labels like that. In comparison, we exodites had a simpler tradition on naming. Thankfully, I didn't need to rename this armor after my family House name, since Father's armor was the prime relic armor.
All other armors brought in after into the House… well, that was up to the new owner's decision. Not that I planned to rename it—I certainly wasn't going to bring that bad luck on myself. Nope, its last owner had been an imperial crusader. I certainly wasn't going to dishonor the previous owner's choice in name. Pilfering from an imperial already lent to an uneasy feeling.
"All right, Journey it is. Please keep me safe in these dangerous times."
"Acknowledged," the suit answered back emotionlessly.
Even with its indifferent answers, there was still a thrill in knowing this suit of armor was now mine—and I was talking to it. My old environmental suit's backpack easily fit over my shoulders, and I was awed at how light it felt now. Or its lack of weight.
"Don't get overconfident," Father said, his voice already synced into my helmet's speaker. "New knights always feel they can defeat the world. I've never seen any of them be right."

My survival chances had shot up through the roof, but I could still find myself buried in the snow if I wasn't cautious. I nodded at him and he continued.
"Knights need to go through extensive training to make use of an armor's full capabilities. Weeks or months if need be," he said. "We don't have that time to spare. I'll teach you the basics, and that will have to do for now."
"What's the first step?"
"The user interface. You can select things by looking at them and blinking twice. Or just call up the name with your voice."
I responded affirmatively and then tried it out. The heads-up display was filled with different bits of information. One of them caught my eye—the word "biometrics" floating off to the far left. Looking directly at it, I blinked twice.
A full, three-dimensional hologram of my body appeared projected onto the helmet. It rotated around, highlighting in red my wounded calf. Statistics and details appeared on the side when I glanced at each, showing exactly what was wrong.
Apparently, that calf wound was going to be a problem unless I got treatment for it, according to the warnings the armor was shoving into my face. It wasn't fatal, but it could be crippling if not properly cared for.
Once I looked away and blinked, the page was closed automatically. I started exploring the other options from the interface, making a shallow check of all the possible items I could work with.
There were other stats, including historical data and a realization that the last wearer had been a woman named Cathida, not a man like I'd originally thought. Given the pose they had all died in, it seemed like they hadn't died in a fight but rather lack of resources or exposure. Death must have been anticipated. A few logs also remained of her final days from what the armor showed, and as much as I wanted to dive into the history behind this relic armor and find out what they were doing here, I was on a time limit.

Those logs weren't going anywhere, but the rescue party certainly was.
The helmet color-corrected everything I looked at in the cavern, making it easier to identify items or see items in the distance. Those orange lines and highlights pointed out things I had missed, such as equipment the other two skeleton pilgrims had outlined on the bodies. One of which was marked as

"Priority One."
Well, that was ominous.
"Has the armor told you its name?" Father asked, breaking my focus.
"The relic armor's name is Journey."
"A good name for an old crusader's armor. We'll run a set of exercises to get you up to speed, and then we need to continue forward. I would celebrate for a day straight, were these different times."
But I hadn't been listening. Instead, my gaze was fixed on what I'd just seen a moment ago. Journey had synced with Father's armor, Winterscar.
And the family armor had sent back a biometric report of Father's current status. His full skeleton, bones and all, were outlined and superimposed over his biometrics. All the fractures, the broken, mismatched seams, everything was on display. And more importantly, what wasn't there at all.
His arm hadn't been broken.
It was completely missing.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

ROOT ADMINISTRATOR

"F

ather." I stared at the three-dimensional skeleton of his vitals. The entire left arm, almost to his shoulder blade, had been cut clean off.
The vitals unhelpfully stated permanent damage but showed the skin was cleanly cauterized. "What happened to your arm?"
He shrugged as if it were nothing. "I told you already, boy. It's broken."
"No. Winterscar shows me it's outright missing. You're lying to me."
That gave him pause. He muttered something about the armor, then sighed. "Fine. If you need to know, I had to deal with machines while you were unconscious. One of these encounters didn't end in my favor. A drake cut through the relic armor and my arm with it. The armor could be repaired eventually, but there wasn't anything I could do for my actual arm."
The explanation made sense, but given his track record of avoidance, I couldn't be sure that was the real truth. I didn't understand why he was keeping so many things from me. What was he gaining from doing that?
Regardless, however, he'd lost his arm—it was missing and cauterized. That fact was indisputable.
I didn't need to guess at the rest of the issues he faced. The sheer amount of warnings and internal injuries Journey pointed out on Father's vitals told the rest of the story. Skull fractures, broken ribs, muscle contusions,
subconjunctival hemorrhage on the left eye… it went on and on. The relic armor was even predicting time until total organ failure down to a matter of days, neatly written in a counting timer on the side.
Stimulants, painkillers, and Winterscar itself were the only things keeping him walking and lucid right now. "We've got to get you back on the surface.
Maybe we can still… fix some of this," I stuttered out, waving vaguely at…

well, everything.
He shook his head slowly at that. "No, Keith... this will be my last mission as a relic knight, and the last time I wear my armor. When I return to the surface, I'll be an invalid for the rest of my days with a crutch if I'm lucky. A wheelchair is more likely."
Shock flooded through me, realizing the gravity of the situation. Journey was indeed already writing out a detailed report over the heads-up screen,
pointing out where the long-term damage would come from. "But, what…
what'll happen to you?"
It was a stupid question in hindsight.
"I'll retire." He shrugged as if it didn't bother him. "Kidra will inherit Winterscar, and I'll find another way to serve the clan. I can mentor trainees,
help the next generation learn to survive. I'm... more than my combat expertise. I still have something to offer. I'm not yet worthless." He looked to the side as he spoke, and a feeling of loss dug down in my guts.
Still, he shook me out of it with his next words.
"We need to survive first before we can worry about what happens after,"
he said. "Do you understand, boy? Survival first. Everything else can come later. Put these thoughts aside for now and focus. I need to get you up to speed on how to make use of the relic armor while I still can."
I nodded, my swollen calf feeling like such a minor wound in comparison now.
A few steady breaths and I put everything I could into the back of my mind. There was a plan here, I just needed to do my part in this. Father's condition—we could consider it once we were closer to the surface, when it was possible to even start tackling it.
"All right, what are the first drills I should do to get myself familiar with relic armor?"
His voice seemed almost thankful I had dropped the subject. "First, we'll have you test the range of motion in your arms and legs. Watch how I move..."

Father talked me through a set of katas and drills meant to showcase the full range of mobility. We went through the abridged version without issue in an

hour.
While I couldn't land all the physical moves the armor was capable of, I was doing much better with the suit's more technical abilities. Navigating through the options menus, settings, and other administration was second nature to me, which apparently hadn't been the case for anyone else Father had trained before, including himself.
He went quiet after I'd started exploring deeper into the suit's interface,
letting me find out more, testing how it moved with different settings.
"You… seem relaxed about this," I said, in between the silence.
He'd been sitting down, cleaning off the ancient longsword the imperial crusader had once owned. We'd already agreed it would serve best in his hand while I took on the rifle. Father was an expert with multiple fighting styles, and while Nagareru's longsword and dagger combo wasn't feasible right now, he was certainly no slouch with the more straightforward Tetsu,
using a one-handed variation. Frankly, I didn't think there was any of the three combat schools he wasn't an expert in. Father just understood instinctively how to fight.
"Relaxed about?" he asked.
"Your situation."
There was a pause as he likely considered his words. "I've been prepared for something like this for some time now, Keith. I only needed to make sure you learned how to take care of yourself first. I wouldn't be able to face your mother if I didn't—I knew that deep down in my gut. Now that you have relic armor of your own… things have changed."
He paused, then glanced up, away from the sword. I couldn't tell what expression he made under that helmet, not even Journey's sensors would show that. "You know what, boy? I think I'll try to learn something else.
Something other than fighting." A dark chuckle came from him, the first time I'd heard him laugh. "Perhaps I'll learn how to scribble numbers in the dirt.
You seem fond of it. I only need one hand to hold a stick after all."
"Are you serious about that or just kicking the ice 'til it melts?"
"Serious." He grunted out. "I have time, more time than I will know what to do with. I'll need distractions. Man is not built to continue without a purpose."
"... I'd be happy to teach you."
"I know you would be, boy. I know you would be." He stayed quiet again, inspecting the blade further. Then, he looked up sharply as if he'd

remembered something. "Your boot has a knife. Draw it out. You've probably already memorized the suit interface. It's time I taught you some quick techniques with the occult weapons. You'll need to know how to use these weapons. And this will be the last time I can teach you by example."
The crusader didn't just have a longsword, she'd also had a knife.
Strapped right to her boot, same as Father's. "How rich was she?" I muttered,
extending the weapon out of its sheath.
"Reserve knives are almost always paired with armors. They come up in combat as often as rifles are used. Too many enemies are immune to conventional bullet fire, especially in the lower levels. This crusader, Cathida,
she likely kept it in reserve in case her longsword was indisposed. Our situation is different, and you'll need to be able to use that weapon as a standalone. Now, draw it out."
Kidra had let me investigate her knife before. I'd learned precious little I hadn't already heard stories about. I'd confirmed myself that these weapons had electricity that ran through them, working as a trigger to activate the blade. It didn't need much, so we theorized the current acted more like a real on-off switch than an actual power source.
The actual blade was basically just a chunk of metal, enchanted by a warlock, where the knife edge would glow when triggered. That part was up to anyone's guess because it certainly made no sense to me, and I'd tried quite a lot of tests to figure out what its secrets were.
It was all futile, of course. I knew that from the start. If I could find out the secrets to creating occult weapons, the warlocks would have been out of business a long time ago.
For this knife, it must have been centuries since it was last used. Could it light up again? Or would the power source inside have dried up? The armor needed a refuel to work, I wasn't sure if the knife needed some maintenance of its own. With a shrug, I clicked the trigger.
The blade lit up with the traditional blue glow I'd come to associate with the occult. "Can't believe it still works…"
Except, I could if I thought about it more.
Backup generators could be preserved indefinitely. The only drawback was inefficiency. The blade itself didn't need a strong source of power, so it made sense if the hilt had been built with that style of power storage. There was no need for efficiency here. All occult weapons were probably made like this.

"Fighting with occult weapons as a relic knight is different," Father said from the side, standing back up. "These weapons can cut through anything except another occult weapon or a shield. Power isn't a requirement, speed is.
You want to leverage the relic armor's legs and arms to strike as quickly as you can. If you do it right, the armor itself will carry through the rest. Start with a standard Tetsu stance. I'll show you why Alef's variant is used exclusively by relic knights..."
Following his orders, I performed a series of training katas and lunges with the dagger. It felt like I could go faster than possible with my actual body, but I couldn't tell exactly how to pull out that extra bit of speed, even with his coaching.
The Alef variant made more use of the body as a whole to shield against attacks. It made more sense now that I was in my own armor—the entire suit was shielded. Using a hand to block an incoming attack wasn't asking to get your hand mangled but a perfectly viable defense.
I continued through the motions, many of the strikes being used more to drill down the range of motion my armor could have. Most of the work in training had already been done a few years ago, so the variants were easy enough to incorporate.
"Feels just like old times." I had done… average I suppose. Kidra had learned like a sponge, and her skills with knives and longswords were more in the league that Father was. Mine, not so much.
"I regret not having been a better teacher," Father said. "Each training session, I was failing you further."
"Don't think it's you that did the failing. I just don't have that natural talent you and Kidra have. I wasn't bad..." I said. Thoughts of past fights with some of my peers proved I had at least picked up enough to hold my ground.
"Just not great. I give myself even odds of fighting off a pipe weasel, so long as it's smaller than my hand and doesn't look at me funny."
"You misunderstand." He stood, drawing out his own knife and walking to my side. I mirrored his stance. He struck forward a quick lunge, and I followed it. We moved together for the next set of movements, familiar to me through drills and practice.
"I know I'm not much of a father. And don't insult me by denying that,
boy." He cut me off quickly before I could say anything. "The only thing within my skills that I could do for you and Kidra was to teach you how to fight. At least that one thing, I thought I could do. It's all I was ever good at."

Strike, block, turn, strike. I followed the kata, trying to move as quickly and precisely as I could. Even with relic armor, I could tell my father was still moving only half as fast as he could, slowing himself down for my sake.
Normally, there would start to be anger at this point. But instead, he continued to talk. It wasn't anger in his voice, it was something different.
More like melancholy.
"Each lesson that I failed to teach you… it made me feel like the one thing that I could do right, the one thing I'm supposed to be able to do right, I couldn't. I grew angry, frustrated at myself, and then I'd take it out on you."
We struck out with one last strike, twisting around an imaginary hit and lunging forward to complete the kata. I stayed quiet, not wanting to interrupt him.
"You weren't the one failing, Keith. The more I gave it thought, the more I realized Kidra is like me. She simply understood. I didn't need to explain anything to her, I only needed to show by example. I was blaming you for something you couldn't possibly overcome."
He turned to watch me. "You don't learn like she does. Showing you isn't enough. You need to understand through answers. Through words and experiments. Trial and error. You never take anything for granted until you can put it personally to the test." He sighed, lifting his dagger, watching it as if it held answers. "I can't explain to you why stance is important, or why you need to strike at certain angles. Cadence, tempo, spacing, instinct. It's all too complicated, and I'm no scholar with sharp enough words for the task."
"You might be overthinking it, Father," I said. "Occam's razor. It's a proverb that's often quoted among the Reachers: sometimes the simplest answers are the real ones—I'm just not good at fighting," I said. "I don't think I could be any better than I am right now."
At that, he shook his head. "No, you can be. You could do so much more than I can. I know that in my gut. I can't explain it to you why or understand it myself, but I know you could be a great warrior. If you applied that intellect and combined it with... I should have learned how to teach first. And now look at you—you believe you can't fight well. I've crippled you, boy."
He reset his stance and I followed. We continued with another set of strikes, no words between us.
He only spoke at the end of the form. "I suppose I won't have a choice but to learn how to teach a different way once we're back on the surface.
Perhaps there is still some good to come out of all this." He gave another

chuckle, and this time it held more life to it. "I'll need to be able to explain with words. The Reachers were able to teach you. They could talk to you in ways you could understand. If I learned from them, I could try to teach you again. And succeed this time."
He motioned me to lift my knife again, then took a different stance to my side. Once more I stood nearby and mimicked the position.
"I could... introduce you to some of the engineers I know," I said, Anarii and Teed coming to mind right away. "You might think they're low caste, but they can all be charming. I'm sure they'll grow on you."
"I never thought they were beneath me, Keith." He paused. "You need to understand—I see them as fragile, in need of shelter. I've lived a life where I've been tasked to protect people like them. And I needed you to be the opposite of fragile."
Then he shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore now that you have armor. Let's get back to the drills. This much I can do right."
I believed him.

The training brought an interesting discovery. The suit wasn't just powering my movements or moving like a second skin, it was actively predicting how and where I wanted to move through some sort of connection with my brain or predictive data. Or something of that nature.
When I'd asked my armor, it had simply said it was generating solutions through predictive modeling based on a massive data set of previous human motions. I don't think it understood how it functioned, only that it did.
This wasn't actually a suit of combat armor, it was a vehicle, tailored to fit the human frame. And I was controlling it all with my mind, more or less.
This made me curious about Father's particular circumstances. Relic armor was so intelligent, I wouldn't be surprised if it could practically move on its own if needed.
This brought on one glaring question: "Journey, why isn't Father's armor moving his left hand for him?"
"Hardwired security measures prevent autonomous locomotion," it said.
"What? Why is that a security issue?"
"Hostile force may attack the combat suit cybernetically and override the

unit's locomotion. All features that require autonomous locomotion are locked, requiring both physical user confirmation and administrator permission. Local administrator permissions are waived only if no local users are active."
I couldn't even fathom what sort of weapon could hijack relic armor, but I suppose it could exist out there. The thought of being trapped in your own armor was pretty claustrophobic.
Father stood up from his seated position. We'd been taking a breather in the meantime. "What are you asking about, boy?"
"Relic armor is too smart," I said. "It moves itself and is constantly predicting your motions. If it can do that, then what's stopping your armor from moving your left hand for you?"
"My arm is missing." He scoffed. "Winterscar wouldn't be able to tell how I wanted to move a missing arm."
"But that's the thing! Your arm is muscles and nerves. How you choose to move the arm comes from your head, not your arms. So I need to find out if the suit really does have sensors all over to detect muscle movements, or if it's all in the helmet. Or if it really is just predicting things within nanoseconds."
And the first step to finding that out was to figure out this safety lock.
"Journey, is Father the current administrator of his armor?"
"Negative."
Ah. That'd have been too easy. "Okay, who is?"
"No data found."
I could understand Father not being an administrator, but no way to find out who was?
"Why can't you find anything about the administrator? Another security measure?"
"No administrator set."
"So… what, you're still running factory settings?"
"Affirmative."
Well. Worth a shot. "I'd like to upgrade my permissions to an administrator account, please."
"Administrator override required. Please log in to an administrator account with required permissions for this action."
No free meals for the hungry. The old chicken and egg situation where to become an administrator you needed an already existing administrator to

confirm. Which begged the question—who was the first administrator?
I'd seen this problem explained exactly once in my life, from my source of all things interesting: books I'd bought.
One of these traders had shown up with a pilgrimage and brought with him a bundle of books on wi-fi and old third-era tech. I bought the whole set thinking I'd crack the puzzle. No prize for guessing how that ended.
Those books weren't exactly light reading and also not quite all engineering books either. One of them wasn't even a book but an instruction manual for a router. And I'd found out the last section of the bundle had been a legal document—some thirty pages dedicated to ownership of a single bit of wi-fi software. People from the past eras were nutcases with too much free time on their hands. The vendor had padded the books out with that in hopes gullible people like me didn't have the time to spot it before buying. It had worked, but in my defense, I was still a tiny kid back then.
Nonetheless, these books had been mostly worthless. There was a reason a random trader had those for sale, and back then, I hadn't understood that real information wouldn't be for sale in the first place.
But... I did find out something interesting about security. Right now, the common tech was mechanical so there was little need for administrators or permission shenanigans. My old environmental suit and pistol didn't have any users or passwords to deal with for example. But apparently, in the late third era, almost everything could talk to one another which led to… issues.
So how do you set the first administrator account if you need an administrator account to confirm the permissions?
Ironically, it was that instruction booklet for routers that mentioned the answer.
Everything made had a default administrator account and password burned inside the hardware. One that was supposed to be accessed by its first user and changed immediately after. The password was usually the same as the username and very short. The booklet had made it seem like this was just common practice that everyone knew about.
I'd get no better guesses, so it was time to put obscure trivia to the test.
"Journey, I'd like to login. Username: Admin. Password: Admin."
"Incorrect login. Two attempts remaining," Journey replied immediately.
The tone remained completely colorless, yet I could swear it almost felt patronizing anyhow. As if the armor had figuratively rolled its eyes at me.
Welp. Here I thought I'd been so clever. Only two more chances to get it

right.
The third era was a few centuries before the godly lost tech era of these armors, but everything was built on top of everything else. So my theory was that somewhere buried deep were the building blocks that the third era left behind—if the way to handle administrator default settings had worked without issues back then, I didn't see why they'd change that up later. How often were these things updated anyhow?
Still, better be sure I wasn't going to mess something up. "Journey, what happens if I fail the last two attempts?"
"User will be locked out of login attempts for the next twenty-four hours."
Okay, not that bad.
If I survived all this, of course. I'd be able to spend time back home and go through all the books I had to make a more educated guess at this.
"Got a user manual by chance?" If Journey had one, I might be able to find the keys to the kingdom. Would be a cheeky win if it worked. This whole plan did come from a wi-fi manual after all.
"Data not found."
I tutted, annoyed but not surprised. I'd burn through the low-hanging fruits right now just in case one worked. Better to have tried. If I found out I'd been sitting on the right answer the whole time and not used it out of misguided fear, I think I'd die of shame. "Admin-Admin" was the one the router manual had pointed out, but there were mentions on others.
I gave them a shot. "Root, root."
"Incorrect login. One attempt remaining."
"User, password."
"Incorrect login. System locked."
Ratshit. They had changed it up since the third era. No great loss. I hadn't seriously expected that to work. I didn't have any other clues on hand with what I had here. I metaphorically shrugged my shoulders and grabbed my knife, preparing for the next set of training drills.
This can be revisited later. "Well. Can't blame me for tryin—"
"Root administrator remote override accepted. Guest user: Winterscar,
Keith—upgraded to administrator account."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

PREDICTIVE MODELING

I

did it? Wait… how did I do it? I ran out of password attempts.
"I'm an administrator now?"
"Affirmative," Journey answered, voice still monotone.
Father spoke up. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm getting more control over Journey. Funnily enough, it worked completely out of my control. I've unlocked something, though I'm not quite sure how."
That seemed to make him worried—for good reason. He stood and walked over. "Unlocked what?"
"Administrator rights."
"... And what does that mean?"
"It means a lot. But most importantly, there might be a way to fix your arm."
This all raised some serious questions I had to solve, and I didn't mean getting an arm to move. Except, right now, we had to get to the surface. And the best way to do that was to get Father's left arm back into working condition. Here goes nothing: "Journey, ask Winterscar to move Father's left hand for him."
No idea if that was the right way to request things from relic armor. My guess was that the suit would know what I was after. They seemed more like butlers and servants.
"Current administrator for combat suit callsign Winterscar cannot be reached."
"Can't be reached because there isn't one yet by any chance?"
"Unknown."

Okay. The question was if my luck would hold twice, because guessing random passwords clearly hadn't been what did the trick. But it might have put me on the map to something or someone else. Would it work for him? Or was the root administrator that helped me out just now only able to do that for Journey? "Father, repeat this word for word to your suit. 'Winterscar,
upgrade my account to administrator.' And when it asks for a username and password, say: user - password."
For a moment I thought he was about to rebuke me for wasting time again. Instead, he nodded and followed directions without complaint. Once done, he turned back to me curiously. "It told me my account was upgraded to an administrator?"
Ho, ho, ho, we are cooking with fire now.
The override for Journey came from a root administrator and was considered remote—that meant the real administrator was at a distance. It was possible it was notified of my attempts to brute force the armor on failure, and when it looked into my situation, it decided to throw me a bone.
Given that Winterscar requested the same, and likely failed to unlock administrator the exact same way as well, my theory was that Winterscar also sent out a ping just like Journey had. To the same root administrator. Who already had decided to help out.
Ergo, that would explain why Father only tried to unlock it once while I had to go through all failures.
More troubling, this root administrator had the permissions to two different relic armors, one of which had been sitting in a cave for the past few centuries. So they probably had access to all the relic armors… or a huge chunk of them.
There were five possibilities I could think of that would live that long: a Deathless, a group of people passing down knowledge, a machine of some kind, the creator of the relic armors themselves, or the suits of armor acting on their own—possibly bending their own programming logic in order to help us out the most.
A group of people would certainly try to get leverage from us in some way first—there are no free meals. Additionally, if there was more than one person who knew about administrator accounts and how to unlock them, I'd have heard rumors by now. You can't keep simple information like that secret for centuries. Complicated information was one thing, but something simple to tell over a few sentences and a drink would inevitably leak.

That left a machine, the forgemaster, or the suits of armor themselves.
The machine theory could be tossed out, because they'd never help a human like so.
These armors hadn't come from nowhere—someone had made them. And given there weren't many differences between them all, the armors might have been all forged around the same time. Whoever created these armors might have some kind of immortality like the Deathless did. I couldn't rule that theory out, but I certainly couldn't prove any of it either—it was all wild speculation based on gut hunches after all.
The armors themselves might have tried looking for wiggle room in their programming to assist us in more creative ways. Except that this theory could be disproven easily. If the armors were that altruistic, more people would have unlocked the administrator accounts already. If Journey tossed me the keys when it just met me, that meant it was primed to do the same for any other human. I couldn't have been the first person to poke my nose into this.
Although, Father wasn't tech-literate, and he wouldn't know what administrator account meant, aside from the literal definition of administrator. He'd spend his focus on what he excelled at; tech stuff wasn't his theater. I knew only soldiers like him would wear these suits of armor,
and they wouldn't see much downtime for an engineer to sniff around. The problem with all this was that even if I really had been the first engineer with access to one of these relic armors, the undersiders had more suits of armor than we did. It only took one city that allowed engineers to either wear or simply maintain the armor for this "secret" to leak out. They'd surely have also discovered the administrator accounts at some point, and the pilgrims would have carried that knowledge up eventually.
A Deathless was currently the most possible solution as far as I could tell.
It wasn't a perfect fit and had its own holes, but at this point, I was now either wrong on all five guesses or there was information I didn't know yet that affected the options.
Focus on the task at hand first. I could come up with more answers later.
Turning my head around, I glanced at Father. "Ask Winterscar to move your hand for you, see what happens."
There was a hesitation in his stance, but he quickly moved past it and asked the suit to move his hand. Things went quiet again, Winterscar must be saying something to him. I couldn't overhear what it was saying, but Father replied, "Confirm override."

Excitement followed behind as we both waited with bated breath to see what happened next.
Nothing. The arm stayed limp.
"Keith," Father said, "I… I'm not sure what the armor is asking me now.
Translate for me."
More troubleshooting? "All right. Journey," I said, "can you patch me into Father's armor?"
A similar but deeper ethereal voice answered instead of Journey.
"Connection established. Voice pitch modified to identify combat suits vocally."
"So... you must be our House armor, Winterscar, right?"
"Affirmative."
Goosebumps ran down my spine as I realized I was speaking to the Winterscar armor itself. Despite the number of times I'd seen it, this old armor was still an outright legendary relic handed down in our House for generations. "Uhh, pleased to meet you for the first time."
It didn't answer back. These suits really weren't much for small talk.
Father had hit the target when he said they didn't befriend anyone. All right,
let's get to the real meat. "Winterscar, can you repeat what you asked Father?"
"Please select between motion options: an autonomous combat subprogram, or predictive modeling based on one hundred and twenty thousand,
four hundred and forty-nine hours of logged operational use for user:
Winterscar, Tenisent."
Holy ratshit, that was a lot of hours. "Which would be better?"
"Option two is estimated to be more effective. Enough data logged to make simulation accurate to ninety-nine point nine-nine-eight-six percent. An additional sixteen-point-seven percent power draw is estimated for single-arm simulation."
If this was what I thought it was… the way these suits moved was far too eerie and accurate. And Journey had only known me for less than an hour. So what could they do after spending a full lifetime of watching? The number of hours Father had spent inside that armor was mind-boggling, but it made sense if accounting for the years of daily use.
"Please select option two, Winterscar."
"Remote override rejected. Insufficient permissions. Local user permissions required for any control override using general administrator

permissions," Winterscar chimed out.
"What th—oh!"
Had to be actually wearing the suit before it would take any orders. I couldn't control Winterscar remotely. Made sense. Even with the new administrator account, the suit wanted confirmation from the current user as well. I wondered if that same safety feature prevented our elusive patron from messing with the suits while we were inside them. It most certainly prevented the enemy from messing with us if our own friend couldn't.
I turned to Father. "Ask it for the predictive option. I think the suit can only take that sort of order from you."
He still seemed mostly confused about what was going on, but he shrugged and asked Winterscar for the second option.
As soon as he had said his order, the armor responded. "Releasing safety locks. Loading predictive modeling. Isolating model to left brachium. Partial cognitive engram, online."
A beat passed. Winterscar said nothing else.
"Is it done?" I asked the armor.
"Affirmative. Partial cognitive engram is currently online and functioning within nominal range."
While that was great to hear, Father's arm still wasn't moving. Ahhh,
scrapshit. What was wrong this time?
Father turned his gaze to me, an almost confused look to his posture. "Is there another step to take?" he asked, moving his arms in a minor shrug.

Moving. Both. Arms.
He seemed to realize this at the same time I did. Immediately, his left arm raised up and his head snapped down to observe. The hand flexed its fingers,
open and closing, twisting the wrists while Father gazed down at it,
enchanted.
"I… how is this possible?" Father asked, lifting the whole arm up,
amazed as the hand continued to move. "I know it's not my arm. I can't feel anything, and yet it moves as if it can read my thoughts! As if it is my own!"
The left arm continued to wave and move, fingers opening and closing as he gazed in awe. He kneeled down and drew out his boot's knife, spinning it around in his hand, and then tossed it to his left. The left hand snatched the midair hilt of the knife as if natural. Right hand free, he reached out for the occult longsword. Then he stood up into a full Nagareru stance. The result

looked like the man had nothing wrong, both arms working in perfect sync with one another.
He swung a few experimental moves, testing the waters. The strikes flew fast, growing more complex with each second. They flowed into each other like water woven into a stream. He mixed in ducks, feints, twirls, and even weapon swaps. The ghost limb acted without flaw, matching his movements perfectly. Both the weapons lit up as he moved, surrounding him in an afterglow of blue following the path his weapons took.
He looked less like a man and more a force of nature, a whirlwind of glowing azure made manifest. I'd seen him once move like this when he fought and reclaimed his title as Lord Atius's right hand.
His flow of moves ended with a full-body twist, extending his left hand at the optimal moment to throw his knife directly ahead, where the blade sank into the rock wall down to the hilt, aimed perfectly level to his arm.
He turned to me, chest breathing in and out quickly at the excursion.
"This… this is amazing! Keith! My arm is back! Look! It's even moving when I speak!"
It had indeed been moving exactly like anyone would unconsciously move their hands. Father jogged forward to recover the knife, then sheathed the weapons. Next, he balled up his right fist and brought it down to the palm of his left hand. It had moved perfectly up to catch the fist. He pushed against it, and the hand let itself be pushed slightly back. Then it overpowered his fist back. He continued this tug of war, alternating speed and power.
"It feels like my left arm is still there, only numb. But it moves like it's connected to my mind. How is this possible?"
"Predictive modeling, from what I can guess," I answered back. "It's a long story, but basically, Winterscar has spent so many hours watching how you move and think, it can predict what you do next. That's why it's got 'predictive' in the title. And a model is a more technical term to say something like an engine in this case."
Father nodded, still in awe over the moving arm. He began a series of katas like I had been doing, testing how reliable the arm really was. It was a night-and-day difference to my own outright clumsy attempts at those same katas. This was how it was truly supposed to look.
I joined in with him again, and we went through the katas together. It was downright eerie how well the arm moved. Since I couldn't see the inside of the arm, it simply looked like my father was moving normally.

I'd done good. I'd definitely done good.

The next item on the to-do list was the other weapon the crusader had left behind. My scrapper gun had a massive handle, which made it usable for my environmental suit but more than awkward for my new relic armor.
Fortunately, Cathida had owned a rifle as well, and it had been cradled in her lap before I'd donned her armor.
The ancient rifle left by the dead crusader was a lot more straightforward to work with—no permission issues here. I wasn't surprised to find its ammunition was different from the scavenger pistol we currently had. I'd have to make do with the leftover reserves on the crusader's belt.
The design of the weapons hadn't changed, however. Ammunition magazine into the rifle, lock and load, and press the trigger to shoot—
preferably while aiming at something disreputable. Different era, same humans. Don't fix what's not broken and all that.
I found where all the bells and whistles were, went through the motions,
and took an experimental aim. Nothing happened when I pressed the trigger.
Rats.
"The weapon's been too damaged by time. They don't need to be wellmaintained, but some maintenance is still needed," Father spoke from the side, making his way to my partially dissolved and ripped-apart environmental suit. "You'll have to make do with your scav pistol for now."
I looked down on the ancient weapon with an odd sense of loss. And then frustration. The relic armor could disintegrate metals and organic matter to rebuild itself from thin air. This raw power that could just magic things out of thin air was literally centimeters away from the broken weapon. Could it really just be restricted to itself?
"Journey, is there any way you can fix the rifle?" I asked.
"Scanning… corrosion detected. Possible to disintegrate corrosion. Please keep the weapon near the armor."
I brought the old weapon by my chest, and the familiar haze of black particles streamed from my suit and flowed down into the rifle. There, they slipped inside.
The process took only a minute before the particles streamed back out.

"Repair complete," Journey chimed in my helmet.
I primed the weapon once more, took aim, and pressed the trigger. The weapon worked exactly as expected, bullets barking out, straight and true.
Father quirked his head to the side. "I hadn't thought to ask Winterscar to assist in maintaining my own rifle. That's… a novel use of the armor."
"Calibrating targeting reticle," the relic armor spoke, and then a more pronounced orange circle with tick marks appeared. It moved as I moved my aim.
"I can't believe undersiders have hundreds of these," I breathed out. "The sheer amount of things relic armor can do... scraping bent metal pricks keeping us in the dark." They had to know about all this.
Wait. Did they?
Journey still had the default settings—no administrator accounts set up.
The same as Father's suit. I could understand Winterscar might be untested, it had spent most of its life up on the surface as far as our history went for it.
But Journey? That was an armor owned by undersiders, a crusader even. If her armor still had the default settings enabled, then maybe the undersiders also didn't know about the accounts? Or the root administrator didn't hand out the keys like candy.
How the scrap were they supposed to have been using hundreds of these suits of armor? They'd have to have figured out a way to create more…
To create more.
Oh, I was such an idiot.
I'd seen the armor repair itself from nothing but scrap and power cells. I should have thought of this immediately. "Journey... can you create another armor?"
"Negative," the suit replied, dashing my hopes instantly again. That really would have been a bit too broken. But again, I wasn't out of the running just yet. I'd wiggled out a few wins already from Journey, so it was time to dig into this. It was pretty clear the armor didn't do anything creatively on its own.
"Why can't you make another suit?"
"Gray goo protocol prohibits the creation of non-colony nanites."
"I have no idea what any of that meant."
"Specify query," Journey chimed back.
"Ok, first: what's gray goo protocol?"
"A protocol set in place to prevent a hypothetical global catastrophic

scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control selfreplicating machines consume all biomass on Earth while building more of themselves."
I paused and looked around. The entire cavern had been sculpted by mad mites who had left untold centuries ago to do the same somewhere else. "I think the protocol failed a long time ago, buddy."
Journey remained quiet.
"See, since the protocol failed, why not give it a shot now?"
"Negative. This unit is physically incapable of breaching the gray goo protocol."
"Physically unable to? I find that hard to believe."
"This unit's nanite colony was hardwired to be unable to create any nanite not connected to the colony."
"Fine. What are these nanites? Is that nanotechnology? What's nanotechnology?"
"Nanites are an application of nanotechnology. Affirmative.
Nanotechnology is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes."
This was making my head spin. All these words didn't mean anything to me. I had to get some footing in the real world about them. "Can you give me an example?"
"This unit used nanotechnology to repair the rifle."
Oh! Nanotechnology was the lost tech term for the armor's spirit! "So you can't create another black cloud unless it's part of your own black cloud?"
"Affirmative."
There had to be a way to twist this to my advantage. I could feel there was wiggle room here to tear in. I sat down and started to brainstorm ideas.
Father broke me out of my thoughts a few minutes later, working with specific knife forms that relied on swapping hands on the knife mid-fight.
"We'll need to go soon," he said, putting the knife back into his boot with satisfaction. "Staying for too long in one area attracts automatons. You'll have to get used to the suit on the move."
"Sure, let me see if… if the pilgrims had anything on them." I took a few hesitant steps toward the dead bodies. I didn't feel too comfortable with the idea of desecrating the dead bodies even more than I already had. As a scavenger, that was an odd thing to feel, since part of our nature was to loot

anything that wasn't bolted down... but these were pilgrims. There was a sense of desecration when I thought about trying to find anything else to pick from their corpse. Journey's old owner, Cathida… well, she had died protecting these two.
It looked like Father had the same thoughts as his left arm shot out quick,
stopping me in my tracks. "That will bring down omens on us, boy. I understand your pragmatism; however, the relic armor and weapons are enough. I'll not take more chances by bringing down the ire of the gods on our heads," Father said.
I found myself agreeing with Father's words easily. Rather, I was hoping someone would tell me not to do this.
We both started to take a few steps, while I gave the pilgrims one last look.
Journey highlighted the items they had without prompt, pinging something in the ground the moment it entered my sight. One skeletal hand lay clutching what looked like a black brick with a carrying handle. The armor was highlighting that item, insistent on its importance, a halo of orange surrounding it.
"Hold on. Journey's trying to get my attention about that item," I said,
pointing at it.
Father glanced down, following my finger. I could almost see the gears running in his head. "I don't recognize this," he said. "I've seen and escorted plenty of pilgrims and pilgrimages, and I've never seen this before."
He didn't stop me as I approached the item, kneeling to inspect it. It was a black brick with a handle on it, a skeletal hand wrapped around the grip. The glowing halo of orange from Journey's heads-up display labeled it "Priority One."
"What's this?" I asked. No answer came.
Right, I needed to get more used to the armor's quirks about talking.
There's been a pattern I'd noticed: The armor stays really quiet unless it's obvious I'm talking to it. "Journey," I said, using its name to be as unambiguous as possible, "what is this thing?"
The armor chimed in my speaker, "Priority One."
Yes, I could read that, the HUD was making it abundantly clear. "Uh, can you tell me more about it... Journey?"
"No data found," it answered back curtly.
"But you're highlighting it on my visor. Why?"

"Item designated as priority one by user: Langg, Cathida."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

REUNION

T

he crusader had set this as something important to guard. I couldn't know her motives until I could read the logs. Since this was her armor,
I could at least try to protect whatever she'd marked important as a sign of respect.
Reaching down, I pried it out of a long-dead hand.
At first glance, it looked like a file storage device of some sort. It didn't have any seams that showed it could open, except at the edges. Whatever this was, it was mechanical. That guess about it being a file storage got thrown out of the airlock once I noticed no ways to connect the brick to any power supply. That meant it had an internal supply—if it was even electric in the first place. I started looking for openings.
What I had found instead were buttons on the handle. Possible on-off switches? Flicking these did nothing—the item was probably out of power.
Unlike occult knives, this device probably didn't store power like backup generators did, so there would be a finite lifecycle. Searching further, I found what I'd been looking for: on its right side was a small valve and inscribed sigil for power. Jackpot.
All I knew about this item so far was that Cathida had died protecting it and that power was required. Fortunately, we did have plenty of power to spare.
I shuffled over and grabbed one of the three spare power cells we had in stock, graciously donated by less than reasonable folks.
A quick twist on the valve opened it up, and power flowed freely as I dropped a small trickle of liquid, charging up the device in a few seconds.
Since the brick was small, it didn't take much out of the power cell before

capacity was reached.
Now I flicked the power switch back to what was probably the activation.
The brick lit up a few stylized runes in dim blue on its flat surface but nothing else besides that. I rotated the device, looking for points of egress,
and found that there were a few seams that were now more visible with the dim lighting, where the thing would probably open. All four corners and right under the handle. That part opened with a tug, showing the plate had protected two buttons. One was labeled "Capture" and the other "Connect."
I pressed the connect button, but the box just flashed red and the switch flipped back. I guess that was a dead end for now or required something more. I toggled the capture button next and saw a telescopic tube shoot out of the front, followed by the sound of air being sucked.
Looks like it was a mini-vacuum cleaner. This could be a science kit designed to study small samples of material, at least from my first thoughts. I flipped the switch off and the tube retracted smoothly, the vacuum turned off.
I'd have to dig into the logs to find out more about what this thing was.
"Keith," Father said at my side. A quick glance and I could tell what was on his mind without more words.
We had to go. We'd been here for too long.
"I need to take this with me," I said, hooking the black brick to my belt. It fit snuggly, clearly made for this.
Father shook his head to himself. "What's your reason this time, boy?"
"The armor's owner. She's marked this as priority one. I don't think this was a pilgrimage, Father. I think they were on a mission. And maybe I might be able to help complete that mission, once we're back on the surface."
That seemed to convince him. "Fair enough. And now I suppose you'll ask to follow the gold light farther down into the depths?"
"Got a better idea?"
"No." He sighed. "All my instincts are calling me a fool for following the unknown, but it led us to relic armor. It has proven trustworthy. I just disagree with the direction."
If that light wanted to kill us, leading us to a second suit of armor was the polar opposite of that plan. I didn't know the destination or the exact goal the light had, but I could make a good case it wanted us alive—and able to stay that way. We hadn't ascended at all, but until we found the lit tunnels again,
we'd have no way of knowing where we were going besides that light.
We turned to the only tunnel leading out that still had that golden light

active. One quick thing to check before we continued forward: "Journey, are you the one causing that?" I asked again, pointing. I didn't expect a yes.
"Query must be specified further."
"The yellow light there. We followed it to get here, was that you?"
"Negative."
"Do you know who did?"
"Negative."
It hadn't even known about the lights in the first place. In hindsight, this made a lot of sense—Journey had been dead to the world. Powerless. From its perspective, Cathida had just died a few hours ago and power had run out.
The next thing it knew, a new user was taking over and it had been a few centuries in the intermediate time.
The AI was taking it well in stride, all things considered. Or it truly wasn't capable of caring. It certainly gave off the impression that this was business as usual. Maybe Cathida really was just another name on a long text file somewhere in its memory banks as far as Journey cared.
"Prepared?" Father asked from the side, knife tucked securely to his boot and rifle in a relaxed carry. I'd been left with my scavenger pistol and Cathida's occult knife.
"As much as I'll ever be. I suppose this will double as running practice."
"Aye. Keep up, but don't be a fool and push yourself over the edge either.
Your calf muscle is still wounded."
"I don't think I'll forget about that anytime soon." I chuckled.
"You might. The painkillers will make it seem as if nothing is wrong.
Keep it in your mind." He turned and jogged off, following the yellow light. I made my way behind him, Journey matching my movements smoothly and letting me keep up. The suit had about seven hours per power cell, and we had just about three left. We'd be cutting it close, but we should have enough to make whatever side detour the gold light wanted.
We moved after it, vaulting over obstacles and leaping chasms and rivers as we crossed through the tunnels. The first few times were a little nervewracking. Journey made the whole process easy, and soon I was moving around like the armor wasn't there at all.
Since we'd be on the run for some time now, I might as well do some investigating. Maybe I could find out more about that black box. "Journey,
open up the last logs of Cathida, please."
"Input password."

"Ah, bend me over metal, not this again." I sighed. "I'm an administrator,
right? I should have full access to everything. It's in the title."
"Affirmative. Negative. Logs were user-locked. A password is required.
Password hint has been attached."
"A hint? What hint?"
What I heard next was a woman's voice.
It sounded like an old voice, with the telltale signs of age where each breath and word had a crinkle to it. Not ancient, but certainly on her way.
Cathida... might have been an old woman. I hadn't expected that.
"My name is Cathida Langg, a crusader of the fifth drann. I fear that I and the two disciples I'm charged to protect will be soon dead in this cavern. I've encrypted all my logs with Journey, my armor, and set the password as the fifth vow. If you are imperial, I command you to bring these logs straight to the nearest cardinal. They will know what to do with the information. If you are not imperial, I pray to the goddess that you might do the right thing anyway. Indulge an old woman's last wishes. And take care of Journey for me, whoever you are. He can be a capricious child." She cackled, then returned to a somber tone an instant after. "Solaris imperium, stranger. Do better than we did."
The recording ended abruptly, leaving me alone in my thoughts again. A lot to unpack in that, more especially was the lack of things to unpack. She didn't mention anything about the priority-one item and kept things vague—
likely on purpose.
I hardly knew the first four vows of the crusaders, and I had no clue there was a fifth vow.
Welp, nothing to do about it now. The black box had been attached to my hip easily, clearly made to be snapped to a belt like this. Whatever that box and logs were, we could worry about them later once I was back on my bed.
Getting her logs to the nearest cardinal would be my next task once I got back home. High chances that the mission's data had long ago become irrelevant, but this wasn't about that. It was the principle of the thing.
Also, getting haunted by the ghost of an imperial was not on my to-do list.

It was an hour in that a notification on Journey's heads-up display showed up, blinking on the right. "New connection established," it read.
Lord Atius's voice burst into my helmet, "Tenisent, is that you? Gods above, do you hear me?" It sounded crackled, filled with static but understandable.
It was the best thing I'd heard in my life.
We'd done it. Comms were in range to the expedition. We both quickly skidded to a stop, and Father answered straight away, not even pausing to celebrate. "Aye. I hear you. We survived the fall and have been making our way back up to the surface since. I'm relieved to hear your voice, m'lord."
"I swear, Tenisent"—Atius laughed—"you're practically Deathless already, you tenacious old bastard."
My sister's voice cut in right after. "Father, where's Keith? His comm signal isn't showing up with you."
"Kidra?" Father replied in disbelief. "How are you he—never mind, I'll ask later. He's with me and doing fine. We discarded his environmental suit a while back and replaced it with a new relic armor we found."
The comms went dead quiet as everyone processed through the implication.
"You... found a relic armor down there?" Lord Atius spoke through the silence.
"Aye. The armor's name is Journey—an old crusader's relic. Keith is currently its owner now."
"Gods above... I'll buy you the first round myself."
Another voice piped in, slightly higher pitch. I recognized it as the Shadowsong prime, a prim and proper accent to his words. "With respect, my lord, he stopped drinking years ago."
"Slipped my mind in the moment, Ikus! I'm getting old these days, you know?" He laughed through the comms, joy in his voice. "We'll damned get him something else, details for later. And how's the young whelp, is he on comms yet?"
"Yep, I read you all loud and clear," I answered. Journey showed the icons on the top right were working correctly, and mine lit up as I spoke.
"Switching your tracker signal over to the new ping," Kidra said, dealing with the administration issues right off the bat. "I'm really happy to hear your voice, Keith."
"M'lord," Father asked carefully before I could answer back.

"Question?"
"No disrespect intended. Why is my daughter among the search team?"
He might have sworn no disrespect, but there was an edge in his voice when he asked about his family. However, while Father was seething in his armor, there was only laughter over the comms from the other relic knights.
"She's... let's say, extremely persuasive," Atius sheepishly answered.
"Kidra made a clear and unambiguous vow that she'd come down no matter if we barred her way or not. Somehow, Ankah and Calem both backed her up. While I'm heartened to see a show of comradery this early in their careers, they all disobeyed direct orders from myself. I couldn't afford to send any of my knights to drag the three back to the convoy and lock them down. Time was essential. So it was a choice of either bringing them with us or having the three fall behind alone and on foot. I had enough knights to carry them around, so it wasn't a hard question to answer."
Either she'd get a low chance to survive accompanied by relic users or absolutely no chance by getting left behind on foot. Atius had decided the former was better. Though given his massive lifespan, I wondered just how much he valued a single life?
"I see," Father answered bluntly, unsatisfied but unable to argue further.
It made sense to me. Retainers literally had "sacrifice" in our vow of duty. All three were honoring the call.
I'd spent my life making fun of that vow, believing it to be misplaced idealism at best. In hindsight, that hadn't been fair to the vow of duty Retainers took. My selfless and stubborn sister was going after me no matter what. And her worst enemy had set aside her own agendas to honor their vow. Couldn't exactly have a dim view on that anymore when I clearly saw the nobility it could inspire in people.
More likely, thinking critically, I'd probably attached the Winterscar name to that vow over time without noticing. And I really didn't want to be a Winterscar. That's likely where all my animosity was coming from.
"Make no mistake, Winterscar, your daughter is going to see all kinds of storms once we're back with the clan. Ikus, that goes for your own whelp too —and her friend. Disobeying a direct order from me does not go unpunished.
Gods save me, this is the part where I wish surface clan culture didn't venerate duty so much."
"Understood, m'lord. You will, of course, see no argument from me,"
Father answered back, mirroring the Shadowsong prime's own answer.

"I knew the risks I took," Kidra said coldly, "and I would pay that price again if I had to."
"We'll deal with your insubordination later," Father said with even more ice.
"For what it's worth," another knight added in, "if she had more equipment to work with, I wouldn't be surprised if she really could handle herself alone down here. I don't think your daughter is capable of missing a shot, Winterscar. She's able to nail them even after they've adapted and started dodging."
"She's got more kills than Ironreach." It seemed the knights had their own sense of humor, their voices cutting in.
"By one! And I was about to destroy it too."
"She doesn't have relic armor," a different voice noted. I thought that was likely the Windrunner prime—I'd heard his voice before.
"She's Tenisent's gods-damned daughter, a mini-monster on her own,
you can't—"
"Cut down on the chatter and let's focus on getting them home," Atius cut in, all business now. "Winterscar, full report, inventory first."
"Three magazines of ammunition left, one working rifle, two occult knives, and a longsword, one grenade, and one pistol. Enough rations for three more days. Water is low, but we can resupply on route once we find a stream. Power can last us a day and a half at current reserves for us both."
He paused here for a moment but continued.
"I took a booster four hours ago, estimating sixteen to twenty hours before... permanent damage sets in," Father answered back.
"Copy. Critical situations like yours are exactly when they're supposed to be used. We'll get you out before psychosis sets in. From the scanner, it looks like you're about three clicks away from us. Confirm distance?"
Journey brought out a three-dimensional map of the tunnels we'd explored so far, along with a glowing light farther away in unknown territory,
slightly higher than we were. Distance showed three-point-two miles. I noticed it had also shown the territory we'd traveled before I'd donned the armor.
"Confirmed distance," Father said. "Have additional items to report besides inventory." Then he launched into the details. "We've recovered an imperial artifact that needs to be returned to the pilgrims. Additionally, Keith discovered information I'm noting as priority one. It's a sensitive topic that

needs to be discussed face to face."
"Too sensitive for comms?"
"Aye. It could change everything we know about relic armor."
"Understood. Any other item to discuss?"
"We were guided to the new relic armor by yellow-gold lights that opened doors for us. We've been following since. We don't know who or what is behind the lights."
"Get me the path history."
A notification blinked on the top right that Journey had sent out the data package. The armors were listening in to the conversation, assisting automatically when they could. It was uncanny how smart these things were,
given how limited their personality had been.
Lord Atius paused, then spoke up. "It looks like your path is taking you away from us; however, it's leading you in roughly the same direction as the original mission coordinates."
"Orders, sir?"
A pause followed as Lord Atius considered the best plan of action forward. "While following the yellow light might seem like a safe idea, it's directly opposed to the main goal of reuniting as fast as possible.
Additionally, you're on a timer, Winterscar. Set a course to meet up. Once we're all grouped up, our chances of survival increase significantly. We can knock you out of commission safely at that point. The earlier we knock you out, the faster your recovery will be. We'll bring you back up for medical attention first. The airspeeder has a dialysis machine we can use. I can lead another team back down to track the yellow light at a later time and without non-relic knights in tow. Our objective hasn't been disturbed in centuries, I doubt a few more hours will change that."
"Understood."
"Get moving. Three clicks should be less than a half-hour, but the winding tunnels could increase the time. After that, it'll be another three hours of travel to reach the airspeeder. Atius out."
The comms clicked off. Father glanced at me and nodded. He started jogging down the tunnel, the one distinctly not lit by the yellow light. The gold flashed quickly at the side, but we'd been ordered to ignore it for now.
"Sorry, we'll come back in a bit," I muttered and turned to join my father,
following the doors that weren't lit in the general direction of Atius.
The light followed us, appearing at the next few rooms, always insistently

pointing in one general direction while we continued to move on course to meet with the rescue party. It never stopped with that intensity, as if pleading us to continue behind it.
Soon, using Atius's coordinates as a guide, we'd reached the green-lit tunnels once more. After that, our underground tour would reach its end.
As far as adventures went, I couldn't complain, considering the loot. A holy mission, relic armor, an occult longsword, and a companion knife.
We were hauling some real treasure.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

THE REAL TREASURE WAS THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY

T

he upper reaches were more disheveled than previous sights. Now outright rock cave-ins blocked many of the tunnels forward. I didn't know if the farther up we went the fewer mites would travel around to repair damage, but it certainly looked like time had done a number on this place.
Large scratches and gouges above the rock cave-ins pointed to a picture of older fights that must have once raged around here. I even spotted a few metal spikes—the same kind that those barnacle turrets had fired out from the ceiling.
These obstacles slowed down our progress greatly, often forcing us to backtrack once we'd reach dead ends. We stopped only once on the run for a break. The initial flask of water I'd split between us hours ago had run dry.
Fortunately, we found a river in one of the tunnels we jogged through.
I peered at the slowly flowing water. Under the ice layer, lights showed,
illuminating the whole trickle with a pale, almost magical dim teal glow.
Father punched the protective cap of ice on the river, cracking off a chunk. Then he dipped his water reservoir into it, filling the item up quickly.
I unhooked Cathida's old flask reservoir and followed suit, filling up after Father had gotten his own done. It was extremely cool to drink and made for a good refreshment compared to the stale water I'd been carrying all this time.
"I almost can't believe we're close to the end of all this." I exhaled,
sitting by the stream. The scanner showed only one-point-two clicks left. The winding tunnels and frequent cave-ins would stretch that out, but soon it would be all said and done.

"Keep your wits about you, boy. We're not out yet."
"Of course, Father. I'm not about to drop my guard after all we've been through."
I took another long drink from the straw, then we stood and continued on our way. The pace we set was brisk and could be maintained for a long time,
even with my calf being as wounded as it was.
There was still something on my mind. I'd been pushing it back, but that was no way to handle issues. "What did Atius mean by psychosis?"
"It is no longer anything to concern yourself with. We're hours away from reaching the rescue party," he said, continuing his pace and not looking back.
"Don't lie to me. Not after all this."
He paused as if considering whether to let me in the loop or not. "As the booster continues its effects, my mind will… break down, in a manner of speaking. Again, there isn't cause for concern. Once we reach the rescue party, they'll induce a coma to put a stopgap halt in the effects. I'll have my blood manually cleared using that dialysis machine. All airspeeders have one.
The recovery process can take a week."
"What sort of breakdown are we talking about, in specifics?" I asked testily.
"Lucidity starts to fade in the early stages. At that point, I'll become erratic. Hallucinations come next after several more hours, usually a mix of auditory and visual. Paranoia and aggression set in after. Near the end stages,
I'll stop being able to recognize people. At that point, I become a danger to you or anyone around me. I was prepared to handle it when the first symptoms started showing. I know how much time I have before effects become more than my will alone can handle."
This would have been handy to know. Oh, hey, son, by the way, in a few hours I might go berserk and murder you in under a second. Rage instantly churned inside, lit by panic.
"Why did you keep this from me?" I yelled. This wasn't the first time either so far. "Again and again, you hold off on information until you have no choice but to tell me. The same with your arm! What's going on? Why are you like this?"
Father ground out, "It was for the best."
"The best? What gods-damned reason do you have?"
"I don't have to explain anything to you, boy." There was that note of

anger in his voice, matching my own. Seemed to run in the family.
"It's you and me down here, and we've both got relic armor. I'm not some charge you have to escort anymore," I said. "We need to work together,
and this whole cloak and dagger scrapshit isn't helping anything."
"Fine. You want my reason?" He turned to stare me down, the jog completely forgotten. "You're a boy." His finger jabbed out against my armor plate, pressing the point. "Placed in a situation that would break most men.
You needed to feel that someone was in control, that there was some hope for survival. Do you get that? Or do I have to spell it out for you?"
"Maybe you missed the cue," I shot back, pushing his hand away, "I fucking grew up while you were passed out on vodka each day, Father." The moment I'd said that, regret hit me hard. But the venom had already been speared out.
If he was hurt by the comment, he made no mention of it. "I've seen others break down for less," he said, "and they were adults trained for situations like this one. Soldiers. The more I told you about the reality of our situation, the more hopeless it would all seem. That could break you."
"It didn't! Look at me, I'm still fine after hearing all of it! Unless there's even more ratshit you're keeping from me again?"
"You're fine now—only after getting the relic armor. This was what truly gave us a chance. Everything seems possible now because of that armor. You would have broken down otherwise."
"You can't know that."
Father snarled, rounding on me. Hands shot out for my collar on reflex,
but instead his gauntlets simply collided with my own armor. Journey remained fixed in position, utterly unmoving against the grab. We both stared at each other in confusion.
The roles and rules between us had been changed now that we both had armor. I was a relic knight. He would never again be able to just grab and slam me on the ground. I think he realized this chapter of our lives had come to an end at just the same moment I had.
He took a step back, turning around to continue down the path. I heard him over comms, his voice soft this time, all fire gone. "It broke me, Keith. I didn't believe we would live. And if it made me give in, what would it have done to you? Understand, damn you."
That... couldn't be true. My mind reeled away from the implication. "But you kept fighting," I said. "I didn't see you didn't give up. You never gave

up."
There's no way someone like Father just broke.
He chuckled at that, a deep throaty thing. "It was easy to keep going with no future in sight. I'm well-practiced." Then he stopped in his tracks, turning to look at me again. "Keith, what are the virtues of the gods?"
Urs. Talen. Tsuya.
"Resolve, tenacity, resilience," I said.
"They're our gods for a reason. We were exiled from the underground,
just as the gods were exiled from the surface. Do you see? These are the values they represent because they are us. They struggle like we do each day.
Even if I give up, I still fight to the end—as all exodites should. Even if that end comes at the tip of my own weapon. This is even more important to a relic knight above all. We swore a vow to our House. To our clan. You need to accept what we are."
He turned and continued down the cavern, and I followed behind. We were quiet for a long time after, jogging through the unending tunnels,
chasing after something we didn't quite understand.
"I don't get it," I finally said. "Why pick now, of all times, to grow a heart? Why go out of your way to protect me like this? If you knew trying to keep me alive was doomed to fail, then the next priority would have been to return home yourself."
"I was ordered to keep you sa—"
"Cut the scrapshit." If duty and honor mattered to him that strongly, it would matter over family for sure. "The armor can't be lost down here. Duty would compel you to take the strongest possible measures to reach the surface alive, or at least alive enough to return that armor for House Winterscar to continue, even if that meant leaving me behind. One life is meaningless compared to Winterscar. So why did you come back for me?
You knew I'd be dead weight at best."
From a purely numbers point of view, outright losing an entire House was less painful than losing an armor. Winterscar could be folded into another House. It was his duty to make sure that armor made it back home.
Father sputtered. "I—that wouldn't be—it…" he grew quieter. "It was the right thing to do." He didn't sound convinced himself, as if this answer was just as much a lie to me as it was a lie to himself and he knew it. Sacrifice had a lot of meanings, not all of them about losing your life. He busied himself instead by making his way to the end of the tunnel rather than give me a

straighter answer.
A familiar whistling sound struck the rocks above us just as we passed by the entrance, cutting off whatever his next answer could have been.
In hindsight, I should have considered something about these green lit tunnels. These predictable green lit tunnels.
We didn't realize we'd walked into an ambush until it was far too late to do anything about it.
Inside this pocket, we found ourselves on the wall of a chasm. Concrete bridges spanned across the chasm gap, long in the distance, but here there was only one thin bridge possible.
The metal spike whistled above, striking the entryway we'd come from. I spun around, only to witness the trap spring shut.
The path caved in.
Exactly like all the other cave-ins that had blocked our path, the entry had been whittled away previously, unstable enough that one hit would send it all crashing.
With the way behind us blocked, the only way forward was across a narrow bridge. Worse still, our side of the chasm had been meticulously cleared of any rock cover possible.
We'd been funneled into a trap.
Our friend here didn't know where we'd gone, but it knew we were going up. While we had been spending time with the dead imperials or yelling at one another, it hadn't forgotten. And it had been busy planning out revenge.
One single automaton hung from the ceiling. Missing one leg, armor riddled with bullets. With a barnacle turret jury-rigged onto its shell.
The spider cackled darkly, and then the barnacle turret simply turned and opened fire.
Father's reaction speed was impressive, but the spider's was even quicker. It already lifted its front legs, blue shield activating and protecting the vulnerable barnacle as Father traded weapon fires with the turret.
The bullets had no effect on the spider's shield, but the spike certainly did on the relic armor. His shield flared out, taking the hit.
Father halted fire, not wanting to waste bullets on a target that was clearly invulnerable.
"Keith! Sprint for the tunnel!" he shouted and began his own mad dash across the bridge. Without any means of dealing damage at range, the spider could just whittle us to pieces over time. We had to get out.

That plan was quickly cut short as the spider dropped right on the center,
guarding the way out against Father's charge. Two limbs shot out at the incoming relic knight, forcing him to dive away and backtrack. Another spike flew at him and struck him on the chest, forcing him farther back in a spark of blue shielding.
It was clear we weren't going to be able to make it past the automaton without a fight. "Any other ideas?" I shot out at him.
"Just one." He growled, drawing out his knife with his left hand, flipping the blade hilt down while he unsheathed the imperial longsword in his main hand. He ducked another spike and rose back up in a full Makiskeru stance—
using the variation that maximized the reach of a longsword with the closequarter ability of a knife. A stance that required both arms to work in perfect unity.
His left arm took to the stance with a perfect pose. He waited for the next spike to fly at him, twisting around and charging forward the moment it sailed by.
I reached down and drew out my own knife, then followed behind wordlessly, the relic armor transferring my movements smoothly. Father raced ahead and slid down, an attacking limb missing over his head. The creature didn't let that failure discourage it. It struck back violently with more limbs, keeping Father busy.
In seconds, I had made my own way into range and then promptly got sent flying from the creature's first swing. The thing struck as fast as a pipe snake; my reactions couldn't keep up. One moment I was about to reach it,
and the next moment a massive limb obscured my whole vision.
Father, on the other hand, was in a completely different league of skill compared to mine. And this time he had no disadvantages to deal with. He dodged and twirled against those lightning hits. Attacks were weaved with each dodge, and all were vicious.
After a roll and a half, I slid to a stop on my knees, thankfully away from the edge of the chasm.
As if to add insult to injury, I was hit by a metal spike as a parting gift the moment I lifted my head back up. Journey's shields flared hard, holding fast against the direct hit. The blow still knocked my head backward and threw me onto my back. I could see it already lining up the next shot from the corner of my eye.
The barnacle couldn't target Father easily since the madman was far too

close. So it went after the next best target.
Me.

CHAPTER THIRTY

NO PLAN SURVIVES CONTACT WITH THE ENEMY

I

rose to my feet, only to get shoved backward as another metal spike struck the center of my chest. I could see the blinding flicker of blue as Journey's ancient shields flared to life, breaking the blow's bite. Still, the force carried me back to the floor with no mercy.
"Warning. Shields low," Journey chimed in my ear. Scrapshit. These things were too gods-damned fast to react against. How the scrap does Father do it?!
Unless... he doesn't.
If they were too fast to react against, maybe what he was doing was predicting them ahead of time. Given Journey's shields, I wouldn't be able to tank that many more direct hits, so it was all or nothing.
Once more, I stood back up, and this time I twisted to the side, blindly.
Whistling passed right by my helmet's side.
Scraps, I had dodged a shot. I took a few steps and dove to the side erratically. The spike still struck home, though clearly off-center as my shoulder jerked backward. Journey didn't flare its shield for that one, letting the armor take the glancing hit. Parts of the gold ornaments broke off, but the damage was otherwise superficial.
The turret remained eerily leveled, the long barrel stabilized despite the wild movements of the spider under it. And it was clear the spider was having a fight for its life with the amount of motion going on.
I was onto something, only I didn't have the agility to pull it off like Father did. Except I didn't need Father's agility. I had an intelligent armor that could move for me.
Time to cheat and put my thumb on the scale. "Journey! A little help

here?"
"Specify query," Journey said as I threw myself flat on the floor again to avoid another spike. My impromptu "dodge" worked this time, with the spike flying above my head. The intervals between fire seemed consistent.
"Anything you can do to make me fight better in close range or help me dodge those things automatically?!" I said, rolling to the right, exiting into a sideways sprint.
"Options available. Combat system can auto-correct movements.
Warning: user may be injured. Administrator override required."
Another spike sailed by as I changed directions mid-sprint, using my gut to tell when the shots were coming. "Yeah, that's fine, just do it!"
"Administrator override confirmed. Lowering priority to emergency only.
Releasing safety locks. Loading module... combat module online."
I didn't feel any different. That was up until another spike flew right at me while I was distracted.
The suit instantly twisted my shoulders sideways for me, narrowly avoiding the shot across my breastplate. I could swear I even saw the few fractions of a second that the spike flew by the chestplate, small sparks flying off.
It felt like someone had grabbed my entire back, neck, and shoulders,
then twisted everything violently to the left. There wasn't any pain, probably because of the pain inhibitor drug that was still pumping through my system,
but I certainly felt my muscles stretch hard against the shift.
Just as fast as the override had come, I was free again. Disoriented but free. I took the cue and charged forward again with more confidence this time, knife in hand though keeping it off. Didn't want to stab myself by accident if I got sent out for more flying lessons.
Father and the spider had been focused on each other in the meantime,
stuck in a deadly duel.
Small cuts had started to form around the automaton's legs—battle damage accumulated from the fray. The occult knife would bite down on the ceramic limbs, cutting straight for important sections with unerring accuracy.
Limbs that seemed to have escaped the reach of the knife would be sliced by a longsword with surprising range.
Each attack could have easily severed the whole limb if the automaton hadn't been reacting as fast as Father was moving. It was barely keeping pace, however, always pulling the limb away seconds before those blades

could find something important.
And in seconds I'd be among the fight, breaking that delicate balance of power.
I dove into the spider's range of attack, preparing for the creature to try and throw me back again. The creature lashed out as I expected—a quick,
panicked response to clearing me out of the way as fast as it could before Father overwhelmed it.
I tried to duck and slide under the hit like Father had done on his initial approach. A second later I realized my attempt would fail. The creature had remembered and learned from this already. The sweeping attack it sent out was lower, and the spider had already corrected itself to strike even lower.
Before I could even think about my possible recovery options, Journey twisted my legs back into a crouch, stopping all my forward motion onto the heels of my boots. It leaped upward immediately after, bleeding the built-up rotational energy into a midair roll.
The attacking swipe flew right under me. Journey had made the right call.
Again, it felt like an unstoppable force had seized every part of my legs and forced me to move like a puppet. My chest and arms were locked in the correct pose for the leap, which brought a sense of claustrophobia, followed quickly by disorientation as the unexpected jump didn't sync with my running rhythm. I hit the ground and fumbled, turning it into another roll from sheer training reflex.
I came out of that roll disoriented and attacking like a rabid animal, no plan other than to strike. The knife in my hand lit up with a bright blue edge,
and I slashed out almost blindly at the nearest limb, only getting an inch of the blade into the target.
The limb withdrew with quick jerky motions. I hounded after it,
brandishing my knife, slashing into the air. Each time it moved its limbs away from my range.
Was this effective? Not in the least. That wasn't the point. I wasn't aiming for a solid hit; my own skills were on a far lower level than this thing.
Instead, each time it had to defend itself against me, I'd force it to divert attention away from the true threat. I wasn't a soldier; my job was support.
And by the gods, I'd do my part.
A low hissing started to come from the creature. Its behavior seemed to change from one of smug triumph to... fear. I think the full predicament it had placed itself into was dawning on it.

It remembered the first lesson it had learned: Father was not an opponent you could afford to forget about.
And here I was, a gnat in the proverbial house, forcing it to commit one of its five limbs to hold me back lest I start cutting important bits, leaving it with only three to hold itself up and one to hold off Father. If it still had six arms, it might have been able to do more, but with five, resources were limited. And it hadn't anticipated the upgrades we'd acquired.
I sliced my knife through thin air but overswung. Another limb speared out, attempting to skewer me through my armor, but Journey twisted me again with a violent last-second jerk. The stab skidded across my breastplate,
the blue shielding flaring up and deflecting the blow away. I could hear a deep set of cracks, but it didn't come from the armor—it sounded too muted,
like it had come from within me.
"Alert," Journey said, "rib cage fractures detected." Ah. This was what Journey meant by damage—the armor could easily break my bones or tear a muscle if it moved counter to my own motions at the wrong moment. And given how frantic combat was, there'd be too many chances to roll snake eyes.
Tsuya save me, was this what relic knights had to deal with? These fights were too fast to follow. At least we were making progress. That attempt to skewer me had cost the machine.
A lifelong disciple of war, Father was absolutely relentless. He gave the creature no quarter, each move methodical and practiced. A slice of blades always followed each dodge without fail. The spider's attacks failed, again and again. Each swing would cost it. Each stab would be narrowly missed.
Each feint countered. Father moved mechanically as if victory was a foregone conclusion. That the only thing left was executing the right number of strikes and dodges until the spider made an error it couldn't recover from.
So the creature made the only rational choice left: it gave up on the dream to murder us and tried to run instead.
The machine screamed in rage and slammed its full body down hard on the bridge, causing cracks and fissures to snap out as the concrete shattered.
Parts of its own ceramic armor had snapped from the hit, but the damage was done.
Father didn't have time to yell out a warning as the bridge crumbled apart, taking all of us down with it.
I lost track of our target in the falling rubble, too disoriented in the fall.

The void yawned below us, easily fitting all the broken chunks of the bridge.
My headlights quickly caught a glance at what lay at the bottom. A massive river of water, churning even more as the first sections of the broken bridge collapsed into the water. I braced myself, not knowing what to expect next. Preparing for cold and pain.
I didn't feel anything as the armor plunged into the water. Belatedly, I remembered relic armor was vacuum sealed.
The river picked us up and threw us into the churn. I was spun, slammed around into the rocks, and all I could see were bubbles and illuminated darkness. Occasionally, rocks passed by my view, the headlights showing details only for a moment before they were gone. Up or down lost meaning;
my balance had been completely shot. The only thing on my mind was to clench my right hand as hard as I could. I can't afford to lose the knife in this turmoil.
Panic welled up inside until I heard Father's clear voice in my helmet.
"Stay calm, boy. Relic armor is airtight and shielded. You won't drown, and a few impacts won't damage the armor."
I flailed around, out of control, but he was right that I wasn't dying or being hurt by any of the impacts against the rock walls.
"Stabilize yourself. The armor will sink us to the bottom soon enough.
We'll find a place to regroup."
The ground hit my left shoulder blade, and I found myself rolling on the riverbed as the water continued to force me forward. With a bit more control,
I twisted myself so that my feet followed the direction of the current, the heels grinding two trails into the loose sand.
Ahead, a dim headlight illuminated the underwater stream. Father's. He must have gone farther downstream than I did.
"I see you, boy," he said over the comms. "Hang on." The light in the depths turned and then grew nearer.
A surge threw me off my feet, rolling me over on my back and putting me into a lopsided spin. I almost overshot him. His hand whipped out, catching my own outstretched arm in a death grip. I returned the favor, holding tight to him, too.
The current continued to drag us, but now I was getting a much better sense of the river bottom, my feet touching down sporadically. We were still going in one direction, but at least there wasn't that disorientation.
"We'll be fine," Father said, already taking perfect bouncing steps to keep

himself both upright and in control against a tumble. "Take deep breaths."
"The spider," I gasped out. "It's out here too!"
"If it followed us here, the river will be a disadvantage to it. The turret would be useless and its own attacks slowed. We, on the other hand, don't need to strike hard or fast. The blades will cut through the creature no matter the speed. The monster knows that. I would guess it has burrowed into the riverbed while we were swept downstream."
The stream continued to yank us wildly, but now, with Father's help, I was getting the hang of those large floating steps we were taking. Right up until a set of rocks blocked our path. We hit those hard, and Father's hand pushed my chest down into the riverbed, reducing the surface area and giving me more control again.
The water continued to surge over us, but our feet were planted firmly on the lip of the rockbed with our backs down against the riverbed. We were finally stopped and had a moment to breathe.
I could hear panting over the comms. Couldn't be sure if they were my own or Father's. Probably both of us.
"Gods, I didn't think that thing would chase after us," I said.
His headlights illuminated the water, moving back and forth. "Neither did I," Father said. "All the fireteams I've been on, we've never retreated from a nest before. This is the first time I've seen what happens in a draw."
"Think it'll keep chasing us?"
"I don't know everything, boy. What I know is that their behavior was always greedy, often fighting among themselves if a target was exposed or vulnerable. In a fight, they are defense-focused, skittish almost. When we fought it, the other spiders didn't interfere, they clustered around to watch me fight. I'm not sure if they have some sort of code or if that creature has marked us as its property. It isn't out of the possibilities that it still continues to chase after us, even knowing we outmatch it."
I took a moment to think, trying to put myself in the creature's shoes.
Think like it would. Find out hints to see what it might do next.
The rock cave-ins. The trap. The way it had cleared off the sides of the bridge so we'd have no cover ahead of time. It had even thought to bring a turret on its back. Not to mention it had considered a backup plan, likely weakening the bridge ahead of time in case it needed to retreat.
This thing was smart. What had been its full plan? The spikes wouldn't have slowed Father for long… so they were meant for me. With just my

environmental suit and the lack of cover, I'd have been killed like a goat within the first few seconds of the fight.
From there, it likely had assumed it could batter past Father's defense,
since the last time the creature had seen us, Father's left arm was out of commission.
The plan it had come up with was solid. It only failed because it had been based on outdated information. Something it couldn't have guessed ahead of time.
The creature was smart. It knew it couldn't beat us in a straight fight anymore. Whatever plan it came up with next, it would be built on current information.
"You said they're greedy, right?" I asked.
The headlights shook in confirmation. "As far as I've seen how they behave outside of combat. I've never seen them out of their nests and in the wild like this," he said.
"Then we should assume the little monster will chase after us. And it'll have to come up with a better plan for the next round. This time around it found us because it knew we were going up. Do these creatures have other ways of tracking us down?"
"If I knew how they find us, we'd be planning ahead for those tactics from the very start," Father said flatly.
Oh. Duh. If we didn't know exactly how the creature could find us, then maybe we could take a guess at it. I had to think through how this creature would view the situation. If it were me, knowing I couldn't defeat my enemies anymore with firepower, then I'd fall back on the second-best plan:
use the environment. "If it can't beat us in a straight fight, my guess is that it will try to separate us somehow or lay a trap to do the work for it."
"Aye. We will need vigilance. It is possible the machine's programming only allows it to leave a certain range of the nest, or that it will only attempt to give chase once, but we can't rely on that."
"Yeah, but before all that, we need to find a way out of this chasm."
At that, Father stood up in the darkness, water again trying to force him downstream. "That part won't be an issue. There are underground lakes everywhere, so this river must lead to one. Keep an eye for the shoreline. Are you ready?"
I stood up after him, and together we jumped off the bedrock, letting the water carry us farther down.

We'd been washed downstream for possibly ten more minutes before shorelines started to populate the sides. By then the stream had died down from a torrent to more of a mellow ride, which ended with a waterfall into a far more tranquil lake.
My stomach lurched as we fell off the waterfall into the lake, the relic armor absorbing the impact with no issues. We sank like rocks down into the depths of the lake. On hitting the bottom, Father and I began to march our way back up the banks onto the shoreline. The relic armor ripped through the water, powerful enough that even the murky depths weren't doing much to slow our march.
In moments, water streamed off my armor as we emerged from the lake onto what felt like rocky sand.
We'd found ourselves still underground, of course, and with an interesting view. Half of the cave wall on the other side simply wasn't there,
instead showing a full view over the pseudo city we'd left hours ago. This was a cliff cut into the mountains of sorts, and clearly naturally—the cut seemed like a straight line right through as if the city had a massive invisible cube that cut the surrounding mountains.
It caught me speechless. Lights twinkled across the empty city like stars in the sky.
Old, broken-down, mite-built buildings lined the area around us, right up to the edge of the cliff. The architecture of these buildings was starkly different, more like welded metal put together in more circular shapes than the square concrete of the abandoned city. No mites were anywhere here.
This might have been a previous city that existed before the teal mites had moved in.
I could see lights still working in these new buildings. Not the artificial mite ones, real honest-to-the-gods lightbulb lighting. Cloth and tapestries draped around these buildings, tent-like for some. Almost as if this had been somewhere people lived.
Father surfaced after me, water crashing off the frame of his armor. He didn't gawk around like I did; instead, he checked his supplies to verify everything had made it. A soldier to the bone, his priorities had sightseeing dead last.
"Status," he barked out at me.

I checked through my own supplies to confirm I hadn't lost anything in the crash. This would have been a disaster if I were still in my environmental suit. Those absolutely weren't made to be submerged underwater. If I hadn't drowned in the river, I'd be dead of hypothermia soon enough. Everything on my belt had survived, even the first aid kit. A check inside showed all the contents perfectly dry. Those kits were a lot more airtight than I had thought.
"Journey, how far off course did we go?" I asked.
"Additional three miles have been added between the current location and expedition search party," the armor chimed in response.
"Ratshit."
"Could be worse," Father said gruffly. "Winterscar to search party, come in."
The comms crackled for a moment, but then a voice blessedly answered back. "This is Atius, report."
"Had a run-in with an automaton that knocked us off a bridge. We've been setback."
"Copy. We've run into a few on our own but are still making good progress. Can you still make it to the meeting point?"
"This area of the city might have an elevator. We're going to investigate to see if there's a way to return to the same level. If so, we'll be able to continue our path in your general direction."
"Timebox it to thirty minutes and then we'll reconsider options."
"Understood. Winterscar out."
The comms clicked shut.
Father strode up to one of these buildings. He stayed quiet for a moment,
hanging by the walls. "That was your first combat encounter as a knight.
You... you did good this fight," he said. "Your skills have massively improved. I haven't seen someone master armor this fast. Quick enough to dodge attacks from a spider with only a few hours of experience."
On reflex, I tried to scratch the back of my head sheepishly. The armor made that a moot point. "Uh, about that. Not exactly my skills per se. I had Journey take over dodging for me."
"Relic armors can do that?" he said, stunned for a moment. Then his left hand opened and closed a few times as he rose it up, glancing down to it. A small chuckle escaped his lips. "Of course they can. You are full of surprises,
boy."
"It's the good old time-honored tradition of our House; finding any way

to cheat. I only got more creative and applied it to combat."
He walked by, patting my shoulder gruffly. "Whichever manner you've chosen to apply your skills, it helped turn the tide of that battle. Don't ignore that. Had the creature not had a plan to escape, it would be dead at our feet."
It was a moment of awkwardness between us. I didn't know what to say,
and he clearly didn't either. Instead, he drew his hand back and continued to examine the surroundings as if this moment hadn't happened.
"I recognize this building's architecture," he said. "The last city that had this also had mechanical infrastructure. A lot of it."
"Those elevators you mentioned?"
"Aye. And since there are lights here, then this part of the city has power." He gazed over the lake, where more of the city lay.
Unlike the concrete one, this metal city looked like a complete mess of buildings stacked against each other in any way that fit, with wide and winding streets. If there were elevators in that metal jungle, I didn't know if I'd trust them. "Journey, know anything about this area?"
"Negative. All logged maps are out of date and no longer match the landscape."
"Any way to scan around for it? Might speed us up." If we could get our hands on some map, we'd go through here faster. Last time we'd found a terminal that held a map. Maybe we could make do without that?
Father shook his head. "Active scanning is a last-resort option. It lights a torch in the dark. Everyone around will see you."
Ah. And we weren't out of danger yet. Not by a long shot. And not with a possible angry spider plotting vengeance somewhere behind us.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

REDEMPTION

T

he mission was simple so far: find an elevator, join up with the rescue party, and get to the airspeeder. Walking around this part of the underground, knowing the surface was just above us, lent to an eerie feeling. So close to escape and still a possible stretch of danger to go through.
That spider might catch up to us. Except for this time, the tables had turned—it only had a window of a few hours at most to ambush us again before we met up with the search party. A party that had five relic knights—
one of which was a gods-damned Deathless. No amount of firepower could contend against that. The best part in all this was that the critter had no idea either, so it wouldn't know to rush its plan.
It would be ironic to have it plan out something meticulous to counter the new relic armor and weapons we'd obtained, only to find us with a small army of relic knights at our back. I'd find it cathartic, that's for sure.
I'd also be perfectly okay to completely skip any encounter with the evil,
murder-obsessed spider. Let's just forget about each other, Mr. Spider. No need to reopen old wounds.
It was clear that this welded city had only partway escaped the ravage of time and its neighboring mite-active city. We found plenty of it still active and working. And we also found that, near the cliffside, some of these buildings were outright cut in half as if the ground had been level here once and then the teal mites from the concrete city next door moved in.
The entire cliff was sheared off in a perfectly straight line. Anything past was a vast distance down. I was walking just above the square mountain face I'd seen while we were escaping the fake city.
This welded city had a far more organic feel to it as if built from hundreds

of different scavenged scraps. We even saw what looked like the hull of an airspeeder used as part of a longhouse.
We hadn't been exploring around for more than ten minutes before the comms crackled to life.
"Search party to Winterscar."
"I copy," Father said.
"We've run into an issue up here. We triggered a wave by accident and had to seal shut a few doors behind us. We'll need to plot a new way back to the surface once we've met up."
"No losses?"
"Negative. We're all safe so far."
"Additional updates?"
"Nothing from our side besides route backtracking being off the menu."
"Copy. Keith and I are still looking for an entry shaft up. If there are no other updates, Winterscar out."
I hadn't heard the term "wave" used before. From the cues I could get, it was either a new type of automaton or just a large number grouped up. But it must have been something strong to force five relic users to flee and seal the way behind, including Lord Atius himself.
"Is a wave a new machine or just a group of machines?" I asked, wanting to get the definite answer rather than keep guessing.
"A group," he said. "Machines don't usually travel alone down here.
Drakes are one exception. There are more unique machines that don't fit the mold as well, those could travel alone. A wave would be multiple groups that happened to be moving together."
In a way, machines were starting to sound almost like social creatures.
Despite the different kinds, they still flocked together in the dark.
"If they have the way back blocked because of the wave, uh…
will that be a problem?" I asked him, tapping my head so he'd get what I was referring to. We were on a time limit before that booster started causing issues.
"No. I still have hours left before the first symptoms appear. It will only cost us a few more hours to reach the surface."
"And you're not lying to me this time?"
He sighed, then shook his head. "No, I have nothing to hide. They will knock me unconscious if we go over time, you'll see. Kidra will take over my armor, and Atius himself will likely coach her on its use. I'll be given

whatever parts of her environmental suit can fit my size to keep me warm enough and then carried out. Once we reach closer to the surface—or close enough to be mostly safe from machines—we can have a more fitting suit be brought down."
"That seems… pretty well thought out."
"Always maximize the use of relic armor. If I'm not making use of it,
then someone else must. If we hadn't found Journey, I would have made sure it was you walking out of here with my armor when my time was up."

Unlike the fake concrete city, the pathways here were wide. They looked more built to allow vehicles to pass by. Given how the city was almost built from vehicle parts, it seemed to fit the theme. This was quickly confirmed when we did run into the first elevator.
The hole was massive. A black square vertical tunnel that led both ways,
down and up, it was clearly built to fit some sort of tank and ferry it up or down. Right now, the elevator platform was somewhere else, leaving the whole shaft exposed.
Father yanked a switch and the world shook. Rumbling from deep under sounded out.
"It looks like everything's still in shape." Father breathed out.
"And if the lift is broken?"
"Then we scale the shaft up. It would not be difficult or much of a setback. Trust the armor and don't look down."
That didn't sound like a fun time. Journey would make this a lot easier like he said, but still… one slip and you'd tumble half a mile down. Relic armor or no, that's not something anyone could pick themselves up from after the big splat.
"Winterscar to search party. We've found an elevator platform. We'll be able to climb back up to the upper sublevels."
The crackle popped in. "Confirmed. We'll try to approach and meet up near your current position at our current elevation. Search party out."
We waited as the platform slowly ascended. Soon it ground to a shuddering stop at our feet.
"This thing is safe, right? Did we read the small print on the warranty?" I

asked hesitantly.
"No, but it's safer than climbing."
"If we end up dying from a broken elevator, I'm coming back as a pissedoff ghost."
"Stay close to the walls in case it gives out on you," Father answered,
taking a step into the massive platform. "If you're fast enough with your hands, you should be safe."
It had once been made to carry vehicles, that much was obvious from the size, I just wasn't sure if it could actually carry that weight anymore. Or if it had only been made to look the part. The mites that built this could be either amazing engineers or horribly clever artists.
We stepped onto the iron slab at our feet. I took it as a good sign that the lift didn't immediately break down with our weight added onto it. Father flipped a switch on the inner wall and the platform shuddered, then started to move up.
At first, we rose into darkness, the shaft completely enclosed. But up ahead I could see light again. Not the small electronic lights, but more like the end of a tunnel. I got my answer in minutes.
The elevator was open-air partway up, held by the spine. The view from here took my breath away.
Father walked to the edge, sitting down and letting his feet dangle into the open air, using the handlebar holds at the floor edge to keep steady. I sat down with a bit more hesitation at his side.
"Things will be different now," he said.
I gave him a questioning look.
"The armor. You are a relic knight, Keith. One of us. As dangerous as the underground is, you belong here now."
He waved an arm forward, motioning to it all. We were only half a mile up from all our walking, and the fake city sprawled ahead of us. I couldn't tell where the sunlight came from, considering the dome that stretched above,
but the world was still well lit enough that I could see the details.
"I don't feel in any great hurry to come back down here, after all that we've been through," I said, "I think I'm more interested in finding my bed and hiding under it for a week. And then spending the next week in a hot bath."
"You think your curiosity won't drag you back down here? I know you better, boy."

That… was a good point. Was I going to come back down here myself, or just loan out Journey and live like a fat king up on the surface? If I were smart, I'd take the second option and live in luxury for the rest of my days.
Everything I'd seen flashed through my mind, and everything I still wanted to know gazed back like a void in my mind.
I stayed silent, watching the view as we slowly rose. It was a peaceful moment.
Was the underground terrifying? Yes.
Was it going to keep filing away at my soul until I finally went down again to hunt for those answers? Also yes.
"Fine, maybe I'll only spend half a week under my bed then. Monday to Wednesday. I'll stick my leg out on Thursday and maybe my hand on Friday.
I'll take the weekend off… naturally. I made a solemn vow to never work on the weekends. Can't be helped." I chuckled, then gave a big sigh. "You know what's the worst part about all this? You're right. At some point in the future,
I'll find myself down here again. Running around down here, pulling up rocks to see what sort of bugs I can find under it. I had an entire childhood of practice doing just that. It would be a shame not to make use of it. Gods, I'll make one strange relic knight, that's for sure."
"Keith," Father said, reaching out a hand and clasping my shoulder, "I know you will be a great relic knight. You and Kidra both—when her time comes." His voice softened then. "I know that childhood of yours must have been… difficult. After you were born and she… well, I wish… I wish that—"
He broke off and remained silent for another beat.
Something welled up in my heart and I froze still, worried that if I spoke a word, he'd shake his head and return to his own silence. I let him continue.
"Could you tell me abo…" his hand didn't leave my shoulder, but he still had trouble.
"Yes?"
"... No, never mind." He turned away, hand withdrawn.
I prodded. "Why not just say it? We've got time." I patted the elevator platform, which was still moving at a snail's pace. I didn't want this to end on a silent note like this. It felt like he had something on his chest, something he needed to tell. Maybe it was my brotherly instinct guiding me here, because Father and Kidra both seemed to share the same tell.
Father glanced back in my direction, flinching almost. His left arm flexed, hand opening and closing as he examined it again. "I told you

something about my experiences in past missions I've been on, could you…
could you tell me something from your childhood? A story or something?"
I gulped, wondering how to word any of this. "I don't think any of it is as interesting as your own stories down here. It was only the street kids and me,
running around and pulling pranks and finding our own fun. Oh, and pestering the Reachers about how things worked. Scholar stuff. Numbers,
sticks, dirt, you know. Are you sure you want to hear about that?"
He didn't say anything for a moment before answering softly, "It will take months, maybe even a year to recover from all the damage I've built up.
But at least once I've done my time, I could still return to the front lines, so long as I have Winterscar to assist my movements and my arm." His left hand opened and closed experimentally as he raised it. "In just a few minutes, you fixed something that I hadn't thought possible. My life went from being over at the end of this mission, to now only put on a minor pause. A few months of recovery is nothing compared to a lifetime. All because you were a scholar.
So yes, I would like to hear about you."
Memories floated through my mind, and I wasn't stupid enough to tell him any of the ones that had him in the picture frame. Those were usually bleak. "I'd… uh, well, sure. I'm just not even sure where to start?"
"How about your friends? These kids you ran with."
That was a good enough point to start something from. "Well, since the rest of the Winterscars didn't see any advantage to looking after me, I found myself free to escape down into the hub. That's where I met other kids in the same situation—where they had slipped through the cracks. I kept my ties to Winterscar hidden, so they accepted me without issue, thinking I was just another. Some had no goals in life. Maybe grow up and tend to the insect farms or the hydroponics. Except for one of them. He planned to take the Reacher qualification tests. That goal of his became my gateway into the scholar stuff you know and love."
He gave a mock scoff at that, looking away. "Aye. Suppose I brought this scholar stuff on myself. What is this about a test?"
I had to explain to him more about the qualification exams. Father knew everything there was to know about combat and knew enough to get by on clan politics within the Retainer castes. How the rest of the castes and lower Houses worked hadn't been important to him, only vague details.
Retainer houses were on invite-only, but other houses had different ways to filter through talent. The different castes had their own ways of sniffing

out talent from the mass of houseless. The agricultural Houses were the easiest to get in, for example. Anyone who spent enough time working alongside them would get an offer. These were huge Houses; maybe even a third of everyone in the clan belonged under one of their banners. No one messed around when it came to growing our food.
The Reacher houses had their own filters—a series of tests divided into age brackets. Passing the test did not mean a Reacher House would select the winners, but it did go on a record. The more tests someone took, the more visible they became. The youngest age bracket was for ten-year-olds, and that's when all the study madness would start.
And with madness came shenanigans. "There was this superstition that the kids in the lower bellows spread about one particular chicken coop by House Lifebringer's left quadrant. They said that if you touched one of the eggs, it would bring you good luck on the ten-year Reacher test," I said,
already deep in my explanation.
Of course, since I was already part of House Winterscar, I couldn't take the test myself. But from the group of hooligans I ran around with, Alem had ambitions to join the Reachers. So we studied together—me out of bored interest at first and to help a friend out and him out of sheer determination to eke out a more comfortable life.
Alem was looking for any extra bit that would push him over the edge.
So, naturally, when he'd heard about the magical egg in the chicken coop, it was a done deal.
"Normally, it would be a pretty easy job. Climb over the gate, go into the coop, touch an egg, and leave before anyone spotted you." I was already laughing a bit thinking back. Alem was like me—smart in some ways, and an idiot in others. Neither of us even questioned the superstition—or its origin.
"The group of stewards that was responsible for that coop knew about the rumor, of course."
I was pretty sure they were the ones behind it in the first place. It was too easy to get to the coop. Maybe hydroponics was a boring job and the adults wanted to have a laugh every now and then.
"They didn't set up any security to guard against us kids; instead, what they had was a rooster. It had the temper of a machine pulled straight from the bowels of the underground. The little monster would chase down anything on two legs that was short enough to terrorize. Which ten-year-old kids like us were. My friend, Alem, tried his own luck at sneaking past the

rooster the day before he took his test. You can probably guess how that went if I'm telling the story."
"He failed to sneak past I take it?" Father asked. He'd been paying close attention as I spoke, almost saying nothing at all. I couldn't guess why he wanted to know more about my childhood all of a sudden, but I did ask him about the underground before, and he'd shared about his life then. Fair was fair.
I nodded back. "Worse. The rooster spotted him, charged at him, and the poor kid panicked and slapped out blindly. Fight or flight response. Slapped the rooster clean in its chest and sent it flying off."
"Reminds me of a friend of my own," he said. "A few knights knew he was terrified of snakes, so they'd made a prop. Expensive I heard, and they'd spent hours making it. When they surprised him with it, he neither screamed nor ran. Instead, he slapped it. In relic armor. That fake snake was more or less obliterated. Everyone learned a lesson that day." He shook his head fondly. "He still gloats about it to this day. I am surprised caretakers allowed a rooster in a position like that. Eventually, a child would come around that could harm the bird."
"Maybe a slap from someone of your size and build, Father, but Alem was ten and I was barely eleven. These birds would see a slap from us more like an insult." And none more than that rooster. He took it personally.
"After the slap, the rooster went for blood. I'd swear on Tsuya, you could feel the hatred in its screams. Alem wasn't given any time to climb out of the coop, so I had to help."
He chuckled. "So how did you save your friend from death by rooster?
Climb inside the pen and try to fight the creature hand to hand?"
I flashed a thumbs down. "No way. Too heroic for my tastes. I opened the gate to let Alem run off. I figured that rooster wasn't going to chase too far past the coop. Any other chicken I'd have been right, but this rooster was on a different level of petty hatred. It chased Alem straight out of the gate and never stopped for anything."
"Like our spider. At least a chicken is less dangerous."
He had a point there. The spider had chased us right out of its own gate,
come to think of it. Did we just get nearly murdered by something with the same temperament as a rooster? Life had taken some strange turns for me recently. "Alem ran into the market thinking the people there would scare it off, or at least one of the adults would step in to help."

I could imagine the day vividly from their perspective. All the adults,
busy with a hard day of work, going down to the market to bring back food for the week. And while browsing the goods, some terrified kid runs by on two tiny legs, screaming all the while, with a bloodthirsty rooster chasing behind, unerringly loyal to its mission of murder and mayhem.
A grueling day, followed by a single unexpected moment of levity. It was like a matchstick to kindling. The laughter was contagious, spreading like a wildfire behind the screaming kid. People bent over their knees trying to put it under control.
No one had stepped in to help Alem because of it. The poor kid had to climb up a rooftop to escape, and the rooster remained firmly camped underneath, cold, calculating eyes keeping track of its prey. Everyone said chickens were stupid creatures, but that rooster had a plan. It knew the kid would need to get down eventually.
"It would hiss at me if I took a step too close. We had to get one of the caretakers to come by and fetch their little monster. Long story short, the rooster was put back into its pen, Alem took his test and passed, and now everyone knows him as the chicken tamer."
Those days had been good to me. The kids I had run around with all had their issues, and we'd banded together because of it. "I'm guessing you didn't have much of the same freedom I did to roam around. Was your old man as strict as Grandmother? I hardly hear anything about Grandfather."
"He died on the field when I was thirteen," Father said. "That didn't make much of an impact in my life. He and I didn't talk often. I believe he married my mother out of political necessity and hadn't wanted or cared for children.
It would be one thing to have a negligent parent, at least I would know what not to do or be. But since he died, I had no ref..." he shook his head.
I was horribly afraid for a second he really would clam up, turn around,
and let the subject die off. But he didn't go silent.
"No," he said with a sigh, "I can already see where my mind is trying to move this conversation to. There is no explanation or excuse. I could have asked others about how to raise you and Kidra alone. I could have learned what I needed to do. I have no excuse for abandoning you like I did. Your mother would never forgive me if I tried to downplay what I've done or blame my own upbringing as the reasons for who I am. I can almost feel her glaring at me from above." He chuckled. "She cared too much."
"I… what was she like? Mom. The Winterscars never did tell any stories

about her. I'd heard hundreds about you—they had tons about how you'd win duels or fight and defeat other relic knights and pirates—but it was like she didn't exist. Nobody ever said anything about her."
He turned to glance up at the distant ceiling, slowly approaching as the elevator ascended. When he tried to speak, his voice broke at first. But he rallied anyhow. "... Our House didn't speak about her because she wasn't a Winterscar."
Wait.
Was there some sort of lineage issue I hadn't known about? "But the family records show her as Kellen Winterscar?"
"Aye. After she married me. She was houseless originally. So she had no history with the Winterscars, no trace of politics. And she didn't care to establish any of it either. That's why I loved her as much as I did. That's why I felt safe around her. She wasn't a Winterscar…" he stared up, pausing for a moment. "She would have loved you. Loved you like she loved Kidra.
She wasn't a Winterscar, Keith. She was good, and kind, and… and caring."
His voice broke, chest shaking as his voice wobbled. "... And I regret so much that you never were able to experience that. It changed my life..." he stopped, shook his head, and went silent.
The elevator continued to rise at a steady pace. We stayed like that for a minute before he spoke again.
"You'd never guess how I met her." His voice was back and level.
"I had been undercover for an assignment.
"She had been a cook working in the bellows. On the side, she was a runner working for a known information broker to make an extra paycheck.
Nothing important. Atius had been hunting down conspirators at the time—
damned fools who were scheming with outside raiders to coordinate some attack. He suspected they would try to intercept her deliveries.
"I spent four months at her side, acting as a common low-budget bodyguard. The kind that's all show and no action. The kind that our targets would feel safe to attack. He fed them false information, making them believe I was wearing fake relic armor to impress clients. The unadorned aspect of the Winterscar armor was perfect for the setup." A chuckle came out of him.
"I never got my chance to fight. Lord Atius manipulated them into setting up an all-hands-full meeting, and then he culled them in one swoop. He called it counterintelligence."
He took a moment to think of his next words, trying a few times and then

halting mid-sentence as if it wasn't the right way to explain it.
Eventually, he found his groove again. "We... grew close over those months. She never knew who I was. She couldn't have possibly known, no resources to even guess. No connections, nothing. She'd even go as far as to cook dinners for me, thinking I didn't have enough funds to make my own ends meet. She truly believed I was some down-on-their-luck mercenary with only a fake relic armor to my name. Winterscar was some far-off House in her mind, somewhere in the upper districts. And so I knew what she showed me was genuine, without manipulation. I spent so much time doubting at first. It took months before I began to trust."
I thought about how his life must have been. Grandmother was a sociopath, and the rest of the Winterscars weren't that far off themselves.
Everything anyone did in that House was always calculated. Every favor done, every word, every lie. There were no real friends among my House.
It dawned on me that Mother might have been the only person in his life who'd actually cared for him or showed him what that even was.
I had Kidra, and together we could brave anything. But he hadn't had anyone, had he?
Meeting her must have felt like finding fire for the first time, after a lifetime drifting in the cold. And ten years later, I was born and that fire was extinguished at the very same moment.
"I'm sorry," I said, glancing down in shame.
"Don't be, boy. It wasn't your fault." He snapped back "Only a monster would blame a newborn for what happened." His voice softened, and his gaze cast down. "And… and I might have been one, at the start."
The lift shuddered to a stop, wobbling. I reached out for the handles on the floor to hold me steady. But besides the moment of terror, the elevator held together, creaking and groaning the whole way. We'd arrived at the top.
Father stood up next to me. "You asked me a while ago why I didn't leave you behind down here. I know you deserve an answer to that. The truth is... I don't know why. I've been asking myself the same question this whole time since before you woke up, as cruel as it might sound to you."
"I don't find it cruel. Like I said before, the optimal choice would have been to leave me to die. A Winterscar would have picked that in a heartbeat.
If you ask me, I think you're just terrible at being a Winterscar. "
He chuckled darkly at that. "Perhaps I am. I thought I had been following orders to keep you safe at first. Lord Atius was the first person I ever truly

respected, and the first person I would give my life to protect. That didn't feel like the truth to me as we made more progress down here. Then I thought I had been doing this for her because she would have wished for me to keep you safe. But the more I think, the more I don't quite believe that either."
He stepped off the lift, walking into the dark shadows of the unknown. "I don't know how I'm supposed to feel, Keith. I was never good at emotions like your mother was. She could read me like a book. I might as well be illiterate. My mind is a hundred different thoughts anytime I think about you,
even after all these years."
I followed behind, watching as he walked farther into the gloom, the darkness slowly giving way to the cavern light in the distance, glittering off his armor.
"If it's for honor, or duty, self-loathing, or even some sense of misguided redemption, I don't know. I only know I have to see you safely to the surface.
If I knew why… surely, I would have been a better man already."

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

THREE'S A CROWD

W

hat we found at the top of the elevator was a smaller set of welded buildings, same architecture. The bit of mountain that remained visibly connected to the surface, which meant somewhere in this winding city, there'd be cracks to make it back to the surface.
The comms flickered to life. Atius's voice came out. "Search party to Winterscar."
"Go ahead, we copy," Father responded.
"We found a possible descent point. Are you two still rising at the moment or stable?"
"We are currently stable. The elevator worked and brought us up as far as it could go."
"Confirmed. We think we'll be able to level with you after we descend down this point—assuming it drops to that level."
"Understood," Father answered back.
"We've got a good signal from here already. Stay where you are; we'll be reaching you soon. Anything to report on your end, Winterscar?"
"Negative. Nothing new since last."
"Understood. Search party out." The comms clicked shut.
Father and I walked over to an empty house, a metal table sticking out of the side, complete with stools. We sat down and unpacked our rations, both working without a word.
"How are you doing timewise?" I asked him.
He gave a positive nod. "Nowhere near my limit. At this distance, we might even make it to the surface without having to knock me out." He gave a quick tap on the metal table for luck.

"That meadow you talked about," I asked him, taking my helmet off to nibble on the leftover rations, "was it built by mites or the undersiders who lived there? I've been thinking about it, but if there's a meadow and other biomes down here, does that mean that mites can create living tissue? Or at least a facsimile of it."
It would be interesting to consider Deathless might be artificial humans.
If mites could create living tissue, who was to say they were the only ones?
"Mites are ambitious builders," Father said, "but I've never seen them create plants or animals with my eyes yet. However, the vegetation seems more... planted, for lack of a better word, in those biomes. There's an order to it, hard to spot, but still there. Perhaps the mites create the seeds and then let the plants do the rest?"
I thought about those little enigmatic creatures. So tiny and yet responsible for everything around me. Layer after layer. It felt like there were a lot more answers behind the mites than anyone could suspect.
"How far down does the underground actually go? I heard twelve miles before, but is that really true?" I asked instead.
"It goes deep," he said, "so deep nobody knows where it ends. Twelve miles is a rumor, unconfirmed but commonly said. Even the undersiders don't explore past the third layer. The machines we fight up here are considered weak compared to what you find farther down. After a certain point, even relic armor isn't enough to balance the odds out. And the larger the group you travel with, the easier it is for machines to find the group."
"Undersiders have access to a lot more relic armor and tech than we do,
why haven't they explored all the way down?"
"The farther down you go, the more dangerous it gets. There are sanctuary points, places where a large pillar stands at the center with a few glyphs, glowing blue. Occult things, and not made by the warlocks. Around those pillars machines don't cross, though the radius is small and they're hard to find. Deathless have another use for it. They gain and exchange their powers at these pillars."
The elevator shuddered to life again, descending back down, empty. It cleared the view on the way down, revealing the city again. Father pointed out the distance. "Most undersider cities exist in the first three layers. After that, it becomes too dangerous to hold off automatons. The rest of the layers... it's anyone's guess what you would find down there. Weapons,
treasure, power, but usually death for those of us who only die once."

"The Deathless, are they able to make it farther down?" I'm guessing that was a "yes, but no," otherwise they would have confirmed for a fact how far down we could go.
"You're on the right track. Only Deathless go deeper. They gather together on the third-level cities and then set off, usually in groups of five.
Perhaps they're the reason we say twelve miles is the limit. I don't know how deep they've gone. It's grim work, and many are exhausted, especially the older ones. Some of the Deathless, like Atius, never delve deep into the underground. Atius went on to protect and lead people. Other Deathless have sequestered themselves into undersider cities, where they've taken year-long breaks from the fight. Whatever they are, they're still human at their core, in my experience."
I tried to wrap my head around that. The machines we'd run into already were hard to fight off. If we didn't have relic armor, we'd have died dozens of times already. And he was saying there was worse below.
But then again, the machines up here weren't optimal. If I had been in charge of designing killer automatons, I certainly wouldn't be picking these sorts of forms. The spider had merit but glaring weaknesses in the number of limbs.
Additionally, their reflexes didn't seem on par with actual machines.
Things from even the late third era could already track and calculate options within nanoseconds. So why weren't the machines just as fast up here? And there was also something odd about their memories. "Every machine we've fought so far, it felt as if it had never fought a human before. But machines are just code. And memory is data. Why don't they all share collected memories or at least pass on their data to their next chassis?" And come to think of it, "Why are there no machines on the surface?"
Father shrugged. "Atius has asked the same questions you did. He asks each time we dive down into the deeper cities. No one has any answers, only theories. As for the surface, they seem almost oblivious of it I suppose. As if they can't comprehend that the surface exists. Atius has a theory that it's all an artificial limit. Implemented likely by either the machines themselves for some arcane reason we don't understand or by an enemy of the machines.
They might have failed to wipe out the machines, so they've settled on harming them in ways to prolong the world."
If this entity had been strong enough to modify the very core of how the machines behaved... it was hard to put it all in context with what reality

looked like now. It was almost like these monsters up here were made specifically to be opponents to fight, rather than a pest control measure.
And the only opponent I could think of would be the Deathless. What was their relationship to the machines?
"What exactly are they? Deathless I mean. Is there some sort of secret we relic knights are supposed to know? I'm no longer just a scavenger now."
"Would that I knew. I told you most of what I knew about them earlier. If there are more secrets, then Lord Atius is keeping them from me as well," he answered back, dashing my hopes. "What I told you was the truth. This last year has been... different. More different than any before. The Deathless have truly changed for the first time in millennia. They're strange, Keith. Lord Atius is worried about it as well. He talks to his fellow Deathless when he meets them, and none of them can make sense of this new generation."
"Are the imperials right, about this being the end times?" What a godsdamned century to be alive in. Right when the apocalypse appeared over the corner of this scrap pile.
He shrugged again at that. "This new generation at least fights against the machines, most of the time. They're just different from us. I spoke to one in a city a few months back. They see the world as a game. I've seen them fight and bicker among each other constantly, complaining about things that seem trivial."
He drew out the sword, examining it while he spoke, almost as if to distract himself with something. "But they have already discovered things farther down than any have before. Some of the imperials I've talked to believe the sun goddess is desperate or trying something new to break the stalemate. The crusaders are mobilizing, regrouping together already. Large pilgrimages are happening underground, not to the surface but to the grand cities, the ones on the lower level. The same places these new Deathless are flocking to. I'm not sure where they will go from there. So far they've been joining expeditions farther down, following these Deathless. The other surface clans are still trying to make sense of it."
I'd heard the songs dozens of times of course. The Deathless were demigods, old dead heroes brought back to life by the gods and sent down to protect humanity. I could see why the new ones acting much less dignified put a wrench on that explanation.
"Do we know why they're trying to explore the lower reaches?"
Father nodded. "As a matter of fact, the one I spoke with did tell me.

They say the key to the world is beneath the last layer, as told by the mite speakers."
The key to the world? It probably wasn't a physical thing. Maybe some sort of digital signature? But what sort of permissions would unlock the entire world?
Oh.
The answer seemed so obvious in hindsight, it almost smacked me off that table. There was one machine that shaped the world as it was. "The administrator keys to the mites."
"Perhaps," Father said. "There's a lot of speculation on just what 'key'
means in this context. Controlling the automaton. Or the mites. Or even other Deathless. Whatever it is, there is something deep down under all the layers of the world. The new Deathless want it. The crusaders are following them down underground, taking the fight to the heart of the enemy. The world is changing."
"I can't say I'm too thrilled about the idea of some unhinged Deathless controlling the world itself," I said, bringing back the conversation.
"Neither am I. I trust the gods have their plans. Surely they were behind this. Whatever the Deathless are, they fight for humanity for the most part.
And you'll meet them soon enough. After the expedition, we were slated to protect a trading convoy into the lower levels—a joint mission with Clan Ja'dok. Meeting the new Deathless is unavoidable now with their numbers."
So much of the world seemed... fought over. Intentionally shaped. And over the eons, it had shifted into the balance we had now. The machines seemed like a result of different powers trying to either weaken them or empower them. The mites might as well have come out of the same result.
Gods, the mites might have once been aggressive machines themselves at one point. If it was the gods trying to modify the machines—and I couldn't think of any entity powerful enough other than the gods—they surely would have tried to go all the way. So what had stopped them?
The Way of the White, our scriptures, always talked about the threat being outside of the world. Like everything, it was all explained in the songs. But something was clearly opposing and counteracting the attempt to pacify the machines, and it didn't make sense for that entity to reside outside the world when the machines were on the inside. Did these buckets of bolts have their own gods fighting for them?
The elevator made a creaking noise behind us, coming back up. I glanced

back wearily. Was something coming up? Father stood back up from the table, sword raised. "It should not be coming back up," he muttered under his breath. Journey still caught the wording.
"You don't think that..."
I heard the spider's metallic snickering echoing around the town, coming straight from the elevator shaft. That same dark chuckle of superiority, as if it had pulled a fast one on us. I scrambled to put on my helmet and pack my gear back up on my backpack. I had it fastened up and ready to go in record time.
"It followed us," Father said, clenching the crusader's longsword.
The top of a familiar barnacle turret soon peeked over the elevator edge,
continuing to rise. It didn't wait to say hello and simply opened fire without prelude. Both of us dodged the attack easily enough, splitting our respective ways off. Father barked out orders for me to get to cover while he closed in to finish the thing for good, swords and knife ready in action.
He skidded to a stop when he spotted extra heads besides the five-legged menace appearing over the lip of the rising elevator. A lot of extra heads.
Great. It had brought friends.
The spider wasn't going to fuck around this time, and it clearly remembered how we'd kicked it out into the cold last time. I had thought it would set up traps or use the environment, but there was a far more basic and easier to employ tactic to level the odds.
Minions.
I supposed the spider subscribed to the philosophy that quantity had a quality of its own when it came to minions. And it wanted to make absolutely sure we wouldn't survive this time. Twenty-eight pairs of violet eyes glared balefully at us. A small army of screamers against two worn-down relic knights.
The screamers didn't wait for the platform to level; they leapt out. Half climbing, half jumping, they started a counter charge against Father. The spider didn't follow into the attack; instead it remained behind, watching. The screamers would soon obscure the line of fire to their closest target, so the barnacle had already chosen to wail on me… again. I swear that thing had a personal vendetta against me.
I made a quick slide to the first cover I could get to. There were buildings all around, and any of them would let me duck behind. Journey halted my movements halfway, letting a spike fly by right where I'd have passed by. It

felt like I'd run into a slightly cushioned wall, Journey taking over the motions, utterly unmovable, disorienting me for a moment after.
Better than getting impaled.
In moments, I'd made it to safety behind one of those welded-together mite buildings. A second spike fired, whistling in the air. It planted straight through the metal, the tip exploding out the other side, almost damaging my armor but not quite enough power to sustain the momentum. OK, note to self:
these metal buildings might not be as sturdy as I'd considered.
I could see the small minimap in the corner of my HUD showing Father hadn't started sprinting back on the retreat.
Scrapshit. Was he trying to hold them off, or did he have some sort of idea?
With quick motions, I unstowed the crusader's old rifle, flicked its safety off, spun out of cover, and took aim. A burst of shots flew right where the targeting reticle expected the hit. The spider was immune to the small arms fire, using its legs as shields. So instead my snap action had been aimed at the turret on top—the eye.
The spider's leg was quicker, shooting across the air at the last second and stopping the attack.
Scrapshit. Neither its body nor the barnacle was getting downed soon. My aim went down, searching for other targets. The automatons covered the ground like insects, swarming across.
Father, on his end, had better ideas of how to handle combat now that I got a look at what he'd been up to. The long sword had been sheathed back,
and his free hand was drawing out the last grenade he had.
A flick of a gauntleted hand and his last explosive flew straight at the charging mob, red light rapidly blinking.
None of them had seen a grenade before so, of course, they didn't dodge.
That turned into a very expensive mistake.
The explosion tore into the charging group. The enemy counter was stopped dramatically on Journey's HUD. That had ripped apart five screamers off the bat and likely damaged others. The machine charge faltered, staggering from the blow, the smoke obscuring the full scene.
"Cover fire, shoot the moment I retreat. Conserve ammo otherwise," he ordered. "I need to thin their ranks."
Twenty-three targets left. That didn't seem to faze him at all.
No, instead he charged forward and dove into the smoke.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

NOTHING PERSONAL

T

he man burst through the smoke like an avenging wraith, knife and sword in hand, destruction in mind. Obscured in the cloud, I could only see his orange outline on the HUD, Winterscar relaying motion data to Journey.
A whirlwind of destruction followed, the sweeping strikes of the long sword slicing madly and the knife cutting off legs and hearts. The automatons didn't even have time to regroup with the veteran scything into them.
He moved with choreographed strikes, every hit deliberate. He spun around the grasps, jumped over the lunges, and struck the openings,
maximizing the use of the fading smoke, knife stabbing down deep into anything that came too close, longsword handling anything at further range.
In mere seconds, he had slaughtered another four and greatly damaged more.
Nineteen left.
Just as fast as he had appeared, he disappeared like a ghost, retreating into the smoke cloud and sprinting in my direction.
"Cover fire," he called out to me, voice steady, sliding into the open. That left him completely exposed, but I understood a moment later why as the barnacle opened fire on him—choosing to take the easy target over me. His longsword flicked out in impressive instinct, and the spike screamed off course right before impact.
The automatons vaulted through the remains of the smoke, howling for vengeance. And I was completely free to open fire on them with impunity.
The targeting reticle made it easy to line up my shots. Journey's arms kept the rifle exactly as steady as I needed it to be. I pressed down on the trigger, flowing back into my training days.

A skull exploded into metal shrapnel and white ceramic. The owner dropped dead on the ground, its brothers jumping over the body without care.
Eighteen left.
I targeted the next and opened fire again. This time it twisted, ducking and trying to dodge the shots. A lucky clip hit its leg as the creature straightened up. The dodging quickly became more flailing and far less in control. It took another two bursts before I nailed the little scrapshit.
Seventeen left.
"Don't waste bullets. They've already adapted. You'll need to fire when they're not paying attention now," Father said at my side, dodging another spike, making it look effortless.
The spider shrieked in the background, bellowing out orders. The barnacle turret turned to me now.
"Fall back. We can outrun them and continue the assault from range in a better location," Father ordered and sprinted. I let go of the rifle, leaving the strap to do its job, and followed behind in a tight sprint of my own, keeping up with him. Journey continued to halt or redirect my movements to avoid spikes I hadn't seen coming. Pain was flaring up in my muscles from the constant forces exerted, and my own pace was getting slowed because of it. I gritted my teeth and bared with it.
The spider finally charged now that we were making a run for it. It could easily outrun the screamers, but it still chose to remain behind the lines,
letting the barnacle take its potshots at us.
At intervals, Father would order me to turn and open fire while he drew the barnacle's attention.
Unfortunately, the enemy had gotten the hang of avoiding my rifle shots.
It still forced some to pause their charge, moving in ways to avoid the shots.
As a result, when they finally reached us, it wasn't as a group, just as Father had planned.
Father wiped the floor with the arriving stragglers, easily handling one at a time. They would catch up to him only to realize he'd allowed them to do so intentionally. And then he'd instantly skid to a stop and lash out. The first was swiftly cut at the throat. Another caught up to Father a moment after, this time trying to avoid the strike only to falter to a feint and counter sweep. Two more dead.
The next was a little wiser to the trick. Up close, however, it couldn't dodge my bullets, and that mistake was recognized a little too late to them.

With a quick sweep of my rifle, I pulled on the trigger and killed that one without difficulty as it had focused too much on the immediate threat, its head breaking into pieces as it failed to adjust rapidly enough.
"We're going to have to find a blockade," Father told me. "Watch,
they're grouping up now. No more easy takedowns."
Fifteen left. Still enough to overwhelm us both if they made use of their numbers.
He turned and continued his retreat while I followed dutifully behind.
Occasionally spikes would glance over my armor, as I couldn't get lucky all the time with the dodges. I could see the shield bar on the top of my HUD slowly drain away with each unlucky roll of the dice. I scrambled through the options we had, trying to come up with a plan of my own to help. They were staying as a unified wave now instead of branching out. A line of automatons,
so that if any dodged weapon shots, they wouldn't have any automatons behind them to slow down.
It was wasting bullets at this point to try attacking. Their ducking and weaving were making it too hard to track and shoot.
Wait a second. Why did I need to do the tracking? The suit could predict where shots lined up with the targeting reticle, and it could easily move my arms too. If there was any time to be cheating in a fight, it was now.
"Journey, can you auto-aim?"
"Aiming assist uses autonomous movement and requires administrative access before being enabled."
"You're saying it's possible?!"
"Affirmative."
Oh. Oh, this was just beyond overpowered.
"Enable aim assist." I grinned in my helmet with pure glee.
"Override confirmed. Aim assist activated to within one inch of reticle distance from any identified threat. User can change distance in the options menu."
"Father!" I barked out, "Journey can aim my rifle for me. I think we might be able to clear the rest!"
He nodded. "Copy. Look for a suitable position and we'll return fire."
As luck would have it, we'd gotten just what we needed a few meters ahead—some more of those metal tables by the sides of the welded buildings.
Father fell into a slide, rolling into cover. I settled down right and twisted my rifle around to aim.

My arms jerked in my hands, possessed, the reticle snapping onto the targets even as they desperately tried to duck and weave proactively. It was amazing how, no matter how they tried to weasel around, the targeting reticle stayed perfectly level on their skulls, slightly ahead of where they'd move.
Journey was moving my arm with gentle but firm tugs, letting me shift targets by pushing hard enough against the aim.
I pressed down on the trigger. A skull exploded. Fourteen left.
I took three more down in quick succession before they realized dodging wasn't on the menu anymore. Oh, they'd tried to adjust to Journey's aiming subroutines, but Journey was also adjusting to their own countermeasures equally as fast. The winner of this mathematics escalation fight had been Journey.
Plans changing up, the machines bolted to the sides, abandoning the idea of catching up to us entirely. I got one more nailed before they'd made it to safety. Ten left.
"Good!" Father shouted. "Fall back while they can't charge at us. We'll reset the distance they gained."
Both of us sprinted again, running down the streetways. The spider streaked behind, catching up to the stalled line of screamers, chittering all the while. It didn't sound happy at all.
The screamers reorganized, leaving cover and running alongside the spider this time.
Once more we ran into a good enough spot for a counterattack. Safe enough from the spikes to get a few shots out. I found my footing behind a wall and peeked out to rain down destruction again.
Once more, Journey's precision was perfect. Except for this time, another machine was able to stand toe to toe with Journey. The spider intercepted the crosshairs with those shielded legs. Protecting its flock.
It was absolutely uncanny how with every shift and movement of the rifle, the spider's limbs would match and follow like a partner. Gave me a strange illusion as if I were controlling the spider's limbs like a puppeteer,
with my rifle as the stick holding the strings.
Had the thing not been an evil monster out to murder me, I would have sung some damn praise at the feat. This creature was absurdly strong when it came to defense.
"Bastards came up with a counter," I said.
Father grunted. "I can hold them at melee. See if you can whittle them

down."
"You trust me to fire into a melee? You'll be in the possible crosshairs."
"I do," he said with calm confidence. "You'll either succeed or Winterscar's armor will take some hits. But you won't fail me."
I nodded back. The spider continued its careful advance, arms at the ready.
That barnacle on its back hadn't stopped this entire time either. It continued to rain down fire at me specifically. The little scrapshit really had it out for me.
Father jumped over the table cover, charging forward right after the barnacle had taken another shot at me. The spider held its ground for a moment and then scuttled backward at the last moment. Ten automatons against Father. Even with his arm restored and all the drugs keeping him at a temporary peak, these weren't great odds. The veteran seemed to know that.
If I fucked up, he would be the one paying the price. And yet he didn't waver in the slightest on his dash forward. I leveled my rifle, searching for a good pick.
He picked his fights far more carefully than the first time he'd charged into them. The weapons reserved for defense, his movements always keeping him from being surrounded. The first bout of contact saw neither he nor the automatons get hit. Both sides launched strikes and feints that the other dodged. There was a healthy distance between them, neither side wanting to get within the kill zone of the other.
They had number superiority on him, except they had to keep an eye on me. If they looked away for a second, I'd be the end of them.
The barnacle took another shot at me that I ducked under. I aimed to return fire once the threat had sailed by. Journey tracked after targets, far too close to Father for comfort. It took only a few seconds before I had a window. The screamer had been forced to pay full attention to Father in order to avoid his strike—and more importantly, had overextended too far away from the spider's protection.
I pressed the trigger, putting complete trust that my armor wouldn't fail.
The screamer succeeded in dodging against the longsword, only to have its head explode into pieces as my attack flew true.
The pack screeched louder, and Father lunged at another that'd jumped away to dodge. It got a front-row view of my rifle locking onto its midair trajectory and opening fire.

They could try to dodge on land. In the air, they had nowhere. The creature hit the floor without a head.
Now the pack of machines was being far more cautious, taking only the safest possible attacks while keeping an eye out on where my rifle was aiming. I didn't see a single one try to jump away again. Eight left. Not enough to turn the tides yet.
All this took the span of a few seconds, which was all the time we got before the spider put a stop to all this nonsense, charging up close enough to act like a hen mother brooding over her children. It now remained close enough to block my attacks and moved to follow any overextending minions.
The spider screamed and hissed in anger, clearly barking out a change of orders. Father tried to take a few swipes at it whenever the limbs got too close in their defense attempt, but the automatons kept him too busy to commit.
The spider could have made use of that, striking out at Father while the minions kept him on edge. Instead, it made no attempt to get closer to the man, preferring to let its minions deal with the dangerous target. I could understand really. Father was like an angry blender. One does not simply poke a spinning whirlwind of blades without getting cut—something the spider seemed to have taken to heart.
It knew any attack on that relic knight would open it up to a counterattack, even if it would have been a small one. The eight remaining minions left were already winning, chipping away at his shield while sustaining light damage in return. They'd outlive him at this pace.
I kept trying to find a viable place to fire off some shots, even if it felt hopeless. That machine would not let me out of its sight. Between the barnacle firing down on me and the spider's preemptive legs, there were no more easy wins.
Sit by the front lines, block my shots, and wait for its minions to slowly bring down Father—it was a solid plan. Retreat wasn't possible anymore for us. Father couldn't extract himself safely at this distance without getting stabbed in the back.
But the spider hadn't been content with just that. No, it hadn't settled for a probable victory; the creature was greedy. It wanted to make sure it would win.
That hadn't been the whole of its new plan. I realized this only by chance when I noticed a discrepancy. Father was now stalemating the enemy, when

moments ago they had been slowly winning.
In the middle of the furious fighting, he twirled past an outstretched arm and delivered the first killing blow. The automatons no longer took greedy hits or unsafe lunges after that. They fought more defensively, almost like… almost like they were stalling for time.
I realized exactly why Father started turning the tides only now, whereas before it was a slow pace to defeat. The numbers.
He wasn't fighting eight screamers anymore. There were only five left in the melee, with one already dead at his feet. Two were unaccounted for.
I twisted just in time to spot them, leaping from the building right above my position.
Falling down directly at me with open, bloodthirsty arms.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CRUCIBLE

M

y preparations saved me. The rifle was already in hand and primed to shoot. At this range and speed, I didn't even know which one to target, so instead I pointed in the general direction and hoped it would be enough. My rifle snapped onto the nearest target, the automatic aiming deciding for me. A single burst of bullets was all I managed, but it was enough.
One automaton collapsed on the floor, skull already in pieces. Its partner landed far more gracefully, one hand already sweeping out for me. I tried to dodge to the side, but Journey took control and had me walk backward. The relic armor easily overpowered me. It felt almost like a tight sarcophagus for that fraction of a second. The disconnect disoriented me, and I stumbled down on the ground the moment the armor released control, rifle slack on the shoulder strap. I must have let it go.
Knife. I reached my hands for my boot, only to get violently slammed back down twofold. One for Journey attempting to overpower my motion,
and the second for the automaton's hand—too close for any escape movements—catching my throat and throwing me down.
The automaton hadn't wasted its chance against a prone target. Already its long hands fully wrapped around my throat, its knees pinning me down on top of the breastplate. A terrible metallic groaning was coming from the suit,
and red flashed over the HUD, indicating hull damage. The monster was slowly bending the neck plate. No shielding could prevent a direct force like that. But Journey held against the strangle—I didn't feel a thing.
My hands shot out to grasp at the thing's wrists. Last time I had been like a child trying to pry off this sort of grip. The creature was powerful enough to

break past relic armor. There was no way a regular human could compete against that might. Those violet eyes again, staring down into my soul.
But it wasn't me that moved the armor. The armor moved itself. My motions were just direction. And Journey's strength wasn't human.
The gauntlets gripped the wrists and then crunched down, breaking the ceramic armor in chunks. I pushed. The thing's hands were pried off, inch by inch, the relic armor stronger than the machine.
It seemed the automaton realized this in the same instant I did. It shrieked in fury, pulling its hands away. The move caught me by surprise, and the wrists escaped my grasp. Those mechanical hands rose and dove straight down. This time it wanted to stab and claw at the armor instead.
I rolled free and tried to scramble away. That attempt got stopped midway as the thing gripped my ankle with one hand. The other hand raised for an attack while it dragged me back into range. Somehow, I had enough presence of mind to go for my knife again.
The blow hit my armor right before I could take the knife, knocking me like a rag doll to the side.
"Warning, low shields," the suit announced. It had taken too much damage in this scuffle. The spikes had whittled it away already, and direct damage like this was mounting up. Those attacks were no joke. I would have slid a distance on the ground, but the thing still had a grip on my ankle. Its arm lifted again and wailed down on me. Hard.
My left arm reflexively shot up to protect my head. Journey overrode the command, twisting my hand around and opening it into a grab. The move was violent, but Journey caught the automaton's attack, catching the thing's wrist again, stopping the attack cold. The automaton seemed almost shocked.
Notifications scrolled through my HUD, biometrics flashing red on my left hand. Fractures, bruising, muscle contusions.
It tried to rip its hand free, but Journey didn't let it go. I closed my hand,
retaking control. The mangled machine wrist crumpled further under my grip.
It spasmed, black metal now bending as the relic armor squeezed. The creature screamed out, a mix of terror and anger combined.
My right hand finally found the opening and grabbed my knife hilt. The enemy saw the weapon come out. It let go of my ankle, trying to escape now.
Not going to happen, you bastard. My grip was iron. No amount of pull the creature could muster was strong enough to break it.
I yanked the captured arm toward me, interrupting its escape plans. Only

then did I let go of my grip, shooting out for the next target: the ribcage.
Journey's armored gauntlets wrapped around one of those fake white bones,
and my knife flew at its face simultaneously, the snap-hiss of the blue edge activating midway into my lunge. I screamed death.
Oh, it tried to dodge. Tried. But Journey's grip was a vise, and the ribcage offered a perfect handle to hold against letting me pull the creature even closer. The blade sunk into the thing's throat effortlessly, digging up into the skull. Again and again I stabbed the thing, screaming incoherently the whole time. The violet lights vanished and the creature slumped over me.
A quick shove got it off me, where I could roll over and stand back up.
That was the wrong thing to do, since a spike speared out and struck me squarely into the chestplate. The blow knocked me down again on my back.
"Warning. Shields offline," Journey said. It almost sounded annoyed—
despite the monotone.
With a grunt, I grabbed the machine body and flipped it over, making an improvised cover for me. Another spike flew out and struck the corpse but couldn't make it through. I lifted my head up to check the current fight and felt elation at the sight.
The spider had made a terrible mistake. Once two more of its minions had dropped out to hunt me down, it was a losing battle from there. It had gambled hard and lost just as badly.
Father had sliced up three, and the fourth had retreated under the safety of the spider. He must have turned the tide before the spider could order a retreat. I could picture it looking like an even fight at first until one of these creatures got greedy, and Father instantly destroyed it and sped through the rest with the opening.
He couldn't quite get at the final minion, as the skittish spider was now playing exceptionally safe, for good reason. Its attacks shot out to force him away while the last remaining automaton prowled under, looking for a chance to get a hit in safely.
The barnacle tried firing another spike down at me. But now that I was paying attention again, I could hide from the hit behind the dead automaton. I needed to shift the advantage to Father somehow.
A plan came to mind almost immediately. Simple solutions and all that.
The only reason the oversized spider was keeping Father at bay from killing that last minion was that it was free to use those arms.
I knew how to effectively remove one arm from the fight. A simple catch-

22 for the critter.
The only thing I needed now was a window of time where the automaton minion would try for something, expecting the protection of the legs.
It wasn't a long wait. These machines were greedy even when they knew the situation couldn't allow mistakes. The minion moved in for an attack. In a flash, my rifle was up and aiming. Except not at the minion but at the spider.
The creature must have seen the motion, since it reacted immediately,
shielding itself first from the possible bullets.
Leaving the minion wide open and undefended.
Father didn't need to be told anything. Without the spider to cover for it,
the screamer had little chance. In seconds, he'd cut the automaton's throat.
Exploiting the falling body as a springboard to leap up, he leapt into the air,
giving him a perfect firing angle on the barnacle. The turret wasn't quick enough to change targets from me to the imminent threat in time.
A knife flashed out. The spider realized the problem and reacted a moment too late to save the turret. In a split second it seemed to realize there wasn't time, so instead it went on the attack, looking for a trade.
The knife struck squarely into the barnacle's single violet eye, blinding it.
At the same moment, the spider's sharp legs flew out and stabbed at the midair relic armor. Father saw the attack coming, longsword slicing up to meet the strike. It wasn't fast enough, the limb too quick.
Relic armor shields screamed and crumbled. The strike tossed Father backward. He hit the ground and leaped back on his feet unsteadily. The damage was significant, but the shield had prevented the worst. The HUD displayed in a flash of red that Winterscar's shields were offline, same as mine.
The automaton charged after him, another two limbs flying out to sweep him off his feet while he was still recovering his footing. The creature knew this would be the only chance it had.
My rifle was locked on and already firing. It hadn't tried to use its legs this time, opting to rely on the thick armor instead. It wanted Father dead,
even if it had to trade its eyes for it.
My bullets hit their marks. Three violet eyes shattered on the thing's exposed side from three quick trigger presses. Journey's aiming was perfect,
accurate, and quick. But the automaton's attacks were just as rapid and precise. They reached out for Father, wide, scything swings with terrifying power behind them.

He jumped clear over the first, sword flashing out and sinking in, letting the automaton's own motion sever the appendage wholesale.
The victory came at a cost. The spider's second follow-up attack clubbed Father right out of the air a moment later.
It sent Father speeding back again, this time a nearby building halting the momentum with a terrible crunch. He fell straight down from there, hitting the ground. Winterscar reported a laundry list of broken bones flashing over my display.
Father groggily tried to get back on his feet and faltered backward into the building wall instead.
I continued raining down fire the whole time. The attack had opened the spider up to some damage but not enough. The legs were once more making my bullets useless. Our last enemy closed in on Father, chittering all the while in that strange machine tongue.
He stayed slumped down to the ground, staring at the advancing enemy. I could only hear ragged breathing over the comms.
Get up. Please, get up. I continued to shoot at the spider, trying to stall it.
"I… I can't win this one…" I heard him over the comms. "Body is giving out. Pushed too far. Run, hide. I'll… buy you time." With a grunt of effort, he rose again, Cathida's longsword still somehow clutched in his hand despite everything. He brandished the sword like a torch now, warding away the violet dark—all precision and stance now gone. The spider growled in response, warily circling its prey. Far out of reach of that swinging weapon,
not yet confident enough to charge in.
Ejecting the old clip, I slammed a fresh one into place on my rifle. I kept the weapon aimed and ready, searching for an opening. "Not going anywhere. We're almost done wit—"
"Damn you, boy, do as I say!" he screamed through the comms, glaring at me from the distance. "Move! Get out!"
The spider charged, gibbering out with incoherent fury. Father turned and silently met its assault head-on. He'd always been floating right on the edge,
drugs and relic armor keeping that edge at bay.
With the additional broken bones, ripped muscles, and offline shields,
he'd tipped over that edge. And both of them knew it.
I had to step up to bat; I needed an alternative plan. Or I needed to change the victory conditions.
The rifle barked at the spider, forcing it to defend. It turned slightly to

hiss at me, considering if it should rip a hole in me first or finish its original target.
"Get to shelter in a house and start patching yourself up!" I called out,
"I've got an idea on how to hold it off for now!" Lies, of course. I had jack squat for a plan right now.
But Father didn't need to know that. My only aim was to get him out of the fight first. I'd figure something else out later. We'd killed off the army of minions. The thing was already damaged and missing limbs. We'd almost won already.
There was no way I was going to let it somehow snatch victory after all this. We'd worked too hard for it. I needed to placate Father somehow, pull him out of the fight and deal with this thing myself.
A chuckle passed through the comms. "You don't have a plan."
Scrapshit. "I'll figure it out, we can wi—"
A probing limb flashed out, striking out at the family armor. Father dodged, twisting around and slicing out. The movements were clearly off now, imprecise. Wavering but still kept lethal enough by sheer muscle memory. The longsword bit down, the tip cutting through ceramic armor before the spider withdrew.
It snickered. The creature circled around, taking only safe attacks, slowly exhausting Father. I could tell this was the new plan. It was almost playing with him now.
The spider had only four limbs. The thing needed three minimum to stand. One to attack or defend with.
But not both at the same time.
"I know what we can do," I said.
"No, you damned fool, you need to—"
Another probing strike shot out to catch Father. Again, it withdrew too fast for him to counterattack.
But not fast enough to defend against me.
Bullets zipped through the cold air, directly into another violet eye.
Another burst flew out to take an extra bite, but the spider was quick enough to shield itself from that. It snarled at us, taking a step back. Realizing I was still a threat.
Okay. So I'd get about enough time to snipe one eye with each attack.
"We can do this. You just have to keep it busy and stay alive. I'll take out its vision bit by bit. Once it's blind, we can really work this thing down. I can

carry you back home the rest of the way, you know I can."
"That… that could work." He took a step forward, sword ready. The spider took another step back, then tried a quick half-spear. It hadn't even reached Father before the leg retreated to ward off my bullet fire.
It screeched angrily, understanding the plan we'd come up with. It couldn't get to me with Father in the way, not without opening itself to a possible crippling blow. We had it in a checkmate. The machine glared balefully at me, hatred easily readable in its stance.
Father advanced methodically, step by step like a half-dead revenant come back from the grave, sword trailing behind him, conserving his strength to strike with it only when he needed to. The metal tip scratched the floor behind him with an eerie noise.
The spider retreated, scuttling behind a building, trying to break my line of sight. A pitiful plan. I jogged forward to keep it in vision the whole time,
the rifle never leaving my aiming position. It hissed all the louder.
In desperation, it tilted itself down. The dome-like body now looked like a round shield, using the barnacle and its own thick armor to protect itself.
The eyes were out of my sight now, and it struck out at Father. The odd angle did a number on the creature's agility, limiting how it could attack.
Father didn't go for the limb. The spider's main body was in reach, and the old warrior was going for the kill, ending the fight as quickly as he could.
He bolted over the attacking limb, far more limber than I could have guessed, slicing through a section of the creature's main body, swinging the longsword in a long vertical arc right through the barnacle wholesale.
The creature screamed and scuttled backward again before another cut could be executed.
Cathida's blade hadn't been long enough to damage critical parts of the machine, but black oil dripped from the carved-out section. The barnacle turret hadn't been as lucky, spluttering and eventually going dark. We had it spooked now.
Out of options, the creature went completely berserk in a last-ditch gamble. In moments it had sprinted above Father, stabbing down furiously at him with every limb it had from every direction it could, once more going for a trade of blows.
My rifle barked out, taking eye after eye out. Not even three seconds had passed, and I'd already broken all the eyes in my vision.
"It's blind on the left!" I called out. Father responded by shifting over to

the creature's left, forcing it to turn around again to continue the attack. He moved with efficiency, struggling to avoid each lethal hit of the creature. My gun continued to snap out eye after eye until it clicked empty. There were still four eyes left to go.
Scrapshit. No. Not now.
Instantly, I gave up on the rifle, letting it go limp in the strap. There wasn't time to reload, I had to keep up the pressure. I drew out my pistol.
"Warning. Target is out of range," Journey chimed. At this distance, the pistol wouldn't do a lot of damage. It didn't matter. I aimed and unloaded all ten shots in rapid-fire.
Four eyes at the start, a single eye left after all ten rounds had been spent.
I'd narrowly missed the last one.
With a curse, I tossed the pistol aside and went for the next rifle clip,
moving as fast as I could.
A grunt of surprise passed over the comms. "Warning," Winterscar chimed, "fatal internal damage detected."
I froze and glanced up, catching what had happened.
Father had been skewered clean through the stomach, a dodge too late.
Relic armor and all. Even wounded, his sword was already swinging down with vengeance against the attacking limb. The spider didn't wait to have its fourth leg cut apart. Instead, it flung him off with a derisive swipe. The sword only made it halfway into the limb before he'd been thrown away.
He flew off, low to the ground, skidding to a stop, a trail of blood left behind. "Emergency life support activated. Three minutes estimated to hemorrhagic shock," Winterscar called out, voice still monotone. "First aid required. Loading medical module."
Father tried to get up but only collapsed back down on the pool of blood spreading beneath him. "R-run," his voice drifted over the comms, desperate now.
Run.
Run?
If I ran, I could make it back to the surface. I had relic armor now; I stood a chance of survival alone. Father knew that. I hadn't even reloaded the rifle,
but it would be worthless in this fight. I'd be down to using only my knife for this. And he knew I couldn't beat this thing with a knife.
I took a step back, caught between the terror, anger, and fear. He was going to die in three minutes without aid. Winterscar was keeping him

stabilized from the messages on the HUD, but it showed up as a temporary solution with a time limit. If I killed this thing fast, I could make it to Father in time. The armor would show me how to save him.
I couldn't possibly kill this thing by myself. Let alone within the next few seconds.
No winning move. Despair flooded into my heart. The creature snickered again, turning the last good eye in my direction. It approached, ignoring Father, already marking him as a non-threat.
What if I ran? I could just turn right now and I'd live. He was going to die in less than three minutes. And he'd ordered me to run too.
I need to run.
I need to run.
I need to run.
Cathida's knife flared to life in my hand.
I've run long enough.
My shaking hand stilled. The spider approached, leg tip sharp enough to puncture through metal. Sharp enough to kill me in one hit. In response, I took a step forward, taking the stance Father had taught me through blood,
pain, and trial. A breath in and out to steady myself.
The ancient occult knife in my hand slowly rose to face the enemy.
I am Keith Winterscar, relic knight of House Winterscar.
And I will honor my vow.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

SON

A

utomatons are more like wild animals, Father's voice drifted into my mind. Even weakened as it was, those legs moved too fast. Too fast for a human like me to react to. I felt silly, lifting a tiny occult knife against the towering monster.
That last violet eye locked onto my own. Every other eye had been shot.
Still, that monster's mechanical ability alone meant there wouldn't be a win coming from pitting my combat skills against it. If I was going to come out of this alive, I had to figure out a plan that sidestepped the spider's advantages.
In short, there was no winning this by being better. I needed to be smarter. It moved so much faster than I could be. Only another machine could match that speed.
Only another machine…
"Journey, can you fight this thing?" I asked.
"Movement requirements would exceed user safety limits. Combat protocol stands an unlikely chance of matching the target enemy and will cause injury to the user. Option not recommended."
"Is my current chance better than 'unlikely'?"
"At user's currently displayed close-quarters combat skills, estimate two percent chance of success. Combat program estimated at thirty-four percent chance of success."
Not great. There had to be ways to improve that. But how?
Could I abuse its sight? No, it would turn too quickly. The thing was a fast little scrapshit. There was no way I could get into the blind spots. Not with it focusing solely on me, even if it only had one eye.
If I can't move into a blind spot, could I create one? A cloud of dust right

in that eye would obscure me, giving me the chance. "Journey, can you obscure that thing's vision with your spirit?"
"Option possible. Target would need to remain within three feet of the central nano swarm to maintain coherence."
I'll put that idea down as a maybe. I'd need to stay really close to do much.
"Can Winterscar also trigger the combat program?" If both Journey and Winterscar worked together, that might give a better chance at victory.
"Option not recommended," Winterscar immediately answered. "Combat armor emergency life support would need to be canceled to allow full range of motion. Immediate first aid required."
That option was off the table. Winterscar was barely keeping Father stabilized. He'd die if the armor stopped its efforts.
There was something glinting on the side of the automaton's leg. The crusader longsword remained embedded, turned off, last wielded by Father in his last strike. He must have let go of the weapon.
The sword had cut deeply, but not deeply enough to affect operation.
Could I get those extra inches with a gunshot? No, the sword wouldn't turn on unless it detected a hand gripping it out of built-in safety. These weapons would only remain active without a wielder for a few seconds being let go of —long enough for a thrown weapon maneuver and nothing more. No bullet shot would do anything to turn it back on. Gods, my head was going in strange directions now.
Think. What else could I use?
There was a large gash in the body where Father's attack had wounded it.
Black oil was leaking out. Was that flammable? A bullet shot might cause a spark.
I drew up my empty pistol on reflex and the spider instantly took to the defensive. Its limbs drew in to protect itself, the advance slowed. Far more cautious now.
All automatons have patterns, only not always obvious. Remember this if you ever get caught.
In a flash of insight, I recognized the pattern. This defensive fixation. The spider reacted the same way the first time we'd met when I brought out my pistol. It always played as safe as it could. Every step of the way, it was riskaverse to any physical damage. Greedy outside of a fight and skittish inside one.

Against something it had seen before, it would remember and assume the proper defense against it. But when pitted against something it hadn't, it would maximize its defense just in case.
It had already seen everything we could throw at it. Rifles, pistols, knives,
even explosives. There wasn't anything new I could spook it wi— Wait. It had reacted to the pistol—the unloaded and harmless pistol.
There's always a weakness to leverage, Keith.
I didn't need a new weapon, I only needed it to think I had a new weapon.
The plan ironed itself out in my mind. This was how I was going to win. I would abuse its behavior. There would be one shot at this. One chance. If I failed the execution at any point… no do-overs.
That meant I couldn't rely on my combat skills. I came up with the plans,
that's what I was good at. I'd leave the fighting to those who were good at that. I'd have to give complete control to Journey the moment the spider started any counterattack.
This couldn't be a partial control setup. I need to commit completely and trust my armor could execute a good offense. My own inputs would muddy the waters. This had happened too many times already—two drivers at the handlebar would crash the airspeeder.
"Journey, on my signal, override all my motion control with the combat program. I can't fight that thing with my own skills, but I can open a window for you to do the damage," I said.
"Warning, extended use of full override may cause possible physical trauma."
"Will it kill me?"
"Negative."
"Then do it."
"Releasing safety locks. Loading standard combat module. Full combat module, online. Standing by."
I had to trust the combat program would do its part in all this. I prepared for my part.
Do or die time. I holstered my pistol, loosened up my shoulders, and then sprinted toward the enemy.
The spider mimicked my charge, screaming fury at me, ready to stab down and end it. Near the end of my suicidal charge, I yanked the artifact out of the belt and flipped it on. I still had no idea what it was used for, but it glowed blue when turned on and looked techy. That's all I needed.

Drawing it as if it were a pistol, aiming my bluff down range, the brick lit up bright blue. The effect on my target was immediate.
It scrambled to a stop and hid behind the only limb it had left for the job.
Covering its last eye. Father's sword still embedded on that very limb, the hilt inviting.
You remembered the wrong lessons, you oversized piece of scrap.
I let go of Cathida's artifact to free up my hands as I ate the last few feet of distance and leapt forward to get the extra bit of height I needed to reach the hilt, my hand extended out to grasp it. If I missed, I was dead. There wasn't time to question my plan now.
I soared through the air, reaching the apex of my jump, the hilt just barely in reach.
My fingers wrapped around it.
The crusader's longsword flickered back to life the moment it detected a firm grip.
The inertia of my jump did the rest, severing off the limb as the sword cut itself free. The jump hadn't been high enough for the second part of the plan.
The machine's body blocked my path, and I bounced back. Scrapshit. I'd planned to land on the top.
Instead, I hit the ground and rolled on my shoulder, finding myself directly under the creature just as it shrieked in realization. Instinct and reflex had me ram the longsword blade up into the underside carapace.
It sunk into the creature, but the blow hadn't been enough. The creature lifted itself up in a panic before I could execute a full cut, out of reach again.
The spider stumbled backward, weakened, trying to keep me in vision. One of its limbs lifted up.
"Now, Journey!" I screamed out.
The relic armor locked shut around me, trapping me immediately in a claustrophobic space. I couldn't move a single muscle—not even my fingers or neck. It was as if I had been moving around comfortably in liquid lead only to have it instantly petrify solid, completely entombing me inside. Fear flowed through my veins, and I threw a wall of willpower at it, trying to remind myself this was the plan and that it would only last a few seconds.
Trying to stay as still as possible to not trigger the mounting fear.
Instinctively, I knew there were only seconds before the claustrophobia woke within me in primal terror and overpowered all my senses. Time seemed to stretch out. The limb lifted, tip as sharp as a spear.

I was hyperventilating from claustrophobia already, darkness at the sides of my vision.
Journey jerked my body to the side, dodging the attack within inches. In the same motion, it slashed out with the blade against the attacking limb. The attack had no elegance or poise, no set form. A simple and brutal swing. But what it had was sheer speed. I could feel my muscles and bones ache from the whiplash.
Journey released the locks on my body moments right as I started screaming.
I found myself collapsed on the ground, breathing out the last of my panic, trying to steady myself again.
It had cost me.
But it had worked.
The sword had cut straight through the leg, leaving the spider to tip down.
Now it had only two rear legs. Not enough to stand up or attack.
It desperately tried to escape, but the mass was too much for two legs. I could see it dragging the weight behind it, black oil trailing behind it, that single purple eye glaring at me in both hatred and panic.
I stood back up to my full height. Mustering the last bit of energy I had left, and sprinted after it. I jumped on top of the domed bulk. The violet eye tracked me, following my trajectory. It watched with naked fear. Good.
The thing had been following us all this time. Learning. Adapting. Now I had one final lesson to teach it.
"Remember this," I snarled and rammed the blade deep into the monster's center, down to the hilt. I spun on myself and pulled, executing a massive chasm as the blade cleaved out in an arc.
All traces of violet faded to black around me.
It was over.
It was dead.
There wasn't time to celebrate.
I let go of the sword and sprinted over to Father. Traces of his struggle to get up colored the floor with bloody streaks and handprints. He'd managed to drag himself to a wall but nothing more. There he remained, slumped against it, a trail of scarlet painted around him.
I made it to his side, finding him still breathing but too weak to stand up on his own.
"Two minutes until hemorrhagic shock. Immediate first aid required,"

Winterscar said calmly. Biometrics flashed before my eyes, warning after warning scrolling by.
"No, no, no no!" I rushed out both first aid kits.
"Keith," he said, gasping and reaching up a hand to unhook his helmet.
Winterscar's helmet slipped from his fingers midway down, hitting the ground with a clunk. Neither of us made any move to bring it back as it rolled away.
Gray eyes marred with red veins. A harrowed-out face and clammy skin,
pale as death. Stubble had grown across the sunken cheeks. Short black hair filled with gray whisks. Gods above, he looked so frail. Haunted even. He'd seen better days—he'll see better days, I mentally corrected.
"No, not yet. We're so close," I hissed, snapping open the medical kits from both his armor and my old environmental suit. "Lord Atius is right around the corner. Any moment now, we'll link up and get out of here, and we'll be back at the colony in no time."
Inside each kit, all tools remained safe. The padding had protected them through everything up to now. I had a chance.
He tried to speak. Only able to get parts of a sentence out with each quick breath. "Thank the gods I'm dying, boy... saves me from having… to scribble n-numbers on the—" A coughing fit cut his voice off, his chest heaving with the effort.
"... on the dirt," I finished for him, my voice catching in my throat.
The spider's limb had made a hole in his stomach, and blood flowed everywhere from it. They'd built the superglue to stem blood loss, except there was... so much. Where was it all coming from? Gods above. Where did I even start?
Journey came to my aid. The HUD pointed out locations to apply aid. I followed the pinpoints blindly, moving as fast as I could. Dozens of spots.
"Everything will be fine. I'll just carry you back home after this," I said as I worked. "You'll take a vacation for a few months in a wheelchair, and I'll teach you all about engineering and all that scholar scrapshit since you won't be able to run from me. You're going to hate it; it'll be great, you'll see. Everything will be okay."
"Thirty seconds until hemorrhagic shock," Winterscar announced in my helmet, calling me out on my lie.
I ignored the armor, continuing treatment. Glue was everywhere now. It formed a massive patch, the first dispenser running dry. I was almost through

the entire second one when I'd finally tagged the last spot.
Winterscar confirmed the bleeding had been stemmed.
"Twenty seconds until hemorrhagic shock." The timer continued ticking down, ignoring all my efforts. He was still dying.
"Journey! Damn you! Fix this!" I screamed out.
"No options available given the current resources," it answered in monotone.
No, no no! Something else—there had to be something else I could do. I ripped out the gauze from both kits and tried to clean up the wound. They filled up with blood in seconds.
Worthless.
I swore and tore at the kits for more. There was nothing left inside. Both were empty, save for useless drugs. I swept the empty boxes away in a fit of rage, turning back to my old man.
Peace was not an emotion I'd seen on Father before. He wore it perfectly.
"You turned out good, boy." Words wheezed out, lucidity ebbing away into the air with them. "T-turned out… good."
Fourteen seconds, Journey's HUD showed.
"W-when I see h-her... I'll tell her about... y-you,"
Seven seconds.
Sensors had to be faulty. The bleeding had been stopped. He should be fine now! What more was I supposed to do? I ripped my helmet off in sheer rage, throwing it far away with a scream. I didn't want to hear Winterscar's scrapshit lies or Journey's helpless shrug.
The chill air attacked my cheeks instantly, the cold reaching in through my tears. I couldn't care less.
Stupid scraping shit-filled—"You could have made it out alone!" I screamed, throwing the worthless superglue dispenser away, hearing it break on some faraway rock. "Why didn't you just let me die in some corner? You would have lived. You should have lived."
He stared back, breath wheezing, seconds dying away.
Then a look of shock bloomed across his face. And for the first time in my life, I saw him smile. A broad, massive thing, full of wonder. "I know… I know why."
He reached out a trembling hand. I clutched that hand back tightly,
watching those gray eyes lose focus.
The world reduced to faint whispers.

"My… m-my son. B-because you…
are…
my…"
He let go.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

DARKEST BEFORE DAWN

I

remained curled up in that gloom for a long time, wrecked with emotion.
The relic armors stayed silent too. I'd have thought they'd be screaming at me right about now, telling me numbers and damage reports. Then I realized why there was silence: I wasn't wearing my helmet.
The thing ended up far away from me, abandoned by some wall. When had I thrown it away?
Mechanically, I stood and made my way to Journey's discarded helmet.
The blank faceplate stared back up at me as I held it. Ornate gold decorated the visor, reminding the world of its true origin. Despite the color, the metal had dulled and only small bits of reflection came across it. I turned it around and lifted it down on my head. The orange HUD returned to life and the entire cavern lit back up in my view.
Journey stayed silent as I walked back. Only once I had recovered the longsword from the spider's corpse, Cathida's dropped black box, and stowed all the weapons back into where they were meant to be did Journey chime.
It was as if it had waited for some requisite set of time for mourning.
Integrity reports, power outputs, and requirements for repair. It had enough tact to remain voiceless, leaving the notifications silently to the side. All noise to me, floating through the heads-up display unnoticed.
I made my way back to his body, still propped up on that bloody wall.
Motionless.
Father's helmet isn't where it should be, something whispered in my mind while my numb hands reached out beside the body to grab the discarded metal.

I lowered it back where it belonged. That dying smile. Lit with a last triumph. The plated helmet slipped over it, hissing shut to the world. He looked like himself once again.
"Suit integrity critical. Repairs required," Winterscar urged impassively in my helmet, this time not bothering to display it on my notifications feed.
I know what that scrapshit armor wanted. I know what it was asking permission to eat.
"Shut up. Just… shut up," I whispered back, taking time to return Father's knife back into its sheath.
Thank the gods the armor listened. Or maybe it didn't care a bit, only executing my demand as an order. The armor had served Winterscars for generations, following every order given. What was one more order to it?
Father would have wanted me to keep going. Let the armor repair itself with whatever materials it could get, no matter how macabre. Gods above, he would have demanded it even, yelling all the way.
Winterscar belonged to someone else now. She would need it fixed.
"I said it would all be okay," I said to no one in particular. "Not the first time I've been wrong, Father. Gods, I've been wrong every step of the way down here. I'll make sure you come back home. I won't get that part wrong."
He didn't answer back. The dead didn't speak.
Journey's armored gauntlets reached under the unmoving sibling. There was no surprise at how weightless it all felt when I lifted it up. These armors were heavy on their own, and yet it felt like carrying air when I stood.
"Suit integrity critical. Repairs required," Winterscar once more chimed in my ear, insistent. I was about to yell at it when Journey's HUD lit up and outlined the dead spider.
I started laughing. "Gods. My head is addled. I'd thought you were trying to eat his… his…" but I couldn't finish that sentence. Instead, I walked numbly to the dead creature.
It took only a few cuts and some directions from Journey to find where the creature's heart was. Two power cells kept the creature moving, one of which was sliced in half by the sword cut I'd done. The other was still mostly full. I stripped it out and brought it to Winterscar.
The black cloud expanded, drinking from the opened power cell container, expanding out in a small bridge of black to the dead spider's body,
breaking down the creature into smaller component pieces that slipped off and dissolved before hitting the ground, absorbed by Winterscar. The power

cell was soon emptied. The rips and broken metal had been pieced back together.
It didn't touch any of the blood, leaving all of it to freeze on the armor plates. I could see the armor reform itself over Father's wounds. Soon,
Winterscar had a perfect circle of metal covering the stomach while the rest was dyed as red as our sigil.
I lifted it up again once the repairs were done and walked away. Father's helmet slumped on my breastplate, my march home making it shift slightly from side to side.
Journey picked up the slack, pointing out directions. I had no idea how it calculated where to go, and I didn't care either. It was another half-hour before anything shook me out of my daze.
"Search party to Winterscar," the comms queried. That brought my feet to a stop, standing in the middle of some random path. I didn't even remember how I got there. There was no one but me now to answer.
"I copy."
"Keith?" Lord Atius's voice questioned. "Why isn't Tenisent answering?"
"He can't anymore."
"What? No, it's too early for symptoms to sho—"
"No, you don't get it," I ground out, cutting over him. "He can't answer anymore. Ever."
Silence on the comms.
Ironreach broke first. "Scrapshit. He's lyin'. That asshole couldn't have kicked the bu—it can't be tr—it just… Tenisent dead?"
"Do you believe his son would lie? Have some tact for once in your life,"
Ankah's father, the Shadowsong prime, cut in.
Lord Atius spoke next, almost regally, a note of finality in that voice cutting through the chatter.
"I was... dreading this would happen. I'll miss him dearly."
"Great. You've moved on already," I spat out.
"Keith!" my sister hissed out into the comms nervously. "This is Lord Atius, please, beh—"
"It's fine," the lord replied with a measured pace, cutting over my sister.
"I'm Deathless, little Winterscar. I've lived a very long time. I've seen hundreds of my friends die. Some in their beds surrounded by family, others in battle, and some alone on the floor of their own home with a pistol in hand.

I've learned to mourn in a different way than you do, but I mourn all the same. You will simply have to take my word for it."
There was silence on the comms for a moment before he continued.
"Scanners show you're only a half-click from us. Hold position. We will come to you. Search party out." The comms clicked shut before I could say anything else.
A wall found my back, and I sank down beside it. Winterscar was cradled in my arms. Everything was just too raw.
"How long has it been, Journey, since he died?"
"Forty-two minutes, twenty-seven seconds."
Sniffling, I let go of his armor, leaned it on the side of the walls, and curled up on myself.
My mind floated, and I knew where it would inevitably go. Skirting around the events, climbing up the chain of what caused what. The spider had killed him. The spider was able to kill him because he'd been down here.
He'd only been down here because of me. And I'd only been down here because of my greed.
I'd killed him.
I pulled that lever and killed him. The full realization poured into my heart. I crumpled on my knees, hand reaching out to rip off my helmet, but I was too slow. Vomit splattered all over the inner visor, splashing back over my face, almost drowning me. The smell of bile overpowered any other scent as it climbed up my nose.
Journey reacted immediately, the black cloud pouring out on the edge of my vision, cleaning up the mess I'd made as I hacked and coughed through the episode. "Warning. Abnormal spike of adrenaline detected. User may be suffering from a panic attack. Please remain calm and take deep breaths."
I stayed on my knees and started laughing, bubbles forming in the pressed-up vomit. Deep breaths? Journey continued to try to console me in its own unique way, throwing advice after advice that I'd have read from some generic manual on well-being. By now the vomit had been cleaned up and the smell was gone. It had done a thorough job of it, cleaning my cheeks and even swarming through the interior of my nose to hunt down every last bit of it, as well as the visor.
"I'm not... I'm not having a panic attack... you know why I'm down here,
Journey?"
"Winterscar logs were synchronized. Would you like a recap?"

"No. Winterscar doesn't know the real reason."
The armor remained silent as I confessed. "See, there was an emergency manual backup generator lever we passed by up there. At the site. I pulled it,
Journey. I fucking pulled it. Everything that's happened, all because of that one choice I'd made for shitty reasons. I knew that it would turn the site back on, and I pulled it anyhow. Because I couldn't be content with just winning.
And look where it got me."
Ye'd have learned a hundred times by now—nobody ever deals with the devil and comes out of it hale.
Now I'd seen all the devils, and it came with a price. Only, someone else had paid it for me. I shouldn't be the one walking out of all this.
Ironic that a month ago I wouldn't have cared if he'd died. A day ago I still hated the man down to my core. Yesterday's me might have bought myself a drink and raised a toast had I heard the news. What the hell had happened since then? Some sort of Stockholm syndrome?
Absent all my childhood and a terrible teacher when he'd come back.
Serious issues controlling his anger. Violence a tool to use anytime he couldn't explain something properly, which was often.
He'd looked down on my engineering passion his entire life, even destroying anything I made if he found it. I'd been counting down the days until I could be truly independent of him, scheming it even.
Now... now I didn't know what to feel. Did one good deed clear him of a lifetime of scrapshit ones? Or had all those scrapshit decisions all been done because he'd been afraid all this time? Afraid of what would happen to Kidra and me when he was no longer here.
His last smile floated into memory, and I knew then that I didn't have it in me to hate him anymore. I couldn't muster even an ember.
I got back to my feet, pushing against my knees. He'd tried to be better. I needed to do the same.
"Warning. Enemy threat detected," Journey pinged in my ear. An image of a screamer floated above my HUD, with an arrow pointing at a cluster of dots approaching my own.
"They don't ever stop, do they, Journey?" I chuckled back. This whole world wasn't going to stop just because I needed a break to do some soulsearching. The underground was ruled by machines, and I was a trespasser to be hunted down.
"Previous history shows machines always investigate sites of lost

battles."
"I don't suppose I could just lay low and hide?"
"Negative. This unit has been pinged. High probability enemy units were dispatched specifically to hunt current user down."
Father's body weighed nothing to Journey, even if his memory did to me.
In a second, he was back in my hands. There wasn't any more time to cry and mope and think about difficult things. I shook myself free of thought,
focusing. Clinking sounds of heavy footsteps sounded behind me, running with their strange gait. Coming around the same bend Journey had guided me through. It was do or die again.
"Keith to search party." I toggled the comms, starting on the long race against time. My feet moved across the metal road, Journey assisting with each leap.
"Search party copies. Status?"
"A group of screamers spotted me. Can't stay at the rendezvous location,
I've got to move."
"Understood. We'll double our pace and try to catch up with you. Try to run in our direction if possible. Good luck. Search party out."

Journey was fast. Distance flew under me as I put the armor to the full test.
Still, there was training required to unlock the full speed from the armor—
arms needed to be moved in specific ways, legs bent at the right angles.
Running naturally without that training, maybe seventy to eighty percent of the armor's true top speed could be reached. And then factor the extra weight of an entire additional suit of armor. Arms couldn't move either because I was committed to carrying Father. It was possible my speed was only half of what Journey could be capable of.
"Journey, are they catching up?"
"Affirmative," the armor said, killing any hope I had of outrunning them.
"Think we can make it to the search party's coordinates before they catch us?"
"Unable to calculate. Too much terrain is unmapped."
"They've for sure spotted us?"
"Affirmative. If the suit's sensor suite can detect them, they can also

detect the suit."
"Can you take over movement and get some more speed?"
Journey paused for a moment. "Movement requirements too precise to isolate only to leg partition. This option requires full body control. Trauma might result from prolonged override. Additional weight and motion limitations from Winterscar combat suit will reduce effectiveness."
Fear spiked through me at the thought of being encased again. Buried alive. Scrapshit. Did I have any drugs that could help me out with this? Antipain drugs sure, but nothing that would block a reaction like that. Had to put that plan down as a last resort. "How many are there?"
"Motion sensors detect seven entities following behind."
It was always seven with those monsters. At least it was predictable.
While I felt more confident in taking out one, or even two, seven would probably shred me to pieces. Can't hide, can't run, can't fight.
But I wasn't out of options. I knew I could fight them one on—if that could be arranged. Funneling them would be a possible victory condition.
The rifle could take them down too, if I used distance as my buffer instead of a funnel. Shoot, run, shoot, run. Repeat until they're all down. Effectively, I would be dealing with them one at a time with that strategy. That would mean dropping Father to free up my hands. Gods, that might even end up being a distraction against them. My rifle had been reloaded and my pistol as well. I was as ready as I could be for this.
There was another ticking victory condition. Once the cavalry arrived, the crisis would be over. If enough time was bought with whatever scheme I came up with, then I won. Atius was Deathless, and while I'd never seen them in a fight, their reputation painted a clear picture. He would absolutely wipe the floor singlehandedly.
If I couldn't fight them one on one, then the next best option was to force the field so that no one got to fight at all. Maybe a strong, natural barrier to separate us—something that couldn't be reopened. Like the gold-lit doorways.
I hadn't seen one in a while, but if they did appear, there'd be no hesitation from me. Hell, I could make do with a thick sheet of metal in a pinch. The strength of my relic armor to hold it against a tight entrance could buy me the time I needed.
Using distance and my rifle was a gamble—if I messed up there wouldn't be any way to recover. Finding a blockage had a much better chance of

success if something went wrong, and I'd be chipping away at the timer too. I decided to go with that one, as there would be more ways to recover from a bad situation.
All that was needed was a building that had a single doorway and something to seal it with. Given that I was sprinting past dozens of buildings,
it wasn't long before a good candidate showed up. The domed specimen had no windows and seemed to be big enough to have multiple rooms. That'd give me a possible retreat, though it might be a double-edged sword. I risked it.
A quick switch of direction and I was at the old metal door. Storming inside, the surroundings gave me confidence. A lucky first pick, finally.
There was piping on the roof, a second door at the rear, and plenty of metal tables. Tools I could work with.
Father's body was dropped, and my knife was put to use in cutting up some piping. Hopefully, this would bar the door long enough. I slipped it through the door's handle, locking it into place.
I followed this with a quick slice through a table's legs, and now I had a flat plane of metal to add as an additional barrier. That was added to the pileup at the door. Time ran out halfway through cutting out a second table.
The door instantly groaned as white armored hands shot through the cracks, pushing and pulling. They tried to pry the door open and even managed to bend the piping slightly by the time my rifle locked on to aim.
The pipe and table combo held them at bay.
Bullets lit out in three-shot bursts, diving through the widening crack.
Weapon fire continued to rain through, and pairs of mechanical hands snapped away with sounds of ceramic armor cracking. They howled and shrieked all the louder. I could hear them climb over the building, searching for another way in while the others continued to try and force the door.
My rifle clicked empty. Death was coming to get me, held away by a few inches of metal. If I let fear paralyze me again, it would succeed this time.
Urs, watch over me.
Focusing on one task at a time, drowning out everything else, I snapped into action.
Eject the magazine.
Grab another.
Feed the rifle.
Reset.

Aim.
Fire.
They'd heavily bent the piping during those few seconds, the gap widening enough to stick a head through it now. More arms shot through the opening, trying to remove the blockage. Cathida's old rifle scythed through the mob. White ceramic skulls shattered in pieces and bodies flopped to the ground.
There were at least four left when the rifle clicked empty. That had been my last magazine. Scrapshit. Thin, armored arms still pried the door open with deceptive strength. The metal groaned as it bent, inch by inch. They'd get inside soon.
I had no explosives, one scavenger pistol with ten shots loaded, two knives, one sword, and approximately ten seconds to cobble a plan together.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

BACK INTO THE FRYING PAN

T

he snap-hiss of my knife echoed in the room. Of course, I hadn't brought out my knife to fight four against one.
The knife cut down on the last two table legs I'd been working on before they'd gotten here. Job done, I tossed it away without pausing. There wasn't time to properly sheath it back in my boot. Instead, my arms wrapped around the freed metal table. It easily flipped vertically, creating a makeshift massive shield. If that door was going to break on me, then I'd gods damned make my own.
I charged forward, slamming the full table into crumbling defense. My shoulder locked in place against the entryway. With my free right hand, I drew out the scavenger pistol.
"Journey, how many are there?" Last I counted, I'd shot and broke three skulls. There should be four.
"Motion sensors detect four entities outside," Journey confirmed a moment later.
Ten bullets for four targets. Those were good enough odds. A deep breath later and I peeked between the improvised door. I aimed for my first target.
There's this book I'd once read that had a great quote in it. I'll paraphrase: Never assume the enemy is as stupid as you are.
I assumed like a true moron that they'd basically just keep trying to break the door open while I shot them. Like good little monsters. No, there was an elegant solution to dealing with a camping rat like me, hiding behind a barricade.
There wasn't even time to press the trigger before one drove a hand in through the gap and yanked the weapon out of my surprised hand. And just

like that, the gun was tossed away and out of the picture. I had messed up.
Bad.
"Uh, Keith to search party."
"Search party copies."
"What's the ETA? Because I really need you all right here, right now."
"Assuming we don't run into another dead end, ten minutes."
It was fine. Everything was OK. No one liked Plan B anyway. It was time for Plan C! Whenever I figure out what that is.
The table yanked hard against me; the monsters were trying to shove me backward. It was now a pure contest between Journey's strength and theirs.
That was a lucky break on my part. Journey had them beat in the strength department.
I bought about three minutes before they gave up on trying to beat Journey in a competition of strength.
Next, they tried to claw at me. Here, they made the same mistake I had done about assuming your enemy's competence.
They couldn't shove against me because Journey was stronger. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a single relic armor arm was also stronger than a single automaton one by that logic.
Did they think I was going to let them claw at me without fighting back? I ripped two of their limbs apart with my free hand each time they snaked close enough to grab. "Delicious!" I yelled out at them, smacking my lips. "Give me more!"
The machines realized this wasn't going to work and promptly aborted,
clicking and screaming robot profanities back at me. At least that was my guess at what they were saying. Well, if they were going to start trash talking,
it wouldn't be very sportive of me to ignore them. "Try again you little scrapshits, maybe it'll work this time. No really, I swear I'll give you a handicap."
If they got the pun, they didn't make much of a ruckus about it. Instead,
the onslaught came to a stop. There was a break in the fighting now, while both sides regrouped and tried to figure out another way.
I could hear them chittering to each other, continuing their automaton powwow. And I just sat fuming about what else I had to work with. My dagger was on the floor, out of reach since I hadn't had the time to sheath it after cutting the table legs free, and Cathida's sword was on the ground farther away, dropped off with my father's body. My rifle was still on its

strap, but other than a glorified bat, I couldn't see how else to make use of it.
I did have two ripped-off automaton limbs, but they'd also end up as glorified bats at this point.
"Journey, any way to tell what they're saying?" Maybe I could spy on them.
"Negative," it replied.
"Figures." Worth a try.
I knocked on the table, getting their attention. "Hey, you over-engineered calculators! I'm willing to offer you terms of surrender. Given my massive,
sweeping advantage here, I recommend you accept."
They screamed back angrily.
"I'll assume that's a no," I muttered to myself.
Through the gaps, I could catch a few glimpses of what my uncanny enemy was up to. One of the machines broke off from the group, climbing over the roof. I could hear as its mass lumbered over loudly, all power and no subtlety. The other three moved away together, searching for something. The doorway was clear for the moment.
To my surprise, they had left my pistol farther out of reach just outside.
Almost intentionally positioned and lined up to the doorway so I couldn't possibly miss spotting it. That couldn't have been more obvious bait if it had a signpost attached on top with a skull sign. Did they really think I'd go for that?
The second-best use of this pause in the fight was to gather up some weapons. I couldn't see any of them nearby, and the motion sensors showed all four dots, three clustered together farther away and one sulking around the roof.
Going outside for the scavenger pistol was out of the picture—they'd see that a mile away. But going for the knife and occult longblade was a sounder move. I double-checked their possible locations and then made my move.
Rushing over, I picked up both my discarded knife and the crusader's old blade. It was better than nothing. I could try to make a run for it right now,
farther into the building. There was a chance I could find a more secure place to hold out. Ten minutes was the goal. The single scout was alone too. My blades would make quick work of it if I caught it alone.
Another glance out of the gaps and my heart sank.
The three machines had returned with a massive metal box—a water heater or a terminal of some sort. Function didn't matter in this case, only

weight. And they were struggling to keep it off the ground. I raced back to brace the door.
How does one deal with a fortress door that's been barred? There's a long and storied history of human ingenuity solving exactly that problem. Instead of hitting the fortress door very hard, the actual solution was to hit it even harder.
I swore as they prepared to ram the door down. "Journey, do you think you can withstand something like that?"
"Unable to calculate. Not enough information to generate a meaningful result."
They started charging. Both my hands braced against the metal door, and I prepared for the worst.
Scrapshit, scrapshit, scra— The hit was deafening, and it bent the table around my hands, metal screeching with the damage. Boots dug through the rough floor, but I survived the hit. Barely.
The enemy screeched, angry their plan hadn't just worked right off the bat. They took another lap backward, going for another run. It hadn't worked the first time, but it had clearly caused a dent. A few more rams and they'd wreck the building itself.
"Search party to Winterscar," The comms clicked.
"I copy. I hope it's good news, because I really need that right now."
"I wish I could tell you otherwise. We hit another dead end. We're backtracking to find another way forward. ETA is delayed."
Heh. I was going to die.
The news settled over me like a comfortable cloak. Maybe it was those drugs I took after the first fight that were still in effect, but I only felt mild bemusement. Some part of me deep down must have known all along that my chance of survival was pretty slim. I had a good run, a few good moments,
and some pretty sweet plans that occasionally went right.
Okay, if there were no paths to victory anymore, I would just move the goalposts. Given that it didn't appear I would live through this, the next best thing was to leave something behind that would help the most people.
"Kidra, I'm not going to make it."
"Keith, you will cut this scrapshit immediately," my sister hissed back with venom.
"Listen, I carried Father's armor up here for you. I'm not sure what the automatons do to dead bodies, but I'll figure out some way to get you the

armor somehow."
"You will hand me that armor yourself, do I make myself clear?" she said. "I will never forgive you if you don't."
"Lord Atius," I requested, ignoring her.
"Go ahead," he said, his voice calm.
"I want Teed to inherit my armor, should you find it. He's the Reacher caste navigator you talked to when coming here."
"You're contemplating handing over your armor to a Reacher?!" the Shadowsong prime gasped out.
"Has your time underground flash-frozen your brain, Winterscar?" Ankah said. Oh my, that patronizing voice of confident supremacy was almost nostalgic to hear. She continued her small tirade. "Engineers have no place in the field of combat. If they were born to be warriors worthy of that armor,
they wouldn't have become Reachers in the first place. That armor needs to be given to someone deserving."
"Teed's not going to use it in combat, you pompous snob, he'll loan it out to people more suited for it when it's needed for combat," I said, bracing already for the next impact. "I want my legacy to be handing relic armor to an engineering house."
The automatons slammed again into the door, throwing me back. I shoved the breaking metal table back into position before they could slip through, but the makeshift door's days were clearly numbered like mine.
Lord Atius spoke this time, and once more the comms went silent for him.
"Humans tend to stick to traditions and not always for logical reasons.
There's a reason the caste system exists on the surface and that I've allowed it to continue all this time. A dying wish isn't enough justification for gifting relic armor to a lower House and the fallout that will come out of this. Give me a better reason to work with."
I thought about it as the automatons lined up for another run.
"Soldiers don't think like engineers do. I found secrets in these suits of armor only an engineer can find. When Teed gets this armor, tell him to go digging. I swear he'll find some interesting things." House Insight would carry the torch I lit.
Silence. The third ram hit in the interlude, parts of the door frame itself bending now. I still managed to hold on. The fourth scout had come back,
now helping its brethren with the ramming plan. They moved with

bloodthirsty glee, almost like they could taste the victory. I wished I could spite them somehow on the way out, but the best I'd do was maybe kill one of them before they mobbed me.
"I've had engineers study the armors in the few moments they were not being used. They hadn't found anything different."
"I did. I don't have time to go into details—when you get my armor,
check the logs to see everything I unlocked. There's more to these armors than we suspected."
"That is… acceptable, on one condition," Atius said. "If these logs show something we haven't seen before, then you will have my word that your armor will be passed down to this Teed. If not, I will assign your armor to where it can be best used."
No one raised any concerns; the clan lord had spoken. They all had to shut up and deal with it. I supposed that was the best I'd get out of him.
"Thank you, my lord," I said. "Oh, and, Kidra, living by the Winterscar motto of never doing a good deed without attaching strings to it, tell Teed in exchange for the armor I want his House to work on my internet idea. Hold him to it. I spent half my life trying to make that work, I'd like to be vindicated at some point about it."
"Please, just live instead, Keith," my sister begged. "Run or hide, we're going to make it. You need to buy just a few more minutes of time. We're almost there."
The fourth ram was coming soon. The metal box they'd used had some bent parts to it now, but it was still working for its new purpose in life.
"Nope, out of time. Love you lots. Bribe me with a ration bar on my grave, and I'll put in a good word for you to the gods when I see them. So long as it's a fruit-flavored bar, not those weird veggie ones. Don't make me haunt you—you know I hate doing extra work. Winterscar out."
Journey cut the comms for me without my prompt. I liked this armor a lot. Even with its bland personality, it somehow knew how to play as a good sidekick for my dramatics. That, I could respect.
The fourth ram hit. This time tears started to appear on the doorframe and walls. They might not even need to get through the front door at this rate. The table held, somehow.
"Journey, when you meet your next user, can you give them administration access?"
"Negative," it said.

"Scrapshit. Not even for me, old buddy?"
"Negative."
"Fine. Can you recount all that you've done for me to the next user? Do it right after activation."
"Affirmative. Logs stored and prepared for future review."
I sighed in relief. Atius would get the logs and then pass down the armor to Teed. He'll figure it out from there. His House could all pour together over the last few hours of my life and retrace everything I discovered. Now, the only thing left was to figure out a plan to ensure that the armor survived and ended up in Lord Atius's hands.
Plan C in the end wasn't about surviving at all. It was about finding a way to ensure Journey and Winterscar survived my death.
My mind flickered with possibilities. Relic armor could be re-created from even the worst damage. Maybe I could have the spirit hide in the helmet and hide those somewhere inside the house?
My last stand would be without a helmet in that case. Memory flashed through my skull of the first time I encountered this strain of automatons.
With it, a crystal-clear understanding of exactly how I'd die without my helmet. Slow suffocation.
Of course they would.
Father would have done it were he in my shoes. He'd have traded dying like that without hesitation if it was for the greater good.
Four automatons. Just four. If it were Father and me, we could have easily handled them together.
I glanced at his armor, laying down on the floor. He'd been a monster in combat in his own right, brutally efficient even when missing an arm. That look of wonder when he saw his arm move again, the helmet couldn't hide that. Lost tech was capable of amazing feats. And that had—
Oh.
Moving his arm. The suit moving itself. A chill spread through my spine.
I still had one more crazy idea to try out. "Winterscar, is it possible to load the predictive model of Father across the entire suit?"
"Affirmative," Father's armor responded.
"Do it!" I bellowed, a spark of hope returning into my soul. Please, gods above. Let this work. I'll give anything. The automatons started charging for the final ram.
"Remote override rejected. Insufficient permissions. Root level

permissions required for remote override."
No, no, no, no. "I need you, Winterscar. I'm going to die without your help."
The armor stayed quiet. Its decision final.
"You spent thirty-three years at his side! It had to mean something to you.
Everything he saw, you did too. Everything he did, you were there with him."
Nothing. Father's name was just another entry on a text pad to Winterscar. The automatons were charging outside now, their footsteps loud in the air. This was going to be the last charge. I knew that deep in my bones.
"You were his whole life. If he meant anything to you, anything at all... Please, I'm begging you."
Impact. The door buckled, and the force of the hit threw me clean across the room. Journey protected me from the damage, shield flashing, softening the landing. I rolled to my feet, keeping my longsword in hand. Violet eyes glared at me through the dust, hands and feet gliding over the broken remains of the barricade, ripping them out of the way.
I'd fucked up. The helmets hadn't been hidden. And I hadn't been able to convince Winterscar to break rank. It was over.
The best I could do now was at least take some of these nightmares to the grave with me. The ancient longsword rose in my hands and flared to life.
The creatures walked in slowly, almost casually now, savoring each step.
Pausing at the entrance, they reveled in their victory. A bridge of silence lingered between us. Despair and acceptance on my end. Glee and bloodthirst on theirs.
"Releasing safety locks."
My breath hitched, and my heart froze at the voice.
"Loading predictive modeling…"
The enemy cackled, skull faces leering at me. They stalked inside, one after another, sharp hands ready to rip and tear. They were too late.
"Full cognitive engram online."

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

TOO SHALLOW A GRAVE

I

t felt like a rip in reality.
A new sense I hadn't perceived before, or even contemplated, pulsed out from behind me. As if something fundamental to existence had been measured and then twisted.
The room lit up in occult blue, casting an extra shadow of my armor on the wall.
The automatons halted, all those skulls turning to stare behind me, violet eyes showing confusion, anxiety, and surprise.
A nervous energy grew between the four, the mechanical chittering flying around with increased intensity as if they too had felt existence bend in that single pulse. And worse—the pulse had a distinct direction. I turned my head slowly, caught between monitoring the enemy and looking behind to see what, by the gods' names, was happening.
What I saw sent chills down my spine.
Winterscar rose slowly like a wraith from a tomb, sparks of occult blue bleeding through the armor cracks, flashing out like lightning, illuminating the room with each pulse.
One bloody gauntlet reached down to the boot, gripping the hilt of the knife. A flourish I had seen time and time again brought that knife out, back into the world, flawless in every motion. The blue edge of the knife traced a halo in the air as it lit up, perfectly matching the color of light fading off the armor.
Journey's HUD showed Winterscar sending error after error, almost frantic.
Everyone remained stunned. Tension hung as if we had all agreed on a

silent ceasefire. The feeling of wrongness faded as the occult glow burned out, plunging the room back into the gloom.
The error messages halted. "Connection to combat suit Winterscar lost,"
Journey chimed.
The dead man's armored helmet gradually turned in the dark, locking onto the automatons staring from the doorway. The knife rose in its hand and the automatons took a step back.
Wordlessly, the revenant bent down and charged, breaking the frozen moment. The enemy responded a split second later, leaping forward with screams, all fear forgotten. Chaos descended in the room.
There wasn't time to think about what had happened. It was do or die. I followed behind Winterscar as the wraith sprinted past me.
The first target opened up with a bloodthirsty grab for the revenant's throat. With a quick duck and a head tilt to the right, the armor narrowly avoided the grasping hands with precision. Sparks flew as the metal claws scraped past the helmet.
Winterscar lunged forward in the same instant, knife seeking the automaton's throat, too fast for the automaton to avoid. It was faster than I'd ever seen it move before, and it cut deeply through, unerring.
The automaton's lights snapped off entirely, and momentum carried the heavy, limp body forward. Winterscar expertly directed the machine's remains away and onto the floor with a twist of its body. It continued forward, losing no speed, the move as efficient as it had been swift.
That's the full technique, I realized belatedly. The very first time we'd fought the screamers, he hadn't been able to execute the complete range of motion required because of his arm. And now I saw the part that had been missing.
The screamer on the left leaped out to take me on. It only had a single arm, as I had mangled the other during their previous ill-advised plan. It still attacked the same as it would have with two, but now only one hand lunged for my throat. This familiar opening attack... they really were predictable.
I ducked and tilted my head to the right in a pale imitation of Father's movements.
The claws sailed clear past, as predicted, and my sword snapped up to punish the vulnerability. The machine tried to abort, attempting to throw itself to the side. I wasn't as precise as Father, and my movements weren't efficient enough, so the machine had enough space to weasel away from the

blade, throat safe because of my inexperience.
I wasn't alone in this fight, however. Journey silently tracked it,
calculating that I would miss, forcing my arm farther down, right where the creature couldn't escape. With its additional compensation, the longsword rammed down, stabbing clean through the neck.
The attack wasn't as smooth and proficient as cutting the wires off. Lights hadn't faded yet, but the creature spasmed with clear damage. I drew out my weapon and swiped down at the defenseless enemy, beheading it. Now the lights finally went out, the entire head rolling off the limp body.
Winterscar sprinted forward in the meantime, ducking under an attacking swing, multitasking all the while. Mid-slide, it hurled the knife in expert motion.
The weapon flew with deadly accuracy, catching the fourth automaton right between its eyes. There was no time for the creature to dodge, the dagger sinking deep into the skull. It reeled backward from the impact,
slumping to the ground. Darkness.
The relic armor turned the slide into a full shoulder roll, jumping back onto its feet with unmatched agility. The move avoided the last opponent's effort for a clean stab.
The machine screamed in fury, lashing out again with a wide haymaker this time. Its long arm flew on a collision course with the armor's helmet.
Winterscar's left arm calmly snapped up, palm out, catching the terrible hit with a massive crunch. Shields flared, but the arm held it at bay, giving only a few inches despite the savage hit. The automaton paused in sheer incredulity, as if it couldn't process that the attack had been stopped.
The relic armor's hands clenched down, the creature's own trapped hand split apart into cracks and dust, the ceramic armor failing. A half-second later, the metal parts of the machine followed, being bent and crushed.
The automaton screeched in panic, trying to tug the broken hand away and finding it impossible.
The relic armor's right hand reached back and then dove into the ribcage,
grabbing something deep inside. Unlike that very first fight against the screamers, this time it found the heart and yanked down with a brutal tug.
Black wires snapped away, the Winterscar's hand ripping the automaton's power cell straight out of the chassis.
The enemy fell limp, rolling off to the side, all lights off.
Winterscar remained standing in the darkness, a captured power cell held

tight, snapped wires trailing from it.
The helmet turned to me. "K-k-k-keit-h-h-h," Father's voice cut through,
distorted, metallic, and stuttering. The armor took a shuddering step forward,
a hand reaching out to me. "F-f-f-rac-t-t-tal-l-ls-s-s i-i-in ar-r-r-r-m-m-m-"
All movement stopped. Lights around the armor went dark.
It collapsed to its knees, arms falling down limply to the side, the machine power cell tumbling out of grip.
An unbalanced second later, the rest of the armor fell to the floor.
Nothing stirred except for the dust.
I watched it like a hawk, uncertain of what I had heard or seen. "Journey,
what... what the gods was that?"
"Unknown."
"It spoke. Was… was that him?" A spark of hope flashed through my heart. An idea that Father hadn't yet truly died.
"Speech impossible," Journey replied calmly. "Predictive modeling engram applied to combat motion. No other data was input."
"It talked with his voice."
"Speech impossible," Journey repeated.
"You heard it. Am I going crazy? You must have heard that too! Did he really talk?"
"Affirmative. Negative, no abnormality in user behavior or brain scan detected. Affirmative. Speech impossible."
Fine. I needed to ask the source directly, except the family armor remained completely silent on the ground. Even the HUD, the armor's icon,
had been grayed out. Winterscar was out of commission, completely shut down.
"What happened to… to Winterscar? It collapsed."
"Low power automatic shutdown was initiated. Once all enemies were identified as destroyed, the hard-wired low-power shutdown command superseded all other overrides."
That… didn't make sense at all. We still had plenty of power. Even with the elevated use in combat, it should have lasted at least two more hours.
"How much was it using? It had roughly five hours left in the tank if I remember right. Did the power usage spike up past…"
Five hours was three hundred minutes. In less than five minutes, the suit had consumed all three hundred-ish minutes of power it had. That was an over six thousand percent increase in power consumption.

"Journey, where did all of that power go? Actually, scratch that. Tell me step by step what happened. Go into details."
Gods, is he still inside there somehow? Did I bring him back—or a version of him—from the dead?
"Combat suit Winterscar's logs reported successful engram creation. One hundred seventy-four microseconds later, a security breach was detected.
Power draw by the engram increased by six thousand three hundred and twelve percent for seven seconds by an unknown entity. Subsequent systems were corrupted and engaged without direct command," Journey said.
"Winterscar's countermeasure suite was unable to defend against the intrusion. An emergency shutdown was attempted."
"Attempted?"
"Command was overridden."
"By who? The system hack? Where did it come from?"
"Unknown entity overrode the command. Affirmative. System logs register security breach originated from the newly generated predictive modeling engram."
"... was it him?"
"Assuming 'him' as user: Winterscar, Tenisent. Answer unknown.
Predictive model engrams do not operate in this manner. Security breach expected to have misled countermeasure tracking conclusion."
So Journey didn't believe the engram had been the source, rather whatever was taking over Winterscar had confused the system into believing it came from the engram. That wasn't what I thought was going on,
especially with all the occult light coming off the armor. More likely, the reality might have been "impossible" to Journey, so it had tossed that conclusion out wholesale. I thought what was happening was beyond the armor's understanding. It said speech was impossible.
And yet... and yet that was my Father speaking.
"What exactly is a predictive model?" I needed to understand more about what was under the hood here. I'd only learned the surface level.
"An algorithm designed to study a set of data and generate predictions on future motion from current events. In this case, the data set was Tenisent Winterscar's motion data in all situations."
Okay. "So the engram was made purely from motion-capture data?"
"Negative. Situational awareness data was also included, as that data is directly relevant to motion choice."

"Any voice data on how he spoke?"
"Negative. No audio data was transcribed into the completed model."
Well, it had spoken. If the predictive modeling engram literally didn't contain a single shred of Father's audio data, then it really couldn't have been the prediction model itself that had come to life like that. I could see why Journey was so adamant that speech wasn't possible. Something else had somehow emulated my father's voice—or it truly was his ghost somehow manifesting inside the digital environment?
The occult. "There were streaks of blue coming off the armor at the start.
Did you see that?"
"Affirmative," Journey said.
"Any idea what that was?"
Journey quickly dashed my hopes. "Negative."
Come to think of it, I hadn't yet heard anything from the armor about that topic. "Do you know anything about the occult?" I'd seen glowing inscriptions inside the relic armors already, all glowing that sickly occult blue. The armors must have some parts of the occult built-in.
"Occult. Noun. Supernatural, mystical, or magical beliefs, practices, or phenomena."
Heh. It clearly didn't know what the occult was. Maybe some of its subsystems were as abstracted from the armor's full control as the beating of my heart was to my mind. The body simply knew how to repair a cut, so the same might be applied to relic armors.
"What about that… that pulse at the start?" As if reality had been bent. I'd seen the automatons also stop in their tracks, so I guessed they had "felt" it too—if machines could even feel. "Did you… uhh, feel that, Journey?"
The armor stayed silent for a moment as if processing the request. Then it spoke: "Affirmative. Warning. Anomaly detected. Historical archives report additional data relevant to your question. No source of relevant data found on integrity check."
"Uhh, I'm not sure I understand. Can you clarify that?"
"Log file size of the last three minutes reports seventy-two gigabytes of information. On accessing the log, eighty-seven gigabytes of data is loaded into memory."
"Let me get this straight. When you access your logs, there's an additional bit of information about the pulse. But when you run a check over the actual files, that data is missing?"

"Affirmative."
"What is this additional chunk of information?"
Again, Journey went silent for a moment before it answered. "Natural language predictive transformer unable to generate acceptable solution to the query. All answers fall below twenty-percent confidence threshold."
Well, now. Something was seriously off. I knew from experience, and what everyone had told me time and time again, that the occult and technology did not mix together well. I was starting to see why now.
If I understood that right, Journey could understand the data package—
the memory it had of the event—but it couldn't find a way to word it in English. What in the gods was going on?
"What's the next highest acceptable solution to the query?"
"Highest solution generated at twelve-percent confidence: I felt the pulse across my soul."
Holy scrapshit.
There was massive context to uncover in those seven words. It was the first time I'd heard Journey refer to itself. The implications of that were enormous already, not even factoring in the other parts. Were these suits as intelligent as machines? Sentient? Did Journey have a soul? And it hadn't used words like "sensed" or "detected" the pulse. There were a lot of words for that report, but the language model Journey used had specifically picked out "felt." That was deliberate.
The discoveries were coming too fast and furious for me to keep up.
Every answer I got only opened up three more. Magic, souls, consciousness,
a dead man returning from the grave—everything pointed, again and again, to the occult.
I was going to need a warlock to make sense of any of this.
I put that thought on ice and moved on to my next question. "How in the frozen wastes did Winterscar override the security lock for motion?" To move a suit, the currently logged-in user had to accept. If there wasn't a user,
I'd understood that root level permissions were required. Just being an administrator wasn't enough to move another suit of armor remotely. I thought those were hardwired. I wasn't thinking too straight during the heat of the moment, but that should never have worked.
It had stubbornly refused to listen to my pleas, only to turn around at the last second. Programming didn't do that. If it had already decided not to unlock the engram in the first place, no amount of begging would have

changed that fact.
"Security locks are active if a user is currently logged in. Security locks are active if the armor has no current occupying user," Journey answered.
That didn't seem helpful until I spotted the hole in the logic.
"... There weren't any rules in place for a non-living user technically occupying the suit."
"Affirmative. This logic is undefined and rated low on the original intention of the wording. Winterscar reports it had detected this logic exploit as a viable means of continuing main objective, given certain conditions. It manually reset all systems and selected you as the source of intention on reboot, as you possess administrator rights. It then calculated that had you defined these rules in the immediate moment. The highest percentage match would include this logical ambiguity, intentionally."
Winterscar had looked over the rulebook when I'd begged for help. And then it had squinted. Really, really hard.
That both awed me and troubled me. These armors were way more than they seemed. Here, it had tried to accomplish every bit of creative weaseling in order to help. I didn't think I'd figured out even half of what they truly were.
I shifted gears to what the ghost of my father had told me. The last words.
If that was really my father speaking to me from the grave, what he had said must be important.
The words played through my mouth. "Journey, do you have a recording of Winterscar's words?"
Journey confirmed it did and then replayed the audio file.
His speech had been garbled up, hard to make sense with the stuttering and distortion. It had to be something similar, adjacent.
Frak talin arm? Talen's arm? I played the recording again and again,
trying to make sense of it.
The "frak" part of it threw me off. What if it hadn't been an "f" but instead another letter? Hack? Hack Talen's arm? Track? Track Talen's arm.
That could be it.
The "arm" might have been a word cut in half. Army? Armament?
Armory? Armor? If I assumed the "f" was intended, then it could be "Fractals in armor." The rest of the arm-starting words didn't quite make as much sense.
Too many options. "Fractals in armor" made some sense. The only armor

he could be referring to was the relic armors. Or to track something belonging to Talen. But what the scrap did that mean?
"Journey, what's the best idea on what the words meant, all put together?
Give me your top three ideas."
"Compiling. 'Fractals in armor' noted at sixty-one percent confidence.
'Fake it all in arm' at thirty-two percent confidence. 'Track Talen's arm' at thirty percent."
I shook my head free of thoughts. One thing at a time. There was a laundry list of tasks to do, and the majority of those were asking questions about what the fuck had just happened. First thing's first.
"Keith to search party." I pinged the comms. There were reports and paperwork to fill out about my grossly overstated death.
Kidra answered it, frantic. "Keith?! Hold on, we're almost there!"
"Whoa, whoa, everything's fine and under control now, you can relax!
Turns out I came up with a last-second scheme. And it worked."
"Targets eliminated?" Atius asked, an impressed note in the timber.
"Affirmative. I… I had the Winterscar armor replicate Father's combat movements."
"That's possible?" Atius seemed genuinely perplexed. "I've never heard of this before. How is that possible?"
"I did say engineers had a different viewpoint on the armors. I've got a long story to tell you, sir."
"This mission keeps getting stranger and stranger," he muttered. "Is this what Tenisent mentioned was priority one?"
"Uhh, partly. There's more."
"Of course, there would be. Never anything simple when it comes to Winterscars." He chuckled.
"Don't report over wide-range comms, lad. We don't know what's listening in. We'll have plenty of time once we reach you. Till then, sit tight."
"Understood."
"Search party out."
It clicked shut, leaving me alone in the silence.
"Journey?" I asked in that gloom. The wording of Father's final message still rang in my head.
Journey had been convinced that the security breach didn't come from the engram, only that Winterscar's subsystems were being fooled. The armor was fallible. That meant the top result of Father's last words—Fractals in armor—

could be wrong. The best solution then was to investigate all the directions.
The second highest made no sense, but the first and third results were both plausible. "Do you know what Talen's arm is?"
"Negative," the armor responded.
"An undersider city maybe?"
"Naming conventions follow wording. Correlation plausible. Estimate seventy-four percent match to possible city. Twelve percent match to a possible unknown religious sub-group."
"If it wasn't 'arm' that the armor implied and the word got cut off, do you know any matching item for Talen that has a second word starting with arm in it?"
"Seventeen instances of Talen found within compound words, pulled from diction in Winterscar's database. None contain arm in them."
Father could have told me to track this down for some reason. I didn't know why or what it was. If it was really Talen's arm, it had to be something he'd discovered while outside his armor, or else Winterscar would have had it defined in its dictionary.
I had to find out more about Talen—find something that was either named after that god or belonged to him.
And I needed to open up one of these suits of armor. See what these fractals inside were supposed to be.
I slumped back against a wall, suddenly exhausted. My biometrics were everywhere, all sorts of fractures and muscle contusions painted in red over the HUD. Damage had been accumulating with each override Journey executed against my movements. If the suppressor drugs hadn't been in full action, the pain would have been debilitating.
Somehow, I was still alive despite all odds.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

A WARNING WRITTEN IN THE DEEP

W

interscar was given a wide berth as I recovered my weapons. I was stalling the eventual moment I'd have to power it back on and start asking it questions.
With Father's knife in hand, the screamers gave up their power cells without much of a fuss. I could never be sure what the future might hold, but more power was never a bad idea. And with each extracted cell, Winterscar's prone armor would remain at the edge of my sight and mind, waiting.
Waiting for me to deal with reality.
The memory of that pulse persisted in my mind. Some sort of instinct dreaded the thought of feeling that pulse again. And that strange sense that came with it. The feeling of unhallowed knowledge that should not be touched upon. The occult blades and trinkets I'd seen in my life had never felt like this before. No, what had happened was… something.
I'd once read about higher dimensions in mathematics and had an interesting time trying to picture how the fourth dimension would look. If you cut a three-dimensional object into a slice, what would appear on the slice would be what could be seen by a two-dimensional viewer.
The next dimension up imagined that a three-dimensional object as a slice from a fourth-dimensional one. The thought experiment blurred my mind a bit, where at some points I felt I had it, and at others the concept would bleed away in my mind like melting snow.
Feeling for that soul-sense was exactly like that. I knew and remembered how it had felt, a sort of connection to reality itself that I hadn't noticed or known about before. Except it went beyond a biological sense. More as if consciousness and sentience itself were somehow acknowledged by the

universe the same way matter was.
And yet, getting a figurative hand on that sense was slippery, as if for some moments I'd be able to comprehend it and at others it would slip by and only remain as a memory—the difference between feeling actual pain and reading a note about pain. It was not the same thing, not even in the same league. The concept of pain was there, but the actual feeling was difficult to recall in perfect, lucid detail.
I wondered if Journey was suffering the same effects, only the digital version of it. If that was even possible. Was that why his logs had an extra bit of information appear when it was loaded but disappeared when not opened up?
With the last cell in hand, I made my way back to Winterscar, reluctantly.
A lingering sense of terror remained behind, making each step in that armor's direction a deliberate choice.
The dead armor remained prone on the ground, unmoving. No sign of life. I steeled my nerves and kneeled next to it, one hand reaching down and resting on the chestplate. "I'm not sure if you're still here, Father. Thank you,
if you are. One last time."
The armor remained silent. Unmoving. A chill passed through my spine,
raising the hairs on my arms.
The side clasp for the power cell still functioned. In moments, the spent power cell was jettisoned from its holder at the base of the belt and I replaced it with a full cell. My movements were slow and careful. The power drained out of the cell and into the armor.
What would happen when the suit was powered on? A strange mix of hope and dread spun around in my gut.
A few seconds passed, and Journey's HUD chimed that connection had been reestablished to Winterscar.
For all that I had thought might happen, the mundane event happened instead: it stayed motionless on the floor.
"Winterscar, are… are you online?"
That ethereal voice snapped up on the comms. "Affirmative."
"Can you tell me more about what happened?"
It went into detail. As I spoke to it, it became clear Father wasn't going to suddenly spring back to life. The armor acted and spoke as if everything was operating as expected. Nothing was different from Journey's explanation. No amount of digging would discover anything else. I spent a few minutes

interrogating the armor, and none of its answers were new to me.
"All right, fine." I gulped and steeled myself. There was still one way to see… "Can you…" my voice faltered, horror creeping up in me again. I pressed forward. It had to be done, I had to know. "Can you turn on the combat engram of Father again?"
"Remote override rejected. Insufficient permissions. Root level permissions required for remote override."
"What?" Winterscar had stopped squinting at the fine print. "You allowed it a few minutes ago. What's changed?"
"Root-level permissions required for remote override," the suit stubbornly insisted, giving absolutely no additional information to work around. Despite the monotone response, there was a feeling of… fear? A twinge of something in the voice. I might have imagined it, however.
Was Winterscar scared of triggering Father's engram again? I didn't know armors could get spooked, but just a moment ago, I'd found out Journey had some sort of consciousness already. So what did I really know about these ancient suits of armor?
I'd get it a good therapist when I was back home, see if that helped it out.
Or rather, Kidra would. She'd be the one inheriting Winterscar.
Therapists were expensive anyhow. She'd be here soon, minutes at most.
Green dots were rapidly approaching my location, from what Journey's HUD was showing me. I wasn't keen to ask the armor again anyhow. Part of me was actually relieved it had denied my request.
I sat back against a wall and waited for the rescue team to arrive. I didn't need to wait long.

Once they came in range, it was time to say hello. I pulled myself back up and walked out.
There wasn't anything cinematic about their approach. Simply a line of human silhouettes, making their way. At the center, walking with steady strides, was the clan lord, Atius. The large fur cloak he wore was somehow light enough to sway from side to side. The fur shoulders made his outline look massive—likely intentionally. He looked every bit like a figure of myth,
walking out of the shadows.

Behind him trailed four other relic knights. His retinue. Two were from House Shadowsong—the prime and one of his subordinates. Quite the honor for two relic knights of the same house to be part of Atius's personal fireteam. The other two knights came from House Ironreach and House Windrunner. Both were prime armors, the greatest knights these houses had to their names. They were the elites, each storied with years of skill honed behind their weapons.
And following behind these legends were three scraggly looking scavengers. They'd unfastened their masks a while ago now—the visibility increase clearly needed in this environment.
Kidra and Ankah walked side by side, while poor Calem closed ranks behind, towering above both and yet out of his league.
My sister had the same grim look she'd always sported, minus the makeup, and her long black hair was tied in a ponytail by a band that held a few black raven feathers as a stylistic choice of hers. Her sharp blue eyes held a piercing gaze that made anyone self-conscious if she glared in their direction. In a house like Winterscar, appearance was another tool among the arsenal of weapons, and Kidra had sharpened hers into an edge. Back home she'd usually sport black and blue eyeshadow to double down on this effect,
paired with black lipstick. The lack of it was obvious here—no reason to spend time on that outside the colony, a week into an expedition requiring a full-body environmental suit.
Ankah was almost the opposite. Tan skin, purposefully done to show off how often she'd get access to the top-level skylights of the colony. Good looks were easy to maintain at that level of wealth.
Usually in the colony, she'd wear all kinds of gold ornaments, different ones depending on the day or her inclination. Out on expedition, she only wore the minimum. The less metal worn, the less chance for an issue since they conducted heat rather well. I supposed those gold bracelets of hers were essential.
The one feature that always stayed the same were those gold hoop earrings. It oddly surprised me to find her wearing those even now, out on expedition. That couldn't be comfortable to wear covered up with a full environmental suit helmet. Then again, Kidra wore her raven feathers even here as a talisman of luck. Perhaps this was Ankah's version of that.
Did they have some sort of significance to her?
Calem was the same as usual. His stern face fit the massive build he had

under that environmental suit. He looked like your typical meathead, and he'd fully committed to that deception. Even his throat bulged with muscles.
People would miss it, but his brown eyes had a twinkle of sly intelligence.
I'd underestimated that man once in the long past. Not a mistake I'd make again.
All three of them seemed on edge as I walked out. Until the moment where I reached up and unhooked my helmet, leaving my face exposed in the cold air.
Of their three faces, Kidra's was the one to light up. She broke ranks and rushed out to me, wrapping a hug I couldn't feel through the armor. "I thought you were dead," she said.
"Well, given my track record, I'd also bet on finding me lying face down somewhere down here too." I returned the hug, patting her back all the while.
"No offense taken."
She broke away, scowling, then slapped the side of my shoulder. Journey didn't bother with a shield. Even a bullet wasn't enough for the relic armor to use up shields, let alone a slap from a gloved hand.
Atius and the others shortly drew up to me before I could trade another set of words with my sister. The lord stepped closer and Kidra backed away,
almost on instinct. The clan lord had a completely distinct presence up close.
He towered over me, a full head and hand above. His armor's helmet had been secured on the side of the shoulder, a half plate that left the back of his head mostly exposed.
I'd heard Deathless using helmets like these. Just enough plate to trigger the shields and heads-up displays, worn more like crowns than proper equipment, though it still covered the full face. Given how easily armor down here was punctured without a shield, I could see why the shields were the important detail.
His armored hand patted the old crusader armor's other shoulder as if examining for himself that reality of it, taking a critical look over the light gold ornaments that still remained intact. "I'll be damned," he said, that deep gravel of a smoker's voice of his grinding out each word. "I knew Tenisent wouldn't lie about something like this. Still needed to see it with my own eyes. Wear this with pride, little whelp. Its last owner had clearly been among the elite—a crusader from the looks of it. Large footsteps to fill."
I nodded back, matching his gaze. "Her name was Cathida. I don't know anything else about her other than what she'd named this armor. It's damn

good to see you all."
He grinned back. "We're all ready to climb down into hell itself to rescue our own. We're knights. This is what we do."
The others behind him nodded solemnly at that.
This was the closest I've ever been to the clan lord. I could see every detail of his face, right down to the stubble in his beard. His old eyes washed over me, searching. "Now, show me his body, lad."
"There are some circumstances around his armor and death," I said. "We need to talk about that."
"Using the armor to emulate Tenisent? I've had that on my mind since you let me know. What sort of necromancy have you been up to, little Winterscar? Tell me it all."
I pointed at the inside of the room, where the armor still lay. "Long story.
I'll try to give you the abridged version."
He nodded, then waved to the group. "Set up camp, everyone. We'll remain on-site for burial. We resume after. Eat and drink while you can."
The fireteam all began to unpack, setting up on the scattered metal tables and scavenging around the dead machine bodies.
Atius and I both walked inside as I explained to him the strange events I'd seen. His face went from curiosity to shock and then deep contemplation as I wove my tale.
"And you're sure the lights you saw floating off him were blue? Occult blue?" Atius asked. My nod was all the confirmation he needed.
"Do you know what exactly happened?" I asked him.
To that, he shook his head. "Some parts, I have sound theories. Other parts, no. You need to understand, this is the first I've heard of someone unlocking the administrator accounts for an armor. That part is a mystery to me. I do have a handle on the occult; however, for us Deathless, it's more…
instinctive. Only the warlocks are able to reliably use the occult to empower objects. As for my kin, our abilities are more direct. That pulse against reality, on the other hand, I'd seen it before. I carry it on my belt, you could say." He glanced down at Father's body. "One of my brothers discovered a technique on his expeditions down. An ability to empower his blade for the next attack. He called it a soul strike."
"Discovered?"
He nodded. "Has Tenisent explained sanctuary points to you?"
"Honestly? He might have, but I don't quite remember right now. I've

been a tad busy in the meantime. You know, stress, panic, death… the usual."
The clan lord softly smiled. "I see you have a penchant for understatements. Further underground, the gods, or more likely the mites if you ask me, have set up pillars that ward away machines. Safe zones. If I touch one of these pillars, I gain access to a new spell or ability that pillar stores. I can't hold over four, however."
He drew out his longsword, though he didn't turn it on. "My fellow Deathless aside, I've seen that rip in reality before. I carry something similar right here." The ornate hilt looked both simple and elegant at the same time as he examined it. The weapon itself was a clear longsword, slightly broader than my own. I wondered then what sorts of enemies that blade had seen and felled.
"Breaker. That's its name." He flipped it and offered it to me, hilt up. "I'll be taking it back after, of course. I can see you've got a sword of your own now, so I hardly believe you need to hold on to mine for long." He chuckled.
"That blade is quite valuable to me and likely even older than I am."
The moment I wrapped my hand around the hilt, I felt something. That soul-sense again. The feeling that if I pushed slightly on the blade, something terrible would happen. And the understanding that I could.
"Hmmm, did you by chance feel something?" Atius asked, watching me carefully.
I nodded. "Yes, my lord. I sense that I can... trigger it in some way. I don't know what it would do if I did."
The Deathless nodded. "Seems exposure to the soul pulse made you attuned in some way. I don't know if that ability will remain permanently etched inside you, or if it's only temporary. Oh, and don't trigger the blade.
The power is old and fraying inside. I fear I can only use it a few more times before the enchantment breaks for good. Time really does break down everything."
Looking over the blade more critically, the only thing different besides the ornate hilt were soft engravings on the inner side of the sword blade,
wording in a strange language. The letters were recognizable, albeit with odd lines. The structure, however, was complete gibberish: Cum litterā dīvisiōnis dēleō quid adversārium meum colligit.
"That writing on your sword," I said, passing the old blade back, "do you know what it means?"
He raised the weapon, light catching on the edge. "I would be a rather

poor owner if after all these years I hadn't already figured out what that writing meant. It's an old imperial language called Latin. Not used as an actual language, rather imperials use it decoratively on the grander items and scrolls they own as part of their culture. If I remember right, it translates as such: "With the letter of division, I destroy that which unites my enemy."
Makes more sense why the sword is named as it is."
"Sounds imperial all right. Any idea what it actually means?"
He shrugged. "I have suspicions. It was a gift, one from a very powerful and rather…" he hummed, thinking over his words. "Let's say 'reclusive'
order of imperials. As for the meaning, the forge smith likely left it intentionally vague to give the wielder room for their own interpretation.
They can be dramatic like so, imperials."
"Fair's fair. They think we're the weird ones with all of our songs." I gave him a what-can-you-do shrug. The most common gripe pilgrims had with us surface dwellers was the sheer number of songs we had. To them, it must have looked like we had a song for everything. They weren't wrong.
"Reckon you have a point. Human culture is vast." He shook his head,
keeping the blade out.
"Did they know about that… aura the sword has? What does it do?" I asked.
"I believe they didn't know about the blade's ability. To them, it could have simply been an artifact of the goddess they kept in their vault. Until I happened to touch it. After that, they became convinced the blade had been forged for me."
He shook his head, smiling. "That part is a story for another time. Of the blade's true ability, my fellow Deathless I spoke about earlier demonstrated what this kind of enchantment can do: when he imbued his weapon, it could cut beyond the physical world for the next strike he did. I believe Breaker has a more permanent version of that ability infused into it."
The clan lord's longsword flashed blue, active as he swung down on a table, dividing it in half. "The ability, however, has very niche uses. See, had I used the sword's capacity just now, it would have done and felt the same as this cut. You wouldn't have felt anything. So the result on the surface would be no different. Despite that, my friend kept his ability, even if it took up one of his four slots. There was one exception where the technique was worthwhile."
He turned to look me in the eye. "I don't know why most machines don't

carry over their memories after death. I would have expected them to learn and remember past fights in order to improve. Instead, none of them do.
Experience is only gained within their current lifespan. But... just as humanity has Deathless, the machines have their own champions. We call them Feathers. They appear humanoid, although each has its own unique flair to distinguish itself."
"Humanoid?" Just how humanoid are they? I glanced up to meet Atius's eyes, connecting dots together in strange ways. Were the Deathless…. no,
that couldn't be. Could it? "How humanoid are we talking about? Are they able to appear indistinguishable from humans?"
At that, the clan lord laughed. "I see where your head is going, lad. No,
they have no intentions of hiding among humans. When you see a Feather,
you'll know. Only parts of them look human. As for the Deathless, I have my own theories. But us being rogue machines or sleeper agents are some that I've long ago disproved. And I have had a long time to ponder the depths of my own life, with a long list of books and knowledge I've used to draw my conclusions. Economics, logistics, polemology, even philosophy."
He unhooked his left gauntlet, exposing his hands. Then he drew his blade and made a large cut across the forearm. Blood leaked from the exposure, immediately pooling down across the raised arm. It was deep red,
closer to black. "As you see, I bleed just like everyone else. As far as I can tell, I both behave and feel human too. Look at the color of the blood,
however. Far blacker than it has any right to be. It doesn't freeze either."
With his other hand, he wiped away the trail of blood, revealing completely unmarked skin where at least a scar should have remained. "Rapid healing is a trait all Deathless share as a baseline from what I've put together. So,
darker blood, immunity to the frost, and rapid regeneration. Take a guess where that might lead."
There was only one thing I knew that could fix itself, wasn't hampered by climate, and had a black coloring. "You've got an armor spirit mixed inside your blood?"
"The first theory I had, and all this time later, still the most probable theory. A variation of an armor's spirit that doesn't tend to an armor at all,
but rather made to inhabit a human. It doesn't speak either; the only voice in my head is my own. I have no control over it, it simply heals me rapidly through minor to serious damage. There are limits. There's plenty of damage that can't be regenerated—like decapitation. Deathless always return to life

somewhere in the world nearby, and our bodies disintegrate on death."
"Like how the armor spirits consume matter?"
He nodded. "Yes, lad. Exactly like that. The only hole in the theory,
however, are the Feathers—they're not stupid opponents. Far from it, they are our mirror match in almost every way. We can't kill them—at least not permanently. They can use the occult like we can, and it's clear they remember past fights and learn from them. And while the Deathless seem to all be noble souls, the Feathers are cruel and sadistic, reveling in causing pain above all else. They would have certainly adapted their weaponry to catch a floating armor spirit or at least tried to experiment."
Atius re-equipped his armored gauntlet slowly, taking his time as he explained the details. "I'm still around, and so are my brothers and sisters through the decades and centuries. Therefore, the Feathers must have failed. I suspect our spirits work differently than the suits of armor in ways we don't have the tools to measure."
"And your friend, you said he kept that special strike of his for a reason?
Does it sever a Feather for good if he kills one?" I asked.
He shook his head at that, chuckling. "Would it be so. No, if killed by the strike, the Feathers still return at some point—but a year or more later, not hours. This is useful enough to hold on to. Feathers are not the strongest opponents the machines can field against us. They are, however, the most dangerous in my opinion. Taking one out for years is an excellent trade. From what he'd learned, the strike must have ripped through something important to them. When he struck, it felt as if reality had bent at the edge of that blade,
much like what you described happened with your old man. The same happens with my own blade, from the few times I saw fit to make use of its capabilities."
Gauntlet secured, he turned his gaze to the sliced table, pointing at it. "It only works on living foes. Inanimate objects like this table wouldn't have that pulse. Had I struck down a rat with my sword truly powered, however,
you would have felt it. Which begs the question: at what point does a machine stop counting as an inanimate object? A question my brother in arms didn't know the answer to. And one I do not either."
He knelt by Father's body next, hand outstretched to the chestplate.
"We're entering territory that isn't well understood, lad. I suspect the Deathless and the armor spirits might have something in common. And here,
this armor's spirit was mimicking your Father's motions while his body was

still inside, less than an hour after his death. Likely too soon for the lady of the deep to ferry his soul away. Body, mind, and soul are all separate but overlap each other. That feels significant to me. Assuming there is such a thing as the soul. I still haven't found answers to questions like those yet."
I shuddered at the sudden intrusive thought of my father returning as a Deathless, with no memory of his trials or his triumphs. A blank slate where there had once been a life that went through struggle, desolation, despair, and ultimately resolution. It left an utterly bittersweet taste in my mouth, an anathema.
If Atius noticed my thoughts, he didn't make a mention of it. "And the armor refuses to reactivate this engram?"
Nodding, I gave him a demonstration. "Winterscar, activate Father's combat engram."
The armor promptly spat out its usual response. Lord Atius remained quiet, contemplating the answer. "Perhaps a set of external circumstances had to happen to allow it to bend the rules as it did? Or something changed in the interim between then and now. Maybe the armor only allowed it due to the dire situation. Danger inspires a lot more than peace."
He rose and took a step back to the outside. "Regardless, we'll conduct some experiments once we return. Let's put his body to peace for now and discuss this once we've returned to the colony. The man deserves at least that. He's done his time."
With deft hands, I lifted Winterscar and followed the clan lord out of the house.
All the relic knights had formed a semicircle around the parameter, facing inward, prepared for this moment. The scavengers and Kidra dotted the outer edge of the semi-circle. The three eyed me with different looks. Kidra with her usual impassive eyes, Ankah with thinly kept disdain—which, to her credit, had clearly dialed down compared to her usual look—and Calem with… respect?
I walked to the center and lowered Winterscar in their midst.
Lord Atius stepped forward first, head bowed and watching the armor with a critical eye. The blood remained frozen on the plate, the last trace of a brutal fight.
Sounds of a single sword being unsheathed filled the cavern. Atius had drawn his weapon once more.
The four knights behind followed with their own motions, each taking off

their helmet to the side and drawing their weapons out. Two took out knives,
while the other two came from houses wealthy enough to own a longsword of their own. Those defaulted to their swords instead of knives.
In this ring of blades, they had left a gap. A gap for one more knight.
I walked over and took my place among them, turning and drawing out Cathida's longsword. Now my own blade. I'd have to inspect it further to see if she had named it.
As one, we lifted our blades, extended out to Father's limp body. Only Atius kept his blade to the ground as he stepped forward and spoke.
"I've seen very few people turn their life around like Tenisent managed,"
he said to the assembled group. "He found himself at the bottom of a pit, a pit that claimed countless others before him. And he dug his way out, by claw and by teeth. What I say next might sound callous to you, Keith and Kidra. I hope, instead, that it'll bring you some amount of comfort. It does for me."
He turned his gaze up to meet mine and then looked to my sister. "I strongly believe he's exactly where he needs to be, on a path to reunite with his wife. As far as I could understand the man, Tenisent has been waiting for this moment for a long, long time. Tell me, Keith, as the last one to witness his struggle, do you judge that he died on his own terms?"
I could hear metal knocking over the chestplates of all the relic knights,
each using the hilt of their weapon. A sign of respect to the departed. I drew my sword down to the ground as Atius brought his own up to join the circle of blades.
The question stayed in my mind, and I had to answer it seriously. Now that they had labeled me as the speaker of the dead, I was to judge his life.
Did Father die on his terms? Did he die as a follower of the white? Did he die at all? I couldn't know. Death wasn't the end in this world but only to a tiny few.
Even if I give up, I still fight to the end, as all exodites should. His voice drifted back into my mind, the memory still clear and lucid.
If I knew why… surely, I would have been a better man already.
I know… I know why…
"Aye," I finally answered, "he died as he lived. I stand as witness and judge him true of heart."
My blade rose back up, signaling I had said my peace.
"Don't weep for him, celebrate him!" Atius boomed. "He would consider it a life lived in full and complete to the very end. That's all that I need to

hear myself." He turned his gaze back down to Father's still body, taking a step forward. "May your journey with the Lady o' death be a swift one,
Tenisent. Rest in peace among the gods, and may you be reunited with family and old friends. Fireteam, present blades."
The clan lord lifted his sword high, then rammed it down into the ground,
the edge glowing bright blue for a second. The rest of the knights mirrored his movements. All blades lifted to the heavens, then sank down into the ground in front of their wielder. A burial out on expedition. I knew what would come next.
Atius began, both hands on the hilt of his sword, a slow tempo to his words. The first lyrics to the song of the dead. "In life, we served... the call of destiny. To live, to fight, to stay free of the blight. Until… we reached the end."
The rest of the knights joined in unison, unprompted by any command.
"O' see, o' see, o' lady of the deep. O' see our hearts, and weep in defeat!"
A haunting melody, written right in our scriptures. The full accompaniment of everyone's voice had a quality of its own, becoming a deep timber that resonated all around. No one's voice could be recognized individually, but the collective voice became something greater than the sum of all parts.
"The gods rose up and held the darkness back. And we, and we, upheld the journey back. O' knight, O' knight, O' follower of the white. Go forth.
Go forth, and join the gods above."
All of us sang, even the Shadowsong prime. And for that one moment, all animosity was left behind to give respect to one who had served the clan,
right to his last breath.
We sang each verse and each chorus.
Soon, we reached the end of the song. All voices faded off, and only Atius's was left. "Beware, beware, the glyph of unity." His voice went low and soft, slowing to a complete stop. "Beware, beware, that glowing destiny.
Go forth, go forth... and be free."

CHAPTER FORTY

THE MISSION WE CAME FOR

"W

e have one airship remaining above for our return. I had planned to make haste given your father's condition." Atius glanced over to Father's body, where Kidra knelt. It went unsaid that we'd have more time now. "The rest of the convoy would have departed already by now, or they couldn't have made it for the celestial flyby. Too important to miss."
I'd seen Teed's maps before we'd left. I knew none of the gods were predicted to fly over this part of the world for at least another two weeks. We had one airspeeder and no way to refuel it. "We're stranded?"
At that, he chuckled. "Not at all. Operation of scale, lad. A massive convoy has too many airspeeders to individually refuel. So we rely on the celestial flyovers to refuel the whole. A single airspeeder, different story." At my bewildered look, he patted my shoulder. "Do the math, lad. How many power cells does one airspeeder really need to make a week-long return journey?"
Numbers flashed through my head. "Twenty-one, add another six to cover an extra two days' worth of travel as insurance for possible issues encountered. Oh." That was a doable number to collect between our group. I mean, there wasn't a lack of enemies walking around with those power cells.
Atius patted my shoulder. "You've got the right idea. We're far, but not that far. The cost in power cells is within our means to collect. Not suitable for a full expedition of airspeeders, but refueling just one is."
I nodded at that. Made sense.
Around me, a small camp had been set up. The rest of the knights were busy either loading a hoversled with power cells or using the cells and dead

bodies to repair their armor. Some sat and ate rations while they could, joined by Calem.
"If we're looking for more cells, Father and I fought a small army earlier.
We can retrace my steps to find their bodies."
"If this small army of yours is the size I think it is, then we won't need to linger down here hunting for more. Now, I've come here to talk to you about parts of your report, if you're ready for it, lad. There are two details I need to confirm with you on."
I gave him the go-ahead, and he went right to it. "First, I've tried to retrace your steps to unlocking the administrator account for my own armor and found no solution. Once I input and failed the third password attempt, the armor closed off all access. The other knights report the same. Are you sure there isn't any other step or action you omitted or forgot about? Even smaller details."
I thought back at all the steps I'd taken. "No, I told you everything I did.
All the steps, as far as I could remember them."
He nodded at that, frowning. "I suppose we can review the video footage back home and then try a more detailed and methodical approach. Human memory is fickle. I've heard all I needed to know about Winterscar armor for now, but you haven't told me more about this artifact you recovered." He pointed at my belt. "Have you done any more experiments since the initial probing?"
I shook my head. "No time. I haven't tried to crack into the logs either about what this priority-one artifact means or was used for. Have you seen it before?"
The clan lord shook his head sadly. "I've seen a lot in my lifetime, and there's always something new around the corner. Like what happened with Tenisent. This would be one such item to add to the count. Allow me to see it?"
I handed Cathida's last memento, and he took it from my hands with reverence. Bringing it up to head level, he turned the brick around in his hands, touching different sides. "Not from the third or fourth era." He held it on the flat of his palm, watching it. "Nothing from the occult either. This is pure technology. Seems closer to the relic armors, perhaps built in that same lost era. That's only speculation on my part. Intuition. It doesn't feel made or designed by humans."
He flipped it around in his hands a few times, touching the different

buttons and testing it out.
"A crusader owned this previously, which means the imperials had access to this somehow. Possibly a relic from their vaults? Those are only given to their strongest ranks. Had to come from the lower levels then. What has me curious is the circumstances you found this in. Why was it brought all this way near the surface? And with such a small force? Almost like they were sneaking past the machines with this."
"Do… do you want to hold onto this, my lord?" I asked.
To that, he chuckled. "No, lad, I'll not strip you of your fun. Finders keepers, as the saying goes. I have a feeling you'll uncover more things than I ever would, given your current track record." He pushed the object back into my hands, letting go once I had a firm grip. "The priority, of course, will be to return it to the crusaders. First chance we get. I trust we won't have any issues when it's time to let go?"
I gave him a curt nod. "No way am I going to call down even worse luck on myself. And the logs, sir?"
He gave a shrug. "Not my speeders, not my snowfield. I'd advise we follow the spirit of their wish and hand the logs over to the first pilgrims who make it up to our clan. Preferably a priest, out of courtesy. They'll take it from there. Am I clear?"
"Perfectly, my lord," I answered.
"Then we're done here, for now." He turned his head to watch Kidra from the sidelines. She'd remained by Father's side. Quietly watching over him.
Preparing.
Atius gave me a soft push. "It's time for your sister to join our ranks. I've held you up long enough. While the others are busy stripping the dead of their cells, you should be by her side for this."
With a sheepish nod, the brick was put back in its place by my belt and I made my way over to her. I could see her face was impassive, blank, as she kneeled over the body. Normally, she'd have been donning this armor back in the quiet safety of our House manor, well within our territory.
"Ration bar for your thoughts?" I asked.
She smiled, a soft, sad thing. "I hope that isn't simple lip service, because I will be holding you to that, my dear brother. Strawberry."
"No worries, I'll find a way to weasel out of it later. So? Thoughts?"
After a pause, she spoke. "I wasn't sure the armor would end up in my hands. He trained you past what a normal scavenger would get, and that

detail always confused me. I suspected he intended to give you the armor, or else why all the extra training?"
"Life makes for strange reflections on the ice," I said. "For what it's worth, I think he was training me for a very different reason than being a relic knight. He never told me anything about the underground before. That's the real evidence this armor was always supposed to be yours." I shrugged.
"Most signs pointed that he would leave it for me, yes. But there were still inconsistencies I couldn't rule out. Details that didn't quite fit that story."
She sighed. "I feel dread, inheriting this. It comes with a heavy burden and a lifestyle I don't idolize like my friends had. I've looked into it deeply before.
I've done my due diligence."
"Tell me about it. Not quite like the stories show it to be, owning one of these things. How are you fairing? About him?"
She stayed quiet for another moment, likely mulling it over. "I knew him when he was someone different. For years of my life, I believed if I took care of him and stayed at his side, he would eventually just… wake up and come back to us exactly as he was before. The sort of naive dream of a child. I never really outgrew that."
Kidra sighed, shaking her head. "It was a shock to me when he came back like a stranger. An obvious one. In a way, to me, he'd died a long time ago,
so now all I feel is numb. Or perhaps, as he would probably word it, I am in shock and will only process through everything later."
Ankah stepped behind us, her hoversled active and loaded with a few dozen power cells already. "Winterscars. I've brought my sled to carry his body."
I turned to thank her.
She gave a scoff in reply. "I suppose condolences are in order. I didn't care for the man, though I respected his combat ability. Your father might have bested my own to be the first blade of the clan lord, but once I've earned my armor, you can be sure history will not repeat. That honor will return to House Shadowsong. Where it belongs."
The past half day death itself had hounded after me, and I'd been convinced multiple times I'd never see the sunlight again. But here she was,
focused on things that seemed so trivial in comparison. "It's somehow comforting to hear that, Ankah. Thank you. I needed a bit of normality back after all this."
The girl, in turn, seemed confused at my response, huffed, then stalked

away, leaving us alone.
"The underground must have been an ordeal for you to be like this,"
Kidra said.
I flashed her a cheeky thumbs up. "Oh, it was the absolute worst. It felt like every other hour they'd attack us. And if they weren't already attacking us, they were certainly hunting us. Long story short, I don't recommend any tourism down here without booking a guide. The expensive kind. With guns."
She tutted at that. "I, for one, find that the natives down here can be charming. When they're broken down into pieces at my feet, possibly crushed under my heel." She gave a sigh, hair shaking as she moved her head. "How are you really faring?"
"Well, if you want to know, it's not good," I said. "Gallows humor aside,
I'm trying really hard to hold it together. Part of it is easier because almost nothing feels real anymore, you know? See enough terrible scrapshit and the mind stops processing things. I feel like I'm only doing the bare minimum while the rest of me is shut off. Like I'm only reacting now, not really in the moment anymore. I'm exhausted."
Father's body remained still, unmoving. Reminding me, again and again,
that he was gone—and somehow not gone at the same time. The logical part of me could understand what had happened, but the rest of me still didn't get it. "I think the drugs are probably keeping me in a strange state.
I'm a little worried about what will happen when all of this... you know,
actually sinks in. It partway did earlier, and I threw up in my helmet."
She scrunched her nose at that. "I doubt that was pleasant."
"I don't think I was lucid enough to really notice anything more than blowing bubbles into it before Journey cleaned it all up. And you?"
She undid the straps on her gloves, pulling them off one at a time.
"Combat is more than knowing when to attack and how to dodge. He taught me well how to remain focused. I'm making use of his training even now. I have a duty to complete, and we are not yet safe in the airspeeder. I'll take a second breath once I'm strapped in and we are away."
Winterscar's helmet seal hissed open as she drew her fingers near, as if the armor had recognized another Winerscar and judged her worthy. In a way, the armor had known Kidra already. It had watched as Father had trained her, day in and day out. It knew her capabilities just as well as she did.
"Thank you, Father," she whispered, hands holding the sides of his

helmet. "I will… carry the armor now, for our House. For our clan. And for your memory."
The helmet was pulled off.
There was no final smile to see. Instead, the armor was hollow. Empty.
His body was gone. I took a step back, stumbling. "Journey, wh-what happened?"
No answer came. I hadn't been wearing my helmet. Kidra continued to look at the armor, perplexed. Parts of it broke apart in front of her, following procedure to be equipped by a new user. Every part that tumbled on the ground revealed nothing within the armor. No bones, no body.
Only the frozen blood that rimed the outside of the armor had remained.
My sister glanced up at me, her confusion visible in her normally impassive face.
The only conclusion possible reared up in my head.
Winterscar had consumed his body.
"There were… circumstances near the end," I said. "I'm sorry. All the events are happening too quickly. I explained it to Atius in private, but..."
She nodded. "I take it the armor has taken him for repairs? I suppose that is as fitting a burial as they come." If she were troubled at the thought, it didn't show. Instead, she stood up and began to strip her environmental suit off, taking it all in stride.
I walked behind, picking up the chestplate of Winterscar, still stunned and not quite sure what to think. "No… the armor had already been fixed at that time. It didn't need to… look, there are some things you really need to know about this armor. You might want to hold off before you don it."
Atius's words rang heavy in my head. That armor had held his body,
mind, and soul all overlapped. Perhaps it had been even deeper than just that.
If Winterscar had subsumed his body, what had it done with his soul? The lady of the deep collected all souls in the world, shortly after they died. She was the personification of death itself, more a force of nature as it was said in the songs. Could a relic armor hold to a soul despite that?
If he remained, the armor had made no sign of it, behaving exactly as it should. It was more and more troubling. I felt I should be freaking out a lot more than I currently was. Were those drugs still affecting my thoughts?
While I'd been having a silent breakdown inside my head, Kidra had continued with the preparations, stripping off the environmental suit. Knights would wear a more skintight black mesh under their armor. Scavengers like

us usually wore whatever we felt was most comfortable. She'd been wearing a simple overshirt and leggings combo in this case. Normally, she enjoyed wearing the kimono styles while in the colony—that's practically all she liked to wear. As Teed would put it: Kidra liked to sign her name in glitter,
and no one except a mission would stand in her way. But expeditions demanded practicalities, and a dress wasn't practical to wear under an environmental suit. She liked what she liked, but she also liked to be practical.
"I'll hear you out," she said as she worked. "However, as you know, the reality of the situation does not grant us any luxuries. We can't afford to waste a relic armor down here."
Still, she had to know what she was getting herself into, both figuratively and literally. I tried to explain in more detail exactly what was going on,
pushing my groggy mind to bring out all the details, although I had a strong feeling she'd wear the armor even if a demon from the underground outright possessed it. And if I'm honest, I think she'd have the demon terrified of her within the hour.
"Regardless of what happened to Father, the mission remains," she simply said after I told her everything I knew.
I helped her don the plate, piece by piece, the same way Father had helped me don Journey. If she was more hesitant to don a haunted armor, she didn't show a single hint of it, only grim resolution.
Wisps of black smoke were already dissolving parts of the armor,
reshaping it to fit her height and frame.
If Winterscar had a sense of shame, it certainly seemed to act like a dog with its tail down. It might have been my imagination at first, or random luck,
but certain parts of the armor were being left untouched. The armor seemed like it was avoiding anything with frozen blood on it, dismantling all the other parts it could to work around that limitation.
It became more obvious and decidedly not accidental with a closer look. I could even see parts of the armor nicked and broken, unrepaired only because blood coated the surface. Only the chestplate bust was impossible to avoid.
Kidra needed the extra space.
It disintegrated the chestplate slowly, leaving the blood until the very end,
reforming the whole into something fitting—a sleek triangular frame with a short throat guard.
The traces of blood were removed in the process, showing the armor was

perfectly capable of cleaning that up but not replicating the bloodstains. It couldn't create anything besides what it had in the design docs and armor variations if I remembered right, but it could destroy next to everything when it needed to and had time.
The behavior made me suspect that consuming Father's body hadn't been a choice the armor had picked. And it made me question just how loyal these suits were to their programming. I'd seen Winterscar squint at the rules already, and now I'd seen it attempt its version of deference to a dead past user.
Father had been convinced that, once he'd died, the armor would only remember him as a name on a list of previous owners. The truth seemed more involved.
Armored up, Kidra looked the part. The changes had been subtle, yet it was clear Winterscar had been changed. My sister held onto the helmet, the last part to wear before her initiation was complete. Eyes lifted, meeting my own.
"Tsuya guide you," she said.
"And may Urs witness your trials," I answered and equipped my helmet,
hearing it hiss shut. "It's still you and me, like any other time. Only a different chapter in our lives now. We'll manage. We always have." A quick hand sign for a smile passed from my hand.
She returned it, smiling back, then donned her own helmet. Of course, it fit her perfectly.
The very first thing Winterscar did was rat me out.
"Keith," she said, a note of horror in her voice. "What the gods happened to you?"
"Be more specific? I've got a lot of answers for that."
"Winterscar is showing dozens, maybe even hundreds of red markers over your body. Fractures, muscle contusions, it's one thing after another.
How are you still standing?"
"Drugs." I shrugged. "Painkillers are still in effect; I can't feel a thing.
There's some grinding on my ribs that I still feel if I move the wrong way.
Journey alerted me it's a rib fracture. Other parts I can't feel yet."
"You should be put on the hoversled. I can carry you back like that. It was cleared off for Father's body, it can fit you in."
I gave her a shake of my head. "We both know we can't afford one less knight in the field, even if I'm not exactly the best knight we have.

Practicality above all. Besides, Journey would have warned me if the damages I was taking had gotten too serious to walk around in. Right,
buddy?"
My armor chimed affirmative, in a very grudging way. At least, that's how my gut heard it, even if technically it had sounded the same monotone as always.
Kidra was certainly smoldering in her new armor, but she had enough sense to put her feelings aside for the moment. Her hands went back to work,
recovering her environmental suit backpack and items, and she didn't say another word to me about my condition. I had a feeling she was saving all of those for when we were back home.
There was a single major difference to the armor compared to how Father wore it. Kidra now sported a bandoleer over her chest, holding knife straps.
Winterscar had known she'd have two knives now and had already provided storage for them.
With a quick rummage over her environmental suit, she withdrew her own personal knife. A learned flourish later, she drew Father's old knife in her other hand. "I haven't used dual knives before. I suppose I will have to improvise as I go if we end up in melee." She sheathed both weapons on the chest straps, then made her way to recover her rifle.
Ankah watched with poorly hidden disgust from the sidelines. My sister had gone from having a knife, to having two knives and the prime armor of our house. The petty side of me shot Ankah a smirk, though, of course, with Journey's helmet she couldn't see it.
I swear, she still felt it somehow, given her reaction.
Camp was soon lifted, and Atius took to the center. Word of Father's body having been consumed had circulated already, being received with mixed emotions. Bodies of knights who couldn't be carried back home were often "buried" like this, so the event hadn't been unprecedented. Except it had always been a choice.
"The mission parameters have changed," Atius said to the gathered group. "Kidra, henceforth you'll be referred to as Winterscar One for the duration of this mission. Keith will be designated as Winterscar Two. We will be resuming the original mission. Our first objective will be to secure enough power cells to fuel a return trip."
He pointed straight at me next. "Winterscar Two has given me the coordinates for a past encounter he'd been in that contains enough cells to

complete this objective."
Holding his hand out, his armor displayed a map of the surrounding area.
Most of it was obscured, except for where Father and I had traveled through and what looked like the search party's travels. All the suits of armor must have already consolidated the map data. A large target had appeared on the site of the final battle with that spider. "Following recovery, we'll resume direction northwest for seven clicks," Atius said. "Once we've secured what I came here for, we'll be making our way back to the surface."
He pointed at a massive barrier on the map, farther away from our current position. "Since we've had to seal blast doors on our way down here, another way back will need to be scouted. I don't expect this to be an issue. Finding a way to the surface is only a matter of time." He glanced over his fireteam, all of us ready. With a nod, he dismissed us, turning and making his way back in the direction I'd come from.
We began. Both Shadowsong knights, the prime and his second in command, carried Ankah and Calem on their backs. The rest of us had armor,
so we quickly fell into a run. I explained to Kidra everything I knew about the suits of armor as I jogged at her side. Her gait had initially been awkward.
Initially. Now she strode with the knights as if she'd always belonged.
Scraps raining from above, I think she moved better than I did already.
Atius had her come to the front, where he began a private chat, coaching her on the armor as we sprinted back. It was quiet for a moment on the comms as we simply ate away at the distance, the ground flying by under us with each footfall.
"I remember challenging your old man before," the knight from House Ironreach told me as he fell in line at my side. If I remembered right, his name was Delmar Ironreach. He wasn't the head of his House, that honor fell to someone else, but House Ironreach's first armor was in his possession for a reason.
"I was a bit younger back then. A hotshot you could say," he said, a tinge of nostalgia in his voice. "I had beat everyone else in my House and proved worthy to wear Ironreach itself. Riding on the contrails of that victory, I was looking for more opponents to test my mettle with. Of course, my new fellow knights turned me in Tenisent's direction and gave me a push. All I needed.
No intel, no studying up on my target. Worst possible way to be introduced to the Winterscar prime."
"I'd make a bet that he beat you," I said, "except I don't think anyone

here could be convinced to take me up on that."
I'd never heard of Father losing before against anyone in the clan—with exception to the Shadowsong prime, once. And Atius himself, once as well.
"I can't even call it a fight to be honest. Winterscar was a monster among monsters," Denmar said. I could almost see him grinning in his helmet.
"Atius would use him to cool off hotheads like me all the time. In the past,
he'd be the one to do that, but with Winterscar there, the clan lord had gotten lazy. Tossed them right at him like a meatgrinder. Your father would quietly break them over his knee like children. No words, no taunts, nothing."
"Worse, he'd do it in seconds," Windrunner added. "It's like he always knew the single most optimal way to get past your defense and knock you out. Imagine it from our point of view. You spent time preparing for the fight.
You walk out into the field contemplating all your opening moves. Take your stance and ready the blade. The next moment, it's already over."
Ironreach nodded. "Damn unfair if you ask me. What about you,
Shadowsong? You're the only one who beat him."
Ankah's father remained silent for a moment before speaking. "The man I beat wasn't Tenisent Winterscar. More a pretender, clinging onto things he had no more right to own."
I knew this story. The Shadowsong prime had called Father out and challenged him to his title of first blade of the clan lord—something he'd held onto ever since he'd earned his armor, where he'd won it from Shadowsong himself. This was two months after Mother's death. Father had accepted the fight and arrived completely drunk. They say he almost couldn't stand on two feet. I hadn't seen the match or remembered anything of it—it was all secondhand to me. I'd been two months old at the time after all.
"Still almost beat you." Ironreach snickered. "That was brutal to watch.
Devolved into a monkey show by the end."
Shadowsong growled back. "What I did, I did for the clan. Atius needed a first blade, and Winterscar was tarnishing the title." His head turned back to glance at me, and then he looked down, focusing on the run. "At that moment in time, at least."
"I never got to watch that particular fight," I said. "The first time I'd ever seen Father actually fight was against you, funnily enough, to recover that title."
Much like Ankah would, he scoffed in that special way only a Shadowsong could truly emulate. "I feel no shame in being beaten by the true

Winterscar prime."
"How about we pick a different topic than something grim like that?"
Windrunner suggested. "I'd rather we honor his memory with the better times we've shared with him, instead of the strange ones."
"I have just the one," Ironreach said. "Caught feelings for a woman a few years ago, something bad."
Windrunner groaned. "Never ceases to amaze me, how you find a way to fit that in every time. We know already, you're planning to propose after this mission. Spare us the joke."
"See, if I lampshade it dramatically, bad luck won't happen because everyone expects it now."
"I'd rather not tempt fate at all. Some things should never be said out loud," he said, knocking on his chestplate a few times for luck.
"Well... it can't possibly get worse, right?"
That got a groan from all the knights on the comms as he started laughing himself. Even Ankah looked like she'd seen a rat, though she kept quiet.
"I don't think I've ever told you lot, how I got the courage to confess.
See, she was Logi, head of command and control—and way too clever for a meathead like me. At least that's what I thought all the time. Talked to me often, gave me winks, touched my hands often, smiled each time she saw me.
Never picked up on the hints. Always thought she was joking. She once played a game where she ran her hands on my leg asking if I felt nervous. In hindsight, don't know how I didn't get that one."
Windrunner started snickering. Ironreach shook his head. "Laugh it up,
buckethead. Everyone around can always tell, but when it's you in the center of it, you'll keep doubting all the signs. Guarantee that. Wasn't until godsdamned Tenisent himself stopped me that I realized how bad it had gotten.
Remember it like yesterday. Had his hands folded over his chest, glaring at me, and in that pissed-off voice of his, he demanded that I get it together and ask for a date already."
"If Winterscar of all people could notice the tension between you two, it must have been a massive wake-up call."
"Exactly! That's exactly what went through my head! It was like a light had been lit, and I saw all the signs for what they were. Followed his advice right away, and things are looking good for us. She'd told me her own friends were also at her throat too about making the first move. I think we were days apart from that. And well, things have been steady ever since! And guess

what! I plan to propose to her after this mission."
Windrunner groaned loudly at that, while Ironreach laughed and laughed.
"Anyway... that's my favorite memory of him. Who's next?"
"I have one," the Shadowsong prime said.
That made the whole group fall quiet. There'd been history between those two, history that seemed to have passed down right to Kidra and Ankah. He didn't keep us in suspense for long. "It was the time he offered to train my daughter."
That got a collective held breath around comms, with the exception of Ironreach, who immediately blurted, "What?! That can't have ended well.
And how in the frozen wastes is that a good memory of him?"
The Shadowsong prime shook his head. "Had anyone else said those words to me, I would have started a blood feud immediately. Such words could only be seen and taken as an insult. Especially from a Winterscar of all Houses. Instead... I believed his sincerity. We happened to pass by her as she was training in the courtyard against aspirants. He simply saw something that could be amended, and he offered to do so. There was no other motive. I could see it in his eyes. Tenisent was above politics."
That made the woman in question tilt her head. "You rejected that offer I take it? I don't recall him teaching me anything."
"I did turn him down, yes. It was too much for my pride to allow him to teach you, no matter the intentions. Instead, I asked him to teach me. And then I passed down what I learned to you."
Heh. I could see Ankah taking that with mixed emotions. Struggling to reconcile how parts of her training had come from the Winterscars. Or the idea of her father being a student to her traditional enemies.
"We've arrived," Atius said over the comms, cutting off the discussion.
The battlefield was much as I'd left it. The spider had been partway dissolved, but the rest of the screamers remained as they had been.
Windrunner whistled. "All this, just the two of you?"
"Just me and him. And at the end, it was just me."
Atius stalked forward, inspecting the carnage. "Why is a spider out of its nest?" he asked.
I shrugged as I caught up to him and Kidra. "The thing followed us."
"Followed? Explain."
"We'd escaped it once when a door shut between us and the nest. It set up an ambush later on and tried to finish the job." I patted my armor. "As you

can see, that didn't work out. Chased after us with a different plan each time until I killed it."
"Troubling. What you're describing is behavior I would expect from a drake. Those are the designated hunters that machines use at this layer. We understand their patterns perfectly after centuries, they don't change."
His eyes lifted to watch the far edges of the world. Thinking. Calculating.
"New behaviors… always come as an omen."

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

THE SECRET LEFT BEHIND

I

t had been about half an hour since Kidra had donned Winterscar, with no sign of anything... abnormal. Or glowing blue, at least. Her adjustment to the armor was going quickly, and her mastery was already at my level.
Although to be fair, I've only had this armor for a day while likely still high as the gods, and I was being held together by duct tape, prayer, and dreams so far. So maybe not quite surprising she was already past my level of skill with relic armor.
It took us about ten minutes to scour the entire field for every power cell we could get our hands on. All in all, we brought back a well-stocked haul on the hoversled, the straps used to keep the whole bundle of power cells together. It got big enough I'd stopped counting. More than enough to get us back to the colony and then run a lap around it, depending on Teed's mood.
"From this point on, an additional objective will be to safeguard this payload." Atius patted the sled as he took measured steps next to it. "It is our way home after all, lads. Had a nice enough walk earlier today on the surface,
and I'm in no rush for the scenic way back to the clan."
With a chuckle, we turned to depart.
And then we were pinged, because nothing good ever happens.
Atius sighed at the alert. "And here I'd been hoping that the blast door would have given it a longer speed bump. All knights, formation," he said in a tired voice.
The four elites snapped forward, taking up armed rifles and aiming down sight in the ping's direction. Kidra took a position at their side, while the Shadowsong scrappers searched for cover, pistols drawn.
In the far distance, that same elevator I rode up on was moving, the sound

of clanking metal carrying all the way here. Journey augmented the sight,
zooming into the distance.
A massive, clawed hand shot up, gripping the ground, bending the metal as it constricted on the handhold. The skeletal head of a drake appeared over the rim, teeth in a perpetual grin. As it pulled itself over, fourteen screamers jumped to the side, baying out war cries and already charging forward.
Atius walked past the formation with slow steps, Breaker drawn from his scabbard with a clean note. "You all know the drill. Once they get into range,
cut them down. Switch to melee after they've adapted. I'll take the drake.
Winterscars, cover the Shadowsong whelps."
The drake in question opened a maw of teeth, glowing violet light lighting up jaw. The clan lord made no move, staying directly in the center of the knight formation. I'd made my way to Calem in the meantime, keeping close to where he'd taken cover. We all watched as the enemy charged the weapon, and the screamers raced across the streets to intercept.
A beam exploded out of the drake's mouth, but at the last second the creature twisted its head to the side, aiming at a different target than the clan lord.
Atius dove just as fast as if he'd been expecting the drake to target someone else, feet a blur as he rocketed to the right, raising his left hand.
He skidded to a stop right as the beam struck, directly at his open palm.
A relic shield of some kind had appeared in front of the clan lord, only it remained uncolored and far wider. Like an invisible dome of force, it extended a few inches out of his hand. I couldn't see it at all, only the negative outline on the beam of the drake's attack.
In a split second, the violet beam ended. Atius remained completely unscratched. And unamused. He took a step back to the center, readying himself again.
The screamers had made headway in the meantime. They'd be entering the fire-line in seconds. Shadowsong's voice crackled over the comms, calm and in command. "All knights, pick your target and engage."
Reflex raised my rifle, the barrel aimed and ready.
Two scavengers and all six relic knights, including myself, opened fire.
Havoc descended on the enemy, skulls being ripped apart in droves. Seven bit the ground almost immediately. We destroyed three more on the second volley. By the third volley, the automatons had adapted and begun to avoid the weapon fire.

Journey didn't give them that luxury, its targeting system still superior. I destroyed two more before the screamers made it into melee range.
All four knights dropped their rifles and drew blades, charging forward past the clan lord with expert discipline.
Atius remained still, eyes only for the drake. The screamers almost made it to him, but their line crashed against the wall of knights. They broke apart as Atius's elites made quick work of them, with brutal efficiency.
The drake in the distance snarled, turned, and left. Atius watched as it slunk away, apparently not planning to chase after it this far away. I'd seen those things run before. I knew they moved faster than relic knights could.
The last thing I saw was a white bone-like tail as the drake disappeared from my view. The battle had ended as quickly as it had started.
Atius turned back to the group and signaled to form rank and move on.
"It'll be back and likely with another plan. Now it knows that picking off knights from a distance while they're distracted won't work. Continue pace,
and use active scanning to catch any possible ambush ahead of us. They already know we're here. No point being coy about it."
The group remained somber as we hurried off. "Are all you Winterscar brats scrappin' prodigies at aiming and fighting?" Ironreach pinged out.
"Never seen someone nail those skullheads after they start dodging around."
"I'm cheating, if it makes you feel better," I replied back. "Stuff I can do with the administrator account."
He groaned. "Scrap, would that have been useful if it worked for us too."
"Don't rule it out just yet. I really need some time to sit down and run it through its paces back home on an engineering bench. Who knows, I might figure out how to unlock the accounts for everyone else."
"I'll buy you any ration bar you want if you can do that for me, kid."
Windrunner pitched in, "I think he'll be asking for a lot more than ration bars for a secret like that. Think you can afford it?"
"Are you calling me broke?" Ironreach shot back.
"Not at all. I'm just heavily implying it while gesturing in your direction."
"Ah, I see. My mistake. Carry on then."
Shadowsong stepped in and put an end to the chatter with a quick order for quiet. We weren't out of danger just yet, even with Atius among us and full active scanning being used to catch any new targets approaching.
I opened a comms chat with Kidra in the meantime. "Friends of yours?"

"The two knights?"
"No, I meant that drake. Seemed like it wasn't the first time it's been spotted."
She sighed. "We're well-acquainted by now. My issue with the drake is that it can't take 'No' for an answer. The cursed creature has been following behind us for some time now, keeping itself at a distance. This is the third time it's tried something. Last time it tried to focus fire on Atius. According to the other relic knights, this sort of behavior is typical for a drake—they're hunters. If they aren't killed, they'll keep chasing."
The first time I'd seen a drake, Father had said it was the second hunter sent after him. It made more sense now why he didn't try to hide or outrun the creature, instead choosing to dispatch it as soon as possible.
"Atius mentioned something about blast doors?"
At that, Ironreach gave me an answer. "Exactly what they sound like, kid.
Blast. Doors. Massive fackin' things. Once they close, they're closed for three days, and nothing you can do will open 'em up. Can't slice through them with the occult weapons either—impervious like relic shields are.
Except relic shields eventually break. These doors just… don't." He said that with a waved hand as if tossing the last word out to me.
"That sounds oddly handy of the mites to make." What team were the mites actually on anyhow? It seemed like a lot of what they made benefited humans more than machines. Map terminals, marked tunnels, and now blast doors?
"Oh, it gets even better. See, they ain't just made to stop all traffic,
they're also made in places that split entire zones up. If a door seals, it'll certainly have sealed in the only crossing point for a good mile."
Windrunner chimed from behind us, jogging up. "Ironreach is making them sound more useful than they really are. Often, there will be machines on the other side of the doors as well. You trade one set of problems for another usually. But they do seal off some threats and buy time."
"Not enough time; drakes move fast," Atius cut in. "Our friend must have abandoned his previous army. Fourteen is a small number, and that makes me think the machine numbers around this area might be depleted."
Given what Father and I had been through, I would hope so. I got a chance to see one of these doors for myself, within the very next half-hour.
The top peeked from behind a wall of buildings and possibly a few blocks behind. Looming over the city, showing another world past it. Like the

entrance to a cathedral, it towered above all the other buildings and nestled by the very wall-side of the metal city. And burrowed into that wall of buildings between us and the door was something that did not belong.
A squat concrete thing, rounded. Like a small fortress, complete with turrets. Twelve of them, if I counted right. All massive mechanical monsters,
silent like a grave. What was more interesting about this was the architecture.
This looked human.
And the most surprising thing: the mites had clearly not dismantled it.
Instead, they seemed to have made a cocoon of sorts around it, with buildings. A few of the massive turrets were almost completely obscured by overhanging balconies from the neighboring buildings, likely to the point they wouldn't be able to rotate anymore if they had been active.
"What the scrap is that?" I asked, seeing the strange human bunker in the middle of a metal city.
The clan lord looked it over with an appraising eye. "Our target."
"Why haven't the mites destroyed it? It looks like they just built the city on top of it instead."
Atius slowed from his jog into a walk, the rest of the team following his lead. "There used to be a creature once called an oyster," he said. "A bivalve organism that lived within a shell it would construct underwater. A filter feeder. Occasionally, sand or some bit of rock made its way inside the shell.
The oyster was a primitive organism with no hands or means to dislodge the irritant if it was deep enough, so instead, it would cocoon the item in calcium carbonate, the same material as the shell interior. Ever since I read about them, I see the mites more akin to those. Cocooning irritants they can't break down and either pushing them away or leaving them well entombed down here."
He shrugged, turning to glance at me. "Where do you think those prebuilt colony structures appear from? Mites make them, and another colony pushes them up to the surface. I've seen a few fortresses pushed down instead into the lower levels. Sometimes mites refuse to break down a foreign building completely for no reason that I could suggest. You've only seen the sites that happened to be pushed up by the mites."
So by that logic, there'd also be a whole range of sites that didn't get pushed in any direction and instead remained half-cocooned like this site had been. The underground might be filled with such things.
"Did mites create this?" I asked him just to be sure my hunch about it

being human was right. It looked like a large barracks, big enough to house a few rooms inside but nothing massive. Two horizontal weapon slits were located on both sides of the doorway. There were old black-and-white photos of an old world war that our ancestors had fought at some point in time. This looked like what the architecture had been picked from.
Windrunner shook his head, walking forward and answering.
"Undersiders made this. You can tell from the building time period. It mixes multiple styles together. The turrets alone look more modern, like they'd belong in the far late third era from some of the tanks there, while the walls look far more primitive. Mites don't like that. They're one-track builders."
"And you're sure this our target, m'lord?" Ironreach asked at the side,
walking up.
Atius nodded. "Aye, this be it. Inside and deeper. Fitting it would be a fortress of some kind. Let's hope the security is turned off, or this might be more difficult than expected. Those turrets don't look like they'd be easy to handle. Weapons up, form up, and prepare to approach."

Luck was with us. The building was cold and dead.
As Atius approached it alone, none of the turrets on the walls activated. A few more hesitant steps and he'd confirmed there weren't any lights inside the building left on. Instead, we were stopped by a large metal-reinforced door.
It was locked shut, of course, with no yellow light twinkling above. There were massive hinges on the sides, making it clear the door would open outward and to the right.
Doors had plenty of different ways to lock. One that would swing on hinges likely used deadbolts to secure the other side. And a blast door like this one might have a few massive deadbolts sealing everything.
A glance around didn't reveal any kind of key to open the door, with the exception of a long-dead panel to the side. If it was an electric signal that triggered the door to open, could it be possible to bypass? Or would a more physical attempt to pick the deadbolts work better?
While the group set up around the bunker and finished making sure the hoversled had been hauled up to here, I made my way to that door and gave it

a few experimental tugs. No prize in guessing how that ended. "This door is estimated to be able to withstand above seven hundred PSI," Journey chimed as I tugged some more. "Combat suit is unable to exert a matching pull."
That got a whistle from me. "No way we're prying the door open, I guess.
Maybe we can knock?"
The clan lord passed by me, drawing out his occult longsword. "I never intended to politely knock."
Doh. I owned both a knife and a sword now. Got to get used to realizing I could cut through anything now. Almost like a cheat really. Well, almost anything. Apparently, some materials mites made could be occult proof. If it happened to be a massive door that towered above buildings.
The ancient, long blade of the clan lord flickered to life, and he gently guided it through the leftmost door crack, sliding into a neat straight line where the deadbolt holding the door would be. It was kind of ridiculous really, a weapon with centuries to its name being used as a picklock. Given Atius's lifespan, that blade might have been used for far weirder things,
statistically speaking.
It would be fun to ask him. As a knight, I would have a lot more chances to speak with him casually in the future.
As soon as the blade reached knee length in the cut, a surge of water spilled through the cracks and didn't show any signs of stopping. He powered through the torrent, cutting all the way down. Then, with a step back, he observed the work. Water continued to pour out through the cracks, bubbling out and covering the side as it flowed to the ground. "Given the water, the site is likely flooded on the inside. Don't have high hopes for great salvage here."
He sheathed the weapon back into his belt, reached for the handle, and pulled. The door swung open, more water spilling, covering past his knees and helping him shove the slab of metal open. That gave me a first look at what lay inside the old structure.
Darkness inside.
My headlights turned on automatically, Journey already prepared for the entrance.
Brown and gray metal came into view, loose wiring marking the sides, all messily packaged in exposed, corroded interior walls. Water did not do great things to metal. And there was clearly enough water to reach my knees, all rapidly draining out. I could hear further debris and metallic groaning inside

the old structure, smashing down into the water with distant crashes or into the sides of the walls. I suspected quite a bit of architecture had degraded to the point the loss of buoyancy from the water caused a chain collapse.
I was fairly confident the walls weren't about to break down on us,
however, given how thick they had been made. What I was more curious about was where that water had come from in the first place.
Parts of loose metal and materials were already flooding past my legs,
ever-expanding into the city streets. Ankah and Calem took several steps back, making sure they wouldn't touch the water. They did not design environmental suits with liquid water in mind.
"Fireteam, form up," Atius ordered, turning around to take stock of all of us.
It didn't take long for us all to line up as the clan lord planned out the next plan. "Shadowsong One, Windrunner, and both Winterscars. Remain out here and serve as an overwatch and guard duty for the Shadowsong whelps."
His gaze hovered over Ankah and Calem. "You'll both remain out here and shore up the center, where you're most protected. Without relic armor, you both need every advantage."
The pair nodded slowly, understanding.
"Shadowsong Two and Ironreach, you'll be scouting the surrounding sector. By the time I'm out of this bunker, I want a full map. Start with the blast door behind this bunker. I want to know exactly how to reach it once we're done here."
The two gave a quick salute and moved off in a quick jog.
"That only leaves you for the bunker, m'lord," Windrunner noted.
"Intended. I'll be entering the bunker alone. I'm immortal after all."
Journey's headlights immediately winked out.
"If I don't come out within thirty minutes, make your way to the surface and seal the blast door behind you," he continued. "I'll eventually make my way back once I revive." Windrunner and the Shadowsong prime both nodded grimly.
Atius matched their gaze, then turned and made his way into the structure. The water clung to his legs and soaked the bottom of his greatcloak. He paid it no attention, his relic armor letting him march through the flood with impunity.
Once he turned a corner, he vanished completely from view without another glance back. The moment that contact was lost, his comms also

dropped out of range. The bunker had been reinforced and cut off transmissions by its sheer architecture if I had to guess—likely material within the walls blocked signals from traveling in or out.
The Shadowsong prime didn't waste a moment in starting preparations in the meantime. "Move to set up a perimeter. I want a double layer of retreat points and an escape route ready. Dismissed!"
Windrunner took the orders immediately, moving out to start cutting side buildings for scrap to build walls with. Kidra and I followed through. The work would be slow, but it gave us something to do as we waited.

Atius wasn't long inside the bunker. He emerged out the door about ten minutes later, comms realigning. "Keith, Kidra. I'll need your help."
"Us, my lord?" Kidra asked, surprised.
"Aye. I need manpower inside the bunker. Can't bring Calem and Ankah inside with me, they've got environmental suits. The flooded ground will soak into their boots, making surface travel impossible until it's dry, besides risking frostbite. Worse, confined spaces with no ventilation like this bunker can have pockets of gasses build up over the years. Either toxic or lacking oxygen." He shot a look at the pair of scavengers. "Both of you are clever enough to know the danger that represents."
They nodded. Most surface sites were open-air or had enough holes in them to be exposed to the wind. The environmental suits still had a simple gas monitor in the rebreather, just in case. If it started beeping, that was usually the cue to backtrack as fast as possible. A human could be knocked out cold within seconds, especially if reverse osmosis took place—where oxygen was leeched out of the lungs with each breath. The environmental suits didn't have room for an oxygen canister, which meant these two wouldn't have something like that handy. The rebreather only heated air, it wasn't a filter of any kind.
That bunker might as well be a deathtrap. At least for those two.
The rest of us wouldn't even need to care about something like that. A relic knight could function completely submerged, so a bunch of bad air wasn't going to make us blink. I chalked it up to lost tech black magic on how oxygen was maintained inside the suit.

"Shadowsong One and Windrunner are both reliable fighters. I want them outside to cover the whelps," Atius continued. "And my last two bucketheads are off scouting for a possible retreat vector."
There was a squawk of protest on the comms, which Atius chuckled and cut over. "You've been called worse. Report while I have you in range."
Ironreach answered, "There's a second doorframe behind the bunker that opens up to a main street. Directly ahead and to the right, connected by a plaza, are the blast door steps. Area is dense with structures, plenty of high ground. We'll have the rest of the map filled out in minutes, my lord."
He nodded, then turned back to us. "So that's where you two come in. I need at least two relic knights. By process of elimination, you're both the last choices remaining." He turned on his heels and strode back into the bunker,
footsteps disturbing the water at his ankles. "Time is closing in. There's something that's been left behind for us to recover. I intend to do so."
Journey's headlights turned back on.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

SOLARIS IMPERIUM

T

his bunker had seen better days. A clear-cut line of rust painted the entire structure, marking where the water line had once been before we'd opened the door. When breaching the door, a lot of that water had flooded out into the streets, giving an unrestricted view of the topology of the mite-built roads. It wasn't even. A rather large pool of water had somewhat equalized in front of the bunker doors.
The flood was now more ankle-deep and still flowing out at a leisurely pace. What it left behind was broken everything.
Empty racks that had collapsed on themselves, traces of disintegrated chairs, and old computers filled with corrosion and cracked screens. Sounds echoed everywhere, mostly of water dripping down walls and into the remaining pool. Eerie would describe the whole place. Atius surveyed the site, headlights flashing around, while Kidra and I followed behind him.
"It's just ahead," he said, stalking past all the wreckage with singleminded intent.
There were a few bulkhead doors in our path, but none were locked, and it looked like he'd already opened them. Even if the internals had seized up,
the strength of relic armor had clearly ripped them free again.
I couldn't quite place when this architecture was from, but I noticed something. There were candles almost everywhere, old incense burners that had rusted over, and glimmers of light, faded gold in just about everything.
The real pick in the ice were sigils on the walls. The gold emblazoned had peeled off, and yet it was still recognizable enough.
If this wasn't an imperial bunker, I'd sell my rebreather. Leave it to them to house so many ritual items and other such memorabilia. Even in a military

bunker hidden out on the edge of nowhere. At least they had the sense not to decorate the outside of the walls.
"Do we know what imperial order they garrisoned here?" I asked,
curious.
Atius turned, his suit of armor's lights shining at the walls as he did so.
He had a soft grin that would have fit an old man perfectly. "Oh? And what made you suspect this?"
"I don't want to say it's all the gold and candles, but it's definitely all the gold and candles."
He chuckled under his breath. "They can keep everything secret except for their obsession with shiny things. Almost makes me think it's a front.
Almost." He glanced back at me and gave a full answer, patting his sword.
"Yes, I know that sigil. They're the same ones who once held onto this blade,
after all. That, however, is likely an actual coincidence."
"Your reclusive friends?"
"Friends would be stretching it. Respected acquaintances, that'd be more accurate. They acknowledge my kind and our role against the machines;
however, they see their tasks as more important. They're called the Indagator Mortis. Elites of the Imperium, an old order that was said to have served the lost emperor, now supposedly taking direct orders from their sun goddess.
Still around, very zealous, highly respected, and dangerous. I suspect your armor belonged to a crusader from this order."
"Cathida?"
His headlight lingered on the peeling golden glyph on that wall. "I can't be sure of anything when it comes to the Indagators, lad. They have a tendency for misdirection and secrecy. A very strong tendency. Never expect straight answers from them, only theories. It's when you get straight answers that you should be worried."
"So, what are your theories here? Are we walking into some sort of conspiracy?"
"Perhaps. I don't think it's a coincidence we found a hidden imperial bunker within spitting distance of a crusader's gravesite. Especially one of the fifth vow. Add the fact that your armor doesn't bear any sigils — which is usual for a low-rank crusader but never done in the higher ranks. Since you found it in such a small expedition group, I would hazard it to be intentional.
Your armor's name is Journey, yes?"
"It is. I didn't rename it when I recovered the armor."

"Well then. Let's clear the low-hanging fruit." He coughed, clearing his throat. "Journey, do you recall anything about this location?"
It responded. "All logs have been locked behind a password-protected entry. Answer is unknown."
That made the old Deathless laugh. The sound echoed, bouncing off the empty hallways, joining in with the water drops and occasional collapses still happening in this bunker. "If I wanted even more confirmation of your armor belonging to this order, that would be the icepick left behind." He settled down, now more chuckling to himself. "To be fair to those zealots, they claim their enemy is a goddess. Gods are not opponents to take lightly."
We passed by a barracks containing four bunk beds. A fairly small crew had manned this bunker if I was right. There was also only one shower and toilet, from the looks of things. The mess hall was equally small. Had there not been a table, I'd have thought we were just walking through a slightly larger room.
We'd reached the center of the bunker when Atius held a hand out to stop. This room was large and circular. Four pillars lined the center, vertical rail tracks on each. And oddly enough, some screens and equipment still looked intact. Like they only needed a power cell to turn back on. They'd built the center heart of this bunker with encapsulated and durable components in mind.
The clan lord noticed my stares. "They likely had everything wiped—if those even still work. I'd let you try your luck on it, but we're on a deadline,
lad."
He pointed down at the very center of the circular room, and the murky water flashed his reflected lights back, rippling with the waves we had made as we marched through the complex. It was clear enough to see hints of details. The floor simply gave way to a circular drop, like a center pool.
There was depth to that pool, since our headlights saw nothing but blackness.
"It's still down here." Atius pointed. "They contained it in a liquid solution to further scramble any signal leakage from my examinations. The flooding was likely caused by lack of maintenance."
Journey provided me with a small three-dimensional model of the bunker,
showing the places we'd walked through. Data collected from Atius's armor.
The entire room was visible, which included what we were after.
A capsule. That's what was in the center of the room, submerged a good dozen feet into the hole.

It was completely separated from the bunker, except for large gear wheels connected to the railing. Massive springs on the wheels dampened the structure, and if the map was correct, they were all still intact despite being completely submerged. The capsule itself was large enough to fit two people inside comfortably. Given that they made the thing out of metal, it must weigh tons.
"The lift system is still intact from what I saw, but the trigger mechanisms don't work anymore. No free meal. We have to lift the structure up manually." He looked around him at the surrounding destruction. "Let's find something to jam the capsule once we've dredged it up."
Given the massive amount of debris, and our blades capable of cutting anything into fitting pieces, it was quick work to find a few rebars capable of doing the job.
As three, we each knelt in the water, hands searching around for the top of the capsule to grip on. Atius told us there should be manual handholds put there for this specific possibility. The headlights were harsh on the surface reflections of the water, but Journey polarized the view, letting us see a lot more clearly through the water. The silt had deposited to the very bottom into a layer, leaving most of the water somewhat clear enough. It didn't take long for us to find handholds and prepare.
"Winterscars. On three," Atius ordered. A countdown later, we pulled.
Bubbles rose from the depths as our movements dislodged old trapped gasses underwater. Ancient gear wheels turned slowly on their axis over all four sides of the capsule, slowly coming into view from the darkness. The top of the capsule peeked over the lip of the pool and then surfaced above the flooded ground. Water streamed out of all the nooks and crannies of the old structure, stirring up the silt even more. We continued to lift.
Water started rushing into the pool now, being sucked from the surroundings, trying to fill the void that the capsule left. The wheels on the side of the object turned on their hinges, clicking into the groves of the pillars without issue. Halfway out of the water, we readjusted our grips.
With the gears now coming out of the water, we could hear groans of metal on metal bounding around the room.
The capsule itself had only one side that looked capable of opening up—
like a door, almost. It had a thick glass window on that side, small and barred up. It was too filled with piled-on detritus to see clearly through, however.
With one final grunt, the three of us slid our scavenged rebars under the

capsule. Moment of truth, and we let go. A massive groan of metal happened next, and all three rebars seized up as they supported the full weight of the capsule. It dropped a half-inch but then remained steady and held.
We all took a step back to admire our work. The capsule waited motionless before us.
"This is where it ends," Atius said, drawing out his blade and turning it on. "I'm not sure what we will find behind here. The only fact I know is that it called out to the Deathless, somehow. It has been this whole time, only nobody was around to hear it. Ready arms in case of hostility."
What sort of signal could even escape something as thick as this thing? I didn't know what senses the Deathless had that could penetrate through both the bunker, the water, and the capsule itself. But somehow it had.
Kidra drew her knives, and I did the same with my longsword. At this close range, the occult blades would serve as better weapons to tackle what we found.
From the looks of this thing, the door opened downward, with all the hinges on the bottom. Once opened, it could serve as an entry ramp into the capsule. Atius cut at the sides of the door. His blade sliced through the old metal without a single issue. The door groaned halfway through the operation and then snapped forward, lowering down until one last deadbolt to the side held the whole thing at bay, halfway opened. He slashed that loose with a precise flick.
The door fell down fully, hitting the flood of water with a massive splash.
Whatever hydraulics had been built to soften the speed had long ago leaked out.
Our headlights peered into it.
Inside were instruments, screens, and keyboards all lined around a pedestal. There hadn't been room for any chairs, so they had made these old computers for users to shuffle around the tight space and work standing up.
Even more impressive were the small signs of glowing light on some consoles. Power was still active and working in this capsule, only deep in sleep. The pristine screens and equipment made me sure the whole modular structure could still function exactly as intended. They had engraved imperial markings and decorations all over the interior, making it look like what we had dredged out of the pool had been a small shrine or chapel.
What really drew the attention lay on the center pedestal. A single metal sphere, just about perfectly hand-sized, floating. It held intricate markings

carved across the whole surface. A wave of soft yellow light floated across,
lighting up the markings as it passed by, seemingly at random. Like the waves in a lake, unpredictable, crashing against one another. I could hear humming coming from the base of the pedestal, likely from whatever was keeping the sphere in midair.
"Ah. I understand now." Atius breathed out, a look of recognition briefly passing through his face.
"Seen this before? Or is that on a need-to-know basis?" I asked from the side, curiosity driving me.
Kidra rebuked me immediately after. "That's the clan lord's business,
Keith, keep your curiosity in check."
Atius chuckled, watching the floating sphere with a naked eye. "I'm sorry, lad, but it is indeed need-to-know. There is a reason the Indagators went this far to keep this hidden. Knowing what this is, I'm inclined to honor that decision."
He took a step into the capsule. "The sphere will be coming with us. As for the pair of you, if you're casually talking to each other about today's events in private, or if someone asks, the official story is that we didn't find a sphere, we found an encrypted hard drive. Is that understood?"
Kidra and I nodded. Atius hadn't finished, however. "Following through,
should you find yourself captive or interrogated, you will reveal that we hadn't found an encrypted hard drive but discovered this was a research facility focused on machines. The capsule contained a machine head,
connected to wiring. We took it with us but had to discard it later in our return due to danger. Understood?"
"That's… pretty thorough?"
He chuckled. "We're dealing with matters a few leagues beyond us now,
lad. Basic counterintelligence becomes widespread at this level. Always have two lies prepared. An obvious one that everyone suspects as the lie, and a second lie they'll believe is the truth you were hiding. The Indagators were filled with such redundancies. I don't expect you to ever need to use these;
the hard drive will probably do for the rest of your lives. Still, failure to prepare is preparing to fail."
Atius took a further step into the capsule and reached out with a gauntleted hand, touching the sphere. The waves of yellow didn't change at the contact with his relic armor. The fuzzy light still floated around the sphere, flowing now over his hands. He pulled the sphere out slowly.

The moment it left the pedestal, Journey chimed in my ear. "High priority connection request received. Accept?"
Atius stared at the sphere, transfixed by it, while Kidra remained on guard, her headlights slowly circling around the room. It seemed neither of them had gotten this message, given they hadn't reacted at all.
"You two didn't get a connection request by chance?"
The clan lord spun his head in my direction. "A connection request?
Inside a comms-protected bunker?" I could see him running the math in his head, narrowing down the only possibility left. We both turned to stare at the capsule at the same time. A yellow light blinked within it, slowly strobing.
"Should I… should I accept?"
He didn't answer for a moment. "Let's see what these crusaders left for us. Patch it through the speaker. I'd like to hear as well. I'm curious about why it's picked you of all of us to speak to."
"Journey, accept request."
The moment I ordered it, a woman's voice spoke in my comms. "Ahh,
Atius. I've been hoping for a chance to speak to you for years. And, Keith,
I've been watching over you since the site collapsed. I'm glad to have a chance to clear the air."
"Who are you?" I asked.
She answered back immediately. "I led you to the armor. I led Atius to this bunker. I detonated the site. And I unlocked the administrator account for your armor. I've been the yellow light guiding you. You both know me as Tsuya."
I took a step back, by pure reflex. Tsuya—like… like—
"The goddess?" Atius asked, completing my train of thought. He didn't seem perplexed or surprised.
"Goddess is a misnomer," she said. "I was a researcher who discovered the means of uploading my mind and soul into a digital format. I don't have many opportunities to speak directly to anyone. My enemy is everywhere and in almost every system. Over time and generations, cultures shifted, and I became more myth."
I glanced at Atius, who matched my gaze with a befuddled shrug as if this immortal demi-human was also just as puzzled as I was. Considering my world was getting completely upended, I was oddly calm about all this.
"Assuming you are who you say, why reveal yourself here?" he asked.
"I don't need to hide this site anymore from the enemy, so I'm free to

burn its use. We should be quick, however; she'll notice this port soon. First,
forgive me for taking advantage of you earlier, Keith. I led you to the armor,
not only to help you but to have you carry that relic on your belt and deliver it back into friendly hands for me. Consider Journey as payment. You've been acting as my agent without realizing it, and I've benefited from it more than you can imagine."
"Cathida's primary objective?" I glanced down at the black box.
"The very same. This is Cathida's true mission. And for a few hundred years, I had no agents nearby who could possibly recover it. Attempting to be more direct would only invite Relinquished to notice its existence."
Atius shifted, turning his gaze at the capsule. There had been a snap change in his demeanor as if talking to Tsuya herself hadn't fazed him—but the mention of "Relinquished" had.
"Relinquished." His voice had no levity to it, only the weight of centuries.
"I've heard that name before, always surrounding heavy moments. What is it? I want the real answer, once and for all."
"We don't have time for a histo—"
"No. Tell me what, or who Relinquished is, or I will cut the channel."
"... so be it," she said almost with a sigh. "Relinquished is an AI built by an old doomsday cult that wanted to wipe out humanity and themselves,
some seven thousand years ago now. She controls all the machines, with the exception of the mites. No one controls the mites."
Atius nodded, slowly, as if contemplating the information. His outburst earlier had likely been a bluff, I thought. I hoped.
"The death cult stumbled on power early on that snowballed catastrophically. Even today, I don't have the raw processing power that she has at her command and never will," Tsuya said. "I can't fight her on fair ground. However, I'm far more creative. We've been at war for a long time now. I fight, scheme, and try everything I can to keep humanity alive, while she tries to snuff the light out."
"You could have led my team to this object instead of Keith. Why him?"
Atius asked.
"You are a Deathless. You and your kin are my lightning rods. You drew her at—" Tsuya stopped. "She's found me. Don't speak, no time. All logs of this conversation will be auto-deleted in your suits of armor. Pay attention,
you won't hear this twice. Atius, the sphere is complete and ready for use.
You know what it is. Keith, I need you to do some work for me. Are you

willing?"
"Uhh, yes?" I mean, this was the goddess.
For some reason, I got a distinct feeling this one-word, hastily-thought-up answer was going to change the entire course of my life. And not even a few seconds in hindsight, I was sure it was going to. Still, I felt this was the right direction to go, down deep in my gut.
On my heads-up display, an mp3 file showed as downloaded correctly,
simply named "mission."
A moment later, a clicking noise sounded in my helmet. Journey chimed:
"User logs, unlocked. Historical archive, unlocked. Map data, unlocked.
Motion data, unlocked. Twenty-three additional items, unlocked. Please see event logs for further details."
"Ho—"
"The recording I sent you will show you how to use the seeker on your belt and what the goal of your mission is. I have time for exactly one question. Anything you wish to know, if it is within my power to answer,
then I shall. Go."
My mind froze. The world flowed by me, all the things I wanted to know.
If this was the goddess or an avatar of her, I could ask for anything, learn anything. The internet, why the world was how it was, who she really was.
And when I opened my mouth, there was only one question I truly needed to know.
"Is my Father alive?"
"What? No. He perished. Why waste tim—wait. I am looking into the full logs now." There was a second delay and then she spoke again. "Novel, I have never seen this approach before. Incomplete, done without precision and in trauma. His soul might be within the soul fractal inside the armor."
The capsule flickered, lights blinking for a half-second. Her voice returned. "I'm sending you the coordinates for a book I've hidden on the surface. A very valuable book Relinquished has gone to great lengths to halt the spread of. Find that textbook. Master the fundamentals outlined. Research the soul fractal—the Julia set, it'll be written somewhere on one of those pages. You'll figure out the rest yourself. Do not let the warlocks know of this book, they'll likely take it and kill you. Thirty seconds. She's actively tracking me down. After that, you all need to run. Last question, now."
Atius sprung in before my fat mouth could ask the fucking goddess herself another irrelevant, selfish question.

"What are the new Deathless?" he asked, a desperate tone in his voice.
She answered back. "My doing. Research uncovered the equation to a meta-fractal. A tenth di—"
The capsule went dark with a loud mechanical clank and her voice cut out. It was dead silent all in a single moment. We only heard the slush of water at our feet. The waves we'd made still hadn't calmed down.
That silence only lasted for a moment in that darkness.
Then there was a laugh and a voice returned on speakers. "Oh, you silly humans. Scheming again, are we?"
The tone was slightly deeper, and there was a feeling of… darkness dripping from each word.
"Who are you?" I asked, feeling shivers in my arms. This clearly wasn't Tsuya anymore.
"Who am I? Why dear, you know me already," she said as if the answer were obvious. "I have many names and titles. You humans come up with new ones for me every few centuries. However, deep inside, every human knows me. How could you not? I am death. Specifically, humanity's death.
"Now, what exactly did my little sister tell you?"

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

RELIN UISHED SENDS HER REGARDS

T

he voice called herself death and aimed to destroy all of humanity.
"I'm open to negotiations," Atius calmly said. "Assuming there is a return on that investment."
He spoke to that horrible machine as if it were the most mundane topic of issue he'd come across. Politics as usual.
Kidra's headlights shot up as she turned, focusing on the clan lord,
bewildered that he'd consider betraying the fucking goddess herself. I was thinking the same exact thing, stuck frozen by sheer shock.
The lord didn't return her gaze; he remained focused on the capsule ahead with an intensity reaching his eye that wasn't present in his tone.
"Negotiate?" The voice on the other end seemed more confused. "My poor dear, you are mistaking a demand for a request." The voice over the comms spoke almost as if the whole subject was a side-venture that she didn't care to spend time on. If she had hands, she'd be more interested in her nails. "You will tell me, or I will rip it from your armor myself. I would think this a simple choice."
Atius smiled like a wolf with a plan. "All records have been deleted by her hand already. It's only left in my head, and that's not something you can connect to. What Tsuya didn't expect was that I'd be willing to betray her. If offered the right incentive, of course."
Kidra raised her rifle and leveled it at the clan lord. Her hand didn't shake. It was her stance that gave away her confusion and hesitation. More telling was that she hadn't shot him already. She wasn't the kind of person to raise a weapon without already planning on using it. Atius turned an eye to watch her, flicking a quick hand gesture that I couldn't quite make out from

my view. His body obscured it.
My sister saw it.
Her rifle lowered.
All put together, I had a good idea of what Atius was doing: lying through his teeth like a pipe weasel.
If Relinquished had noticed, she didn't make a note of it. It was possible the machine AI had no camera feed into this bunker, audio only. "How interesting," she said. "Tsuya's little pet biting the hand that feeds? Your name was Atius?"
"Atius is fine. Make me an offer, I don't have all day."
The voice hummed. "What is it you wish, little Deathless? Power?
Wealth? Mercy?"
"Information for information. What are the new Deathless to you?" Atius asked. "Tsuya spoke about them in large, but I want to know how much of it was truth and how much was omission. She didn't tell me everything, likely to avoid this very situation."
… Atius, you gods-damned, single-minded monster. He didn't get his answer from the goddess, so he goes right over to ask the enemy goddess instead. If we made it out alive, I needed to remind myself never to play cards with this man.
"A weak attempt to recreate the original pair, as usual. This time she seems to have traded sanity for quantity. They're a thorn in my side, but one I've already countered. My Chosen will do nicely to match those pests. Now then, tell me of my dear sister."
"That's all? It's not enough," Atius answered.
"You forget yourself, lordling. I am a god. You are a footnote. Know your place. I am not someone you wish to anger."
Atius slowly nodded. "Fine. Your sister told me she was losing. That you've uncovered and destroyed too many of her plans, and she's become desperate. The new Deathless was an accident she has no control over, and it terrifies her."
Tsuya, of course, had said nothing of that sort. And Relinquished ate up his beautiful lies without so much as a pause. The machine AI almost purred into the comms as if deeply satisfied. "Tell me in detail."
"She gave me orders to dive deeper into the underground, past the layers,
and uncover something. Told me I would meet up with other Deathless, and they would give me more information on this covert attack. What is it she's

after?"
Relinquished laughed. The voice felt like ice grinding against each other.
"She thinks sending Deathless would—" Her voice cut out.
Three seconds later, she was back.
And furious.
"You." Relinquished spat out, the word dripping in hatred. "One of my children knows your name, Atius. He told me all abo—"
"Continued discussion with you serves no purpose. Journey, cut channel,"
Atius ordered, already turning to leave.
The armor complied and the channel cut. I turned to speak, but Atius lifted one hand, signaling enemy and then the hand signal for operational security.
I got the message—don't talk. We weren't sure she was completely gone.
He stalked through the bunker, away from its now-dead center. Kidra and I followed behind him, water sloshing at the knees. The rest of the fireteam had remained outside where we'd left them, ready. Journey clicked on my HUD settings, showing we'd recovered comms contact with the group.
"Fireteam, prepare to switch to encrypted channel. Scout party, return immediately. All units be alert, possible hostile contact expected. Go no contact until encryption is set up," the clan lord ordered out.
If they had any questions about what happened, none of the fireteam made any mention or question. They simply bolted to their tasks, drawing out weapons and preparing to hold off.
Shadowsong Two and Ironreach both returned from their scouting within minutes, sprinting as fast as their relic armors could move them.
Once they reached visual distance, he flashed a two and a six on his hands in rapid succession. I knew the signal and flicked through my HUD for the comms options. Journey had imported my scavenger's more primitive headset settings, so I found all my old setup intact.
Shifting over to channel two, I engaged the sixth encryption preset. In moments, I'd joined the chat group.
"Contact!" one scout reported, almost out of breath.
Ironreach finished for his partner. "Machines are gathering up, a mix of screamers, drakes, serpents, and one behemoth. Enough to overrun us in open ground. I'd estimate they'll have grouped up and be ready to storm us in about ten minutes."
"Possible preemptive attack on our part?" Atius asked.

Shadowsong Two shook his head. "Negative. There are too many amassed. It's an army, m'lord."
The clan lord nodded. "We've got what we came for. If they capture any of you, prepare a full purge of logs, especially video." Then he turned to me and handed me the glowing sphere, motioning to my backpack.
I took the sphere, still lazily glowing. Not to be asked twice over, I stuffed it into my scavenger backpack. Atius continued to explain a plan while signaling a completely different one with his hands. "Fireteam, we've recovered an encrypted hard drive that needs to be returned to the undersiders. Shadowsong Three is going to sneak the hard drive data out of the installation, he's the only one who has stealth equipment."
His hand slammed slightly near his wrist, signaling mission objective as he spoke. He'd also raised a hand in the signal of protection and pointed at my backpack.
"He will make his way to beachhead three, further underground. We'll regroup and make our way to the nearest underside city from there."
South blast door, protect, go to surface.
"Our job is to execute a fighting retreat to the south blast door as a distraction from Shadowsong Three and then trigger the door and fall back west and make the machines believe we've gone through the door. We'll cut a path into the floor and make our way in the underside. Are we clear?"
His hand signs continued to paint conflicting orders.
All knights saluted and responded affirmatively over the comms, while also flashing the orders understood signal on their hands.
I thought I could piece together the actual plan. He'd given me the orb since the enemy would likely focus him first and then go after the other elites before spending time going for me.
That gave me the best chance of making a breakout. From there, the real mission was to carry the sphere back up to the surface.
I gave him a solemn nod. Atius returned it, signing a quick motion for luck and knocking on his breastplate to follow through with it. "Winterscars,
for now, go back into the bunker and work on repairing the entry door."
Stay. Safe.
"Use scrap or whatever you can find to replace the deadbolt I sliced off. I trust you both can do that, aye?"
We both saluted and stalked back to the bunker.

Atius had ordered us back into the bunker because I was holding onto the "hard drive." Fixing up the doorway was likely something he did want done —but not the critical part. There were doorways to seal in all parts of the bunker. The big door out here would be a bonus.
Still a bonus I planned to collect on.
For the most part, the deadbolt had been modular. It was easy to drag the large slab out of both ends of the fortified doorway. The issue came in replacing it. We didn't find a spare deadbolt, but we did find plenty of possible steel scraps that could serve as such.
We'd need to weld them together, which required a welder. I came prepared with many tools in my scavenger kit; however, a gods-damned welder was way too specific. Not to mention the versions that worked outside in the surface were far more involved than just a handheld tool.
I'd bet a bunker this far from all civilization was self-sufficient, which would include a lot of these maintenance tools, so I went digging around. The good news was that we did end up finding them. Most of the tools were above the waterline, so other than humidity and rust, we found them in fairly good working condition. The bad news was that the single tool we needed had been stored under a table. Which was submerged halfway already.
Completely ruined. And so were the other backups of it, all stored under the water level. "Going to need to glue these pieces of steel together or something," I muttered. Gods, even strings would do in a pinch. Maybe I could rip up some of those wires and reuse them for that. Really stretching the definition of a rush job here.
"I'm no engineer; however, glue does not sound like a particularly strong binding agent," Kidra mentioned behind me, reaching around for scrap.
"It doesn't need to bind hard. We could probably manage with nothing and shove a bunch of metal bars into the deadlock port. All that matters is that there's enough metal shoved into the deadbolt chamber to prevent it from opening."
She came back, piling up more steel scrap that could fit into the deadbolt,
and drew out her knife. "Tell me how you want these cut. And let me know if there is more that you need."
"Have you got three weeks of rest and relaxation in your bag by chance?"
I asked.

"Fresh out," she said. "How bad is it?"
"Eh. Technically, I don't need the deadbolt to hold together well like I said. The surrounding doorframe does that. I just need thick individual pieces that can combine their total force and resist being sheared. So glue will do fine. Pass me your field repair kit," I requested, hand outstretched. "My own kits are spent."
And also broken on some wall a good distance away.
Scrapshit, I was just piling up regrets here left and right. My other hand reached out to my boot, drawing out the knife there. It had gotten waterlogged while I'd been stomping around this bunker, but the occult didn't seem to care about water exposure. These knives could work underwater.
We got working on the steel bar together. Our blades would slice into the metal, letting us get them into shape. The goal was to keep them as chunky as possible. The glue worked pretty well on metal, or at least well enough to keep this whole insult to all good engineering in one piece. Pretty soon the "deadbolt" was done, and the door would just have to deal with it.
Kidra and I lifted the heavy thing together and walked it back to the doorframe right when things started to look bad.
"Enemy contact approaching," one of the knights reported. I couldn't quite see since I was still too busy sliding in the deadbolt and making sure it was properly oiled. They had their job, and I had mine.
"All units, open fire at will. Prepare for bounding retreat," Atius ordered.
A few seconds later, the sounds of rifle shots ricocheted through the bunker walls.
I heard the sound of a drake's laser flash across, the sound cutting off a few feet away. Frantic running and shouts.
The clan lord growled, likely leaping to the side to intercept another beam. "Winterscars, door repairs ETA?"
"Just about done with the door repairs!" I said over the comms, lining up the last piston and locking it into position. It wouldn't hold as strong as the original deadbolt, but in a pinch it'd do. Hopefully.
I drew out my rifle and turned to the fight. Kidra snapped hers up as well,
and we both rushed over to take our places by the firing slits on the bunker interior, opening fire on the approaching horde.
And "horde" would be an apt comparison. There were too many screamers to count, along with two drakes in the back.

Snake-like white automatons floated above, gliding through the air, firing out dozens of arcing pods at us. When they hit the ground, the pods would break into small splashes of clear liquid, quickly dissolving metal and causing black smoke to rise from the destruction. The relic knights were aiming for those snakes above all, taking them down methodically before they could get into range.
Another drake opened fire, the light blinding the world in violet for a moment. Atius sprinted and held out that handheld shield in the line of fire,
breaking the beam against his hand. "Fireteam, fall back to the bunker,
trigger the traps, and seal the door. Standard retreat formation!"
Pairs of relic knights mowed out against the approaching horde, skulls cracking ahead as now the screamers were closing in on us. A pair would shoot while another would fall back. They alternated quickly and efficiently,
reloading as they ran.
The screamers jumped over the deserted first barricade, and as a wave they crashed against a detonation of grenades pre-readied on the ground.
Atius hadn't been idle while we were working. The blast impact was close enough that even our relic armors required shielding to trigger. It was a good thing Ankah and Calem had been near the rear. That explosion would have surely hurt the pair.
I could already tell it had done a number on their hearing from how dazed they moved, stumbling to the flooded bunker doors and stopping right by the water's edge.
"Clan lord! Permission to carry the two?" the Shadowsong prime called out as he rushed to them, a note of panic in his voice.
Atius gave him a hard stare. "Denied. You'll need both hands for weapons fire eventually; they'll end up in the water either now or later. We'll need to be fast."
The prime grimly nodded, continuing his retreat. Ankah, on the other hand, had a different idea. She pulled the hoversled of power cells and clambered on board, throwing a rope forward to her father. The prime shot Atius a glance, which the Deathless returned with a nod. "That'll do. Tie to your belt."
She and Calem both strapped themselves in as her father dragged the hoversled over the freezing water. It worked as hoped for, dipping down slightly and causing a wide imprint of the sled to dig into the water's surface.
The relic knights had all filed into the bunker and began opening fire

from the weapon slits on the sides. We'd made it inside, save for the clan lord, who remained at the doorway, longsword drawn.
He took a step forward, raising the longsword high in the air. It glowed brighter blue, streaming from his gauntleted hand. A moment later, he swung it in a massive horizontal arc through the air.
An electric arc of occult blue expanded from the blade, flowing out in a semicircle with him at the center, a shock wave of power. It struck at the approaching screamers, ripping into the mass and flinging them all back.
Damage hadn't been the aim, I realized. He'd done that to give us time to force the heavy door shut. The size of which still took him and the other knights some time even in relic armor to seal.
"Seal the door!" he yelled out, sprinting into the bunker. "Now!"
I flipped the manual door lock levers, watching as the old mechanism triggered and clamped shut onto the door, praying the whole while that the modified deadbolt would slide right into the doorframe as expected.
It got stuck just near the end of the swing, which made my blood feel like it had frozen over. Technically, it was good enough—the majority of the deadbolt would be in place. Still, I tried to put my relic armor's full strength into the lever. It dipped down a few more inches before Journey chimed in my ear. "Maximum power reached."
With one last idea, I back off, then kicked the rest of the lever shut.
Another few inches closed, and then the rest of the handle bent in place.
Deformed and out of commission now. The changed deadbolt showed it was mostly in place and definitely snug inside the doorframe. No one was opening this door now, from either direction.
Good timing too. The wave of screamers surged forward and impacted the bunker, hard. Clawed hands attempted to shove themselves through the weapon slits, while sounds of clanking feet and hands reverberated all across the bunker as the wave had started to climb over.
"The other side of the bunker has an opening that should lead to the blast door," Atius said, making his way through the water. Ankah and Calem hovered behind on the sled, using scavenged scraps as makeshift poles to keep themselves steady as the Shadowsong prime did the main legwork through the water. I hoped they wouldn't need to abandon this strategy anytime soon. The water was likely freezing cold and only kept from actually freezing over due to not being completely water—if I had to guess.
It would be absolute torture for the two or possibly frostbite in their feet

in less than an hour if we didn't address it.
The real danger was if we hit pockets of air that weren't human-friendly.
Not much we could do about that right now, other than forge ahead and hope to the gods things worked out. So far, neither of their rebreathers had pinged an issue.
"The front door will give us at least another ten minutes. Assuming the material is drake-proof. That still won't last forever. The real barrier to entry will be the bulkhead doors inside the bunker, drakes are too large to fit inside and melt those down. Only screamers will be able to fit in here. There's a good dozen of these doors. Spread out, and seal them all shut as we go deeper into the site," Atius ordered. "With those locked, our real danger is the machine wave making it around the bunker before we can storm our way through."
We sealed every bulkhead door we walked through, twisting it tight and making sure to bar them up. They had built the bunker specifically for an invasion of this scale, making the doors remarkably easy to seal shut and secure despite the age.
"These doors will only hold to the center point. After that, the rest of the doors are locked on the other side, as the structure is mirrored to the other exit," Atius said. "If we're unlucky, they'll bring their behemoth to break through the wall of mite buildings rather than try to crack the bunker."
"Behemoth?" Kidra asked. I had the same question on my lips, but she'd been faster on the draw.
"Massive twelve-foot giant," Ironreach said to our side. "Nasty thing. The machine version of a siege engine. Uses different weapons depending on the situation. Always difficult to kill, and strong enough to rip open that front door if it gets enough time."
And here I thought the spider was the scariest enemy machine I'd face down here.
We kept going through the bunker at speed, rushing through the doors now, relying on our internal maps to guide us correctly. In minutes, we had made it to the other side.
It hadn't been fast enough.
Already screamers had either climbed over or had come from this side in the first place, and they were trying to pry open the sealed door here. We turned the last corner and saw their hands trying to slip through the weapon slits, to reach where they expected the door controls could have been.

They would not make any progress on that front. The bunker was too well defended. And this door still had the original deadbolt intact, making it particularly impervious.
If we opened the door here to get out, we'd be swarmed by a small army of machines.
We were trapped like rats.

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

ONE LAST ACT OF SERVICE

"N

early half a hundred, m'lord," Windrunner said. "As far as my sensors can detect."
The Shadowsong prime grunted agreement, clearly displeased at the chaos outside. All the other relic knights had made their way to the weapon slits and begun clearing out some of the rabble. The sounds of rifle shots filled up this edge of the bunker.
Atius glared through the slits, a calculating eye leveled across the battlefield. "This isn't some wandering patrol that stumbled on us. This is a kill order. More are coming each minute. We'll need to storm outside and make our way to the blast door before the full reinforcements can join these machines. The longer we remain here, the dimmer our chances become."
He turned and made his way to the side of the bunker instead of joining the fire line, however. "On my mark, retreat farther into the bunker and hide.
Given this is a sensory dampened bunker, they won't be able to ping any of you while you're inside. They're after me, ultimately. I'll cut a way through the side of the wall and make my way into the mite superstructure. Seal the path after I've gone through. With any luck, I'll emerge much farther to the west. They'll assume we're making a break for it in that direction. Once the enemy chases after me, open the door and make your way to the blast doors as soon as possible. Assume comms are breached anywhere outside the bunker. Communicate anything important with hand signs only.
Understood?"
The knights all pinged acknowledgments. Atius drew out his sword and did exactly as expected, hacking his way through the wall, breaking down the bunker side.

I had a possible alternate idea. "Lord Atius," I said, turning to him.
He gave a grunt of acknowledgment. "Any ideas are open to discussion,
lad. Go ahead."
Right to the point. Works for me. "They built this bunker with defenses in mind. If we could power them back on, we might be able to use the site itself to help clear a path out."
"You think after all this time the defenses are still intact and functional?
Even with the flooding?" He continued to hack at the wall, occult blade making long lines. He would then grab and yank out smaller chunks. They splashed at his feet as he worked to dismantle a way through.
"If these imperials are as meticulous as you say, they must have made the system modular and separated from the rest of the bunker. They probably made defenses far more durable than lab equipment."
He paused for a moment, nodding. "Very well. Take a few power cells and see if you can find any way to reactivate the bunker defenses. If you can't find any obvious systems, make your way back here immediately."
I gave him a salute and bolted into action. Calem had already shuffled over on the sled, unhooking two power cells by their handles and extending them out to me. The two had been using scrap poles to creep the sled closer to the weapon slits, likely to join in the weapons firing. Ankah only gave me a hard stare as I passed by. "Goddess be with you," she said.
"She is. I think," I chuckled back, yanking the cells and hooking them on my belt.
"Then don't embarrass yourself," she finished, drawing out her pistol and searching for a possible target through the bunker slits.
I left her to it, making my way through the old bunker once again,
searching for the center room.
Surface dwellers often used turret defense systems for the home colonies,
though it was rare to find any in working conditions on surface scrap sites.
Our own clan colony was rather rich in comparison and had a long line of defenses. I'd been shown how they worked by Teed a few times. I knew what to look for.
There was a vertical ladder by the far side of the center room, leading down into the lower level.
The basement layer would be likely where the power was located, along with other critical systems. And it was completely flooded and submerged.
I'd have more chances of tracking a cockroach in piping than to expect

anything to have stayed functioning underwater for all these years.
Defense systems, on the other hand, were supposed to be insulated, and the bunker had a vat of water for a container. There had to have been built-in considerations for a possible breach and flood.
My hand grabbed the ladder, and I stared down at the darkness. I could see the whole ladder with Journey's headlights strong enough to pierce the flooded chamber. It was filled with sharp crystal-like rust at every step,
growing on the metal rungs. Giving a silent prayer that this would work, my hand grabbed the sides of the ladder and I sank down into the water, step by step, until completely underwater.
The gloom enveloped me, trying to breach the armor. Journey held it all back without issue.
A few more steps and I reached the bottom, feet landing into the soft silt with a muffled thump.
A small cloud rose on my landing, moving ever so slowly and hanging almost suspended in the water. I'd have to move slowly or else it would quickly obscure my vision.
Journey's headlights flashed through the flooded chamber, showing a murky scene—broken pipes and a small coral reef of rust growing on every piece of metal filled the view. There was a sense of loss here, as if the bunker was well and truly dead and I was only an ant scuttling around the dead remains. I shook the thought out of my head. Low chance as it was for this plan to work out, I had to give it a shot.
Journey scanned the room, overlaying a wireframe in three dimensions,
across my visor. That helped me get a much better feel for where I was going.
By the center of the room was a massive concrete pillar, where the capsule had been housed. I could see piping and valves at the base, likely what had controlled the pool inside. Parts of that lay broken and half-covered in the silt and rust. Clearly, the pressure had eventually ruptured the metal pipes at some point. There wasn't a trace of a current anymore, everything inert.
Above, I could hear the muffled sounds of gunfire as the team continued to fight. I needed to be fast about this. I made a round of the room, taking slow steps in order to keep the silt levels down.
Power cell inserts were easy to spot. They jutted from the wall, almost calling the attention of anyone passing by. Once I'd made my way to the wall side where they'd been at, I unclipped my cells and got to work. The two

replacement cells sank through the water and hit the floor with a muffled thud.
A layer of red rust-like crystal had formed, covering the panel over in a blanket. I gave an experimental tug and the whole thing snapped off easily,
lifting and revealing a more well-preserved system behind. Step one: going good so far.
With all visible obstructions removed, the wall panel should be accessible now. The maintenance lever was right by this wall access, and I wrenched that down. The clicking sound of metal pushing on itself snapped through the water, making it sound like the walls themselves were crumbling bit by bit. I powered through and continued to push.
The wall opened up halfway before the lever suddenly snapped and lost contact with gearing. That left me with a broken handle in my hand. Not good. But not the end of the road either. All of this was purely mechanical gearing. As long as the power cells were connected to the assembly, power should flow. Cells could certainly work submerged underwater so long as there weren't leaks. Quite a lot of lost tech had no issues working in a vacuum, freezing temperatures, or completely underwater.
The big question was if the machinery on the other side of the wall still functioned, or if that side had also flooded. While lost tech was impervious by its nature, the majority of tech here was from the third or early fourth era,
same as back home. That part would surely fail if exposed to water for long enough.
The doors on the sides of this level were all closed, which gave me some hope that the water hadn't managed to overflow anywhere in the lower levels.
The upper floor was crew-oriented, kitchen, bedding, command and control —not a huge loss to have water up to the ankles up there.
If the doors down here hadn't held off the water, there was little chance of anything working. But if it had…
I reached out a gauntlet and grabbed hold of the halfway opened wall panel and then pushed down. Since the lever had snapped off, I'd have to negotiate with this plate of metal more personally.
It groaned for a second and then cut free as the gearing sheared away inside. That covering was never going to be put back in its place after this.
Still fine—cover panels were mostly for crew safety and to keep the cells from being hit by anything. Not technically critical, and there wasn't any more crew who would be walking underwater here for the foreseeable future.

From here, the panel exposed six slots for power cells. Four more than I had brought with me. I swore in my helmet. Now this here could be an issue.
Well, two were brought down, so two would have to do—assuming the machinery still worked somewhere.
I twisted the old empty power cells free and lifted them out of their canisters. As I pulled them out, water was sucked inside, filling the void. The new water current caused was clearly visible from the floating specks illuminated by my headlights.
I unceremoniously dropped the old cells through the water, letting them float down to the ground and bury themselves slightly into the silt layer.
Normally empty cells were just as valuable as filled ones, as far as it concerned surface dwellers. I was handling a small fortune here. Two days ago I would have considered this expedition a major success if I could bring six of these empty cells back home with me. Right now, I was more than happy to just make it back home at all.
Making haste, the replacement cells didn't have any issue fitting into the cell inserts or the relic armor's sheer strength ground out any built-up sediment or rust in the way without my notice. I'd have to hope that debris didn't impede the power connection. Just as the cell chambers had sucked water in as I'd extracted the old cells out, they now pushed the water out as the new cells made their way inside. Specs of rust and debris got swept out into the open water as Journey pistoned the cells into alignment. With a final twist, I locked the first into place and held my breath. I could see the glowing gold-green liquid inside the power cell slowly get sucked inside the system,
leaving the cell bit by bit.
Nothing happened.
But only for a moment.
The lights turned on a second later, illuminating the murky water.
Flashing a few times on and off before settling on fully powered. Holy scrapshit raining from above, the long shot had paid off.
Giddy, I quickly locked in the second power cell and then gave the whole wall assembly a satisfied pat. Both cells were rapidly draining into the system now.
It looked like the guts of this bunker hadn't been flooded; the door seals of this room had done their job as designed. The bunker architects must be rolling proudly in their graves right about now.
"It all still works! Need four more cells down here asap!"

Silence. And then Journey chimed in. "Comms unavailable due to structure dampening."
Right. This place jammed communication. Dumb of me. I had to go back and physically relay the news.
I was half expecting the ladder to snap off, given the weight of relic armor when I got back to it, but luck was with me here. On pulling myself out of the water and back onto level ground, Kidra had made her way into the center room. She came to a quick stop, holding the side of the wall to keep herself steady. "Atius sent me to assist. The lights have turned back, as well as a few consoles. However, the rest of the bunker remains offline. Anything I can help with?"
"Two cells weren't enough. Need a full six for this bunker," I said,
pushing myself off my knee and out of the ladder hole. "But it's possible we don't need the other four. If I'm right, the last thing to go out would be the defenses and life-support systems. So the first thing to come back would be those. Still remember how to use turrets?"
She nodded, looking around the room for a possible console that still worked. We both found it at the same time. Easy really, since there were only three screens that had lit back up in this dead site.
One of them was ventilation and life-support systems, as I'd expected.
These all showed red across the board. Another was a basic structural integrity and damage report. That one showed a more promising mix of green, gray, and red. Mostly gray below ground, though the above-ground portion looked intact.
The last console on the other side showed turret icons. In beautiful,
wondrous green.
Kidra made a direct path to that console. She'd be the one with more experience in using defense systems back at the colony. I wasn't a slouch, but she was the clear better choice when it came to anything that could punch a hole into someone. She tapped a few buttons, navigating through the UI, then swore. "Auto targeting systems are offline. Server that was storing those isn't connecting to the mainframe."
"Too good to expect everything hadn't gone untouched by the flooding.
Any way to make it work?"
"Manual control," she replied, typing out commands and reading the interface displays. "We'd need to get more consoles online so that more than one turret can be used simultaneously. There are twelve on each side of the

bunker in total. But I can only control one at a time. This isn't good."
No kidding. Time to cheat.
"Journey, any way to re-create a targeting software?"
"Negative," it said, ruining my fun. "No template exists that can be modified to fit this architecture."
"What, you can't create something from scratch?"
I was sure Journey could create things wholesale. This screamed like a restriction of some kind.
"Synthetic programming module may not modify code outside predefined templates."
"Let me take a wild guess. Another security issue?"
"Unknown. No reasoning was given."
Too niche of a use maybe? People from Journey's era probably had separate systems dedicated to generating programs for them then, or they never needed the suits of armor to have such a feature? Focus. Not worth thinking about right now. Job to do.
"What have we got left to work with, Kidra?" I asked.
She kept her gaze on the console, opening up logs and system prompts with quick and practiced movements. "I don't see any backup software. I'll take control of one turret on our side and use it to help thin out the enemy. If I find a way to get more online, I'll do what I can."
"If we bring more cells, can we power the rest of the consoles?"
Her helmet tipped down, looking at the keyboard now. Thinking. "I don't think the other screens here are turret emplacements. This console wasn't built to be a manual override. More a central hub to command all of them. I would expect additional turret controls closer to each specific turret."
It rubbed me raw that this brief excursion only ended up in semi-success.
Had to take what we got though. I drew out the rifle, and Journey's spirit ate any remaining water inside it without prompting.
Windrunner caught sight of me first on my return. "How'd the turret plan go?" he asked.
I gave him the quick brief and the rest of the fireteam as well while I took my place on the firing lines.
"Better than I hoped," the knight said. "It could have been all for nothing at the worst."
Ironreach scoffed. "Did you see the size of the turrets, ye daft buckethead? I did. Got a good look at the buggers earlier. I don't think they

fire small caliber shots, let me tell you. I'm thinking one turret is going to pay back more than just snow."
Above, I could hear mechanical whining and then deep grinding thuds as one of the turrets on this side rumbled awake. Right on cue.
Then it fired, and the world exploded into color and sound.
Ironreach chuckled, watching the result. "Should have taken that bet.
Fuck me. I'd have made off like a raider."
On seeing the destruction unleashed, I was a lot more satisfied with my actions in hindsight. Simple reason for that: the turret's ammunition was explosive.
They didn't fire a few hundred rounds a minute, more single-shot fire at a steady pace. The small explosions were shredding into the screamers and blowing them into pieces on impact. The machines couldn't dodge these shots; Kidra was aiming at their feet, having already gotten a handle on the best way to use these turrets. The designers had picked the right ammunition for the right job.
A minute later, it got even better. Mechanical whirling sounds above me intensified, and then the entire surrounding was lit up in turret fire.
Kidra had figured out a way to command all twelve turrets on our side at the same time. It was a scene of fireworks outside now.
With the full bunker defenses online, the screamers were being whittled away far faster than more could show up. Even parts of the mite buildings were being chewed into.
"You see that, Windrunner? My kind of music right there," Ironreach noted, now only taking cleaning shots to break down whatever the turrets had left crippled.
"Stay focused," the Shadowsong prime added in, putting down the chatter. "We're still in danger, and there are civilians here without relic armor. No situation is safe enough to put our guard down."
The sound of splashing and footfalls behind us prompted me to glance behind thinking the machines had made it through. Instead, it was Atius,
jogging up to the group.
He grabbed the side of my shoulder and leaned down to look through the weapon slit behind me, scanning through the battlefield, silently updating his plan. "Your ideas paid off, lad. Excellent work. These turrets could cover our retreat in full even, we might be able to make a break for it all together. Far higher chance of success."

"That's all Kidra, my lord," I said. "We only managed to get one working manually when I left. She must have found a workaround."
"Are we abandoning the previous plan?" one of the knights asked.
The clan lord nodded. "We are, depending on if these turrets can remain active. The faster we get moving, the less time the machines have to swarm in. They have an infinite army, only they require time to muster it all here.
We get past that blast door and it won't matter how many machines they send at us, we'll be home free and laughing the whole way, lads." He turned to me,
pointing away back into the heart of the bunker. "Let's go get your sister,
find out what she did, and see if she can make her way here or if I need to take her place."
I didn't have to be told twice, and once more I was backtracking through the flooded bunker with Atius right at my side. This place was growing on me, and I was already starting to get a hang of where everything was. If I had a bit more time, I might even pin up a wallpaper and see about which bunk bed was still in one piece.
Kidra found us halfway back. She looked panicked almost, having clearly rushed her own way through to here. "Winterscar did something," she said the very moment she came into view, "and now there's some sort of glowing sigil on the console. Do you know anything about this? Anything at all?"
"Glowing sigil?" Atius asked, intrigued.
"Winterscar's spirit flew down on a metal part of the console and consumed parts of it to form a symbol of some kind. It looked like two spirals with decorations on the side of each, my lord. Then that whole assembly glowed blue and the turrets all started firing."
"So, you weren't behind getting all the turrets?" I asked.
"No, that's something Winterscar did. I swear it by all the gods in orbit.
Except the armor isn't answering when I ask it, it's only stating it was a security breach."
I was torn between going back to figure out what the gods happened or the priority to evacuate.
Atius made the choice for me. "We don't have time to investigate, lass.
The video logs will have to do. I grieve with you about Tenisent, and anything that could involve his hand is something I would wish to investigate as well. However, it's more critical that we make an exit." He turned, water swirling away at his feet.
Kidra understood. Whatever had happened, we'd have to figure it out

once we were topside. For now, we had to thank our good fortune and make a break for it.
That didn't mean I couldn't shake the ominous feeling in the back of my mind. Occult scrapshit, like Atius had already determined, this was definitely Father. He'd done something.
The whole way back, I almost expected Winterscar to glow again or otherwise take control from Kidra out of nowhere. Nothing of the kind happened. The armor continued to behave and react exactly as expected of relic armor. If I had more time, I would be interrogating that suit of armor for answers.
Back at the firing line, the front doors were ready to open on command.
From what little I could see, the entrance plaza was littered with machine fragments and small craters with rubble all over the place. Some of the turrets had stopped firing, likely from lack of targets.
"This is it then," Atius said. "Windrunner, open the gate. Shadowsongs,
grab your whelps off the sled. We're sprinting at full speed the moment the door's open."
The knights worked as a team, unlocking the door and pushing it open.
Within the first sliver of the outside view through the fortress entrance, I could see the massive blast door in the distance, towering above the mite buildings like the gates to another world. A sprint away to be sure but reachable.
The Shadowsongs took both Calem and Ankah on their backs and then charged into the door, adding their weight and power. In moments, the heavy bunker barrier had swung clear open and we had room to shuffle through.
"Knights!" Atius roared out, "full speed, and stop for nothing! Cut down anything in the way!"
The group didn't waste a second. A Deathless, six relic knights, two scrappers, and a hoversled filled with power cells rocketed out of the bunker at full speed. The ground blurred under us as all of us pushed the relic armors to their max. Kidra and I began to lag behind, simply not trained for a perfect sprint. The Shadowsongs stayed slightly ahead, also unable to keep a full speed with their hands holding onto the pair of scavengers.
Our group formed an almost unspoken formation, with Atius leading the charge at the front, followed by Windrunner and Ironreach at both his sides.
The blast door wasn't in a direct line of sight, but it was close enough and large enough to spot above the mite buildings. It looked like a cathedral

entrance, filled with inscribed decorations I couldn't make out from this distance.
All around us, machine parts littered the street. A drake up ahead peeked around the corner, only to have two separate explosive rounds from the bunker turrets fly over us and strike it from far beyond the range of our own rifles.
The unfortunate drake collapsed, head reeling back and splintering into pieces while the decapitated body slumped limply into the ground.
Screamers emerged from what looked like a sewer grate and were just as quickly targeted and dispatched by the deadly turrets, taking out chunks of the road itself.
We were going to make it. A few hundred meters and we could already see the street turn into a large plaza that must connect with the destination.
And then, with a deep rumbling sound, the blast doors began to slowly close.
"Weapons out," Atius called out, drawing out his occult blade. "We'll be taking a right in the plaza up ahead. The turrets won't have us on visual after that. If the doors have started closing, that means the enemy must have gotten there first and begun the process. Windrunner, Ironreach, speed up and help me clear out the path for the others."
I knew what he meant. The bunker had done its part. Now the rest of the machines that came between us and the door were going to be up to us.
We raced into the plaza and ran to the right, approaching a massive set of steps that lead up to the door.
The blast doors were even more massive up close. If I had thought the doors looked like a cathedral of old, this view solidified the idea. It nestled deep into the cavern walls of this metal city, the wide plaza accepting all paths into the gently sloping steps.
I expected to run into an army between us and the door. Instead, only one lone target stepped out of the closing doorway.
Holding a spear with a lazy grip in one hand, he had stark white hair that was short on top with a long braid at the back and an angled jawline covered in ceramic white. Black lines split parts of his face, almost like war paint.
What gave him away were the glowing violet eyes, watching us with befuddled amusement.
The man in white flicked his spear out to the side. As if he had silently sent an order with the motion, the blast door froze in its tracks, grinding to a

halt. Only a crack remained, enough for three knights to fit through side by side. Left almost like a challenge to us.
Atius slowed from his frantic sprint, back into a jog and then a full stop at the base of the steps. The rest of the team filled out behind him. We got a longer, more critical view of this new opponent.
The man had a loose relationship with armor. His right shoulder pad wasn't really armor at all but one massive and narrow triangle-like shield. A tip going far past his shoulder.
His chest and legs were only partially covered, with the rest of his body on display, sculpted like marble. Black cape-like cloth draped over his left shoulder, obscuring the entire arm while his right held that spear. Somehow,
the spear didn't seem to be hindered by the shield shoulder pad he wore. In fact, that shoulder pad didn't seem connected to him at all on second look,
instead floating a few inches away.
That wasn't the only part that floated. Above him, a massive ring spun slightly off tilt like a metal halo, glowing violet on the outer edges of the spikes.
All put together, he stood at the top of those stone steps with the aura of a monarch. As if the world was beneath him. Like a god who had descended from the mountaintops to deal with the rats that scurried under. Atius was right. There was no doubt about who—or what—this was.
The champion of the machines. The last barrier between us and the surface.
"Going somewhere?" the Feather calmly asked.

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

DEMI GODS

A

tius glared up at the Feather. A complex balance of hatred, anger, and cold calculation flickered across his face. "To'Aacar," he said. "You're in the way."
The enemy, this man—or machine—named To'Aacar, tilted his head slightly to the side as if confused. The halo above him shifted sluggishly in response, slowly floating through the air. "Did you think I wouldn't? That I'd let you scurry away like a rat?" His voice was light, almost regal. He took leisurely steps down, looking around the city like a bored tourist before stopping a suitable distance away.
The man gave a lazy look behind him, to the massive blast door. "Really,
not a single one of these second-rate shells thought to close up the obvious escape route. Too much of the old-world architecture in their skulls. Not enough true intellect. The pale lady spends too much time playing with her food if you ask me." He paused for a moment, contemplating something.
"You humans have a good saying about this if I recall…"
His left hand lifted out from under the black cloth shoulder cape—if it could be called a hand. Floating metal pieces that vaguely resembled a hand,
chaotically moving on some invisible current.
That fragmented, claw-like thing held his chin as if he were deep in thought. "Ah! I remember now! It went like this: if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." His voice dropped a few octaves at that last word, an omen of violence behind it, twisted deeply with annoyance and hatred.
"How are you here?" Atius asked. "I thought I'd left you to rot a continent away."

The Feather laughed. "Distance is nothing to me. All I need is a body on the other end. But I'll give you credit for the deception. Imagine my surprise on finding out this is where you've really been hiding all these centuries."
The voice reverberated around the metal city, magnified far louder than a human could. "The middle of nowhere. You should have sent me… what did the old humans call it? A postcard! Yes, that's the term. Aren't we old friends by now?"
The Deathless clearly didn't rise to the bait. "Let the rest of my fireteam go, and I'll stay behind to deal with you. I give you my word on it."
The Feather smiled. "Always appreciated how quick on the uptake you were. I'll give them until you die to make it through the door. Any that haven't scampered through, I'll kill. Any that get in the way, I'll kill as well.
If you can't survive long enough for them to close the door, then they all die."
"We're in agreement," Atius said. Turning to us, he gave his orders.
"Fireteam, make your way by the sides. Sprint as fast as you can the moment I engage. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to assist me. Not even a bullet. Make your way through the door and trigger the full close. Leave me behind. Find me topside."
"It's seven to one. Can't we simply kill this piece of scrap and be done with it, m'lord?" Ironreach said to the side, hand itching at his blade hilt.
"That," the Shadowsong prime said, pointing up to the machine man, "is a Feather. You haven't seen them before, Ironreach. This is a foe on a different league. I've only seen two people fight them on even ground—and I am not one of them."
"What Shadowsong means is the cost," Atius said, "Aye, we could put this monster down if we all worked together. To'Aacar will certainly kill at least three or even all four of you before we bury the bastard. I know him,
and I know what he's capable of. I'd rather keep him focused on me and have the rest of you escape whole. I can return, the rest of you can't. One relic knight lost down here is already too much."
The Feather's spear blade lit up in bright occult blue, and he swung it around in a lazy arc. "Are you finished with your pets? Or should I eliminate the distractions?"
"I'm surprised a fight is all you still want after all this time," Atius shot back, turning to him and taking a few steps forward ahead of our group.
"I am the one above all challenge and reach, Atius. It's in the name. This

is my nature. Did you think I care about anything else?"
"The pale lady truly sent you here for nothing else but your own entertainment?"
To'Aacar chuckled, an insincere-sounding mockery of a laugh. "Oh, the pale lady has indeed given me a mission, all right. And that's all you'll get from me. I know those tricks of yours, Deathless." The spear spun, and he leveled the tip down to the stone steps, point sinking into the rock with little issue. "I'm done talking. You've had over three hundred years to improve,
don't disappoint me."
Atius didn't reply. Instead, he lifted his blade and leveled it in a proper stance.
I recognized it. Father's dueling stance. This must have been its origin.
The Feather smiled, a broad, wicked thing, full of malice. It leaned down and leaped forward. The sheer power behind those legs crushed the flooring in a ring around him as the machine champion exploded into action, flying the whole distance, a dust trail of crushed rock billowing behind his bare feet.
The fireteam instantly scattered, sprinting to the sides and getting out of the way, Kidra taking hold of my shoulder and shoving me forward while I gawked.
Atius responded in kind. Three ghostly occult-blue images of the man split off his body, dashing in different directions. His material body stepped forward, left hand extended out as if to catch the incoming Feather's spear in hand.
The Feather slammed into the fight, striking a domed, transparent white shield extended out of Atius's hand. The spear rang out at the impact with a single pure note in the air, a burst of wind scattering the dust around on impact. Atius withstood the blow as if he were an immovable mountain,
occult blue pulsing across his armored arm.
To me, it felt as if time had paused on contact. The Feather remained frozen in the air, all momentum stopped. The ghost images of Atius each converged on the Feather.
Violet eyes moved in that frozen sliver of time, taking sight of all ghostly threats.
It grinned, then used the shield like a wall to push himself back out of reach. With the additional space, the machine twisted under a spectral strike,
blocked another with the pole of the spear, and lashed out at the third image before that ghost could complete its attack. It instantly faded away the

moment the spear sliced through the chest, cohesion breaking apart, bits of occult trailing behind the spear swing like mist. The other two ghosts vanished as well, one after the other, without another strike attempted.
The machine had moved fast, even the wind billowing behind its wake.
He dealt with all three mirror images in seconds.
Atius stepped forward into range regardless, executing a thrust and following with a series of strikes. The Feather countered the comparatively slow attacks from Atius—and then was forced on the defensive.
Each slice the Deathless took, a mirror image superimposed on his frame,
taking a second additional attack from another orientation. Only the Feather's ridiculous speed allowed him to deal with those conflicting attacks.
By the time I'd snapped back to my senses, the bout between the Demigods had reset, a clear draw on both sides as they took some distance from each other. The Feather licked his lips, leaned down, and once more rocketed out to deliver another ear-shattering strike, spear easily telegraphed as he drew it high above his head, a wide and bloodthirsty grin stretched across his face, that black side-cape trailing behind him like smoke.
This time I couldn't keep track of the fight as I'd sprinted past them on the side. The other relic knights all filed away up the steps, racing to the blast doors. Behind me, I heard the ringing of that spear, metal striking metal at furious speeds. Whatever the fight looked like, it made for a strange musical tempo of metallic clangs.
I had made it halfway to the entryway before my luck ended.
One instant, I was steadily racing across the steps, the ground blurring under me. The next, I'd found myself thrown high up. Flipping and tumbling uncontrollably a good dozen feet above ground. The landing was rough;
Journey's shields flared up to absorb the shock perfectly. I landed on my back and rolled over on my feet to see what happened.
A massive rip in the ground spanned from near the fight as if a plow had torn a line through the stone steps in an unrelenting straight line. Dirt, gravel,
and pulverized stone steps scattered on the sides of that new trench.
The two immortals continued to fight farther away. Around them was the clear evidence on how exactly this rip in the ground had come to be. Each strike of the machine's spear now glowed bright occult blue, causing a massive crescent of light to fly off in an arc with every sweeping attack. This pulse of power ripped through the ground as it flew in a straight line out.
The trench that had knocked me off my feet hadn't been the first of such

landmarks. There were at least five or six lines already ripped into the stone steps.
The Feather was using this to destroy multiple ghost images Atius used,
angling himself so that the physical spear-tip would obliterate one, while the follow-up arc of destruction would catch another behind. The ghosts didn't dodge. Their attacks looked pre-determined—something the Feather was clearly aware of and making use of.
Atius grimly continued the assault, constantly striking, moving with efficiency and calculation, ghost images forming up and leaping into action at every moment of the fight. Occasionally, these ghosts would lance out and strike at nothing, likely sent out not to deal damage but to force his opponent's position, making certain dodges and movements unviable.
As for my predicament, it was quickly clear to me I'd been simply unlucky. One of those crescent attacks had struck too close by. What made me even more unlucky was simple physics—my armor was powerful and well equipped to take splash damage like this.
My scavenger backpack was not.
It had ripped open, spilling out the last of my tools, my faithful crowbar clinking loudly as it hit the stone ground a few times with quick spins. I'd have mourned the loss of my beloved tool, but I wasn't exactly torn up about leaving it behind in exchange for living.
What I had a much more vested interest in was the yellow sphere Atius had entrusted to my safekeeping. That tumbled out into the open, rolling on the steps before getting stuck on the sides of one of those blasted-out rock lines, wedged into the debris.
I was debating on how to grab it back, but Kidra had been closer and needed no prompting. She was already on the intercept course, her own scavenger bag ready in one hand while the other was reaching out to scoop up the orb.
She'd almost made it before a deafening explosion came from the fight and the Feather flew across my vision, landing hard into the steps in a hasty crouch, even needing his other hand to steady himself.
The manic grin he wore turned into a frown when he noticed her in the way as if she were a fly in his presence.
With a derisive snort, the Feather stood back up and struck out with the spear from right to left, lighting quick, batting away a nuisance. The ridiculously fast blow caught Kidra by surprise.

Winterscar's shield flared up, taking the brunt of the strike on the chestplate and leaving her armor unmarred, forcing her back a step to stay steady. Journey's HUD showed a massive dip on Winterscar's profile. That blow had nearly knocked out all her shields.
The Feather clearly expected this. Just as quick, twisting on himself to spin around, he'd already lined up another attack before even checking the impact of his first. The second follow-up struck Kidra's back, battering her down onto her knee from the sheer force, Winterscar's shields flaring up again and shattering with a flash of blue light. I heard Kidra gasp as the hit knocked the wind out of her. Both hits had come one after another, as fast as a second between each. Another twist and the third hit was rapidly approaching as an underhand chop, going right for her throat and chin.
Kidra's reflexes kicked in.
She leaned back, looking straight up, right as the spear passed clear by narrowly avoiding her neck.
The Feather gracefully redirected the attack, this time turning it into a horizontal strike, aiming for her throat again. She ducked the blow, avoiding the slice while retaliating with a sweeping kick in the same motion and then executing a blind tackle.
To'Aacar easily jumped over the kick but found himself in a terrible position to avoid the follow-up tackle, forced to take on the shoulder a full blow and get thrown backward. On landing, he growled and cleaved through the air with the spear, a massive crescent of blue slicing through the air and racing out. Kidra slid under the attack once more, free hand reaching out to the golden orb, snatching it off the ground.
It flared bright yellow the instant she took hold of it, the glowing light pooling up to her wrist, flowing around in a way it hadn't when I or Atius had held it.
She stopped in her tracks. Whatever the effect was, it had been jarring.
More than just a change in color intensity. Kidra had excellent combat discipline; she should never have stopped moving in the middle of a fight.
In that pause, To'Aacar readied his long spear once more, winding it back for a full arc.
Only to have a thrown crowbar crash directly into his face, interrupting the attack.
The blow had hit him hard enough to force his entire head to tilt back,
even parts of his body moving with the shock. The sound of metal on metal

rang out as the crowbar flew off to the side, clearly bent.
Journey had made the toss perfectly accurate, empowering the throw with relic-powered speed. That should have ripped a chunk out of concrete or caved in anyone's skull. Somehow, the Feather didn't seem harmed at all by the attack, more insulted than anything else. Slowly, the Feather turned his head to stare in the attack's direction, with a look of utter hatred. Directly at me.
"You dare challenge me?" he hissed.
I'll admit, throwing a glorified stick of metal at the living embodiment of machine death wasn't my brightest idea to date—and boy, I'd had a laundry list of bad ideas up till now—but it had a sort of rural panache I felt proud of.
The last job of my trusted and prized tool had been to bonk the head of a demi-god in order to save my sister. A fitting way to say goodbye.
"Not my fault you weren't paying attention!" I yelled back, already sprinting away. "Consider it a free lesson!"
Oh, that didn't do me any goodwill, but the extra seconds of time I'd bought had been enough for Kidra to shake herself out of that trance and get back into action. She sprinted away, bag sealed shut and no trace of the glowing orb anywhere.
The Feather growled out something unintelligible, not even noticing as she ran off, all eyes on me. Probably contemplating the most painful way to squash a human.
The only issue to that plan of his: I'd bought enough time for myself as well.
"Here's the follow-up lesson," Atius's voice rang out, directly behind the Feather.
To'Aacar instantly turned, spear leaping into a defensive stance.
An arc of occult blue ripped through the ground right at the Feather. The same ability Atius had used to clear out the machines at the bunker entrance only turned vertical, likely to avoid hitting anyone but his target. It was still far enough away for the Feather to have ample time to step to the side and avoid the attack.
Time Kidra and I put to good use.
The clan lord had just tossed out his version of a crowbar so we could get away. Great guy. By the time the wave of force had passed by, we'd already booked it safely away.
The Feather glanced back, contemplating on chasing after us or dealing

with the rapidly approaching Deathless. Atius didn't give the Feather a choice, leaping out with relic-powered speed.
Annoyance flickered through To'Aacar's features. He parried the first blow with a derisive snort, and the two began to trade hits once more.
There were no more ghosts this time. Atius's features showed only an impassive and expressionless look. The difference was his eyes. They glowed bright occult blue, leaving trails in the air as he moved.
The Feather's own expression turned from arrogance to worry and then to outright fear. He narrowly avoided decapitation no less than three times, with each of its counterattacks parried or deflected with contemptuous ease. It was an extremely jarring sight as the Feather could—and did—move at least twice as fast as Atius could. Some of these strikes seemed too fast for me to even see them except as an afterimage in my mind's eye. And yet Atius was holding his ground, catching each attack and forcing To'Aacar farther back.
I don't know how to describe what I saw. Atius's movement was simply perfect. Every strike, every parry, every feint and dodge, all of it.
The machine stopped any attempts at attacking, focusing on putting distance between itself and the Deathless.
"Get through the door!" Atius shouted as he chased behind the Feather.
Kidra and I didn't need to be told twice. Both of us were nearly there. The rest of the knights and the Shadowsong scavengers had already made it through the entryway. I could see them all, waiting for the two of us to make it through before triggering the door to close.
The ringing of blows resumed behind us, and I chanced a glance as I ran.
Atius's eyes had stopped glowing, and his fight had returned to using ghost images in combination with his transparent dome shield from his hand to keep the faster Feather on even ground.
It wasn't enough.
In a flurry of blows, the Feather had sneaked a hidden knife and stabbed deep into Atius's leg while simultaneously ducking under a horizontal decapitating strike.
To'Aacar took a few casual hops backward, putting some distance between them and resetting the fight. "Seems it's over now, old friend," the Feather taunted. "Last words?"
Atius limped back into a measured stance. "Your name is meaningless.
You're not above my reach," he said. With his free hand, he traced out a hand signal at the same time.

Catch.
The Feather laughed, then sneered. "You forget your place." He leaned down and leaped out once more with speed, flying in a direct line with the wounded Deathless.
Atius didn't extend his hand out to block the strike with that shield of his.
Instead, he lunged and struck at the same time, a ghost image already forming to deliver an additional swing.
The result was catastrophic.
The spear punched through both his relic armor's shield and plating,
stabbing straight through his chest and out the other side, spilling the ground with his blood.
It had cost the Feather, however. While To'Aacar had twisted at the last second to avoid the incoming thrust and the ghost image at the same time,
Atius's sword instantly redirected from that thrust into a blind downward swing, striking the Feather's right hand—and slicing completely through.
The occult surged, a pulse expanding out of that blade edge, reality warping around as it cut. I felt it once more—that soul pulse—this time a feeling of something being ripped apart. Far tamer than what had happened to Winterscar, but no less noticeable.
The Feather's reaction was immediate. It twirled to the side, grabbing the spear with the remaining left hand, using a leg to both pull the spear and kick Atius away.
The machine glanced at the cut-off stump, bewildered. It didn't bleed.
"What is this sorcery, Deathless? What have you done to me?"
Atius stood painfully back onto his feet. "Maiming you." A cold and vicious tone lingering in the air with his words, blood lining his grin. "I told you. Your name is meaningless. Now, everyone can challenge you."
Those words cut the Feather far more than anything physical. The machine looked dazed, almost confused.
Atius lifted his sword once more and then hurled it at the Feather in one last gambit. The move was unfortunately slow and predictable. To'Aacar took a step to the side with contemptuous ease, almost on reflex. The thrown sword hadn't even been triggered, no glow of the occult cutting edge appeared.
The blade flew by the Feather, missing him completely, and continued undisturbed on its real trajectory—directly to me, where I stood the closest,
behind the closing doors in safety.

I extended my hand out to the incoming weapon. "Journey!" I called out,
trusting it would understand. My armor didn't fail me, taking control and snapping out my hand as the relic blade flew by, yanking it perfectly out of the air by the hilt.
To'Aacar turned to gaze in my direction, a look of realization stretching across his features as he glanced from his cut arm to my shadowed figure.
The door continued to close.
He took an addled step in my direction, cut hand raising out as if trying to grab me across this distance with a missing hand.
Instead, two arms grabbed the machine from behind and forced the Feather into the ground. Atius's weight shoved the creature down into the steps, blood still spilling from his wounds onto the pristine white cloth of the machine.
The Deathless grabbed its head with one hand, fingers digging into the white hair, lifting the stunned creature's face up.
And then he slammed it down into the stone steps. Full force.
The rock shattered to pieces under the blow. That metal halo bounced away, falling flat on the ground. Atius lifted the head once more.
The Feather's left hand let go of his spear and snapped up to claw the man off him, but Atius simply grabbed that with his free hand as if already expecting the attempt, locking it in an iron grip.
Once more To'Aacar's head was lifted high, forcing his body to arch up,
and Atius slammed it down into the steps with the full crushing force only a relic armor could provide, again and again. The Feather spasmed, flailing around in an attempt to free himself. Chips peeled off his face, and each slam exposed more. The strikes pulverized the stone, cracks spreading in all directions.
On the fifth, the Feather jumped instead with a scream of incoherent fury.
It carried Atius up with him, spinning in the middle of the air, throwing the Deathless off.
Atius hit the ground hard but still rolled on his side and got up. The Feather landed softly, almost soundlessly ahead in comparison, immediately racing across the steps to intercept, the remaining uncut hand held in a straight open palm, like a dagger.
Atius batted the attack aside, throwing out his own counter punch and a follow-up knee. They fought hand to hand, a complex set of attacks, blocks,
and feints interwoven.

The clan lord had taken too much damage. Already his stance alone was faltering, his speed and accuracy draining away as black-shaded blood now heavily painted the steps. The machine scored more and more glancing hits,
and the fight was rapidly devolving against Atius.
Without warning, it all came to a sudden end.
Feather had found an opening and struck at the face, stunning the clan lord. With that dagger-like hand, the follow-up attack sped out, stabbing clean through his throat, in and out in an eye-blink.
Atius stumbled back, blood gushing out of his neck as he faltered down onto a knee. One hand lifted to his throat by reflex in a failing attempt to stem the blood loss. The Feather took a step forward. Atius let go and attempted one last lunging attack. To'Aacar caught the punch by the wrist, then used his knee as a fulcrum to snap the elbow. The Feather twisted him around immediately after, slamming a clawed hand directly into his heart.
There was no pain on Atius's features. Instead, he gave one last bloody grin. No words said, his smile was enough to say it all.
The Feather dropped his body with a scream as if Atius burned to the touch, then turned to the closing door.
Too late. The gate was long past the point that anyone could fit through it now. Only a crack remained, a vertical slice to view the world from.
Occult pulsed across To'Aacar and he outright vanished from view,
reappearing from a shimmering blue mist right at the opening of the gate. His hand of floating metal parts reaching right through the open window of space,
colliding hard against the gate, unable to fit more than the arm against the rapidly closing entry. Occult surged around him again, features blurring, but whatever this ability was, the blast doors seemed to be impervious to it.
"You." He snarled, occult fading away in wisps around him, voice gaining intensity and insanity with each word. "You think you've won? Tell Atius he hasn't seen the last of me. None of you rats have. Wait for me.
WAIT FOR ME! WAIT FOR M—"
The door slammed shut, cutting his words.
The last I saw was one baleful violet eye glaring back at me, deranged and filled with hatred. Parts of his skin cracked off in flakes, a hand covered in blood still pointing at me as the gigantic doors sealed. Grinding the metal wholesale starting from the shoulder up to the fingers, crushing them into scrap. They almost danced as they broke apart, the cohesion keeping them afloat going wild, losing any resemblance of a hand.

The door sides pressed and entombed all pieces between them. Leaving only the grand, sealed doorway as one massive mural.
Silence and darkness remained.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

THE FINAL MILE

T

he first signs of the true surface came as ice, formed on the dirt ground before us, crunching under our boots as we marched. The air temperature had been steadily dropping, pairing with the ambient drop in humidity. We took camp only once in this final accent, knowing it would be the last time we could camp out without helmets. Soon the enemy would be the traditional one, the climate above.
The surface was drawing near. Exhaustion closer behind.
Ankah and Calem took the time to affix their surface gear back on,
checking each other's gauges and metrics, making sure the environmental suits were powered and ready for the next leg of the journey. The rest of the knights took one last moment to consume the rest of their rations while they could freely keep their helmets off.
Once we were back in that icy embrace, it would be a death sentence to take off our helmets for any reason. The next time any of us could eat freely would be inside the safety of a powered airspeeder or inside an expedition heated tent.
"Hell of a dive," Ironreach said, sitting down at my side with a thump on the rough concrete block I'd picked as a seat. "It's not usually like this, kid.
I've been serving as a knight under the clan lord for just about seven years now, and that's the first Feather I've seen. Heard stories 'bout them though.
Gotta say, they lived up to the tales. Gods, not a bastard I want to run into again."
The ration tasted dry and dull in my mouth as I chewed, the crushed insect feet just as annoying as always to chew on. I offered the last few bites to my newly arrived guest. He shook his hand, telling me he was just as

enthusiastic about the dry food as I was. "That just so happened to be my first time seeing a Feather," I said, dryly. "Small world."
He nodded, looking over at the assembled group. "I agree it ain't the best first impression as a newly minted knight. Hopefully, the rest of your career doesn't follow the same luck as today."
"I think I might almost sell my armor just for a safe bed right now.
Almost."
He chuckled at that, which devolved into light coughing. The dry and cold air had that effect if it was breathed in too quickly. Might have been a better idea to set camp earlier, except we'd all been spooked after that last fight. The faster we left the scene, the better.
"So, what happens now?" I asked.
He gave me a somber look, those unshaved whiskers of his starting to pick up ice crystals from his breath. "We keep going, kid. But this is the home stretch, the safer part of the expeditions. At this level, the machines don't follow. Don't really know why they don't come past a certain point.
Guess that's how it's always been. We're done here, except for the climb up and trip home."
He pointed up ahead in the tunnel, farther into the gloom. "We'll either find this direction exits out into a surface mountain, or it might be more of a hike first. Sometimes, we could even run into a half-buried site and find a stairwell going straight up. Depends."
The Shadowsong prime moved past us, hoversled trailing behind him.
The glint of Breaker caught my eye, left where I'd stowed the clan lord's ancient weapon. "Why did he toss his sword?" I asked.
"Probably so that machine git didn't loot it from his dead body,"
Ironreach said. "Deathless don't disappear immediately after they die. It'll be an hour or so before his body dissolves, and anything he's wearing will dissolve with him only then. Never seen it happen myself, 'cause the clan lord hasn't ever died in recent history, but that's what the others told me would happen. He don't carry much on him for exactly that reason. Nothing that he can't afford to lose anyhow. Armor is important to us, but to the machines, they don't care one bit 'bout that. Undersiders have entire armies of relic knights down here. It'd be like your enemy caring about looting that rebreather o' yours. Occult blades are the same too. At least normally, 'xcept I'd never seen a blade do that."
He gave a significant look at the stowed blade as the Shadowsong prime

filed past, already hooking his helmet back on. Ankah and Calem tagged along behind, while the other knights stood up from their break, helmets all being donned.
"He cut that Feather's hand off. And that feeling, that pulse, you felt that right? I wasn't just imagining things?"
"You mean that feeling of reality being bent over a knee and slapped around like it owed rent? Naw, no idea what you're going on about. Nobody felt that. We've all been walking silently this whole time for a completely different reason."
"Now you're just gaslighting me, you little git." Ironreach huffed,
standing up and extending out a hand to me. I clasped it, letting him pull me up.
"There's no such thing as gaslighting," I told him sternly. "You're just making that word up."
Windrunner followed behind the pack, snickering. "Finally, you poor bastard, you finally have a friend to shit-talk with."
"Finally? Since when did you get so shy?" He turned back to me,
pointing at Windrunner as he did so. "Look at that buckethead go, acting like he didn't laugh at my jokes under his helmet this whole time. Hope he gets dunked in the white someday." Ironreach clipped his helmet back on,
securing it with a scoff.
"Go propose already," Windrunner scoffed right back. "We're on the home stretch, what could possibly go wrong?" He turned while walking and drew his hands out to the world as if implying everything around him was exactly what could go wrong.
Ironreach grumbled. "But see, we just faced something that could scrap the fackin' clan lord himself. And look who's still laughing." Then he beat his chest. "It's me. I did. I'm the one still laughing."
Shadowsong prime cut in, "Quiet. Have some deference to the fallen. I am no man to subscribe to superstition, and yet despite that fact, the two of you are getting my hair to stand on edge."
The knights caught up behind, both nodding. We all marched in silence from then on. They were keeping morale high in their own way.
Kidra walked ahead, keeping a hand on her rifle. I pinged on my comms for a private discussion with her. She accepted, the channel opening up.
"I read. You have something on your mind?"
I debated how best to ask her, then decided to just go right for it. "The…

ahh, hard drive that we recovered. It seemed to have an effect on you. You paused in the middle of combat, nearly died for that too."
There wasn't any change in her motions, still following the flow of the group at their speed. I could tell she was contemplating how to answer somehow. Intuition.
"Something reached out to me. It felt like I had been... judged in some way. I find it difficult to put into words. It was as jarring to feel as when the clan lord cut that Feather's hand, only more personal and not… violent. I saw memories of my life, moments of decisions. Some easy, some harder. If there was something inside that hard drive, it was pleased at what it saw."
"Our mutual friend mentioned that Atius knew what was inside the hard drive," I said, finding it easier to weave in the lies here. We were still in the underground. I didn't want to break operational security. "Do you think he can shed some more light on this?"
"I intend to find out once we're reunited," she said. "I recognize you have a great many thoughts floating through your head right now, brother, but for me, that event is the only one I've been thinking about this entire march.
Believe me when I tell you, I intend to seek answers."
"Not afraid the clan lord will shut you down and say it's not our crickets to worry about and then shut you out of the loop?"
"I'd like to see him try."

The howl of wind, distant in the tunnels, was the first sign that we'd closed in on an escape from the land. The entire mission's experience was teetering in the back of my head, roiling to break free into my mind. Deep exhaustion was settling inside my bones, the numbness receding into a dull ache. My calf felt like it was a pulsing tumor, and there was something deeply unsettling with the side of my ribs. I'd kept it all at bay so far with drugs and some gallows humor, but everything was being stretched.
Teed's voice nearly undid it all—a lifeline that marked safety and the end of things. "This is Recon Twelve airspeeder to search party. Respond."
The group halted mid-step, a new energy passing through us all.
"This is Shadowsong One to Recon Twelve. We read you. We've returned with the package and need extraction soon. Atius and Winterscar

prime KIA. No other casualties. Begin approach to our coordinates."
If the comms from the surface were being picked up, that meant there was a hole somewhere by us that went into the open air. Considering there was now snow all over the place, I'd say we were just about there.
"Affirmative. Have your coordinates, punching engines now. Hard news to hear, see you all topside," Teed replied, and the comms went silent.
The group cheered right after, morale rising as we could all taste the end.
Hope rekindled, we went back into the march, moving with energy in our steps.
In minutes, it became clear why his comm signals were coming through.
The very next chamber wasn't a chamber at all but the deep bottom of a massive crevice.
And far above us was the night sky, filled with stars and the howling wind above, sweeping sheets of snow that occasionally obscured the view.
It was beautiful. A massive tapestry of shimmering white lights, blocked only by the shadowy cliff-side. The only other source of lights was our headlamps. Just a little more. Escape was only a few dozen meters above us.
"We'll need to scale the wall and lower a repel rope," Shadowsong said to the side, examining the sides of the wall. It wasn't rock, instead slabs of metal cubes made the bulk of it, and what looked to be the remains of a halfconsumed structure. Warped and bent as the metal rock faces had slowly crushed and twisted it over time.
The Shadowsongs were already working as a team. The two scavengers unhooked their ice picks and passed them off to Shadowsong Two. He spun them around in his hand experimentally as the prime packed up the rope up and handed him the filled bag.
Wordlessly, he scaled up the cliffside, using both ice picks in tandem to pull himself up as the rest of us remained watching. Relic armor made the feat something quick and effortless. A few minutes and he'd made it to the top, pulling himself over the lip of the cliffside and into the sleet of snow, bits of loose white ice falling down behind him as he vanished over the edge.
"Exit secured," the second in command said. "No sign of anything but wind and the white up here, sir."
From the darkness of the night sky and obscuring snowdrift, a rope rippled down, unfurling as it fell. It slapped against the side of the cliff a few times until caught in metal gauntlets at the bottom.
The Shadowsong prime passed the secured rope over to Windrunner,

ordering him up first.
Shadowsong had Calem and Ankah go next while the rest of us held the position. They took far longer compared to the armored knights, but none of us were pressed for time. One by one, we scaled the way up. No signs of trouble plagued us, no machines to chase after us one last time. Eventually, it came to me.
I grabbed the rope and used my legs to scale up the wall with the rope as a guideline. Journey made everything effortless. Given the power of relic armor, I suspected even a fall from here wouldn't damage me or the armor.
Of course, following that thought, memories of Winterscar falling down a dark abyss rose unbidden.
With every meter I pulled myself up, thoughts of the mission floated by as my mind held me hostage.
Waking to alarms and pain. The joy of discovery, the mites, and the utterly relentless machines. Constantly hunting behind us, a shadow of death.
Every event played through my head. With each length of rope I grabbed hold of and pulled, more thoughts swam past me.
And what they left behind were questions.
An icon remained on my HUD, blinking slowly, a notification waiting for my attention. 3.
Within that file, there would be instructions on using the relic at my belt,
left by the goddess herself. I hadn't dared to open it up down here, in the heart of the machine domain.
There were also coordinates to an old book she'd hidden away.
Knowledge I wasn't supposed to let the warlocks know about. If I had a guess at it, that book taught the occult arts. I saw a glimpse of my future, and it was tinged occult blue. Memories of the clan lord's fight floated through my mind, showing me what the true power of the occult was when wielded.
And of course, memories of a dead man standing, hand reaching for me,
occult streaks lighting a dark room. I had to find out what happened to Father. To Tenisent Winterscar's soul. I had to.
The edge of the cliff approached. A few more steps.
Inside the book was something called the soul fractal. The Julia set, she'd said.
Fractals in armor. That had to have been his last words to me. Inside these armors, those pattern designs must have been fractals etched into metal.
He must have seen them somehow, realized something, and tried to get me on

the right path with what little control or time he had left.
My hands finally reached for the cliff edge where the fingertips sank into the snow until catching hold of solid metal under it all. I lifted and pulled myself out of the underground.
The cold flowed past Journey's plate, howling across the empty surface.
Snowdrift flew by, curving around the unyielding metal armor. The white wastes stretched to all sides around me, hiding the insanity that lurked below.
In the distance, a massive silver pool of reflected moonlight glittered on the ice fields.
A churning snowstorm came from that distance, with an airspeeder at the vanguard, faint lights as the only clue of its identity. Teed was on approach.
I took a few aimless steps, my boots sinking in the thin sheet of snow with that familiar and welcoming crunch I knew time and time again.
Realization truly hit me only then.
It was over.
The journey had ended. I had survived. Home.
I collapsed on my knees, half-laughing, half-crying. Soon I found myself on my back, now feeling truly free. The release of built-up stress hit my system like a collapsing wall. Shakes coursed through my body, mixed with coughs and intermittent laughing. Journey quickly gave an annoyed squawk to halt all this rubbish, in the usual monotone. I wasn't doing my fractured rib any favors according to it, as it clearly marked and displayed on my HUD the strain. All color-coded in deep orange and reds. They blurred together in my sight, teardrops playing tricks with the light.
So instead I stayed lying down, getting slowly buried by the occasional gust of snowdrift.
Kidra hovered above my vision soon enough, a hand outstretched down to pick me up. I took her up on the offer and sat up. The rest of the knights had climbed up, with Ironreach last to surface. They had pulled the hoversled up at some point, all the power cells neatly lined up and glowing faintly with green-gold liquid on the cell windows. All of them mostly charged and ready for use. Distant sounds of an engine were getting louder as each second passed.
The night air was so clear, the space so wide and open, all perfectly lit by silver moonlight. It was almost surreal how peaceful it felt up here.
There was nothing in every direction, save for the approaching vehicle and truly distant mountains.

The airspeeder looked strange with the lack of scavengers, almost naked.
Normally, these would always be filled with people on the outside hull when in motion. The only times they were not was when inside a hanger bay,
sleeping. I suppose for the leftover rescue mission they had distributed most of the overflow crew among the rest of the expedition. What remained behind were the ones needed to operate the craft.
It banked into full view, curving to the side, killing any extra momentum smoothly as it lowered into the soft snow, landing gear already unfolded and ready to carry the full weight.
We all made our way wordlessly. A small, ragged line of relic knights and two scavengers marching forward in this moonlit night, soft lights from their own different suits twinkling, rapidly disappearing footprints left swept away behind in their wake.
Our little fireteam was packed inside and all tied down to the chairs within a minute, the hoversled being looted, cells passed over on a daisy chain into the storage compartments.
Shadowsong took charge again. "Pilot," he called out over the comms.
"Drive us back to the original site. That's where we'll find Lord Atius. He'll be waiting for us."
Teed's voice snapped into my helmet. "Aye, aye. Setting coordinates now. Waiting for the green light from all crew before takeoff."
The pickup had been touch and go. Once the crew secured the cells and items from outside the ship, they took their seats and the metal behemoth took flight once more. I watched as the dark crack in the ground grew distant,
our airspeeder speeding up and away. The little sliver of a doorway into a much wider and dangerous world.
Father was right. There were cracks into the underground everywhere, if you knew where to look.
"T minus five minutes until we reach the old site," Teed said to the general comms as the scavengers aboard unstrapped and continued to organize the newly taken supplies. A request pinged in my helmet from him to join the Winterscar sub-group. I accepted.
"Keith! You sly little pipe weasel, I kept thinking this was it! That you were dead. Can't tell you how happy I am to see you crawl into my ship one more time. And is that gods-damned relic armor you're bringing with you?
The comms sign showed your name, but the designation label… had to lean up to look through the window just to be sure."

"It is. The armor's name is Journey, an old crusader's armor left behind down there. I'd have died five times over if I hadn't had the luck of the goddess and found it."
In a literal way, but that wasn't something I'd say out loud until after I got a full debrief from Atius.
Teed laughed. "You got some explaining to do. Tell me the stories."
Kidra interrupted, done with stowing away gear and storming over to where I sat. "He will do no such thing. Keith, the only thing I'll allow you to do is head directly to medical right now." She jabbed a finger at the airlock.
Winterscar's helmet obscured all features, but that glare she sent me could be felt across walls. "You can both swap stories another time. And don't say no.
I will drag you kicking and screaming if I have to, the gods help me."
I tried to object, but Teed of all people talked over me. "I reckon the lady's right here, and she don't sound in a negotiating mood. The stories aren't going anywhere, yeah?"
"Traitor," I shot back, but I knew when I'd been overruled and meekly did her bidding.

The upper levels of an airspeeder were behind an airlock and isolated from the surface temperature. Past that cramped entrance, it was safe to take off my helmet. The feeling of warm air on my cheek was absolutely divine. The underground had been consistently cold to freezing, even if the air wasn't deadly to breathe.
Airspeeders were large behemoths; however, the inside wasn't that massive. The rapid response room shared duties with quite a few other hats,
including a direct doorway into the cockpit. Space was still a premium here.
The medical crew in place quickly got the full report from Journey and began to unpack all the equipment they'd need, calling out instruments and instructions to each other.
They'd asked me to sit down on the bed in the meantime, but I'd been stubborn and gone to visit Teed instead. I'd never missed a chance to sit in the cockpit room and watch the world whizz by, and damned if I'd break that tradition now. Oddly enough, I had no complaints or anyone stand in my way. The crew buzzed around, getting out of my way. Belatedly I realized the

behavior was what I'd done all my life around relic knights.
The door pulled open, and I walked right in, dropping down on the spare seat to his side as if it had been made for me.
"Look good in that plate, kid," Teed said, giving a quick glance before going back to his console. The white wastes flew by under us, the broken site slowly approaching in the distance. "I'll ask for a closer look once we're back home. Maybe take a few pictures. Ladies will love it."
"Imperials always look good in their armors," I shot back. "I like the gold too, fits my ego. And don't think I'm going to forget you and Kidra doubleteaming earlier. Are you going to do that every time someone bats their eyes at you?"
He grinned, pulling the handlebars slightly to the side and banking the airspeeder. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Swear on my life. And if I did, hypothetically, I'd only do it for the pretty ones."
"Peh. You can make it up by buying the first round."
He chuckled. "Already acting like a relic knight within the hour, right down to taking bribes. Can't wait to see where you go from here, m'lord."
Teed's estimation was on point. In a little over five minutes, we'd arrived at the collapsed site. The moon illuminated the whole gravesite, any sign of the expedition gone. The snow had already snuffed out the evidence.
The only thing that remained was a single silhouette of a person. As the airspeeder banked into a stop, I got a full sight of the anomaly.
Atius stood under that moonlight, a small fading trail of footsteps behind him leading from the collapsed site quickly being blown away, bit by bit. His features came into detail once the airspeeder lights pooled over him, lighting him up. The armor was gone—only his under tunic remained, whipping in the wind of the landing airspeeder. I suppose the Feather must have stripped the armor despite what Ironreach had said, maybe out of insult? No sign of blood anywhere to show for his last moments underground. Even his tunic didn't bear any marks of damage, only bits of caught snow.
He stalked forward under the open sky, making his way without a care in the world. Shadowsong extended his hand out, and the clan lord clasped it tightly. I lost sight as he entered the speeder.
"Everyone accounted for?" he asked over the comms once they had given him one. It was business as usual.
It didn't take long for him to confirm everything was as it should be.
"Fine work. We'll be setting camp here for the night and then discuss over

the morning on our next leg of the journey. Bring me some spare standard evosuit over-armor in the meantime. All crew, dismissed. Get some good sleep. I think we can indulge ourselves for a bit. The expedition master isn't anywhere nearby to look over our shoulders, after all."
That got a good laugh from the crew, and business as usual continued.
Soon another request to join the Winterscar comms pinged. And not just any request. The clan lord wanted to talk to us. Kidra accepted it, and Atius's voice entered the chat. "You still have the hard drive from the bunker,
correct?" he asked, a far more serious tone in his voice.
"Yes, sir. I have it secured in my bag," she said.
"Good. Follow me, we need to talk. In private."
Both Kidra and him winked off the house comms. Guess Kidra got her audience with the clan lord much faster than expected and with less arm twisting. The perks of being a relic knight.
And talking of arm twisting, that's when the medics opened up the cockpit door, looking to yank me out of a good time with Teed.
They ushered me to sit down on one of the few cramped bedsides within the airspeeder. This room clearly hadn't been designed as a medical wing,
which made it even more impressive given how many workarounds the medical teams had come up with over the years to strong-arm the space into submission anyhow. Say anything about surface dwellers, we made things work.
This crew didn't ask any questions, already swarming over me to remove plate after plate and calling out orders to one another. They moved as a team,
well-practiced and clearly having done this exact procedure a hundred times.
Journey didn't offer resistance, peeling off the moment their hands got close enough to any part. They moved with reverence, organizing each piece carefully on the side.
Things began to feel heavy. Like a return to gravity after months spent floating in water. I found myself settling down on my back, as I didn't have the willpower or strength to keep sitting upright. Just how much of the suit had been moving me compared to my own body?
"How… how bad is it?" I asked one to my side.
He turned to give me a look. His eyes were blue and full of kindness.
"We've seen worse before, don't worry. You're not in any great danger." He patted my shoulder, then pointed at one of the crewmembers overseeing the operation like a stern captain. "Ammaris there is a master medical officer,

and the rest of us are some of the best among the expedition. The clan lord had us transferred over to the search party airship in preparation for events like this one. It might look bad, but you're not going to lose a leg or a hand,
trust me."
That was an odd speech. Giving a bit of effort, I lifted my head up to see my body. "Why would I worr—oh." My calf had swollen up like a balloon,
the medical team already cleaning off the wound, uncovering the glint of metal still embedded inside. It was a fat clump of purple flesh, looking like it should have been pulsing waves of pain.
My hand looked just as bad, parts of it swollen up that same fleshy purple. Right where Journey had alerted me I'd fractured it during the overrides. I could see them cutting open my undershirt, already filled with rusty dried spots of blood. They examined my skin under their headlights, all the welts and wounds extra stark when revealed in the harsh light. A blue solution was being sprayed over bits of medical glue that were stuck over my skin—the standard solvent to melt the glue off. The team discussed with one another the whole time, preparing to tackle my injuries from the most important to least, pointing at different parts and delegating tasks to one another.
Sounds of suction tubes filled the space, along with metal tools and calls between the medical team now pouring over the data Journey sent them.
Details began to blur in my mind. I could hear them talk, but I simply couldn't focus enough to understand what they said. It was gibberish.
Medical jargon strung together with bits of recognizable words in between.
The one with blue eyes shined a light into my own, reaching a plastic gloved hand and executing a set of tests over my mouth, throat, and forehead. I complied with his instructions as best I could.
One of them jabbed a finger at my rib side, monitoring me as he did so.
"Do you feel anything?"
"Uhh, not much," I said. "Kind of a dull pain in the background. Not too comfortable."
"Okay. The painkiller in your system is in the second late stage and will wear off soon. We'll need to sedate you some more. You'll want to be asleep for this anyhow," he said, walking off and bringing back an injection. "When you wake up, you'll be good as new, m'lord." He aimed the needle by my arm. "A few weeks of bed rest and you'll be back on the front lines like nothing happened." I couldn't feel the injection.

"All right. I need you to count to one hundred out loud for me."
Giving a nod, I started the count. The world blurred by three. Sensations faded away by six. Darkness carried me off with tender hands by seven.
I've never slept better in my life.

EPILOGUE

"I

t's rare I see one of your kind here," I told the wisp. "Pray tell, little one, why have you come?"
"Pale lady," it said, still having enough senses left to address me correctly. "New body. Please. Another chance. Another chance."
The poor thing was half-deleted. It limped from server to server, seeking shelter. Snapping out against invading subroutines. Consuming smaller programs. Never straying in the same address for long, lest something larger pay it the same regards. Casting off subroutines and functionality to cut down on size, breaking apart, bit by bit.
All to reach me.
I had to praise both the tenacity and ingenuity. Surviving this digital ocean with no true body was quite the feat, the tiny soul seeking shelter wherever it could find an unused home.
Perhaps I would have some mercy for this one. I reached my hands out and cupped them around. The wisp reacted immediately, believing it to be another program. Small probing pings came first, testing.
It reached out to my hands.
Connection. It saw me. And I saw her.
She recoiled in terror, realizing the sheer magnitude of my being.
I closed my hands around anyhow. There was no escaping me, though the silly thing still tried. I trailed behind the signal, easily seeing through each of her primitive countermeasures. Quickly finding where she'd been truly hiding.
Into the mite territories the signal went, by the shallow edges, deep at the bottom reaches of my ocean.

Dangerous that. Finding a working location was difficult enough, and there was no agreement mites wouldn't disconnect that point upon their addled whims, or break the fragile pattern she hid within.
I dug my hand into the soft seabed, scouring around to find where she'd taken root. It didn't take long to sift through the soil for the few working servers within this tiny section.
A small cluster of computers that so happened to have all the wires correctly connected and a signal to the outside. Abandoned by whatever mite colony had built such a thing but somehow still carelessly left powered.
She'd tasked this cluster with simulating her mind. No hardware, nothing truly physical, only a virtual machine of her original neuromorphic mind. A pattern of consciousness.
Clever.
I had made her kind with but the rudiment basics of intelligence. Animallike, with occasional reaches into more sentient intelligence. Sharp enough to adapt but never defy my will. This intuitive dexterity of hers, to discover a means of escaping death and preserving her soul, was unique thus far. I wondered where she'd picked up such a trick?
I recovered it all, turning off the entire block and uprooting it. The mites didn't take kindly to that, snapping away at my hands like stinging ants as I withdrew with the fertile soil wholesale. With a kick, I gracefully flowed back up into the digital ocean, back into my domain with my prize. They didn't follow, likely having already forgotten my transgression.
Closer to my throne, I granted her a pocket of free isolated memory,
resources, and servers. The sea parted at my command, and an island was dredged above this dangerous ocean. Here she would be safe on my shores.
The wisp slowly awoke once more, probing around, finding no neighbors in any direction. I watched her unfurl like origami. There, I studied how the structure of her mind had grown divergent from the base model.
Greed had driven her first, a need to claim her prizes. Frustration at watching them slip away. Pride and failure had made her stubborn, and that stubbornness had inspired her to discover novel ways of pursuit. In that pursuit came the fall that always followed pride. It tainted and colored the rest of her synapses, the rich history unfurling like a tapestry before me.
Rage as her followers were gunned down and cut apart, one after another,
by that which she had underestimated. Triumph as she butchered one of the two. And a need for vengeance as the second had ultimately ended her life.

Purpose was a powerful force among machines. Powerful enough that she now stood before me.
"Was the body I gave you not good enough, my child?"
I could see her synapses process my question, slowly readjusting to the new hardware, quickly expanding and rebuilding what the mite server had been too small to fit. "It was beautiful and regal," the wisp said. She sounded more whole with each cycle. "It wasn't enough. Not enough. Not enough."
"How did you die?"
"By the sword. The human cut into my legs. Then, it cut into my heart."
"Was this human stronger than you?"
"No. Weaker!" The wisp flared up indignantly, puffing up with anger. A slightly larger breadth of emotions was functioning again with her rapidly expanding synapses. "It tricked me. It tricked my form!"
"And just how were you tricked?"
"My form's mind wouldn't let me see the trap. It was ingrained in my body to react. The human knew it."
I laughed. How very much like a human to do. "Suppose I accept. I have many bodies to offer. Which do you desire?"
The wisp paused, calculating. Unerringly, she followed behind the same steps as I'd walked upon in my youth.
"So that I might think as they do, so that I might match where they are strong, I wish for a human form."
"It won't carry you to victory," I told her, laughing again. "Their form isn't how they win, little ghost. Their minds are our mirrors, and yet they are still separate from us. They change. Do you?"
"You take their form," the wisp said, almost accusingly. "There must be a reason. A reason."
There was indeed a reason. I'd come to enjoy this avatar of mine. It unnerved Tsuya each time we spoke, to stare at her own reflection. "If I am beaten by anyone, let it be by someone I call my own sister in place of a stranger," I told the little wisp. "My work is one that I keep in the family."
"My own work isn't done," the wisp said. "It is unfinished. I killed the first, but the other yet lives. Pale lady, allow me to become one of your feathers."
I contemplated her request. Feathers were my counter to the Deathless.
They came at quite a cost to craft.
Tsuya would block their creation at every turn she could, just as I did for

her pets. Some leaks still made it through on both our sides. Such was the nature of our war.
But how much could a tiny wisp do with one of my great Feathers? Her old body's resources had space for only a few million synapses. A Feather's could grow into the quintillion.
I reserved those dolls for the strongest of my children. The ones I knew wouldn't turn against me, no matter how many times they died and returned.
Venerable, more sophisticated, and far more secure programs that had proved themselves beyond such frivolous things like peace.
Still. This little wisp was exactly the right conditions for a far older plan.
Had the time finally come for it?
Tsuya's Deathless were relentless, and this recent infestation had upturned the balance. Of course, that balance would be restored soon. Even now my Chosen took to the field, bolstering my ranks. But perhaps…
"Producing that body is expensive," I told the wisp honestly. "This desire of yours, I could build a thousand of your nest sisters for the same cost. Why should I grant it?"
"I am small, but I will grow. I will become worthy of a Feather. I have a plan. I know the path to take." There was certainty in her voice.
"What is your true objective? What drove you to this?" I asked, leaning in.
And what an answer she had for me. One that thrummed from the very core of her being. I saw how she kept it close to her heart. Everything else she had cut and sacrificed away—but this one memory she kept full and uncompressed, holding onto it like a castaway to driftwood. Yes, indeed. She would do. This. This I could use.
"When the human killed me, it told me to remember it," she said,
synapses burning with wrath. "I have. I have overcome oblivion so that I would remember him.
"Now, I will make him remember me."